Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1787: Effectively Foolish

Episode Date: December 20, 2021

Ben Lindbergh kicks off a short series of conversations with baseball content creators who work mainly in mediums other than writing or podcasting by talking to YouTuber Bailey Freeman of Foolish Baseball about the Mets hiring Buck Showalter and the challenge of evaluating managers, how many bases Rickey Henderson would steal today, Bailey’s origins as […]

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It's nothing but your foolishness. Hello and welcome to episode 1787 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined not as usual by Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs, my co-host who is on vacation this week traveling for the holidays. I am not yet traveling for the holidays and won't be traveling as much, and so I'm here with you. And whenever one of my co-hosts is away for a week or two, I have to figure out what to do in their absence. A couple holiday seasons ago, I did a series of episodes that I called the Multi-Sport Sabermetrics Exchange, where I talked to some of the leading lights in analytics of other sports. That was a fun little series. And this week, I thought I'd do a themed collection of episodes as well. So for each of the three episodes this week, I am going to be talking to a different content

creator who makes cool baseball stuff in a medium other than writing or podcasting. So we talked to tons of writers on this podcast. We are writers. We talked to tons of podcasters. We are podcasters. But this week, I wanted to do something different. And we've certainly had musicians and artists and poets on the podcast before. But there are a few people I've been meaning to talk to for some time, and I figured this would be a good time to do it, so I won't spoil the surprise of who will be on later in the week, but today I will be talking to Bailey Freeman, who is the founder and proprietor of the Foolish Baseball YouTube channel, which many of you know and love, and which I have

followed for some time too. Bailey makes very distinctive and creative videos, sometimes sort of sabermetrically flavored, sometimes not. His videos really run the gamut and he has deservedly developed a large and devoted audience. And I wanted to have him on to talk a little bit about being a baseball YouTuber. It's very different in some ways from being a writer or a podcaster and similar in some ways too. But we will get into his origins as a fan and as a video maker and talk about how his videos have evolved over time. And we'll also get into a little bit of news in a listener email.

So this will be the first of the three episodes in this series coming out this week. I will try to post them all well before Christmas for those of you who are traveling for the holidays and could use something to listen to. So thank you for being with me this week or whenever you are listening to this episode. Now let's get to our guest. It is time for the crossover event of the century, the long-anticipated team-up. Bailey Freeman from Foolish Baseball is here. Hello, Bailey. Hello, Ben. Thanks for having me.

Well, thanks for being here, and sorry it took so long, and it is not that I was waiting for you to make a Shohei Otani video because I know you have made Shohei Otani videos before. It is a complete coincidence that I am talking to you the day after you posted your latest video, which is about Shohei Otani. And as you know, I invited you before you posted that video. So I didn't know, although it certainly didn't hurt when you told me that that was what you were working on. Certainly pretty relevant to my interests. Right. Well, I've made three Shohei Otani videos, which puts him firmly at the top of the leaderboard for my channel. But yeah, this is the one that got me on Effectively Wild, we'll say.

Sure. Yeah. It's not a pay-for-play situation. You are an Effectively Wild Patreon supporter, but that has nothing to do with it. But we are very grateful for that, of course. But I've been meaning to have you on at some point for quite a while now and just needed the right opportunity to arise, and now it has. So mostly I want to talk to you about yourself and your work and being a baseball YouTuber. But there is some semblance of baseball news, what passes for baseball news in these lockout-deprived days. And the Mets have a manager now. I guess it's not surprising news particularly, but the Mets had narrowed it down to a few finalists, and the most famous finalist was Buck Showalter.

And I think to no one's surprise, he got the gig. So Buck Showalter is a major league manager again. The Mets not only have a GM, but they have a manager. All of the positions that you are expected to have, I guess they still need to hire some coaches, but you need a GM and you need a manager to have a baseball team. Congrats to the Mets on having both of those people to fill those positions. Do you have any thoughts on the choice of Buck for this role? Yeah, I just think given how some of their recent high profile hires have gone, you know, I can understand going for sort of the boring think, you know, it's just kind of proven in recent years that even if you're like a manager who's been around the game for a long time, like

you can teach, you know, an old dog new tricks. Like it's not like Dusty Baker manages the Astros the same way he managed the Cubs. So I wouldn't be too worried about that either. Yeah. It is so hard to evaluate managers, which we've talked about on the show plenty of times before. It's kind of a common refrain in sabermetric circles. But I was thinking of that when the Mets hired Buck Showalter, like in what other industry or what other position out there can you be fired four times from a job? And this is not knock on buck. This is just how managers and the manager merry-go-round works. In what other position can you be fired from that position four times? And then when you

get hired again, everyone says, oh, great hire. He was the guy. And again, I'm not saying that he was not the right choice. It's just such a strange job that you can be dismissed from it many times. And then another team can survey the whole landscape. You can have anyone to be your manager. And you say, I will choose this guy who's been a manager for four other teams before. And they all decided to let him go at some point. It is so strange. Right. And not just fired from the same job four times, like fired from a job where there's only 30 people who have that job at any given moment. Right. Exactly. It's like, I don't know, wanting to reelect a president who was impeached twice or something, something crazy like that, that would never happen. But I think if you look at Buck's whole resume, it's really interesting because not only was he fired four times, but he won manager

of the year three times too. So that's another thing I enjoy about this job is that you can be named the very best manager and then fired like the next year or a few years later. So Showalter won manager of the year in 94, 2004, and 2014. So he just needs the 2024 manager of the year in 94, 2004, and 2014. So he just needs the 2024 manager of the year hardware here, which I guess he can get because this is a three-year deal that he signed with the Mets. So you can go from best manager to fired. I mean, best, I guess, according to writers who vote on these things and may not actually know what is going on behind closed doors. But it is so odd that you can get the accolades for being the best, and then you can get fired. And then a few years later, you can get hired again. And everyone just says, oh, yeah,

that makes sense. He's a great fit for this organization. And really, it's so hard to judge because he has a huge sample size here. I mean, he has managed like, what, 3,000 games, more than that. And his career record is 5.06. He has won or his teams have won slightly more games than they have lost. And that just doesn't really tell the story with a manager, but it's hard to figure out how to tell the story. So you look at wins and losses and it's like, well, he has won slightly more than he lost. So that's good, I guess. But with any other position, if we were talking about third baseman, you could say, well, this guy projects for that much war and this guy projects for that much war and this guy's skills suit city field and this guy's don't. But when you're talking about managers, you can't just look at the projections for Showalter versus Matt Quattaro

or Joe Espada. It's all sort of inscrutable and team-specific. I guess all you really know is that you want to win now while you have Jacob deGrom and while you have Max Scherzer and while you have the rest of this fairly aged team. Yeah. And you're talking about going from manager of the year to fired. Well, Mike Schilt was a manager of the year finalist this year. Right. Yeah, sure. Yeah, that's happened. I mean, what, Joe Girardi, right? Got fired like the year he won manager of the year.

I mean, that has happened before too. So a lot of it is like the interpersonal relationships. And if those things go south, then it doesn't even matter if your team is getting good results. But I'm also interested in it because managers, I feel like they fit into certain molds or people project this on them. Like this is this type of manager.

You want this guy when you're rebuilding, and then you want this guy to take you over the top as if they are completely separate skill sets. And maybe they might be in some cases, but Showalter I think is mostly known as like the guy who gets you there and then you need someone else to take you over the top because of course he helped rebuild the yankees and then he left a year before they won the world series and he helped build up the diamondbacks before they won in 2001 just from starting from scratch

as an expansion team they won the World Series the year after he left. I guess it took the Rangers a few years to get good after he left there. And he did make something of the Orioles, although he has never won a World Series. He's never gone incredibly deep into the postseason. But it's strange because often you'll get like the manager who's good at developing the young players, but maybe is not so great at the x's and o's and so you have to get like the experienced veteran manager to once you have the good team then that manager will take you over the top but showalter he's like a combination of

both which is that people think of him as being good at developing teams and building them up and integrating young players and he also has a reputation, I think, as a good in-game manager and a good tactics guy, whether that's deserved or not. I don't know. Obviously, he has the big stain on his record, the Zach Britton 2016 wildcard game, which he apologized to the team for subsequently. But it's odd, I think, to have a manager who is known for building up teams but is also known for being good at the in-game stuff and yet is also known for not having won a world series in 20 years as a manager which makes me think like maybe this is a good time to hire

Buckshaw Walter because if he has both of those skill sets if he can create a good team and then he can also deploy that team's resources well, then maybe it's just a fluke that he hasn't stuck around long enough or hasn't won those big games. Because so much of it is just roster dependent and timing dependent and you're with the right team at the right time or not and things go south and that really colors your career and your reputation. So in that sense, I'm sort of rooting for him to shed the label of the guy who gets so close but can't quite get there. So you're saying he's due? I guess in a way I am sort of saying he's due. I don't know if the Mets are due, but you're right. It is a change from their recent hires, which they've had, what, three first-time managers in a row, and they have not covered themselves in glory with those hires. I think the first, of course, was dismissed even before all of the bad stuff about him came out publicly, Mickey Calloway. And then Carl Speltron never managed a game with the Mets before he was dismissed. And then Luis Rojas, who had a good reputation and still seems to have a decent reputation.

The Yankees hired him as a coach right after the Mets got rid of him, but that didn't work out. And it's hard to blame any Mets manager for the Mets' lack of success because there's just so much else going on with that organization. But I think of so many managers who changed their reputations midstream and Showalter's respected, of course, but you have so many guys like Joe Torre or like Casey Stengel who were seen as buffoons or like they were clueless. They didn't know what they were doing because they happened to start out with unsuccessful teams. Then they go manage the Yankees and they're Hall of Famers all of a sudden. So sometimes you have the skill set and you just need to get to a good team for the first time. Obviously,

Buck's been with some good teams, but sometimes maybe your skill set just isn't the right fit for a certain group of players, whether it's just a chemistry issue or bad timing or whatever it is. Maybe it just doesn't gel well in a certain time and place, and then you get another opportunity and suddenly everything clicks. And maybe you learned and improved as you went on, or maybe you were good all along and you were just in the wrong situation. But sometimes managers can really change the story about themselves. So maybe that would be the story that Showalter gets some redemption or the Mets get some redemption because I think this is actually the best team that Showalter has taken over. And that's sort of sad because the Mets were not a great team in 2021.

They won 77 games, but that's the most games won by any team the year before buckshaw walter got the job with them right like typically he has taken over teams that were bad or were expansion teams and he just really had to build them up whereas with the mets like they were a winning team for much of that year before their weight season collapse and they are certainly expected to contend. And they have spent and they have acquired good players this offseason. So for once, at least, he's in the situation where he is supposed to win right away. Right. And, you know, it's not just, you know, the Mets in their 77 wins the most for any team Buck Showalter is taking over.

Buck Showalter is taking over, but I think probably just on paper, the gap grows even more because I bet when 2022 rolls around, God willing, the Mets will probably be even higher in terms of projections and just looking at who's on their roster. Yeah. And it is the sort of thing where you try some rookie managers and maybe things don't work out. Well, then you're going to go with the elder statesman. I guess Buck Showalter in a league with Tony La Russa is not anywhere near the elder statesman. He's a spring chicken, comparatively speaking. But you go with the experienced veteran who has control of the clubhouse and commands respect and is a known commodity, essentially. And managers do evolve over time and i think showalter probably has when it comes to analytics and that aspects of things although

it's interesting because like he definitely seems to be someone who is used to having a little bit more control than modern managers do like he is interested in sort of putting his stamp on the whole developmental pipeline and he's interested in sort of putting his stamp on the whole developmental pipeline and he's interested in what's going on in the minors and sort of setting your philosophy all the way up. And that's not really the way that it works for most modern younger managers these days who started out in this era where the front office really reigns supreme. So it'll be interesting to see whether he is willing to conform to the new model or whether the Mets just said it's worth it to have this guy who brings all this preparation and people respect him and we will just adjust and maybe we will give him a

little more leeway or latitude than the typical manager would and if he can just stop the sensational stories and stop like infielders fighting each other over like their positioning and claiming that it was because they saw some animal in the tunnel in the tuckout like if that sort of thing doesn't go on when buckshot walters around then that would be an improvement that's all the buckshot walter talk i have in me yeah that's about all i got too so one of days, maybe there will be another managerial hiring. The A's are still in the market for a manager and it sounds like they may be interested in an internal hire, Mark Kotze, or maybe one of the other finalists for the Mets who didn't get that gig. But that's about all we got for baseball news. And that is why we're here, because you

are our topic for today. Your career being a baseball YouTuber, it is a medium that I enjoy, but have basically no experience with myself creating baseball videos. I have done that very rarely and very poorly. And you are one of the masters of the medium, I think. You are universally appraised as one of the best baseball YouTubers, and I've enjoyed your work myself. So give us a little bit of the Bailey origin story. I know that you kind of started out as an out-of-the-park baseball YouTuber. And my impression is that, you know, you were doing decently making those videos and getting a few thousand hits or several thousand hits. And then suddenly you branched out into more general baseball topics and you were getting like a million hits or more. And

maybe you figured, oh, okay, maybe this makes sense then that I can cater to all baseball fans instead of people who play out of the park exclusively. kind of addressing a need in the community. I felt like, you know, I know how to play this game, but I know that it can be daunting to newcomers. So I'm just going to create a series of tutorials for new players. So I did that. And I did a playthrough series with the Chicago White Sox. And after that, I just kind of, you know, felt like I ran the course without the park baseball. But at the time, I had, you know, maybe 800 subscribers on YouTube. So I said to myself, hey, I have this audience of hardcore baseball nerds. Why don't I try to create something that is still about baseball that can cater to them, but maybe where I can show off things like my editing chops or just create a video essay

type series? Because that's a big genre on YouTube right now is sort of this infotainment, I would say, you know, these are, you know, video essay type things where you try to learn something from them, but it is still also just like, you know, it's for entertainment purposes at the end of the day, you know, a lot of people analyze, you know, film or TV, for example. So I said, let's just do that with baseball. And it's one of those things where the second or third time I made a video in that format, that video essay, you know, about baseball stats format, it just took off. And the YouTube algorithm is so crazy and so aggressive. So now I was going from, as you said, you know, a few hundred hits on a video to I got a hundred thousand

views on a video about Justin Verlander in the span of like a week and Justin Verlander tweeted about it. And so at that point it's about, you know, responding to the feedback that the viewers are giving you and the algorithms giving you. And so I've stuck with that format ever since. Right. Yeah. I mean, it took off right away. Seemingly it wasn't, it wasn't like you had a gradual ascendance. It was like once you started making these videos for a general baseball audience, right away, they found an audience, which is a testament, I think, to your work and your ability to make a video that's fun to watch and also informative. But that first non-OOTP video, what, three years ago or so, a little more maybe, about the worst call in MLB history, as you called it in the title, the 2011 Pittsburgh Pirates and Atlanta Braves game where Jerry Meals made the call on Julio Lugo. like 1.4 million views right now. I assume that a lot of that is from people going back and watching

it subsequently and that that wasn't all contemporaneous, but like clearly that blew up right away. And it seems like you sort of hit on a format that would work having honed your video making, making OTP videos. But like once you branched out, it was like, you know, you found your people. Definitely. Yeah. I mean, it's a testament to the YouTube algorithm as well, right? You know, that I was able to, you know, give me all these impressions and that people were willing to click. You know, I think it just sort of shows the YouTube algorithm is really well designed

to keep people on the website, you know, if you've ever got trapped in the rabbit hole. So if you're a baseball nerd, there's a good chance there's some foolish baseball in your recommendation box at any given moment. Well, tell me about that then. Your livelihood here, your hobby, your more than that is kind of governed by this algorithm that I guess you understand some of the workings of, but it's always possibly subject to change. So what do you have to know as a baseball YouTuber in order to get your videos monetized, in order to get them promoted, etc.? Right. I mean, it's interesting because I think for so long, MLB has had this reputation for being extremely withholding in terms of like copyright and, you know, the phrase,

you know, without the express consent of Major League Baseball exists in our cultural lexicon. But actually, I think compared to say, you know, the other like big four sports leagues, I think MLB is probably the most lax when it comes to their content on YouTube right now. And basically the way it works for me is this. So when I upload a video and it contains content from MLB, let's say in my Shohei Otani video, a clip of Shohei Otani hitting a home run, right? There are bots which scan the content

for copyrighted material. And if it finds a match, what's gonna happen is the video gets claimed. So at that point, I don't get any ad money. MLB monetizes it in their favor and they get all the ad money. So what I have to do is I have to edit the video in a way that the bots won't pick it up because the bots really can't tell the difference between, you know, a heavily edited like original research, original artwork, original script type of thing that I do. And for example, someone uploading, you script type of thing that I do. And for example, someone uploading, you know, broadcast an entire Angels game.

And then I have to trust that MLB won't go back later and like have a human being manually claim the videos, which that's basically where we're at right now is that, you know, you edit to get past the bots. But as a creator, you you know if you create stuff about mlb on youtube you know as long as you're sort of uh putting in what some might say you know if you're using it as fair use for example then the league's not going to come try to get you so that's that's kind of the situation where right now it's sort of a gray area but um yeah i just i'm aware of like where i am it's kind of precarious. I know that, you know, if MLB wakes up tomorrow and decides to change that and claim every one of my videos, you know, then I'm basically going to be out of luck, but that's, that's the world we live in. And I think

that's not necessarily exclusive to someone who creates videos about baseball either. You know, like I said, there's a lot of people that analyze like film or music on youtube you know if the big film studios come after them they're in trouble too yeah and if you're not giving away any trade secrets here how do you edit it such that you don't get flagged yeah so what you want to stay away from is like lengthy sort of like generally i try not to use like more than five or six seconds at a time without some sort of cut. So for example, what I could do is if I was showing Shohei Otani hit a home run, I could show the first like four seconds, which might be, you know, the pitcher delivering the pitch and Shohei hits it and he's admiring his shot. And then I might do a cut and I'm actually

skipping like maybe two seconds forward in the video to show the ball land in the stance. So there's little tricks like that. And then then also everything i do it's never quite at the original speed so generally it's like five percent slower like i stretch out the clip so that there's a few extra frames in there and and then you can mess with the colors sometimes so there's there's a lot you can do to try to get past them without necessarily destroying the viewer experience because you want viewers to not be able to notice these things you just want to you to get past them without necessarily destroying the viewer experience because you want viewers to not be able to notice these things. You just want to get past the bots. Yeah. And your videos tend to cluster around 15 minutes in length, at least the Baseball Bits videos. So is that the sweet spot in terms of the algorithm or is that the sweet spot in terms of

how long people are willing to sit and watch a YouTube video or both? Well, I think a lot of what I do is kind of informed by just my personal tastes. You know, I think just when I got started, the reason I started making this format of videos because I looked around at the sort of YouTube sports scene and I thought to myself, OK, like there's there's no one making this type of video, but that's the type of video that I would want to watch personally. So for me, you know, when I when I go 15 minutes, it's because that's sort of my general preferred length of a YouTube video. You know, I think for just, you know, purely monetary professional

purposes, some people might point at eight minutes as a good length, because that's a point where you can start putting in mid roll ads. So you can get more ad money within the YouTube video itself. But yeah, I think generally, as you said, I average right around 15 on the dot, but some of them are 12 and some of them are 20. And I guess before you really got into this or got into it to the degree that you are now, MLB was more liable to crack down on these things. And there were wars over whether you could use GIFs and articles and that sort of thing. And I think they have loosened up, as you said, and seen the advantages really, because while maybe I guess they could make some kind of claim and get your video taken down, what would be in it for them? making their own version of these videos, basically. Like you are serving an audience here. You are making people more interested in baseball in theory. Like there's no downside to MLB in you promoting the sport and the players and the league.

I guess while they're in a lockout and not talking about active players, I guess that might be different. But generally speaking, bringing more attention to baseball, making people like baseball and appreciate baseball more, that is something that only helps MLB unless you are doing something that conflicts with what they're doing. And mostly they're not. They're putting highlights on YouTube, but they're not doing an editorial job the way that you are with your videos. Right. And I think a lot of it, just sort of the gambit that any sort of MLB YouTube channel runs is that you have to make it so that it's a good deal for MLB, right? Like, so for example, you know, I get people emailing me or asking me things like, oh, you know, these are so great. I love these videos. Why doesn't MLB just hire you? And it's like, well, I'm already kind of promoting the game for them and they don't have to pay me anything. So it's a pretty good deal for them. And so I think you just have to hope that,

you know, you've reached a point where if MLB were to ever do anything to you, it would be to their detriment, you know? So, because if I, you know, had all my videos claimed tomorrow, then I'd probably just have to find a quote-unquote real job and then there just wouldn't be as much baseball content out there. Right. Yeah. And I guess one other thing I wonder about is how your audience tends to consume your videos. When during their daily routines do they watch these videos? Because I think what I hear from maybe older members of the audience who didn't grow up with YouTube and it wasn't just a given, it wasn't a staple of their entertainment diet, they'll say, well, when am I going to watch these things? but in the before times and as opposed to an article where you can kind of have it on your screen and click away or a podcast where you can have it in your ears no matter what you're doing. And unless it's too distracting for you to work, then you can kind of do multiple things at once. Whereas with a video like to get the most out of it, you actually have to watch it and concentrate on it. So how would you recommend that people

fit that into their watching? Or how do you hear that people tend to enjoy it? I mean, 15 minutes, I guess you can take that to the toilet with you if you want. But there must be other contexts too. Well, it's interesting. So I can see on the YouTube analytics page itself that the hours that I get the most views are say from 10 to midnight Eastern time. So, you know, as you said, like, yeah, you're not going to be able to sit down and watch these for, you know, 15 minutes if you're at the office, for example. But I am seeing, you know, an uptick in views as we get past like normal working hours and people are home and maybe they're watching them in bed i think the thing that probably surprises me the most is not just the hours of the day but that the majority of my views come from mobile so yeah that's not how i watch youtube personally when i watch youtube it's almost always on you know a desktop computer

screen yeah so that kind of you know made me adjust the way i make videos sometimes because i wanted to make sure hey can you know if i post a stat graphic in this font, can you read it on your five inch, you know, cell phone screen? But yeah, so I think that's that definitely is something that surprised me. And I think it's just sort of speaks to, you know, YouTube as a platform and social media as a platform is something that we experience more and more through our phones and not necessarily our computers. Is there a clear weekday weekend pattern with your videos watching? I mean, yeah. So I think on weekdays, the hours are more extreme. So for example, you'll get less views in the morning and during the workday, but you'll get more views at night. But then on a weekend, it's very steady throughout the day. So you might get the same amount of views at 10 a.m. as you do at 10 p.m. But on a weekday, you know, it might be twice as many views at 10 p.m. as you get at 10 a.m. Yeah, because with articles, at least back when I was running Baseball Perspectives and would

pay closer attention to traffic, like it was always sort of surprising when you would see, oh, no one reads the site on weekends. Everyone is reading during business hours during the week, which you would think that's when people are busiest. But no, that is when people are most bored and they are sitting at their computer and they need something to distract them. But as we were saying, that might not really apply to YouTube videos. So maybe you still have a lot of people watching on the weekends, I would imagine. Yeah. And I think part of it is, you know, the way I sort of have done this is that the content is evergreen, you know, like if an article on fan graphs might, you know, only be something you want to read after, you know, it's within 48 hours of it coming out, it might be like

super topical, you know, whereas with mine, you know, I think it's set up to the point where, you know, if you get on one video at 8 PM, the hope is that maybe you'll binge a few, you know, almost like you would a Netflix show. I think that's sort of the model I'm going after is, is binge worthy content that you can watch at any time, just whenever you're free. Yeah. So how did you come up with the baseball bits aesthetic and the look of your videos? Yeah, I think it's just all built around my technical limitations. You know, I don't consider myself to be an artist, but I could kind of figure out and teach myself how to do this cool pixel art. And I've always sort of, you know, been a fan

of like retro video game music. And it i just sort of fell you know stumbled ass backwards sorry into it and so yeah i think just and the fact is you know the format really hasn't changed since the first one i made you know i've now i've made about 50 of them and yet they still look and sound the same you know so i just think there's an element of luck there but yeah i just for me it's important to have in terms of like video, I want people to be able to mute the video and still know who made it, you know? So if someone could watch the video without any sound, they would still know within a few seconds who made this video. And I think that's a really good thing to have on YouTube to sort of differentiate yourself from the crowd.

If your videos have a certain look or aesthetic to them. Yeah, you have a brand. And I know that you have a personal YouTube channel as well, Foolish Bailey, where you post, I guess, slightly more often and maybe a little more conversational and less produced. But with Baseball Bits, I guess you're on roughly a monthly release schedule at this point, approximately. And I'd imagine that a lot of that is just the actual time it takes to make a video because there are so many graphics, there are so many stats. I mean, I guess it's partly topic generation. What am I going to make a video about? And then it's partly

getting all the footage together and clipping the footage and then all the stats and all the layering and all the animations like writing the script must almost be the easy part, I would think. Oh, yeah, I would think so. I mean, generally, I sort of split it into three phases. So the first is that topic generation, that research, you know, this is the time where I'm hopping on, you know, baseball savant or stat head or whatever, and then finally writing the script. So that's part one. And the second is sort of, I'm creating or collecting all the assets actually needed to make the video. So I'm making the pixel art, I'm making stat graphics, you know, I'm downloading the necessary clips I might want to show. And then the third is just, you know, record and then put it all in the

editor. And each one of those phases, if I only did that, you know, would probably take about five days each. So I could pump out a baseball bits in about two weeks. But the thing is, as time has gone on, I've added more to my plate. So, you know, I have the Foolish Bailey channel, I have a Patreon, so I do, you know, Patreon content for them. And then just then just sort of over time things creep in. But it's actually good for me creatively because if I was just producing baseball bits back to back, you know, to infinity and beyond, I think I'd get kind of sick of it at this point. So one thing that I want to ask each of the people I talked to this week is what are the tools of your trade? What does a 26-year-old YouTube and baseball star need to make the magic happen software-wise or hardware-wise? Yeah, so the main video editor I use is actually Sony Vegas. And if there's anyone who's in sort of the video editing world out there right now,

they're probably rolling their eyes because it's not the prototypical choice, I would say. I would say most YouTubers are probably gravitating towards Adobe Premiere or Final Cut these days but you know Sony Vegas is what I'm comfortable with I've been using it for probably about half my life now so I started with Sony Vegas probably around 13 and I'm 26 now and I've just never had any reason to change so I think you know the real answer that question at least if you're like an aspiring YouTuber is the best piece of video editing software is probably whatever you're most comfortable with. You know, John Boyce, who's sort of the patron saint of all sports, YouTube famously uses iMovie. So if you can, you know, you can be John Boyce with iMovie, then,

you know, just use whatever you're comfortable with, I think. Yeah, we sort of do something similar here. Dylan and I still use Audacity to edit and produce the podcast, which is free. It's freeware. It's just out there. You too can use the official podcast editing software of Effectively Wild. It's available to all. We don't use Pro Tools or anything because we're just so used to it and it does the basics. And is there anything else in terms of, you know, capturing things to make GIFs or is it all kind of in that same software? Yeah. So as far as creating like the stat graphics and the pixel art, that's done in Photoshop. And you know what, when I record the voiceover,

I also use Audacity. So we're on the same page there. when I record the voiceover, I also use Audacity. So we're on the same page there. And your topics, I mean, just looking at some of your recent videos, like your last four videos are baseball bits, that is, are about Yadier Molina, Ricky Henderson, Richard Blyer, and Shoei Otani. So, you know, some Hall of Famers and all-time greats and unprecedented players, and Richard Blyer, whom you called MLB's weirdest pitcher who doesn't need strikeouts. So how do you come up with your ideas? What appeals to you in particular, and what do you think works best in this format? I think it's just players with some sort of outlier skill set are definitely compelling. If you have a player who's really

good at one thing or maybe even really bad at one thing, I think that just sort of lends itself to a good video. And I also like being able to talk about topics through a player. So, for example, I have a video on my channel about Andrelton Simmons, and it's not really just about Andrelton Simmons. I think it's about really the value of defense as a whole and sort of a primer on advanced defensive metrics. So for me, whenever I can use a certain player to illustrate a larger concept about baseball or sabermetrics, that's a really exciting thing. Yeah. And a lot of your videos are stat heavy. I mean, that's almost the point of some of the videos. And I wonder what you found the best balance to be like, I guess people are coming to you expecting that and desiring that to some extent.

So it's not like with a baseball broadcast where you have to balance the general audience who just happened to turn on the TV with the hardcore stat heads. Like, this is also part of your brand and you have the freedom to craft it however you want. You don't have to just sprinkle in stat nuggets in between play by play. But have you found certain things to be too much or is there no such thing as too in-depth, too in the weeds for a Foolish Baseball video? Well, there's a huge aspect of balance to it, I think, because you're making videos for your subscribers, but you're also making videos for people who aren't subscribers.

And you need those people to convert into your audience in order to grow. So for me, I kind of had this problem when I was making the Shohei Otani video and I was talking about a stat like OPS+. And if you're an effectively wild listener, you probably know that OPS plus is a stat where 100 is average and higher is better. But if you're, you know, if this is your first time watching a foolish baseball video and you're not familiar with that sort of vocab, then you're not going to know what it is. So for me, it's almost like I have to recognize that the audience likes it when I don't like talk down to them. You know, when I just, you know, assume they know some level of baseball statistics, but also be willing to explain certain things over and over. Because you never know if this is someone's, you know, 100th time watching one of your videos or the

first time watching one of your videos. So I think that's definitely a big aspect of it is it's balancing, you know, the audience that I have the hardcore baseball nerds, presumably, versus the people that are maybe being introduced to these things for the first time. And do you generally have a long list of topics that you want to hit? Like, do you know what your next video is and your second next video is? Or are you kind of white knuckling it and going video to video to figure out what to do? I think generally I have 10 to 12 topics sort of on the back burner and some of them are like would only make sense to be released at certain points in the year. Like for example,

if I wanted to release a video about a Hall of Fame candidacy, now would be the time to do that. You know, if I wanted to release a video about Jackie Robinson, you know, I might want to wait, you know, around Jackie Robinson day to do that. But yeah, I just think, you know, I generally have 10 to 12. But also, what I find frequently happens is that I do end up quasi white knuckling it because I'll look at that list of 10 to 12 and think, I don't want to do any of these right now and then kind of have to come up with a new topic in the span of a few days before I can get to work. Right-hmm, right. And do you tend to prioritize videos about big stars, big name players, or do you get kind of an extra thrill

out of bringing attention to a Richard Blyer who no one knows about? I mean, I guess traffic-wise, maybe you're not going to get quite as many views with that, or you can kind of hide it and come up with the title that you hope will intrigue people, and then they will click to find out who is MLB's weirdest pitcher, who doesn't need strikeouts. And I guess that worked to some extent. But do you find like, well, if I make a video about Shohei Otani or some other superstar, probably more people are going to watch that. But also maybe there's less original to say, you know, there's been so much written or made about this player previously. Right. Well, this is a lesson that I've actually learned as time has passed. So,

you know, like I said, the first video I experienced any sort of big success or momentum with was about Justin Verlander. And in the months following that, you know, I found myself in a stretch where the video topics were Clayton Kershaw and Juan Soto and Willie Mays and Albert Pujols, just all sort of like the big brand name players. And at the end of that year, I made a video about Tim Lacastro. And that is the one that got the most views. I mean, the Tim Lacastro video is one of the most viewed videos on my channel, one of the most beloved. And that sort of gave me, like I said, that algorithm feedback. Oh, like this can work. Like I don't necessarily need to piggyback off someone else's name brand value.

Like I have the potential to take someone who people don't know about and turn them into, you know, a YouTube star. So, you know, what followed next was, you know, a video about Jeff Mathis, which is one of definitely the most beloved things I've created on the channel just from fan feedback. And like you said, Richard Blyer. So I think for me, it's about balance. You know, I want to focus on superstars and promote them like Otani, but I also want to sort of create my own foolish baseball superstars. And the other the third thing that I definitely weigh against that, too, want to make sure I get enough historical baseball in there as well. Not every video has to be about an active MLB player. So if I can get a few per year from other eras of baseball, I think that's pretty cool as well.

Right. Well, speaking of that, there's been an old email that I came across last week when I was desperately searching through ancient emails in our mailbag that I figured we could maybe talk about briefly just because you made a recent video about Ricky Henderson. And this email, which I dredged up from late 2018 from a listener named Zach, pertains to Ricky, and he wants to know what would happen if Ricky played today. So given the growing wisdom that base stealing is often not worth the risk, would one have to assume that if Ricky Henderson played today, he would not have nearly as many steals? Or were his skills at such a level that the normal risk calculation wouldn't apply, meaning he would have been given the same amount of opportunities? I have, of course, framed this in a needlessly binary manner. So feel free to go with it where you will. given the same amount of opportunities. I have, of course, framed this in a needlessly binary manner, so feel free to go with it where you will. So having watched a lot of Ricky Henderson highlights lately, what do you think if Ricky were reincarnated today? And maybe he has been,

maybe there's been a Ricky Henderson equivalent and he just hasn't stolen as much. And so we don't think of it that way, but if Ricky were to be transported to today and i guess like any question like this it comes down to like well are we talking about you are having ricky henderson from the 80s step into the time machine into 2022 or are you having some unknown player or some prospect who has the same skill set as ricky henderson but not the reputation come up for the first time today. So maybe it's two different answers, but I don't know. What do you think? or, you know, I would just generally have to assume that catcher pop time has gotten a little bit better just given the fact that, you know, athletes, the average, you know, athlete tends to get better over the decades. But then, you know, another thing, and you mentioned sort of this already, but this idea that there may be, there already has been someone with the base

dealing capabilities of Ricky Henderson. And I kind of think about someone like, you know, Billy Hamilton in recent years, right? But the thing that would make Ricky different from Billy Hamilton is the amount of opportunities to steal a base because it's just his on base skills in general. Yeah. So I think, you know, just the general answer would probably be if you put Ricky in the time machine, I think he does lead the league in attempts and stolen bases. But I don't think he's putting up like a hundred plus in a season yeah it's hard for me to imagine like if you took Ricky Henderson himself and you brought him to the present day and frankly present day Ricky probably would still be willing to suit up if you were to give him an opportunity but if he were just to walk into today's rosters in his prime like i think you'd

have a hard time telling him not to steal because that's just what he does that's ricky that's his game that's his claim to fame so i think it would be hard to restrain him but like players are products of their time to a great extent and And that's sort of something I'm fascinated by beyond baseball is like, if you just look at art in human history or fashion or whatever it is, like it's kind of striking just how often there's a certain trend and then everyone does things that way for a while. Like you didn't have someone playing rock and roll music in the 18th century or something. Like in theory, that could have been invented then. You could have done it then. I guess you didn't have electric guitars. But in some cases, there's a technological constraint. And in some cases, it's just like culture is this sort of mass effort, at least in some parts of the world. And you build on something that other people did. It's like in art, like perspective, like that's always something that fascinates me too, is the idea that like someone had to

invent perspective. That wasn't just like an instinctive thing where maybe it was invented and then forgotten and then had to be rediscovered again. But for a while you look at these images and it's like, oh, they just didn't draw that way or they didn't know how to draw that way. And then suddenly it was discovered and perfected and popularized. And then everyone's drawing that way. And then everyone rejects that and they move on to a certain other thing. But you tend not to have someone who was like centuries ahead of their time, really. Like when you say someone was ahead of their time, like often they're a few years ahead of their time. It's not like decades or centuries necessarily. In science, sometimes you have someone who's centuries ahead of their time and they just don't have the tools to prove it. Or maybe you did have someone who

was playing rock and roll in the 18th century, but no one wanted that at the time. The world wasn't ready for it. And so no one remembers it. It was too out of step with the times. And I think that's kind of the case with baseball. Like definitely in baseball, there were always players who would be extremely whole was running wild for a fairly limited period there. And in the past, like you go back to the 50s, no one was running and you look at today, no one's running and you didn't really have the outliers, right? You didn't have someone who was stealing triple-digit stolen base totals in the 1950s. You had to have a change in the run environment and the style of play. And then suddenly you had Ricky and you had Raines and you had Vince Coleman. And before them, you had Maury Wills and you had Lou Brock. You had to have someone come along and demonstrate that that could be done maybe. And then that person became so influential that everyone wanted to do it or there were other conditions that were leading to that and making

that more beneficial like today i mean if you had someone who had the same stolen base success rate as ricky did during his career it would still make sense to run a lot like ricky's career stolen base success rate was 81%. Like even today where maybe the breakeven point is a little higher just because low batting averages and so many strikeouts and lots of homers, you know, it doesn't make sense to steal as often. But if you had someone stealing roughly 81% of the time, which is what Ricky did or what Coleman did or Raines, of course, the legendary percentage-based dealer who was at like 85%, then you would still probably want them to do that.

Maybe not if you had like Lou Brock or Maury Wills who were like 74%, 75%. But then the question, as you were saying, is like, well, would Ricky still have an 81% career success rate today or would it be higher or would it be lower? And like you said, I tend to think that people get better over time in Major League Baseball. But you've also had a change in the skill sets that are stressed for catchers, right? Like back in Ricky's day, it was like stopping the running game was everything for a catcher. Like that's what you were judged on defensively to a great degree whereas now it's just as much about framing and receiving as it is about throwing and there's

more of a recognition that like pitchers have a big part to play in stolen base success rate so so much has changed and also like you don't have as much like speedy turf anymore, which is something that I think improved stolen base success rates and gave guys an extra boost. So a lot of the conditions have changed. And so I'd have to think that like if someone exactly like Ricky came up again today, then he would not run nearly as often as Ricky did, even if it made some sense for him to. Ricky did, even if it made some sense for him to. But even if Ricky himself were suddenly transported to today, he'd probably run less, but I think he'd just insist on running a lot. Maybe he'd be less efficient than he was and he'd be running into a lot of outs, but I just don't know that you could stop him. Yeah. I think one almost wonders if Ricky played today, if instead of being like a 15 homer, 90 steel guy, he would

just be like a 30 homer, you know, 40 steel guy, right? Because he did have some pop, but that just wasn't stressed in his game necessarily. Yeah. And, you know, he had the career 400 on base percentage during a time when people weren't even paying that close attention to on base percentage, but he was a leadoff guy and he was working his way on. And so, as you said, he just had so many opportunities, whereas some of the other speedsters of that day were just really running constantly, but weren't even getting on base as often. So I think it would be a shame if you had a potential Ricky who could rack up those stolen base totals and just wasn't allowed to do it because of the era. But that's really like that comes up often when you're talking about Hall of Fame discussions and career retrospectives. Can you blame a player for not doing it? You know, like people will say that sometimes about players who didn't walk a lot, like, I don't know, an Andre Dawson or someone like that, and just say, well, no one was telling

him to walk back then, or no one was paying him to walk. And so is it fair to judge him by the standards of today? At the same time, like there were players who walked a lot in that era or an earlier era. time like there were players who walked a lot in that era or an earlier era so like it is a skill that some players just had and have without necessarily being told to and others who knows like maybe they could have walked more if that had been more emphasized if they had understood that to be their job so it's kind of tough to tell i guess all you can really do is evaluate what they were worth by our standards today. But there is always that what if of, well, might that player have been worth a little more if he had known what was actually valuable or at least what we understand to be valuable today.

Right. I think a good illustration might just be Babe Ruth. You know, like he had, you know, those few years where he really was like outhomering teams or out-homering the league, but then it really wasn't long until Gehrig and Hornsby and Jimmy Fox came along and Hack Wilson, and they were putting up impressive power numbers to the point where Ruth was still the best, but he wasn't just outlandish compared to the rest of the league. Yeah, I do wonder whether we will see that happen again. And I guess Otani is a potential case where we could see it happening, right? And I know you made an earlier Otani video just about two-way players in general,

and maybe whether we'll see more of them. But that just kind of completely mold-breaking, boundary-breaking player, like like a Ruth maybe like a Ricky who just did something so much better than everyone else or so much more than everyone else and then it opened everyone's eyes to oh wow I guess you can do that and it's advantageous to do that

and then you had copycats who maybe didn't do it quite as well but certainly narrowed the gap to the point that they weren't lapping the entire rest of the league. I wonder whether that will happen again or whether that has just happened so many times that too much of the sport is solved for someone to come along and just completely redefine everyone's understanding of how to play baseball or what is the most valuable way to play baseball. And I guess Otani is the most obvious answer for maybe this is the new example of that where other players could come along and not quite be Otani, but at least have some approximation

of what Otani is doing to the point that he is not completely unique anymore. Yeah. I mean, I think the conclusion I kind of reached was there's definitely an opening for like, you know, utility, you know, outfielder slash like reliever or something like that, like someone who could do both. And yet at the same time, it's hard to imagine someone who could be like a true middle of the order power bat and ace pitcher

and also, you know, steal 26 bases in a season and lead the league in triples like that that's a skill set that just it doesn't seem like you know will come around but maybe it will you know so I just think the tricky thing about the two-way players is that there has to be a level of balance right like they have to be about as good at hitting as they are at pitching or else they'll end up just specializing in one or the other. So I think that's kind of what is an interesting factor is you don't just have to be good at hitting and pitching. You have to be about the same amount of good, if that makes sense. Yeah. So back to your video. So as we noted, you kind of broke out right away once you hit on the Spaceball Bits format. Is there anything that you have learned over time? If you could

go back and talk to the Bailey of three years ago when you were just sort of embarking on those videos and say, don't do this or do do this more like the stylistic sensibility is pretty similar. But in terms of figuring out what works in the YouTube format and what resonates with your viewers, have you learned anything over time? Yeah, I think, you know, I think I've learned over time that it's okay for me to like inject some of my personality into videos more. Like I felt like, you know, in the earlier years, it was much more about just like getting the video out there and feeding people the information. And now I feel a lot more comfortable just sort of like being myself or like,

you know, really having myself as the narrator almost be a character. So I think that's definitely one thing I've learned about. And even the second channel has taught me that as well. You know, if you strip away the cool video game aesthetics and the music, people are willing to click on a video. That's just me talking to a webcam, you know? So that's, that's kind of an to a webcam you know so that's that's kind of an interesting thing to take away from it as well as that you know for a while i thought it

was just all about the flash but but maybe people do really care about like the substance as well so you started foolish bailey the secondary channel in march of 2020 why did you decide to branch off for the non-baseaseballBits videos as opposed to just lumping them all together? I think I had topics that I wanted to talk about, but that wouldn't work in a BaseballBits format. And I also wanted to be able to comment a little bit more on certain topical things. Like I mentioned before, Foolish Baseball is evergreen.

The hope is that someone will click on them and just go back and watch all of them at some point. So for me, I think the ability to cover league events as they're happening, as well as just address certain topics that I don't think would work, you know, in the confines of a 15 minute video essay. Those are probably the two biggest reasons I went for that second channel. And before you became a quote unquote content creator, very romantic term for what we do and what you do. How did you get into baseball in the first place? Well, I've always loved baseball. You know, I grew up, you know, I was born in 1995 to, you know, parents who grew up in Atlanta. So I really can't remember a time where I wasn't a baseball fan. But as far as I

think getting into, you know, the type of stuff that drives the channel today, I remember reading Moneyball when I was 12 or 13. And that was, you know, really formative for me, because I'd always been like a, like a sports almanac kid, you know, like a total baseball, just, you know, go through and read everyone's stats and, you know, try to memorize like home run leaderboards or whatever. But, you know, reading Moneyball, that sort of, you know, I was able to sort of combine that wish for like better sabermetric stats, but also with like just that respect for, you know, knowing just all types of baseball stats. And so I think, you know, reading Moneyball at 12 or 13 sort of set me down this path. And I also just, you know, in more recent

years, like when I was in my 20s, a few years before I started Foolish Baseball, I mean, you know, shout outs to the blogs, right? You know, shout outs to Fangraph, shout outs to Baseball Prospectus, because I think in many ways, what I've done is I've taken a lot of the attitudes that exist on places like Fangraph, like Baseball baseball prospectus, and just put them in video format. Because the thing is, if you watch YouTube a lot and you get a lot of your sports through YouTube, you probably aren't on the blogs. I prefer personally to digest through a blog post rather than a video. So I'm kind of trying to meet those people halfway. And you're also on Twitter and you're pretty active on Twitter and the Twitter algorithm loves

you, at least in my feed. I seem to get served every one of your tweets, which I'm happy to see them. I'm not even all that active on Twitter or on there that much myself, but every time I load it up, they seem to show me a Foolish Baseball tweet. And it seems like the baseline is like 800 likes it's like you could tweet anything and uh people will will smash the like button like five six seven hundred times it's like when john boyce will tweet going to the store right and he gets like 2000 likes or something so like clearly you have a pretty devoted audience there, your tweets are often not just going to the store. They're entertaining and funny and informative. But clearly, there are people who just like you as a personality and like your work and like your tweets and will just almost like them as if to say,

like, hey, I like that guy. I like this account. Going to give him a like. Yeah, definitely. And I think just, you know, for me, it was very important to grow an audience outside YouTube because the thing is like every YouTuber is absolutely terrified of YouTube as a platform. Like things can change like very arbitrarily. The most recent thing is they've removed the dislike button from videos. I don't know if you've heard about this, but I think that affects people's ability to judge the quality of a video, you know, before they watch it. So I think just for me, like building up an audience on Twitter is definitely important. A big reason I think is that if YouTube ever screws you over, the best way to get in touch with them is not,

you know, through YouTube support. It's just by tweeting at team YouTube and getting your fans to basically harass them. Yeah, it is a very precarious position. I guess that we're all in. We're all dependent on big tech to some extent and some weird algorithms. I mean, even if you're just writing, then it's all about, well, did Facebook change something and now suddenly you're not getting ad money anymore or people aren't going to your site? And now suddenly you're not getting ad money anymore or people aren't going to your site. I mean, that's behind the whole misguided pivot to video effort in writing, which you have pivoted to video and it has been very successful for you fall into if you could kind of put on your critic hat for a second, not that you need to

name names or anything, but are there certain trends that you see in baseball YouTube where you're just like, oh, it's another one of those videos or this could have been half as long as it actually is or something like that? Yeah, I mean, that's definitely a big one, right? Like a video is as long as it needs to be. That's pretty much like the best advice I could give right there. You know, if you have a 12-minute topic, it's a 12-minute video. Just try to make the video as short as you possibly can, I would almost say. Because people don't like having their time wasted.

But I think a big thing in general is just, you have to be the best version of you and not be the second best version of someone else because I don't try to be like John Boy for example. He's number one, he has the biggest audience of all of us. And so I think as far as for anyone in a creative field, but especially on YouTube, you're not gonna get anywhere just being like sort of a copycat version or a second rate version of someone else. Like you have to find a way to be the best version of yourself, you know?

Yeah. And if anyone in our audience is thinking, I should get into this newfangled YouTube watching activity that all the kids are doing these days. watching activity that all the kids are doing these days. Who else's work would you recommend? Anyone who influenced your own work or that you've come to admire? Well, in the baseball scene, you know, one smaller channel that I really admire right now is one called Sports Storm, which, you know, really consistent videos, you know, really cool topics, somewhat similar to what I do, but I think he has his own like real flair to it that I think is really nice. And then as far as just YouTubers that I myself was influenced by, probably number one is Summoning Salt. So Summoning Salt makes videos about video game speed running,

you know, the act of beating a video game, like say Super Mario as fast as possible. And you might not think that's that interesting, but I tell you what, if you check out one of those videos, you know, watch something about Super Mario, watch something about Punch-Out, A, you might find that it's pretty similar to a Foolish Baseball video, and B, you might find, wow, this is really interesting, even though I myself am not, you know,

a video game speedrunner. Mm-hmm, yeah. And is there a large audience for just baseball streamers? I mean, is that something that is even viable given copyright concerns? I mean, if you are a streamer who's playing a video game, sometimes copyright concerns can creep up there too if you have licensed music in the game, for instance. But you can generally play a game and stream over it, and millions and millions of people will happily watch that. With baseball, is there a large community devoted to that sort of thing on Twitch or any other

streaming platform? Or is it just tough to do because you can't really talk over baseball in the same way? Yeah, well, it's interesting because I think we've seen a shift over the last few years where, you know, if you go back before I started and before, you know, John Boy started seeing a lot of momentum, the baseball content on YouTube really was just MLB the show, right? Those were the biggest, were just people playing the video game MLB the show. And now, you know, you see maybe as MLB has loosened up on some of those copyright restrictions we talked about, you know, more of an opportunity to talk about actual Major League Baseball rather than video game Major League Baseball.

But yeah, I mean, as far as live streaming goes, you know, on Twitch, MLB The Show is a pretty big category. Like you can definitely do that. You know, the biggest one I can think of is a Twitch channel by the name of your friend Kyle. And Kyle actually like around the time the game got released in those next few months became like one of the top 20 or so most subscribed channels on Twitch for a bit. So the ceiling there is pretty high. I think every now and then for me, it's good to know like what the ceiling is.

So I know, you know, if you're doing baseball on Twitch, like the ceiling, you know, could be like a top 20 channel on Twitch. And if you're doing baseball on YouTube, I mean, I've said over and over again, but I mean, John Boyd has more than a million subscribers. So as long as those people keep pushing up the ceiling, you know, that continues to give me hope that I myself can grow to reach those numbers someday as well. And as you mentioned, you've sort of objected more of your personality and comedy into your videos over time. And you've also kind of become a commentator, not a hot take person, but someone with opinions that you will share, not purely just informational, hey, here's a good player and some interesting stats about that

player, but your thoughts on sometimes sensitive subjects. Maybe it's the Hall of Fame character clause. Maybe it's Trevor Bauer. Maybe it's the chop, et cetera. And you will put videos about these things often on your sort of spinoff Foolish Bailey channel. So is that something that you have kind of had to become more comfortable with over time, just making yourself the story or sort of putting yourself forward and weighing into these waters,

as opposed to, hey, here's a fun fact, or I made a weird stat? Right, absolutely. I mean, I feel like I've done it somewhat reluctantly. And I think part of it is I've always been just very protective of myself, you know, Bailey Freeman versus the channel Foolish Baseball. You know, when I got started, no one knew what I looked like. And then people found out what I looked like. And then I told people my first name is Bailey. And then, you know, a year ago, I said, yeah, my name's Bailey Freeman. And I went to, you know, Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, you know, stuff like that. So it all just kind of becomes unveiled. And now, as you said, there I am

on YouTube talking about, you know, my opinion of the chop as a Braves fan or my perspective on Trevor Bauer as, you know, someone who's also in the content creation game. And yeah, so I think somewhat reluctantly I've gotten into that. However, what I've also learned over time is that people want to hear me say these things because, you know, in some ways, if I'm their first introduction to baseball stats or even the game of baseball itself, like, you know, they kind of look to me. For example, I may have changed their vocabulary about the game of baseball. They might no longer talk about batting average. They might talk about OPS plus. They might know what FIP is because of me. And because of that, that might mean they come back to me over certain things that are happening in the game. So I think one thing I've learned is that once you get a certain audience and once you start having people who repeatedly come back to what you do, it doesn't necessarily put pressure on you, but there

is like a greater sense of responsibility. Yeah. And you've also kind of evolved from, hey, I'm just going to be this person who doesn't even appear on camera, just talking about these players from afar to sometimes doing more in-person reported stuff. I guess prior to the pandemic, you were kind of moving in that direction a bit. And I guess just before all hell broke loose last spring, you were going to spring training camps and talking to players and interviewing them on camera. Was that a natural transition for you? Or was that another case of needing to force yourself outside of your comfort zone? I mean, not natural at all, right? I mean, first of all, just doing an interview where I'm conducting it and asking

the questions was very strange. And even though I love the game of baseball, you know, it's not always maybe the easiest to talk to the people who play it. And so you have to be like creative in terms of wording your questions to try to coax, you know, an interesting answer from them. But yeah, and I think just in general, you know, just appearing on camera was just a pretty wild move for someone who, you know, had basically been behind the curtain like Oz. you know, had basically been behind the curtain like Oz. But yeah, I just think for me, none of these transitions are easy, but if you want to do it, you want to do it. And so that's how I've ended up in this position. But it's been, like you said, over time, right? You know, this started from just me as a narrator. And then, you know, a year and a half later, it's me at Spring Trading. And now it's, you know, now everything's just out there, you know. Do you want to ask me, if you were set free supermarket sweep style in the MLB video archive, or we don't even know exactly what's in there and what's not in there. But if you had the archive of all recorded baseball footage, is there something or a few things that you would gravitate toward? A couple things that you would really like to make a video about but can't because you don't have access to the footage? You know, this question kind of makes me think of Andrew Varga. And this is someone who I believe

was once referred to as the official YouTube of Effectively Wild, which I will now contest. However, Andrew has a project that he's working on where he basically wants to collect every single Barry Bonds home run. And he's got up to, I think, about 400 out of the 762. So I just tend to think about, wow, there's about 350 Barry Bonds home runs out there that people can't really see. How many of them are just massive tape measure blasts? Is there a walk-off out there? Is there just something exciting that we just don't get to see?

And so I think as far as getting into the the mlb vault you're talking about focusing on uh era of baseball where the availability of clips and highlights isn't very high but where you know you know this is a time where games were still broadcast on tv so you know i can get every pitch of every game from 2009 onwards so i sort of tend to think about you know the the 2000s and the 90s and the 80s is a time that I would definitely be focusing on if I could get into that MLB vault. So one player that definitely comes to mind is someone like Rob Dibble, you know, such an extreme reliever with such an extreme skill set. And yet, if you go type in Rob Dibble on the MLB YouTube channel, there's basically nothing there right yeah it's funny it's like everything pre-2008 2009 like

mlb tv that's even after mlb tv started but everything else is just like memory hold unless it just happens to be part of the mlb film room which has like millions of clips at this point it's a great resource obviously but things but things from decades earlier, which are not ancient history, might as well never have happened. I mean, we just can't find them. We can't watch them again. Yeah, and what's also interesting, too, is there's even a little bit of that happening now because during the lockout, Film Room has actually removed all the clips of active players as part of their purge. So I have to use some sort of special workarounds to get some of the clips I want

while the league is in lockdown. Yeah, won't anyone think of the YouTubers while they're worried about all these labor issues? The real issue is how is Foolish Baseball going to come out with some videos? Where does the name Foolish Baseball come from, by the way? Because you created the account in what, 2012, right? Years before it was really active.

Yeah, and I don't think it was called Foolish Baseball at the time. But I think the name Foolish Baseball has a few origins. But the biggest one I could say is that I remember reading Keith Law's book, Smart Baseball. And I kind of wanted to create something, you know, in that vein where I'm talking about sabermetrics. But I also wanted to show that I don't take myself seriously at all. And so thus, Foolish Baseball was born. So if someone is just getting into your catalog, where would you recommend they start? I guess watching your most recent video about Otani would be a natural transition from Effectively Wild. But everyone who listens to this podcast

has heard every Shohei Otani stat that exists under the sun at this point, probably. So if there is a previous video that you felt like you really nailed it, or you're most proud of, or that distilled the Bailey Freeman experience down to its essence, where would you suggest someone start? Yeah, so I think the favorite thing I've made is the video that I made about Rod Barajas. I won't spoil too much, but there's a twist, basically, is how that video goes. And I just think it's sort of a really fun look at like a really niche player and a really niche season that time had probably forgotten about. But if you're not like a baseball fan, for example, and maybe you're just sort of you know interested in learning more about baseball I have a video about that twins Yankees epic game

from 2019 and it's just basically me recounting you know the tale of a game that was played a couple years ago and how great this game was and I think you know there's still some like you know foolish baseball a sabermetric type stuff in there but that's a video that I think someone getting into the game of baseball itself could really enjoy because at the end of the day it's really just the story of a really good baseball game well I highly recommend that people who have not caught up on foolish baseball do so now and of course I will as always link to all the places you can find Bailey on our show page at Fangraphs. But, again, the main channel on YouTube is Foolish Baseball.

The spinoff channel where you get the look behind the scenes at Bailey Freeman, the man, is at Foolish Bailey. And you can find him on Twitter at Foolish BB. I noticed, by the way, that you are following the person who owns the Foolish Baseball Twitter account who has not tweeted since October 2018. I don't know whether you have made any efforts to obtain that account from that person or you got to get on the dark web and get someone to hack the at Foolish Baseball Twitter account for you so you can claim that one because someone's squatting on it, not really using it. Yeah. And I think it's like a Japanese baseball fan tweeting about like NPB. And so I've tried to like Google translate some of them. And so they are like cool leaderboards and stuff like that. But yeah, whoever runs the Foolish Baseball account has not tweeted

since I really had any sort of public profile. But yeah, I think I'm stuck with Foolish BB for now. I think if I switch now, it'd be kind of weird. Well, seems to be working out okay for you. You have almost six figure followers on there. You have almost a quarter of a million subscribers on your main YouTube account. So clearly the people have found you wherever you are and you deserve it. So everyone go watch his videos, read his tweets. You can also support him on Patreon the way that he supports this podcast, pay it forward at patreon.com slash foolish baseball. Sorry it took us so long to have this long awaited conversation, but I'm glad we got to do it, and hopefully we can do it again

sometime. So it's been a pleasure. Thank you, Bailey. Thank you, Ben. All right, that will do it for today. We will have two more episodes in this little mini-series slightly later this week with two other baseball content creators who work mainly in a medium other than writing or podcasting. But thank you to Bailey for teeing us off here. One quick follow-up from our most recent episode, 1786, Meg and I answered an email about whether pitchers should possibly soak their fingers in water so as to make them wrinkly and pruney, thereby improving their grip in the absence of foreign substances. And we debated whether water would be a foreign substance in that context, but also whether it would work. And we came to the conclusion that, yes, it would enhance grip.

It might also be impractical and easily detectable. But in theory, it should give you a better grip on the baseball. However, we got an email from listener Henry, who made a really good point in response to this. When you soak your fingers, the skin softens, too. I think pitching with pruned fingers would be all blisters all the time. Good point, Henry, because when I looked up how to avoid blisters, the first tip I saw was keep your skin dry. So if you're softening your fingers by soaking them in water, you might have a better grip,

but you might also be more susceptible to blisters, in addition to all the other potential problems here. I know that some baseball players have been famous or infamous for peeing on their fingers, ostensibly to toughen them up and avoid blisters. From what I've read, there's no real reason to think that that would work, that if anything, that would soften them too. Or maybe this is one of those situations. It's an old player's tale where the players know something the doctors don't. Anyway, this throws a wrench into the plan to soak one's fingers in order to make them pruney. Pruniness, not necessarily a performance

enhancer for pitchers after all. We also got a lot of responses to our little tangent last time about learning to love a sport later in life. And several listeners wrote in with some heartfelt testimonials and personal stories about how they came to baseball or discovered some sport or team later in life. Not necessarily late in life, but just not at the beginning. So I might save some of those and read them on an upcoming episode. But thanks to everyone who wrote in to share your story. You can support Effectively Wild just like Bailey Freeman does on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or annual amount to help keep the podcast going

and help keep it ad-free and get themselves access to some perks. William Flanagan, Dave Lean, Sally Gaskill, Matthew, and Mona Shaw, thanks to all of you. As a reminder, if you are a Patreon supporter at a certain tier and above, you can get access to our monthly Patreon-exclusive bonus episodes. Meg and I will be recording one next week when she's back before the end of December. You can also get access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons, where there are well over 400 members,

and some of those members are organizing a trivia night just for fellow Effectively Wild patron Discord group members. You can register up through December 24th, check the link on our show page. The actual trivia event is on December 29th. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on

iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. Give us the gift this holiday of a positive rating and or review. You can write to me and Meg via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWPod. There's an Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Thanks to Dylan Higgins, as always, for his editing and production assistance. And I will be back with another couple of episodes a little later this week. Talk to you then. I remember how foolish I was. I remember how foolish I was.

I remember how foolish I was.