Effectively Wild Episode 1859: Three Strikes and Burnout

by
June 6, 2022

EWFI
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. Then (38:54) they talk to former Phillies front-office executive Lewie Pollis about how working for an MLB team became his dream job and why, several years after fulfilling that dream, he decided to walk away from it by changing careers—a choice with wide-ranging lessons to offer about work-life balance in baseball and beyond (plus a postscript).

Audio intro: The Walkmen, “This Job is Killing Me”
Audio interstitial: Ramones, “The Job That Ate My Brain”
Audio outro: Dan Bern, “Burned Out Case”

Link to Yaz play video
Link to play in full game highlights
Link to story about the “KK play”
Link to video of the “KK play”
Link to posts about unwritten rules of deking
Link to “rat urine” report
Link to Ben on mid-PA pitching changes
Link to Showalter pitching-change video
Link to article about the pitching change
Link to Mookie quote
Link to article on Girardi’s “Strategy”
Link to 2020 zombie-runner rule
Link to article about Roberts’ confusion
Link to 4/17 story on Pivetta’s mechanics
Link to 4/20 story on Pivetta’s mechanics
Link to other 4/20 story on Pivetta
Link to story on Pivetta’s turnaround
Link to EW episode about Trout going hitless
Link to story about the Angels’ losing streak
Link to Richard Hershberger’s Strike Four
Link to 1859 story source
Link to Lewie’s 2014 story on front-office pay
Link to Lewie’s Baseball Prospectus archive
Link to Lewie’s newsletter
Link to Lewie on leaving his dream job
Link to Lewie on the response to his essay
Link to “Great Resignation” wiki
Link to R.J. Anderson on MLB brain drain

 Sponsor Us on Patreon
Subscribe to Stathead (Code: WILD20)
 Facebook Group
 Twitter Account
 EW Subreddit
 Effectively Wild Wiki
 iTunes Feed (Please rate and review us!)
 Get Our Merch!
 Email Us: podcast@fangraphs.com

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

You Aren't a FanGraphs Member
It looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed.
We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we'd like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member.
1. Ad Free viewing! We won't bug you with this ad, or any other.
2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off.
3. Dark mode and Classic mode!
4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them.
5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects.
6. Remove the photos on the home page! (Honestly, this doesn't sound so great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.)
7. Even more Steamer projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context neutral projections available for Members only.
8. Get FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized year end review! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don't be a victim of FOMO.
9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members.
10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features!
We hope you'll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we've also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn't want to overdo it.




 

Comments are closed.