Night

Call in my dreams

Night

Good morning and welcome to episode 405 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from

Baseball Prospectus, presented by the play index at BaseballReference.com, I'm Sam Miller

with Ben Lindbergh and about 20 minutes Nick will be talking to Mike Digiivana who covers

the Angels for the Los Angeles Times. But right now we have Matt Welch who wrote the Angels

SA for Baseball Prospectus for the annual this year and who is a wonderful Angels fan, one of

the smartest angels, fans are one of the best political writers in the country. Matt, how are you?

I'm doing great. Thanks so much for that generous, overly generous introduction.

You're the editor-in-chief of Reason Magazine, correct?

This is correct, magazine for free minds and free markets, Libertarian flavored political commentary

since 1968. Wonderful, I hope that that comes up as we talk, but the first question I have has

nothing to do with Libertarianism or politics at all. Thank God. The Angels right now, it seems

to me that if you ask anybody who follows them or who is involved with them, what they're excited

about right now, the first answer is Mike Trout and the second answer seems to always be Cole Calhoun.

What is it about the Angels that always finds a guy like Cole Calhoun to mythologize?

And what is it about Cole Calhoun specifically that has people excited?

That's funny, I mean there's always this slot available in the Angels fandom for the Red

Ass, Darren Erstead fulfilled that role magnificently even when he wasn't a very good baseball player.

Although he was, I think, we're coming to find now through modern technology or at least the way

that we now calculate wins above replacement, but hey, you know what, he was a pretty good

...