Effectively Wild Episode 1321: You Are the Boss of Me

by
January 11, 2019

EWFI
Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Willians Astudillo being plunked in reprisal for his home-run pimp, the surprisingly small contract of Yasmani Grandal and the state of the Brewers and the NL Central, Jed Lowrie and the Mets’ positional logjam, DJ LeMahieu joining the Yankees and the ramifications for Manny Machado, the latest in teams trying to lure Machado by recruiting Machado mentors, the Dodgers signing Russell Martin, the latest on A’s first-rounder Kyler Murray, and a real-life analogue to a listener hypothetical about running the bases clockwise. Then (26:47) they bring on FanGraphs founder and overlord David Appelman to discuss his history at AOL and the site’s origin story, how he could have ended up building a database for a team, his philosophy of acquiring and providing data, gambling and baseball, balancing the site’s stats and writing, the secret to making a stats site work well, losing writers to teams, whether he wants the site to be acquired, the state of public baseball analysis, what’s on the horizon for FanGraphs, the future of sports media, and more.

Audio intro: Bob Dylan, "Lord Protect My Child"
Audio interstitial: Arkells, "Oh! The Boss is Coming"
Audio outro: Paul Simon, "When Numbers Get Serious"

Link to Astudillo buzzing and beaning
Link to weird Willians hit
Link to Jeff’s Grandal post
Link to Jeff’s Nelson post
Link to Murray interview episode

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Josermember
5 years ago

Two thoughts:
1. You should have asked Appelman if he’s considered exploring a posting system with MLB, along the lines of what NPB does, so that when he loses talent to a Major League team Fangraphs receives some compensation. Of course while that would mostly work in Fangraphs’ favor — Dave Cameron, millions! — inevitably the Jays would come looking for compensation for taking on Cistulli.

2. I re-listened to the episode and can’t identify what you guys did to piss him off, but evidently you did because from the lack of subsequent episodes it appears Effectively Wild has been terminated.

-1