The Only Rule Is It Has to Work

by Ben Lindbergh

  Everyone in baseball has a résumé, and every résumé has a “Goals” or “Objectives” section that’s supposed to tell a potential employer what the person wants to do. The language in these blurbs sounds like a horoscope that’s designed to describe every reader: It’s wordy and unspecific, just broad enough to make every opening a potential perfect fit. A typical example might say something like, “To obtain a position in the baseball industry that allows me to leverage my skill set in order to further the goals of the organization.” (In fewer words: “To get a job in baseball.”) The “Objectives” section of Yoshi’s résumé doesn’t beat around the bush: “To be the first Japanese manager/coach in Major League Baseball history.” An indy-league managerial job would be a nice stepping-stone: There’s yet to be a Japanese-born manager of any American pro baseball team.

  Yoshi arrived after spring training started, and we’ve talked to him only briefly. But on the eve of the season, he seeks us out to ask for intel. He tells us that he’s heard what we’ve said about stats, and he knows he has to be on board if he wants to manage in the modern game. To our delight, he makes this sound more like a learning opportunity than a chore. “Give me all the evidences,” he says, using his word for what we do. I look at Sam and see that, like me, he’s having a hard time not hugging our unsuspected ally. “Yoshi, you have no idea how happy you just made us,” I say. He laughs and jabs me on the chest, which he does whenever he speaks—either affectionately or hard enough to hurt, depending on his mood. Right now he’s happy, and his taps barely register over the accelerated beating of our cold, stathead hearts. He walks away and leaves us wondering why we didn’t discover this side of him months ago.

  “I wish he were the manager,” I say to Sam.

  “Yup,” Sam responds.

  It’s too late now. The season is starting.

  * * *

  There’s nothing Sam and I like less than predicting baseball, a duty we’ve spent our careers trying and failing to duck. Fans love predictions, in some cases because they genuinely value the perspective of people who are paid to opine about baseball, and in other cases because predictions give them grounds to gloat when those people predict poorly. Stat-averse readers interpret the preseason projections that sites such as Baseball Prospectus publish as the embodiment of the hubris of statheads who think they can boil baseball’s beauty and complexity down to a few formulas. “The season isn’t played in a spreadsheet,” these detractors declare. And they’re right! But there’s no such thing as an analyst who believes the projections are perfect. Although projection systems give the appearance of precision, all they really represent is what each player’s past performance—generally a pretty good guide to his future performance—pinpoints as the most likely outcome in a range of possibilities. There are so many other potential outcomes, of course, that the odds are in favor of the actual result being one of the less likely ones. And the more we learn about baseball, the better we understand how misguided any sense of certainty is.

  If Sam and I had our druthers, we’d predict in probabilities instead of absolutes: Instead of saying “Royals in six,” we’d say there was an X percent chance of Royals in four, and an X percent chance of Royals in five, and an X percent chance of Royals in six, and an X percent chance of Royals in seven. This would be so boring to read that no one would ask us to make more predictions, and better yet, we’d probably be dead before anyone had enough data to decide whether we were good prognosticators or not.

  No one makes us predict how each Stomper will play, but against all odds Sam suggests we do so anyway, partly as a historical snapshot and partly so you can look at the misses and laugh at us later. Stompers predictions are impossible: We’ve never seen these people play outside of spring training, and we don’t have enough history to project their performance with any kind of confidence. And because we know there’s no way we’ll nail any of them, except maybe by accident, we predict with impunity.

  You’ll notice some similarities between our predictions, probably because we based them on the same limited looks, stat lines, and spring-training discussions. Here are the hitters:

  And these are the pitcher predictions:

  I think the spreadsheet guys (Gayday, Hvozdovic, Conroy, Conley) are going to be good, and I think Feh’s patronage players (Mochizuki, Miranda, Walker) are going to be bad. Feel free to use these projections to decide whether we’re biased and stupid or biased and smart.

  * * *

  It rains on Opening Day. Just a few drops, hours before first pitch, but a biblical deluge by Sonoma standards, enough to strike superstitious, overstressed minds as an ugly omen. Fortunately, there are no superstitious, overstressed minds on the Stompers. Nope, none at all.

  Our opponents are the Pittsburg Diamonds, which would have been better news in 2014. They were the doormats in the Pacific Association’s first year, finishing 22-56. The quickest way to convey how bad at baseball they were is to summarize the performance of a Pittsburg pitcher named Chris Nowlin.

  Nowlin is a knuckleballer; look him up on YouTube, and you’ll find him in what looks like a self-produced proof-of-life video, in which major league pitcher R. A. Dickey delivers a stilted endorsement as Nowlin looks on. The thirty-three-year-old right-hander, who didn’t play baseball in high school or college, had four games of pro pitching experience before making his Pacific Association debut. In 2007, he faced four batters in the American Association, allowing three runs without recording an out. In 2009, he faced five batters in the Continental Baseball League, recording one out and surrendering four runs. And in 2010, he got into two games for the Sussex Skyhawks of the Canadian-American Association, going a combined 4 1/3 innings and allowing 11 runs. The best one could say is that his ERA was heading in the right direction, falling from “infinite,” to 108.00, to 20.77.

  In his first start for Pittsburg in 2014—four years after the Skyhawks experience—Nowlin went 2 1/3 innings and allowed 7 runs, walking 6 of the 18 batters he faced. On many teams, in many leagues, that would’ve been his swan song. But with Pittsburg, he pitched five more times, including one game—not even his last one!—in which he faced 7 batters without earning an out. All told, Nowlin pitched 15 1/3 innings and allowed 24 hits, 4 homers, and 31 walks, along with 3 hit batters and 4 wild pitches. The good news: Nowlin’s ERA decline continued, as the damage dropped to 14.67 (plus 4 unearned runs). He hasn’t pitched professionally since, but he’s still several years away from his fortieth birthday, which for a knuckleballer means he has time.

  Nowlin’s game against the Stompers was the only one his team won (thanks to 11 runs of support). But the Stompers still got their share of the spoils in 2014, going 16-8 against Pittsburg despite finishing under .500 (26-28) against the Pacifics and the Admirals. Pittsburg’s poor pitching yielded 6.7 runs per game to the Stompers, who scored 5.9 per game against everyone else.

  There’s no telling how formidable the newly named Diamonds will be. The franchise nearly folded a few months before the season started, which would have forced the remaining clubs to play fewer games or field an always-on-the-road travel team to save the league. These jerry-rigged solutions were avoided when buyers were found between our March tryouts and Opening Day: Pittsburg native Aaron Miles, a former utility man for five major league teams, and Khurram Shah, the owner of a towing company. Miles, who was listed at 5-foot-8, 180 pounds during his playing career, appears to have augmented at least the latter figure substantially: His neck is a nonentity, and his belly protrudes to the point that he walks with a slight backward lean, as if trying to counteract the new ballast before him. But his forearms are still strong, and at thirty-eight he’s only three years removed from his last at-bat in affiliated ball. In nineteen games for Pittsburg in 2014 (before he bought into the team), Miles batted .358 with more walks than strikeouts. He’ll manage the team in 2015, as he and Shah try to tow the wreck to respectability.

  We’re still unsure whether the pairing has improved the team’s t
alent, but it’s clear that Pittsburg’s PR presence remains unpolished. A few hours before first pitch, Sam gleefully emails me a Diamonds press release about Miles becoming the manager, which one glance is enough to identify as a complete copyediting disaster. “Pittsburg’s awesome,” Sam writes. “This press release abruptly changes from third person to first. So fun.” I’m in full lower-expectations mode, so despite my amusement I send back a wet-blanket response: “Anything amateur they do makes it less impressive if we win or more embarrassing if we lose.”

  The Stompers’ Opening Day starting assignment—typically an honor reserved for a team’s best pitcher—goes to right-hander Matt Walker, who hails from British Columbia’s Bowen Island, a community of thirty-four hundred accessible by ferry from Vancouver. Walker is about to turn twenty-eight, which makes him the second-oldest pitcher and fifth-oldest player on our rookie-packed roster. Ten days ago, Sam and I didn’t know he existed; five days ago, we would have had trouble picking him out of a crowd. This is only partly a reflection of our failings as team executives. Mostly, it’s a reflection of the fact that he crashed spring training.

  Walker isn’t a returning player, a spreadsheet guy, or a friend of Feh’s: He simply showed up, with the backing of Mochizuki, the third-oldest player on the team and Feh’s confidant. The two played together in Maui in 2012, as part of the North American League that preceded the Pacific Association. Whatever Moch saw in him doesn’t show up in the stats: Walker allowed more than five runs per nine innings and struck out only 10 percent of the hitters he faced. That made him the second-worst of the five pitchers on Maui’s staff who got at least ten starts—and the only one less effective was Eri Yoshida, a twenty-year-old female knuckleballer with a 60 mph fastball. More discouraging still, Walker hasn’t pitched professionally since that season, devoting most of his time to building up a business as a handyman back in British Columbia.

  On the Thursday before Walker’s season-opening start against Pittsburg, he received a stay of execution in the conference room at the Stompers’ office, where Theo, Feh, and I (with Sam on speakerphone) met to finalize the roster before informing the players the following day. The four of us took turns listing our recommended cuts to the pitching staff, hoping for enough overlap to make the decisions easy. I named Walker and two 2014 Stompers, Jesse Garcia and Erik Gonsalves. Everyone agreed on Garcia, a lefty who’d posted an ERA near 6.00 in his first pro season. No one fought hard for Gonzo, particularly after Theo noted that we could count on him to spend most of his money at Town Square. But Feh was incredulous when I named Walker. “Why do you have Walker at the bottom?” he asked. “What did you not like?”

  I had a hard time articulating my objections, partly because I’d watched Walker for only a couple of innings in our entirely-too-short spring training. I didn’t dislike him. It was more that I hadn’t seen him do anything to demand my attention. His surprise arrival wasn’t the only reason Sam and I couldn’t recognize him until we’d memorized every other player’s appearance and learned to identify him by process of elimination. He was built to blend into a crowd, six feet and slender, with friendly but forgettable features. His facial hair was right on the border between blond and red, longer than “stubble” but shorter than “goatee.” His accent was only kind of Canadian. He didn’t have an odd delivery, he didn’t throw hard, and none of his secondary stuff seemed nasty. He just sort of slipped out of our minds, while other players did something to cement themselves. I tried to express this, leaving out the bit about his hair.

  “At the end of the day, this is a guy that’s already proven himself professionally,” Feh answered. (I wasn’t sure what he’d proven about himself professionally, but I stayed silent.) “And there are some guys on the team who played behind him who would pretty much cosign for him. And even Wenrich has cosigned him too, and I respect Wenrich as a catcher who has a pretty good opinion about pitchers’ stuff. I liked his angle. He was hitting all those spots. Obviously it was his first time pitching, but just his demeanor—I really liked the guy. And to be honest, he wants the ball, and no one else has really come at me and said so. Said to me—they’ve went to girls in the bar and said something.” We all laugh: Nothing like a little rookie-mocking to lighten the mood.

  “But at the end of the day,” Feh continued, “I was looking to give him the ball on frickin’ Monday. I wasn’t sure, but I said that to him and, dude, he was like, ‘I want the fucking ball, I’m gonna frickin’ get this shit done.’ I was like, ‘That’s what I’m talking about.’”

  There was silence for a few seconds as I (and presumably Sam) considered whether wanting the fucking ball was sufficient grounds for getting it. Then Theo spoke up in one of his frequent attempts to appease all parties.

  “Walker is really complicated,” he said. “He’s got no work visa. He’s the nicest guy I think we have on the team. He’s got some experience. His visa paperwork was submitted today. The other part of the complication with him: We have a volunteer contract in the league, and just to pitch and get a chance to play again, he would be willing to play as a volunteer this year.”

  Feh piggybacked on the last part. “He already said he’ll sleep in his damn truck, he doesn’t care,” he said. “And he came up to me and said, ‘Hey, thanks for having me out.’ I want to see what this guy can be. Moch is kind of like me, he doesn’t give a lot of people credit. He was all over me from the beginning about this guy: ‘Just let him come, just let him come.’”

  I didn’t fight any further, for a few reasons. For one thing, we didn’t have much data: In the absence of a wide slate of statistics or our own extensive scouting, endorsements from veterans and/or former teammates like Feh and Moch were among the most useful info we had. For another, I figured if his first start stunk, we’d send him on his way, assuming a US immigration officer didn’t do it for us. For a third thing, there wasn’t another pitcher I liked better, and we did need someone to eat innings for ten days, when the major league draft would end and free us to recruit more unsigned spreadsheet standouts. And lastly, hey, he’d play for free. He wouldn’t take up any payroll room, and I couldn’t question his enthusiasm.

  The only thing necessary for the triumph of Feh was for us to do nothing, so when I dropped my objection, the matter was essentially settled. Walker would make the team as long as someone didn’t demand the ball even more forcefully before first pitch. Next time someone tries to tell you to “put yourself out there”—join an online dating site after a bad breakup, maybe, or interview for a job whose requirements you can’t quite meet—remember Matt Walker, the patron saint of putting oneself out there. Walker went from total stranger to Opening Day starter in the span of ten days, just by being around.

  * * *

  The Stompers open their season at Arnold Field on Monday, June 1, bumped up a day because of a conflict with Tuesday’s Sonoma Valley High School graduation ceremony. Monday is the Pacific Association’s usual off day, so not only is this the only Monday during the regular season with a game on the schedule, but it’s also the only game day without two contests taking place at one time. That makes this the only opportunity to get all our advance scouts together without missing action elsewhere, so we turn it into a crash course with three separate training stations. Graham Goldbeck, who’s visiting from Sportvision headquarters in San Francisco, will teach us the ins and outs of operating the PITCHf/x software. Zak Welsh will demonstrate how to log games in BATS. We’ll also set up a camera and tripod beyond the left-center-field fence, trained on the pitcher and batter, which will give us a view not unlike the we’re accustomed to see on TV. As the game goes on, we’ll rotate our assistants from station to station, where we hope they’ll absorb everything they need to know to operate on their own.

  Hours before first pitch, I walk the few blocks from my rented cottage to Arnold Field. A few of our scouts have beaten me to the ballpark and are floating behind home plate, where they’re probably wondering what they’ve signed up for. Eric spot
s us standing around and asks us to help complete the park’s final preparations by putting up billboards on the outfield fences and bunting behind home plate. It’s not a normal game day task for baseball operations employees, but there is no normal in the independent leagues. We put down our laptops and stopwatches and pick up power drills and plastic twist ties. You wouldn’t think it would be possible to put up bunting backward, but the four of us find a way.

  When we’re finished, we watch batting practice. The Stompers swing first, followed by the Diamonds. I stand with our advance scouts down the left-field line, looking over the fence between the visiting dugout and the Leese-Fitch Lounge/Lagunitas Beer Garden, an enclosed area with seating where fans can get their alcohol on while watching the game. Noah Clark, always one to speak his mind, shares his first observation as a scout. “Their guys look better than your guys,” he says.

  I’m already thinking the same thing. The Diamonds are big, and it looks like they’re hitting a lot of line drives that keep carrying. Right fielder Nash Hutter is 6-foot-2, 210, and looks more like a man than most of our players, with the prominent, well-rounded rear that scouts call “baseball butt.” Left fielder Brandon Williams is 6-foot-3, 215, and built like a track star. First baseman Mike Taylor is bigger than both of them. When we look at the lineup card posted inside the Diamonds’ dugout—their roster, in typical Pittsburg fashion, is the only one in the league that isn’t online—we see a surprising name: Nick Oddo, the catcher we came close to signing before Wenrich was an option. The one that got away didn’t get very far.