FanGraphs Audio: Tyler Kepner Talks World Series, Justyn-Henry Malloy Calls From AFL

Episode 998

Just in time for the World Series, we welcome back an author who recently wrote a book on the subject before talking to a prospect in the Arizona Fall League.

  • To start the show, Jay Jaffe welcomes Tyler Kepner, baseball writer at The New York Times and author of The Grandest Stage: A History of the World Series, back to the show. The pair discuss what inspired the book, the hundreds of interviews that went into it, and how Tyler has been preparing to write it his whole life. We hear about picking MVPs for the Fall Classic before they started officially doing so in 1955, and Jay’s fond memories of the 1988 championship. The duo also talk about how un-fun it is to cover Yankees eliminations, how players handle pressure on the game’s biggest stage, and what they are looking forward to in the Astros/Phillies World Series. [3:26]
  • After that, David Laurila welcomes Justyn-Henry Malloy, a prospect in the Braves system whose excellent 2022 campaign has culminated in playing for the Scottsdale Scorpions in the AFL. We hear what a day in the life of a Fall League player is like, and how much fun it has been to play with players like Cade Bunnell, Cal Conley, Heston Kjerstad, and Vaughn Grissom. Malloy also tells us about how he strives for consistency as a hitter while aiming to command the zone, as well as his adventures in battling the Arizona sun while playing the outfield. [33:21]

To purchase a FanGraphs membership for yourself or as a gift, click here.

To donate to FanGraphs and help us keep things running, click here.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @dhhiggins on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

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.

Audio after the jump. (Approximate 55 minute play time.)





Dylan assists in producingFanGraphs Audio, Effectively Wild, and the FanGraphs Live Twitch channel. He also enjoys the Waxahachie Swap (RIP), the Air Bud principle, and the Oxford comma. You can Tweet him about any of those things @dhhiggins.

Comments are closed.