Craig Goldstein vs. Michael Conforto

Michael Conforto has been a big league player for 10 years now, and a solid one at that, having accumulated 16.9 bWAR to go along with some more traditional signifiers of success: more than 100 homeruns, 200 doubles, 1000 games, and a 2017 All-Star nod. However, prior to this season, one thing that you couldn’t really say was that Michael Conforto had a nemesis.

Looking at the list of MLB pitchers that he’s faced more than 10 times, no one stands out as a particularly strong antagonist for the outfielder. He’s faced Aaron Nola the most, and has a below-average .617 OPS against the righty to go with 19 strikeouts; starter-turned-converted-reliever Adam Conley is the pitcher to have faced him the most times without allowing a hit; Max Fried has managed to hold him to a miniscule .130 average through 27 matchups without surrendering a single homerun the way Nola and other NL-East aces like Strasburg and Scherzer.

But, perhaps as a result of Conforto being a relatively mid-tier player in terms of star power on any of his given rosters, and perhaps due to him being a relatively boring personality, it feels like a stretch to say that any of these competitors constituted a true nemesis for him. And then, on December 10, 2024, Michael Conforto signed a one-year deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers. And shortly thereafter, his nemesis finally revealed himself.

It all started with a question: “Can you explain this Conforto signing to me like I’m 5?”

Craig Goldstein, a professional crashing-out Dodgers fan who moonlights as the Editor-in-Chief of Baseball Prospectus (and someone who, disclaimer, has appeared on our show before), skeeted about Michael Conforto 60 times by my count during the 2025 MLB season. They will be more negative than this relatively benign back and forth about the newly-signed Dodger later on; but I wanted to highlight this exchange in particular because at the outset of this exercise, I thought I would be putting his posts about Conforto in positive and negative categories for comparison’s sake. The thing is, this is pretty much the only time the post is even kind of positive.

But that’s all during the season. Let’s take a moment to stick with that initial back and forth, and some further expounding on the signing that Goldstein would include in an article on Baseball Prospectus just a day after the signing. In his comments on both the signings of Michael Confortoa and Blake Treinen by the reigning-world-champion Los Angeles Dodgers, Goldstein was cautiously optimistic that Conforto could at the very least be a contributor in a rotating stable of outfielders including Andy Pages and the eventually-re-signed Teoscar Hernandez.

And this would be the last that Craig would have to say about Mr. Conforto for some time, at least on the social media platform of BlueSky or in the digital pages of Baseball Prospectus. It would not be until midway through Spring Training when Conforto’s performance (and notably, his performance in the outfield) managed to be high-profile enough to catch Goldstein’s ire.

Based on the timestamp of the skeet, I would imagine this is in reference to a Gage Workman sac fly in the bottom of the 4th with one out that scored Vidal Bruján from 3rd base.

The ESPN play-by-play does its best to illustrate the depth of the fly ball, and yeah, it’s pretty damn shallow for a runner to decide to test the arm of an outfielder if that’s any indication (forgive the resolution). But when that’s a 33rd percentile arm worth -1 fielding runs in 2025 according to statcast - suffice to say, the vendetta is starting to take shape.

But, once again, the hate stops flowing for some time. Not because Conforto has been playing well, mind you: through May 8, he was slashing an absolutely abysmal .135/.278/.225. But the Dodgers, on the other hand, had been hot out of the gate, going 25-12 as they entered a 4 game set in Arizona against the division rival Diamondbacks. And at 11:51 pm eastern time, for the first time in the regular season, Craig Goldstein officially had beef with Michael Conforto.

If I were to guess again based on the timestamp, I expect this is in reference to events in the top of the 8th inning. The Dodgers, trailing 5-0 as they entered this frame, had managed to scratch across their first two runs on the night with hits from Mookie Betts, Will Smith, Max Muncy, and Andy Pages. With two runners on the corners and only one out, a timely knock or even deep fly ball from the next batter could pull the Dodgers within 2 and make this a whole new ballgame. Unfortunately for Craig and the Dodgers faithful, the next batter was Michael Conforto, who promptly hit into a inning ending double play. Yuck indeed.

And with this, the flood gates began the crack at the seams just a little bit. After months of no skeets at all, this was the first of two in May followed by 4 in June, with the exasperation building every single week. Here’s a particular selection following a game between the Dodgers and the formerly-Conforto-employing New York Mets. Does it matter that the Dodgers won this game 6-5? No. Does it matter that Conforto did manage a hit and RBI across his four plate appearances? Not really. Does it matter that even looking at the Dodgers players’ contribution through the lens of net win probability added, Conforto’s .204 mark was the 4th highest for the starting lineup that day? You already know it doesn’t.

Craig, buddy, I’m sorry to tell you but you’ve got 82 more games of this to go.

Most notable during this month, at least in terms of importance to the subheading of this wholly unnecessary deep dive, was the meme wielded by Goldstein less than two weeks following that performance against the Mets, as the Dodgers now prepared to face the San Diego Padres in the midst of what was still a fierce NL-West divisional race. Taking the mound for the Dads on this day was Dylan Cease, and in his two appearances against Conforto the outfielder was left completely hapless with a pair of strikeouts, one swinging and one looking. And thus was the following post deployed:

It is worth mentioning that, once again, the Dodgers ended up winning this game! They kept doing that this season at a pretty good rate, largely independent of any connection to Conforto’s overall production. In fact, the following month of July is probably the best illustration of this point - it is by far the most fallow period for the team as a whole, as their .417 win% during the month is their only below .500 month all season; and it is by far Conforto’s best month at the plate, as he posted an .827 OPS during this poor stretch for the team. Baseball remains an incredibly stupid sport.

So through June, we’ve now reached 6 different posts lamenting the presence of one Michael Conforto on the roster of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team from our friend Craig Goldstein. To follow this up, July (again, the month during which by all appearances Conforto was the most productive all season) would see ELEVEN MORE added to that total, bringing us up to 17 on the year. At the risk of repeating ourselves with the several posts about how Michael Conforto will be driving Goldstein to an early grave (as well as three with the typo “Conforot”, which we did include for the purposes of this study and which seem to be the only typo instances during the season), let’s instead focus in on just one post made after the trade deadline. Here, we get some exceptionally astute analysis on the major calendar milestone from one of BP’s most well-regarded voices:

Little did we know that the 11 posts from July were just a warm up for the season’s homestretch, one in which tight competition for the postseason magnified every shortcoming for every contender, including a much-more-mortal-than-usual-looking Los Angeles Dodgers squad. The club righted the ship enough to clinch their hundredth-straight NL-West divisional title - but unlike when Conforto’s rare bright spot was lost in the muck and mire of a poor Dodgers span; this time when he followed up an .827 OPS in July with a .602 across the months of August and September, not one second of his failure was lost on our increasingly incensed editor-in-chief. Because across these two months, he skeeted about Michael Conforto.

Thirty.

Eight.

Times.

Stefon voice: Craig Goldstein’s Michael Conforto crash out has it all - memories of his past Dodgers-based nemeses…

…the second instance of an atomic weapon vaporizing an infant…

…and one particular thread of some of the worst at bats that side of the Rocky Mountains.

Thankfully, for Craig’s sake at least, September brought with it the end of the regular season; and with it, the end of Michael Conforto’s season, full stop. After posting by far his worst season in terms of slash line (.199/.305/.333, all career lows), Wins Against Replacement (-0.7 bWAR, another career low), and OPS+ (79, yet another career low); Dodgers fans were free to finally watch their team without his spectre looming over left field. Conforto, who has not appeared in the playoffs since the 2015 New York Mets were defeated by the Kansas City Royals in the World Series a decade ago, was left off of the the postseason roster for all four series. And you probably thought that meant that Craig was done skeeting about him.

You fool. You rube. You absolute buffoon.

Sure, the tide was stemmed, but not stopped altogether - Goldstein managed to find time to skeet 5 additional times during the month of October about everyone’s favorite $17m benchwarmer. Mostly, it was just about how excited he was to not watch Conforto play (as well as Tanner Scott, who in any other year would seemingly be Goldstein’s Public Enemy #1 if not for the raw, rage-inducing abilities or lack thereof from Mr. Michael Conforto).

But we did almost have a chance to end things on, if not a high note, at least a slightly funnier note. As the postseason wore on and the Conforto-less Dodgers marched ever towards repeating as World Series Champions, the brave Mia Sato came just short of shouting “WOULD!” into the aether about the beleaguered former All-Star. And if you thought that after all this work, Craig Goldstein was not going to swoop in and put a stop to that right away, then you have clearly scrolled to the bottom of this without reading about the 59 posts that preceded the final one:

Or at least, it seemed like that might have been the final one.

On Saturday, November 1st, 2025, the Dodgers won their second consecutive World Series Championship. This came 326 days after Conforto was signed to the Dodgers for a season in which he posted -1.3% championship win probability added, the lowest single mark of any member of the Dodgers roster (and it should be mentioned that the #2 spot belonged to Tanner Scott with -1.1%). Based on that catch-all statistic, it can be safely said that no member of the Dodgers contributed less to them winning a title this year than Michael Conforto. For his troubles he will still receive a ring, but below is what should really get a spot in his trophy case this season.

This is your brain on Michael Conforto. This is the anatomy of a crashout. And to be clear, it’s not unique just to the Goldstein v. Conforto rivalry: other division leaders like the Yankees and Phillies have their own Anthonies Volpe or Jordans Romano driving them up the outfield walls. But for whatever reason, Craig’s (frankly reasonable) quest for vengeance against The Coward Michael Conforto somehow stood out this season amongst all the noise over these past 8 months.

Except, hold on. Are there really two more skeets mentioning him in November… after the World Series. Craig, my friend, your team won? He hasn’t even played in over a month?! What could this possibly be abou-

Maybe it’s really all just for the love of the game. Shooters shoot, and posters post. You just have to tip your cap.