Report on a Project for Idle Moments

For the past couple of months, I have been working my way through the Carson Cistulli-Dayn Perry podcasts at Fangraphs, from the very beginning up to the point where I started downloading them as part of my Fangraphs.com podcasts-via-iTunes subscription, which I took up about a year ago.

Let me start the report with my initial thought about these conversations, which is that they were a sorry example of what happens when one has a position of authority, as an editor, and a misplaced sense of what might appeal to an audience. In other words, they are exercises in self-indulgence, of a kind that, having worked myself in the media for several years, I am all too familiar with. So often one hears 'wouldn't it be a good idea to...' from people either on the fringes of the industry, or outside it altogether. A professional examination of the idea leads to the answer 'no, it would not'. This is rarely enough to stop an idea with supporters in the right place. And yet — although I don't know where to find download data for these Cistulli-Perry exchanges, they do appear to have an audience of some kind. There is a sort of 'what on earth will they do next?' fascination involved here. And that, my dear readers, is what drew me in.

Having first heard what was clearly either a fully matured version of an original idea or, possibly, a show that has 'jumped the shark', I assumed that it hadn't actually started like this. It just couldn't have. It has a certain polish, a shape that has been honed by some practice. The repartee is that of two chess players who have come together on many occasions, and know each other well enough that they will allow the other to advance towards a well-worn position, confident that, having stopped it before, they can accomplish the stalemate again. The individuals themselves are somewhat interesting, too.

Dayn Perry is a figure of some renown in the sports media of the internet era. He currently works for CBS Eye on Baseball, 'the home for all baseball fans' as he repeatedly reminds us. However, at the time the podcasts commenced, he was, like many talented individuals, underemployed by a system that is as ruthless as any nineteenth-century factory in taking in young men and transforming them into prematurely aged, broken individuals, who move from casual job to casual job, trying to piece together a sufficient income to keep body and soul together. The media industry is a cruel place, where at times even 'who you know' joins 'what you know' as a worthless commodity. His persona as presented in the mature versions of the podcasts is of a foul-mouthed, crass individual with a rather better estimation of himself than is warranted. Like the archetypal sophomore literature student, his intent is to make you remember him through his ability to disturb the bounds of propriety. Although he now lives in that most American of cities, Chicago, he is originally from Mississippi. His contempt for his origins is repeatedly manifest, and being a Southerner turned Midwesterner, he bears a cross of arrogant insularity, a burden he does not recognise. For a while, he emphasised a sort of ultra-patriotism that might be seen as an aspect of this insularity; a costume that, obviously satirical, has lost its former prominence. When he isn't playing a part, Perry is clearly a man of boiler-plate American liberal views. Mostly, he just seems to be in a temper.

Carson Cistulli is at first glance a far more sympathetic character. His vocal manner strives to achieve a kind of patrician rectitude, although that vowel at the end of his surname is the death knell for any serious attempt to achieve membership of the WASP Ascendancy. However, no people do patrician elegance better than the Italians, so Sig. Cistulli should treat this supposed shortcoming with the kind of patrician contempt that from time to time he unleashes against Perry, when the latter's transgressions go too far. Like Perry, Cistulli is a student of literature specifically. Unlike Perry he has some knowledge of civilisation more generally. He has odd blind spots, however, as the occasion when he plainly seemed unaware of what a Pietá is. His grasp of Classical culture is far stronger than a typical member of his generation, which is to be applauded in these grim times for our Western heritage. His generously paternalistic politics match this old-fashioned patrician manner. He claims to be an elitist, and I heard no reason to doubt this assertion. It is all of a piece. While some might assert he is pretentious, he shows sufficient familiarity with demotic culture to belie that notion. ('Pretentious' is usually bandied about by people lashing out at the possibility that one is looking down at their cultural choices. One is not really interested in their cultural choices, and they mistake a lack of interest for a feeling of superiority.) The fact is, at second glance, Cistulli is a far more sympathetic character, too.

Yet these personas are finished. Tracing the history of the podcast, one can see the development. Most significantly, when the series began, there was an attempt to link these conversations with goings-on in the world of baseball. The very first had an introductory character, and Perry is very guarded. The shape of the future became apparent in a subsequent encounter, where there were minor eruptions such as remarks about Cistulli's ethnic heritage, and the first bleeping-out of Perry swearing like a trooper. However, Perry goes on to fret about this shocking attempt, pleading with Cistulli not to post the conversation so that his mother won't hear. If anything, in this episode the two almost reverse their later characters, with Perry dodging all of Cistulli's little jabs. Neither persona was as yet crafted as fully as it would be. Cistulli is far from his patrician demeanour, especially in his vocal manner, while Perry is not universally out to shock.

Two weeks later, under the title 'The Great Dayn Perry Experiment' we had the first free-form chat between the two, during which Perry answered demands for 'Trick or Treat' on Hallowe'en, a remarkable metaphor for what was to come. Are these podcasts 'tricks' or 'treats'? That is for each listener to determine. Cistulli characterised this podcast as a search for a new style, suited to Fangraphs. The opening music, while still Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, was changed from 'The Charmer' to 'Spanish Flea', which people of my vintage might remember from The Dating Game. Yet they weren't quite ready to dispense with baseball altogether, as they talked over the recent St Louis Cardinals victory over the Texas Rangers in the World Series. They conclude with an agreement, between themselves, that this had been a 'terrible' podcast. It is hard to disagree that this was a trick, perhaps because they still held that the podcast had to discuss baseball.

The nadir of this stage of experimentation came with 'Dayn Perry, mustachioed gentleman' during which one heard Cistulli nearly break down in tears of frustration at Perry's unwillingness to co-operate with the production beyond responding to Cistulli's questions. The episode ended with 4 minutes and 33 seconds of dead air, an homage to John Cage. This was followed by the first episode in which we see, nearly fully formed, the personas that I have described above, as Perry turns from a defensive churlishness to a truculence that Cistulli applauds. The chemistry between the two blossoms as they discuss Perry's history as a baseball-card collector, (a topic that dissipates the truculence momentarily) and propose the vandalisation of Manny Sanguillén's Wikipædia page. Cistulli's trick is to get Perry to talk about his personal relationship to baseball, as opposed to talking about baseball events themselves. This was the elusive podcast gold.

For the acme of these exchanges one might find it hard to surpass Dayn Perry Can't Help You. However, even as the exchanges acquired a degree of comedic value, they began to decline in frequency. In the summer of 2012, they began to appear biweekly, rather than the advertised weekly occurrence. An attempt at weekly appearances returned in the autumn, but after the World Series, it became quite clear that the two of them could no longer meet regularly, and in the course of 2013 they drifted into appearing about once a month. This is where things stand at the moment.

So what to make of these entertainments? Are they worth listening to? I give a reserved 'yes' in answer. They are not as funny as they think they are, and a lot depends on how Perry responds to Cistulli's attempts to pursue variety, as in the case of the most recent 'Allow Dayn Perry to Disappoint You', when Perry, daunted by being put on the spot by having to invent questions to answers supplied by the listeners, gives up on the project. However, when Cistulli begins by touching on his own personal vulnerabilities when confronted by a beekeeping PhD in 'Dayn Perry, Spleen of Chicago' we again achieve podcast gold. And that is the key. When these two address their own fears, or confront their own pasts, they create compelling listening. When they don't, we're all [beeped].

Jeffrey Loria, Sabermetric Hero?

Last year I finally got round to becoming a big consumer of baseball podcasts. One of my favourites was The Baseball Show with Rany and Joe, sponsored by the Baseball Reference Play Index. This past winter, Rany Jazayerli decided to hang up his microphone, and Joe Sheehan declined to continue the podcast either alone or with a new partner. That's just my lot in life, always a day late and a dollar short.

The reason I liked it so much is the same reason I tend to read op-ed columns I disagree vehemently with. The 'contentious statement' quotient was high, and stimulated a great deal of thought and research. In this context, it is worth noting that Baseball Prospectus' Effectively Wild podcast has inherited this sponsorship. The reason is that a recent podcast presented thoughts about the 2014 fortunes of the Miami Marlins. Nothing was liable to set off both Rany and Joe on flights of self-righteous dudgeon than mentioning the name of Jeffrey Loria. Indeed, when listening to today's sabermetricians one seems to think of Mr Loria as occupying the frozen centre of Hell, with three faces, bat's wings and gnawing on the souls of Judas Iscariot, Brutus and Cassius. Or, if that is too august a position to assign to him, that Lucifer would have sprouted a fourth face just for Jeffrey.

One might think that an Expos' fan would share such sentiments, but in this case one would be wrong. I do not think Mr Loria served the franchise in Montréal well; but I do think he served himself well, and that by the standards of today's sabermetrics he should not be consigned to the centre of anything except perhaps some kind of sabermetric Hall of Fame.

Like a lot of Baseball Prospectus' content in this year's annual, the essay (which I have not yet read) was not actually written by a fan of the team. Instead, a Mets' fan, David Roth, a staff writer at SB Nation and co-founder and editor of The Classical, took the job. Apparently the essay has Latin in it, which given the title of this blog must come as a recommendation. He appears to characterise the Marlins' front office as a 'doof junta', and the organisation itself as a piece of 'towering crude pop art'. 'Do [the Marlins] have any positive role in the business of baseball?' asks Sam Miller, one of the podcast's co-hosts. Roth responds that it is not just the Age of Loria that has established this reputation, but that Wayne Huizenga also had his part to play. We'll come back to that towards the end.

That opening question announces that this podcast will be an assault on Mr Loria's management of the franchise. This becomes plain later on when Miller asks,'Is he a bad dude?' Roth replies: 'He's a bad dude....Loria meddles. He cares. But he cares about all the wrong stuff, and he cares about it way too much.' Oh, he cares too much about stuff that Roth thinks is the wrong stuff. This just typifies how what Roth, Miller and Miller's co-host Ben Lindbergh actually say completely undermines the image they think they are constructing.

Such problematic discussion riddles the podcast. The image painted of the Marlins' ownership and administration is of a deceitful group. Some of this derives from the fire-sale trades that followed the unprofitable and underachieving 2012 team. 'I can't think of them as a team that is willing to deal in good faith,' says Roth, after describing how the Marlins will not give no-trade clauses to players, as opposed perhaps to giving them and then having to enter into negotiations about setting aside the clause when the opportunity to make a deal arises. The Marlins seem to take a fairly straightforward position here. If a no-trade clause is important to a player, he should tell his agent not to return calls from the Marlins.

The Marlins make a huge profit, according to Roth. He does not substantiate the opinion. It could well be the case, as before making a $7 million loss in 2012 according to Forbes, the Marlins averaged a profit of $42 million between 2006 and 2009. (BTW, it's worth noting that the team had to pay $155 million for the stadium, which is a little bit under the $168 million of profits made between 2006 and 2009.) Since then their profits gradually declined until a big jump in payroll to coincide with the opening of Marlins Park led to the loss. Chances are that, thanks to revenue sharing, the Marlins made around $40-50 million again. So let's grant Roth that point. Roth goes on to say, 'Loria's certainly a better businessperson than the Wilpons.' So he hasn't spent the money yet because the players the Marlins have at the moment are probably not ready to contend for a pennant. And this makes him a bad dude?

Well, Lindbergh seems to think that the obligation to make money is an onerous task to befall a baseball organisation, when he says 'You would think the typical GM would want to think of himself as something more than an enabler of the owner, or as someone who makes the owner more money.' Miller chimes in, '[Loria] goes behind his GM's back and signs Greg Dobbs...which feels like a weird way to meddle. He does this tear-down...this poorly received tear-down....And when he tore down, he tore down really incredibly effective immediately in building the farm system up. And he does seem to have some knack for bringing in free agents when he gets personally involved in wooing them....From a competitive perspective, is he better or worse than the median GM?' In answering, Roth has this to say about the Marlins under [Larry] Beinfest (and Mr Loria, if Miller's question is to be accepted in the form Miller posed it): 'They weren't cheap in the draft....They paid above slot. They did like all the things a team that was trying to draft well would do....Beinfest had free rein in this very limited very unnecessarily overactive way. I think he did more than a lot of other GMs would do.' So all the good things are to Beinfest's credit, while the bad are Mr Loria's fault?

And what about the fans? Lindbergh: 'I wonder to what extent it spoils the fan experience? Often the redeeming aspect of rooting for a bad team is that you can anticipate something good a few years down the road...you can imagine your team... building this core... and having a perennial contender. Whereas if you're the Marlins fan based on past precedent the most you can really hope for is that the strong farm system produces a bunch of guys all at once and that you can hang on to them for a year or two before you have to start talking about trading them.' Well, wait a minute. Those chaps traded in fire sales in 1998 and in 2012 were mostly free-agent signings or acquired in trade: Bonifacio, Buck, Buehrle, Infante and Reyes in 2012; or Alou, Bonilla, Brown, Leiter, Nen and Sheffield in 1998. I'll give Lindbergh a pass on Hanley Ramirez and Anibal Sanchez, who were acquired by the Marlins when they were still down on the farm.

The problem for Baseball Prospectus commenting in this way on the Marlins is tucked away in Baseball Between the Numbers, pp 306-25, 'Is Wayne Huizenga a Genius?', by Jonah Keri. Keri has this to say:

With apologies to sentimental types, the twin goals of a baseball team are: (a) to seize the opportunity when it arises and win the World Series and (b) to make money. Huizenga recognized that winners and losers are often separated by mere inches, the bat of an eyelash. He also saw a moneymaking opportunity, with a winning team likely to rake in the bucks and a dismantled winner likely to make more....Mensa has reserved a spot for Wayne Huizenga a tthe head of the table.

Connie Mack, beloved figure of bygone years said much the same thing about the relationship between profits and winning.

What we have discussed here is the 'success cycle', a not entirely accepted concept of newfangled sabermetrics. Among them, none of Roth, Miller nor Lindbergh really has an exact handle on the Marlins' application of this principle. Roth makes an important error when he says, 'Both of those World Series teams they burned down the next year.' Not true. The 2003 winner was not actually burned down until the Delgado signing during the 2004/5 offseason failed to carry them back into the playoffs. The tear-down came in 2005/6, when Lowell and Beckett were dealt to the Red Sox, Delgado to the Mets and Castillo to the Twins. This slip-up basically undermines his argument when he says in another place, 'They have this model that worked twice. I wonder if that entrenched that this is an OK way to do things.' This isn't quite right, because he misses the 2009 team, which was a further run at playoff contention. The missing link here is the lack of a big-name free agent signing. In 2010, the Marlins faded to .500, Fredi Gonzalez was fired in mid-season and the second-place finish of 2009 possibly seemed flukish. To me, the firing of Gonzalez, is a sign that Mr Loria expected a repeat of 2009. Mr Loria, remember, cares.

Nothing illustrates the difficulty of taking seriously the analysis by the 'experts' in this podcast more than an incident near the end. There is then about a minute-and-a-half of mocking of the veteran free agent signings by the Marlins this off-season, with Sam and Ben giggling like a couple of schoolboys over whatever might amuse schoolboys. (The names of Casey McGehee and Brian Bogusevic excite especial mirth.) This leads to a bit of cruel mockery of old baseball fans feeling at home in their dotage watching familiar names of yesteryear. I think I'm missing some kind of in-joke here. Earlier on, Roth characterises the experience of the Marlins' front office in a mental picture of Jeffrey Loria driving up in a golf cart and calling you an arsehole before driving off again. By the time he puts Sam and Ben in stitches, one is inclined to wonder what the difference is between that and calling people a 'doof junta'.

This basically was an excuse once again for the sabermetric chattering classes to throw the contents of their chamber-pots over Mr Loria, an unpopular owner because he is a hard-nosed businessman who is committed to another of those sabermetric themes, that baseball is a business. Mr Loria exploits a system that benefits him, but unlike the other 'welfare queens' (another of those negative images trotted out to attack Mr Loria), the evidence suggests that Mr Loria actually wants to win the World Series. If you want to attack someone for being a stingy owner only interested in pocketing revenue sharing and publicly financed ballparks, I would suggest there are better targets than him. While his franchise may have eschewed the single-minded pursuit of OBP (Marlins' hitting prospects have tended to be sluggers), and not bought into the notion TINSTAAPP (there is no such thing as a pitching prospect), in other respects it is a model of sabermetric strategy:
1. draft and develop prospects
2. buy or trade for talent at the right time
3. PROFIT!