Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1392: All the Phils

Episode Date: June 21, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and guest co-host Ellen Adair banter about Ellen’s acting career and baseball background, the causes of (and possible solutions to) the Phillies’ post-McCutchen slump, what the (extremely far-fetched) idea of the Rays splitting time between Tampa Bay and Montreal might look like in practice, Ellen’s script for a baseball series, and her solution […]

So you just walk right in Cause you're a brand new kind of actress You're a brand new kind of actress You're the same old stubborn waitress Baby, you're a brand new kind of actress Hello and welcome to episode 1392 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. I am not joined by either Sam or Meg. Meg's on vacation. Sam is somewhere in the wilderness camping. I hope he's okay, but I am delighted to be joined by today's guest co-host, Ellen Adair, who is an actress and a poet and a Phillies fan, not necessarily

in that order. Ellen, welcome to Factually Wild. Thank you so much. It is such a pleasure to be here. I'm a very poor replacement for Sam or Meg, but I am really thrilled. So this is, to me, it sort of feels like the result of a make-a-wish foundation for grown adults for me to get to be on this podcast with you. So hopefully I'll try to make up for in gratitude what I lack in knowledge and sense of humor. Well, I'm happy to have you here too. I've been wanting to do this for a while, but I had to wait for one of my co-hosts or both of my co-hosts to skip town to give us an opportunity. So here we are. And I'm sorry it had to be at the low point thus far of the Phillies season. Oh, man. things have been going for the Phillies lately. But just to introduce you to people a little bit,

I'm sure that you must get the question that probably all actors get of, what have I seen you in? And for you, the have I seen you in anything must be, you've seen me in everything, because you've kind of been in every show that people watch, or at least every show that I watch, so that when I first came across your IMDb page, I was like, she was in that and she was in that and I've seen that and I've seen that and I've seen them all. And since then, you've even added to the list of shows that I watch that you have appeared on when you went on The Good Fight recently. So how did you get into acting and how did you end up with this career where you have been on virtually every prestige show in the past decade or so? Oh gosh, it doesn't feel that way at all. But that's very kind, a very kind assessment of my career. I've wanted to be an actor since I was

basically for as long as I can remember. So I always say it belies some lack of personal development. But I was mostly just doing children's theater when I was a kid. So it's not like I was a child actor being in, you know, serial commercials or something like that. And I did my first Shakespeare play when I was 12. And I did my first professional Shakespeare play when I was 15. So for a long while in my career, I was doing a lot of classical theater. And I still really love it.

I just don't do as much of it anymore because I do more really excellent television. So it's not something I can particularly lament. But yeah, I went to school actually for English with a minor in theater, thinking that I would go to grad school. And then that just sort of gradually didn't happen. So here I am. Well, you turned pro pretty quickly if you started your amateur Shakespeare career at 12 and then were being paid to be in Shakespeare plays by 15. That's not a bad turnaround. Well, it was an extenuating circumstance

because the first show that I did when I was 12, the Indiana Shakespeare Company, which now no longer exists because there's no arts funding in the United States, they formed a junior company that was made of high school students and middle school students. And so I was in that junior company and did a number of junior shows that is with other kids who are my age. And then when they were doing a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, they decided to use some of the junior company members in that production. And so I played Puck in that production, but I was not even the only junior company member to be in that show. So it was a really, it was a really fun experience. And then that was really my only professional experience until I then graduated

from college and started acting to actually pay the rent in theory. So in the current phase of your career, where you're going from Billions to Homeland to The Sinner to Good Fight to Veep to show that people have heard of and watch or or even Red Dead Redemption 2, for that matter. Are you often being specifically solicited and sought out? Are you attending open auditions? Are you targeting certain shows that you would like to appear on and trying to make that happen? How does that work? Yeah, well, that's a really great question. And for the most part in my career, I'm still just in the phase of auditioning for the things that I can get seen for. So I have a couple of different sets of agents. I have what are called legit agents, which basically just covers everything except for commercials. And then I have commercial agents. And then I have a manager who helps me with both of those things. commercial agents. And then I have a manager who helps me with both of those things. And so they just submit me for things and I go out for them is sort of how that process works. What just sort of changes is that really the only power, I guess, that an actor has is to say, no, I don't want to

go out for that. Whether that's like, no, I don't really like that show or no, that part is not large. And so it's not really going to build my career in any way. So much like the rest of adulthood, I feel like it's like the gradual paring down of options basically is the career as an actor. Yeah. Well, you have developed sort of a side career that I'm sure is a lot less lucrative even than acting, which is being a baseball commentator and tweeter and person who appears on podcasts. So how did baseball become a part of your life? Well, also baseball has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. So I guess I'm just really bad at telling a story. My parents took me to see baseball games when I was a babe in arms. And certainly when I was a toddler, I think I had like a decently long attention span

for like a very young person because I also, you know, they also took me to Shakespeare plays when I was like three or four. So, so yeah, I, you know, lived in Philadelphia. I'm born in Philadelphia. So Von Hayes of the Phillies was the first man that I ever loved, but I not, I don't, I was so young that I don't even really particularly remember why. My guess is just that he hit a couple of home runs and, you know, I was young, so I was very impressed by, by something, by a feat as simple as that. And you were a Phillies fan for life. You remain one. And that has been an exciting thing to be, at least until the past couple of weeks or so, when everything seemingly ran off the rails. And Andrew McCutcheon was lost. Since then,

it seems as if the Phillies have hardly scored and have lost 12 out of 18, something like that. And as we speak, they're coming off being swept by the Nationals in a doubleheader to a pitcher who is pitching with a broken nose. Granted, a very good pitcher, but still one who was sporting a really excellent shiner. And that didn't seem to hamper him at all. And Jake Arrieta declared that the low point of the Phillies season. So what is going on with the Phillies right now? They've fallen four behind the Braves after holding pole position for most of the season. Diagnose the ills of this Phillies roster and can they be corrected? Oh, goodness. Yeah, it's a dark week to be talking to a Phillies fan. And

I really like to maintain what I think of as sort of like positive realism in my fandom, because I feel like the world, certainly the Internet, but the world in general is so full of people who just are, you know, this person is terrible. And I saw this coming all along. And, you know, the coaches are all terrible and fire everybody and i actually just feel like that's the that's the easy easy way to be because then when it happens and it's bad you can separate yourself from it it's like i knew this was going to happen so even though that's the easier way to be i i try not to do that and i'm going to try not to do that right now but i don't know how how easy that's going to be for me. So yeah, just being four games behind the Red Hot Braves right now feels like a chasm. And part of it is it's hard for me to diagnose whether the low point is dropping two to the Nationals or whether the low point was the series against the Braves this

past weekend, which gave us a couple of different kinds of heartbreaking and soul-crushing losses. But it's probably the combination of those two things. And I think what's hard is it's just not great to see the team make so many improvements and then still remind us uncomfortably of the 2018 team. So obviously, some of the things that have happened to the Phillies have been injuries. Their bullpen has been completely decimated. The guys are working their way back, but there were seven of their top relievers from the bullpen on the injured list at one point. And losing McCutcheon was very sad. And losing Odubel Herrera was sad in a very different way. A very quick side note slash plug.

I do have thoughts about what Major League Baseball and Concerned fans can do better in situations like dealing with Odubel Herrera, and I wrote about it on the turf. So if anybody wants to look it up, they can. Anyway, I won't go into that now. So the Phillies have been hurt, but like so have the Yankees and the Yankees have still been doing just fine. So I don't feel like we can, we can't put all of the grief at the foot of the injuries. I feel like it's mostly inconsistency. You know, if I were going to pick one word to describe the 2019 Phillies, it would be inconsistency.

And it just seems like the team can't get hot at the same time. It does seem often like they can almost all get cold at the same time. Right now, it's pretty much just Scott Kingery, who's hot, and everybody else looks like they're really trying to figure it out. And I think that there was so much talent on this team. And I genuinely believe that they can perform like the best team in the NL East, but they just can't seem to click or put it all together. And I think that they were really riding the first place in the NL East

because none of the other teams were clicking either. And now that the Braves are clicking and how, the Phillies are just suffering from that. I mean, also, I think the Phillies are not playing as well as they did earlier. And I think one of the other difficulties is obviously just that I don't think anybody expected this from Aaron Nola. I didn't expect him to necessarily put up the same numbers that he did last year, in part because of that really excellent and sad article that Mike Petriello wrote about how the

defense had deeply hurt Nick Pavetta, but actually helped Aaron Nola a little bit. And I thought, oh, that's interesting to know. And so maybe we can, we'll see his numbers regress a little bit, but I just don't think anybody was expecting this. And so I think kind of seeing Nola be inconsistent, like the rest of the team and Jake Arrieta not perform like the number two starter that we'd like him to be really the most consistent starter has been Eflin, which is good for him, but he does it with, with mostly with pitch location, which is scary, I guess, to expect to maintain long term. even as they look down on most other fronts. And is this a situation where you are already greedily looking at other teams' rosters as the trade deadline approaches and thinking, well, we just made so many moves over the winter.

Maybe there's one or two more we could make. Or are you thinking that this roster will eventually gel and that there is enough talent already on the team? I think that they need to make some trades. And so, yes, I'm more in the greedily looking at other teams' rosters phase, I guess. And I think that the main thing that's really glaring is just that the Phillies need a fifth starter, which they don't have right now.

And they don't have the bullpen to consistently throw a bullpen game. So the real question is, who's the fifth starter going to be? I mean, you know, they can obviously Vince Velasquez and Jared Eikhoff have started games for the Phillies. And, you know, I was very excited about Eikhoff's return when he got back and was rooting for him really hard. And I'm also rooting for Vince Velasquez, but I have always sort of thought that maybe he'd be better as a bullpen arm just because he really only has the two pitches anyway. So I, I, I know that they can throw those guys out there, but it's clear that the organization doesn't really believe that either of them can be starters for them right

now. And so I feel like they need to, they need to get another starter. And so, I mean, the question is, of course, like, do they, are they thinking they're still going to contend this year? Or are they thinking that they're going to just try to contend next year and maybe make the moves after the end of the season once they see how things work out? And if they make that decision, I guess, you know, and they want to hold on to as many of their prospects as they can, I guess I can't necessarily fault them. But I do feel like obviously with all of the moves they made this past offseason, they have been building to now. They can't continue to build for a few years from now. And so in that regard, I guess any of their prospects who have an ETA of sort of later than 2020, I feel like even if I love them, like I absolutely, maybe my favorite Phillies prospect is Luis Garcia, but we might not see him until 2022. So if they decide that they want to ship him off for somebody else, I understand that. And I think that, you know, the sort of Phillies fan community is divided on whether or not they want the Phillies to not pay

a lot and just go out and get somebody who like will be a body in the hole of the fifth starter. I guess I feel like I'd rather that they try to get somebody who could really make a difference for the team. Certainly just because I feel like not just from this past weekend, but the earlier series this year when the Phillies faced the Dodgers, it was just, and they were swept, like, of course. It was pretty clear that if this team has any aspirations in order to compete in the postseason or even maybe make it to the postseason or even maybe make

it to the postseason, they're going to have to improve their roster. Yeah, not a lot of teams can compete with the Dodgers on depth, but maybe that does kind of bring it home when you see that roster and how deep it goes. But I am somewhat surprised as someone who picked the Phillies to win this division, albeit with a low degree of confidence because I thought this would be a tight race. What surprises me somewhat is the Phillies lineup, which when I looked at it prior to the start of the season, it looked very star studded and very imposing and has actually been a below average lineup, even stripping out the pitcher hitting performance. It's been a below average lineup. And the defense has recovered from its perhaps all-time worst lows of last season to be only moderately below average and somewhat competent and depending on the stat, even perhaps an asset. That is a welcome change, I think. But I am somewhat surprised, I think, by the lineup's lack of performance. And I wonder whether that has dampened any of the enthusiasm, because if you look at the year-over-year attendance still, it's very clear that there is a big bump there, which I would imagine is partly related to last year's run at contention, but is largely related to the spending spree and the trading spree this past winter.

And the Phillies, even now, are up by more than 10,000 fans per game, which is enormous. I mean, no other team in baseball is even 3,000 up from last year, and the league as a whole is slightly down. So that clearly shows that if you go get a bunch of good players, it gets the fan base excited and they will buy tickets to come see your games. But that enthusiasm probably fades if the performance doesn't match the hype at a certain point. Yeah, I think so. I mean, I consider myself a sort of atypical Philadelphia sports fan for any number

of reasons. And one of them is that I do stick with the Phillies no matter what. And I will go to the games and watch the games and listen to them sort of no matter what. So, you know, I mean, that's part of the reason why I'm like, gosh, if I went through 2015, like, obviously I can see this incredibly talented of guys through the end of the season. And I know that my interest will never wane and I will continue to live and die by their every pitch and at bat. But in terms of, in terms of Philadelphia sports fans in general, I think they're, they're a little fickle. Um, and so it could be that they'll continue to turn out all year

because there's this, you know, famous guy called Harper, who is like the face of, of baseball as well as, you know, T-Mobile and whatever, Beard Balm. But yeah, I don't know at what point. I don't know how much, for example, the front office has to feel like we need to go out and get Madison Bumgarner in order to get the butts in the seats. They might not feel that way, which might be why we don't get Madison Bumgarner. But coming into the year,

I didn't particularly want them to get Madison Bumgarner anyway, but that's partly because I thought Bumgarner was going to, was sort of potentially going to fall off a cliff, and he hasn't. He stayed on the cliff. So now I, and, you know, also at the beginning of the season, I feel like I was more optimistic about the Phillies' own rotation, and now I sort of feel more the obvious need for help. I feel like, you know, earlier in the season, there was

a lot of talk about Mike Miner, which I think perhaps I'd rather see Mike Miner be a Philly than Baumgartner, although I think it's obviously less likely that he gets traded at this point, or at least way more of a question. And I also sort of wonder at this point whether or not he might be a lot more expensive. You know, I think some of my thought was that Bumgarner would be very costly because of the name, like maybe more costly than he's worth. And I'm not saying that Mike Miner will cost more than he's worth, but I don't know if he might end up being, if he is moved, if he might end up being one of the pitchers that actually commands a larger

return. I feel sort of the same about Matt Boyd. Obviously, I can dream about, yes, go get Matt Boyd, but I just have no idea what the cost of that is going to be. Right. Well, because they were so active over the winter, you can imagine the possibilities with greater confidence than a lot of fans can because their own teams haven't demonstrated the willingness to spend or to trade prospects for established stars in the way that the Phillies very recently have. And having already made those moves over the past winter, one would think that they would want to double down and to make sure that those moves were not for nothing.

And so as they are entering their competitive window more so than leaving it at this point, they're still very much in a willing to add and able to add phase, at least financially. So that's an exciting place to be as a fan. And also on the bright side, no one is talking about them moving to Montreal for half of their season so that's some solace to you perhaps and and we should talk about that because this news broke and then seemed to die almost as quickly as it broke on Thursday that the Rays have floated this plan and and have been authorized by Major League Baseball to discuss and explore this idea of playing half and that he will not grant permission for the team to talk to Montreal. And the Rays have an agreement with St. Petersburg until 2027.

They're sort of stuck in the trap until then. So this doesn't seem like something that could happen before then at the earliest. And even then, it seems unlikely to happen for any number of reasons. But I did kind of want to just imagine as a thought experiment what this would look like and feel like for fans if such a thing were to happen. I don't know that there's precedent for this, really. I mean, when the Expos were sort of doing their death spiral, of course, they played in Puerto Rico part of the time, and there are examples in the indie leagues and in the early years of baseball of teams that just didn't draw at all at home, just being road teams and being perpetually on the road. But this sort of

transnational home-and-away, first-half, second-half sort of arrangement, I don't know that there is a perfect comp for this. And it's fun to imagine, but probably not very fun to experience. I don't know that there is a perfect comp for this. And it's fun to imagine, but probably not very fun to experience. I feel like I should approve of this plan because I'm a dual citizen and a Canadian and American citizen, and I've got my passports to both countries. So this would be like my national team. As someone who is split between those countries, this team could be split between those countries. So I might have to root for a team that was half Canadian, half Floridian, but I don't know that anyone else would. Yeah, it's very fun to think about it.

And I think also a little bit goes to show just where I'm at in this week with the Phillies, that I'm like, oh, yes, this is far less depressing for me to think about than the Phillies right now. But yeah, it is really stupefying. And it does, it really makes me want to sort of run a cost-benefit analysis for everybody involved. Because of course, the obvious winners here is the ownership, because they'll get more revenue from the ticket sales and the corporate sponsorship in Montreal. But they're really the only ones, it seems to me,

who don't also lose a lot in addition to getting all of those nice, slightly deflated Canadian dollars. Right. Yeah. Because for the players, there's a number of really obvious negatives. Like I have to imagine there'd be complicated tax implications and they'd have to have two homes or else be away from family for a longer time if their family just wanted to be in either Montreal or Florida.

And the only real positive that I can see is that at least they would have more fans at one of their home games, presumably. So I guess we could ask Tommy Pham how he would feel about it. Yeah. I mean, I didn't think it was possible for the Rays to draw fewer fans in Tampa Bay, but that might be what happens here because what they're talking about is having the Rays play in Tampa Bay for the first half of the season and then just camping to Montreal for the rest of the season, which if you knew that your team was about to just leave town for the second half of the season and presumably the playoffs should they make them, what loyalty would you have to the team? What incentive would you have to show up to these

games knowing that the team is about to abandon your city when the games matter more or get more exciting from a pennant race standpoint? And I don't know how this would work in terms of stadium revenues and TV revenues and the local broadcast deals. That sounds complicated. I don't know if they would have to renovate or build new facilities in these places. Either way, with the current to get to. So I would feel sorry for the race fans who are there, even if they don't regularly go to games. You would think there'd still be a sense of betrayal or abandonment if this team left in the middle of the season. And I'd have to think that this is more than a serious plan, probably more of a bargaining tactic. I don't know how much leverage something like this could confer for ownership, given that it sounds so far-fetched that I don't know whether it would be taken as a serious threat. have threatened and said, we will leave town. We will go to this other market that wants us. If you don't give us a nice, shiny new ballpark, that might be what is happening here. Just, you know,

the Rays have tried to secure a new ballpark. It hasn't worked thus far. So maybe they are just thinking of new and even more unorthodox ideas. They're just, they're going to use Tampa Bay as the opener basically for their season. That's the plan here. I just don't know that this could ever work in practice. Yeah, I don't think so. Although I feel like you may have hit the nail on the head here, because from reports that I saw, both venues would get new stadiums through this. Which, of course, feels like the ultimate middle finger to the fan base. Like, we're going to tax you and you're going to have to pay for this new stadium, but then you're like only going to be people would think okay well if there's just the laws of supply and demand if there are fewer baseball games then more people are going to want to go to those baseball games while they're there and i don't know that that

works if you live in saint pete because you'd be so bitter about having been charged for a new stadium that was only there for half of the baseball season that you probably wouldn't go. So yeah, I just like, I don't, I don't really see that working out. I mean, you mentioned the post season. And I do wonder, would it be a de facto like the postseason would be in Montreal? Or maybe could you appease, you know, the fans in St. Pete or its surrounding areas by telling them like, but the postseason is going to be if they get to the postseason, it'll be in Tampa Bay? I don't know. And that's hurricane season, really. So I don't know if this new hypothetical ballpark would be another dome or

enclosed or but that's a potential problem too so there are many more problems than more problems than solutions yes certainly yeah and i don't know that staying and the status quo is a solution either but this just uh this sounds beyond the pale probably well they it would have to be basically a whole new franchise because they couldn't call it the like tampa bay montreal rays right yeah i heard some nickname suggestions like some other name yeah they could be the x rays or uh i think diane firstman suggested the montereys for Montreal and Rays. I mean, you could come up with some portmanteau. Montereys is pretty good. Yeah, it is. Yeah, but what even, would it be Tampa, Montreal, or would you just be like,

this team is the North American geese because they fly north for the summer? geese because they fly north for the summer. Right, yeah. I don't know. Maybe we should be like Star Trek. It's all one world, and we shouldn't have these local loyalties, and we shouldn't be so protective of our tribes. And if you like this team, you can just like this team wherever it is. But I don't think sports really works that way.

I think we want geographical rooting interests. We want our people to beat their people. And that's kind of always the way it's worked. And I just don't know that you can share. I mean, they're asking for an open relationship, essentially, which has worked for people, can work if they both want to be in one, but sometimes can be tricky and complicated. And I think that a sports team, that would be particularly true. Yeah. I'm reminded of the story of, was it Solomon adjudicating who owned the baby? Yes. And that the woman who was like, yeah, I'm fine with cutting the baby in half was the woman who

wasn't actually the mother of the baby. I'm sure there's some way to relate that to this yeah so whichever city is not okay with this arrangement because they love the rays too much to share them they are the one who get awarded the franchise in the end i don't know well this is probably something that was fun to think about for a day and and will never actually come to fruition or get more serious than this. So I'm glad we got to talk about it for one day and envision what that would look like. And that's probably as far as it will go, at least for the next eight years or so. Yes. It made me smile. It made me smile on a day like this. Yeah. Well, I meant to ask you about this, and I don't know how much you can talk about it,

but to whatever extent you're comfortable talking about it, you are working on a baseball project. And this is something that I've been privy to. You shared a script with me for a baseball-related pilot that you're working on. And I wanted to see if you could lay it out a little why you wanted to do this because there's not a lot of baseball content on TV other than the actual baseball itself. And I would imagine that baseball-related acting jobs are probably pretty tough to come by. I guess you missed your opportunity on Pitch. Maybe it will come back at some point. But these days, besides Pitch and Brockmire, there aren't a whole lot of baseball-related American TV shows out there.

So have you just decided to take it upon yourself to create one? And what difficulties do you anticipate? Well, yes, I would like to say that it's totally altruistic that I looked out into the world and I said there is a hole of baseball-related content. And I am the one to fill that hole. But in fact, it was a little bit more selfish, I guess, or self-motivated. So my friend, Chris Carfizzi and I, Chris and I met when we were working on Billions together. He plays Rudy.

At Axe Cap? At Axe Cap, indeed. Yes. So we're Axe Cap alum. At Axe Cap? And he said, I would like to write something about the difficulties of advocacy and like championing problems of gender inequality. So in some ways, that is the kernel of the two sort of protagonists that we've created for ourselves. That I think he brought to the table, perhaps the thing that you would have expected maybe the woman to bring to the table. And I brought the thing to the table that you would have expected maybe the man to bring to the table. So we have been working on this series for a little while.

And it's about two sports writers who are best friends and they're working. They are writers for a website that is tied to a fictional television network. And so it's in part about the difficulties that the character that I have written for me, whose name is Erin, encounters being a woman just in the world in general, like different workplace things that I've dealt with and different workplace things that other friends of to kind of take on the difficulties that she has. But then also along the way, you know, encountering the difficulties of the idea of trying to help somebody else who you feel is less advantaged than you are. And we're also looking at kind of the way that media is changing, you know. So Chris and I, as many people are, are fans of Sports Night, but the world of media is very different now than it was when Sports Night was written and was on the air. And so we feel like that also has a lot of ripe possibilities for us to explore it.

For example, in our pilot episode, you learn that there are even more layoffs at the network. And so everybody's more afraid for their job. And sort of the very, very long plan that I have for, you know, the hypothetical season three or season four of the series very much has to do with Aaron deciding to take advantage of new media and sort of becoming a leader in that, which I don't want to give too much away. But it's very much about baseball because I love baseball and it's my favorite thing that's not like often categorized as an art, although I think it is an art. But sort of just playing with gender dynamics is something that we're kind of doing certainly throughout the first season and I think throughout the hypothetical future seasons too. Yeah. Well, I really enjoyed what I read of it and the version of the script that I saw had praise for both Fangraphs and Baseball Savant in it, which if you succeed in getting that on the air, that will be quite an accomplishment, I think. But I read it and I also said to you that it seemed like sports night,

but with baseball bloggers and also not with the anchors, but with the people getting harassed by the anchors in some cases. So this is a different perspective and obviously one that I quite enjoyed and that I think a lot of our listeners would enjoy. And the parts of it that overlapped with my experience rang pretty true. And I hope that this gets picked up at some point down the road. I would very much like to see a show like this get made, partly for self-centered reasons of wanting to see a show about the sort of things that I've gotten to do, but also because it fills a niche that is not filled and I think would be able to bring up

some issues that are often overlooked. So I wish you the best of luck. I know that it can't always be easy to sell baseball-related projects when people think baseball is dying and no one cares about baseball anymore, which as we know is demonstrably untrue, but that may be a bias that you have to overcome. But I hope that you do overcome it. Well, overcoming that very bias would be one of the many topics of the show. Yes, that's right. And we are about to speak to someone who has lived this experience for herself and has gotten a job in baseball and in a historically male-skewed field, is changing the demographics a little bit and has been part of the MLB diversity program. Sam Schultz, who works in the baseball operations department for the Padres. So we will bring her in shortly, and we had a good chat with her. Since you mentioned your Oduble Herrera piece, this is probably not a topic that should be shunted aside

into a very brief conversation, but I will link to it for people who want to read it at length. But would you care to share your own feelings as the Oduble Herrera suspension surfaced? It's a difficult thing to deal with as a fan. And even when I've spoken about these issues with Sam or Meg or Jeff, you know, we're typically not coming to it from a fan's perspective just because we cover the game and don't view the game through that lens so much anymore. But I know from having talked to people and from having tried to moderate our Facebook group when these discussions, which are always somewhat inflammatory, arise, I know that this

can be a difficult thing for fans to figure out how to respond to. And what does this mean? Does this mean I should stop watching the team? What should I think of this player? What should I think of how baseball handles these issues in general? And I think you wrestled with all of that in this piece, which again, I will link to and recommend that people read. But what would you say about how you have tried to process this experience as a Phillies fan who wants the best for the Phillies, but also does not want to see teams and the Phillies in particular sort of skate by when this sort of issue arises. Yeah. Well, thank you. Because it's like I don't want to talk about

it and I feel like it needs to be talked about at the same time. So obviously I have many feelings about this because I wrote, I don't know, like 3000 words or something, it was ridiculous. And so I won't go into all of those thoughts and feelings. But I think it sort of boils down to, I think what by the end of the article, I called a like, forgive, don't forget policy, because it really bothers me when I feel like people have forgotten, when people have what are all this Chapman did when people have forgotten what Jose Reyes did. the article, I don't necessarily think that a lifetime ban is the answer for like good practical reasons and also for sort of emotional reasons of I just don't, I don't believe in rejecting any human outright. However, what I proposed as a solution that I would feel more satisfying to me as a baseball fan, as a censure from Major League Baseball, rather than just a suspension for a certain number of games, would instead be to say that a certain percentage of whatever the player makes for the rest of the player's life would instead go to charities that support victims of domestic abuse or sexual assault. And so that percentage could be publicized and it could be, you know, in accordance to

the severity of the event, but that it would be ongoing so that you had this sense that when fans are watching a player play that by playing they are a certain amount of whatever they would be making otherwise is instead going to be going to victims and that a certain amount of whatever the organization would be paying would instead be going to victims and that there would be an event every year where the player could announce. So this year, the proceeds, you know, from my, I called it tithing in the article would, where are going to be going to this organization. And, you know, there could, you know, everybody could be happy about that, but that it would remain in the public eye instead of sort of feeling like it's this one moment when

everybody gets really mad, you know, it feels sort of like 1984, the however many minutes of hate it was, you know, everybody like it's really mad for a second and then they feel better later because they got mad, but they didn't actually change anything. So from thinking about this, the solution that I came up with for myself was I said, well, if the Phillies keep Herrera on the roster and he plays again, I can do my own version of this and I will donate a dollar for every run that he scores or every RBI that he has. And that way I will feel like I can cheer for him to do that thing because I know that that will result in me not only giving money to this

organization that I would be happy to give money to anyway but that I'll be public about this is how much I'm giving to this organization and I'm doing it because of this player and this thing that they did so it could at least kind of raise the visibility of the issue so my thought is you know anybody who feels the same way about whether or not they're also a Phillies fan and they feel the same, they have the same worry about Odubo Herrera or whether or not they're dealing with somebody else on their team who has pretty, who has serious allegations of domestic violence or sexual assault, they could, they could make a decision to do the same thing so that then at least they'd feel better about watching the games.

they could make a decision to do the same thing so that then at least they'd feel better about watching the games. Yeah, that's a difficult thing to confront because you don't choose your fandom. Perhaps you can, but I think it's a difficult thing to do unless your team is spending half its time in another city and you live in that city or something in this future Raze world. I know that some Cubs fans, for instance, have done what you have suggested here just because you grew up with a certain team and the team itself is something of a public trust, even if it doesn't always operate that way. It's sort of a staple of your city. And to forsake the team or the sport as a result of one front office regime, one ownership that decides to bring someone in, or one player who does something objectionable and horrible. That is a lot to ask,

I think, of people to just completely turn their backs on the team. And yet, you know that if you do nothing and you continue as you were before, you are tacitly saying that you're okay with it. You're condoning it to some extent and perhaps enabling other teams not changing their behavior when a similar situation arises. So it's a difficult thing, I think, for every fan to confront. But the approach that you've suggested, assuming someone has the disposable dollars to do something like that, I think is one way perhaps to do some good and assuage your own discomfort. So I hope that you

find some solace in that approach if the need arises. Yeah. Well, and I would suggest that if somebody doesn't feel like they have very much money, they could say five cents. You know, I'll do five cents for every, you know, run or RBI. And then at least you feel like you're noticing the thing and you're still spiritually doing something to like send your energy in the opposite direction. Right. You know, and then it still gives you a way to be like, yay, all right. You know, he scored one and he hit one in. And so I'm going to add 10 cents to the tally of whatever I can, you know, he scored one and he hit one in. And so I'm going to

add 10 cents to the tally of whatever I can, you know, feel like I can give at the end of the summer. It's just a thought. I'm not, I'm not telling anybody else to do that. Right. Yeah. I'm just saying I've felt a lot better about it since I came up with that solution for myself. Yes. So I will link to it. And again, everyone can go read Ellen's longer thoughts on the page and we will take a quick break right now and we'll be back with Sam Schultz of the Padres All right, we are back. And our guest today is Sam Schultz, who is officially a baseball operations fellow in the Padres front office.

She came to my attention because she recently liked one of my tweets, probably by accident. I can only imagine. And I noticed that her profile said San Diego Padres astrophysicist. So I thought that sounds like someone I would want to talk to. And then I heard her on the Batflips and Nerds podcast and still wanted to talk to her. So now I am. Sam, welcome. Hello, thanks for having me. So I will ask the obligatory question that you probably can't answer in that much detail, but in whatever detail you can go into without getting in trouble with your bosses, including Dave Cameron, what do you do for the Padres?

Yeah. So like you said, I am a baseball operations fellow, which on its face doesn't really mean a whole lot to people. I'd say that I am involved with a lot of different things at the Padres, but most of what I do is research and development. So I spend a lot of my time at my computer working on projects for the major league team, the minor league team, whatever part of baseball operations feels like they need my help. But yeah, a lot of my day is just at my computer trying to solve problems, trying to make our organization better. I am also at my computer most of the day trying to solve problems, but the problems probably aren't as interesting as the ones that you're dealing with. And you just came off of probably a pretty grueling four-game series that the Padres split with the Rockies.

And this was in Colorado, so you were presumably not tied to the ballpark for those games, but they were the highest scoring four games in a series in baseball history. And I think the shortest ones were about three and a half hours and the longest one was five hours or so. So how much is your routine tied to the games? Yeah. So that series felt like we were in Colorado for like a month. And even though I wasn't physically there, when the team is playing, I'm doing something. I'm either watching the game or thinking about things that happen in the game that I'll have to deal with later or like fielding questions from our advanced team. So yeah, when the team is playing, I'm pretty invested in the

game. And then when they're in San Diego, it's just like, if the team is around, you're around. So the schedule does change a little bit. But that was a that was a seriously intense series, even from San Diego. My husband was actually at one of those games. Yeah? Yes. Did he have fun? He had a great time. He was shooting a movie in Colorado and got to see the game that the Padres won. I guess it would have been Friday. They ended up winning in extra innings. Maybe

that was a number of those games. So how did you get to the Padres? Because you've been there for about a year now, right? Yeah. So I'm actually part of the inaugural class of the MLB Diversity Fellowship. So the Padres were just one of the teams that I was able to talk with through that process. So I started there about a year ago, right before the draft last year, which is like not the best time to start a new job with a baseball team. If anybody else is thinking about doing that, avoid the draft. But yeah, so I've been here for about a year and gotten to do like a bunch of different stuff already. But the Padres actually contacted me about this position. So what was the process like for the MLB Diversity Fellowship Program? It was long and involved. So I think I

started applying for it like in the fall of 2017. And for anybody who has like no idea about it, MLB launched a diversity fellowship initiative to bring more women and people of color and underrepresented people to baseball front offices. So basically non-white men. So I applied through MLB and they had us write a couple essays and do some interviews through them. And then once they had vetted the candidates, they just let us loose on all of the clubs who participated. So then each club was able to conduct the interview process however they wanted to.

So some teams I talked to just immediately wanted to have an interview and we just talked. Others had me do projects. The Padres flew me to spring training for an in-person interview. So it was a little bit different once we got to each club level, what they expected from you and what they wanted you to do. But it was like a six-month process before I had finally chose the Padres as the team I was going to work for. I think this is a great program. My only critique is that there has to be a better name for this position than fellow. I know that there are other meanings of that word, but front offices are very full of fellows. That is part of the problem. That's part of the need for an MLB diversity program.

So I don't know. Maybe there's a better word out there. That's a really, really good point that I hadn't considered, actually. But I think a big problem with fellow, too, is people are always like, so what does that mean? What do you do? But it does sort of capture a lot of things. I do a lot of different things without being tied to one thing.

But it's a very, very good point about the coded language there. Yeah, just a little bit of feedback. But the program itself is great. And I think I read in an article about you that there were 22 people who were hired as part of the inaugural class out of 13,000. So this was very competitive. Can you describe what the essays were about? What did you have to write and how did you try to set yourself apart from that very large crowd? Yeah.

So the first one was just like a personal statement that we all wrote for college and like, you know, just tell us about yourself. So that one was not as hard because I've written those multiple times, like trying to get into colleges. The second one was more interesting. It was about if you were commissioner of Major League Baseball,

what three things would you change immediately? And so my approach to this was like trying to change something about the game itself, something about like how the game is marketed and something about like, I think it was that there's like blackout restrictions and you're limiting the fan base because fans of a certain team who live in that area can't watch their team. So I figured if I tried to like touch all different parts of baseball, that would be interesting. So I think I said something about like how I would change how sacrifice flies work because the batter gets penalized in one instance, but not in another,

like it doesn't hurt their batting average, but it hurts something else, but they get an RBI. So you're punishing and rewarding the batter for helping their team score run at the same time, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me. And then I also said that I would have teams be more involved in like children's sports. So the San Francisco Giants, I actually worked for one of their outreach programs. It's called the Junior Giants, and it serves kids in underserved areas. They get to play free baseball and softball all summer. There's educational components to it.

There's health programs that go along with it, and it makes Giants fans for life. At the end of those eight weeks, all of those kids were telling me that Buster Posey was their favorite player, and they're so excited to watch the Giants now. And it's such a rewarding thing that also creates fans. So I'd like to see more teams get involved with something like that. So that was another one of my ideas if I was commissioner. Well, how did you get to the point where you decided that you wanted to apply to be part of this program? Because you had been studying physics, hence the astrophysics part of your Twitter profile. And at some point, I suppose you decided that you wanted to pursue something else or at least put that off for a while. Yeah. In college, I realized that the math was getting too difficult. I really, really love

physics and I really love science, but I've never loved math. Like my entire life, I have not loved math. And so the math just got too much for me to handle, but I was already so deep in the degree that I was like, I can't change it now. So how can I use my love of like solving problems and data and science and do something that I really enjoy? And so baseball was just a natural fit for me because I knew that there was this sabermetric thing going on in the baseball world and I knew that teams had so much data. So I thought, okay, I can do that for my college team. They don't have anybody to analyze all this data and to help them get better on the field. So I started working with our college team.

I'm just working on like, how can we score more runs, which sounds like a very easy problem to solve, but it is not. Important one. Yeah, it is. So I started working with that. Doesn't sound like an easy problem to solve, but it is not. Important one. Yeah, it is. So I started working with that. It doesn't sound like an easy problem at all. I guess like the idea is like just score more runs. Like it's a very simple idea, but not as easy to execute. So I worked with them before I started my graduate program at Columbia,

where I also worked with the baseball team, but on slightly different projects. So I would say like my transition from physics to baseball was very quick. I did not expect to have a job this quickly, but it was just such a natural fit. And I've used so many of the skills I learned during my physics degree that I didn't even imagine it was going to be this intertwined. I'm really curious about when you were helping the baseball team at your college what that looked like. I have to imagine that you didn't have as much data as you do now at the major league level. Yeah, we didn't have any sort of like the player tracking data. Like none of that existed at the school I went to. But college baseball teams

actually have so much data that they're just sitting on top of. And I think it's because a lot of baseball programs don't have somebody who will sift through it all and make it more easily digestible. So a lot of the data is just like things we could organize in Excel spreadsheets and things we could manipulate that way. Like one of the big projects I worked on was like, are we winning opportunities on the base paths? So when there's an opportunity to take an extra base, are we doing it at a higher rate than the other team?

And it wasn't too hard to like work through some of that stuff. I also worked on some scheduling optimization for them, and that was a little bit more difficult. But baseball teams in college do have a ton of data. And I think just in the last year that I've been in baseball, I've talked with lots of people who are working with their college teams to accomplish similar goals now. So I think you'll start to see a rise in college baseball analytics. And you were actually interning with the Mets before you were with the Padres as a business intelligence analyst. That is fascinating to me because usually we think about how all of this applies to

baseball operations and we talk to baseball operations people, but the business sides of teams are looking into similar ideas and tactics and methods and that's important too so that you can pay players and you can get fans to come to the ballpark and all the other applications of analytics to non-directly related to baseball matters. So what kind of stuff were you working on there and what potential is there to essentially apply sabermetrics to the business of baseball? Yeah, I had never thought about like the business analytics side of baseball until the Mets actually reached out to me about that position. But a ton of the same principles that I'm using now, I also used at the Mets. So my main project at the Mets was just

examining season ticket holders and when they upgrade their tickets, when you can convince ticket holders to upgrade to season tickets and just take the plunge and basically how you can keep up selling ticket holders and how long it's going to take to do that. So it was, it was a really interesting process just figuring out like how do people behave and like how can we not manipulate because that sounds bad, but like how can we take advantage of the way that baseball people and baseball fans behave to make more money. I also looked at like different theme days. So dog attendance at Citi Field is actually on the decline, which was a big problem for me. I was like, we need to do more to get the dogs to come back. So it was it was actually

a really interesting project for something that I'm not at all interested in. But I've taken a ton of the techniques and a ton of the like analytical skills that I learned then there and been able to apply to my job at the Padres. I have questions about the dog data. Same. Okay. Were they tracking? Did they have the number of dogs that had been attending?

They did a census of dogs attending. Did you identify a cause for fewer dogs coming to the park? The way that I stumbled across this is that I was looking at ticket types and there was one called dog ticket. And I was like, oh, they're talking about like the bark at the park theme days. So I basically just like summed up how many dog tickets they sold year by year and looked at how many dog events were happening to see if we were just offering fewer dog days or if dogs were just not interested in coming anymore. And I don't think I identified a cause, but when I presented this information to the owners of the team,

they were excited about it. They seemed actually interested in this. It wasn't just like, all right, that's not interesting. They actually thought it was kind of interesting. I love the idea that dogs might just be over baseball. They're just done with it. They've seen enough of the Mets. day was rained out and then the rescheduled rain out day was also rained out. And then we had to reschedule for a day in this calendar year that didn't actually end up happening. So my dog wants to go there. So she may be a like false positive in the data set basically.

Well, that's good. I'm glad your dog's still willing to go. They need Sam to come back and figure out how to up the dog attendance again, but maybe the Padres can put some more dog days into effect. So as someone who self-professed not a math lover, you have switched into a field that still relies on a lot of math and physics, especially if you're a baseball operations person. So to what extent has your previous training come in handy and how much have you had to learn on the job? In terms of like the math that I'm doing at work now, I would say most of it is addition subtraction. And then we can get a little bit

more invested once we start talking about like functions and things like that. But I'm not doing like imaginary math anymore, which was the problem in physics. But yeah, it's been really, really helpful, especially the physics. But the opportunities I've had to like help explain things to people who don't have a physics understanding has just been the biggest one. So being able to explain to people like, no, that pitch doesn't actually rise. That's impossible. It's like something that people like in this organization might not have had access to before. So I think that's even been the biggest asset,

like not that I'm sitting down and like trying to, you know, create some sort of baseball big bang theory, but just explaining here's what's actually happening during this pitch, or here's what's happening during bat to ball contact. Like how can we now leverage that information to our advantage instead of just knowing about it? Because it's one thing to know like, yeah, this is how a pitch moves,

but how can we now take advantage of it now that we know that? Right. Yeah, that's something Travis and I wrote about a bunch in the book is that all of this comes back to physics and it's not actually magic. It seems like it is sometimes with certain guys in certain pitches but it's all based on forces that are pretty well understood and if you can manage to leverage those and replicate the conditions that produce this pitch or that padded ball then maybe it is transferable in a way that in the past it might not have been because it was all feel and trial and error and depending

on running into the right coach at the right time or the right teammate who could show you a grip or something and that might not have happened for you whereas now we have all these tools all this technology available that you can just identify exactly how these things are happening and in theory replicate it yeah exactly and i think like trevor Bauer is like a, like, like you said about in your book, like Trevor Bauer is a good example of this. And he's very vocal about how he takes like a very scientific approach to designing pitches and his training methods. And I think you're just going to see more and more of that as pitchers get more used to this information, coaches get more used to this information and more astrophysicists end up in front offices.

Right. Yeah. Unfortunately, he's very vocal about other things that he shouldn't be very vocal about too. But the baseball part of it is interesting and we can learn from that. Are there other astrophysicists? Are you aware of others? Is there a group front office Slack for astrophysicists who work in baseball? If there are other baseball astrophysicists out there, please hit me up and we will start a slack channel. I'm not aware of any like I do have like friends and colleagues who do have science degrees, but I have not come across another astrophysicist. So if you're out there, let me know. I'm sort of curious about the breakdown

of people in your office in terms of gender and ethnic diversity. And it's obviously more gender diverse now that you're there. But I'm just sort of curious about that. I don't know if that's information that you feel comfortable sharing or not. So I don't want to put you on the spot. But it's a question in my mind. Yeah, I can talk about that. So the Padres hired two diversity fellows, so me and another woman. And the other woman is actually from Venezuela. So there's two of us. And then one of our baseball administration managers is also a woman. But other than that, I think we have like an English teacher, we have somebody down in our Dominican Republic department. But for the most part, like there are very few of us among the men who are in our office. So I think a goal of ours is going to be to try to continue to increase diversity. And I'm hoping that we'll be involved in the next round of diversity fellowship

hiring. But it's definitely still a goal of ours and something that I'm still aware of when I'm there. Yeah, of course. I'm also just curious, you know, when you were working for the Mets as well, and maybe even in the physics department at your college, that you've probably often been in the minority as a woman. But yeah, I'm just curious about your experience with that. Yeah, so I think I do have like a lot of experience being the only woman in a room or like one of the only few. My physics department wasn't very big. So I think there were actually three women in my graduating class of like seven physics majors. So in my class, we were almost half. But the physics department as a whole, like it was definitely still a minority. So it's something

I've been used to. At the Mets, I don't know that I like noticed or experienced it as much because I was on the business side. Do you have an ultimate dream job? Maybe this is your ultimate dream job. Yeah, I think that like, eventually, I would like to be a GM of a team. When I started, that was also my goal. And a couple people I had spoken with said that that was their goal when they started, then they saw how much work a GM actually does, how much they're responsible for, and it is a lot. I don't think I knew how much it was either. But it still would be like an ultimate career goal of mine. I think like an intermediate staff would be I would like to be more involved with the major league players and coaching staff. So I do get the opportunities to work with them on like certain questions or problems they may have. But I would like to be a little bit more involved with the actual like major league team, a little bit more hands on. So I think that's an intermediary step for me. But I would like to be a GM. I don't know that I'd necessarily want to be the first female GM, because I would hope that someone would get there before me. But if nobody does, I'm happy to do it, and I would love to do it.

I'm rooting for you to break that glass ceiling. Thank you. And do you think the best way, or not that it's your responsibility to single-handedly increase diversity, but based on your experience, this program seems like a great start. And it's important to get the word out so that people know if they are interested that this is a route that they could pursue. But presumably, you also want to get people interested in this type of job who might not even know that they are interested or might not have the interest in baseball, just might never have cultivated that to begin with. And I know from reading a

little bit about your background that you started out playing baseball and then you shifted into softball, as many girls still do. And that, I guess, kind of instilled a love of the game in you as well as some relationships that you had that it was kind of passed down to you. But is there any way to kind of broaden the reach at that point so that people will be aspiring to this type of position and then maybe come across the diversity pipeline and say, oh, this is something I could pursue. But I guess you have to get people interested in wanting to do this type of job in the first place. Yeah, I feel like a lot of the people that I talk to about my job, they start with like, I didn't even know that that was a job.

So I think that's the first step is like letting people know like, hey, there are careers in baseball for people who want to do baseball math or baseball science. Like that's an actual career because it doesn't matter like the like gender of the person I'm talking to or anything. They're always like, I didn't know that was a job. So that's the first step, which I didn't even know this was a job until my junior year in college when I didn't want to do physics anymore and I panicked. So I think that's the first step. And then the second step is reaching out specifically to women and other minorities

in front offices to get them in front of people who make these decisions. Because there are a lot of really qualified people who just don't have the same access or can't get their resume into the hands of these people. And that's why the diversity program was so helpful to me. It just sort of expedites the process. Like we're going to find a bunch of really qualified people, send them to MLB teams so that we can start getting this process moving and it'll just be a natural part of hiring after that. But I have like a big passion for diversity. I had it like in my physics department. I would reach out to local high schools and like girls science clubs, you know summer camps, whatever it was to talk to

them about my path and I still feel like a certain responsibility to do that in this role now, which is one of the reasons I've been talking about it for a big part of our conversation is because it's really important to me and it's important to the game and important to organizations as well. And important to the world. Exactly. On a larger scale, important to the world. And I imagine it can be beneficial to teams in ways that even go beyond improving the world and giving people opportunities that they deserve is just having a mix of perspectives and backgrounds and people who come from different countries. As you were saying in the Padres front office, there's no telling.

I don't know if there's a specific example that comes to mind, but you just never know when someone's going to have an idea based on their background and their interests that someone else it just might never occur to them and maybe that turns out to be the brilliant idea that makes your baseball team better on top of everything else yeah that's something that like i've said before is like it's not just like diversity of people it's diversity of thought as well so like when you introduce physics people and you like pair them up with ex-players or business people or lawyers and people who have like computer science degrees. Like when you get all these people together in one room, there's just going to be things

that two of those people couldn't have thought of before. And everybody's going to bring like special skills to that. So it just, yeah, it increases the range of like what you're able to accomplish when you would diversify the group of people that you're working with. And having heard you on Batflips and Nerds, I know that you were somewhat in demand as a result of this process and that you were choosing between multiple teams and you picked the Padres. And I don't know exactly what went into that decision, but I would think that working for the Padres right now, probably a pretty exciting place to be. As we

speak, the Padres are a game over 500. They're two games back in the wildcard race. That is exciting. They are in it. But regardless of how this season turns out, I think there's a sense that this is the beginning of something. And it's a young team, and it's an exciting and fun team, and good days are ahead regardless of this season's outcome.

So how much did that play into things? And not that you have a lot of basis for comparison to other front offices and other team situations, but what is it like to work for a team that is sort of at the advent of the competitive window as opposed to already at its peak or maybe on the other side of that hill? I think that was like one of the large drivers in my decision was like the newness and the youngness of the team, not just the players, but the R&D department and things that I was going to be able to help accomplish here. So one of the other teams I was deciding between is a team that like, I felt like if I went

there, I would learn from a lot of really great people and I would be able to help them continue doing what they're doing and change slightly what they're doing. But with the Padres, it was more like I'm going to get to help set a standard and help create something and help develop this very new department and decide what R&D is going to be in baseball. So I was excited by that. And then also like very, very excited by the farm system because like I grew up a San Francisco Giants fan so I've always been around the Padres in some capacity so seeing that the Padres were like on the up and they had all these like really young exciting prospects excited me as well so it was just the combination of those

two things that made the Padres like an absolute dream team for me I have a question also based on something that I heard on Batflips and Nerds, which is that I think you watch all of the games from right behind home plate. Is that right? Yeah. So earlier in the season, you could always see like the top of my head behind home plate. We brought in like some new interns now, so I'm rotating out of there to let them get the experience.

But yeah, we do have like a rotating group of there to let them get the experience. But yeah, we do have like a rotating group of people who stand behind the plate to watch. And we put up the pitch types for the people in the stadium, which I think is an interesting touch. Because if you see a cool pitch, you can look up and see what it was and say like, wow, I've never seen a fastball move like that before. But yeah, that's a really cool place to watch a game because you can, you get a sense for just how hard it is to hit a baseball when you see the pitch leaving the pitcher's hand, and then it ends up feet from where you expected it to be.

And I hear from people sometimes who say they wouldn't be able to work for a team that is a rival of their childhood team that they grew up rooting for, for instance. And I guess that's what you're doing. You're working for a team that is in the same division as the Giants. But for anyone who is wondering about whether that actually becomes a concern when you end up in that situation, I am guessing the answer is no, and that it's a job like any other. And despite your childhood fan affiliations, it's probably pretty easy to move beyond that. Yeah, it was it was definitely easy to distance myself. People ask like, well, would you have done it if it was the Dodgers? I'm like, yeah, of course. Like it's it's a dream job. It's what I want to do. And like it was incredibly easy to distance myself and like not just from the Giants, but like from fandom in general, just like working for a team. It's like I like the Padres and like I love the team. I'm happy when they're doing well, like it's my job, but I'm not, I wouldn't say I'm a fan of the Padres. You treat it very differently. So it was, it was definitely easy to let go. Like when the Giants

came to Petco in September of last year, I was excited to see them. Like it was, it was exciting, but it wasn't like I'm secretly rooting for the Giants and I'm like trying to ambush the Padres from the inside. Like, no, that all completely goes away. Like once you work for a team and you're just dedicated to helping the team you work for get better. Exactly what a double agent would say. I believe you. And there was even because I worked for the Yankees when I briefly worked for a team as an intern and I was a Yankees fan growing up.

worked for a team as an intern and I was a Yankees fan growing up, I was especially eager to distance myself from that because I think there was sort of a suspicion, like if you were a super fan of the team and you wanted to work for this team because you rooted for them and you would be like starstruck by the players and, you know, that it would be for the glamour of being close to this team you rooted for as opposed to just treating it like a job and doing the best job that you can do exactly like sometimes people still like give me a little bit of a hard time like because my favorite baseball player of all time is Tim Lincecum so people like still give me a little bit of a hard time about it but like it's all in good fun and like yeah like we all have teams that we grew up a fan of like even if it like even if it is the Padres like

you grew up a fan of some team but I is the Padres. You grew up a fan of some team, but I think it can actually be a little bit advantageous as well. If I understand how a front office tends to think, maybe that's advantageous to us down the road somewhere. But yeah, Tim Linscombe doesn't play anymore, so I don't feel bad about saying he's my favorite player. Right. And are there any specific skills that you would recommend that people focus on? I know that Jeff Sullivan, for instance, until he got his job with the Rays, he was not really a dedicated data manipulator and he would work with Excel for the most part. And if he needed something more complicated than that, he would ask someone for research help. But now that he is on the inside, I guess he has decided to buckle down and take things more seriously. So he is learning SQL and has become something of a query whiz these days. So is there a specific language or program or skill set that you've found to be the most useful in your job? Yeah, I think if you're interested in research and development specifically, like SQL is a must just to be able to manipulate the data and to get the data you need to then do the analysis.

I use Excel a lot and I really like using Excel so I've been a little bit hesitant to try and switch over to a language like R, but if you're not like me and you want to learn a new language, I would say R is probably where you'd want to start. And then if you're a little bit more interested in like the development side of research and development, Python is going to be something that's going to be very valuable to you. But SQL is definitely a must. And as you mentioned, the Padres' wealth of prospects and that in part made them appealing to you. I know that you're in San Diego, you're watching the major league team and you're working with

the major league team for the most part. But how much do you and your colleagues monitor what's going on in the minors? And especially as some of the top prospects have gotten called up and you get to see them in person, are you monitoring their progress as they are ascending the minor league ladder? I would say that other people are doing that. Like you said, I do spend most of my time with the major league team, but I am aware like when a prospect is getting closer to come up or has done something exceptional. I think our player

development department is really good at what they do. And the other woman that I was mentioning, who was the other diversity fellow works more closely with player development in the minor leagues. So there's a lot of there's a lot of monitoring going on. And there's a lot of excitement about those players. And it's exciting to see new ones come up like Logan Allen just made his major league debut. And of course, I knew who he was. But like now that he's on the major league team, it's like more relevant to me. But our player development staff is really good at what they do. And I have full faith in them to get the players where they need to be to be able to get to the major league team and have them be successful once they're up here. So if anyone listening wants to try to follow in your footsteps and get involved in the diversity program, is there

anything in particular you would advise? How do they apply? How would they find out more? Yeah, so they are opening the application process this fall. And if you just look up like MLB Diversity Fellowship, you should find their website right away. And you'll be able to read about the requirements and a little bit more about the program. I don't know exactly when they're opening that application. I think it's sometime around August, but if anybody has more specific questions or anything they want to ask about the process or anything like that, please feel free to reach out to me on Twitter and I'm happy to answer your questions. But the first step would just be Google the program, read what it's about, read about the history, and just get a feel for what the application is going to be like. All right. Well, then we will let you go and get

back to work on the Padres. You can follow Sam on Twitter at RealSamSchultz and ask her questions there if you're interested. And you can watch the Padres and very indirectly see her handiwork. Thank you for coming on. And please say hello to Dave Cameron for us. We miss him. I will. Thank you for coming on and please say hello to Dave Cameron for us. We miss him. I will. Thank you for inviting me. And Ellen, thank you very much for filling in for Meg and or Sam. I'm glad that we found a time to do this. And where can people read you and see you and follow you? You just had a poetry book come out and I'm sure that your next on-screen appearance will be somewhere soon. So what's the best way for people to get the Ellen Adair multimedia experience?

Well, probably the best place would be Twitter. I'm at Ellen underscore Adair, and that's A-D-A-I-R. I'm also on Instagram at Ellen Adair G, just the letter G. And my website is also EllenAdair.com, which is, I guess, if you want more of the like clips of me being in things version of the multimedia experience. But I do also write occasionally at the turf and I have written at a website called Fenway Nation. I don't do either of those things with extreme regularity because I have to do other things with extreme regularity. But I'm grateful to both of those websites just kind of allowing me to drop by when I have some thoughts. All right. Well, thank you again for coming on.

And I hope that watching the Phillies gets a little less depressing sometime soon. Thanks. Hopefully tonight. All right. That will do it for today. Thanks to Ellen and Sam for filling in. A few updates for you. Yesterday, I noted that the White Sox had become the first team to announce that they were extending their netting all the way to the foul poles, and I wondered how long it would

be before the next team filed suit. Well, turns out it would be one day. The Nationals announced that they're doing it, and they're not even waiting for next season. They're doing it next month. I doubt they will be the last. Unfortunately ellen the phillies lost again after we spoke gabe capler shuffled the lineup put bryce harper in the leadoff spot it didn't help phillies lost to the nationals williams astadio went three for four with a homer in his first game back in the big leagues he went one for three in his second game but of course he made highlight reels regardless because his catcher instincts kicked in he was playing third base and he went back on a pop-up and he tossed his hat aside as if he had been wearing a catcher's mask. Made a nice catch and he did switch over to catcher later

in the game. It's hard to keep the position straight when you're Williams Estadio and you're moving within a game often. Speaking of players we all love, I wrote about Mike Trout for a piece at the Ringer on Friday. You may want to check that out. And lastly, I want to read an email from Patreon supporter Jeff Snyder, who was responding to my discussion with Sam about what a minor league Hall of Fame would look like and whether you would put in guys who were good at that level of the minors or whether you would put in guys who got promoted and achieved more in the majors. So Jeff writes,

Your discussion of minor league Hall of Fames or Halls of Fame got me thinking of something that is kind of related and always makes me laugh. In my hometown of Lake Elsinore, the Lake Elsinore Storm have retired three numbers. 19 for Tony Gwynn, retired throughout the Padres organization. 22 for Jake Peavy, who pitched 19 games for the Storm as a 19-year-old and had his number retired in 2008 after he won the 2007 Cy Young Award. And seven for Joe Urso. Urso played two seasons with the Palm Springs Angels, who moved to Lake Elsinore and became the Storm in 1994.

He played part or all of four seasons with the Storm, the last as a player coach. He is the franchise record holder in games 326, hits 353, runs 221, RBIs 146, and doubles 93, which will sometimes happen when you spend four seasons on a team that everyone else is using as a stepping stone. Urso is listed at 5'7", but I've stood next to him many times, and that is generous. He was drafted in the 49th round, that round doesn't even exist anymore, generous. He was drafted in the 49th round, that round doesn't even exist anymore, and played a total of 12 games above high A, but the people in Lake Elsinore loved him, and thanks to him, no Storm player will ever wear number seven again. That's what I'm talking about. That's why we need a minor league hall of fame, so we can get Tony Gwynn, Jake Peavy, and Joe Urso all in the same hall of fame. Thank you, Jeff. You can buy my book, The MVP Machine, How Baseball's New Nonconformists Are Using Data

to Build Better Players. Elena Dare did. She's reading it right now. If you get it and you like it, tell the world. Leave us a review on Amazon and Goodreads. Let your library know about it. Request that they pick up a copy. That helps us out too, as well as other people who might take it out from the library.

Your support is much appreciated. You can also support this podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already pledged their support. Neeraj Shikhar, James Akoya-Coren, Robin Berenson, Rob Borkowski, and John Leary. Thanks to all of you. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild.

You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms, and you can contact us via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you're a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance this week. Meg will be back next week. We have some fun episodes planned. I'm actually going camping as well this weekend. So if I survive, we will be back with a new episode early next week. anything from you again. No one is ever gonna take anything from me again. Sometimes you make me lie awake at night and doesn't work. Sometimes you make me wanna run away but I don't know. So I close my eyes and picture back and flip my pillow. Dream a dream and put the stars back in the sky.

Oh, oh, oh, oh. Oh, oh, oh, oh. Put the stars back in the sky.