Effectively Wild Episode 1231: Chasen the Dream

June 16, 2018

EWFI
Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan follow up on Terry Collins, trick running plays, Steven Brault‘s disappointing strikeout, the Mariners, and Justin Miller, banter about Takuya Nakashima’s 200th career sacrifice bunt, the Astros’ enviable depth, the most exciting rookies of 2018 (including Juan Soto, Gleyber Torres, Walker Buehler, and Adam Cimber), and MLB’s attendance decline, and talk to Hans Van Slooten about his years building and maintaining Baseball-Reference.com as Sports Reference’s manager of baseball operations, his decision to accept a new job as a baseball systems developer with the Minnesota Twins, the pros and cons of working for an MLB team, writing words vs. writing code, the differences between public and private and big and small(er) data, how Baseball-Reference adds (or doesn’t add) information, the expanding Sports Reference empire, his favorite finds on B-Ref, Barry Bonds’s WAR, comparing current players and long-retired players, how the “opener” strategy and Shohei Ohtani affected the site, and how to have his job.