On Wednesday evening I had the pleasure and privilege of interviewing current Milwaukee Brewers relief pitcher, Seth McClung.
Now before I begin, I’d just like to express my gratitude to him not only for doing the interview but also for his speedy responses.
For the past few weeks all the buzz around baseball has been focused on Hot Stove talk. So I figured why not change things up a bit and talk to a player about baseball in general.
For those of you who are not familiar with him, McClung is a six year veteran in the big leagues and has pitched as both a starter and a reliever for both the Tampa Bay Rays (2003, 2005-2006) and the Milwaukee Brewers (2007-present).
His best year statistically was in 2007 when he went (6-6) with an ERA of 4.02 in 105.1 innings pitched.
McClung is one of the growing number of MLB players that maintains a Twitter account to interact with his fans on a personal level.
What is pretty unique, in my opinion, is that this interview was conducted entirely over Twitter, which means that both my questions and his responses had to be 140 characters or less (although in the interest of improving readability I have spelled out some abbreviations that were used to accommodate such a small amount of space).
For more on McClung’s use of the popular social media website check out his interview with OnMilwaukee.com’s Andy Tarnoff.
Now without further adieu here is my exclusive Twitterview with Seth McClung:
PH: Throughout your major league career you’ve been a starter and a reliever which role do you prefer and why?
SM: Starting, but I am always one to put the team before myself. I want to win more than anything, therefore I will do what I am asked to do.
PH: The Brewers came so close to winning it all in 2008. What needs to happen for the team to return to the post-season in 2010?
SM: The team that shows up to camp just needs to work hard, I’ll promise to do that and do my best and we will see what happens.
PH: During your years with the Tampa Bay Rays, the team struggled. Could you have imagined them turning it around and reaching the World Series as quickly as they did in 2008?
SM: I always thought that I would be on the team when they did it. I knew they had talent, but I didn’t think it would happen so fast for them.
PH: What was it like watching the players on the New York Mets become so decimated by injuries? Have you ever seen anything similar to that in your career?
SM: It was a hard year for them, but I really didn’t pay that much attention to their fate though.
PH: In your opinion who is the toughest hitter in the National League to get out while you’re on the mound? In the American League?
SM: It’s the big leauges buddy. They’re all tough!
PH: Baseball bloggers these days love to talk about sabermetrics. What’s your personal take on them? Do you look at sabermetric stats when preparing to pitch?
SM: There is a place for numbers, but the only one I care about is the zero at the end of the inning. It’s easy to over evaluate.
And that concludes my candid interview with Seth McClung of the Brewers. Once again I would like to personally thank Seth for doing the interview with me.
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Short and sweet. Well done. I’d say to it was a slam dunk, Hoops. (sorry, had to) It’s nice to see you’re building a rapport with people in the bizz. Hope to see more like this.
Hahaha thank you. This is just the first of a couple interviews with players/reporters that I have lined up. Stay tuned!
I can understand why you didn’t ask any risque questions, as we the nosey fans would’ve liked, and I can understand why some of his answers were passive. The important thing is building a positive reputation in these situations so you can climb the ladder. A twitter interview with a NL central relief pitcher is the first step, next you have to have a sit down with a future HOFer and sip Chivas.
Interesting response to the question about sabermetrics. Maybe if he took the time to use sabermetrics to evaluate his own performance, he could find a way to actually put together a solid season.
Also, why do active players answer the who’s the toughest player you ever faced question the same way? And yet once they are retired they have no problem answering that question.
i’m sure sabermetrics has more to do with it than conditioning, mental preperation and inherent talent. when stephen hawkins comes up with a formula to anticipate the trajectory of a knuckleball let me know.
I GUESS THE BIGGEST REVELATION IS HOW LITTLE ACTUAL PLAYERS GET INVOLVED WITH THOSE THINGS THAT SEEM IMPORTANT TO ‘FANS’. STATISTICS ARE NOT FACTS THEY ARE INDICATORS AND INDICATORS RELY ON VARIABLES SUCH AS STADIUM DIMENSIONS, OPPOSING PLAYERS(HITTERS Vs PITCHERS & VICE VERSA). IN MY OPINION, MUCH OF WHAT FANTASY LEAGUERS VALUE ARE IRRELEVANT FOR A REAL GM IN THE REAL WORLD OF ACTUALLY BUILDING A BASEBALL TEAM OUT OF PLAYERS ALL WEARING THE SAME UNI AT THE SAME TIME, FACING IDENTICAL VARIABLES EACH OUTING.
OTHERWISE EXCELLENT JOB UNDER DIFFICULT RESTRICTIONS.