Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast

Effectively Wild: Multisport Sabermetrics Exchange Basketball/Football Hockey/Cricket Golf/Tennis Soccer/Rugby Esports/Volleyball NASCAR/Cycling Diversity and Inclusion In the fifth installment of a special, seven-episode series on the past, present, and future of advanced analysis in non-baseball sports, Ben Lindbergh talks to ESports One Head of Esports Data Science Tim Sevenhuysen about esports...

Effectively Wild: Multisport Sabermetrics Exchange Basketball/Football Hockey/Cricket Golf/Tennis Soccer/Rugby Esports/Volleyball NASCAR/Cycling Diversity and Inclusion In the fourth installment of a special, seven-episode series on the past, present, and future of advanced analysis in non-baseball sports, Ben Lindbergh talks to StatsBomb managing editor Mike L. Goodman about soccer and then profe...

Effectively Wild: Multisport Sabermetrics Exchange Basketball/Football Hockey/Cricket Golf/Tennis Soccer/Rugby Esports/Volleyball NASCAR/Cycling Diversity and Inclusion In the third installment of a special, seven-episode series on the past, present, and future of advanced analysis in non-baseball sports, Ben Lindbergh talks to Tennis Abstract founder Jeff Sackmann about tennis and then Every Shot...

Effectively Wild: Multisport Sabermetrics Exchange Basketball/Football Hockey/Cricket Golf/Tennis Soccer/Rugby Esports/Volleyball NASCAR/Cycling Diversity and Inclusion In the second installment of a special, seven-episode series on the past, present, and future of advanced analysis in non-baseball sports, Ben Lindbergh talks to Evolving-Hockey.com’s Josh and Luke Younggren about hockey and...

Effectively Wild: Multisport Sabermetrics Exchange Basketball/Football Hockey/Cricket Golf/Tennis Soccer/Rugby Esports/Volleyball NASCAR/Cycling Diversity and Inclusion In the first installment of a special, seven-episode series on the past, present, and future of advanced analysis in non-baseball sports, Ben Lindbergh talks to ESPN’s Bill Barnwell about football (the American kind) and then...

Ben Lindbergh, Sam Miller, and Meg Rowley discuss the signings of Hyun-Jin Ryu and Dallas Keuchel , the Blue Jays’ historic 2019 rotation, the depleted pitching market, MLB’s rising revenue and the continued strength of spending on free agents, Jake Odorizzi and the qualifying offer, Nick Senzel’ s switch to Scott Boras, and Rich Hill ’s arrest(!), then conduct the seventh...

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about whether this year’s good free agents have actually gone to an unusual selection of teams and whether they believe in Wade Miley’ s supposed pitch-tipping, and then, in the third and final installment of a three-part series, discuss stories that they overlooked about 10 more teams in 2019, touching on the Mariners’ many players (especially...

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about Scott Boras’s mystifying goose metaphor and then, in the second installment of a three-part series, discuss stories that they overlooked about 10 more teams in 2019, touching on a Fernando Tatis Jr. fun fact and BABIP extremes, Ian Kinsler cursing, JD Hammer , Scott Kingery , and a Phillie Phanatic dispute, Mitch Keller and another kind of extreme BA...

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about the Texas-Cleveland Corey Kluber trade, the Diamondbacks signing Madison Bumgarner , the fallout from both moves, and what Kluber and Bumgarner meant to their franchises, and then, in the first installment of a three-part series, discuss stories that they overlooked about 10 teams in 2019, touching on Mike Soroka , Corbin Burnes , Tommy Edman , Dillon Mapl...

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about baseball’s busy week and the Giants and Marlins moving in their outfield fences, then discuss the Angels’ signing of Anthony Rendon , touching on Rendon’s greatness and similarity to Mike Trout , what the Angels still need to do to contend and their outlook for 2020, Shohei Ohtani ’s probable workload, the Dodgers’ relatively...

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller debate the merits of a possible Mike Trout fun fact, banter about Nomar Mazara and the evolving definition of “slugger,” discuss the record Gerrit Cole contract and its implications for the Yankees, the battle to be the best team in baseball, the Dodgers and Angels without Cole, baseball’s competitive balance, Scott Boras, the perplexing free-agent ma...

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley link up during the Winter Meetings for a brief bonus episode in which Meg tries to stump Ben about genuine and fake media-scrum statements supposedly made by baseball superagent Scott Boras. Audio intro : Yo La Tengo, " If it’s True " Audio outro : Jethro Tull, " Sparrow on the Schoolyard Wall " Link to photo of Boras scrum Link to o...

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller follow up on (o)possums playing dead, discuss the Nationals signing Stephen Strasburg to a record contract for a pitcher and the implications for the Nationals, Scott Boras, Anthony Rendon , and Gerrit Cole , banter about the possibility of Shohei Ohtani hitting on the days he pitches, the elections of Marvin Miller and Ted Simmons to the Hall of Fame, MLB moving the a...

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about covering transactions past and present, the latest eye-catching comments by Scott Boras, the Tommy Pham trade and Blake Snell ’s candid real-time reaction to it, and what the busy signing season so far augurs for the future of free agency and labor relations, then answer listener emails about players with more times caught stealing than strikeouts an...

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller discuss a crowdsourced effort to help baseball writer Jen Ramos , then banter about hot stove terminology and why free-agent activity seems to be picking up, analyzing the implications of a busy non-tender deadline day and the expectations-exceeding signings of Drew Pomeranz , Mike Moustakas , Cole Hamels , Zack Wheeler , José Abreu , and others, as well as changes in...

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter anew about José Abreu ’s perplexing RBI total, then predict and discuss the answers in the sequel to “the Crasnicks,” a survey of front-office executives on hot-button offseason questions conducted by ESPN’s Jesse Rogers. Along the way, they touch on the four-player Padres-Brewers trade involving Luis Urías and Trent Grisham , the Orioles...

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the artifacts from the 2019 season that will be preserved by the Hall of Fame, and then (32:25) Ben talks to FanGraphs’ Jay Jaffe about the 2020 Hall of Fame induction cycle, including the shrinking of the ballot backlog, first-timers Derek Jeter and Bobby Abreu , whether Jeter will be elected unanimously, Larry Walker ’s chances in his last ye...

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about Charlie Finley’s dual “innovations,” Harvey and Little Blowhard, then answer listener emails about Chris Davis and why some veteran players may be unwilling to change, whether Gerrit Cole could regress away from Houston, the purpose of punishing the Astros for sign-stealing and how many years of draft picks a team would give up in exchang...

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about what the Padres’ 2017 Rule 5 trio is up to now, the Mariners’ aggressive Evan White extension, how teams would distribute their spending if every player (amateur or pro) were a free agent but spending were capped at a percentage of MLB revenue, the just-announced All-MLB Team, the White Sox signing Yasmani Grandal , whether the early action on...

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley host a FanGraphs Live! event and EW taping at Subculture in Manhattan, featuring three panels comprising seven guests: “Major League Update” (current events and New York baseball) with FanGraphs’ Jay Jaffe and The Athletic’ s Lindsey Adler and Mark Carig ; “Baseball By the Numbers” (sabermetrics and Statcast) with FanGraphs’ Cr...

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller talk to Paul Dickson, author of The Hidden Language of Baseball: How Signs and Sign-Stealing Have Influenced the Course of Our National Pastime , about, well, what the book’s subtitle says, including the origins of sign-sending, the earliest allegations of sign-stealing, historical precedents for the Astros’ sign-stealing scheme, the effects of sign-stealin...

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about “sinister right-handers” and scientific songs, then discuss the latest revelations about the Astros sign-stealing saga before reviewing the overlooked accomplishments of some of 2019’s league leaders and discussing the role of bold ink in the era of sabermetric saturation. Audio intro : Liam Gallagher, " Bold " Audio o...

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the first stirrings on the free-agent market, the latest developments in the Astros sign-stealing scandal, where MLB investigation’s might lead, what the appropriate punishments would be, the psychology of sign-stealing, whether pitchers should call pitches, fighting technology with technology, Mike Trout ’s MVP award win, a fixable flaw in the...

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about the latest linguistic crimes by Scott Boras, then discuss the Astros sign-sealing scandal, touching on Mike Fiers’ role in the revelations, whether sign-stealing actually benefited the Astros, the immorality of sign-stealing, what the Astros’ punishment should be, the history of sign-stealing, whether the Astros sign-stealers acted alone, wheth...

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about the baffling trade rumors swirling around Mookie Betts , Francisco Lindor , and Kris Bryant , try to discern why they would be on the block, discuss how the likelihood of the top-rated team winning the World Series compares to the likelihood of the best team taking the title in other sports, and then conduct their fifth annual free-agent-contract over/unde...