Wednesday BP, 4/24/19

Good morning, McCoven! And to you Sharks fans, my goodness, what a game that was last night. I have watched exactly two hockey games in my life, that one and the women’s USA vs. Canada gold medal game in the last Olympics, and I may never actually be able to watch normal hockey now because I am spoiled.

On another note, ESPN had a great feature about Farhan Zaidi a few days ago that you should check out. I think there are parts of it that are a bit reductive, inferring that people who don’t like certain changes only feel that way because they don’t like change. Some people have legitimate concerns about players’ roles being changed and teams finding ways to rob players of money, as I assume the case would be with Jeff Samardzija and Madison Bumgarner who are mentioned in the piece in a somewhat demeaning fashion. But on the whole, I am interested in Zaidi’s plans for the team and I enjoyed this part specifically:

“I’m leaving the program,” Zaidi said. “I’m going to work for the A’s.”

After a pause intended to keep him from saying the wrong thing, Miguel said, “What are you talking about?” Miguel figured Zaidi was going to give baseball a shot, maybe six months, before returning to the program. Consider it a hiatus, Miguel told himself. Because, really, how do you go from studying solutions for global poverty in one of the world’s most prestigious graduate programs to devoting your professional life to figuring out whether a minor league pitcher’s fly-ball rate will translate to the Oakland Coliseum?