About this episode
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 iTunes Feed (Please rate and review us!) Sponsor Us on Patreon Facebook Group Effectively Wild Wiki Twitter Account Get Our Merch! Email Us: podcast@fangraphs.com var SERVER_DATA = Object.assign(SERVER_DATA || {}); Source