Interview #44: The Milkman
Kyle Lesniewski, Brewers fan, writer and coach
Intro
Kyle Lesniewski is a lifelong Brewers fan who turned his baseball fandom and love of math into a remarkable decade-long run in the sport. He initially fell in love with the sport because of a 2005 Brewers team that featured Corey Koskie, Rickie Weeks, a rookie Prince Fielder, Derrick Turnbow and Ben Sheets’ curveball. The concurrent rise of Sabermetrics and Moneyball led him to write articles analyzing players with new stats and ultimately landing jobs at Fansided and SportsNation Brewers blogs.
And even though his playing career ended in Little League, he had a successful run with the Milwaukee Milkmen of the American Association independent baseball league. He was a coach focusing on analytics and data analysis, one of the first independent teams to implement advanced stat tracking with Rapsodo, a technology that helps track things like pitch spin rates, velocity and batted ball speeds. The team won the championship in 2020 (so at least one good thing happened that year). While with the Milkmen (whose mascot is a cow named Bo Vine), he worked with future MLB players like Anthony Bender, Jake Cousins, Drew Hutchison and Jose Espada.
He still lives in Wisconsin, working as a facilities director and raising three daughters. Luckily he found some free time to do an interview. I came across his name when I was looking up some Brewers stuff online and reached out, so I didn’t know much about him going in. My favorite part was how he got involved as a coach through the magic of a Twitter DM. We talked about the Brewers, baseball writing and of course the awesomeness of minor league and independent baseball.
Brew Crew Ball: https://www.brewcrewball.com/
Milwaukee Milkmen: https://www.milwaukeemilkmen.com/
Kyle’s Twitter: @Kyle_Lesniewski
The Brewers, math and blogging
What got you into baseball ?
So I was never very athletic growing up. Golf was my best sport; I was the worst player on the varsity golf team of my high school. That was my athletic claim to fame. But I've always aesthetically enjoyed watching baseball. I played a little bit when I was growing up, just like park and rec leagues.
I started to get into it going into 7th grade, which was 2005, the first year the Brewers had a .500 record in like 14 years. There was a good amount of excitement around the team at that time here in Milwaukee, and I was young and impressionable and I just started paying closer attention and really fell in love with the game. I love watching good pitchers pitch. My favorite pitch has always been the overhand 12-to-6 curveball, and at the time that I really started to get into the Brewers, they had Ben Sheets on the team. At that time he had probably the best 12-to-6 curveball in the majors.
here’s a quick video of Ben Sheets curveballs:
The Brewers at the time had a guy, Derrick Turnbow, who could throw it 98 to 100, which was pretty rare back in 2005. And then from there, they started bringing up guys like Prince Fielder and Ryan Braun and Rickie Weeks and Corey Hart and that whole core of the team started coming together. In 2008, they made the playoffs for the first time in 26 years. There was just such a palpable excitement around the city. We had been starved for good baseball for such a long time. And Milwaukee is a good sports town and a good baseball town. That summer I remember being in high school, I had just gotten my driver’s license, so I was the one in my group of friends who had a car. So we were driving to go to games all the time and tailgate.
What helped me take the next step is I had always been really into math when I was in school. I've done construction and maintenance jobs in my career outside of baseball, and a lot of that is pretty math heavy in terms of how you put buildings together, all that kind of stuff. And when the Sabermetric aspect of baseball really started to come in, that's where I really started to pay a lot closer attention to the game and what my thoughts on the game were and what I could see in the numbers as to what made a player valuable or what made a player expendable and all that kind of stuff.
Viewing it through that Sabermetric lens led me to start publishing my own blog posts for a short period of time, and then a couple of them got picked up by MLB Trade Rumors. At that time, they were doing a thing every week where they would highlight the best independent blog posts around the Internet. From there I got recruited to start writing for a Fansided website, Reviewing the Brew, and I wrote for that website for about a year as the managing editor, and then I was hired by Brew Crew Ball through the SBNation/Vox Media network. Within a year, I had become managing editor of that website and then held that position for seven years.
Seeing the game through the numbers, and putting the numbers into perspective with what you're watching on the field, it just felt like I had a whole different understanding of baseball than how I first started seeing it when I was growing up.
Do you think that the stats and analytics side was what really fueled your fandom after the initial rush of having a fun team to watch?
I would say absolutely. Getting into how the defense and things really do affect a guy’s earned run average at the end of the day and how much is it really his responsibility versus how you weigh the defense into that, and specifically what the pitchers can control, and trying to identify the skill sets and the underlying numbers that would show repeatable success year after year. You're trying to figure out and identify who those guys are. And in your head, you're trying to do it better than the GM of your favorite team. For me, that really elevated how I felt and what my passion was about the game.
Did it help since the Brewers are notoriously a lower payroll team that they had to probably find more value in these kind of guys where being a fan of the Yankees and they just take the best players, and then you're in there looking at, OK, this guy's going to be great because not a lot of people know this or that. So was that more fun?
Yeah, at the time that I started getting into writing, the Brewers were about to rebuild. So what better opportunity to begin flexing your sabermetric muscles than, hey, your team just got rid of all their good players and they're picking up all these guys off the scrap heap, taking shots in the dark left and right, and nobody knows in spring training what this team is going to look like, so it's fun to comb through a roster, and a 40-man roster and the upper minor leagues and see, like, OK, who are the guys who have something that sticks out that could have an impact on the team this year?
At that time for the Brewers, they had like two established players, Ryan Braun and Jonathan Lucroy. Everybody else, it could have been literally anybody at those positions. So from a creation of content standpoint, there's an unlimited amount of articles that you could write at that time. This guy might be good at second base, this guy might be good at third base, this guy might be a great starting pitcher. In 2016, I ended hitting on one of those preseason predictions with a guy who the Brewers had picked off waivers, he was a 31-year-old rookie, his name is Junior Guerra. The year before, he had pitched in an independent league in Italy, and the Brewers picked him up off waivers. He pitched the first month in triple-A. I had seen some scouting reports about him, that he was up to 94mph and had a really, really great splitter. His minor league statistics were really good, his independent leagues stats were really good. OK, this guy could be pretty good. So they called him up and he made 20 starts and he had an ERA right around 3.00 and I think got some down-ballot Rookie of the Year votes and he won the team’s Pitcher of the Year that year, so it always feels like a little feather in the cap.
Being able to speculate about those guys and, you know, there's a number of predictions that you make that won't come true, but that's the fun part about sports, is everybody's trying to predict and everybody's trying to make their best guess. From a Sabermetrics standpoint, when you look at players that way, it doesn't always feel like you're making just a guess. It at least feels like an educated guess. That part of it, the mathematical part of it behind it, for me, has always been what has really kind of drawn me to the game the most.
Is there a guy you were convinced would be just great and he never worked out and you were always rooting for?
Keston Hiura sticks out right away. He was a little bit of a surprise draft pick when the Brewers took him, but then all the scouting reports were like, this is the best pure hitter in college. He tore up the minor leagues, hit over .300 at every level, and he came up to the Brewers and he hit 19 home runs in 80 games his first year. Everybody's like, OK, this is the next guy, this is a superstar. He came up right around the time that Christian Yelich was in the midst of his back-to-back MVP-caliber seasons (note: Yelich was NL MVP in 2018, runner-up in 2019) and everybody's like, OK, it's going to be Yelich and Keston Hiura here for the next 5-10 years anchoring the middle of the lineup.
The following season, in 2020, his batting average cratered. He was hitting around .200, and then he just kind of flamed out after that. For whatever reason, the hit tool that was so lauded as he was coming up didn't translate to the Big Leagues and he had a big hole at the top of the strike zone for high-level fastballs. It just turned out he was easy to beat that way, and he never ended up getting his foothold after that rookie season.
I think he bounced around a little bit, played some with the Angels this year, but he's been in triple-A for the last couple of years since then. I think from the Brewers standpoint, it's certainly disappointing to not have hit on that guy, especially after he looks so good coming up as a rookie. Generally, until they started having these guys come up in the last couple of years like (Jackson) Chourio, they have struggled to develop hitters in the last 10 years. The Brewers, really between 2015 and 2023, they really didn't bring anybody to the Big Leagues that had a ton of success outside of Tyrone Taylor, who was roughly a league-average hitter and a decent defender in center field. Pitching-wise, it seems like the Brewers have always been really able to identify a lot of strong players. But it's just the last couple of years now that it seems like they've finally figured out what they're doing in terms of hitting development.
So in the last 2 years, they’ve traded all-star closer Josh Hader, manager Craig Counsell (who’d finished runner-up in Manager of the Year voting 4 times) left for the Cubs, traded former Cy Young winner Corbin Burnes to the Orioles, and the Brewers are in first place now by like 6 games? (note: 9 games as of Aug. 27).
It's a a big margin between the Brewers and the 2nd place team. It's definitely been interesting to watch with how they're just able to continually find these guys. The Brewers had Brandon Woodruff, Corbin Burnes and Freddy Peralta at the top of that rotation for four years and didn't win a single playoff series during that time. Now, they still have Freddy Peralta, Brandon Woodruff is injured, not pitching this year, and Burnes is gone, obviously. But Peralta's got an ERA over 4.00, and they are relying on guys like Colin Rea, who has got an ERA right around 3.00, and Tobias Myers, a 26-year-old rookie who had a 1-15 (won-loss) record in AAA two years ago and now he's looking like a possible Rookie of the Year candidate with an ERA right around 3.00.
Joe Ross has pitched in 16 games?
Yeah. They've really just cycled through so many different guys. From a personal level, having known a lot of guys who have played and gotten to the Big Leagues, or trying to make it to the Big Leagues, it's hard for me to see the constant churn of players. I don't always feel like guys get real opportunity. The process of bringing up a guy and then DFA’ing him a day later, personally it's hard for me to really root or enjoy that type of roster manipulation. I don't think there's anybody who does it more effectively than the Brewers. They just cycle through players and they know how to work the options and exactly when to try to pass a guy through waivers and all that kind of stuff. In the last 3,4,5 years, they're using between 55 and 60 players every season. And yet somehow through all of that constant churn, they are consistently putting a winning product on the field at a rate, money wise, that certainly makes their owner very happy.
They've used 20 position players and 36 people have had an inning pitched and they're nine games up. They had Dallas Keuchel? I forgot that he pitched this year and now I think he's in Japan.
Yeah, and he was brutal.
I recall there was a lot of anger at ownership when Counsell went to the Cubs. It felt like, before the season, everyone expected the Cubs to win the division. (note: they’re currently the team in 2nd place behind the Brewers)
I would agree that the expectations were definitely muted.
But until this year, it felt like it was eight or nine years of pretty solid baseball. You had MVPs, Cy Young winners, playoff appearances, and then anything could happen in the playoffs --
They keep saying that, but the Brewers keep getting shown the door in the first round, so.
I'm in Arizona, so I've seen that anything can happen. So you wrote for about 10 years?
Between the writing stuff and the time that I was with the Milkmen, it was a total of eight years getting paid to do baseball stuff.
It looks like you finally had to move on to a grown-up job.
Yeah, I have three kids, three daughters, I'm a single dad. The last year I was with the Milkmen, I was actually working as the facilities director full-time for the campus that they play at. It's like a 200-acre multi-facility entertainment thing. I was kind of recruited to a more lucrative and more flexible opportunity on the facilities director side of things, and unfortunately sometimes you have to make those hard decisions about what's for your family versus. But I don't have any regrets and I'm proud of the things that I accomplished both with my writing as well as with the Milkmen and the championship that we won in 2020 and all our playoff appearances. If I don't do anything else in the game, I'm proud of what I've done and what I've accomplished. But if there was anybody who was ever interested in connecting about an opportunity or role, I would always listen.
The hours for baseball employees are not ideal for family life.
Yeah, it's tough when you're working with a team and you've got kids. As much as it's fun to be at the ballpark every day in the summer, the late nights and everything get to be a little repetitive with family. It was a lot to manage at the end and ultimately I think everything has kind of worked out for the best.
Reaction: A couple clarifications in case you’re reading this and not 100% up to speed on baseball transactions. On any given day, you’re allowed to have 26 players on your Major League roster, and 40 players on the 40-man roster (duh) that are MLB-eligible. Then a whole group of minor league players, so any organization employs nearly 100 players at any given time. With all the rules and bargaining agreements, some teams have found it financially beneficial to employ lots of lesser-paid players, shuttling them back and forth from the big league club to the minor leagues, where they’re not paid at the MLB minimum salary. By doing it in certain ways, you can stretch your dollar out much further by affecting when a given player is due for a raise or reaches certain service-time agreements. Anyways, lower revenue teams (in a multi-billion dollar league, by the way) like the Brewers, Rays and A’s have become very efficient at this, almost like day trading. So in a given season they might dress over 50 players to cover their 162 ballgames, where teams like the Dodgers and Yankees can pay individual players tens of millions a season to play in the lineup every day.
But Kyle is right, while winning is fun, its the team and the players you come to root for and remember forever. While that 2005-2012 run of Brewers baseball didn’t produce much postseason success, it’s star players with long runs with their teams like Prince Fielder, Ben Sheets and Ryan Braun who create lifelong fans. In the Brewers’ case, Kyle’s generation is forever connected to those teams just as the previous generation of Milwaukee fans had guys like Robin Yount, Paul Molitor and Cecil Cooper. But in 2024, with more roster turnover than ever and increasing prices to attend games it gets that much harder to latch on to a team as a fan.
And once again, you see how many different ways someone can get hooked on baseball. Tailgating and Sabermetrics were the magic recipe for him.
A Championship Coaching Career
So, the Milkmen. How did you get started as a coach? I mean, you said you didn't play past Little League.
It was crazy how everything sort of came together. I'm in Milwaukee, and the Milkmen are based in Franklin (Franklin Field at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee). Their stadium is about 10 minutes away from where I own my house in Milwaukee. Being a single parent, it can be difficult financially to take your kids to a Major League Baseball game. That's not always the most accessible thing when it's $15-$25 to park, and then you're paying $20 a ticket for four tickets. You're at $100 before you even get in the door. And you're paying $12 for a helmet full of nachos and $9 for beer.
And then they drop the helmet of nachos on the ground.
This professional team sort of fell out of the sky 10 minutes away from my house. I could get in and see pro ball, and get seats right on the field for free parking and $8 to $10 a person to get in the door. The players walk right off the field to the clubhouse after the game, and the kids can run up to them with a ball and get autographs. That level of accessibility, to me, was just really interesting and enticing from the standpoint of being a dad of young kids who I want to introduce them to the game. So I took an interest in this team and they played their inaugural season in 2019. I used my platform at Brew Crew Ball to publish a couple of articles about them and the players that they had.
After the season, they had let go of their manager and hired a new manager, Anthony Barone. I had written something about a player that they had picked up. And he actually sent me a DM on Twitter; and he was like, ‘hey, I've seen your stuff about the team, I appreciate you giving us a voice.’ And I was like, ‘yeah I really like what you guys are about. I have been doing this baseball stuff for a while. If you ever have any interest in bringing on somebody who has a Sabermetric background, if that's something you're interested in, I'd definitely be interested in having a conversation about it.’ So we just kind of continued chatting from there and within a few weeks I was in a meeting with the owner and the GM of the team talking about what I could bring to the table with statistical data analysis, which is something that at that time wasn't super widespread at this level of baseball.
So I came on as the statistical data analysis coach. I had my own database of statistics that I would keep of the players as the season was going on, and I had it for the different levels of the independent leagues so we could look around at other leagues and try to find players. We would get release lists from MLB when they would cut players from the minor leagues. So I would pore over those lists and look at all these different guys, Baseball Reference pages; if I saw a guy who statistically had something that would jump out at me, then I would start to look up scouting reports.
If I saw enough that made me feel like this is a player who could be successful in our league, I'd get together with the manager about it and we'd kind of go from there. The manager and I worked closely together. During the season, I would track stuff like times-through-the-order statistics and I would take video during the games to help the coaches breakdown with the hitters and pitchers. I was Rapsodo certified so that I could check out data and analyze that once they started installing the cameras in the different stadiums around our league.
So you did have Rapsodo; so you were able to get data where most independent leagues might not.
Yeah, we were able to get spin rates and exit velocity. That's the Statcast kind of stuff that everybody talks about now. Our league started integrating that through a partnership with Rapsodo.
That must have been fun when you got access to that.
Yeah, it was pretty cool being a part of the process to meet with the company, setting up the cameras. The equipment that they set up was different than what you normally think of the Rapsodo, you set it up on the mound in front of you and you throw over it and that's how it records the data. But Rapsodo at that time with our league introduced a radar technology similar to what Statcast and Hawkeye are now. We were the first stadium to have that equipment installed. I was kind of working with the guys from Rapsodo going through how this data was coming in, how to read it, and then interpret it. Now they've replicated that and do it at all the stadiums in the American Association.
Did you work with any players and notice that they were able to use that data to improve?
Yeah, there were a lot of guys who were really interested in that kind of stuff. One player that I can think of specifically is a pitcher named Ryan Zimmerman who pitched a couple of years for the Saint Paul Saints in independent ball, and then when they got picked up and became a triple-A team, he came and pitched for us for three or four years. And now he's in Sioux Falls. But he was a guy who always was very interested in the data and paid attention to how his curveball was playing off his fastball.
Another guy is Ryan Boyer, who is up in triple-A with the Blue Jays. We signed him as an undrafted free agent, he was a sixth-year senior at Canisius College (in Buffalo, NY), and now he's one step away from the Big Leagues throwin’ 98 miles an hour with a back-breaking slider. And that was a guy who started an independent baseball and it's just really fun for me to see.
Anthony Bender pitched for the Milkmen in 2020 before he was a closer for the Marlins. Drew Hutchinson pitched in the Big Leagues for the Blue Jays and the Tigers after he pitched with the Milkmen. Seeing guys like that who have gone on to success or are right on the doorstep to the Big Leagues, having come through our organization and having come through our program, that for me has been really exciting to watch and, even being a step back from the game, I'll keep up with those guys and I'm always rooting for them.
I worked for a triple-A team once and I rooted for everyone on that roster for years after whether they made it or not.
Yeah, it's just cool to see. When you're in it, you see how hard those guys work and you see how much they care. And for everybody who says it's just a game and all that kind of stuff, it's not just a game for these guys. This is their livelihood. This is their passion. This is their life. They're out there busting their ass on a daily basis, whether anybody sees it or not. It's what seems like an unattainable goal and so few guys end up making it. But there are so many guys who put in the effort and who deserve to make it that don't end up getting there. That's why, for me, it's so easy to root for those kinds of guys because you know what they've been through and you've seen the level of work and attention that they put into it. It's just a gratifying feeling to see those guys get to the Big Leagues and have that work pay off. I can't imagine how it feels to be that guy. I can’t imagine how it feels to be Anthony Bender after he spends a year in indie ball as our 6th-inning setup guy and then his closing games in the Big Leagues the next season. That kind of stuff is crazy fun for me.
What was the experience like, especially that first year when you were actually in a clubhouse, in the game, after your whole life as a fan and covering the sport, but you were never in the dugout day-to-day?
Yeah, it was really eye opening. And I mean, it was definitely cool having a uniform and getting ingratiated into the culture of a clubhouse. From a Sabermetric point, clubhouse culture is something that everybody says can't be quantified. It is a real thing.
If no one steps up into that leadership role, the team isn't going to be able to achieve what it could. Having those positive voices and having those veteran guys who come to the park and go about their business on a day-to-day basis and are willing to show these other guys what's the right way to do things and what's the right way to work. It's really eye opening in terms of, when you build a team and you're looking at everything on paper and you can add up what the projected WAR is. But if you don't have a team of guys that gels, they're not going to succeed.
Reaction: This was my favorite part of Kyle’s story. He basically created his own path to being on a pro baseball coaching staff. And not just get in there and put on a uniform and take in the scenery. He was part of setting up their advanced stats and metrics that players at all levels use to improve in ways you couldn’t imagine even ten years ago. As the technology gets more and more advanced, there will always be a need for tech-savvy and analytical-minded personnel on baseball clubs to give organizations an edge.
For those unaware, Rapsodo is a technology company that specializes in data tracking products to record batted and thrown ball information like launch angles, spin rates, velocities and create visuals and databases for study and analysis. They also do a lot of work in golf, but sadly cannot get my driver to consistently find the fairway… yet.
The Next Generation
Did your daughters enjoy it when you were at the stadium all the time and they got to go?
They definitely thought it was cool. They'd come down on the field before the games and the guys would walk them up and down the line and they'd run the bases after the game and walk with me back to the dugout or to the clubhouse. Now, I can see that there is still an enduring interest in the game. They'll ask me to go up to the park and throw the ball with them so they can swing the bat and play catch here and there. We still make it to a handful of games every year. Been to a couple of Brewers games this year and a couple of Milkmen games as well. It served its purpose in helping my kids get introduced to the game and grow that love of the game. If you ask my daughter who her favorite player is, she's not going to say Jackson Chourio. She's going to say Mason Davis, because Mason Davis is the guy who'd give her a ball after every game when he was the starting shortstop for the Milkmen.
They're going to say it's Aaron Hill, who was our utility player on the championship team because they watched him hit a Grand Slam one time and then he gave them knuckles after the game. That's the kind of stuff that kids remember, and for me to have been able to give that experience to them, as a dad and as a lifelong baseball fan is extremely gratifying.
A lot of women I’ve talked to, they got into the game because they were at the ballpark a lot with their brothers playing or their parents were huge fans so they’d go to the games a lot. So that exposure. If you had not had that coaching experience, and then just the one or two Brewers games a year, do you think it would have stuck as much with them?
There's something about being there and being close to the action. If you're sitting in the nosebleeds at American Family Field, you're just not having that same experience. And for a kid, like a 10-, 6- and 3-year old, they don't really know the difference between Major League Baseball and the Milwaukee Milkmen of the American Association. They just see baseball. So for them, it's about the experiences that are associated with baseball. And beyond being able to have access to the players with the Milkmen, they remember the “Princesses at the Ballpark” night, they remember the helicopter flying over the field and dropping candy, and they remember the “Christmas in July” games.
Those are the experiences that stick with them and that they associate with baseball. Those fun times together with baseball as the background, that is their foundational love of the game. It's not like I'm poring over box scores, reading them the newspaper every day and watching the Brewers on TV. It’s like, hey, let's remember these great fun times that we had with our dad at the ballpark. And they were a lot of fun for me, too. Growing up, being a dad is what I wanted to do. I always wanted to be a dad. And it's almost like the culmination of dream to be able to have shared these experiences with my kids.
I imagine that letting 3 little girls run around the ballpark every night makes it a little easier to get them to bed later.
Yeah. That's part of it too. You're sitting at a stadium that you can see the whole thing from one end to the other. So if the kids say, Dad, we're going to run a lap around the stadium, you can literally watch them run a lap around the stadium. They're chasing each other, running backwards, running up and down the stairs, that kind of stuff. And it's just such an intimate atmosphere, again, with baseball as the backdrop. So when I say hey, you guys wanna go see a baseball game, it's like, yeah, it's awesome when they hit a home run and the lights come on the scoreboard and all that kind of stuff. But it's awesome, too, because we can run around the park and, we can get pictures with the mascot (his name is Bo Vine).
It's just such a more engaging experience as a dad and with the kids being in an environment like that in the ballpark. You feel that a lot more at a minor league game or at an independent league game than you do would necessarily at an MLB game where the focus is on all these guys who are making a million-plus dollars down on the field.
I love the minor leagues the most. I’d take a minor league game over 10 major league games any day. We went to a Timber Rattlers game one year up in Appleton. I hope they stay like what they always have been, even though there's one company that's buying every minor league team.
That's something that people need to know more about. I'm glad that you mentioned that because I would really hate to see the homogenization of the minor leagues.
The corporatization of things that don't need to be corporatized.
Right. It's not about growing the game anymore. It's about creating efficiencies so that you can maximize ownership profits. What else would you call the contraction of the minor leagues? And all of these different ways that they're squeezing these guys out of jobs and limiting the amount of rosters that they have, reducing the draft and all that kind of stuff. Which then in turn makes leagues like the American Association where the Milkmen play, and those summer college leagues, those are going to be the leagues and the teams moving forward that are going to have the greatest opportunity to grow the game. Those are the teams and leagues that are going to be in the areas that aren't necessarily served by Major League Baseball.
And as the minor leagues continue to shrink, there has to be something there for these people. It can't just be short term pursuit of MLB level profits that is driving baseball forward. There has to be something at some point that swings the pendulum back the other way.
It's pricing people out of being fans. I think it was Arte Moreno, the Angels owner, a few years ago, said that the calculus has kind of changed from selling as many tickets as you can to focusing on these luxury suites. You want to sell as many of those. The same amount of money you would sell in 40,000 tickets if you're selling all upper level seats, you can sell X amount of $20,000 box seats and you know there's going to be a handful of people that will pay it. And that's the handful of people that you cater to. You're not catering to the baseball fan at large anymore.
Any closing thoughts you want to share?
I didn't graduate from college, didn't grow up playing baseball seriously, but through the power of the Internet, I was able to find my niche in baseball and it worked for me for eight years. There are still avenues for people like me to get into the game, and I'm just hopeful that as time keeps moving forward that we don't continue to lose access to baseball the way that that has been happening over the last five or ten years. I really hope that Major League Baseball sees the need to place a greater emphasis on initiatives to grow the game and grow accessibility to baseball and grow the ability for someone to have a team within driving distance, whether it's an MLB team or a minor league team or a partner league team, whatever they want to call it. We need to make sure that there is baseball for people to be able to go see, because if people can't go see baseball, then the game is going to die.
Reaction: I love that. If anyone important in baseball ever reads these things, I hope they realize that the lifeblood of baseball, what makes it our national pastime going on 150 years now, is that it’s our game. It belongs to the people. And when people are exposed to baseball, that’s where they fall in love with it. There’s so many ways to get hooked, whether it’s like me who had a baseball-obsessed family and played every chance I could, or Kyle getting deep into the Sabermetrics wave, or his daughters who enjoy the ballpark gameday experience and atmosphere that will have a lasting impact. Regardless of what draws you in, it’s the access to the game that needs to be preserved and enhanced. With more money towards independent and minor leagues, serving all regions of the country and of course MLB accessibility on TV, that’s what will keep the game thriving the next 150 years.
