Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1859: Three Strikes and Burnout

Episode Date: June 6, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Mike Yastrzemski trying the “KK play,” the distinctive smell of rat urine, Buck Showalter making a mid-PA pitching change, Dave Roberts running afoul of a position-player-pitcher rule, the wording of the zombie-runner rule, Nick Pivetta’s near-miraculous mechanical adjustment, and Mike Trout’s slump, plus a baseball-history fact from 1859. […]

Yn y sgwrs ysgol, mae'r cyfoen yn ei ddweud ei bod yn dda nawr. And that's a job And they're leaving now It's time that I'm around But I need a job as good as me Hello and welcome to episode 1859 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs, presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Mender, a Catholic ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. Well, last time we discussed someone leaving the Phillies involuntarily.

That'd be Joe Girardi. On this episode, we will be discussing someone leaving the Phillies of their own volition, Louis Pallas, a former front office executive for the Phillies who left after seven years or so with the club, he wrote a piece on his sub stack earlier this year about his decision to leave baseball, which resonated with us and with, I think, a lot of readers. And we've been looking for a time to have him on. And this seems like a good time. This has been a point in history where a lot of people are leaving jobs, feeling some level of burnout. Louis felt that in baseball, even though baseball was his dream job. And he wrote, I think, in a really perceptive way about his thinking and how it evolved and how it might be applicable to

anyone else who might want to work in baseball or just in whatever jobs they do, because I think this is sort of universal or something close to that. So Louis will be joining us in a little bit to talk us through that decision and evolution and how things have worked out. But we do have a couple of things to get to. A couple, as you noted before we started recording, real podcast bait occurrences this past weekend. So we talked two episodes ago about the KK play as it was informally dubbed by the Spartans, the college team that tried it, the deke, the deke in a potential game ending slash walk off situation where a fielder with a runner on third and less than two outs decides to make it look like maybe they did not catch the ball or just to catch the ball later than it looks like they might so that they could deke the runner on third into leaving early and then they could throw to that base and appeal and get them called out. Well, we wondered when will this ever happen in a major league game? Because it happened recently in a college game and it worked out well for the Spartans outfielder who tried it

and they were going to lose the game and outfielder who tried it and they were going to lose the game and they ended up forcing extra innings and then winning in extra innings. And this was an idea that they had been given by Rays outfielder Kevin Kiermaier, who has considered trying it and practiced it, but not actually done it. Well, no sooner than this happened at the college level and we talked about it, then it actually did happen at the big league level. So we had this whole discussion of, well, could this happen? Should this happen? What would happen if it did happen? And then it happened just days later in effectively wild fashion. So Mike Yastrzemski, Giants center fielder, he tried it. He tried the KK play on what would have been a

game-ending play for the Giants and ultimately turned out to be a game-ending play for the Giants because it did not work. But he tried it. How about that? Yeah, he seems to have tried it. It did not work. Do we think that the issue in this circumstance, the not working of it all,

is because he didn't sell it well enough or because of intense discipline on the part of the base runner. Right. Yeah. So that's one thing we talked about, how many things have to go right for this to work. A lot of things. Yeah. Yeah. The outfielder has to execute it convincingly. The base runner and base coach maybe have to be a little bit inattentive. The umpire has to be paying close attention, although, as you noted, they could do a replay review at the major league level. But I think he didn't sell it well enough.

Now, maybe it wouldn't have worked anyway, but I think he could potentially take some lessons from the college outfielder who tried this and had it work out better than it did for the Giants. Because I think the difference there was when Spartans left fielder Jordan Lala tried it, he went down to his knees. Yeah. He kind of fell down and he still managed to catch it. Whereas with Yastrzemski, he bent over. He almost did like a little spin move sort of. But it was more of a crouch. Like Lala went down to his knees and Yastrzemski didn't really do that.

So I don't think he sold it well enough i don't know that it would have worked anyway but i don't think this is definitive proof that it wouldn't work because i think you could do it better than this yeah when i watched it and now i just have it on a loop over and over as we are sitting here talking about it this reads and i don't know if he was asked about this after the and i don't know if he was asked about this after the fact i don't know if he was asked by the beats whether he was trying to engage in subterfuge but i think he's trying to engage in subterfuge but the problem i think the problem is that it looks less like the kk play it looks less like intentional deking and more like he realized, oh no, I took a bad

route. The body language is not someone who is about to have dropped the ball. And so I think that the real solution to this is that Kevin Kiermaier, perhaps with an assist from his college pals, needs to hold a clinic to instruct people in the KK play. And I would be excited about that because we're imagining a particular set of physical movements that would be successful in deking, right? We've seen an instance of it, and I imagine we could think of more, but it would be very cool to see the variations on the KK play that might emerge with other fielders who are able to, and no offense to Mike Yastrzemski,

but able to sell it better than Yastrzemski did. I think that that would be really neat. It's like, and then we'd have to come up with new names because I worry that we would call everything a KAK play, just like we're calling everything a sweeper. And they're not all sweepers, Ben. Not all those sliders are sweepers. Some of them are just sliders.

So I think that that would be neat. And then we could have a taxonomy of outfield deking, and people could have their preferred variants of outfield deking, their own stylistic flares. And I think the game would be better for it. Yeah. So I'm glad that someone did it. The seal is broken now. Others can try it.

It only took a couple days after we talked about it. So glad we talked about it when we did. Yeah, me too. But I guess it makes sense that the Giants would be the ones to do this because they declared open season on the ones to do this because they declared open season on the unwritten rules this season. So if there was an unwritten rule against this, and I don't know that there was because it hadn't really been tried to my knowledge, but I think if it were tried, if it did work successfully, then other teams might try to

impose unwritten rules. Because again, if we go with the Sam Miller theory of unwritten rules, which is that they're basically a way for players to pressure their opponents into losing some sort of advantage that they might have, then you could see. And there have been cases of dekes prompting fights or making players mad about unwritten rules. So I think that this would quickly become something that had some baggage associated with it were it to work. But it did not. And the Marlins won the game.

But good try. And I applaud the effort. And it did seem like the Giants lingered on the field for a little while maybe. Like Kapler was considering calling for a replay review or at least wanted to maintain that option. And then I guess probably they looked at the replay and the runner did not leave early. Yeah. Right on time. Yeah. There's a bit of milling about there. It seemed like just, you know, let's check it out. Let's see if the KK play worked. So I didn't see them interview him about this or find out why exactly this was done or how it was done. But I would be curious to hear because it's not really something you can think of in the moment, probably. It probably has

to be a game plan like, hey, if you find yourself in this situation, because it would be hard to have the presence of mind to think of it and then also execute it. So I wonder at what point he decided to do it or the coaching staff decided to do it and told everyone and whether they explicitly said, hey, I've heard about this on Effectively Wild or probably not, but saw it happen in this college game and it actually worked. So anyway, kudos to Luke Williams, who was the runner on third and was not deked by Mike Jastrzemski. By the way, he was playing right field i believe i said he was a center fielder but yeah he was actually in right he was in right

yeah i just i part of why i want this is to have an opportunity for us to continue to explore like when we are comfortable with people engaging in trickeration and when we expect them to pay attention and to really be focused and hold up their end. Because like I said last time we talked about this, there are places in the rule book where if you are not attentive, if you are not paying good attention, you just have to take your lumps. You just have to accept the consequences of your actions. Even sometimes when the other team has made a mistake,

like if a team bats out of order, the umpire is explicitly not supposed to call the other team's manager's attention to that. It says in the rule book that it's designed to require constant vigilance. There's this expectation of really being locked in there. So I want to continue to unspool our attention expectations. Yes. So the other effectively wild thing that happened or sort of happened, we were alerted to it by a lot of people, is that Buck Showalter made a mid-plate appearance pitching change. Yes. So this was in the Saturday Dodgers-Mets game,

the rat urine series at Dodger Stadium. Did you see this report that the Mets are considering complaining to MLB about the rat urine smell at Dodger Stadium? Yes, I did see that. And then I heard someone, I saw someone say, but how do you quantify the smell? How do you instill the smell? We need whoever designed the bugs life experience at Disneyland where it smells like a stink bug.

And you're like, why am I in here? Why did I subject myself to this? Yeah, we need that person. Get that one on the line. Yeah, it was Mike Puma of the New York Post who reported this said, one problem is trying to document a smell. It's not like they can just take a picture and send it to MLB. Well, can't they take an air sample and see how many rat urine molecules are in there? I don't know if MLB is set up to do that kind of analysis. I don't either. Apparently, it's like on the visitor's side. It's like in the video room, there is a rat urine odor.

How do they know it's rat urine? visitor's side it's like in the video room there is a rat urine odor how do they know it's rat urine does does rat urine smell they know it's rat urine is the constitution of rat urine different from other kinds of urine would you recognize rat urine if you smelled it as opposed to just urine in general i mean so like i will say that my at my mom's place up in the mountains, they've had to deal with pack rats, because this is what country living is like, I guess. And I'm given to understand that pack rats are incredibly smelly. They grab stuff and they put it all together to build their nest. That's why we call them pack rats. That's why we have that expression to refer to people the part where it hopefully varies from people is that they like

they like peel over everything i think to i don't know if they're using it as like a way of cohering the different bits of garbage to each other or if it's like a marking thing and look you're gonna tell me in the emails friends and i just want you to know that i'm gonna relay this conversation to my mom and she's gonna tell me and so i will tell you what she said and if you want to send an email you still can because we love to hear from all of you but you don't feel don't feel obligated to send an email is the point that i'm trying to make here anyway i think that that my mom has described that as like a unique olfactory experience you know that is a that is a smell that she had never smelled before and hopes to never smell again they did a lot of work on the outside of that house to

make sure no more of those pack rats could get in so maybe maybe there is something particularly putrid about that smell but the only time that i've been in what I assume to be the proximity of rat urine has been like, you know, when I lived in New York and would take the subway. And I dare you to differentiate that smell from the other, you know, the cornucopia of scents. Yeah, that's the thing. The nose journey one embarks on

when one is in the New York City subway system. So, which I have affection for even as it falls apart. So, you know, like maybe it is unique. Maybe they will go to the league office and sit there and describe like a harrowing tale. You know, they will have a journey that they take the league on. But I'm surprised because, you know, we often associate really bad vermin and or smell and or, you know, sometimes poo-poo conditions with teams that have let their stadiums fall into disrepair. Right. Often because they aren't willing to invest in them like the A's with the Coliseum.

But this suggests that inattention to rodentia could be a problem that spans the payroll spectrum. Yeah. Well, in Oakland, presumably it would be cat urine or opossum urine. I'm sure they have rats too. Or maybe they don't because they have the feral cats and that controls the rat problem. So, yeah. I mean, I was going to say as a lifelong New Yorker, I've spent plenty of time around rats more times than I would prefer. And I still don't know that I could identify the rat urine smell specifically just because there's just such a bouquet of fragrances in this city and in my borough that I don't know that I could isolate that one.

I have done some light Googling here, and it sounds like I've read that the urine smells similar to other animals' urine because the main components are water and urea. Urea is high in nitrogen and forms ammonia when it breaks down, giving it a strong odor. Rat urine also contains minerals such as calcium, which can leave a chalky residue when it dries. So that's something I guess you could document that easily. You could take a photo of the chalky residue. But some people describe the smell as musky. Well, it doesn't even sound so bad, but some other sources say it can almost like make your eyes water. It's like bleach or something.

It's like a nitrogen smell, a strong, obvious smell. So if your nose is tingling or getting hot, then it's rodent urine. So I guess I'll give them credit. They were able to identify the source of the urine seemingly, or maybe they just gave the Dodgers the benefit of the doubt that they were not humans urinating on the Mets premises there. Anyway, that was not the point. That would be much more. That would be, look, I don't think it's great to have like a rodent-y time.

You want to, you know, like that's a, for sanitation, you want to make sure that, and also because you don't want to shock people with, I mean, they're not, it's not like Ratatouille. They're not cute, right? They're not cooking in a French restaurant. They're not cute. But it would be way worse and more disturbing if it were human urine. worse and more disturbing if it were human you're like i'm just saying like that's you know that's like that's like the subject of a netflix true crime documentary if like they're having people

and then who do you have go in there to do the anyway we've gone wildly off the rails what happens when we record on sundays but i'm just saying don't you know that would be really bad that would be that would i'd be worried about people and then the choices they're making and what kind of human person they are if they were to do that. Yeah. I think rats could be cute if we saw them in a different context. It's just that they're so often running amid garbage bags and they're covered in garbage or, or spelling like urine, you know, if they were domesticated pet rats.

Some people have had pet rats and they probably think they're cute. Anyway, I brought up that series because Buck Showalter pulled a picture in the middle of a plate appearance. And so the Effectively Wild signal went up and we got lots of tweets and emails about this. So this happened in the fourth inning of the game on Saturday. And David Peterson was the pitcher who was pulled. He was facing Mookie Betts, I believe, for the third time in that game. And Betts had hit him hard to that point. He had a line out earlier. He doubled earlier. And then to start this plate appearance, he hit, I believe, a long foul ball, like a foul homer type thing. And so Showalter said, OK, I've seen enough. I don't want to tempt fate here. Bet seems to be on Peterson's pitches today. So I'm just going to pull him before some disaster occurs. And he brought in the rookie Colin Holderman, which, by the way, incredible name for a pitcher.

No notes. I thought of doing a meet a major leaguer on Colin Holderman because it's amazing. Like, other than Josh Outman, I guess. Yeah. This is about as good a name as you could have for a relief pitcher specifically. Oh, yeah. He was not credited with a hold in this game because he was credited with a win, actually. He only faced Mookie Betts, and I think he threw him three straight balls

initially, and then he came back to strike him out looking. So it worked out. They got the results that they had wanted here. Maybe it took Holderman a minute to settle in, but ultimately he did. And they got the out, and that was the only batter that Holderman faced. And then the Mets took the lead and he got the W. But Showalter said Mookie was on everything he was throwing. It was obvious he was real comfortable there. I just didn't like where that at bat was headed. Mookie said after the game, I think it caught all of us by surprise, but it worked. So you can't really argue with it. I would say that catching you by surprise is the point. So if it caught you by surprise, then it worked. Now, here's the thing. I would draw a distinction,

I think, between this type of mid-plate appearance pitching change. So you could say maybe this was Showalter's homage to the departed Joe Girardi because he was the one who brought this to our attention initially. He called it strategy. I guess technically he didn't call it that, but when asked why he did it, all he would divulge was strategy. And so we have called it strategy since then. I don't know that this was exactly what I think of as the platonic ideal of strategy because this was a pitcher who had thrown 90 pitches in the game. So he was getting toward the end of his rope anyway. And the concern was that he was going to get hit around by Mookie.

So in my mind, it wasn't just I'm going to gain the advantage of bringing in a new pitcher and giving him a new look in the middle of a plate appearance, which is the point of it in my mind. You're used to this certain release point and this stuff, and then suddenly you're confronted with a new pitcher in the middle of the plate appearance, and it's tough to make that adjustment. This was, I think, almost as much about just getting the original pitcher out of there. Like sometimes you will see that happen from time to time where it's just like someone falls behind in a plate appearance and it's like, oh, he's lost it. He's out of gas. I'm just going to get him out of there. Now, in this case, he had not fallen behind.

He was up in the count and it was just a loud strike one. And I will give credit to Showalter for not waiting. Why wait? I think it's smart. But I don't know that it's pure strategy because this to me, it seems like as much about pure application of this as it exists in my mind is not necessarily that you've lost confidence in the old pitcher, but that you think you're going to gain a greater edge by bringing in a new pitcher and giving the batter a new look. So I don't know that this completely qualifies, but it's close and i applaud the unconventional thinking yeah i love that we really had three podcast bait moments right because we had the the kk play and then we had the mid pa change and then we had an opportunity to be patented yes so really we're we're the target audience of baseball this this uh weekend i guess I do think it is useful to draw a distinction.

It is interesting that at least from the batter's perspective, even though Showalter's initial intent seems to have been to remove a pitcher he saw as flagging and getting hit hard. Because like it really, the ball that Mookie fouled off, he was like very close to being a home run. It was like one of those ones that was going to curve around the foul pole down on the left side over that little tiny wall they have over there.

But even though the intent was more about let's get this guy out, it ended up being the strategy, right? Because the guy was, because Mookie was like, I was thrown off

and then he, you know, he did not score. I was at dinner and this was on in the, this game was on in the bar and I almost texted you and was like, Ben, they did your thing. But it did strike me as a little bit different, but it was close enough that I was like, we're going to get emails about this. The only rules it has to work came out and we talked about doing the five player infield or the four player outfield. And then we would constantly get emails or tweets whenever a team like in a game ending walk off situation would bring in extra infielders. We would get people saying, oh, they're doing it.

They're doing the Ben Lindbergh, Sam Miller thing from the book. And we would always draw a distinction and say, well, no, this is not quite it because this is just a walk-off situation. This is sudden death. This is if a ball is hit to the outfield, you're going to lose anyway, that sort of situation. This is in extremis. And so it's still kind of cool when it happens. But what we were doing and what we were talking about the book is just having that happen in a routine play to parents, not in a situation where you're about to lose. And we have seen that start to happen now where teams just will do those things as a matter of course, not necessarily just in a game losing situation.

But I think it's important to draw the distinction between doing it in one context and doing it in another. And I guess for most people, what was more notable about that Mets-Dodgers game was that later in the game, Dave Roberts got called to account because he broke a rule, which he did not know was a rule, which is that he tried to bring in a position player pitcher, Zach McKinstry, when the Dodgers were losing by five runs. And you cannot do that anymore. It has to be six, right? Yeah, it has to be at least six. Yeah, it has to be at least six. And that rule, I think, was first announced in 2020. And then it was deferred because of the various health and safety protocols and pandemic baseball. And evidently, Roberts was not aware that that had actually gone into effect. And so the umpires called him on that. And there was a long delay. I'm not sure why it took like 11 minutes to sort out, I think, because Roberts asked for like an appeal to New York. Like he wanted to confirm that, yes, this was actually a rule.

I don't know why that was not a simple and easy and quick answer. It's amazing how long it takes. It took a while. And, of course, Evan Phillips, the reliever, had to come in and he had all the time that he needed to warm up. So that added to the time, too. So it took a long time, but while I'm applauding people, I will also applaud that umpiring crew for Colin Roberts on that, drawing the line because position player pitching, it's kind of out of control these days.

It's lost a lot of its novelty. I still sort of enjoy it when it is like an Albert Pujols or a Yadier Molina getting to do it for the first time ever, like some notable hitter. It's kind of fun to see what they look like on the mound. But for the most part, it's kind of boring and maybe with only a five-run deficit. I don't know. Is there something untoward about that? Does it look like raising the white flag? Maybe you should raise the white flag. You could always just forfeit if you wanted to. But Roberts wanted to save a pitcher because he had already used, I think, six real pitchers in that game because they'd all gone like an inning or two. Walker Bueller was pulled after two and a third. So he ended up basically doing a bullpen game and wanted to keep some of his

bullpen fresh for the last game of that series. But he was thwarted. And some people initially thought it was Buck Showalter, who is famous for knowing the rules. But he actually wasn't the one who instigated this, seemingly. It was the umpires who picked up on it themselves. So kudos to them, because it's out of control. We got to keep this in check a little bit. So I do kind of approve of that rule. Yeah, I think that you got to set the line somewhere did we ever get an explanation for why they picked six instead of

five or seven or no i don't think so yeah so i i'm curious if there was an actual process there but otherwise yeah i think you gotta you gotta draw the line somewhere i have some sympathy for him not realizing that it had been slowed down because you know how many times have the pitcher limits been delayed and rejiggered yeah and changed so these you know this is stuff that can happen but you know it is always the rule checks that seem to take the longest those are such long delays like minutes and minutes. It stretches forever. And it's like, but why? They have a rulebook sitting there, don't they? We did talk about the zombie runner specifically and whether it contradicts the rule in the rulebook about how you, in order to score a run, you have to touch the bases in order. We talked about

whether the zombie runner does actually touch first or not. And people have tweeted us and said, so-and-so did touch first, so-and-so didn't touch first. They don't do it always. And we were wondering whether the actual rule for the zombie runner or the automatic runner or whatever MLB would call it, whether it would specify that there was like an exemption from that overriding rule about how you score a run in baseball. So listener Raymond wrote in to say that he found the 2020 MLB operations manual, which covers the health and safety protocols, but also those rules changes. And the zombie

runner rule is one of them. And I won't read the whole thing. I will link to it on the show page, but there is nothing in there. As Raymond said, no override of rule 5.08, the runner must touch all bases in sequence to score. No override of rule 1.04, when a batter becomes a runner and touches all bases legally, he shall score one run for his team. No override of the definition of a run in the glossary. A run or score is the score made by an offensive player who advances from batter to runner and touches first, second, third, and home base in that order. So zombie runner runs are double invalid, Raymond says. Not only did the zombie runner not touch first base, he was never a batter either. Will this challenge work? No. Should somebody try? Absolutely. So I wonder how long that rules appeal would last if someone appealed the zombie runner on the ground that they were not a batter first in this inning and they did not touch first base.

How long would it take for New York to sort that one out? I wonder. Yeah. I'd like to see someone try. Yeah. And the last thing I will point out is that I'm always a sucker for a good mechanical change story. Like someone changed their stance or they changed their windup or whatever it is, and suddenly it's like a night and day difference. And that has happened with

Nick Pavetta. And I just wanted to draw attention to this because Nick Pavetta's first three starts of this season for the Red Sox went very badly for him. He went five and two thirds and gave up four runs. He went two innings and gave up four runs. Then he went four innings and gave up five runs. And in that third start, in the last two innings of that start, seemingly he said he made a mechanical adjustment. And evidently he went to talk to pitching coach Dave Bush, an old fantasy baseball favorite of mine, always thought he was going to be better than he was. But he allowed five runs in the second inning against the Blue Jays on April 20th. And then he talked to Dave Bush. And then in the third and fourth innings, he made some mechanical adjustment and suddenly

his velocity ticked up. And Cora said, I believe the last two innings were his best innings so far out of the three outings this season. Velocity went up. There was some 95, 96 mile per hour. It seems like he was more aggressive with the fastball. He was able to get it to the outside part of the plate. If we're going to take something positive out of this, it was the way he finished. And Pavetta himself said, I made mechanical changes that I've been kind of trying to search for for the past 15, 20 days now. Just got my hands breaking in a better motion. I got my arms circulating better. My velo picked up. Everything picked up after that. So that was positive, but super disappointed with how the second inning went. So he was sitting like 92, 93,

disappointed with how the second inning went. So he was sitting like 92-93, and then he was hitting 96 after that adjustment. And Cora had said after his previous start that did not go well, that his mechanics were off and that that was why his velocity was down. Anyway, since then, Nick Pavetta has been brilliant and was brilliant again over the weekend in another start. And so if we go from April 26th, which was his first post-adjustment start, to June 4th, which was when he made his most recent start, the Fangraphs War pitching leaders are Garrett Cole, Zach Wheeler, Kevin Gossman, Martin Perez, whom we talked about last week, and Nick Pavetta. So he has been the fifth most valuable pitcher in baseball by Fangraph's War, dating back to the start after he made that mechanical adjustment.

So it really does seem like, you know, sometimes I will be somewhat suspicious of that. It's like, oh, yeah, I fixed everything all of a sudden. But in this case, like he was just unable to whatever it was, get his hands breaking at a better time in his motion, get his arms circulating better. So I don't know what it was or why Dave Bush was able to get through to him in that moment or why he was able to fix himself in the middle of that game. But initially, when I saw that report, I was like, all right, well, we'll see. We'll reserve judgment until we actually see him pitching again and whether he is able to sustain these improved mechanics. But boy, he has. And he's someone who I think has always been said to have good stuff and has had sort of up and down results. So

evidently he found something. And I don't know whether he will maintain control over whatever he found, but he has been able to for the past six weeks or so. And he's gone from terrible to brilliant. So that's kind of cool. Evidently, sometimes it is just that simple. You need someone to say the right thing to you at the right time, and then you find it. And now you're great after being unable to get anyone out. So that's kind of a cool story and good for the Red Sox, who have kind of turned their season around to some extent, as Pavetta has.

Yeah, I think we've had a couple of surprising Red Sox pitching performances, and I thought the one that was going to really leave its mark was Whitlock's transition to the rotation being so good. But this one's shooting up the charts, up the rankings. It's shooting up something. Oh up the rankings, up the, it's shooting up something. Oh, that sounds bad out of context. It's quickly advancing. There we go. Yeah.

We need someone to tell Mike Trout what to do because as we were speaking, the Phillies-Angels game is still going on, but he just made another out. I believe he is hitless in his last 25 at-bats. It's been a lot of at-bats. Yeah, that is a record drought in Mike Trout's career. A trout drought? Yeah, trout drought. So I don't know if this is like the curse of Tommy Pham. Like ever since he called out Mike Trout for being a bad fantasy football commissioner,

he can't buy a hit. But this is trouble. This game is still going on. The only way for the Phillies to right the ship was to play the Angels, apparently, because the Angels have not gotten out of their own way lately either. They've lost 10 in a row, although they are winning

this one late in the game, so it looks like they might snap that streak, but Trout has not snapped his streak. Someone pointed out, I think, in the Discord Discord group that I think it was episode 891, we did one of our Trout hypotheticals, which was just like, what if Mike Trout just starts going hitless forever? Like, how long does it take until he's not still in the lineup? How long does it take until they move him down? I don't think that's what's happening here, but it is notably long. So I hope that this is not another effectively wild thing that will come true. I'm sure it is not. He will be back to raking sometime soon.

I'm sure it will be fine, but 5% of me is concerned he'll never get a hit again. Yeah. All right. So let's finish this intro with today's history minute. Now, after I put out a call for names for this segment, we received many. I don't know whether any of these will be to your liking, but I'll Now we got a bunch more. Shane says that we should call it this episode in baseball history or maybe like this episode number in baseball history. Ethan says historically wild. That was a suggestion we got from a few people. Nathan says waxing episodic. Michael says we should just call it history minute or whatever we're calling it, which is basically what we've been calling it to this point. Zach says wild history. Miff says chronologically wild.

Triumph says throwbacktively wild. JG White says turn back the pitch clock. Mulder Batflip says pitching backwards. Ben and Ted suggested past ball, as in like P-A-S-T ball maybe. Dakota said, how can you not be historic about baseball? Scott suggested historically wild also, or what's in a year, or the way back pen, or a call to the when. David said episodically wild or historically wild. Again, that was a popular one.

Episodes in baseball. Our episodic game. The episodes of summer. The episode game. The historical episode. So I don't know. The historical episode abstract. So I don't know.

I'm not sure that any of these has captured my affection. Historically wild has been the most popular suggestion so far. So I guess that's something. But people can keep writing in. Anyway, the segment is that we take the number of this episode and then we have a little anecdote about baseball history from that year provided by Richard Hershberger, the historian and saber researcher and author of Strike Four, an excellent book from a few years ago about the evolution of baseball. So this anecdote is from 1859, and it is tied to our recent discussion of the hidden ball trick, because October 18, 1859, was the earliest known example of the hidden ball trick. So this was the Stars versus

the Atlantics, both Brooklyn clubs. The Atlantics were a working class club and don't always adhere strictly to gentlemanly niceties. So maybe they're the giants of 1859 and that they were willing to go against the unwritten rules. Maybe they would try the KK play. They'd pull some pitchers mid-plate appearance if anyone ever pulled pitchers those days. They also, not coincidentally, fielded what is arguably the best team anywhere, maybe because they were willing to break conventions. So in the seventh inning, Richard writes, we get a taste of how this worked. And this is from an account in the New York Sunday Mercury, October 23rd, 1859, which I will link to an image of. Flannelly, the first striker, was put out on second base by a dodge on the part of Oliver, the Atlantic second baseman, who made a feint to throw the ball and had it hid under his arm, by which he caught Flannelly, an operation, however, which we do not much admire.

That is the writer editorializing there. And Richard says, this sums up discussions of the hidden ball trick to the present day or up until that point. As a side note, he says, I went looking for other accounts of the play. The closest I found was in the New York Clipper, which gives a detailed account of the first three innings. I found was in the New York Clipper, which gives a detailed account of the first three innings. The reporter then apologizes for not providing the rest, but explains that he has mislaid his scorebook. Such are the trials and tribulations of studying 19th century baseball. That's great. Yeah. But we thank you to Richard for persisting and going on despite those challenges and bringing to us the news of the first account of a hidden ball trick.

And immediately it was running up against some resistance from people who did not think it was appropriate to employ such trickery. Yeah. All right. So we will take a quick break now and we will be back with Louis Paulus, formerly of the Phillies front office, to talk about why he is a former member of that front office, why he decided to leave baseball, and why others could consider leaving their dream jobs too, if they are no longer providing the satisfaction that they thought that they would. case. Yeah, this is the job that ate my brain. I can't take this crazy pace. I've become a mental case. Yeah, this is the job that ate my brain. All right, well, we are joined now by Louis Paulus. Normally, I suppose I would say Louis Paulus of whatever his job was, but I guess part of the point that he is hoping to make on

this segment is that we don't need to define ourselves solely by the work that we do. So maybe that will come up a little later. But for now, I will just say that he is Louis Paulus. He writes a newsletter called The Lose Letter. And one post that he wrote for that, the first, in fact, was called How to Leave Your Dream Job. And that is largely what we'll be talking to him about today. Hello, Louis. Hey, Ben. Hey, Meg. I've never said this unironically before, but I am a longtime listener and a first-time caller, so I'm excited to be here. Happy to have you. And I guess we can only have you at least to talk about this subject

because you did decide to get out of baseball ultimately after years working in the game. But to back up a bit, before you made that decision, you had to make the decision to work in baseball for the first place. And I know that that was a dream of yours for a long time. So how did you get into baseball and how did you initially decide that this is what you wanted to do as a career? Yeah, I honestly don't remember when I decided this is what I wanted to do because it's just what I've always wanted to do. I suppose that when I read Moneyball, summer before eighth grade was when I first learned that there was a place in baseball for someone like me who was better at

math than playing. So I guess maybe that's when the dream crystallized. But that's what I've always wanted to do is to be around baseball and to be working with the numbers in baseball for most of my life. So I don't quite know when that started. As to how I got there, around, I think it was my senior year of high school, I started blogging about baseball for various sites. I've now spanned the internet of whom I've written for. I was writing about baseball, just doing my own commentary. And that led to trying to learn more about the advanced analytics so that I could sound smarter when I was writing about them, which led to my doing my own research, which led to trying to get hired to do analytics for a team. I guess my first baseball job was summer before my junior year of college.

I did some consulting work for a college team, which once I had that on my resume, I was able to get a little more attention from major league teams. So I interned for a summer with the Cleveland Guardians, spent some time interning for the Cincinnati Reds, and then the Philadelphia Phillies. At the end of my internship in Philly, they forgot to let me go. So I ended up sticking around there for seven years in total before I left. And what was your sort of trajectory through the Phillies as an organization? What were your roles there? I was a baseball analytics intern in 2015, my first year there. I was an analyst in the baseball R&D department starting

in 2016 through 2018. And then since then, starting in 2019, I was the lead quantitative analyst for amateur scouting, which meant what it sounded like. I did a lot of work with the amateur scouting space trying to find the best players in the draft. And you kind of constructed your schooling and your studies and your pursuits around getting that job in baseball. And I guess we will talk about whether that's even a good idea or something that people should want to aspire to, because I know we have a lot of listeners who do. But how did you sort of set out to say, well, I know I want to work in baseball now. Here's how I'm going to apply myself to do it. Because some may remember your writing back at Baseball Prospectus. As you said, you wrote for

several sites. But BP, back when I was there, you were a contributor for a while before you were hired by the Phillies. But really, you studied subjects. I guess you devoted yourself almost single-mindedly to, yeah, I want to work in baseball and here's what you have to do to do that. that I do want to push back a little bit on the premise here, which is I am not saying don't work in baseball. That is not remotely what I am setting out to do here. Please don't take that the wrong way. If that's the message anyone's getting from what I've said or written, then I have written poorly. I just want to be a little more nuanced in how we talk about it. But I guess to answer the question you were asking, at the time, I guess most of sabermetrics in baseball was really oriented around sort of econometric thinking, that most of the formulas, most of the research was done along those lines. And a lot of it still is, but it was, I guess, even more so back in those days. And a big part of why I studied economics in college was because it sort of fit in with that sort of research, that sort of work that I wanted to do. I wasn't

interested so much in the economy or in money as much as I was in that way of thinking that lent itself so well to thinking about baseball. So I studied that. I wrote about baseball every time I could, whether it was for public research or writing, whether it were for school papers, including, I'm guessing you were setting me up for talking about my senior thesis that might be my still claim to fame in the industry in which I argued that a dollar put towards for office personnel would get you further than a dollar put towards

a player on the field because of the massive market inefficiency in non-player employees. Which, you know, in retrospect, I think there are some possible anti-labor implications of the way I argued that that I wish I had done more carefully at the time. But it was an honest argument. It was a self-serving argument. But it was an honest one that I thought the team should be investing more on the people who do things besides hit and pitch. I thought the team should be investing more on the people who do things besides hit and pitch. You know, it certainly helped to get my foot in the door if I was able to tell a prospective employer that I thought they should make more money. And so how would you describe, I know that this is sort of a silly question because there's a lot of variability and there's certainly a ton of variability between roles even within the same organization. So your typical day changed, I imagine, quite a bit over the course of your tenure with the Phillies and might have been very different than someone else in the organization, even someone with a skill set

similar to yours. But to help set the context for your decision to eventually leave the industry, what was a working day like for you when you were with Philadelphia? What was a working day like for you when you were with Philadelphia? So this is the one question that anyone I've ever talked to for personal growth, for an interview, whatever, always asks. And I feel like I've never had a good answer for it because there was no real typical day in baseball. Yeah. When you're working in baseball, again, depending on your specific role, but generally speaking,

you are looking ahead to some event on the baseball calendar, whether it's opening day, whether it's the draft, whether it's the trade deadline, whether it's the post-season, whether it's the start of free agency, whether it's spring training the next year, or some other smaller, more nuanced things in there too. What you're doing depends on the time of year, and I didn't even mention just in season versus out of season, that's another quite big variable too. But depending on what your role is, depending on what your main focus is, some combination of, I'd say, larger scale projects and research when it's not your busiest season for whatever your main focus is, and then smaller scale analyses and question answering and meetings closer to whatever your main decision point is in the calendar. Is that a helpful yet vague enough

answer to your question there? It definitely is. I think that one of the things that I am struck by in your pieces, and it is relatable to me as someone who works in baseball media, although I imagine that the pressures are significantly greater for people who actually work on the team side, is that despite that variability, one constant through line, whether it's the time of year or the role is that that work can be all consuming, right? And so talk a little bit about the experience of finally getting a job that realizes your greatest passion and how that can take over. Yeah. So I think the thing that I experienced that from other people I've talked to throughout the industry and people who want to get in the

industry I don't think is unique is that you don't even think of it as a ton of work because it's what you've always wanted to do when you're trying to get into sports and specifically baseball. If I hadn't been working in baseball, I would have been thinking about baseball. If I had had a normal job and gone home at the end of the day, I would have been watching baseball. So I think when you have that real passion for it, when it's at your most passionate point, I don't know if it even feels like work. It just feels like you are applying your existing all-encompassing passion to a profession. It's honestly a lot of fun when it's what you really want to do. There's nothing better than going to work in the morning, going to a baseball stadium when that's what you've always wanted to do,

hanging out at a baseball stadium, thinking about baseball, talking about baseball, learning about baseball, and then watching baseball. You know, again, I didn't mean for my, I guess, writing or attitudes to come off negative because it was really a lot of fun for a long time. It was a lot of fun for a long time. But the thing that really wore on me was that eventually, there's only so long that, in my experience, that can be all you do and all you think about and all you talk about and all your life is oriented around. And the thing about baseball, and I would guess other sports too, I haven't worked in other sports, is that it's really hard to half-ass that passion, I guess for lack of a better way of describing that.

That if you really care about your job, if better way of describing that, that if you really care about your job, if you really care about the game, if you really care about winning, it's hard to step away and decide I'm not going to care about winning tonight or I'm not going to be thinking about this over the weekend. Because when your passion is winning and doing your best and it's a zero-sum game where if you're not grinding, some other team might be, it's really hard to turn off that mindset. Because if you're a competitive enough person to give everything to your job to want to win in the office 12 hours a day, six or seven days a week. It's something that seems to arise almost organically just because there is that culture, that expectation, that ethos. You have games going on late at night, and so you feel like you kind of

have to be plugged in and around. And then maybe there are people who are getting out of those games and have to ask questions or need some information. And so you feel an obligation to be available. So is it just kind of a mission creep that happens there where you think, well, I'm only obligated to be here at certain times maybe, but there is, I don't know whether it's an inadvertent peer pressure or someone else sets an example of just being the first in and the last out and you feel some pressure to match that. How does it happen exactly? I think that's right. I think you frankly put that better than I did.

So I wish I had stolen your words there. I think that there was a time that there was an expectation of eyewash, the baseball term of, you know, you get there, you try to be the first one there, the last one to leave, you're working all the time. I can't speak to every organization, but I think the industry at large from what I've heard is moving away from that and trying to encourage more work-life balance and lack of burnout and all that. So I think that for the most part, depending on your job and the time of year, I wasn't going to clock out at five o'clock the night before the draft when that was my main focus. But generally speaking, it is more self-imposed or it's not a hard expectation. I think that the game really is trying to be more aware of you do better work if you take time off and if you take vacations and if you can unplug and you don't go to every game and you have a life

and you have a support system outside your job. But yeah, it's hard to, if you really care about your job in an industry where it is so competitive and, you know, again, it's a zero sum game, it's hard to reconcile the idea of, you know, we got to do the best we can to win with, I'm going to close my laptop and go out to dinner tonight. When you first got in the door, did you feel like, okay, I'm living the dream. This is Nirvana. I did it. You know, I'm what, still in your early 20s at that point and you made it. Or did that dream then get replaced by, well, my next dream is to be a department head or my ultimate dream is to be a GM.

I mean, was there always some other dream or at first, before maybe this burnout or whatever we call it set in? Was it just Yep, this is what I wanted to do. And it's as great as I thought it would be. Yeah, I think honestly, you know, if you had told me when I first got my first job in baseball, that I was going to be at that level the rest of my life, I would have still been over the moon. Just the idea of being a baseball doing baseball work of contributing in some small way to some baseball decisions. It was really cool. It was all I wanted to do. I didn't mind having that be my every waking thought and work because it was what I cared most about in the world. I was thrilled about it. In terms of later career aspirations, I think that honestly, the more I worked in baseball, the less I was interested in trying to be a GM or some leadership role.

I think that in the public eye, sometimes the GM is the top of the pyramid. They make all the decisions. They have the fun job of just making trades all day. And when you get inside a team, you realize how much other work goes on beneath that, whether it's to support the big decisions that the top level people make, whether it's to do some smaller scale research that ends up feeding into other things, whether it's taking care of other pieces of running a baseball team that the public just doesn't even think about, let alone hear about. There's a lot of really cool stuff going on at every level of an organization. And I think that the more time I spent in it,

the more I was interested in just the work rather than I want to be at this level in five years. So you get this dream job and you're working all the time, but you're doing the thing you love. Talk about the internal process of realizing that something was a miss. And how did you end up differentiating that from just the sort of typical fatigue that can occur in any job when you're going through a busy season, right? Like I imagine that, you know, right after tax season is done, accountants aren't wild about being accountants, right? But then they get some distance from their busiest time of year, and they're probably more at peace with being an accountant again, because they're not working quite as much as

they were when they were, you know, making sure that the IRS wasn't going to come after their clients. So when did you start to realize this is different than just the typical fatigue that might follow a particularly busy period in the baseball calendar? That's a good question. I think the honest answer to that would be right around the time of the last draft last summer, which again, as you said, it's always a busy time. It's always a stressful time. But for the several years I've been involved in the draft, despite the stress, despite the exhaustion, it was always a really fun thing that I looked forward to. Like I thought of it as a cool challenge that I was going to be exhausted afterwards and maybe don't bother me for a couple of days while I nap after the draft is over. But it was something that I always eventually was energized by as tiring as it was. And I don't know if I even would have been able to put good words to this

at the time because this is a hard realization to come to. And I don't think I even really reflected on how I was feeling until it was past the point of where I was burnt out the industry. But I didn't have that same feeling of fun amidst the stress that I don't know what it was, but I certainly don't want to come across as bitter or holding a grudge or I have no complaints at all about any of the people I worked with whom I really enjoyed working with and respect and frankly miss. But I just, I wasn't enjoying it as much amidst the other stuff that was going on. And I sort of allude to this in the article, but that was sort of the first clue that something wasn't quite right in how I going on. And I sort of allude to this in the article, but that was sort

of the first clue that something wasn't quite right in how I was feeling. And then it took a few more months before I was able to really unpack that and articulate that in a way that I could more easily understand. I don't know if you kept track of your hours closely up to that point, but do you have any idea roughly how many hours a week you were working? I don't know exactly. And I think, you know, it wouldn't really be fair to say what I was working towards the draft because, again, that was the big event I was working towards most. In general, yeah, on average. Yeah, it was probably, you know, in terms of formal work, it probably wasn't too much

off of 40 hours a week. But again, it was the distinction between when does work start and stop and where does the rest of life stop that if i was you know at the stadium watching a game but still you know wearing khakis and not holding a beer that was technically fun time if i was at the stadium enjoying myself but it didn't feel like fully not work i was still at my office i still felt like i had to you know have some modicum of professionalism while I was there. Yeah. If I was watching a game at home, even if I would be eating dinner on the couch, if a team were on the road or something, and that was not working technically, but it was still feeling like work to some degree when I was doing it. And honestly, that was a big thing for me.

I was realizing that watching games had started to feel like work, even though they were not mandatory most of the time. It was a thing I did for fun, but it was sort of unpacking the logical progression in my mind to hear that I'm working in baseball because I love baseball, therefore I should watch all the games because I love watching the games. And then when I started to realize that I wasn't excited to be watching a game every single day, that's when I started to think, maybe I'm not enjoying this as much as I used to. Yeah, I experienced that a little bit myself when I was an intern for the Yankees. I wasn't there nearly as long as you were working in baseball, but I felt a little bit of that loss of childhood

feelings for that team or for the sport. I mean, they were replaced by different feelings, also strong. And now having been out of working for a team for many, many, many years, I have very strong attachments to the game that are just a little bit different from what they were before. And we get that question a lot, I think, from people who are just fans and have always been fans and haven't worked in the industry and question why even media members often seem to lose their fandom. So how would you describe that? Is it just seeing how the sausage is made?

Is it just when you're getting a paycheck, it's just not the same sort of innocent enjoyment? It's, you know, you would think that, well, I'm working for a team, like I'd be more invested than ever. And I guess you are in a way, but it's just a different way. Yeah. I think I would agree more with the second part of what you're saying there that I certainly was still a fan. I still am a fan, you know, very much of, you know, I like to say or said a couple of times that, you know, when you get your first paycheck, that's when you

really become a fan of the team because, you know, the selfless way to describe it is that i can't be working my best towards a team if i'm not fully rooting for them so i gotta be full in i think the more selfish way to say it is that you know i wanted to win so therefore i wanted to root for whatever team i was working for so i could be whole hog in there you know i guess one i don't know if this is quite describing the feeling but uh i think the best example of this was the second to last game of the season last year, the Phillies played at home, Rangers-Juarez through a Maddox. And I have been to probably conservatively 500 major league games in my life, which is, you know, I told myself as a kid that that'd be life someday. I'd be over the moon about that.

You know, I've had a great fortune to watch a lot of really good baseball. And I had never seen a Maddox before in all those years. And it was exciting. It was really, really cool to see that feat. And my wife turned to me as we were walking out of the game. She said, like, I haven't seen you have that much fun in a game in years. I had been caught up in the moment of what a really cool accomplishment it was to see a Maddox in person.

And that sort of helped me reflect on in my head, going to baseball games is the most fun thing I'll possibly be doing. So if I'm not experiencing that same level of fun anymore, maybe something has changed in what I want and who I am. And as you started to be able to articulate to yourself that a change might be warranted so that you could be happier in your life. What were the conversations like that you had with other colleagues and industry contacts to the extent you had them? Because I know that you remarked both in the essay on leaving your job and then the follow-up to that of how surprised you were that this was not an uncommon experience, even if the sort of degree

to which it influenced people to leave or stay might vary across different folks in the industry. Yeah, I guess I was really surprised, as you sort of said, by how many people just got it. You know, whether people had, you know, entertained such thoughts before on their own and kept it to themselves. And I mentioned, I was surprised by some of the people who I thought were, you know, totally pot committed baseball their entire life. And they told me when I started talking to them that they had similar thoughts, you know, or even people who were totally happy with their jobs.

You know, they heard other people talk about feeling burnt out or feeling like their interests had changed, but weren't bothered by it themselves. They still got it and they were still supportive. And I think, and I'm sure I've said this many times in the essay in so many words, but this game is not very good at talking about when you're not fully invested in it. And again, it goes back to the idea of, you know, we're all trying to win.

We all care really a lot about winning. It's a zero-sum game. If you're not fully invested, then you're not going to be doing your job as well. So I think that makes it harder to talk about feelings of, is my heart still in it or not? And I was really relieved, frankly, to find out that I wasn't alone in being someone who had spent their whole life thinking baseball is all I wanted to do, it's all I wanted to be, and then finding out that that didn't have to be the case forever. I felt really lonely when I felt

like the people who had similar levels of passion that I had wouldn't have been experiencing the same thing. And it was, you know, I was sad that other people have gone through this as well, but it was a relief to know that I wasn't alone. And the reason that I published this essay in the first place, instead of just writing it and feeling catharsis from having written it and, you know, putting it on Google Doc that nobody ever saw again, was that I was hoping that someone out there, whether it was in baseball or in sports, or a lot of people in other industries resonated with them too, would read it and realize that there's no shame in it, that it's okay to change what you love the most and what you're most passionate about. And there doesn't have to be a reason for it. There doesn't have to be a, you know, not everyone has to make a whole press release

self-indulgent diatribe about why they changed their mind about something. But it's okay. And it's a part of life. And it doesn't change who you are if you change what you do. Anyone in your life who knows you well enough to be surprised by a change of passion should care enough about you as a person that they'll understand. Yeah, it seems like, I mean, I would imagine that there'd maybe be a bit of apprehension about bringing this up to your colleagues, let's say, before you're sure that you want to make a change, just voicing doubts. You might wonder, well, how will that affect my career prospects here if I decide that I do want to stay? But beyond that, it sounds like there was maybe a bit of guilt almost about what your younger self might have thought about you having these doubts or people who helped you get to that point,

right? Because they knew that you had this dream and helped you accomplish it. And then you decided that it wasn't your dream anymore, that maybe you had different dreams. So I guess you had to overcome both the external and also the internal, which maybe that was even stronger, it seems like to me from reading your essay. Yeah. And I guess I can spoil the central metaphor here if anyone isn't actually going to read the essay. This sounds like a ridiculous framing of it, but it is legitimately honestly what I was thinking about when I decided to leave baseball, which was the only thing in life that I have loved about the same degree as baseball is macaroni and cheese. When I was a kid, I loved macaroni and cheese. I still love macaroni and cheese. Everyone loves macaroni and cheese. But it was the preference I

had all the time. It was my favorite food. Whenever it was available, I would eat mac and cheese. And it was a totally foreign concept to me that if my favorite thing were available to me, I would not get it if it were available to me. And I had these recurring crises when my family would go to have lunch at this passable Jewish deli. Cleveland was not the best place for Jewish delis growing up. But at the time, it was one of the best places that we had around. And they had a really good corned beef sandwich and a really bad macaroni and cheese they would have as a special menu once or twice a week. And every time they would have the macaroni and cheese special, I would order the macaroni and cheese special, even though it was terrible. And I would sit there eating this really dry, flavorless, bland macaroni and wishing I had ordered a corn

beef sandwich. But how could I have ordered a corn beef sandwich when macaroni and cheese was available? Because I was a macaroni and cheese kid. That's what I was supposed to have. And I was, you know, in retrospect, ridiculous, of course. It's okay to order something else besides mac and cheese all the time. Probably would have been better from a nutritional standpoint to not order mac and running cheese every chance I had. But it didn't occur to me that, you know, first of all, no one would care. You know, no one was paying attention, monitoring what I was eating to make sure I was eating in a way that was consistent with my established preferences. But also that it was just okay, that it could be my favorite thing, but also not what I wanted that day or not what i was in the mood for at the time or just that the corned beef's better at this

place than the mac and cheese is and there's a range of quality among the different foods not just between them but uh i realized that it wasn't saying i didn't love baseball i still do love baseball i love it in a different way than i did you know a year ago or 10 years ago or when i was a little kid and it had never occurred to me really to put it this concretely that I could love baseball, but also decide it was not what I wanted to do every minute of every day. That it was okay to love it as a fan or love it as an occasional writer or just someone who watches on TV and follows on Twitter. There are different ways to love something just And just because, you know, even if it is still the greatest thing I love in my life, besides my dog and my wife, if they're listening to this,

it didn't mean I have to have the rest of my life revolve around it. Yeah. So how many months roughly elapsed between these doubts first surfacing and you ultimately deciding to make a change and what led you to take that plunge? Yeah, again, it's, I guess it was about six months between the first, the first time I said to someone that I wasn't sure I wanted to be in baseball anymore. And it was, you know, varying degrees of going back and forth on how serious I was about that. And, you know, what my feelings were in the moment or the day of the week, it's hard to pinpoint when it actually started, because again, I didn't really recognize it for a while. It was hard to even put words to it to acknowledge it both because I wasn't

quite sure what I was feeling and also that it was just hard to admit it to myself once I started to feel it. But it was probably a span of a few months depending on how you actually count that. And what was the final nail in the coffin of your baseball career, at least the first go around? is just trying to, assuming I was taking the job to stay at the Phillies, to stay in baseball, and just keeping that in my head and having that be how I operated. And then after work one day, I was just sitting by myself and feeling this just, I didn't know how to articulate the, I still know how to articulate it, I guess, if I come out of work for it, but feeling something wasn't right. And that's honestly what occurred to me, this long dormant memory of sitting at Jack's Deli, sadly eating a plate of bad mac and cheese. But I remember the

feeling of loving something so much in theory that I wasn't thinking about whether it was the right thing for me in practice. And again, I want to be careful with this analogy because that I think implies a level of bitterness or unhappiness with my old job that I do not mean to convey at all here. But the basic premise of it was okay to decide that I wanted something different, that it was okay to decide that it was something that maybe wasn't my favorite thing in the world, but sounded better than what I was doing at that point. So that's what that was like. completely or maybe dramatically different conditions, like what could be done to remedy sort of the working reality of people in baseball so that we don't lose people to the sensation of burnout. So there's like that piece of it. But then there's also the reality that I think you

very deftly pointed out in your follow-up that this is not a feeling that is unique to baseball. There might be some aspects of baseball as a workplace that heighten the experience of burnout, but all kinds of people experience this in their jobs, whether they're teachers or the accountants I mentioned, or art restorers, it sounds like. Is this something where we want to try to change the experience of working in baseball? Or is the broader takeaway here simply that it is useful for people to be able to prefer exit without feeling like they have failed in some way? Yeah, it's a great question. It's one that I have been thinking about a lot and wish I had a better answer for after all this time. I think the core problem,

as we sort of talked about earlier, is it's not so much about what the demands of the job are in terms of what people expect from you or what the hours you're supposed to work are, as much as it is just, it's really hard, at least for me, maybe other people don't have this problem, but it's really hard to do a job like this where you are by nature competitive, hopefully not with your coworkers, but with the rest of the league with the idea of trying to win and feeling like you're not giving it your all. And, you know, I think that teams are trying to be better about encouraging work-life balance and making it clear you're not expected to beat every home game or, you know, I think that

different teams, different policies about working remotely, but trying to encourage that more, at least as an option for people to have more of a life outside their job. But it's really hard, I think, to feel like you're doing a good job if you're not giving it every single thing you have towards trying to win. And again, maybe not everyone struggles with this. I feel confident saying that I'm not the only one. Maybe I just had a more acute feeling of it than other people do. I think that every job could be better about finding ways to keep their employees happy. I can't speak to what every person in the league is thinking about their working conditions. But I think the bigger takeaway is just that if you're going to be working in baseball, I would say you should either, for sure, you should go into it knowing it's okay to not have that be your

forever. If it is, that's great. And I, you know, it's wonderful. I don't know how to say that about something sarcastic, but it's legitimate. If it's, it makes you happy, that makes you happy. And that's great, but it's okay to decide that it doesn't make you happy at some point, if it doesn't make you happy anymore. And I think you should be aware going in of, you know, that it's going to be different when you're working for a team and your goal is to win. And that goal is largely in conflict with having a life just by nature of the job. So if you are okay with that taking over your life, then by all means do it. I would advise you to just be aware and make sure you're asking yourself if you're really happy at regular intervals once you do.

Or if you can find a way to do your job well without that pressure putting on yourself, I'd be very impressed. I think there are people who can do that. Evidently, I'm not one of them. But I think you should be aware of that phenomenon that people have in, I think, all of sports. And again, seems like other industries too, about how to divide your attention between your job and everything that's not your job. Again, I don't want the takeaway here to be working in baseball is bad or you shouldn't do it. That's not remotely what I'm trying to say with this. But just be aware that it's not as simple as leaving your work at work and abandoning the idea that you should be trying to win with every moment of your life.

and abandoning the idea that you should be trying to win with every moment of your life. Yeah, one reason maybe why your essay resonated and why I wanted to talk to you is that it seems like a lot of the things you're talking about are, if not universal, pretty pervasive these days. There's a lot more attention paid to working conditions, as you alluded to earlier. And there's a lot of talk about four-day work weeks and unionization. And I cover video games part of the time and the culture of crunch as it's called there. There's a lot of attention being paid to that now and workers advocating for better conditions. But there is also, I think, a trend toward a lot of people making the decision you made, right? The so-called great resignation. So I wondered whether you think

that the pandemic prompted you or spurred you in this direction or everything that has gone on over the past few years. I know you got a taste of working from home during the pandemic, and maybe that was eye-opening to a degree. So do you think you would have gotten to this point anyway, or would it have taken longer, or was it somewhat tied to what was going on in the world? That's a great point and one that I've had a couple friends mention earlier and I wish I had thought of earlier myself because I think there's a really, really strong parallel between the pressure of – or I guess the difficulty of getting a job in sports where there are so many fewer jobs available than there are people who want to work in sports. There are so many fewer jobs available than there are people who want to work in sports. And my generation's approach to getting a job, I graduated from college in 2014. I don't know how old you guys are, how old your listeners are. But for most of my life, I guess really my entire professional life, having a job was not a sure thing when you graduated from college, let alone one that you can move to a new city by yourself and support yourself doing that. I think my generation really has an attitude that you're lucky to have a job and be able to support yourself, just like you are lucky to get a job at all within sports.

It's hard to do. And if you can do it, then that itself feels like a miracle. And when the whole Great Risk Nation trend started about a year ago of being more of an employee's market than an employer's market, I don't think that's why I decided to change jobs. But I think that it's totally fair to say that hearing for the first time in my life in general that this was a good time to be looking for a job and that it was a good time for someone who was looking to change jobs to try and find something new, I think that definitely played a part in why I started looking in the first place. I just never heard that messaging before, you know, within sports for sure. But even in general, just in the economy, that's, that's not what the world that my generation has lived in. Do you think that the fortunes of the team that you're working for have any bearing on

feelings of burnout? I could imagine it going either way, right? Where if the team is super successful, well, maybe that might incentivize you to keep coming back. On the other hand, it might lead you to continue working even harder. And then you might lead to doubling down on that burnout. So were the fortunes of the Phillies at all tied to your decision or your emotions, do you think? Or would you have felt this regardless of whether the Phillies were winning the World Series every year? I unfortunately don't have the kind of factual. It'd be nice to win the World Series and find out there's an alternate reality where I do that, then I could come back on and let you know.

I'm sure that there's some bearing on that. But I think as you said, it's all about the pressure of working too. And even if there are different rewards you get from you said, it's all about the pressure of working too and even if there are different rewards you get from doing so, it's not just if you win the World Series, you're having fun. If you don't, you're not. I also, I try not to talk about specifics here of how many teams that I have worked for or know about, but

I think the Phillies are known for being one of the better teams to work for in terms of workplace culture and how that is. So, you know, would I have rather worked for a team that had won the World Series but was not as fun of a place to work? I don't know. Again, if you want to give me a World Series ring, send it back in time. I'd be happy to find out. But I'm sure that, you know, how your team is doing has an impact on how you feel, but I think it's a lot more than that. Yeah, I think it's important for us all to acknowledge that like things can be going

very well. And you can, in general, like what you do very much and even, you know, like what you do and have some feeling of tiredness or exhaustion or sort of temporary burnout that resolves, but that just because it's a dream job doesn't mean it's not still a job. I mean, I know that people have sometimes taken umbrage with me expressing that I get tired in October. Like, how dare you? And I'm like, I don't know, man, I'm just tired.

I love my job very much and it's great, but I've just, you know, I just worked like 31 days in a row. So I'm a little tired, that's all. It's like 31 days in a row. So I'm a little tired. That's all. It's like not a, it doesn't need to be a whole thing. You know, it doesn't need to be an indictment on Fangraphs. It's just, you know, the reality of a busy season.

So I think that there's a lot of value in us being able to have candid conversations about the moments when even jobs that we like very much and that we do find fulfilling and meaningful are at odds with the reality of being a person who has interests and needs beyond just what they're doing at work. And I don't know, it can be hard to have that conversation, even I think in a moment like this when we are sort of in a broader reckoning with what it means to work and where we want to and what conditions should be when we are. So I appreciated your writing very much because I think it's an important conversation for us to keep having. CB Thank you. I hope that, you know, I've heard

that people appreciate just knowing that other people feel this way. I don't mean to self-aggrandize myself here. But if that's the outcome of this, that more people know that they're not alone and they either go into it with open eyes or they find other ways to work with it before they reach the point of burnout, then in baseball for decades, and it is their whole career, their whole lives. Do you have any sense of how they manage? Is it that they don't feel the same level of burnout? Is it that they have just become so accustomed to it that they don't identify it as a problem? Have they found ways to minimize that? How do they do it? That's a great question. I think if I knew the answer to that, then I would have done it. Yeah. Yeah. I do think, and part of what I mentioned in the essay is I think that a lot of the people

who appear to be that way also, again, have at least humored these thoughts before and obviously have not indulged them the way I did. But that was a part of the thing that I was relieved and saddened, but selfishly comforted to hear that even people who loved it and had that long attachment to it often felt that way too. I think that one sort of theory I've had, especially for, you know, going back the last few years when having played baseball was a large part of how you got into working in baseball in the first place that you know most scouts and coaches and you know even executives were former high-level players i think that just to get to professional baseball even get to the minor leagues and have a career there takes so much dedication and work and how many years of baseball is your entire life

from t-ball to the day you finally hang it up that if you still love baseball at that point you must have found some way to cope with the burnout and have it be your life maybe you still get energized from it maybe you uh you know waver in it but you find some other way to deal with it there's probably some uh you know survivor bias in who is still interested in working in baseball after all that time that they must have some sort of coping mechanism to stick with it. I think that, you know, not to bash the nerds who are coming into the game like me, but I think there is sort of a different culture of you can be working in baseball without having already proven your dedication to it over years and years of grinding in the minor leagues or in college or in high school or travel ball, whatever it is.

So even if you love it and even if you've been thinking about it for years, and I think that when I was coming into the game, I had certainly proven that I had a strong passion for it, but it hadn't been my entire life for decades the way it was for some people who came into the game to work after they've already played it. So I wonder if that's part of it, but I would say you should have some other older people on who've been doing it for longer. Ask them yourself. Were you having most of your misgivings before you made your decision and then it's been smooth sailing since then? Or have you had some second thoughts or what are the kinds of things that you're able to that it's kind of a cool job or at least a lot of people would think it's cool.

Other people wouldn't care at all because it's not interesting to them. But even if you're an intern, like if you're working for a baseball team, it's a good conversation starter. It's a good conversation starter. That can be a double-edged sword because sometimes you don't necessarily want to start that conversation or don't want to talk about baseball 24-7. And when you tell someone I work for a baseball team, well, that's just inevitable that that's where that's going to go. So there was an initial feeling of like, I'm walking away from this thing that other people would think is cool. Does that mean that I should not want to walk away from this? So there was that, even though I didn't miss the work so much and in fact was happy to be doing what I was doing after that, there was almost a feeling like, huh, I did that. I left. I mean, in my case, it was just my time ended there. I didn't choose to leave necessarily, but I also didn't choose to pursue something

similar like that again in the future. So clearly what I've been doing since then I've found more rewarding, I think, than I found that or that I think I would have found continuing to try to pursue something in that field. Sure. So I guess, first of all, to be honest, I do miss the status of it. Getting to say I work in baseball, it's a cool thing to say. It's a cool thing to do. I think I wrote this in one of my essays that, you know, I used to get up in the morning and think I am doing today what I've wanted to do my entire life. And that's a really cool thing to be able to say to yourself and recognize about yourself. So I do miss that. You know, I hope I'm not coming across as negative that I'm not, you know, closing the door whenever getting back into work in baseball if the right opportunity presents itself. And if

anyone ever wants to hire me again, if I haven't burned too many bridges by talking about this, you know, depending on where I am in life and what the position might be. But, you know, I had a friend tell me that the jump was the hardest part. That once you decide to leave and you, you know, tell the first person that you're doing it, you accept to yourself that you're, you know, giving up a dream that you had, at least, or at least putting it on hold. Everything else is easier. up a dream that you had, at least, or at least putting it on hold, everything else is easier. So I certainly do miss, you know, feeling like I'm in baseball, having a spot at the stadium, getting to just, you know, waltz in and be at the baseball field. It's a really cool thing to be able to do. And I, I'd be lying if I told you I didn't miss that, but I do really enjoy having more of a life outside of work that, you know, I, I like my new job a lot. I, I like my coworkers, like the culture, I like all that stuff.

But I don't carry it with me throughout the rest of my day the way I did in baseball, that I close my laptop at the end of the day and then I go make dinner or I go have a beer. Or, you know, at the weekend I close my computer and I sometimes I'll have ideas. Unless we invite you onto a podcast and then you have to open it up again. Yeah, but, I mean, that's a good example though, is I'm, I'd probably be at a game right now if I were still working in baseball and I certainly would be less free to talk to you even if I weren't. So yeah, just having more time to do things that, you know, I have more nights to just

have dinner with my wife, which is an incredibly novel concept to be able to do. You know, it's, it's a little bit different than, I'm at the game, you know, I'll get your ticket if you want to come. We've been traveling more. We've been, I've been writing more, obviously. You mentioned my sub stack there. So I certainly miss baseball. The little involvement I've still had is, you know, I used to still have a little foot

in the door, but I'm waiting for the night when I wake up in a cold sweat and I can't believe I threw this away and And maybe that will still come. But the fact that it hasn't yet, I think maybe says something about making the right decision here. Yeah. Well, we've enjoyed talking to you and reading you and the two posts that we've been highlighting here called How to Leave Your Dream Job and then the follow up How to Leave Our Dream Jobs. We will link to both of those on the show page, as well as Louie's newsletter, thelouisletter.substack.com. It's not just about baseball or leaving baseball. It is about a broad range of subjects. And you can also find him on Twitter at Lou's on First. And who knows,

maybe we will see you return to baseball writing elsewhere someday. It would be nice to have you back. But good to have you back in the public sphere one way or another so that you can come on podcasts and talk about your life. So this was a pleasure and we wish you well with your new life. Thank you so much. All right. In case anyone was wondering, and I'm saying this with Louis's permission, he is still doing a little bit of consulting for two teams. So he still has a toe dipped in the water. He's just not immersed anymore. His day job is on the data science team with Match, as in Match.com, the online dating service. I believe he himself is an online dating success story, as am I, though it was OKCupid in my case. And Louis is not the only baseball front office person who has gone through this sort of

transition. Back in October 2020, R.G. Anderson, friend of the show, wrote a piece for CBS Sports headlined, Why MLB Has a Brain Drain Problem in Front Offices and How the COVID-19 Pandemic Accelerated It. And in that piece, he lists a lot of reasons why some baseball front office people were deciding to move on to more leisurely or lucrative or secure or all of the above industries. I will link to that on the show page. By the way, I did confirm with a member of the Giants organization that Jastrzemski was trying to do an intentional deke there. The person I asked did not know where he got the idea, but they said, I think every outfielder is sort of waiting for the day they can try it. So that was his day.

I hope he has another. At the end of the intro segment, you heard me say that it looked like the Angels were going to snap their 10-game losing streak. Well, that did not happen. The Phillies came back to beat them on a walk-off. So the Angels have now lost 11 in a row. They've gotten the Phillies out of their slump, but the Phillies have extended the Angels. So the Angels are now, I believe, a half a game out of the third wildcard spot in the

American League. Their playoff odds are down to 36%. Mike Trout is 0 for his last 26. Not looking great out there. They have not been a very fun team lately. Another late-breaking suggestion for our History Minute segment is Retroactively Wild. That's from Rick. Darren suggested Past Blast, and Benji suggests two acronyms, the first being BABIP, Baseball Anniversaries brought by iterations of podcasts, and tennis, as in the catcher, today's episode number as a chronological event.

I think we've probably gotten enough submissions now. We can pick from one of the ones we have. We'll figure something out. And one other follow-up. On our last episode of last week, we answered a listener email about whether the batter who gets hit on a full count by a pitch, so gets hit by the pitch but doesn't really get anything for it because it would have been a ball and a walk anyway, whether that batter should get something or whether the pitcher should

be penalized somehow. Well, a number of people wrote in in response to our discussion of that subject because the idea that had been proposed was giving the batter two bases, which we agreed was too much. However, Rick and Jscape2000 and Josh and Francesca all wrote in to suggest, well, maybe the next batter should get a ball or two in their favor. Maybe the count should start out 1-0 or 2-0. Listener Ben specified that the following batter would start their plate appearance with the number of balls that the previous batter had earned. So those are kind of the equivalent of giving half a base, as Meg had said. We can't do that, but maybe this is the closest thing. But I don't know about this giving

free balls as credit. Don't love that idea. Don't necessarily think we need to do anything. But if you give a free ball to the next batter, you're not really directly compensating the guy who got hit on the full count. That's still a significant advantage to the next batter, you're not really directly compensating the guy who got hit on the full count. That's still a significant advantage to the next batter. One suggestion I like more also came from Francesca, who says, what if the pitcher was not allowed to throw over to first base while the runner who was hit was on? The catcher could still throw to either first or second, and the pitcher could throw to second, so it wouldn't completely award the runner a free steal of second base, but they would be allowed a decently large lead. It's possible that even that much of an allowed

lead would effectively give the batter a far too easy stolen base, though. I like that a little more, just because it gives a leg up to the guy who got hit. Better than the rollover ball, I think. And another idea from Christian was, should a batter hit by a pitch in a three-ball count be awarded with a walk instead of a hit-by-pitch? It doesn't change the game state at all, so maybe it's too minimal and irrelevant a change to even bother implementing, but I think it'd be nice for a batter to be credited with a walk, generally considered more of a skillful activity than drawing a hit by pitch, when they did in fact get four balls in the plate appearance despite the last one hitting them. Doesn't even change more common stats like OBP, so maybe nobody cares, but I imagine walk percentage is used in arbitration and contract negotiation, and every little bit helps. What do you think?

Well, OBP can be used in those things too, so the hit-by-pitch helps there. And there is skill to drawing hit-by-pitches, even if that's not as widely recognized. It wasn't always widely recognized that drawing walks was necessarily a skill either. So I say no. If you got hit by a pitch, then you get a hit by pitch. The bruise doesn't go away if you call it a walk instead of a hit by pitch. And I think we should recognize your pain and

suffering, even if it's only in the stat column. Rick says maybe the pitcher should just owe the batter dinner after they're both retired. I like that. I had joked about a pizza party, but a dinner would be good. That would enable them to bond and connect, and the old wounds would heal, not just the physical wounds, but the psychological ones too. All right, well, that will do it for today. We recorded early this week

because both Meg and I are traveling in the first half of the week. So we wanted to get this episode out to you, and then we probably will not record Monday to Wednesday because we will both be out and about, but we'll be back with our usual two more episodes later in the week. Just don't be sad if you're refreshing your feeds and not seeing anything in the next couple days.

In the meantime, you can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad-free, and get themselves access to some perks. Quinn Sanchez, Justin Becknell, Jacob Longo, Benny, and Steve Discala. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group, Discordantly Wild, as well as a bonus pod every month. So if you're missing us for the next day or two, you could listen to our archive of bonus episodes for Patreon supporters. You also get access to a

couple of playoff live streams later in the season and a 10% discount on shirts. As noted last week, we have some new ones available for you. Check the merch link on the show page or in your podcast app description. 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. Keep your comments and questions for me and Meg coming via email at podcast at vangrass.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWPod.

You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back later this week. Talk to you then. I'll see you next time.