Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 606: The Baseball-to-Cricket Conversion

Episode Date: January 30, 2015

Ben and Sam talk to international baseball and cricket coach Julien Fountain about his efforts to turn marginalized minor leaguers into well-compensated cricketers.

But that's another story that won't be going round I'll call nine-nines, call sacks, don't forget I'll call nine-nines, that will put me in it But that's another story in the finish Good morning and welcome to episode 606 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus presented by The Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I am Ben Lindberg of Grantland, joined as always by Sam Miller of Baseball Prospectus. And today we're talking to a guest.

A couple of weeks ago, we spoke to Garrett Brocious, former minor league pitcher who is leading a class action lawsuit trying to get minor leaguers higher pay. And the person we're talking to today sort of also has a solution to help minor leaguers make more money. But it involves not baseball, but cricket. He is Julian Fountain. He is an international baseball and cricket coach, a former Olympic baseball player, and he has started a program called Switch Hit 20 that is dedicated to turning baseball players into cricketers. And we're going to talk to him a bit about that today. Hey, Julian.

Hi. Thanks for having me on the show. Yeah, no problem. Cricket comes up now and again on this podcast and it's never a bad thing. So I want to ask you a bit about your own introduction to baseball because you were a baseball player kind of in an orthodox career or different from the ones we usually talk about. So tell us how you got into baseball and what your baseball experience was. into baseball and what your baseball experience was. Okay, pretty simple really.

I started life as a cricketer. I was playing for a county which is one of the professional teams in the UK. I was part of their youth program. So I was on the track towards becoming a professional cricketer and I sort of hit the 16, 17 age mark and I wasn't getting the playing time that I felt I deserved. Looking back now, maybe I was a crazy kid, a bigger ego than perhaps I should have had. But sort of when I was 17, 18, I just basically, I saw a bit of baseball on the TV. I remember clearly watching the Twins Cardinal World Series.

And I watched it and I became completely hooked because, I mean, obviously watching sport live from the U. US, there's a time difference. So I found I was staying up until the early hours of the morning absolutely hooked. And it sort of grew from there. I thought, I reckon I can play that game. So I pretty quickly thought, well, no, cricket's not for me. I'll give baseball a crack. And I started playing a little bit of baseball in the UK.

Before I knew it, I'd been picked up by the national team, the national under-19 baseball team. Very quickly after that, I graduated to the national team. What made you think that you could play that game? I think probably because of the way I played my cricket. As a cricketer, I was fairly aggressive with bat and with ball. I was a really good fielder, so I was never shy of you know hard hit balls diving getting dirty throwing catching i was basically i always wanted to be in the thick of things so it was kind of natural um and you know again maybe big egos so i reckon i can i reckon i could be good at that and yeah i was kind of correct i wasn't too bad and you you played in the Olympics.

You tried out for some big league teams. There's a 1989 LA Times article that talks about you flying over here to try out with various teams. It says you've been clocked at throwing 65 miles per hour. Is that accurate? No, come on. That's horrible. that's horrible that's really harsh no no i mean i'll be honest my fastball was never was never that quick i think i maxed out at about 84 um that was my so i was never ever that quick um i'm not very big i'm only five foot ten so you know i tried out you know i know, I got a few invites to some open tryouts, you know, nothing major. I did okay. You know, I was told by the various sort of pitching

coaches that, you know, clearly I've got really good control and great sort of breaking stuff. But, you know, when I'm at 83, 84, it's just not good enough. It's just not quick enough. So, you know, that was that. I maybe wish I tried out a positional player rather than a pitcher. But, hey, you know, hindsight's a wonderful thing. So that was that. I don't want to get too far off topic, but I keep reading this LA Times article trying to find some other clue

that they're, like, having a laugh about this or something. It seems like an earnest article except for this 165 miles an hour. So now I wonder if it's just like a typo in the archiving or something. But when you came over, was it – I mean you were – were you the first basically person who'd ever called clubs and said your experience was cricket? And did you like i don't know was the novelty played up in a way at the time or just you were an athlete and you were trying to be an athlete yeah no no i think um to be honest i think there may have been a small very small element of uh you know this is a unique situation. But I mean, most of the responses I got was, you

know, it doesn't matter. So what? We don't really care where you've come from. We just need to know you've got the stuff. So come and have a go. You know, I think there was a little bit of uniqueness in the world one or two media articles. I know if I remember correctly, they're Stars and Stripes, the US forces newspaper actually ran a very small piece as well. But yeah, I think I was just an athlete who wanted to go and they said, fine, come and try if you think you're good enough. The LA Times claimed that you are shorter than you are also. So its fact checking department was just off its game that day. So tell us a little bit about developments in cricket lately

because baseball is going through this process now of trying to shorten games, trying to make it more active, and cricket has done this in an even more extreme way. Of course, everyone might think of traditional cricket, taking five days for a match or taking a full day for a match, at least. And it seems kind of incredible that no one shortened it sooner. I don't know whether it was the power of tradition or what. But so what, just over a decade now, cricket had this kind of revolution and has this new

form of cricket that has generated a lot of excitement. So can you describe how that happened and how that game differs from the slow-paced cricket? Sure. Well, I mean, to be honest, I think, I mean, obviously you guys are well aware that cricket and baseball comes from the same sort of parent sport. So there is an intrinsic link between the two games and always has been and always will be. You know, back when the game split, when the two games became separate, you know, each one had their own identity and each one sort of evolved in a different way. However, I think, you know, you'll agree they both face the same kind of problems. the same kind of problems. Now, yes, cricket faced the sort of the same sort of problems that baseball faces now but back in the 60s, 60s and 70s, baseball went big on floodlit games, making sure the families can come and watch them. And cricket's gone through an evolutionary process and we face the same challenges that

baseball faced and face now, trying to get people in the game, trying to get people to come and watch. So I think cricket changed back in the 70s when we adopted one day cricket you know we very quickly adopted white balls colored clothing um after a little while then again we realized that people aren't going to come to what to watch a game during the day perhaps because they're not going to work so again they adopted floodlights so you know it's we're learning lessons both sports learn lessons from each other now there's been a massive evolutionary process in the last sort last 10 years where we have shortened the game even further down to what we call T20, which is, I mean, basically it's a three-hour game. It's done and dusted in three hours.

And again, you know, the same sort of problem that baseball is facing with the pace of play the time it takes is crucial so the time is monitored and there are penalties for playing the game too slowly um but you know i mean if you look at the way the game is is marketed now the way it's sort of portrayed and presented to the general public i mean we've got you know color clothing white balls games at night you know cheerleading there's massive sponsorship, global television audience, millions of dollars. There's been a huge evolution shift to make it a far more entertaining sport. It's a world away from perhaps the game of cricket that Americans might think about white

clothing, cups of tea, cucumber sandwiches, taking five days to play. T20 is a complete universe away from that. It'd be great if the solution to baseball's time of game problem would be three hour games, because we'd be there, that would be it. So tell us how you got involved in making baseball players make this switch. So the kind of test case for this was when you did this in Korea, right? So how did that work? You took a bunch of Korean baseball players and you made them capable cricketers. Well, I mean, okay.

I mean, this is a concept, you know, baseball players. Baseball players playing cricket is something that I've been pushing for years. I mean, there's myself and there's a few other cricketers who have sort of crossed between the two sports but it's you know it was clear to me right from the very beginning that you know a high quality baseball player would easily pick up cricket now this was this was back when I first started coaching clearly the way T20 has evolved in the last 10 years, there is now a specific game which is absolutely perfect for a baseball athlete, absolutely perfect. All the skills and attributes, physical attributes, the technical attributes, everything is perfect.

So this is something I've been pushing for a little while now. Now, as you mentioned, I spent last season, I spent in Korea, which obviously has a huge baseball following. I mean, it's the sport. I mean, it's a fantastic country. And, you know, I was so happy to be back in a baseball environment. You know, it was wonderful. But, you you know clearly baseball is the number one sport there now uh what we had was we had the asian games which is the olympic event um for that region so it's a high profile sports event covering a multitude of both olympic and non-olympic disciplines um And there was a gentleman out there who was mad keen on cricket and has been pushing cricket over there for many years.

And he was fairly influential in, you know, as they were hosting the Asian Games, he was fairly adamant that he wanted to make sure that Korea was represented at cricket. And that's how it came about, basically. He got me involved to help coach. Some of them were baseball players, some of them weren't. But generally speaking they were mostly baseball players. So he had put together a squad and drafted me in to sort of do the actual hands on coaching and bring them up to as close to a professional

level as possible. Tell me if I'm hearing this correctly. It sounds like this is taking advantage of rules changes or playing style evolutions in T20 that maybe these skills and attributes that baseball players have wouldn't have been as valuable in a different context or a different time. Is that correct? What are the changes and what are the skills and the attributes specifically that play up? Okay well I mean it's it's a basic contrast between the playing styles of the three main formats of cricket. Three main formats of cricket test cricket which lasts for five days, there's one day cricket which won't last for one day

and there's t20 which lasts for just under three hours so what you're looking at is you're looking at the type of skills that you can that can maximize the amount of runs wickets catches balls everything in a very short time scale so tactically you're looking at much more of a power game you know every aspect of T20 is about power. Power hitting, power bowling, power fielding. Everything is about speed, power, accuracy, athleticism. Cricket has evolved, and even test cricket now just displays those attributes.

However, you know, T20 is incredible. It's very, very quick. The funny thing is if you actually sit and you compare a game of T20 to a baseball game, baseball could quite possibly come off as fairly slow compared to a T20 game. Because in T20, every single ball, every single time, there's something happening. It's go, go, go go go 100 fire baseball coming

off as slow why i never there's there's a sentence in this story that i'm reading about the korean team you coached in the indian express that says fountain gets excited when he talks about the variety that his bowlers possess in their repertoire one or two can even do a version of the dill scoop i have quicks that swing the ball well and spinners who bowl at a really good pace i even have one that can bowl a deucera i understand three percent of that sentence what what does that mean okay well i mean in all honesty it's not as difficult as it sounds um what you've just described there is basically a pitching staff. So what you've described there is you've described two or three fancy batting shots and you've described a pitching staff.

That's all. So in the same way that you would describe a starting lineup, starting pitcher and a bullpen, middle relief, closers, certain types of stuff, power, control, whatever. That's basically what you'd describe for cricket. So it's not as crazy as you may sound. Okay, so what skills are most difficult to translate or what skills translate most easily?

When you take a baseball player who has never played cricket before, what area of the game requires the most coaching? Okay, bowling. So bowling is cricket's version of pitching. I think bowling will be the biggest job I will have during this project. That will be the toughest thing is just to get guys to be able to bowl

correctly, follow the rules. But again, you know, some people pick it up really quickly. It's just about keeping the concept right. It's about understanding the concept of what you're trying to achieve. And I think, you know, in the past, when people have tried to cross between the two sports, what they've tried to do is they've tried to over coach, they've tried to completely remove the individual from where they've come from, and teach them the basics of where they're going. To give you an example, the Korean guys who I went and coached, they'd had some coaching before they'd been to India, you know, they'd been on tour to another country. And clearly, the coaches that they came to, you know, they'd been on tour to another country and clearly the coaches that they came to, you know, they looked at them and said, well, you're absolute beginners.

You've only been playing the game for a couple of months. So what they did was they tried to completely walk away where they come from and teach in the basics, you know? And I think the key element for me is going to be not trying to teach them as if they were beginners, but to add value to what they've already got. Because a lot of what these guys have got, a lot of what a pro baseball player has got an awful lot to offer in terms of batting and fielding, massive amount to offer. So the question is you've got to add value, not try and change them too much,

but just give them the extra stuff that they need to survive and compete. So, I mean, from a batting perspective, these guys have got incredible hand-eye coordination. They've got incredibly fast hands. They can hit for power. Yes, there are going to be some differences. Yes, hitting a ball that's bounced on the turf, there are going to be some differences yes hitting a ball that's bounced on that on the turf it's going to be a different feeling but it's not going to take

that long to to sort of understand the concept you know once once you've learned some of the some of the tactical variations once you've learned the concept of how to bat in cricket why you're batting, now they should pick it up really quickly. I mean, one of the biggest things is going to be valuing your at-bat because obviously in a game of baseball, you bat multiple times. So there can be an element of it's okay, I messed up this time, I'll get them next time. And that's probably one of the major differences between cricket and baseball is you only get one shot at it. So you've got to be absolutely sure of the decisions that you make when you're batting. But again, that's not the end of the

earth. That's just one part of it. So one of the things that we've learned in the last few years about baseball, or we think we've learned, is that the process of hitting is so cognitively demanding that if you don't learn it, if you don't learn how to do it and master it really early in your life, you're probably never going to be able to. No matter how hard you practice baseball, if you don't start until you're 20, you're basically doomed. And there was somebody who wrote sort of a book about this in regards to Michael Jordan and all of that. And so the implication of that would be that, you know, maybe a person who, no matter how good an athlete, couldn't learn baseball later in life. Is there any skill like that in cricket where it's just neurologically too demanding or cognitively too demanding for even a great athlete to really think he'll ever master it no i don't think so honestly i i truly believe because the two sports are you know intrinsically linked you know they have a history they come from the same parent so like i said the skills and the attributes needed to be an elite player in one form will lend you towards being an elite player possibly in the other form.

So, you know, there may be the odd bit that some of these guys will struggle with. Potentially, you know, there may be the bowling. You know, they may struggle a little bit with how to bowl. But, you know, in all honesty, when push comes to shove, there's a lot of people in who don't bowl in cricket they just bat in their field so i think personally i think the the good attributes and the good aspects of of what an elite baseball player can bring to the table will far outweigh

anything you know that um that they may be lacking far outweigh and have you gotten is this controversial at all among observers or your opponents who don't like the idea of you, I don't know, bringing in sort of foreigners of a sort into this sport and, I don't know, trying to get this edge in a way that maybe they think is against cricket? No. I mean, what you're describing there is sort of an old possibly an old colonial view on how things should be done the transition that cricket's gone through in the last sort of 10 to 20 years means that a lot of those old colonial views are pretty much disappeared

to give you an example when I was playing cricket, if you played professionally, you played for one club. So very similar to playing for a baseball team. That was your club. You did pre-season with that club and you played for that club from April all the way through to September. And that was that. That was your one sporting contract.

Now, with the advent of T20 and you know it's as I said it's a global complete global sport what you've got now is you've got T20 competitions all around the world now that what that means to professional cricketers is that if you're if you're of a high enough standard, what you can do is you can actually tout your playing expertise as a pro in multiple teams all around the world. So rather than playing for the entire full season with one team, what they do is they'll play the specific event, which is T20, and they'll hop from country to country to country. Because a lot of these events, they only last for three weeks.

I think the longest one is the IPL, which lasts for eight weeks. So imagine if within baseball, if there was an international competition whereby you could play in multiple countries, and you only played in each country for three weeks and earn vast amounts of money playing for that three weeks and then you hopped from that country to the next country to a new contract, new team, new league, and so on. So, I mean, now what you've got is you've got international cricketers who spend a lot, most of their time,

just basically hopping from country to country playing T20 and they earn an incredibly good living T20. And they earn an incredibly good living from it. I mean, an incredibly good living. So I read a couple of quotes from you that you said that you were the first to introduce baseball fielding techniques to international cricket because a major league outfielder will outthrow a professional cricketer every time. You also pointed out that the hitting area of a baseball bat is a fraction of the width of a cricket bat. So is cricket inherently less demanding in terms of physical spills in certain ways? It's a tough one because obviously I've spent my career stepping between the two sports.

So I have a foot in each camp. The only reason I got back into coaching was because of the baseball that I played. That's the only reason I started as a professional cricket coach was because there was a need for someone from baseball to coach cricketers how to pick up a ball and throw it. Literally. And then from there, i branched out both

into fielding i look at now i look at power batting for t20 cricket slower balls again something i brought back from baseball i show cricketers how to basically how to how to bowl curveballs knuckleballs that kind of stuff um so you know there's there's a there's a there's elite skills and there's elite requirements in both sports you know and each sport has its own set of you know high priority needs um and you know where where the two sports have got to now is that t20 in my opinion and this is only my opinion, has sort of outpaced baseball in terms of the speed, accuracy, power. Yes, baseball still is a massively powerful sport in a high pace, etc. But T20 has taken that step as well.

So, you know, for me, an elite baseball player can definitely switch over to cricket, given a little bit of training. Yeah, they wouldn't be able to just pick up a bat and go straight out there. It'll take a little bit of training, obviously. But, you know, I don't think it would take a lot more training to switch a professional cricketer to go and play baseball. A lot more training. Okay, so tell us about the new program, Switch Hit 20. How are you reaching out to minor leaguers, and what kind of feedback and interest have you gotten,

and what kind of promise can you make to a minor leaguer who's interested in this in terms of, this is what you're making now, this is what you could realistically be making in such and such a time? Sure. Okay, well, I mean, the position that we're at now with the project is we are reaching out to minor league players, both through social media and through regular media. We've still only had a very very very small amount of media coverage

you know a tiny tiny tiny fraction of what we require um and we've we've had a pretty good response so far you know we like i said we've we've got getting on for 100 players already who've signed up given the details very interested in at least learning more about the project. Within that group, there's a lot of players who have expressed a very strong desire to give this a really good go if this project comes to fruition. The status of the project at the moment is we are still in talks with potential sponsors. We are still in talks to try and create the best end game possible.

There's a number of different options. And at the moment, we're still discussing with the various parties concerned how best we can make this happen. So yes, it is fluid it is a work in progress but the you know as days go by more people take an interest more people hear about it more people want it to happen so you know it's it is looking very positive you know i think we've had five or six different television companies already get in touch who want to make a reality documentary out of the whole process so there is a there is a you know there is a a huge want for it to happen

you know it just needs to keep pushing pushing pushing to make sure we can get this up and running um so yeah i've had some pretty good discussions with some major global companies over the last couple of weeks who have shown a big interest in making this happen. So, hopefully, fingers crossed, as the days go by, we'll see something concrete come to fruition. Now you're getting the effectively wild bump, so'm sure that will that will go a long way i mean i think the big thing for me is to let everybody know i am not trying to steal your future major league stars that's the thing is you know your future major league stars will always rise through the system and come out at the top. The guys who I'm looking at are the guys who don't quite make it. They're the guys who've sort of, you know, early to mid-20s, they've played two or three years and they realise,

hey, I'm not going to make it to the show. So, you know, and they just give up. So those are the guys. So, you know, I don't want anybody to say, oh, he's trying to try to steal steal future major leaguers absolutely not that's not the case i want i want your second best because your second best certainly be good enough to come and play pro cricket definitely well you can you can have them as far as i'm concerned so is the do you envision this being a way to kind of export cricket players from the U.S. and have them join teams in areas where cricket is already established?

Or do you envision it being a way to build up American cricket efforts? Okay. I mean, I'll be honest. I would like to say yes to both of those. I would like to say, you to say it'll do two things. Firstly, it will give US athletes, US former minor leaguers who, let's face it, struggle when it comes to wages. These guys, they work incredibly long hours and they get paid a pittance for it. Now, I know that that's been part of baseball culture for as long as we can remember

however you know the guys who don't make it the guys who who drop out who you know they realize that they've they've played three or four years two or three years of professional minor league baseball they're not going to play for the yankees you know at the big end so these guys what do they do they drop out they go and play well they go and coach they go and they just give up the sport which to me is an absolute waste of talent you know these guys are elite athletes they should be utilized somehow so you know i mean you've got two ways to look at it yes these guys once they've been through some training programs with me Two ways to look at it. Yes, these guys, once they've been through some training programs with me,

potentially, yes, we could try and get them into professional teams overseas. I honestly can put my hand up and say, I'm pretty sure that a professional franchise somewhere will be interested, even if it's just for the novelty value of having one, two, three, half a dozen of these guys playing in their league. I'm convinced of it. Like I said, there are leagues everywhere. There are T20 professional leagues all around the world. And because of the different time zones, you can go and play.

There's basically 365 days a year. So you can find a T20 competition going on almost every month somewhere in the world. So these players can jump from country to country. Now, the one that's closest to you guys is the CPL, which is the Caribbean Premier League. Now, I mean, one of my potential endgame designs is I'm actually looking to potentially create a franchise based in the USA, actually have a franchise in that competition based in the USA,

actually have a franchise in that competition based in Florida. Because I know firsthand, I know that companies desperately, cricket companies desperately want to get into the States. You know, it's such a huge market. So, you know, imagine having a T20 franchise based in Fort Lauderdale because there's an international cricket stadium in Lauderdale. So that's one of my projects that I'm looking at. That's where we'd like to go with this,

is actually have either a semi-pro or pro franchise to enter into the Caribbean Premier League. I mean, that's just an awesome, awesome prospect. But again, the other offshoot is the fact that this massive increase in awareness and this massive increase in newfound cricket talent can only do good for USA Cricket. It can only take USA Cricket from strength to strength. And, you know, I would love to see USA cricket right up there,

changing the biggest and the best countries in the world. Certainly, you've got the talent. It's just a question of harnessing it properly. And what is the state of USA cricket? Is the comp kind of soccer, where now the US can compete with established teams, but decades ago wouldn't have been able to? Is that the hope that it follows a similar trajectory?

Yes. USA cricket, again, if you check the history, USA cricket goes back hundreds of years. So you've got the history there. got the history there. But as with anything, it takes a huge amount of organisational skill to keep a sport running across a country as vast as the USA. So, you know, what you've got to have is you've got to have perfect structures, you've got to have an amazing administration. And yeah, this has all got to work every day perfectly. You know, any kind of sport needs a good structure. And I think where maybe the USA has struggled is the domestic structure can be a little bit,

excuse me, a little bit hit and miss. You know, they can, they have good days, they have bad days. And unfortunately what happens is that means that the national team is very hit and miss. what happens is that means that the national team is very hit and miss um you know i think if i'm if i'm not incorrect i think the usa team is ranked somewhere in the 30s at the moment maybe 35th in the world um cricket is operated on a global sort of platform so what you've got is you've got the top 10 countries in the world

are basically where you play professional cricket those are the big big sort of 10 countries so beyond that what you've got is you've got countries who play cricket some of whom play a lot of cricket some of whom play less cricket but there is a global ranking system and i'm pretty sure that the usa the last time I looked, was up in the 30s. Now, if this project comes to fruition, you could see that ranking go right the way up to 11 or 12. So I'm not sure they could break into the top 10, but again, that's mainly down to

infrastructure. There's a lot of hurdles to jump over before you can get into the top 10. But there's no reason why the USA couldn't climb right up to sort of 11 or 12 and compete very successfully with the top 10. But it's going to take a lot of work. I've got to say, I'm pleasantly surprised by 30s.

There are 200 countries in the world. We're doing okay. It's not bad. I think cricket-playing countries, I think we're on about 125 or something. I think it's about 125, 130 cricket-playing nations. So, you know,

I mean, yes, okay, you can look at 30 and say that's okay, but when you look at the amount of sporting talent there is in the USA, no. You know, talent there is in the USA, no. There are countries in the top 10 and there are countries just outside the top 10 who the USA should really be eating for breakfast, so to speak. We also used to be England, so you'd think we'd be a little bit better at this. So lastly, we heard an interview with Gideon Haig on a show that we listened to called hang up and listen a couple months ago and he mentioned just sort of the the state of offense in cricket and

that it seems like scoring hasn't suffered at all and maybe is even up i don't know whether he was referring to t20 or or other forms of cricket but But that's in addition to the pace of game and length of game problem in baseball. The run environment being down and fewer runs being scored is also a big issue in baseball today. And one of the theories about why scoring is down is that pitchers are throwing harder. It's harder to hit their pitches now. And I'm wondering if there is a parallel to that at all in cricket. Evidently not, according to what we heard. But if not, I wonder why that doesn't apply.

Are bowlers not bowling faster than they used to? Well, I think if you asked a selection of international bowlers, our version of pitching, I think if you asked a cross-section of international bowlers, they would probably almost to a man say that cricket, especially T20, has become a batter's sport. There are fielding restrictions, so you can't put fielders in certain places. The odds are stacked against the bowler currently. That's just the way the game has evolved,

and it's very much a batter's game. So, yeah, batters lead the way, and like I said, it's power, it's scoring, it's speed, it's everything. That's not to say that pitchers aren't still high, you know, but our bowlers aren't high quality. We've got lots and lots of very high quality bowlers who bowl both with pace, but also make the ball move around. But with the advent of T20 and the way the rules go, the tactics go, the odds are stacked in the batter's favor. All right. Well, it sounds like the solution to all of baseball's problems are to be more like cricket

and possibly the solution to many minor leaguers' problems is to play cricket. So if you are a starving minor leaguer or if you know a starving minor leaguer, tell them about Switch Hit 20. You can find information on the program at switchhit20.com.

You can also find Julian on Twitter at Julian Fountain. That's Julian with an E. Thanks, Julian. Thank you very much, guys. I really appreciate the chance to come to the show and talk to you guys about it. No problem. We enjoyed it. And that is it for us this week.

Please send us some emails for next week at podcast at baseballperspectives.com, rate, review, and subscribe to the show on iTunes. Support our sponsor by going to baseballreference.com, Have a wonderful weekend. We will be back next week.