Jack Morris Pitching to the Score, David Eckstein Doing All the Little Things: The Baseball Intangibles Thread

I think one story that always stood out to me was something that happened in 2004 with the cubs, in that disappointing follow-up season to their even more disappointing postseason meltdown in 2003. There was these supposed moment when Kerry Wood smashed Sammy Sosa's boombox with a baseball bat. It made me wonder just what the chemistry was on that team over the previous several seasons, even the ones that were more successful. The way they acted when the bartman moment happened just felt like a team that was highly dysfunctional and not ready for prime time. Which is kind of why despite the pain of that, when they won in 2016 with a more homegrown team it felt like it was worth the wait.

Very relevant quote from Ball Four:

There was a rumor abroad in the land that the Astros were going to get Richie Allen from the Phillies and some of the Astros were against it. They said he’s a bad guy to have on a ballclub. Humph. I wonder what the Astros would give to have him come to bat just 15 times for us this season. It might mean a pennant. If I could get Allen I’d grab him and tell everybody that he marches to a different drummer and that there are rules for him and different rules for everybody else. I mean what’s the good of a .220 hitter who obeys the curfew? Richie Allen doesn’t obey the rules, hits 35 home runs and knocks in over 100. I’ll take him.

Dick Allen was far from an average player, so this is in line with NoTime's post.

(The more common view I've seen the last few years was that Allen's supposed difficulty was wildly overstated because of racism.)

Obviously this isn't to say that every player needs to fit in. Reggie Jackson, Jeff Kent, Barry Bonds, etc. did OK for themselves. But for the average player (most players are close to average, not superstars) I think it does matter.

Kent recalled a time one of his early Giants teammates, Orel Hershiser, drilled Álex Rodríguez with a pitch as unspoken retaliation for A-Rod wiping out Kent a day earlier.

“It’s something that I can’t quantify for you,’’ Kent said. “It’s not a state. But it’s a pride. The old cliché is, ‘I’m in the foxhole with you.’ It’s just an emotional attachment. Does it lead to an extra hit? I don’t know. But it can lead to this:

“If Orel’s pitching, I might not ask the coach to give me the day off. I might not stay out late at night. I might say you know what? My buddy Orel’s pitching tomorrow so I need to go prepare. You may have a little more of an aggressive attitude that could lead to more success.”

Both Bonds and Kent speak with remarkable candor about their highly functional contempt for one another. Together, they help stomp out the notion that chemistry means being BFFs.

“Why do you care that Jeff Kent is over there looking at properties for his hunting place? Who gives a crap?” Bonds says now. “When it came to game time, what name would you want on the back of the uniform of the guy playing second base? I want Jeff Kent.”

I think one story that always stood out to me was something that happened in 2004 with the cubs, in that disappointing follow-up season to their even more disappointing postseason meltdown in 2003. There was these supposed moment when Kerry Wood smashed Sammy Sosa's boombox with a baseball bat. It made me wonder just what the chemistry was on that team over the previous several seasons, even the ones that were more successful. The way they acted when the bartman moment happened just felt like a team that was highly dysfunctional and not ready for prime time. Which is kind of why despite the pain of that, when they won in 2016 with a more homegrown team it felt like it was worth the wait.

the intangibles of a nude Anthony Rizzo briefly canceled out by the black cat curse of Hector Rodon spraying aerosol shoe cleaner at his balls, the tiebreaker being the Heyward speech.

I was thinking about this very thread on the way to work this morning, and the post I initially actually came here to make was about Trevor Story. He’s been injured a lot the past two years which is one of those situations that happens, but NTBT’s post about guys feeling part of the team contributing applies here too, I think. He returned from injury and while his glove is elite, his bat isn’t there yet. But that’s not what I wanted to really talk about. It was about his influence on younger players off the field:

Encouraging Jarren Duran, who had an abysmal season last year and who started out in Triple A, to make the most of his natural athleticism, which paid off hugely for him this year*:

A conversation with injured teammate Trevor Story got him thinking about taking the extra base more often this season. Duran said he tries to put pressure on opposing outfielders knowing that even if they make a perfect throw, he still will likely have time to turn and get back to first base.

“At the beginning of the year, Trevor Story told me he’s going to have more hustle doubles than me,” Duran told reporters, per MassLive. “We all know he’s really fast and really good so I’m trying to capitalize on those hustle doubles before he gets back (in the second half of the season) and passes me up.

“He told me I need the head start so I’m trying to take full advantage before he gets back.”

Story views Mayer and the rest of Boston’s middle-infield prospects much the way Tulowitzki looked at him.

“It says a lot about (Tulowitzki),” said Story. “I can't be any more thankful to him for doing that for me. Some people look at it as a competition-type thing. You know, he's a shortstop, he's coming up to take your spot. He obviously had a different view on it. And I think that's the way it should be.

“These guys are a part of the organization, and they're gonna help us win at some point. I think that's a huge thing. And I want to embrace that, and I think Tulo showed me the way to do that.”

That play, in the rain, is burned into my brain - it came when there were still a lot of doubts about Casas and istr that Cora kind of peremptorily announced that Turner would start playing more first base. A real low point and I think not great from Cora. I could see Story being a manager some day.

Justin Turner needs to manage. He’d be great at it. Honestly seems to take everyone as they are and is viewed with so much respect by his teammates. And knows exactly how it is to struggle and fail, but how to win too.

Yeah Cora was like, JT is gonna play more 1B and then that lasted a (literal) day. But I remember that shot of him and learning that Story stepped up like that really made me think a lot of Story. It’s so easy to go, not my problem!

Whatever Tulowitzki had in Colorado, he had, to all appearances, lost it by the time he got to Toronto. He made it very clear right from the outset that he didn't want to be here. I don't know what went on in the clubhouse, but he struck me as a non-stop complainer, often injured, definitely past his prime (maybe even a creation of his home park--his mediocre numbers in Toronto weren't wildly out of line with his road numbers before the trade).

With some players, I imagine they weren't one type of person in every situation but different people at different points in their careers.

Yeah I can’t speak to any of that but your concluding point is fair.

maybe related to the thread, you wonder if playing in Denver causes players to lose their confidence when playing on the road, never admitting it but maybe privately wondering if they themselves are a Coors Field creation, which leads to even more of an extreme split, or just a major decline upon leaving the team. Maybe that's what happened w/Tulo. It didn't happen w/Walker, who over two years played the equivalent of one season w/St Louis and was really, really good. and Galarraga had a phenomenal season w/Atlanta after leaving Denver.

do denver pitchers get better after leaving denver? has that been proven? is it still a thing after the humidor?

Surely being a shortstop in the land of easy hitting means you’d have to be pretty good to thrive there

Definite topic for extensive research, what happens to players after they leave Colorado. (I'm sure there's been some.) Arenado has made out fine, though predictably there's been some offensive drop-off. Pitchers, too: I don't remember any notable cases of ex-Colorado pitchers turning into stars after leaving...Am I forgetting somebody? Ubaldo Jimenez had the one phenomenal year in Colorado and never did much after that with Cleveland or Baltimore.

definitely there have been some pitchers who were good, signed with Denver, were terrible, and then returned to being good when they left. Mike Hampton and Darryl Kile come to mind.

Holliday was very good w/St Louis and briefly w/Oakland, but obviously didn't reach those MVP heights he did with the Rockies.

Vinny Castilla became an offensive star in Colorado, left for 4 seasons and became largely mediocre or terrible, came back and promptly led the NL in RBI.

A possible intangible that I didn't mention in the introductory post: is losing a game that involves a squandered lead and/or blown save worse on team morale than a regular loss? Especially if you lose a bunch of such games in a short time-frame. I've always believed that such losses are worse, but others take the a-loss-is-a-loss-is-a-loss view. I don't know if that's quantifiable, although you could probably study it with large enough sample of teams that go through that.

I think "momentum" as it were doesn't really exist in baseball. Tough losses matter more to fans than the athletes, and the fans are the only ones debating this stuff.

Take last year's World Series: Astros blew the 5-0 lead in G1 with Verlander on the mound, and lost. They came back and won G2. But they got blown out in G3 to go down 2-1. There was talk about the Phillies having the momentum, that the series wouldn't even go back to Houston. So what happened? The Astros no-hit the Phillies in G4. And they won the series in six.

Baseball isn't like football, it doesn't lend itself to these rah-rah, let's go smash them speeches. If you smash your head against a locker between innings and go to bat looking to crush the bejeezus out of the ball, you'll end up flailing away at the plate and looking stupid against offspeed pitches. Baseball isn't that kind of game. I think that's why there aren't many team meetings in baseball, unless things are going really bad and there's a noticeable lack of team focus and motivation. You have to keep emotions fairly in check, and shrug off losses quickly.
It's counterproductive to get hung up on a loss when even the best teams lose 60 times per year.

Agree with all of that...but I'd still like to see a large-scale study of teams that lose a number of games because of blown saves within a short time-frame. Another way to say that: part of me thinks the primary difference between the 1983 Jays, an up and coming young team that suddenly found themselves in first place in late June and then had to contend with a bunch of nightmarish losses out of the bullpen--the Joey McLaughlin year--and the 2023 Orioles is Felix Bautista.

Again, I think it comes down to whether or not you think athletes have some special ability to not get down on yourself (or, in the aggregate, a team not get down on itself) when things take an ugly turn. That is a very human thing to do. Sometimes I'm willing to believe they do have that ability--I remember Kyle Lowry missing the championship-clinching shot in the finals and then coming out next game and hitting his first three or four shots--other times, no.

I don’t think baseball players are any more special than other athletes in that regard but the sheer volume of games played necessitates the old “turning the page” cliché, right?

In keeping with that, possibly it would have far more effect on a young team (like the '83 Jays).

Intangibles = grit, character, momentum, choking, leadership, mystique, a million things.

my sense is that these things only matter insofar as you believe in them, and that baseball people, who are inherently conservative, overwhelmingly do. also i doubt there's an athlete on earth who would say confidence isn't vital to performance.

('leadership' matters whether you believe it or not, though, as in the willie mays and trevor story anecdotes above)

until recently, most people in baseball management were former marginal players -- the backup catchers, the gritty utility guys (there are obvious exceptions, e.g. joe torre). and they valued the things that gave them their (slight) edge, like 'bulldog mentality'. but actual talent is better.

scouting reports historically have been essentially phrenology (and similarly racist). you can say a guy throws 91 or goes from first to third in however many seconds, but beyond that it's all 'tremendous mound presence' or 'peerless makeup' or 'parents are good people' or 'won't look people in the eye'. the astros took everything too far, but one can see luhnow's point about scouts -- they had electronic tracking in all their minor league parks first and could get actual data rather than whatever some dude who just drove eight hours had to say about a kid's body language.

otoh, unless you have godlike ability (and even griffey jr. had his struggles coming up) it *does* take a certain mental toughness to deal with all the failure, the inevitable unfairness, etc. before reaching and remaining in the majors. but that toughness doesn't look the same in everyone, and baseball tends to look for it in only one way.

if i had a point when i started i guess i've lost it now? essentially agree with clemenza that intangibles don't matter until they do, or vice versa

in “knuckleball!” - a not very good movie that nevertheless has a few nice pieces of film footage from games where wakefield was striking guys out etc - r.a. dickey talks a lot about the confidence to “be himself” particularly with the kind of skepticism that the knuckleball provokes. joe niekro and charlie hough served as mentors for awhile and niekro recalls telling dickey that before every pitch, imagine that one might be the best pitch you ever throw. there’s a lot of that in baseball, like “i hope the ball is hit to me” - you have to throw yourself into it 100% despite the likelihood of failure. it’s certainly very easy to see how any crack in that mentality could split and widen into a real problem

Geez, I loved Knuckleball.

One thing I've had to question myself on is the way the whole Jays culture changed when they traded away Teoscar and Guriel. I was definitely tired of the home run jacket and all the bells and whistles--Marcus Semien seemed like a beacon of sanity in the midst of all that--but after a year of this team's comparative blandness, maybe there's a tangible value to that stuff after all.

there's a lot of great footage in it but the interviews are pretty stilted and it's just pretty artlessly put together - totally worth it to hear these guys though obviously

Only saw it the one time...What I loved was the secret-society subtext of it, that these four guys--Wakefield, Niekro, Hough, Dickey--possessed some rarified knowledge that wasn't available to anyone else in the world, like they collected early blues 78s from a specific region of the country or transcribed ancient Aztec scrolls that no one else could decipher.

otoh, unless you have godlike ability (and even griffey jr. had his struggles coming up) it *does* take a certain mental toughness to deal with all the failure, the inevitable unfairness, etc. before reaching and remaining in the majors. but that toughness doesn't look the same in everyone, and baseball tends to look for it in only one way.

Never forget that Mays started his career 1-for-26 and crying in front of his locker. Never forget that after his incredible rookie of the year season, Willie McCovey struggled so much that he was demoted to Triple A for 17 games. And when you look at, let’s see here, the hundreds of thousands of prospects who didn’t have careers quite that accomplished, most of them struggled in a way that they eventually couldn’t overcome. Baseball is hard. Calm down.

Corey Seager must have used the word "resiliency" six times in a post-game interview I saw last night as explanation for the Rangers winning. I assume he's referring to a) their schizophrenic season, where they looked dead a few times, and b) the injuries they had to get past: his and deGrom's in the regular season, Garcia and Scherzer in the post-season.

1) Is resiliency an intangible, or is it more a skill, the ability to not be distracted by negative developments (perhaps helped along by Bochy's calmness that everybody talks about)?

2) Did that play a big role in their success, or did it have far more to do with the fact that, after Atlanta, they were able to mash the ball like no one else? They just needed a couple of weeks of good pitching at the right time to go along with that.

1) bit of both, I have lots of thoughts on this but I need to finish work & get my nails done

2) as above, but I don’t think you can be a successful team without resiliency. Regular season’s a marathon, players slump, postseason is another month on that if you go all the way.

1) cf “short memory” or “goldfish brain”

By your definition, I would call it more of a skill. Bochy was a master of it in SF too: remodeling the team he was given after the trade deadline, finding new roles for players during the postseason, working around injuries/slumps.

You probably could set up some kind of study that tries to measure this. Track how a team responds to losing streaks, to especially tough losses (e.g., squandering a big league), and to injuries. No idea how you'd do that, though--for an eight-game losing streak, say, what about the sixth, seventh, and eighth losses inside the streak? Why would they be treated differently than the win that ended the streak? (if that makes sense).

Corey Seager must have used the word "resiliency" six times in a post-game interview I saw last night as explanation for the Rangers winning. I assume he's referring to a) their schizophrenic season, where they looked dead a few times, and b) the injuries they had to get past: his and deGrom's in the regular season, Garcia and Scherzer in the post-season.

1) Is resiliency an intangible, or is it more a skill, the ability to not be distracted by negative developments (perhaps helped along by Bochy's calmness that everybody talks about)?

To quantify my bit of both comment, and to refer specifically to Bochy:

Fellas, you have taught me to look beyond impossible, to never say die, to never stop believing, and never, never give up on what you're trying to accomplish. ..Fellas, you've challenged me, you've entertained me with your backwards personalities, and you've had me in awe of your talent. Managing you guys has been one of the greatest joys of my life. Thank you for making me a better manager and a better person.

The Rangers were coming off their sixth straight losing season, but Bochy talked only about moving forward. He made it clear: I’m not coming out of retirement to lose. And he added, even more meaningfully: I know this team can win.

“It was really empowering,” pitcher Jon Gray says. “I felt like I was a part of something way bigger than myself.”

Combine that empathy with consistency, and a certain calmness comes over a club. Players are in tune not only with Bochy’s in-game strategy, but also the routines he establishes, reducing the physical strain on players by ordering a late bus to the field, or canceling batting practice. Again, it sounds simple. But Heaney, a 10-year veteran, says he has never played for a manager who understands the rhythm of a season quite like Bochy.

“That’s something that is hard to explain, but you feel it,” Heaney says. “It puts you a little more at ease.”

Earlier this season, during a rare time when the Rangers were not hitting well, Bochy called over Hyers(the hitting coach) in front of the other coaches.

“Man, I’m looking for a really good hitting coach,” Bochy said. “Have you seen one lately?”
…
“There is a lot of banter that goes on,” Wilson says, laughing. “He jokes with you, messes with you, and that makes you feel comfortable when situations do come up and you can have a serious conversation.”

Bochy's approach obviously works for him, or at least has in select years. Other managers succeed with very different approaches. Famous counter-example: Earl Weaver got what he wanted from Jim Palmer by preying on his insecurities. Or Casey Stengel, who, in the '50s (according to James), used a kind of creative anxiety: do better or suddenly find yourself dropped in the order, or platooned, or worse. Those last two approaches might not work so well today. It's like teaching kids, though, or probably any kind of leadership/managerial role in any context. Somehow, you have to get everyone on board. (Somebody, can't remember who: "I keep the half of the team who hates me away from the half that's not sure.") I've seen teachers do that countless different ways. And you have to have the talent, obviously. Based on Ball Four I take it that most of the Pilots loved playing for Joe Schultz as much as Bouton did, and you couldn't get more easygoing than him. Did not translate into wins.

Managers aside, can you quantify resiliency? I don't know.

It's a group dynamic that relies on its constituent parts, and is pretty unpredictable as a result. I've certainly seen it in a business context.

baseball is probably the most paranoid of professional sports in that anybody can be benched or sent down at any time, really, unless you're on a big long-term contract. It breeds superstition and a kind of jumpiness that guys mitigate in a lot of ways but which is still the background ambience to your working life. if a manager like Bochy can come in and make you feel secure, that's absolutely enormous

I was watching this (very good btw, watch it) interview with Lucas Giolito by Chris Rose & then ended up watching one with Tyler Glasnow (who I love) and Glasnow had interesting things to say about this topic. He used the word resilience several times.

Glasnow was asked about how he reacts to getting lit up because he is visibly distressed when he’s doing badly. He gave a pretty long answer on the subject that basically boiled down to: he is naturally a pretty emotional pitcher and when he was a Pirate he spent a lot of time trying to be stoic and spending effort on that instead of his pitching. He says his whole family are “If you feel something (negative), get it out, and you’re fine” and he finds that approach better if he makes a bad pitch in terms of being able to play through it and keep going. He leans strongly on the side that resilience is a learned skill and that you should channel your natural strengths into what can help you build it.

That's interesting because I was thinking only about team resilience, rather than individual resilience. For a team, it's definitely a skill acquired by the manager and the front office. They need to juggle a lot of moving parts and do so every day for six months.

Related to Tracer's point: baseball isn't like football or basketball, where the team revolves around one or two players who are bigger than the team and essentially can call their shots. On even the best teams, there will be key players who will win or lose their jobs over the course of the season. A closer might get demoted but he becomes a 7th or 8th inning guy and the manager needs to shuffle the roles of his relievers and get everyone to buy into it without letting ego and jealousy get in the way. Teams have to navigate through maybe dozens of situations like that every year, and it's all on the manager to make it work. That's definitely a skill.

Clemenza will roll his eyes when I post this (no shame, I’m doing it at myself), but this story immediately came to mind reading your last part. From 2019, the Bochy retirement:

As a former player still coming to terms with the incandescence of his career, Lincecum is hardly unique. But his spirits lifted when asked to name a time when Bochy inspired him or made an impact on him.

Lincecum pointed to a game in late May of 2012 when he gave up six runs at Miami to raise his ERA to 6.41 – when he showed the first real cracks in his Cy Young armor. Bochy and Sabean called him in for a summit.

“He just kind of lifted me up to get me to believe in myself again,” Lincecum said. “You know how emotional I can get. I can get down on myself and it turns into almost a hurricane or a wave and you can’t get out of your own way. And the belief they had in me definitely pushed me to want to be out there more. They knew who I was. I was an emotional player and they wanted me to continue to be that guy.”

Lincecum rode that trust when Bochy asked him to embrace a bullpen role that October, and it translated to this: six appearances, 14 2/3 innings, one run, three hits, two walks, 19 strikeouts and another parade ride on a Cable Car bus to City Hall.

I'm all for managers who are sensitive to every last player. I was the 12th man on my high school basketball team, rarely played, so when I coached kids in school, I made sure that if you were good enough to make the team, you played every game. (I may have bent a bit the one year we made the finals in baseball--but everyone would have played in the games leading up to that.)

I'm still trying to figure out what an intangible is, and it makes my head hurt after a while. It's often used as a pejorative: something that doesn't really exist, like clutch hitting as a repeatable skill. I'm more inclined to go with something that can't be numerically quantified, so you rely on the eye test, faith, etc. (Why I wondered above if you could quantify resiliency somehow.)

Which immediately leads to a problem. Clutch hitting can be quantified in a number of ways--people have studied it, and they've concluded that with the overwhelming majority of players, it's purely random from year-to-year. So under my definition, it's not an intangible; it can be measured. Under the other definition, it is an intangible; it's not real, not in the sense that the ability to hit HR or steal bases is real.

If you find that confusing, you should. I do.

It may be quantifiable, but if it's truly random it's not predictable.

Maybe that's the defining attribute.

"Leadership" and "grittiness" are two classic intangibles, neither of which can be quantified.

(When Thermo and I went to a Jays game a couple of years ago, we were talking about how there was, historically, an unspoken racial bias to the concept of grittiness--it was almost exclusively granted to white players. We had a hard time coming up with Black or Latin players from the past who were admired for their grittiness (past maybe the most obvious example of all, Jackie Robinson...we eventually came up with a couple of good examples, but it took a while).

I'm still trying to figure out what an intangible is, and it makes my head hurt after a while. It's often used as a pejorative

it's literally never used as a pejorative

Completely, emphatically disagree. In the earliest days of sabermetrics--late '70s--one of the stated goals was to strip the evaluation of players of all those intangibles like "clutch," "grittiness," etc.

If it wasn't something that could be measured, quantified, and--as Jim Beaux points out--repeated, it was a complete myth.

Athletic piece: "Is data dead? MLB’s search for the next competitive advantage may have a softer touch"

Bound to happen sooner or later:

Every team still needs to participate in the arms race. There may still be some data streams that are left to be uncovered. But the numbers business is heading for a certain maturity. And as teams truly look for a new edge, they might want to look for some of the soft skills like humility and empathy, or think about the processes that turn that data into actions on the field, as much as any specific data coming into the pipe. Increasingly, everyone’s looking at the same numbers.

Calling David Eckstein.

To be fair, that article isn't anti-data, most of the focus is on how to apply the data.

"Soft skills", "coachability", and so on (as we've discussed previously, such as earlier in this thread) aren't silly Eckstein-like intangibles!

It's only data analysis that gets targeted in these sorts of articles. Nobody ever writes about how all the teams have access to the same equipment, the same training regimens, the same medical staff ... everyone's doing the same on-field prep, so what's left to learn?

Nobody would write that because it's a ridiculous suggestion.

Marcus Stroman situation with the Yankees is a lot of this.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/43830831/yankees-marcus-stroman-not-camp-first-two-workouts

Yankees manager Aaron Boone said he "had an idea" that Stroman would miss workouts Wednesday and Thursday after speaking with the pitcher earlier in the week. Boone said he was in communication with him both Wednesday night and Thursday morning, declining to divulge Stroman's reasoning for the absence.

"I'm not going to speak for him," Boone said. "You can ask him for the reasons. I want him here, obviously, but we also have to respect the rules that are set up."

…

"He's a prideful player," Boone said. "He's a guy that's had a great career. It's a little bit of an awkward situation, obviously. So of course I want him here, and I'm trying to keep nudging him to get here. But, again, you also have to respect the fact that this is something players are allowed to do. There's a mandatory date and he's choosing that right now."

writing a story about someone refusing to give up 10 days of vacation because their employer would rather they simply came to work

It's a real "situation"!

xp the point is that it’s a pretty strange situation to be in for pitchers and catchers reporting, no?

it is a strange situation . . . that owners will use to portray players as selfish and overpaid when they don't go above and beyond the demands of their contracts. and that espn dot com and writer jorge castillo have chosen to highlight for reasons one can only guess at

looking forward to their exposé on all the other players who merely report on time rather than 10 days early

It’s not ten days early when pitchers and catchers have reported is the point though? The point they are making is it is because they’re trying to trade him. I don’t disagree that Yankees have mishandled that situation but it is in fact a little strange that he swerved the first couple of days of official pitchers and catchers! Pitchers showing up now are doing so because of their teams reporting date for them, not because of wishing to show early. The Yankees anticipating that Stroman wound be unhappy they tried trading him, but not having a ready answer to save face when asked why he wasn’t there, is also pretty shambolic!

I was proven very wrong by Stroman and honestly, good for him. The Yankees need him now. As it happened situation blew over pretty fast - useful lesson for me in learning how to interpret media scuttlebutt.

This is going to be the intangibles show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iCBiPLXnjA

- failure
- failure in a big market
- the grind of 162
- strain on personal relationships
- dealing with pressure

I’m really curious as to whether the shitshow upthread, where Cora admitted to getting Bello to throw at Judge, is included. We know already Duran using the slur towards the fan isn’t in there as live footage because Netflix had stopped filming for a while due to budget reasons (I think they also missed the Reese McGuire Colorado brawl). Regardless, as a behind the scenes of a Major League team it should be of interest to anyone posting itt and most ILBBers.

There’s also a shot in the trailer of Ceddanne making a failed grab at shortstop and the audio over it is like HE’S A BUM. Supposedly some of this cuts in famously awful Boston radio talk with footage of the players, which that feels like it’s part of.

Austin Hedges is the Intangible Man:

Ostriches, butt cheeks and relentless energy: How Austin Hedges became an indispensable MLB teammate

How Cleveland’s Austin Hedges learned to stop worrying (about hitting) and love his job

Kurkjian: Why everyone loves Guardians catcher Austin Hedges

Finding myself writing about Jarren Duran again, is it

Previous post about his mental health struggles: Jack Morris Pitching to the Score, David Eckstein Doing All the Little Things: The Baseball Intangibles Thread
Previously: daddy issues Mojo Dojo Casas House: Boston Red Sox 2024
Post I’d totally forgotten writing (2023): To What Extent Does Your Life Revolve Around Alejandro Kirk? (The 2023 Blue Jays Thread)
Post about Jarren Duran calling a fan a slur: You can’t spell ‘no big contracts’ without RSN: 2024 regular MLB season thread!

Red Sox Netflix show is about to drop tomorrow and the embargo on reporting has lifted, and what’s being reported is this:

The episode builds from Duran’s upbringing as a smaller-than-average kid growing up in Southern California with a father who was very hard on him and includes interviews with his parents. Duran describes always having to work harder because he was smaller, but also never feeling like he was good enough. When Long Beach State recruited him in high school, he almost didn’t call back because he didn’t believe in himself.
…
The documentary shows Duran, who came up as a second baseman and transitioned to the outfield largely at the big-league level, struggling mightily through the end of 2021 and particularly 2022.

The Red Sox believed Duran’s athleticism would be an asset in the outfield, but he had never fully solidified outfield fundamentals before his debut, and the repeated defensive failures compounded for Duran, especially as he struggled at the plate in 2022, hitting .221 with a .645 OPS in 58 games.

In late July 2022, Duran infamously lost a deep fly ball off the bat of Toronto’s Raimel Tapia with the bases loaded at Fenway Park. As the ball bounced past him and Alex Verdugo raced to retrieve it, Duran stood and stared blankly as Tapia rounded the bases for an inside-the-park grand slam that went viral.

…

Two weeks later, there was another tough incident where Duran misplayed a ball in the outfield in Kansas City and then got into a shouting match with fans in the stands as Verdugo held him back.

“I started thinking about when I debuted, how I felt like I was on a frickin’ island all by myself and the world was falling apart beneath my feet,” Duran says.

The Netflix documentary shows Twitter posts and media clips mocking Duran after the two incidents.

“I’d go out to center and hear, ‘Go back to Triple A, you don’t belong here,’” Duran recalled. “They didn’t know how hard I was trying.

“I couldn’t deal with telling myself how much I sucked every f— day,” Duran said.

That’s when the documentary shifts to Duran on a couch in a team hotel on the road where he reveals his attempt to take his life.

“I didn’t want to be here anymore,” Duran says, as Whiteley, off camera, asks if he means “here” as in with the Red Sox or on Earth.

“Probably both, that was a really tough time for me,” Duran says.

Duran describes sitting in his room and attempting to take his life. For reasons he says he still doesn’t understand, he survived unharmed.

Duran came out the other side and began to turn things around, but his story remains complicated. The series covers his rise to major league stardom, including his MVP performance in the All-Star Game, while also addressing the August incident where he was suspended two games for directing a homophobic slur at a fan in the crowd. The show pulls no punches in laying out the severity of Duran’s mistake and makes no attempt to let him off the hook.

Reflecting on the incident later the outfielder said the part he regrets most is hurting others.

“I got messages on Instagram from kids that were like ‘I know you didn’t mean that word in a bad way but it kind of hurt my feelings,’ and it was like a kid,” Duran said. “Seeing that I was like, damn, I let that kid down.”

While saving stuff from Steven Rubio's blog for a possible book, came across a still-working link to something he wrote for Baseball Prospectus about Dusty Baker. (Steven was a Giants fan who watched Dusty manage for a few years.) Haven't read it yet, so not sure how well it holds up--it's dated 1998, and baseball analysis is ever-evolving--but related to the thread topic of intangibles.

https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/166/evaluating-managers-another-trip-down-a-dusty-road/

Truly obscure baseball reference in Parks and Recreation, obviously courtesy Michael Schur, co-creator of the show and Joe Posnanski friend: a law firm with seven or eight names, ending with "...Vorp, and Eckstein."

Sure enough, I missed the beginning of the joke:

https://www.si.com/mlb/2013/10/25/david-eckstein-parks-and-recreation

I love it. Reminds me of all the Infinite Jest references in Season 5, which he apparently has film rights for. but enough tennis

Fantastic piece about Orion Kerkering and how he dealt with that awful play in last October’s NLCS:

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7007607/2026/02/04/orion-kerkering-phillies-nlds-error-offseason/

Great, great piece about failure and recovery and building resilience.

He stuffed his phone away in the immediate aftermath, which is why he missed the call from Brad Lidge the day after Game 4. Kerkering wouldn’t have picked up anyway; he did not have Lidge’s number and had never spoken to him. He wasn’t answering anyone. There were heartfelt words from friends and former coaches back home. A few Dodgers players had relayed supportive messages to Kerkering through his agent, Danny Horwits at Beverly Hills Sports Council. Some Phillies fans even reached out to the agency with positive notes to pass along.

When Kerkering and Lidge connected, it was Oct. 21 — 12 days after it happened.

“I just wanted him to know,” Lidge said. “Don’t beat yourself up over this.”

Lidge threw the final pitch of a World Series, authored a perfect season as a closer, and the hanging slider he threw to Albert Pujols in 2005 is still replayed over and over. Lidge was not right for two years after surrendering that prodigious home run with two outs in the ninth inning of Game 5 of the National League Championship Series. Three years later, the lasting image of Lidge hanging his head as a Houston Astro was replaced by euphoria as he dropped down to his knees with the Phillies in 2008.

Becasue of the WS, I'd actually forgotten all about him--will read tonight.