The utility player is returning to the Mets. He would like a shorter regular season, and to joke around with Logan Verrett without Noah Syndergaard telling him to stop.

Photo: Jim McIssac/Newsday. Good Fundies illustration.

Recorded on November 13, 2017. Edited for clarity.

Roger: Ty Kelly made his major league debut with the New York Mets in 2016. He batted 1.000 and was one of only four Mets to record a hit off of Madison Bumgarner in the winner-take-all Wild Card game. Then, he helped Israel win not one, not two, not three, but four games against higher-ranked countries in the World Baseball Classic. As a reward, the Mets…released him a month later. He spent 2017 on the Philadelphia Phillies, but we stayed fans of him anyway because he is the one and only: Ty Kelly.

Oh thank you very much for having me on and what a beautiful intro.

Brian: I forgot that we had a fourth hit in that [Wild Card] game.

Yeah, four hits.

R: Do you remember the other three players that got a hit?

Definitely yeah. Both Riveras and Asdrubal.

R: That is correct.

B: Dude that’s awesome.

Yeah, that was a fun game. I mean it’s the only playoff game I have ever been a part of, so…it was fun.

B: It didn’t feel *that* fun…

It was really easy for me because I pinch hit and then I was done, so I watched the rest of the game in the video room basically.

B: There are a lot of Mets fans Ty that thought you should have started that game. I don’t know if you were aware of that.

I wasn’t aware of that but I appreciate it, and honestly I was just happy to even be on the roster at all. You never know what’s going to happen with the roster and stuff like that but I guess it worked out. Since it was a wild card game, you carry more position players and things like that but I was just happy to be there basically.

R: Do you bring up the fact that you got a hit off of Madison Bumgarner in a playoff game every day of your life? Because I would.

Not every day but probably like three times a week for sure.

R: That’s fair.

Yeah. If there are people walking down the street that look like they may want to know then I’ll tell them. Honestly, the coolest part was that it was against the Giants and I’m from Northern California, so all of my friends and family and everything like that were watching so that made it that much cooler for me.

R: Were they rooting for you or for the hometown Giants?

Actually everyone was definitely rooting for the Giants. They have an insanely loyal fan base. Even all of my friends, I’m sure they were cheering for me but at the same time it was still 0–0, so I think they were all a little upset about it at the time.

B: Maybe they hoped you would hit a triple and get stranded…

Exactly, yeah. It would have been really cool if I was the only run to score there and we won it, but obviously it did not work out like that.

B: This is a Mets podcast, but we don’t only talk about the Mets losing in the playoffs. Just so you know, just highlighting one of your career highlights so far.

Well they didn’t lose at all in the playoffs this year, so that’s a plus.

B: Forward progress!

R: Before we got on the air we were talking about the fact that you recently became vegan.

That’s right.

R: How did that come about?

It came about via a couple of documentaries that I watched, and mostly just starting to think about things differently than I have been in past years for the rest of my life. I guess just trying to think more critically about everything and more existential and things like that. I understand everyone is going to be fine eating whatever they are eating, and probably a lot of health has to do with genetics and things like that, but it was kind of a personal choice I felt made sense to me. and was something I can get on board with, being a little bit nicer to animals and stuff like that. I figured if I could do it that I might as well do it for as long as I could, and I have been healthy and feel good so far. So that was like four months ago and been going strong.

B: So you actually started during the season.

I did. I made a pretty impulsive decision and just thought ‘Well, I’m going to start doing this and hopefully I will live through the season’, and I did so that was the start right there.

R: Congratulations and I wish you the best of luck with that.

I appreciate it.

B: So we watched some of your other work and collaborations with Matt Pare: Homeless Minor Leaguer. One of the great things on Homeless Minor Leaguer was the interview with you on which you discuss eating Chipotle almost every day.

Right…

B: Did the e.coli get you or what have you replaced it with?

The e.coli never got me, so I didn’t have to replace it with anything. They have sofritas which is like a tofu I believe, so it’s like a vegan option at Chipotle which is pretty great because I can still have all that stuff, and it’s still healthy so I basically just had to get rid of the meat and go for the fake stuff if I’m going to be eating at Chipotle.

R: So it’s not like when Keith Hernandez’s Just For Men sponsorship ended and for awhile he didn’t dye his mustache.

Oh I didn’t know that.

B: Until someone called him out on that right?

R: Nono he does the commercials for them again. That was recently when Frank Thomas pointed out that he wasn’t using it lately and then the very next game at the World Series his mustache was jet black.

So he just dyed it.

R: He did just dye it, yes. There was six months a couple of years ago when his contract ran out and he stopped doing it and he shaved the mustache actually, so that has nothing to do with it…

It’s interesting though, thinking about people who are doing like Weight Watchers or something like that that are sponsoring those kinds of things, like for the rest of their life if they want to promote that product they’ve got to stay however it is they represent the company best, and you would think Keith would want to keep doing whatever the product is that he’s promoting but, I don’t know…

R: I don’t know either with that guy.

Yeah but he was on Seinfeld.

R: He was on Seinfeld.

B: And when Frank Thomas tells you to do something you do it. Because he makes ARod look small.

Yeah. Frank Thomas I mean, he’s a good guy.

R: Have you met him?

No I never met him but he seems like a nice guy though. I’m not basing that on anything he just, I don’t know…

R: I 100 percent understand where you are coming from. He seems like a good guy.

He seems like a big teddy bear.

R: Yeah he seems like a guy who will laugh at all of your jokes even if they’re not funny.

And some really cool Reeboks back in the day too, back in the nineties.

B: We remember those.

Those cleats.

B: Did you grow up a Giants fan?

I liked the Giants and the A’s because they were close to me, but I also liked the Braves; they were on TV every day. When I was growing up they were on TBS every day so you could watch Fresh Prince and Saved by the Bell, and then the Braves would come on, and they went to like 14 straight postseasons, so it was really difficult to not like them also. That was basically the teams that I liked and of course Griffey, wherever he was at, so, pretty typical nineties kid I think.

R: Did you know that your former teammate Curtis Granderson grew up a Braves fan?

I didn’t know that.

R: He grew up in Chicago, but he was mad at the Cubs because they would preempt Saved by the Bell on WGN, so he became a Braves fan because they were on every day too.

I didn’t know that we had that in common. That’s really interesting. Honestly I didn’t know that WGN was a thing until five years ago, so I had no idea that those games were on also, or else I probably would have liked whichever team was on more: Cubs or White Sox.

R: I think the Cubs were on more, but they also had the White Sox.

Besides yourself, who was the funniest player on the Mets when you were there?

Logan Verrett and I always had some really interesting conversations. The amount of sarcasm and just absurd things that we would talk about were probably overwhelming for anyone that was around us because there was just no way we could be together and not just be talking about nonsense, and neither of us will quit in the middle of the bit so it would just go on and it was just not funny to anyone anymore.

B: Complete commitment to the bit.

Absolutely. So we would just go on forever, and I remember there being multiple occasions where Noah [Syndergaard] just told us we would have to stop because it was just outrageous and it was so far beyond the point of being funny that it was just ridiculous.

I always really enjoyed hanging out with Logan Verrett; I know he’s bounced back and forth a couple of times. Actually I got to play against him earlier this year when he was in Norfolk and I was in Lehigh Valley at one point, so I got to hang out with him a little bit and it was more of the same.

B: I was going to ask you about how you forge friendships in the major league clubhouse, especially when you have a path to the majors like you did. So you’ve been in many different organizations and only joined the Mets in 2016 which is the same year you came up, so who did you know?

In baseball you play against so many people, especially someone like myself — I think the Mets I guess were my fifth organization — so I’ve played against a ton of people, and you kind of have this mutual respect for everyone you played against especially throughout the minors. You kind of have gone through the tough times separately, but at the same time everyone has a mutual respect for one another. I’m trying to think of who I knew before that…I don’t think I really knew anyone. I knew Danny Muno a little bit, but not that great. Then I just kind of… in spring training you get to know everyone…yeah I don’t think I really knew anyone actually…

B: Weird!

Yeah you play against guys and just kind of already have that respect for each other. But I have gotten a lot better at just going into new organizations and just making friends right away. I always say every baseball team is basically the same group of guys, you just have to figure out which personalities belong to whom. Logan Verrett I found out really quickly that I can talk to him about anything, and just bring up any subject and it was going to be okay, so you have to figure out which guys who mesh with you and your personality and things like that. I’ve gotten better at figuring out more quickly as I’ve played in more organizations.

R: Do you remember your first meeting with Logan Verrett? Because I imagine it being like this sarcasm-off or something when you realized you two would be best friends for a long time.

I honestly think that the first time we talked, I was doing a connection thing with him like ‘oh you went here, so do you know these guys?’, and we played against each other. So I don’t even think that it was interesting. I wish I had like a good story for you but I’m pretty sure that that’s what it was. Now it’s a lot of times whenever we still talk, I’ll pre-empt the conversation with me sending him the YouTube video of me hitting a home run off him a few years ago. So it’s nice to have people that you can kind of you can make fun of each other and kind of talk smack to stuff like that and the clubhouse keeps things fresh.

B: Yeah I imagine there’s a lot of that. Now you, I’m often amazed by major leaguers who say they can have this incredible recall like they’ll remember: ‘Okay this is my first game, I faced this guy five times.’ Or you know like, home runs and highlights like that are one thing, but do you have that type of ability to isolate memories where you can say ‘Oh yeah you know my first game, this is the starter. This is the guy I got my first hit off’, things like that?

I think so yeah, I’m pretty sure that I do. I tend to remember pitchers really well throughout the years. There’s usually something about every pitcher that is a little bit different. So I tend to remember stuff like that and I think I remember…I remember a lot of stuff from early on in my career like 10 years ago now. I remember the way certain guys pitches move and things like that and certain at bats.

B: Wow.

Yeah I don’t know, I guess it’s just one of those things that when you have so much to go off you remember all of the little intricacies and little differences that you see all the time.

R: And when you look at that videotape, was your memory always 100 percent accurate?

That’s a good question. I’m probably wrong a lot. I just feel like you remember stuff…well I think that also as you grow as a player things look different. Speaking of different people’s pitches: You are going to be able to pick up more things with better lighting, so I’m sure at the beginning of my career — when you’re in like short season half the fields you play in are just like park fields…so I can’t imagine that the lights are any good, it’s just like playing in a parking lot. So it’s probably slightly skewed. But I do remember at least the way that I saw it at the time really well.

R: I didn’t mean to imply that your memory in particular might be faulty.

B: That’s what it sounded like to me.

Yeah that’s what I thought you were saying.

R: Oh Ty no no not at all. Every human being’s memories are like that.

Just not as faulty as mine.

R: *Sigh* So how is Las Vegas? Because Brian and I are a little obsessed with how Las Vegas’ Cashman field plays so differently than any other baseball stadium pretty much. What are the biggest differences that you found between hitting in Vegas and hitting in the major leagues?

I think the biggest thing in Vegas is just how windy it is.

B: I’m back.

Oh good I didn’t know if it was because of that thing we were doing.

B: I was deeply offended by Roger’s question.

R: He was yelling at me and I just powered through.

I appreciate it. At least someone’s concerned for me.

R: I was asking about Las Vegas.

B: Ah my favorite topic. OK. Please.

Yeah. So I would just saying that I think the biggest differences are just that is really windy all the time, and like the majority of the time the wind is blowing straight out. So there are a lot of balls hit straight up in the air that end up being home runs, or like banging off the wall or something like that that wouldn’t play. So it’s definitely hard anywhere in the PCL to judge guys’ stats and things like that. And then the the fact that it’s so far away from New York too really makes the travel tough. In 2016 I was up and down four times so I had to like make that trip that many different times. It’s really rough and I’m pretty sure that the Mets are moving in a couple of years, at least that is what I heard.

B: You know there were a lot of Mets fans out there once again who are like ‘Come on guys, you’ve got to cut this out with the taxi squad’. You know it’s not a taxi squad if they’re in Las Vegas. Take mercy on these guys. Who was it Roger who had to turn around in the airport this year? I think it was [Tyler] Pill?

R: It might have been Pill. I thought you were going to mention Matt Reynolds who only got an hour of sleep and then he hit a home run that day.

Yeah. That was two years ago right, in Cincinnati?

R: Yes, it was Labor Day I think and the joke became ‘Oh he’s really good when he’s on no sleep’ which doesn’t seem fair.

B: It’s one of Roger’s favorite stories because he loves Matt Reynolds.

R: I do love Matt Reynolds.

He’s a nice guy.

R: Of course he is. He’s Matt Reynolds.

Yeah he’s super nice. He’s got really good hair too.

R: Who has the best hair on the Mets?

He’s got some very good hair. Yeah definitely not any of the guys with really long hair. I mean like we get it you have super long hair.

I would give it to [Reynolds] to be honest. I mean it’s really good hair he’s got. He’s getting a touch of gray now which, I mean I happen to think that looks pretty cool too.

B: Thank God.

Yeah I definitely would watch out for that. Next time he’s taken his helmet off or something like that.

Screengrab: Dailystache.net

R: But did you notice that Jacob deGrom recently cut his hair?

I saw that. Yeah I think it looks a lot better, but I mean I don’t know how that is for his brand. That’s kind of like his calling card to have that super long hair. I don’t know what they’re going to do with all those hat hair promotions that they do.

B: He speculated it was going to add like a mile per hour or two to his fastball.

Yeah that definitely sounds like speculation.

R: What are they going to do with all those Geico commercials?

Yes, he can’t be a caveman anymore.

B: I’m sorry I know this is back to not being funny but I’m dying to know. As someone who was in Triple A and made the jump to the major leagues. You know you you see some guys who seemed to make the switch seamlessly. Other guys struggle. Do you have any idea why — and forget you know that the PCL is a hitter’s park and everything — but you know, and every league you see this, as some guys do it and some guys don’t. Is there any inside baseball players talking kind of speculation as to why that is?

I think a big part of it is just the opportunities that you get. Like you said Matt Reynolds plays well on no sleep, but I mean for most people that’s not going to be the case. You’re going to get called up and get thrown into this high pressure situation and whatever other circumstances are, no sleep or not, and you’re going to be out of your comfort zone, and a lot of guys don’t get multiple opportunities in those kind of situations because it’s really difficult to succeed in the first place in the big leagues, let alone when you get one chance every couple of days, or you may get a spot start here and there and then you’re expected to perform at the highest level in these really difficult situations. So I think for a lot of people, it just depends on how many opportunities you get and what kind of opportunities they are. For someone that’s a prospect coming up, they’re going to get a bunch of opportunities and they’re going to get chances to fail. And for most guys out there they’re not going to get opportunities and they’re not going to get the opportunity to fail and then continue playing.

If you’re a career minor leaguer and you get called up and you don’t do well right away then it proves all the scouts right why you didn’t get called up for that whole time, and then your chances are few and far between from there on out. So I think there are tons of guys that can play out there. It’s just whether or not you get in the right situation and get chances to be successful. How many times you see managers put guys in difficult situations and it’s just like ‘This can’t be the best way for him to succeed’? So I think that you have to know him, you have to hope to be put in in situations where you can succeed a lot of times when you’re trying to break in. That’s not the case, you’re going to get pinch hits against the closer or the pinch hit with the fifth inning when you’re like down 10 runs or something like that. And they’re just like not that many opportunities to be in great situations.

B: Right. You haven’t played in a week. Here’s Craig Kimbrel or Tony Watson or…

Exactly that. Not even just that, there was an at-bat I had this year where it was in like the fifth inning of a game against Kershaw, and I hadn’t played in a few days and was leading off the inning, so you know there are only so many good things you can do: if there were guys on base you can lay a bunt down, or move a guy over, something like that. Nobody on base, you either get a hit or a walk or else your at-bat is not going to be considered successful. So the more times you get to play in a close game, guys on base, things like that, there are gonna be tons of ways to succeed in your at-bat even if you don’t get a base hit.

B: That’s actually a perfect segue. I’m not sure if Roger appreciates you taking his job on this. You were on the major league roster pretty much the entire year last year with Philadelphia. Is that right?

Yeah I played two minor league games with the Blue Jays, then four with Lehigh Valley. So yeah basically the whole rest of the year.

B: And you managed to get into a very nice number of games with the Phillies you got into 69 games with them.

Oh I didn’t know that. That’s cool.

B: Yeah, nice. But only 104 plate appearances, and that’s over the course of the whole year. So that must have been just incredibly challenging for you as as a player who had played pretty much every day in the minor leagues coming up, and then really I guess having your first part time experience being with the Mets the year before that.

Yeah definitely. It was like I was saying: you hope for the best opportunities, but obviously when you’re the last guy on a bench your chances are going to be pinch hits against the starter. You know early on in the game, or, you know, we really didn’t double switch very much either, which normally would be a big role for me because we had such a young team that there was really no one that we could take out at any point. So there were not many double switches, so it was tough. But I think that I got a lot better at it. I did pretty well as a pinch hitter. I got some extra base hits and I think I did about as well as I could do for for the types of at-bats that I was getting and how infrequent they were. Like you mentioned 69 games and 104 plate appearances just shows you how spread out it was.

B: Yeah I think it was like I think nine plate appearances in August but you were like four-for-nine. You had a great month.

R: Wow Brian you should be Ty Kelly’s agent or something.

B: Oh listen I got a lot more where that came from because I also looked up your plate discipline numbers before we started today.

Ok.

B: And over the last two years, Ty, of 495 major leaguers that had as many plate appearances as you did. You have the 19th most selective swing percentage.

Oh wow that’s pretty cool.

B: So I wanted to ask you about that. So the guys who swing as rarely as you do, only 38.7 percent of the time, the guys that you’re sandwiched in between are Mike Trout, Mookie Betts, Tommy Pham, and Yandy Diaz. So it’s pretty good company.

Yeah I mean if you’re my agent I would like to be getting as much, if not more money, than all of those players.

B: So let’s let’s use Trout as a starting point.

I think that’s probably my best comparison.

B: Is that a strategy that you’ve always worked with or did you become selective some point later in your career?

I think for most of my career it has been pretty close to that at least. The more I moved up the more…well first of all the better umpire’s zones get you know, at least theoretically…

B: Roger and I play rec ball we know how that goes.

I mean especially in the low minors, you’ve got umpires that are like 20 years old and they’re just trying to get the game going, so I think the more you move up the more you can trust umpires the more…especially for someone like myself the more respect I get from like minor League umpires, knowing that I’m someone that’s going to take a lot of pitches and a lot of close pitches. And yeah it sort of has just developed into something that I am good at.

It’s something that I take pride in a lot more now. I mentioned before there are different ways to have success in an at-bat. To me it’s really important to see pitches and to try to to work pitchers and to be able to come back into the dugout and let other guys know what this guy throws. And I feel like better than a lot of people, I pick up a spin on the ball early. I want to see all the different pitchers pitches that the guy throws so I can get back into the dugout and say ‘he does this on his fastball, this movement a little bit, so watch out for this’, and try to help everyone else out.

R: Wow. And you know also Ty you are a very versatile player. You can play multiple positions and I hear that’s en vogue now for a lot of teams. Now I’m doing Brian’s job I’m sorry.

B: We’re all doing each other’s jobs. Ok, so I’m going to pinch hit next week.

Your first taste of the big leagues was [2016] with the Mets, [2017] you were in the big leagues for pretty much the entire year. What’s the best perk of being in the major leagues? Aside from I guess the major league salary.

I would say no question, the best part of it is all of the travel. From flying on planes everywhere, it’s straight after the game and getting into the next city at a decent hour, to the hotel accommodations where you get your own room. Those are so big especially for me, I’m a really light sleeper, so picking a good roommate on the road in the minors is like a huge deal. It’s not really something that I’m sure anyone thinks about. If anyone is snoring at any point during the night I’m going to wake up. Being able to have your own room on the road is just huge, especially for me, because I can get a good night’s sleep and it changes like the whole complexion of the season, because you’re getting a good sleep every night. Especially in the PCL, the travel is just so brutal. It’s not bus rides or anything like that but it’s plane flights, and I was in Tacoma for a year and a half. It was a wake up at four in the morning to get to the stadium at six in the morning to take a bus to the airport and get there at seven so you could be at the earliest flight two hours beforehand, and then you’re up all day, and that’s every four to eight days you have a flight like that. So it just changes everything because the rest of that day — and you don’t even want to play that night because you’re so tired — you might get like an hour of sleep on a plane, and then a little nap or something like that.

R: I don’t hear Matt Reynolds complaining.

That’s true. Yeah that’s a very good point. I mean he just thrives on that kind of thing.

R: He is thriving.

B: But that explains why so many guys in their mid thirties hang it up instead of doing the minor league circuit again.

For sure.

B: We’re older than you, so when I play, which is rarely nowadays but like you know I’m yawning I’ll yawn on the bench. I never see major leaguers yawning.

No, because we get such good sleep.

R: The Pacific Coast League goes as far east as Memphis right? So that’s pretty far sometimes.

Yeah. We took a red eye to Memphis one year in Tacoma, we played a day game that day and then we waited all day to get onto a red eye that night, and then you know get into…we flew into like Atlanta and then into Nashville or something like that, and then drove to Memphis. The travel is no joke. You’re basically going two thirds of the way across the country or whatever. And for the next couple of days you’re just not going to be the same.

B: Is that where you met Matt Pare, in the minors?

I met him through my other roommate Matt Lujan who is in the Giants organization. He’s been a really good friend since high school, and I lived with Matt Lujan for the last like five years. And then Matt Pare met Matt Lujan in the Giants organization, and then he moved down to San Diego where I was already at. And then we met a couple of years ago there in San Diego. And then just kind of started making videos and working out together and things like that.

B: What’s it called again?

Homeless Minor Leaguer.

B: Yeah it’s actually pretty funny.

Oh thank you.

R: You can hear surprise in his voice.

Yeah you know, actually we’re incapable of being funny that’s okay…

B: I’m not going to sugarcoat this for you Ty: Most athletes are not funny or smart.

Yes, we’re trying to break the dumb athlete/dumb jock stereotypes, actually planning on a lot of the things that we are doing. So we’re putting out a YouTube video a week this offseason that started November 1st. So every Friday we put out a video?

Matt Pare: Every Wednesday.

Every Wednesday we put out a video.

B: He’s there?!

He’s actually editing some footage right now, some YouTube video footage.

R: As long as he’s not eavesdropping: That’s very rude.

No he’s not listening to anything.

B: I can’t believe this just happened. We were talking about this for like an hour.

He’s hard at work over there. Trying to make it look we could act.

R: Ty I am going to give you, I guess this is a promotion.

Ok.

R: You are the commissioner of baseball for the next ten minutes.

Thank you.

R: What is one rule change you would make, or what’s one rule you would just make up entirely?

I would shorten the seasons first of all. I would try to bring it down. I probably started at 142. Just bringing it down 20 games seems pretty reasonable, just the fact that the baseball season in some places starts and ends in like snow basically. Yeah I mean, it’s just ridiculous and nobody is going to games that early in April, at most places. Even in good fan bases, it’s just too cold to go watch games even in New York, like the games are not crazy at the beginning of the season because it’s just too cold to go sit out there every day, and why go to a game that early when you’ve got you know 150 other games that you could go to? There’s not much rarity in the game like in the NFL where there are 16 games, so obviously everyone is going to go no matter what because you only get so many.

So I would shorten the season. I think that’s pretty easy and I think that they’re actually talking about doing that anyways.

B: I would be shocked if they would give up any money but yeah sure.

I think they are at least discussing it, but they would also have to pay players less, so somebody’s $1 million contract wouldn’t be $1 million it would be whatever 140 out of 160 is, that percent. Was there another part of the question to that?

R: Nope.

I just think that makes baseball way more fun for everyone. I also enjoy the fact that the playoffs were so exciting this year and the games were really long. And I think that what they should be finding is that it’s not about how long the games are, just about how fun they are to watch. So just trying to making them fun to watch, and not shorter, because if you want to watch a game that’s 10–9 it doesn’t matter how long it is. No, people would rather watch a 10–9 game than a 1–0 game that takes two hours. The casual fan at least.

R: Right I see what you are saying. If there were fewer games, you’re more likely to enjoy a three and a half hour game because there are fewer of those anyway.

As long as it’s played well and there’s runs and things like that, like the juiced balls and all that stuff, I just don’t see how that could be bad for baseball. And when you have a guy like Altuve, a 5'5" guy that’s hitting home runs and stuff, I don’t see how that can be bad, because people don’t want to pay to watch guys do things that they think that they can’t do. People will watch golf and they’re like ‘I could do that, I’ll just go out…’ and you know, with how much practice that most people think it would take them to be on the PGA Tour, I don’t think anyone thinks it’s out of their own reach because they do it every Sunday.

I think that it’s really cool when regular guys do amazing things and people want to see the amazing happen, and especially like Altuve or a guy like Steph Curry in the NBA, the same kind of thing, just regular looking guys that are making amazing things happen.

R: So the balls are juiced?

I think they have to keep getting better. And I think that would be crazy to try to stop whatever process…I mean like ‘juiced’, I don’t know, I don’t really know exactly what that means. I mean I don’t think that there’s anything like steroids in the balls.

B: Roger my client objects to the question.

R: I don’t really know what ‘juiced’ means either. I mean, everybody else says it?

Objection. Leading the witness…

R: Your honor I’m not really a lawyer…

Whatever machine they’re making the balls in, they might as well keep trying to make the machine better and keep winding them up as tight as they can.

R: Right. Okay.

But what do I know?

B: I never hear anyone complain about high scoring games or long games. I hear people complain about poorly played games and stupid pitching changes and replays. If the game is entertaining and long, then all the better.

It’s to the point where every call is that you’re holding to see if you can challenge, and like every call, and it’s just such a waste of time because the most obvious calls that don’t need to be challenged, ‘Well, let’s wait’, and so then you’ve got to wait like a minute to give the coach a chance to see if he wants to challenge or not, and 90 percent of the time they don’t challenge it, so that’s a way bigger waste of time than anything else.

B: Exactly. I mean I agree but we have diverse opinions on the replay on this podcast.

Oh really. Well everyone’s opinion matters. You know?

R: Aw thanks, Ty.

B: We’re talking to a future baseball ambassador here Roger, don’t you think?

R: I think so, I think he has a bright future.

Most of their opinions are probably wrong but…

R: Well I’m sorry Ty, you already picked the 142 game season, you can’t change the replay.

No I mean I’m the commissioner am pretty sure I can do whatever I want.

R: That was a few minutes ago.

Now I’m not commissioner anymore?

R: It was five minutes, I believe I said that.

You said 10 minutes.

R: I don’t like how argumentative you have become.

I’m the commissioner, how do you think I got to this?

B: I have one more question that’s really been on my mind. I was dying to ask someone in baseball. Have you ever noticed anything different about the different organizations you’ve been in? I mean structurally, the nutrition, the training, anything that they do in terms of what they push their players to try to do with data or not? Do you notice a discrete difference at the upper levels of the different organizations you’ve been in, or are they all generally kind of the same?

Yeah there’s definitely a difference. I think that every year more teams decide to go towards more nutrition. We had a nutritionist in Philly, and I know that the Dodgers were the first organization to really get started on that kind of thing, and having a nutritionist and focus on the guys overall health mentally and physically, and not try to just keep doing things the way they’ve been for years and years because that’s baseball and nobody wants to change anything. So I think that a lot more teams are going to that type of stuff. I know that with the Blue Jays they have tons. Their training staff is all really, it’s like ‘advanced training’, I think they call it something like that, so that it’s not like just getting into the weight room and doing bench press and squats and stuff like that. They have really unique exercises and I think that more and more organizations are switching to things like that.

And as far as whenever people ask about different organizations I always think back to the spring training that I spent with the Cardinals. As far as just the way spring training goes, because it can be really like a relaxed kind of monotonous setting in spring training where nobody is really worried about that much, and it’s just a chance to come out and get loose again and just get ready for the season in a kind of slow, big league way I guess. Though with the Cardinals, it was done in groups, so they would switch around groups — like there would be two veterans and two young guys in a group, and you’d go station-to-station, like you’re at a summer camp or something like that. And then every week they would switch the groups so that at some point you’re getting to know everybody on the team, and I thought that was really cool. And every other spring training that I’ve been to has not been like that, it’s been like the big leaguers are separate, and then there’s the guys that are going to be in Triple-A, and so on, going down the list because of their careers.

B: Because they kind of know who’s going to end up where?

Yeah, and you never want to mix up the big leaguers with the rest of the population…

R: The non-roster invitees.

So I thought that was really cool though, because you end up meeting a lot of guys that you would never really spend too much time with, and as a young guy there’s not really a chance to kind of break in and have a conversation with veterans unless you’re in those small settings. And you can be personal with them and get to know everybody. So I always thought that was really cool.

B: So was there a player who made you really nervous?

R: Matt Holliday?

Yeah, and he’s a super nice guy and he was definitely one of the veterans that I had at some point in my group, and we got along pretty well because he has a solid amount of like straight faced sarcasm.

R: I can sense that with him.

Yeah. So we got along pretty well.

R: Was Albert Pujols already gone by then?

Yeah, this was just like three years ago.

R: I like *that* Cardinal Way, that I can get behind.

You can tell why they had so much success. I think there everybody is kind of bought into that whole ‘Cardinal Way’ thing.

R: Ty Kelly, thank you so much for joining us. Sorry the commissioner thing didn’t work out, but hopefully free agency will, and it would be great if you were a Met again.

I appreciate that. Yeah. If you guys have any actual agent pull, you know, give them a call.

B: We’ll put in a good word for you. I’ll put together a little something for you. You’re a smart guy: You know what wins above replacement is right?

Yeah I know that that’s WAR, that the acronym WAR stands for wins above replacement.

B: Right. Right. And you are definitely an above replacement player, so I expect that some team will be smart enough to see that and we’ll see you be picked up in the next couple of weeks.

That is a really, really nice 2017 complement.

B: Listen, you have positive advanced fielding metrics at first, third, left. You know, you can pick it.

Thank you.

B: And I think you can take some pitches and hit.

I appreciate it.

B: Best of luck to you.

Thank you very much. Thank you guys for having me on the podcast, it was a lot of fun.

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