Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1119: We’re in the Great Game Now

Episode Date: October 6, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter one last time about the Glory Hole Recreation Area, as well as fading feelings of fandom, the circumstances that led to Braves GM John Coppolella’s resignation, and poor press-conference questions. Then they discuss their takeaways from the wild-card games and thoughts on the division series matchups before answering playoff-themed […]

Well, I am the Ancient Warrior Man, and I hail from the Ancient Warrior Clan. I invented the computer man, hubcaps and soda cans. Well, I am the Ancient Warrior Man, and I hail from the Ancient Warrior Clan. I invented the computer man, hubcaps and soda cans. Hi. You know what's kind of funny is we introduce every episode the same way, and it's like the one part of the show where one of us is like directly addressing the audience, because otherwise it's like a really weird way to begin a conversation with one other person. Hello and welcome to this chat that you and I are going to have for an hour. I'm going to start all my interactions with that same phrasing. Hello and welcome to this conversation with me.

I'm Ben Lindberg, writer for The Rigger. Joined as always by my fiance. All right. Well, we've got a playoff podcast, which is probably true of all the podcasts we'll be doing for the next month or so. We'll get into some other stuff. This is our regular listener email show. stuff this is our regular listener email show so we are going to still do some emails but try to keep them mostly playoff themed questions about games or teams or players who are in the playoffs so we'll get to that in a minute just before we do we finally got some closure on the glory hole

so to speak so i figured i would just follow up there one more time just to put everyone's questions to rest. This is an email from Brandon in nearby Sonora, California, not Sonoma, Sonora. And Brandon says not to belabor the conversation about the Glory Hole recreational area. Too late for that. We're laboring away. But as someone who grew up and lives close by Glory Hole Recreation Area, I wanted to share a few additional thoughts. Glory Hole Recreation Area is located in the motherlode, aka gold country. In mining, the term glory hole refers to a gold deposit which likely formed in a pool below a waterfall where the gold has collected in a pool due to being heavier than other sediment. This is a beautiful area, close to Big Trees State Park,

which is home to some of the biggest trees on Earth. Checks out. Yeah, that makes sense. There are a number of other oddly named nearby destinations. For example, if Glory Hole is not your thing, you can also recreate at the nearby Moaning Caverns. One final note, I work at a nearby community college. We used to offer classes

at our satellite site, the Glory Hole Center. The center name made for some awkward conversations with students about where classes were being held. Recreation is also a weird word because what are you recreating?

I mean, I get that, you know, there's like recreations of wars and battles, but is that like the original outdoor activity? I had to look up that word. I've never actually used recreate as a verb. Used recreation, of course, but recreate is strange because, of course, it is also recreate, which is probably a more common usage of words that are spelled that way.

But, yeah, you can say recreate too. So thank you, Brandon. Moaning caverns. Yeah. So we finally got an email from an authority on this subject, someone who was very close by instead of people who were helpfully speculating, although that was fun too. So I guess we can close the book on the glory hole recreation area.

Thank you for your banter service. Moaning cavern sounds like a glory hole. It does. So I don't know where we want to go with this. You have, I think, a question to ask me. Do you want to circle back to the Braves controversy briefly? I know everyone is in playoff mode right now. I guess if you're the Braves, that story probably broke at just about the right time when everyone is looking forward to playoff matchups but we now

know more than we did when we talked about this the first time which we knew nothing except for several tweets yeah okay so let's see let's i'll start with the question first then we'll go to the braves then we can go to some email stuff unless there's anything else uh which there is because playoffs so i was live chatting on fan graphss through the American League wildcard game. And over the course of the seven and a half hours that the game was taking place, somebody asked. I was in there with Travis Sochik and somebody asked if we were going to go to any games in person. And if we felt anything, if we went to games in person, if we felt anything when we've watched our teams in person play important games. Now, I can't speak to that because my team has never played any important games.

speak to that because my team has never played any important games but your name came up because somebody knew that you were at yankee stadium to watch the yankees play and subsequently and inevitably defeat the twins and this person seemed to know that you had grown up a yankees fan and was curious whether anything was stirring within you as you watched the yankees play a playoff game and win it in fairly dramatic fashion even if it did not end dramatically and i answered for you because you were not in the chat. You were at the stadium. And I said, no, no, nothing is stirring within Ben. But I didn't know for sure.

So I wanted to ask you. So in this public arena, did you feel anything watching that game? Yeah, I mean, I think not really. I was excited at the exciting moments. But for both teams, really, I think there's this weird way in which my family kind of guilts me about my lack of fandom and my family, not really baseball fans for the most part, but my mom kind of got into baseball a little bit just because I was into it. And I guess she wanted to know what I was talking about or have something to talk to me about. So she kind of

became a Yankee fan, not like hardcore, but she'll have talk to me about. So she kind of became a Yankee fan, not like hardcore, but she'll have the game on the radio, that kind of thing while it's going on. So she kind of makes me feel bad about not being a fan anymore, I guess, like I've turned my back on my childhood or something. But in the moment, I didn't really have any rooting interest, really. That kind of stuff just gets overcome by professional interests, I think, at this point. And it's strange because a lot of my favorite childhood memories are going to Yankee Stadium for playoff games and some really memorable ones. And obviously, I had a rooting interest when I was at those games. And I think maybe it helps

a little that this is not the same stadium. It's not really the same atmosphere. Although the crowd at the wildcard game was louder than a typical new Yankee stadium crowd, I think. But maybe it would be harder for me to ignore if it were the same setting. But it's a new place without those memories. And yeah, I wasn't really rooting for anyone. But there are other things that you root for. I mean, I'm torn because like on the one hand, if there are games in Yankee Stadium, I can go to them without traveling, which is nice. I'm probably not going to travel this playoffs.

Maybe Michael Bauman will travel, but I don't get a whole lot of utility traveling for playoff games. Like in the wildcard card game even the clubhouses were closed before the game so like even if you wanted to go talk to someone you couldn't and there are manager press conferences but they put the transcripts for those online like five minutes after they're done so there's almost no benefit to being there other than maybe sensing the atmosphere or feeling the emotion or something but it's a playoff game you can kind of infer what fans are feeling at a playoff game so i no longer

travel all that much to cover games i have in the past so on the one hand it's if there are a lot of yankees games this postseason i can go to them without a lot of trouble on the other hand if they get eliminated i don't even need to leave my apartment. That's always nice. So, and then there's the concern of just like which team is most interesting to write about. And I think in certain ways, the Yankees are probably more interesting to write about and talk about than the Twins. I mean, the Twins would have had that element of this is crazy and it's random and it's the playoffs and they're not even that great. And, you know, you would get Byron Buxton making leaping catches and that sort of thing. But with the Yankees, I think you get to talk about lots of interesting stuff about how they're constructed and their bullpen and their lineup and whether they're well-suited for October. So on the whole, I'm not unhappy with how it worked out, but no, I didn't really feel that old childhood Yankees fan feeling. That's essentially what I figured, although your answer is longer than I thought.

So yeah, so the Braves thing, we don't have to dwell on it too much because people probably want to hear about the playoffs, but this is a juicy story. There's 22 other teams. Yeah, sure. And we know a lot more now than we knew when we talked about it, although there's still a lot we don't know. We don't know all the details of the violations that the Braves, Coppola may have incurred here, but we know that it has something to do with spending limits, signing rules, probably in the international market, maybe also in the domestic market basically it just seems as if he was doing what probably many teams do but maybe being more aggressive about it and maybe also not very well liked by his peers and so maybe someone snitched on him or something or just was more aggressive about prosecuting this than they would have been for some other teams that is the the sense i'm getting and so you can blame him

you can blame the braves. Certainly the Braves, just as a franchise, have done some sort of loathsome things lately, even just with the stadium funding that they've done at every level of their organization. But you can also blame the system that put them and puts all teams in the place of wanting to spend more and trying to find ways to spend more because teams have lots of money and they want to use it. It turns out there's really no such thing as like a noble multi-billion dollar monopolizing corporation that puts a baseball product on the field. But yeah, I think so. Two things have surprised me out of this one that, oh, a general manager

resigned in the first place. And two, I didn't really have a sense before of how wildly detested john coppola was you never really know these things for sure like you can kind of assume that no one likes aj preller i think we can say that with a high degree of certainty especially now like gms just don't like him and when the when the mariners had jack zarenzic and then maybe more conspicuously when the mariners no longer had jack zarenzic then we all found out how much everybody hated him but i had heard those whispers in the past before because he was just kind of an awful person to work with and or for but i didn't know that about john coppola because i i first became aware of him when he was lower on the raves totem pole so to speak and he had a lot of media contacts and he put his name out there a lot. And he was, I did not have any contact with John Cappellella personally, but I heard that he was

pretty free with information. He was just happy to talk, happy to talk about the baseball industry in a way where a lot of executives are usually pretty cagey. You know, they won't say, you know, what's the word? Anything? They won't say anything. And John Cappellella would say the opposite of that. I never really heard much about him personally, but I think I just kind of took away from that. And I developed, I imagined this persona that he had, where it's just like a happy go lucky guy who's just working for a baseball organization. And then he was named the general manager at one point. And I thought, okay, great. Now a guy, he's probably not going to be able to talk so much anymore with the media. But I did not know that maybe that was kind of part of his agenda, that he was using his media contacts to inflate his own reputation, which, by the way, worked. So he had a lot of people on his side at first, but I just didn't realize how awful he was as an executive to deal with. And it kind of makes you wonder how many other executives might be awful to deal with.

We can say that Kapolela was. He's gone. We can assume that Preller is. It's not gone somehow yet. I don't know who else is out there, but I'm sure that Dan Duquette is incredibly frustrating just because of the guy who's pulling his strings. So I think that the most, one of the most interesting things that's taking place here

is that the Braves are being investigated for some, it seems like signing violations. I don't know what else they might have done. The fact that a general manager resigned from this, as opposed to when the Red Sox had their discipline, they were fined, and then they had some international signing restrictions. But nobody really lost a job from what the Red Sox did. So it seems like the Braves must have done something above and beyond.

But there is the talk that top prospect Kevin Mait tan my tan might kevin uh let's just go with kevin my tan top prospect kevin my tan might be made a free agent if uh if the investigators find whatever they need to find maybe his signing was in some way illegal maybe he was signed too early and what i didn't realize when i first saw that rumor was that if he were made a free agent then just like with the Red Sox guys who were much lower profile, five players had their contract with the Red Sox voided after investigators found that there was some unscrupulous behavior. And those five players signed with other organizations, but they signed under mostly the international amateur free agent

rules. So Kevin Maitan, if he's made a free agent, which would be a pretty dramatic step, because he's such a good prospect. But if he were made a free agent, which would be a pretty dramatic step because he's such a good prospect. But if he were made a free agent, he would not be a true free agent. He would not be able to go sign with a team for like $100 million, which a team would give him. He will have to be subject to the same international signing rules as any other amateur player. He just wouldn't be signing with the Braves. So we won't be seeing him as a true amateur free agent, which would be a hell of a test case that I think baseball would have a vested interest in not seeing play out. So that's too bad, I guess. I wish that we could just see someone signed for what he's actually worth, but I don't think I've ever talked to him. I've never had him on a podcast or anything, although I've heard him on podcasts. But he was responsive. Like when I wrote a story about Tyler Flowers earlier this year, I asked John for a comment about why they signed him or what they think of the progress he's made or whatever. And he got back to me and he didn't say anything in any email exchange I've had with him that was particularly, you know, that revealed a whole lot. It was just kind of GM speak basically. And I don't think it affected

my coverage of the Braves or I don't think he got anything out of my maybe quoting him once or twice in an article. But yeah, you don't really develop a sense of someone from emailing with them a few times. You appreciate it, of course, when any source or person you're trying to talk to gets back to you. And I don't know if that subconsciously affects how you think of them or anything. But generally, if I haven't even met a person, I'm not going to form a strong opinion about their qualities as a human being. So, and yeah, I think Carson and Dave did a whole podcast about this. If you want more on this story, they did a Fangraphs Audio episode just about the strange incentives here and the fact that by trying to limit spending and earning by amateur players, MLB just kind of not forces teams into this situation, but definitely gives them a reason to try to schools. And this is just maybe a particularly egregious example of this. So I don't know whether this will scare other teams and other executives out of doing this because this is not just like a team fine or a team penalty.

This is obviously potentially costing someone his career. This is not like a Chris Correa situation. It's like this is a baseball transgression. He is not going to go to prison or anything like that. But I think that, you know, this is obviously a huge stain on him. And so maybe other executives will think twice about this. I know better than to think MLB will change the system or something and just let amateurs be true free agents. That's not going to happen. So this kind of thing will probably continue in some form or another yep nothing more valuable than a very good young international

player we have seen we know just like with domestic draft picks but we know with the uh the top international prospects when they get signed they're not getting anything even close to what they're actually worth and we just kind of you see right there that there is a clear benefit to teams acting with, I don't know what the word is, some sort of impropriety if they can get away with it. And we see with Shohei Otani reportedly coming over this winter, he's going to be signing a contract that is well under what he's going to be worth. And we just kind of people have been spending months going through the CBA, going through

all the rules, trying to figure out how some team will be able to skirt what exists in order to convince Shohei Otani to sign with their organization. Ethical behavior is unlikely to get you Shohei Otani because there is so much to gain from having him that some team is going to figure, well, it's worth doing something that the league doesn't want us to do just so we can get this guy and probably the penalty will be less than the benefit of having him with the team. All right. So we can do a bit of playoff talk before we get to playoff emails. So we're recording Thursday before the ALDSs start.

So by the time you hear this, there probably will have been a Red Sox-Astros game, any Yankees-Indians game. And then, of course, the NL series start on Friday. We get the crazy day in which every remaining playoff team plays, which is always madness and fun. And we've talked about and you've probably read about by now or written about by now just the strength of this playoff field, these eight teams remaining.

They're all really, really good teams. No flukes here, no undeserved members of this elite eight. So it's exciting. I'm looking forward to it. They're fun matchups here, fun storylines here. We've talked about a lot of that. Before we put the wildcard games in the past, do you have any takeaways from that? I wrote in my game story, basically, which I filed right after the game, went up shortly after the AL wildcard game. The takeaways, I think, were pretty obvious from that, which is that this was a demonstration of the Yankees' bullpen power. They hadn't intended to

do a bullpen game, although it had been suggested by some, but they ended up doing one and it worked out marvelously for them because their bullpen is incredible. And I saw a thread in the Facebook group because someone else wrote a similar article at another site the next morning. And someone in the Facebook group was like nice of them to copy and paste Ben's article or something. But like every article is going to be the same in the playoffs because we're all watching the same game. We're all seeing the same thing. in the playoffs because we're all watching the same game. We're all seeing the same thing.

There are maybe takeaways you can have that are different from someone else's. But for the most part, the dominant insight from any one game is going to occur to more than one person when like everyone who writes about baseball is watching and writing about the same thing. So that was a theme, obviously, of the wildcard games was starters not going deep into games and relievers pitching most of the innings and for the most part, pitching well. So I don't know how much you can extrapolate

from wildcard games to regular playoff games, but clearly this was a theme when the postseason started. It's even more of a theme now. Yeah, you can think yourself in circles you can you can drive yourself crazy trying to come up with some original new way to cover what the yankees did to the twins but at the end of the day severino was bad the yankees bullpen has not been sneaking up on anyone people have been writing about how good the yankees bullpen has looked for months ever since they got tommy canley and david robertson to add to what they already

had yep yeah they always looked dangerous at the playoffs. Now, nobody expected Luis Severino to last one third of one inning. And the way that that game began was kind of incredible. I found myself sort of caught up in the surprise of it, but didn't take long. Didn't take long for the Yankees to go all Yankees twins on the twins. And yeah, the Yankees took over. I think that it's worth noting that when Chad Green came in to get two important strikeouts in the first inning, it's like, I think people had a sense at the time. Those were two really important strikeouts.

The Twins had two runners in scoring position when that was happening. And it's a good reminder that it's never too early for high leverage outs. So Chad Green comes right in, does what he does. Now, not every team obviously is equipped to act like the Yankees did. But I mean, when you have that many good relievers, why push it? There's just no reason to push it. So anyway, three takeaways from the two wildcard contests beyond the obvious takeaways. One, I can't believe Zach Granite just missed the bag. Who misses the bag? Nobody ever misses the bag. Got an email about that. So we'll save it for a little later. But yes.

So credit to first base umpire Mike Winters for watching that play happen and never calling Granite safe. He made the immediate out call when Starlin Castro tagged him. Castro did not know that Granite missed the bag. He just tagged him sort of as a reflex. Mike Winters, the hero of that play and arguably the game. And moving on to the the national league wildcard game so paul goldschmidt hit the first inning three run homer first pitch off john gray it was one of those i

think classic goldschmidt mammoth moonshot yeah home runs just got a lot of air you had a time to go get a beverage while before the ball came down what floored me and what continues to floor me is paul goldschmidt swung at the first pitch from John Gray and the Diamondbacks swung at I think 46% of all first pitches in the games or clearly they had some sort of strategy to be aggressive early on. But it was a first pitch curveball from John Gray that was sort of up and in and almost out of the zone. And as I watched the swing like 10 times, and I in Goldschmidt timed it perfectly, kept his weight back. Obviously, he had a dang home run off the pitch. And I can't for the life of me figure out why Paul Goldschmidt was sitting on a first pitch curveball. It's John Gray's third pitch. He's

known for his slider. You always expect a first pitch fastball. His curveball has gotten better this year, but you don't look for it. Whenschmidt is faced gray this year he had only seen one first pitch curveball out of like nine or ten so it's not like it was a pattern so i don't know if it was just sort of like a hunch but it wasn't even like a good now it wasn't a good curveball in that it was hung it was up it was actually a little above goldschmidt's belt but like it wasn't even like in the middle of the strike zone yeah so i can't i just can't figure out i want to say that wow paul goldschmidt's belt, but like it wasn't even like in the middle of the strike zone. Yeah. So I can't, I just can't figure out. I want to say that, wow, Paul Goldschmidt is some kind of like hitting genius, which I mean, all the evidence points to he is very good.

Yeah. But there wasn't a runner on second. So it's not like there was a stolen sign or something. And I just can't figure it out. And when I was looking for postgame quotes, I couldn't find anything good. Goldschmidt, bless his heart, he'd said nothing at all the least bit interesting after the game was over. He was just like, I just want to get the run in from third.

And then he was disappointed in his next two at-bats because he couldn't drive runners home. It's like, just say something about why did you swing at that pitch? And he swung at it so well. So it's a mystery to me. Really impressive. Batters very seldom swing at a first pitch curveball. Curveballs get like the fewest swings of any first pitch. It's kind of when you get that get me over curveball idea because hitters are up there. They're looking for a heater. Maybe

they're sitting on a slider or something, but you just don't swing at first pitch curveball. So I can't I just can't for the life of me figure it out. And the other takeaway was Archie Bradley tripled. Yes, he did. Yeah, that was strange. I don't know. Obviously, in the playoffs, teams are devoting extra resources to advanced scouting. So if this were something that Gray did often or maybe had started to do more often recently or, as you mentioned, had done it against Goldschmidt in the past, that would make sense. But it sounds like none of those things is true. So I don't know, unless there was some kind of tell or pitch tip or something that

Goldschmidt picked up on, or maybe he's just that good that he can recognize a curveball that early that it looks like he's sitting on it when he actually wasn't. I don't know. But yeah, the quality of the postseason questions asked to players is pretty spotty. Like, let me give you the first question that was asked to David Robertson about his career-long three-and-a-third inning outing in the AL Wildcard game. I don't know who asked it. I didn't see. But here is the question. Quote, can you talk a little bit about the greediness out there tonight? Did you feel like you had to be a warrior end quote and the response starts david robertson quote i don't know about that and then there's some more about how i don't know he wanted to help the team win or whatever but yeah there's a lot of that

kind of question in post-season press conferences as opposed to why'd you swing at that pitch how'd you know that pitch was coming which is at least more valuable than the other alternative kind of question just assuming the narrative like you can you can rip up players if you want for making too much of a postseason outing but like that's just a writer who's trying that's the writer framing the answer yes you could always tell like when they have their game story written and there's just like a part of the story that says, TK quote from David Robertson or something, and they're just waiting to fill it in there with something about grittiness. So, yeah.

Had to be out there for a while, but such is life. Yep. Yeah. So, all right. Well, obviously these were long games, which we'll be seeing a lot of this month, and predictable outcomes in the sense that the teams that were pretty heavily favored won, but there was a lot of weirdness along the way. Pretty fun games, obviously, just with the stakes and the suspense that's built into the wildcard game. It's pretty hard to have a terribly boring

game, so I enjoyed them. Anyway, we've got four other series. I don't know if we want to break down each in detail or whether they're some that are more interesting to you than others or whether you have any contrary opinions about these. I guess the consensus opinion about these four series or who's favored or who most people would think would win these things. Probably Indians over Yankees, Astros over Red Sox, and Dodgers over Diamondbacks and Nationals over Cubs, I would say. Although Nationals-Cubs may be the closest to a toss-up. I don't know. And certainly there are people who think the Diamondbacks will be a tough matchup for the Dodgers.

They definitely will. But I don't know that I see anything that makes me disagree with any of the picks I just mentioned. I don't know whether you have any unconventional opinions about these division series. No. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I mean, you can often just get yourself in trouble trying to be unconventional. Like, you know, I saw people who pick the twins in the wildcard game or whatever. It's like, you know, what's the point?

I mean, sure, the twins could win. And I guess the thinking is that you want to stand out from the pack or like if the twins do win, you will have been the one person who picked them to win or whatever but it's not because you know more about baseball than everyone else it's because you got lucky and you tried to do something that everyone else wasn't doing so for the most part i don't disagree with i think the standard thinking about these series and like dave wrote something i basically wrote something about how good a postseason team the Yankees are. And when you did your breakdown, which you teased in our last episode about how the postseason teams stack up just looking at the players who are on postseason rosters, Yankees were among the teams that benefit most from transitioning to this format, but they are running right into probably the best team in baseball and as good as their bullpen is and i think it's probably better than cleveland's i just this just comes down to things that we said in the past about the royals or other teams that had dominant bullpens which is just that like they need a lead to get the most out of those relievers. And they're kind of a different team when they're ahead and behind.

And given that the Indians rotation is just so deep and so strong, I think they will probably have the starting pitcher advantage in most games in the series. And when the Yankees are relying on Sonny Gray in game one and CeCe Sabathia in game two, and then, I don't know, going back to Severino, the bath in game two and then i don't know going back to severino maybe tanaka in there at some point i just you wouldn't really expect them to have a lead given the quality of the indians starters and lineup that they could use to make the most out of their bullpen and just start bringing those guys in the fifth inning to shut down cleveland i will point out at least so the indians are very good i'm not convinced the yankees in the playoffs are even a worse team the indians rotation is very good clearly i've i've already written now a few posts about how the indians had arguably the greatest pitching staff in the history of

baseball which is i know that's like a big statement but the numbers are right there no team has prevented runs quite like the indians have at least in the integration era which is incredible but same time you can look at that division and the only good offense that they pitched against in the division belonged to the twins which is not even like a great offense it was just fine and the yankees had very difficult division very difficult ballparks for the most part to pitch in and and they faced just a tougher schedule as i'm looking at the numbers at baseball prospectus for example no pitcher who pitched regularly faced a worse average opponent this year than carlos carrasco so i'm not saying that carlos carrasco was a bad pitcher by any means he's very good but i think

when you look at the indians numbers because of the the quality of competition that they face their numbers are a little inflated relative to what they actually are you look at the yankees and i know because of the reasons he biased you look at every inning you think oh i don't know what he can do in the playoffs but like let's face it all four ace starters in the wildcard game sucked even zach rinke who is not going to be nervous about the stakes so well you write it off it's fluke severino very good he would fit easily as the indians number two i don't know what it will take but i'll probably never trust trevor bauer to be actually consistently good i don't think he is good i don't want him to be good, but I'll probably never trust Trevor Bauer to be actually consistently good.

I don't think he is good. I don't want him to be good because I have a personal qualm against him, but that's my own thing. Really don't like Trevor Bauer. People can probably guess why. So Kluber, great. Carrasco, fine. Bauer, meh. Tomlin, don't know what's happening there.

Clevenger, Salazar in the bullpen. Indians, very good playoff pitching staff because of how deep their bullpen is. The Yankees' bullpen is at least as deep. Starting rotation is not bad. The offense is quite good when Judge is going because Judge is, when he's going, he's maybe the best hitter in baseball. So that series is going to be, I don't know, just all eight teams are so good. I'm not glad that the Twins and Rockies were eliminated because you always want that underdog. And there isn't an underdog except maybe.

I guess the Diamondbacks would still be kind of the weak link because they have kind of one good reliever who, granted, just gave up two home runs after hitting a triple. Weird game for Archie Bradley. But their closer is Fernando Rodney, which the Diamondbacks can make you nervous. I don't know which of their five starters are going to put in the bullpen that can make a big difference for them but they're probably

the weakest of the eight teams left and from the others I just there's no there's no real distinction and I I feel like the Yankees and Indians are probably built best for the playoffs one of them is going to be gone in a week or a week and a half and I guess if I have any sort of like somewhat contrary opinion, if the consensus is that the Indians are better than the Yankees, well, I don't think that they are. I don't think that they are in this month, at least. Yeah. And there's been a lot made of the starting pitching decisions in this series, especially the Indians not starting Kluber in game one, going with Bauer, saving Kluber for game two. This is, it's a really complicated decision to

analyze because there are just so many factors here. And ultimately the edge that the Indians are either gaining or losing here is probably small in terms of World Series odds or even the odds of winning the series. It's hard to analyze because there's the fact that Kluber evidently wants to be on regular rest, does not want short rest, does not want extra rest. And if he's really adamant about that, then you kind of have to do what he wants and what will make him most comfortable. And then there's weather considerations because there could be rain during game two. There's considerations about who the other team is starting, whether you want to take advantage of a weak starter and really go for the jugular, or whether you want to save your best starter to match up against their

best starter. And at the time the Indians made this decision, I don't think they even knew what the Yankees rotation would be. And there are sometimes considerations about some guy does well on the road or at home, or at least you think that he does. Like, I think that's been something people have mentioned with Carlos Carrasco. I don't know how much stock to put in those splits, certainly for a single season, even for a career, but there are all these different things. And then there's, well, does it hurt you slightly in the division series, but help you in the long run if your odds are trying to maximize your chances of winning the world series. So it's like if your just instinctive reaction is this is brilliant or this

is dumb i'm suspicious of that just because like to figure out whether this makes sense probably have to do all sorts of probabilistic calculations and then also somehow know the psychology of the pitchers involved it's it's really complicated. But obviously what Francona is doing here is slightly different from the standard, which is just start your ace in the first game so that you can make sure to line him up for game five too. Yep. And I guess, I don't know how much longer this point needs to be raised, but when you are talking about this decision it's also i think critically as far as these things go it's critically important to just not catch yourself overrating the identity

of the starting pitcher because at the end of the day these teams know that their bullpens are deep they're going to lean on them heavily and the starter might just be out there for four or five innings and like the average reliever on the yankees or the indians is like as good if not better on a per inning basis than Corey Kluber himself. So the difference between Kluber and some other starting pitcher is just not that great. So it's you you think about the playoffs and how you always think about Madison Bumgarner that year that Jake Arrieta just like shut down the Pirates. And you think an ace can can just take a game over and then you you need a ace to win the World Series. And I mean, i don't know lots

of teams in the playoffs this year are going to try to prove that's not true the yankees just proved what you all four teams i guess just proved that you can play a wild card game and not have your race do anything i guess two of the teams lost but whatever irvin santana was better than severed anyway i guess you don't want to just defer to a 30 all the time, but it's October. The Indians are smart. They've earned the benefit of the doubt. Just assume that their reason for starting Kluber in game two instead of game one is probably fine.

And even if it's maybe a little bit wrong, even if you figure that they're overthinking, just it's not going to be wrong by that much. Certainly not going to be wrong enough to lose your mind about lose your mind about what actually happens on the field, because I'm just going to say for the third time in this podcast that archie bradley hit a two-run triple thing the baseball is gonna be weird and who knows what's gonna make the difference anniversary of the midges game between these two teams so you can line up your rotation exactly you want it and then midges so who knows incidentally uh i just saw a note earlier today i don't know if you saw joppa chamberlain confirmed wednesday to the new year post that he is retired

from baseball huh wow 32 years old that was not the trajectory i expected his career to take but yeah that's what happens when you go on trampolines. I guess that's the lesson from this. So, yeah, I mean, I think I'd probably take Cleveland, give them a slight edge in this series. Just, I mean, if only because the Yankees are not starting Severino until game three. So you only get to use him once. And then, I mean, presumably game three, but certainly not one or two. And then they probably will not have their full bullpen available in game one, which again will have happened by the time people are listening to this.

So maybe that is enough to swing it one way or another. As for the other matchups, is there any series here that is particularly compelling to you or that you think you have some semi-unique observation to make about how these two teams stack up against each other again another reason it's so hard is that there often are not interesting like matchups to point out that are specific to two particular teams that play each other like often you're just talking about well this is this team's strength and that is this team's weakness whereas if it's basketball if it's football then you have like defenders covering specific players and you have coaches matching up strategy and there's all sorts of stuff you might tailor your play calling to this specific

other team and the players that you're facing that much in baseball. There are some limited examples, like maybe you have a platoon split that favors versus left-handed pitchers or right-handed pitchers, and maybe another team is particularly heavy on left-handed pitchers, right-handed pitchers. That's kind of like the extent of it, or maybe a team is a great base-running or base-stealing team,

and the other team has a weak catcher, and so you can take advantage of that sort of thing. Usually not the thing that swings the series although there are examples where certainly games can be won or lost because of those things yeah heck i mean you wrote earlier this year about how the diamondbacks were such a good base running team and then yesterday they hit four triples like that's that's pretty cool it's not all because they're a good base running team again one for the fourth time i'll mention one was a pitcher but nevertheless it's it's neat to see that stuff and with i don't know i i think of the of the four series just for

i'm kind of gut feeling i'm sort of least interested in the nationals cubs not for any good reason they're two very good teams i think they're about equally matched curious to see how max scherzer is going to do because right now he's got a tweet hamstring and he's lined up to pitch a game three but who knows how healthy he's going to be but then jake arietta also has a tweet hamstring and he's lined up to start game four so he who knows how good he's going to be but then Jake Arrieta also has a tweet hamstring and he's lined up to start game four so he who knows how good he's going to be or if there will be a game four also sort of unknown because he barely made it back before the end of the regular season yeah so Harper also just you know so now we're talking about three of the best players on those two rosters combined and who knows how close they are to 100 you know i i think i'm sort

of least interested in that series one because i've never felt any connection to the nationals not for any good reason they're extremely good lots of good star players and as for the cubs i just don't like seeing repeat champions so i kind of don't want them to make a deep run but whatever that's just my own gut feeling and that things are going to change as the playoffs evolve it's hard to think of any sort of unique or compelling viewpoint for the reasons that you mentioned you can't really design defense specific to either one of these teams the cubs are good because they have good players the nationals are good because they have good players both teams have good players in the rotation in the bullpen and at the plate and in the field the nationals don't have adam eaton i guess but they haven't had adam

eaton all year and they played in a bad division but that doesn't mean that they're not a really good team. And who knows? I mean, the Cubs have been sort of one of the best teams in baseball over the entire second half of the season. So as easy as it is to look at the record and think that they've been a disappointment, they haven't. We probably underestimated the hangover effect coming into the season that it seems like

the Cubs and the Indians both kind of dealt with before they caught fire. So Cubs quite good. You would think that the two best starting pitchers in the series pitch for the Nationals, but the next four best probably all pitch for the Cubs. So there's some sort of weird intermixing there. I'm going to assume that either one of us really strongly believes in Gio Gonzalez. So I assume that the Nationals bullpen is going to get used pretty heavily for maybe the first time in franchise history. They seem to have a good and deep one, but you know, you never really know who's going to be good or who's going to be bad archie bradley gave up two home runs after hitting his triple that's five mentions so i don't know switching to the dodgers and diamond

backs i guess it's you know it's going to be interesting to see how healthy clayton kershaw looks he's not going to be used on short rest according to the dodgers which they've also said before before he was used on short rest so it doesn't really mean anything the diamond backs clobbered the dodgers in the second half or at least in september i think they just beat them handled didn't they sweep them two times or yeah and they took the season series like 11-8 something like that yeah i mean diamondbacks are a good team but i think that the the most the the thing that hurts the diamondbacks in the playoffs is that they're like the one team that has five really good starting pitchers yeah and so one of them does not get to start but i don't know which

one of those is going to end up pitching out of the bullpen that guy should probably be used pretty heavily because right now their bullpen is kind of archie bradley and hope it will be interesting to see how often fernando rodney gets the chance to actually close a narrow game because the diamondbacks aren't dumb and i was thinking Rodney yesterday because for a little while, it looked like he was going to inherit a one run lead, which was going to be the ultimate Fernando Rodney experience. Did not happen. He inherited a four run lead, which was good for the Diamondbacks

because he gave up a run. And that's kind of typical Rodney fashion. But I was I was thinking about him. I think to a man, everyone that rodney's ever played for or with kind of loves him and i think even when you're not watching fernando rodney he's a really lovable character seems like a great dude i hope i'm not missing anything but i don't think i've ever heard anything negative about him in terms of his like off-field behavior he just seems like he's a good quirky entertaining warm-hearted man who is just the world's most

frustrating closer he seems like the kind of closer where you hate having him on the mound for the ninth inning but if you didn't the team might revolt because they all love fernando rodney so much so in that sense it could make him like a really powerful but a really dangerous man to bring into your clubhouse because you think crap if we're going to make this guy the closer he's going to have to close because players might mutiny if we remove his responsibilities now i might just be making way too much out of this but the fact that he's his age and still throwing 98 miles per hour and still closing despite everyone he's just everyone understanding how wild it is to example like of closer who is an adventure every time. And you'd think that when a pitcher develops that reputation, that would be the time to

have him not be your closer anymore. But Fernando Rodney's had that reputation for years and years, and he is still closing. Yeah. What? Over the last three years, he basically has like a league average ERA as a closer. He saved like 80 games over that same span of time. He's closing now. Fernando Rodney is 40 years old. He's 40 years old and he's still throwing like his average fastball this year was 96 miles per hour.

And he's not that good. That's it. But it must be it just must be at this point that he is simply that popular, which I can buy because he just seems so great when you don't have to actually watch him in a close baseball game. the leverage index breakdowns of the Diamondbacks relievers. Obviously, there have been some pretty terrible closers in history, worse than 2017 Fernando Rodney. And most of the time, they get the save because a lot of saves are fairly easy for a major league pitcher to record. And some teams at least have seemed to employ the strategy where you use the older guy who's not that great as the closer, and then that frees you up to use your Archie Bradley or Archie Bradley equivalent in a more flexible or higher leverage or longer outings role, or maybe even just keep their costs down because if you have saves,

then you will earn more in arbitration, that kind of thing. So that is one way you can go about it too. Here's what I'll tell you. So this year, 291 relief pitchers through at least 20 innings small minimum but whatever 291 relievers 20 innings i am sorting by game leverage index this is not leverage index per plate appearance because as you might expect fernando rodney's goes up after he enters the game because he creates his own leverage so this is just looking at leverage when a pitcher enters a game first place edwin diaz 2.03 when diaz came in to pitch the situation was about twice as i don't know volatile critical whatever the word is twice as leveraged as the

average situation second place cory knable 1.91 third place fernando rodney 1.84 he had a healthy lead over archie brad Bradley on the same team and a very healthy lead over Jorge de la Rosa on the same team so Rodney still pitching the Diamondbacks biggest innings and I will say to Rodney's credit although he did have a elevated ERA his peripherals were fine because he just did not allow home runs he is ultimately hard to hit he is a maybe a good reminder that when you have a wild closer who runs into walk trouble it's better than being a closer who runs into hitting trouble so rodney still hard to hit he will just generally put somebody on and maybe he will put maybe he'll

give that base runner some company before he gets the save completed. All right. Well, if we haven't dwelt on your team yet, sorry, but we'll be doing many more podcasts. We are scheduled to talk again before these NL series actually start. So anything we haven't covered in detail today, we can talk about tomorrow. We're going to get to all of these teams at some point. So let's do some emails while we're at it.

We can finish up with those because we've already been talking for quite some time So the aforementioned Zach Granite email This is from Steven He says, I am home from the Yankees game and have rewatched Zach Granite missing the bag How do you miss the bag? I don't know I guess to make some excuse for Zach Granite

He was not prepared to start this game. He probably did not expect to be coming in as a defensive replacement for Byron Buxton, a job that no other baseball player is qualified for because Byron Buxton is probably the best outfielder in the world right now. But hurt his back, Zach Granat had to come into a wildcard game in Yankee Stadium. to a wild card game in yankee stadium perhaps he had other things in his mind beyond touching first base but uh it seems like the sort of thing that a major league baseball player should have ingrained in them by the time they get to this point step on the first base bag i don't know how this happens it's something i would do but i wouldn't expect a actual baseball player to do yeah and granite said after the game like uh he was trying to he thought that tommy canley's momentum was going to bring him over the bag and he didn't want to have a collision

or or step on canley he said after the words well i should have just stepped on him now if you watch the replay the canley's momentum did not actually carry him over the bag granite based on his body language he didn't really he was just running straight to the bag he didn't move out of the way he didn't like lean his upper body or move his legs. He just stepped completely over the base, which I don't know when I would try to Google how often this happens. Like I found a clip of Nelson Cruz not touching first base from 2016, but he actively moved out of the way of a collision with Hanley Ramirez.

And so he kind of stepped off to the side of the base. Granite just stepped over it. And I couldn't find other cases of a player doing that. When you read about a player missing a base, it's usually when he's like rounding to get a triple or a double or an inside the park home run. And you just kind of cut a base too short. And you can kind of understand that

because you're not really concentrating on trying to step on the bag. You're just kind of trying to be as efficient as possible with your route. Granite was just running down a straight line. And he didn't step on the bag you're just kind of trying to be as efficient as possible with your route granite was just running down a straight line and he didn't step on on the base and so i i wonder reading some i wrote about this at vangraves and i was reading through the comments and a few people suggested this might be pretty common with players who are like stepping on the base can be dangerous stepping directly on the base when you're in a full sprint it's just it's weird to have elevated bases in the first place let's be honest so it's a it's a good way to hurt yourself we've seen players get hurt before i believe that's how bryce harper got hurt just uh not too long ago so you can kind of get

it you wanna you wanna clip the base which is just a weird thing to have to do so i wonder if this is the kind of thing that happens all the time except that when it happens the players are are out like the ball has beaten them there because when you have a close play you figure as a runner okay i need to touch the base but when granite was going down and the throw beat him beat him by a few steps and then he just strode over strided strode i don't know over over the base and i wonder if it's the kind of thing that you see players do a lot with plays like this except that they're already usually out. So it doesn't matter.

I don't know. There's no there's no recording of how often people actually step on the base. All I know is that in the way that this played out, you just don't often see players. You almost never see players out because they didn't touch a base where they weren't trying around it. That wasn't actually the question. So Stephen says, here's my real and important line of inquiry how was the play scored a 3-4 i score every game i go to and my aunt who taught me to score we were both confused once we learned he had missed the bag and not taken a turn greg bird clearly threw the ball

to tommy camely who proceeded to drop the ball and then starlin castro picked up the ball and tagged out granite why is that not a 3-1-4 put out? Is it because Canely actively hurt their ability to make the answer on this the e1 or as it would have been scored had castro not alertly tagged granite does not allow him to get an assist bird does get an assist because had the error not been made an out would have been recorded so it oddly looks like three four as the pitcher does not get credit for an assist in a situation that would be scored an error the assist to bird is probably what is a little confusing but that's how it is scored when a fielder drops the ball i would have listed this for a3 assist 3 but the software likely forces this to appear this way so maybe the software is not prepared for a play this weird which i can't really blame it for that so wait you

can't you can't have an error and an assist on a play, but you can... Am I correct that you can have a blown save and a hold in the same game? Does that make sense? I know you can have a blown save and a win, obviously. So how would you get a blown save and a hold? So you blow the save, but then... This feels like it's not true.

That's hard to figure i guess well you keep talking i'm gonna look something up well yeah this is this is kind of confusing but i'm gonna trust darren on this this is not a situation that comes up often so i cannot say based on experience and i'm not someone who regularly scores baseball games anyway still searching nope so what i can confirm is no no i was wrong i was trying to i was thinking of of something else i guess maybe it was just a blown save and a win which happens all the time you cannot i don't think get a blown save and a hold i misspoke i'm an idiot so that's that and so yeah i guess tommy canley does not get an assist. And Greg Bird might as well have just banked the ball off of first base umpire Mike Winters.

Not that Mike Winters did anything to deserve being pelted with baseballs. He nailed that play. Start to finish. All right. Question from Forrest. Has either of you looked at team level pitch values? Right now, the Indians have a huge lead in value against sliders. And he shows us a graph and they are, according to this, the only team that has a positive run value against

sliders this year. Farr says, I find the idea that only one team has positive value against sliders a bit surprising. Then again, if you use this leaderboard and now he links us not to, I think, the baseball info solutions source of this data at Fangraphs, but the pitch FX based source of this data. That's a pitch classification difference. Of course, the Indians are not even in first place. So he says maybe this is a pitch classification issue. Maybe they categorize sliders, cutters, curveballs differently. That might be a separate thing to look at.

Anyway, the top five there is pretty interesting. And then you get the Braves. The top five is like all playoff teams, the Nationals, Dodgers, Red Sox are in there too. So the idea that one team could be especially adept against sliders or any particular pitch type, do you put much stock in that? No, not really.

But I will say that it was fun to think about as I looked at this email. And one of the things that's been true about the Indians for the past few years, and this year they did it again, where they led baseball and the percentage of their plate appearances taken with the platoon advantage. So the Indians have done a bunch of lefties against righties and righties against lefties. They do that all the time. Yeah. Yep. One of the quirks of their roster.

And it's been true for a few years and another thing that's true about sliders is that sliders tend to have big platoon splits as a pitch you like righty on righty sliders or lefty on lefty sliders you don't really like lefty on righty sliders or righty on lefties this is why pitchers are always said that they need a third pitch if they want to start because you need something like a change up or a good curveball or a splitter to throw to an opposite handed batter usually so even though i don't know if it's true what i could say is that in theory it could make sense that it's true that when the indians have seen sliders this year more often they have been when they have had the platoon advantage and so they're seeing worse

sliders and so therefore it would make it easier for them to hit them i don't know if it's true i don't want to dig into it because i just like the elegant the theory is. So that's what I'm going to say. And if you have evidence that suggests otherwise, I don't care. No, I don't think I do. All right. And question from Encore. He says, I have a question about what to make an observation that I came across recently. One of my friends pointed out a fun fact that he saw on ESPN. Craig Kimbrell has the highest exit velocity on batted balls and the fifth lowest whip of all time. I thought this was particularly curious, so I started to dig around in Kimbrell's stats for this year.

I was curious if this might have been due to some BABIP luck. He's obviously been incredibly effective this year, as shown by his other stats. I was still unconvinced that the weirdly high exit velocity didn't mean anything, so I looked at Kimbrel's batted ball data, specifically his percent of hard hit balls on fangrass. His came in at 39.1%, ranking 151 out of 155 qualified relievers. I interpreted this as batters are hitting Kimbrel incredibly hard, as the exit velocity data says,

but the ball is generally not going into play. Am I right to assume that Kimbrel's great results and analytic value for this season are superficial and the granular batted ball data suggests that perhaps there is some luck involved here? Or is everything that I said a complete lie? And is this a sort of skill that Kimbrell has mastered? And he wants to know if maybe the fact that Kimbrell throws his fastball a lot makes him predictable. And basically, how is it possible for a pitcher to be so effective and yet also apparently allow hard hit baseballs? Also, here's one of the things about Craig Kimbrell. If you're talking about the balls in play that he's allowed, you're talking about a

small sample size because he struck out half the opponents that he faced this year. And I mean that literally 50,.6 i guess percent of craig kimbrough's opponents struck out the season and so his sample of batted balls is uh whatever 87 plus 21 is which is 108 so you know still 100 odd batted balls but for one thing the exit velocity that he allowed it wasn't like outlandishly high it was just high it was like 91 and a half miles per hour i think think, on averages. Hard hit rate was elevated. If I had to guess, here is what my guess is.

Kimbrell is a two-pitch pitcher. He's got the four-seamer and he's got the breaking ball. He throws the four-seamer about twice as often, a little more than that. And I figure as a hitter, you know that against Craig Kimbrell, you're a little bit, what's the word, effed, a little bit screwed if you're facing Craig Kimbrell. You don't really have a prayer of hitting his fastball or curveball if you're caught in between so if I had to guess if you were a hitter against Craig Kimbrell you're just up there thinking well I'm gonna swing as if it's one of these pitches and maybe I'll be right and so therefore if you've got players who are

swinging from the heels against Kimbrell they are going to miss a lot but when they don't miss they might have it kind of perfectly timed up or maybe not perfectly timed up but better timed up than usual so i figure that maybe it's maybe it's not so uncommon to have the really high strikeout pitchers have elevated exit philosophies because maybe hitters are just like well i'm just going to swing really hard and see what happens yeah yeah it could just be that like when craig kimball throws a pitch outside the strike zone, a lot of hitters with a different pitcher, they might make weak contact, and that would bring down their average exit velocity.

Whereas with Kimball, if you swing at those pitches, you're just going to miss. And the only times you're going to make contact with Craig Kimball could be if it's in the strike zone, and maybe you're more likely to make hard contact if it is there so it could be that it could be just that he is so good that he is essentially limiting the sample of batted balls to like only the ones that are hittable which for him are a lot fewer than for most pitchers so i'm guessing it's something like that or it's just a fluke you know i craig campbell is clearly amazing so i don't think we have to worry about him regardless of what the exit velocity says so let's see this is uh one yeah we kind of get this one every year some version of it but dylan says

in anticipation of more national baseball talk for the playoffs i think we should discuss the broadcasts that many complain about. I think I have a solution for one of the classic sports broadcaster problems. The problem being they never criticize coaches and always dilute their opinions on what a team is doing wrong. My belief is that the primary reason these broadcasters are so neutered in this regard is quite human. They have personal relationships with all these teams and coaches. They have hours of meetings with every team they cover on TV. They go to dinner with coaches and staff.

The two sides that fight about this are the fans versus the league or teams. Broadcasters are clearly so close to the league and teams that they've almost become a mouthpiece for them, especially in regard to how ex-coaches never criticize coaches in the broadcast, et cetera, et cetera. He suggests that broadcasting networks actually have their own scouting networks essentially so that they are not getting info from the teams they're getting separate info they're not dependent on the teams or coaches or players themselves and he says this doesn't touch

on the problem of ex-players that don't even try to pass along useful info but it's a start i believe and we've talked about this in the past, I think we've identified some clear reasons why everyone gets mad at broadcasters in the playoffs. There are probably a few reasons. It's just that these are not the people you're used to listening to when you talk, when you watch your baseball team. They maybe don't have the local perspective. They haven't been following the team all year. They are treating it as a national audience of casual fans who are not experts in these teams. And so maybe they're saying obvious stuff that if you're on the edge of your seed and you're white knuckling through the games and the broadcaster is just being impartial, maybe that annoys you. But there are all sorts of reasons and it's a broad audience. You're not going to get tons of sabermetric stuff probably on these broadcasts. So if you're someone who's listening

to this podcast, that might annoy you too. But as for like the connections with teams, I think some of that is probably inevitable, right? Just because of like the partnerships that broadcast networks and leagues have, they are kind of in bed together as far as profiting from each other. And so if you're in the business of getting people to watch baseball, you're not going to be disparaging the product that you are presenting all that much. Also, if you're broadcasting the playoffs, I mean, there are things there are mistakes that are made, but these are not really teams to disparage in the first place. These are these are the best of the best, especially this year, for goodness sake. But, yeah, I would think that this really comes down to you've got the league who has a relationship with the network that is broadcasting the game the league has an interest in not being criticized on national or

international television i guess and so if you have a network where the broadcasters are i don't know i don't even know what i mean unless you're just like just mean on the air i don't really know what kind of criticism we're talking about but if you have this overly critical broadcast well the league isn't going to like that and so it's going to be less inclined to want to give you the the contract for the next year whatever i don't know how long these arrangements are under contract for but maybe there's just not really that much value added to a broadcast from critical analysis whereby i guess critical i mean negative in this case as opposed to just objective analysis because i mean what are you what are you going to be critical of i don't i think the the broadcast talked about zach granite missing first base okay

well that was a mistake shouldn't have done that and and they talked about it when john gray threw his first pitch curveball that goldschmidt hit out of the park i forgot who the broadcaster was but he says well gray just hung that curveball like the criticism was there because it was a poorly executed pitch and beyond that i don't know what kind of criticism you're looking for and i don't know if it's the lack of criticism that even makes people displeased with with postseason broadcasts i think that they just want insight as opposed to negative statements when something negative happens because they are there when players make mistakes they do get discussed now they don't get discussed flippantly with one word, like when Dennis Eckersley reads and Eduardo Rodriguez rehab starts that line.

But I guess people who complain about postseason broadcasts seem to be complaining because the broadcasters are saying a lot without saying anything. And I don't think that that's the absence of criticism. I think that's the absence of criticism. I think that's the absence of thought. But I also don't think that is as widespread a problem as it used to be. And a lot of this feels sort of, I don't know, vestigial, sort of like people still remember complaining about Joe Morgan and Tim McCarver. And so they still apply those thoughts. And I think that the broadcasts have gotten a lot better. Like the ESPN booth the other day was great. Yeah, I didn't hear it. You didn't get to hear it.

But yeah, I mean, right. There are complaints about every national broadcaster always, and there always will be. And sometimes in the playoffs, you get people who are not primarily baseball broadcasters. And sometimes that shows a little bit, but it doesn't impact the enjoyment of the game all that much for me because the voices are just kind of a babble in the background, really. I'm watching the game. I like to have the commentary on just because, you know, it's accompanying the image that I'm seeing. But it's not really that crucial to my enjoyment of the games. And you can, you know, listen to a radio broadcast.

Maybe if you are in a certain place or so equipped you know, listen to a radio broadcast. Maybe if you are in a certain place or so equipped, maybe that will help a little bit. But maybe like the most frustrating example of this is like the in dugout interview with the managers, which, you know, everyone hates. Maybe someone likes it out there. I don't know. Like, I see why you would want to do it if you are the broadcast network. Like if you have an opportunity to talk to the person who is having an impact on this game during the game i could see why that would be appealing and it you know kind of shows off the access that you have hey we can just talk to the manager who's making these decisions right now but in practice it just never works out well like you have 30 seconds or something you're just getting these quick questions out that don't tell anyone anything. The manager's not going to say anything interesting

and you can't ask anything like super critical as we're saying, because, you know, managers aren't going to submit to just being second guessed by the broadcast in the middle of the game probably. So often it's just like, what are you seeing from player x out there or something and it's like he's hitting his spots or he's not hitting the spots or whatever it's just you know it's completely a waste of time it's not a waste of that much time and whatever we're watching this broadcast anyway but i never derive really any enjoyment from that i don't think maybe occasionally there's like an entertaining player who does it, but the manager interviews. And I know some people think it like trivializes the game almost like, you know, you've got this high stakes thing and teams are like on the verge of their seasons being over.

And yet the manager is taking time to answer questions from a reporter right in the middle of all this. I don't care so much about that, but I just, I get nothing out of it. So, right. The only upside of those things is when you have like players in the background throwing stuff at the person being interviewed. That's about it. Yeah.

All right. One more to end on. This is from Jay. He says there's a certain percentage chance that the Yankees and Dodgers now go off onto simultaneous golden ages. They have the young talent and the money and a prime free agent class coming up among the many probabilistic results of the next five years is one where the two teams meet each other in the next five world series. I don't know what the chance of this is. Let's say

one in 500. Let's say one in 500. Anyway, let's say it happens and that the playoffs are about as entertaining as they have been in the past several years. They're a good series and near upsets by the Cubs or Red Sox or whoever, but the next five series are Yankees-Dodgers, New York versus LA, East versus West. My question is, is this more likely to be a good thing or a bad thing for MLB? Dominant big market teams are supposed to be good, but reputation and unbalanced results are supposed to be bad. Which do you suspect wins out? Yeah, okay.

So I emailed back to this and I will be interested to hear your response to this, Ben. So this is maybe the closest example. Basketball has sort of seen this. The last three championships have been between golden state and cleveland i believe i confirmed that but looking it up on the internet i didn't know off the top of my head but it sounded true and it was true so the same teams have played each other in the championship three years in a row and i know there's been talk in the nba about trying to increase parity because you know it's it's pretty obvious that the western conference is way better than the eastern conference and and there are sort

of the same halves and have nots every year but still i don't think that the Western Conference is way better than the Eastern Conference. And there are sort of the same haves and have nots every year. But still, I don't think that the NBA business is suffering. I think people still love basketball. And it helps that nobody wants repetition. If you gave someone the opportunity who's not a Yankees or Dodgers fan, if you gave someone the chance to pick this outcome for the next five years, no one would take it. outcome for the next five years no one would take it people would be strongly opposed to the idea of the same two teams especially the Yankees and the Dodgers playing each other in the World Series five years in a row but I think that if it were to happen then all you need in sort of hindsight is for there to have been suspense along the way because if the Yankees and the Dodgers are just

blitzing if like if they go undefeated throughout the playoffs until they run into each other then it's no fun you want there to be suspense but But if the teams come close to losing in every year or almost every year, then I think that you could almost sell it like, look, we've got these dual villains and who's going to be the next team to bring them down. So I'm not I don't think it would be the best outcome for baseball, but I don't think it would be that bad of one. Maybe five years is too much. Maybe three would be enough, like what we've seen in theba but i i think as long as there is uncertainty then i don't think it's that big of a deal yeah i mean there's intrigue to certain teams matching up multiple times like if the indians and cubs end up facing off again this postseason i think a lot of people would like

that that's the storyline you get some of the same faces and everything. And those teams had pretty intriguing stories to begin with. And yeah, I think it's probably good for baseball from a business perspective, at least. If this happened like a couple times, a few times, I could see it being a benefit. I mean, five times is a lot. I think if you had five times, that would start to feel like the season was just a waste and we knew how it was going to end. And I think you mentioned in your email that some people feel that way about basketball. And I don't know that it has hurt basketball at all, that they've had the same finals matchups and you can anticipate that even more easily than you can in baseball so i think

yeah two times three times you get storylines you get repeat appearances i think if it's two big market teams that everyone can hate or root for very hard if they are fans of those teams i think that works out maybe in baseball's favor but once you get to like four times i think probably everyone gets sick of of those teams and you start to want some new blood in there. I mean, was baseball worse for the Yankees making five out of six World Series? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, they didn't play the same team. Right.

Yeah, that's the thing. I mean, people certainly hated the Yankees even more, but I don't know. Maybe it prompted some changes in baseball to improve competitive balance. I mean, I think baseball itself decided that it didn't want that, right? And Bud Selig wanted parity and new teams competing every year, and they made changes that helped bring that about. So I guess they decided that it was not in the best interest of baseball, at least for the rich teams to be able to spend their way in. Maybe that's part of it. If it's Yankees, Dodgers, and those teams have two of the highest payrolls,

maybe that cheapens it a little. If there were some team that just had a middling payroll that just managed to build an incredible roster, maybe that wouldn't be so bad because it wouldn't make it look like the sport was rigged in a way yep are we are we bypassing stat segment well if you have one ready i don't want to waste it yeah it's quick okay go ahead uh including the stat segment i have three quick things to bring up i will say first because i forgot to mention it earlier when talking about zach granite and looking for precedent and i found a play of nelson cru Cruz missing first base in 2016. He was a game against the Red Sox,

and he was avoiding a tag from Hanley Ramirez. A throw was up the line, and Hanley caught it down the line from... Ugh, complicated. Hanley Ramirez caught the ball off the bag and tried to tag Nelson Cruz. It was a weird play at first. Nelson Cruz tried to evade Hanley Ramirez. He was initially called safe at first base. The umpire signaled safe.

You know, the thing that Mike Winters didn't do. Cruz never touched the bag. What was strange to me about the play was not that Cruz missed the bag or that the umpire called safe, but that Hanley Ramirez tagged Cruz and then he went to the umpire and he said, no, he missed the base. I tagged him. He's out. And then the umpire changed his call and said he was out.

They didn't go to the replay review. The umpire actually just took hanley ramirez at his word and reversed his call so i guess just based on that alone that's why you have arguments on the field because you never know which one is going to actually just change the umpire's mind based on his your word alone so very rare play to see there another thing this is an absent thought has nothing to do with anything but yesterday i was listening to the end of the diamondbacks and the rockies game on the radio i was listening to the diamondbacks radio feed because whatever and when the game is over they were talking about going forward playing the dodgers and they said that this series this

series is going to be determined it's going to come down to which team does a better job of executing it's going to come down to execution and i've heard this a lot recently. I don't know when this caught on as a cliche. Baseball has shuffled through countless cliches, but I've heard the execution one a lot. And it seems to be a phrase that people go to when they mean, oh, these teams are very closely matched. So it's going to come down to who does a better job of executing the game plan. Well, I don't think that I need to. I don't think it's a stretch to say that this is just a very slightly muddied way of saying it's gonna come down to who plays better baseball

exactly which is like the emptiest possible how do people get away with it somebody asked craig counsel the one of the other more recent times i heard this was someone was talking to craig counsel about one of the last series oh is the series a series against the cubs that was coming up and the brewers were looking at a four game series against the Cubs that was coming up. And the Brewers were looking at a four-game series against the Cubs. Brewers still had a chance at the division at that point. And Council said, oh, the games are going to be close. It's going to come down to execution. And how do people get away with this?

Because whenever you have people, when people make fun of baseball cliches, they say, oh, it's going to come down to who scores more runs. Ha ha ha. Which is like clearly like no one would ever say that. But they're saying that. They're saying that basically right now. And no one's calling them on it. I think it's because of the way postseason baseball works. Joe Girardi was talking about execution too the other day.

And I think it's because we're asking managers and players to analyze single games in ways that we don't during the regular season. Like during the regular season. Like during the regular season, you wouldn't say it's going to come down to execution. I mean, it is, I guess, in some way, but it's also come down to who has the better players and who stays healthy and things like that, that matter over six months. Whereas you can't really say that as much in a single game. Like even who has the better players might not be the deciding factor it might just be i missed my spot on this one pitch or whatever and that was the that was the game so it is totally lacking insight or information i think but i also don't know what

we really expect people to say about you know like when you say how did you win this one or how are you going to win this one or Or what's the key here or whatever? It's like, well, playing well. So they're kind of an impossible situation. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. I guess the real problem here is it's not on the people giving the quote. It's on the people asking for the quote in the first place.

Don't ask for quotes. Yeah. No quotes ever. Would you say that you were a warrior out there? So anyway, stats, I mean, this will end the podcast. This is inspired by a question from Patreon supporter Sam. Sam N. I don't know if we're supposed to say last names.

I don't know why I'm so concerned with people's privacy. Anyway, Sam sent us a message. And long story short, anyone who's been paying attention knows this is not Sam's words. These are now mine. Anyone paying attention knows that the Yankees beat the Twins in a game in which Luis Severino lasted all of one third of one inning. He faced six batters. He retired one of them and the Yankees still won. So Luis Severino is the sixth.

According to baseball reference, it's the sixth time in baseball playoff history a team has won a game in which its starter lasted exactly one third of one inning. Sam actually brought up a related but slightly different point he brought up the fact that according to his research this is only the third time in history a team has won a postseason elimination game when their starting pitcher has been removed after getting one or zero outs so sam continues i'll just read his message now word for word the other two times were both game seven of the world series in back-to-back years 1924 and 1925 in 1924 the washington senators started curly ogden yep that's very 1924 who walked one and struck one out the manager bucky

harris admitted ogden was used as a decoy to get the giants to build their lineup for a right-handed pitcher harris then pulled ogden after two batters for george mogridge mogridge a lefty senators won in 13 innings in 1925. Vic Aldridge started for the Pirates and gave up four earned runs in the third of an inning, but they rallied and won 97, defeating Walter Johnson. So more clever managerial techniques in 1924 than we've seen in 2017. But anyway, I liked that. I like that message just for the Curly Ogden fun fact.

Managers were looking for strategy. But there have actually been three times in, this is no longer just about elimination games, in playoff history, there have been three times a team has won a playoff game in which their starter went zero thirds of one inning. We have got three games. Most recently in game four of the 1981 World Series,

Bob Welch was starting for the Dodgers and Welch's outing went like so. Willie Randolph triple, Larry Milbourne double, Dave Winfield walk, Reggie Jackson single, Dave Goltz jolts. I had looked these things up before. Dave G replaces Bob Welch pitching and batting ninth. So Welch lasted four batters. He retired none of them in that game. The inning ended with the Yankees leading the Dodgers to nothing. And the Dodgers ultimately won 8-7.

So 1981, Bob Welch, zero outs. And the Dodgers still won. Before that, we go back to 1947. We've got the Brooklyn Dodgers who defeated the New York Yankees 3-2. This is a game for the World Series in 1947. I don't know if I said that before. Anyway, so Harry Taylor was the starter for the Brooklyn Dodgers.ry taylor's outing went so stuffy snuffy sternweiss single tommy henrik i got it henrik tommy henrik single yogi berra i know that one fieldless choice but there was an error

and then joe dimaggio walked with the bases loaded. At that point, Harry Taylor was removed. He was relieved by Hal Gregg, who then got a pop fly and a double play. So even though Harry Taylor retired to none of the first four batters, he was removed from the game. The Yankees scored just one run in the inning. Now, this game became much more incredible later on because even though the Dodgers did score a run in the fifth inning that narrowed the score to two to one Yankees, Bill Bevins started this game for the Yankees. And I'm just going to make sure I'm not mispronouncing Beavins. Well, in any way, Bill Bevins from Salem, Oregon. He was starting for the Yankees. And here's the

really interesting thing about this game. Now, I guess there's there's a few things because Bill Bevins went eight and two thirds innings. That will tell you something about how the game ended. And Bevens allowed three runs. He had 10 walks in the game and five strikeouts. So not maybe the greatest outing of Bill Bevens' career. However, it was two to one Yankees going into the bottom of the ninth. And the bottom of the ninth began with a Bruce Edwards fly out, a Carl Ferillo walk, then a spider Jorgensen foul pop fly, which meant that after eight and two

thirds innings Bill Bevins was throwing a World Series no hitter Dodgers said no hits and then Pete Reiser came in to pinch hit for pitcher Hugh Casey there was a stolen base Pete Reiser was intentionally walked at that point which is controversial because that meant that the winning run was put on base which you don't see very often at all. So at that point, the Dodgers had Eddie Stanky coming up. However, he was pinch hit for by I'm going to get this one right. Cookie Lovagetto and Cookie Lovagetto then hit a double. So the Dodgers first hit of game four of the 1947 World Series won the game.

It was a walk off to run double. So that's a fun one and finally 1917 world series game five this was the chicago white socks against the new york giants the white socks beat the giants eight to five in this game the giants scored two runs in the first inning and they scored them both off of white socks starter reb russell reb russell his game began with a george burns walk a buck herzog single and then a benny koff double and then he was replaced by eddie sacote cicada well i i thought it was cicada but then i looked this one up and at least according to baseball reference it says

pronunciation seacott so oh yes that's right yeah i think that is right it should be it it's like chakotay, probably. But, you know, we're not going to do that. It's Seacott, or we can just call him apparently Knuckles. So whatever. Reb Russell was relieved by Knuckles, who went six innings. So Reb Russell faced three batters in the game, retired none of them. The White Sox still won.

And this series was interesting. The White Sox won the World Series in six games. And the starter, if I have this correct. So in game five, later in the game, Reb Russell started three batters. Eddie Seacott went six innings, then Lefty Williams threw an inning, and then Red Faber threw two innings to end the game and get the win. That was game five. I'll remind you. The Chicago White Sox starter in game four was Red Faber, and the Chicago White Sox starter in game six was Red Faber. So Red Faber in game four got the loss. Red Faber in game five got the win, and Red Faber in game six got the win, working a complete game, nine innings, two runs. Big series for Red Faber.

All right. Well, this was a long one. We'll do it all again tomorrow Mm-hmm. All right. Well, this was a long one. We'll do it all again tomorrow. My goodness. All right. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Five listeners have already pledged their support include Jake Silverman, Andy Morris, Jake Myers, Luke Whitestone, and Angus Kellett.

Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash Effectively Wild. Big fun group threads going for every playoff game so far. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance. And of course,

I must mention, you can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes. If you're looking for something else to listen to, Michael Bauman and I did a new episode of

The Ringer MLB Show. It should be up now too. We went series by series. We did some prop bets we did some predictions you can contact me and jeff via email at podcast fengress.com or by messaging us through the patreon site we'll talk to you all very soon Day and turn the world Again Execution day Star Which began

And turn the world Again Execution Day Star Which began And turn the world Again Let's begin. Let's begin.