Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 888: Meet the Minor Leagues’ Latest Recruit

Episode Date: May 20, 2016

Ben and Sam talk to former Sonoma Stomper (and The Only Rule Is It Has to Work character) Santos Saldivar, a pitcher they discovered on a spreadsheet last summer who was just signed by the Brewers. (No book spoilers.)

Can I get a, can I get a, running her hands through my fro, bouncing on 24s, that's why they say I'm ready It's the remix to Ignition, hot and fresh out the kitchen, mama ruling that body, got every man in here wishing Sipping on coke and rum, I'm like so what I'm drunk, it's the freaking weekend,, I'm about to have some fun Good morning and welcome to episode 888 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives presented by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com I'm Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectives Hello, Sam Howdy Don't know if you can detect the excitement in our voices, but we have never been happier in our previous 887 episodes

to start a podcast than we are today. We are thrilled. We have worked our connections and we have landed a big guest. He is the newest minor league baseball player in the country and his name is Santos Saldivar. And if you have read our book, you know him from the book. You do not have to have read the book to listen to this podcast and we won't spoil the book. So feel free to continue listening no matter what your book reading status is. Santos has an interesting story. And the highlight of the

story, at least for now, is that he is a Milwaukee Brewers prospect. He is a new pitcher in the Milwaukee Brewers system. He was just signed today. By the time a lot of you listen to this episode, he will be on a plane headed, I don't even know where. Where will you be headed, Santos? And by the way, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. Yes, I will be heading to Glendale, Arizona. All right. So you're going to extended spring and they're going to watch you pitch in person, which they haven't actually done yet. And then if that goes well, the plan is hopefully that you'll be pitching in short season ball sometime soon.

So what do you know? What have you been told? How does it work when you get signed by a baseball team? Well, they called me today. I was literally getting off the plane in San Francisco and they gave me the call that the brewers were interested in signing me. And 15 minutes before I got to Sonoma, I got the offer and told me I was headed there. I had my flight at 10 the next day. Wow, that happened really fast.

This whole thing came together in just a few days. It sort of started with an idle email that Sam and I sent to someone with the Brewers who read the book and liked it and we mentioned Santos and he said send us some info and we sent your stats and your video and your pitch effects information and it was as impressive to him as it as it was to us and so the Brewers jumped on it really quickly and we are totally thrilled that that happened. So what was the plan? You had just gotten to Sonoma and you were planning to be with the Stompers again. Yeah, I had literally just picked up my bags from, just claimed my bags from the airport and I literally got the call. It was shocking to me. I didn't know anything about it. This is the first

I hear about the email or anything. I mean, I'm'm just excited it's gonna be can't wait to get out there and prove what i got oh come on don't come on he's already he's using ball player cliches too cliche he's an hour into his minor league career and he's already talking like the boulder room guys that's good that's good because we were thinking we'd get you ready because now you're going to be facing the real press now that you're an affiliated ball. So this is your trial by fire. Well, I mean, I'm a humble guy. I mean, I can't. I've never been that kind of person.

So I'm just taking it one day at a time. I've heard you say some pretty unhumble things in the last year or so. But you backed it up because you've got the stuff. So the backstory here is that Santos is one of the pitchers that we signed sight unseen off a spreadsheet based on his college stats. And you pitched for Southern University, which is in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It's a Division I school, and your stats there were extremely impressive. In your last year pitching there, you pitched 87 innings, which is a lot for a college season, and you struck out 12 batters per nine, and you broke Jose De Leon's single-season Southern University strikeout record with 115, and De Leon was not only drafted by the Dodgers,

but is now a top 30 prospect in baseball. So the takeaway is you were pretty good. You were pretty good at this whole pitching thing. And yet you weren't drafted and no other pro team picked you up at first. And then you did have one kind of close call in pro ball before we found you. So describe your first pro ball experience, which didn't last that long. Well, I went with the Rascals of River City. I had one start. It was like four innings, two runs. I was a little rusty and nervous. I just got done playing my SWAC for our conference

championship. And it was like four days after the tournament. They had called me. They wanted me to start right away. I wasn't 100% ready. And just my luck, the tournament they had called me they wanted me to start right away I wasn't 100% ready and just my luck the Cardinals had released a double A player and they picked him up and since I was a brand new guy they let me go. I remember you told me one time that when you went out for that start you were so I don't know nervous or anxious or excited or maybe just looking forward to it that you like went out like an hour early and started warming up and everybody's like, dude, the game's not for another hour. Yeah. I got out the locker room. They were still taking VP and I came out and I wanted to watch. I mean, I had never experienced that before. And the coach was like, what are you doing? Get out, go back in the locker room. I was like,

all right. I mean, I went back to the locker room. And 30 minutes later, they came in, showered. They all went, did their stretch. And I was like, OK, I guess it's time for me to start throwing. I went out there and started throwing. And they were like, you know, we still have an hour and a half and we're away. You might want to go back in the locker room and wait a little bit longer. I was like, OK.

So I went back 30 minutes longer. And then I came back out and started throwing. So how long was it after that start that Ben called you? About a month. And what did you do during that month? What were you sort of planning with your baseball career at that point? I mean, I didn't really have a baseball career after that. I was just in my hometown playing slow pitch softball. You were playing third base in slow pitch softball, right? Yes, sir. Yeah, and you're a two-way beast, right? You hit as well as pitch?

I mean, I don't want to brag, but I was a three-hole. Yeah, I remember you wanting to brag. I remember you wanting to brag a lot. Of course. I mean, we did have a pitcher's BP home run derby, and I did win that also. You did? How many did you hit? I hit 13.

13 bombs in BP. 295-foot left field wall, but still. Hey, hey, hey. By the way, I did have a net bat with the Stomper. I did have a hit and a stolen base. Just throwing that out there. Yeah, and a pop-up to third base that turned into an adventure, as I recall, when you were out in the field. The wind was blowing a little bit, and I'm from Texas. The Cali wind blew a little harder

than I was expecting. So when I called you, I kind of had to talk you out of retirement. It wasn't the easiest sell in the world. You were ready to hang them up, it seemed like, because of that first Frontier League experience and I guess because of going undrafted and not knowing who I was or what this team was. So what was your thought process? I think you took a weekend or so to think about it. Yeah, well, I was disappointed that I didn't get drafted. I was told by many scouts and coaches that I wasn't going to get drafted. So that was a big disappointment.

And then after being released, I wanted nothing to do with Indy Ball because I figured that was just how every Indy Ball was going to be. So I didn't want to put myself in a situation where I wasn't going to succeed again. Yeah. So why did you come out of here? What did Ben say? Uh, I mean,

he basically told me it was California. I had never been here before. And he told me it was a smaller independent ball team that they didn't work like the Frontier League did. They didn't replace players left and right. And they offered to pay my flight. Pretty good salesman. One of the things about this league that sort of struck me as the season

went on is that we're so far away from everybody else like a lot of those other indie ball indie ball leagues they're in the middle of you know the country or they're on the east coast and it just feels like they're a lot quicker to cut you or to bring in new guys and we're so far away from any other independent league team that it just felt like once you got a roster spot, you really had to try to lose that roster spot. Like, you know, I mean, you know, you could think of names. Ben could think of names, guys on our team who we kept for a long time because it was just like, well, you came so far. Like you flew, like you spent 550 bucks on your ticket and we just didn't really want

to cut you. And it felt like in a, in a weird way, this, like, it was the one place that would give you more than one start. Not that you needed one. I remember your first outing as a reliever. We were just giddy. I hugged you. You were the only player who immediately after a game, I think I ran over and hugged because of how good it was. I was in the dugout just giggling. Paul Hasdovic, who had started that game, just came over and stood next to me in the dugout and just watched my face as I watched you because we didn't really know what we were getting. We knew you had struck

out a ton of guys in college and that seemed like a good sign. But then you had the one start in the Frontier League and they let you go. And I emailed their manager and asked them for a scouting report and he didn't really give the most positive report. And I figured he had seen you in person. And so that might be more reliable than the spreadsheet. So I had no idea what to expect. And then you came out just dealing and showing just more pitches and more stuff than anyone else in the league.

And we just couldn't believe our good fortune that we had managed to sign you. Yeah. Can you talk about your stuff because i uh i remember driving you up from the airport and you were describing what you had uh in your repertoire and it uh you were i would say you were you were proud of it i mean that was a talk me trying to trying to get you not to cut me on my first day well maybe the brewers are listening so do the same for them well i mean i have a I have a foreseam that I can...

I was always a curveball pitcher, so I always had to be crafty. And it wasn't until my junior, going to my senior year, where I started getting my speed, where I was 88 to 91. And I was a curveball pitcher. I mean, I threw 50% curveballs. So whenever I got my speed, I just started working with a two-seam and a cutter because I can afford to lose two, three miles an hour and still be 88. So I started throwing a sinker in, two-seam in, the righties,

and cutter in to lefties, and that seemed to work really good. And I got a 12.6 that I can make the speed. I can throw the 60 to 78. So did you have a pitching coach who taught you all this, or was it really just a matter of the difference between what you were throwing VLO-wise sophomore year and, you know, what you were throwing as a senior? I basically YouTubed and Googled how to work with pitches,

and me and one of my good friends from back home would just throw every day in the summer and then until I got some movement and uh when the speed came it just broke so much more and do I remember right that you faced Dansby Swanson at Vanderbilt no it was uh Alex Bregman from LSU okay yeah so you faced Alex Bregman how'd you how'd go? Well, I believe whenever I came in, the game was two to two in the ninth inning, and they had their three, four, five up with a runner on first. Bregman came up first, but then he grounded out to short, and they just got him out at second. Then I stroke out Chinea, which was their fourth batter, and Foster, who was their fifth batter, who also got drafted, I believe. So you mentioned that you knew you were

getting scouted in college and and that your coach or other scouts had led you to believe that you would be drafted so did you hear anything after the draft from any of the teams that had been interested did they explain why you didn't get drafted did you know why it didn't happen no they they uh well i had a i had a pre-draft workout with the Padres and then they just told me they would keep me updated with, with if they were going to draft me or not. And I didn't get a call after that. And I didn't get a call after the draft either. Your experience in college was kind of a lot different than Sean Conroy's because Sean just, he was pitching in the middle of nowhere. Nobody ever saw him. You know, you were pitching against good competition. You pitched with Jose de Leon who got drafted and, you know,

you had all this stuff. It seems fair. I don't, maybe it's not to you, but it seems fairly obvious that if you were 6'2 or taller, you would have been drafted, but you're not. You're quite a bit shorter than that. Did you sort of feel when you were at college that you had the stuff to be drafted and that you could, you know, that when you're facing guys like Alex Bregman, that you're basically just as good as the guys that prospect towns were looking at? Oh, yeah. I mean, I believe I could, whenever I was in college, no matter what hitter was up there, they were still my age. They were in my level. So I felt like I can compete against anybody. If I make it to that level, that means I can compete against them. And that was just always my thought process. Yeah, you're 23 this year. Last year, last summer, when Ben and I were trying to convince

the team to come out and scout Sean Conroy, we did a lot of work on figuring out where exactly the Pacific Association is in the kind of baseball ecosystem. And basically what we concluded is if you're really good at the Pacific Association, you're good enough to be in high A right now. And for a lot of players, that realization would be kind of damning because a lot of the guys that we have who are good in the Pacific Association are 25, 26, 27. And if you're 25 and you're doing well at something like a ball or high a it doesn't mean a whole lot but you were 22 last year you're 23 right now and like high a is pretty much where you should be and like you were pretty much dominant at our level so i i mean i don't know who knows what'll happen but like i feel like if you'd been in high A last year, you'd be in double A right now. You would have been great.

I couldn't agree with you more. I couldn't agree with you more. Yeah. So if you don't have the typical pitcher's build or pitcher's stature, scouts obviously look at that as a handicap, and yet you came into this league, and from day one you were dominant and you were dominant in college and now you're getting a shot with the Brewers so how have you compensated for you know not being 6'4 if you consider it a weakness what is it about you that allows you to

overcome it I mean just I really can't fall to I can't let them bring me down by what they say. I just got to keep working hard like I've always have. I mean, I can't grow. I can't grow in height. So I got to grow somewhere. So I just started working out a lot harder. And it got got me to where I am now. We will link to the video of you that it's up on the book website, but I'll link to it in the podcast post and at the Facebook group. It's the same video that helped convince the Brewers to sign Santos. And I have watched it many times because it's just fun to watch. You've got so much movement. You've got so many different pitches. Is there anything that you are hoping to work on or that you were planning to work on with the Stompers this season? New pitch, different pitch, harder

pitch, anything different from what we saw last year? My splitter, just more consistent and not throw it just to get ahead and throw it as a strikeout. That's one thing I was really going to work on in these two weeks of being here and having a catcher. And probably a better changeup. I mean, I can throw a change up whenever I want, wherever I want, but I just want it to fall off the table just like my curveball and slider does. And you had another kind of close call and then sad ending with Pro Bowl this winter too. Not only did you almost retire last summer before we called you, but you almost retired this winter too because you went and tried to play with another team

and that didn't work out. So talk about your off-season experience. Well, in March, I got a spring training invite to Mexican big leagues with Moncloa Acereros. And, I mean, I pitched as good as I've ever pitched, threw about 10 innings, gave up two runs, seven strikeouts. I mean, I had a start where I only gave up one run, which was a little blooper over first. And I mean, I pitched just as good as any pitcher in the team. And I think we had an inner squad,

and I threw two innings. And I went through our one through seventh batters without giving up a hit. And just the last day of spring training, the same thing. The thing was the Padres released a guy from AAA. He played on our team two years ago. They picked him up and they told me I didn't have the experience. Wow. I mean, it's just time after time, there's some sort of circumstance that seems to conspire against you. And yet at the same time things have worked out because now

Two teams have signed you without ever actually seeing you pitch just based on Looking at your stats or looking at video or looking at your pitch fx numbers And that's something that wouldn't have been possible Probably because you know We couldn't afford to send a scout out to see you or something and we couldn't afford to fly you out to just a throw for us so we had to trust the numbers and the brewers can't just send scouts out to see every single indie ball player either so they had to kind of trust the information they had so if this were five ten years ago you might be

completely out of luck. So you're kind of lucky that you came along now that teams can evaluate players from afar like this without ever actually meeting them. Of course, it's still an advantage to see a pitcher in person, but you're getting this shot now that not many pitchers in the past probably would have gotten. Definitely. Just like I told our GM, i couldn't have done it without anybody i it didn't take just me to strike out a couple guys to get looked at if it wasn't for the videos if it wasn't for the pitch effects i would probably be at home right now so um i'm in the stompers office today everybody is really excited like really incredibly excited and tonight you and i are both going to the stompers opening night spring training opening night banquet do any of your teammates know and what's the reaction you're the first stomper who's been signed directly by an affiliated

team is there like do you know if anybody knows have you been there when they found out yeah well whenever uh i was in the van coming back from the airport whenever it was all finalized and we went to the field and there was a couple guys there and i had to tell the manager because he was a manager he was telling me how excited he was for me to pitch to him pitch for him so i kind of had to break it to him that i was leaving tomorrow and the guys overheard so i mean they were all excited they were all excited for me i guess it's it opens up their eyes that it is possible to get picked up from this league okay so i think this is my last question but um have you read our book

have you read our book the book that we wrote have you read it well let's just say the reading isn't my strong nobody's read it it's crazy this is i keep i keep on it's been out two and a half weeks and i haven't heard from a single player who's read it or even picked it up in my defense i went to the store today and they didn't have it at the store at the team store so i mean i tried i'm literally look sandos i'm in the team store right now i'm in the the office which is eight feet from the team store and there are four stacks that are 25 books high i asked you they said they were all uh pre-ordered or something i asked you do you have any extra books from your uh to buy they said no they're all bought they just haven't came to pick them up all right well Santos, let me give you

I just want to give you one piece of advice before you go. I was, when I was out here last summer, I was obsessed with this concept of feel and like who had feel and what it meant to have feel and like how people expose their lack of feel. And so I was always asking like, does that guy have feel? And it was

when you were new, before we knew you, early on, I was like, so I asked a few people, so like, does that guy have feel and it was uh when you were new before we knew you i early on i was like so uh i asked a few people so like does that guy have feel and they said yeah santos yeah he's got feel except for one thing there was one thing that early on the first few days everybody's like that dude does not have feel it was that when you go out to shag at bp and a ball a fly ball goes over your head you throw your glove up at it. And everybody pretty much agreed that that was not cool. So that was widely condemned as bush. So don't throw your glove up at fly balls over your head when you're shagging, okay?

I got it. Thanks for the great advice. That would give me far in life. Thank you. All right. Well, we are extremely excited. We're really happy for you. It's hard to untangle our happiness for you from our happiness from ourselves and how smart you have made us look. But we're pretty happy for everyone involved on this call, I think.

And obviously, we'll be following you closely. And just getting to this point is something that the vast majority of really good baseball players never do so if you go no further you have accomplished a lot but we think that you have the stuff and the mentality and the drive to go further and we hope everything works out really well and that you remember us when you're in the big leagues and we'll still come on our little podcast. I could never forget about you. If it wasn't for you, I definitely would not be here, and I definitely wouldn't be here this summer again. Well, we wish you the best of luck.

We will be keeping close track of how you do. Hey, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. There's one last thing. Part of you coming back here this summer was that you were going to be the owner's accounting intern. So that's true. So you could get the final course credits and get your diploma. So now, what's this mean for your education? Well, I mean, I already got my degree.

I just wanted to add to my resume. That way, after baseball, I can have an accounting job in my resume. That's why I did it. Okay, I see. I was going to come here regardless. I was just trying to see if I can get something out of it. Okay. Now you can say that, I guess.

He said no, and he said he was too busy. I mean, of course, I would have still came. But I was just trying to get an accounting internship out of it. And it worked. It worked. There's not much an independent league team can offer to a player, but an unpaid internship is one of them. Definitely.

Now you don't need another job because you're going to be making the big bucks of short season ball. I hope so. I hope so. I can hire you all to track me everywhere I go. We will. You don't have everywhere I go. We will. You don't have to pay us. We will be doing that for free. And we will update people on the podcast about how Santos is doing. And we hope that all of you will read the book and read about Santos in there and then tell Santos if the book is good.

And maybe one day he will read it, too. We'll get our hopes up. Santos, thanks for coming on. Congratulations again. We are really proud of you, and we wish you the best. Thank you. All right, so that's it for today, and I can't emphasize enough, if you haven't watched Santos' highlight reel, you really should.

It's just fun. It kind of brings me back to World Series baseball 2K2 playing as Mike Messina or the late Daryl Kyle, guys with just these loopy pitches that look like they defy physics. Santos has that movement in every different direction and a huge separation in speeds. So I'll link to the video in the Facebook group and on the BP blog post. Check it out. And I really, I don't know if I can convey just how special this was for me and sam we wrote in the book that the pacific association is something like 10 promotions away from the

majors and santos just leapfrogged a bunch of them in one move and it often felt like even if the talent level of the pacific association wasn't so much different from a ball or high a or whatever we thought it was it still felt like this gulf that almost no one could cross. Because unfortunately, it's not just about convincing a team that you can succeed at those lower levels, but also that you have a real chance to advance beyond that. And the competition is intense. So we are very happy that someone did it. We now have an official minor leaguer of the Effectively Wild podcast.

And I hope he makes the brewers look smart too. And by the way, if you want to buy some Stompers gear to show your support for the team and for Santos, you can do that at the Stompers newly redesigned website, stompersbaseball.com. There's a link to the fan shop, and you can use the coupon code BP to get 15% off all merchandise.

You can get autographed copies of the only rules it has to work there, but you can also get some Stompers apparel. And the nice perk of picking up Stompers gear and wearing it around is that you will run into fellow podcast listeners in the wild. We actually just got an email from a listener who is neighbors with the editor of our book, and they had spoken to each other before. And this listener knew that our editor did some work on baseball books, but hadn't inquired about the details. And then one day, they both left their apartment wearing their stoppers hoodies,

and they realized that they had a deeper connection than they had suspected. Again, if you want to buy the book, you can do so now in every format. It's out on CD and on Audible now. Just go to the website, theonlyruleisithastowork..com where you can find reviews and excerpts and interviews and photos and videos and stats. There is an event tonight in Petaluma, California. Sam will be there with not Santos because Santos has better places to be, but Sean Conroy and Mark Hurley and Daniel Baptista and Theo Fightmaster might be the best event yet. 7 p.m. in Petaluma at Copperfield's Books. So if you're anywhere near the area, check it out. And if you have finished the book and liked it, please let people know,

leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads. Every recommendation counts. You can also support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Today's five Patreon supporters are Michael DiPrima, Stephen Winthrop, Emily Fiasco, Brian Christie, and Chris Caseman. Thank you. You can join the Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectivelywild. You can rate and review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. Review the podcast and the book at the same time, the Double Dip Review. And you can get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription to the Play Index by using the coupon code BP at baseballreference.com.

Keep the emails and the questions coming to podcastsatbaseballprospectus.com or by messaging us through Patreon. That's it for this week. We hope you have a wonderful weekend. We'll be back on Monday. that he owns. He's gonna call her up on the telephones. Just dial, lift up that guy. He wants to ask around, to partake of a drink. He had it all locked up, but he was missing the link. Just smile, cause that's your style