Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1120: Back-to-Back-to-Back-to-Back Baseball

Episode Date: October 6, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the larger improbability and significance of Archie Bradley’s triple in the NL wild-card game, how to experience a four-playoff-game day, the first games of both AL division series, Chris Sale’s and Masahiro Tanaka’s semi-struggles and the vexing nature of pitcher home-run allowance, the danger of using home/road splits […]

Now I'm way down the line Yes, you're gone, but you're still on my mind Blowing blood Through my heart, let the four winds blow Hello and welcome to episode 1120 of Effectively Wild. Through my heart, let the four winds blow supporters they are matched in number only by their loyalty the two of us yep and for that i wish to express my tremendous appreciation as do i if you're out there on the fence then uh you should uh you should probably be a uh a patreon supporter because we uh we we just i don't know we love them more you know you know you're not supposed to pick your favorite kids but uh yeah

when your favorite kids give you money that does kind of swing the odds in their favor a little bit. Well, I guess we're going to find out pretty soon whether we're going to redo this beginning or not of the episode. But in any case, this is Friday morning, and we have seen the playoffs begin. We will watch very shortly the playoffs resume. Before we get to that, I just want to mention something that I was not aware of and that will become inevitably the subject of a post in November or December or January or February. So the other day, as mentioned on this podcast, at least five, maybe six times, Archie Bradley hit a triple. Archie Bradley hit a triple. It was, according to Win Expectancy, the biggest event of the Diamondbacks, Rockies, and a wildcard playoff.

It moved the Win Expectancy 16 percentage points. That's a lot. Good triple for Archie Bradley, who, it turns out has been one of the worst hitters in baseball, even among pitchers. And he hit the triple off of Pat Neshek, who has been one of the best pitchers against right-handed batters over the course of his major league career. So improbable triple. Anyway, even without knowing those splits, you can, I think you already know, pitcher triples are rare. So even if you didn't know those splits, I think everyone would have an understanding that pitcher triples are rare for reasons that you can imagine. Here's something I didn't know.

Okay, so this season, in the regular season, there were seven pitcher triples. Maybe you knew this, Ben, maybe you didn't. I'm just going to read from the bottom. Tied for second place, Jeremy Hellickson, one triple. Patrick Corbin, one triple.ake arietta one triple first place luis perdomo four triples did you know i did not know yeah right who knew luis perdomo he uh he pitches for the padres by the way they uh he's a pitcher on that team he uh he batted 53 times he had 46 at-bats. He had five hits, one double, four triples. I would like to watch the double, see why he stopped.

But who knew? And you might guess that this seems vaguely historic. And it is. Going back to what Baseball Reference calls the Retro Sheet era, that stretches all the way back to 1913. So we're looking at 105 years of Major League Baseball. Walter Johnson, in 1913, hit six're looking at 105 years of Major League Baseball. Walter Johnson in 1913 hit six triples. Good for him.

Erskine Mayer in 1918 hit five triples. And then we've got Perdomo. Perdomo at four. There have been, looks like, 17 pitchers who have hit four triples in a year. However, Perdomo did it in 2017. Robin Roberts did it in 1955. And nobody else seems to have done it since the beginning of World War II. So Bob Feller's up there, but pitcher triples.

Dontrell Willis did hit three in 2007. He was a good and very athletic offensive pitcher, and that same year he had two doubles and two home runs. So Willis kind of did better than four triples but four triples man this is this is gonna be a fun post that uh it would be now I don't know on the one hand it would be kind of fun to just write this post and publish it during like game six of the world series but this is probably best to save yeah and I would imagine that since he's doing this in 2017 he must have had fewer opportunities to do it than the people ahead of him on that list, right? Who were making many more starts and pitching many more innings.

I don't know how much the average number of plate appearances by a pitcher or an NL pitcher has declined all that, you know, over the course of baseball history, but it must have declined to some extent, right? Absolutely correct. Robin Roberts, the other sort of recent four-triple pitcher, he batted 130 times. Perdomo batted 53 times. Now, Hal McCain, I don't know who that is, but in 1930, he had four triples and 37 plate appearances, so good for that guy. But we've got Luis Perdomo, Robin Roberts, Bob Feller, Hal McCain, Charlie Root, Carl Mays,

Red Lucas, Bullet Joe Bush, Babe Adams, almost, Babe, Tom Zachary, Hugh McQuillan, Walter Johnson again, Sherry Smith, Pete Alexander, Walter Johnson and Walter Johnson, and Clyde Hendricks. Look at Walter Johnson go. Triple machine. Yeah. So where did those triples come for Perdomo? I was wondering, like, did he get them all in a certain park? Because it's not like Petco is a crazy triples park or something. Like, did he do them all in Coors Field or something while he was pitching there?

Well, why don't we find out? On May 15th, he had a triple at home. June 12th, he had a triple at home. And then the second two triples both happened in San Francisco. That makes sense. I have not looked at any video, so I don't know how this happened. But, you know, San Francisco is home to triples alley and Perdomo, well, he bats right-handed. So if he, he would have to go sort of the other way to hit a ball over there.

So yeah, it could be strong. I look forward to investigating this in a month or three. All right. Do you have anything that you would like to discuss? I suppose not. Speaking of the Bradley triple, Joe Sheehan made the good point, I think, that that was an example of why we should remember, A, just how unpredictable all of this is, obviously, that that game would come down to, or that lead would be lengthened by a guy who had never had a triple before, a relief pitcher, et cetera, often all-star reliever. No way to predict that, but also worth just recognizing the accomplishment of it and the achievement of it as we have,

which is something that does sometimes get overlooked in playoff baseball analysis when we are talking endlessly about why the manager didn't pull the pitcher or the pitcher is starting this game instead of that game. And sometimes we forget to just credit the players for being really good at baseball. Sometimes it's something that is a little harder to talk about, I guess. It's not maybe as interesting, as rife for analysis as something like a managerial decision is in some cases. If Jose Altuve hits three home runs, that is really cool. And we can celebrate that, of course, but I don't know how much there is to say about it other than the fact that Jose Altuve is really

great, which we knew already. So sometimes we fixate on the not off the field stuff, but in the dugout stuff or in the front office stuff. And it is always nice to remember that these games are won and lost by the players for the most part. Really, you could say it comes down to execution. It's going to be determined by execution. But it is true. And like you said, so often you come into the playoffs and I personally hope to never read again sort of an article that focuses on like a managerial decision. Now, that's an exaggeration because when you have something like Buck Showalter not using Zach Britton, that's just patently stupid. Like that is a bad decision. on the previous podcast about starting Trevor Bauer in Game 1 over Corey Kluber, which, you know, there's controversy there,

even regardless of what Bauer just did in Game 1. But at the end of the day, a decision like that, we just can't know enough, and the margins are so small that it just doesn't seem like it's actually worthy of maybe all the attention that it gets, at least provided that attention doesn't arrive at a conclusion other than, well, I guess we'll see. It could be fine. Because most of the time, like a lineup decision, most of the time it just doesn't really matter. And this really is about how the players do. No matter, even in a case as egregious as Buck Showalter not using Zach Britton,

I mean, the Blue Jays still had to hit pitches that were thrown by Uvaldo Jimenez, and I think Brian Dunsing was in that game too for some reason. There are a lot of weird pitchers in the game who weren't Zach Britton, but this is a tournament that is decided by the players on the field, and it is, I don't know, weirdly easy to forget because you get distracted by all these other things, but I mean, they're really good. And so if, if I don't know if Pat Neshek properly Neshek, Neshek, I think it's Neshek. I'm going to keep saying Neshek. You could say that maybe he didn't throw the slider that he wanted, but I mean, Archie Bradley, who's not a good hitter. He just did the crap out of the ball. That's it. Full stop. Good for him.

That is a, that's the thing. And yeah, it is maybe kind of boring to celebrate. Oh, good player does something good, but it is more fun when bad player does something good like archie bradley at the plate in the same game bradley hits a two run triple and he gives up two he allowed four home runs this season he had one of the lowest home run rates of any pitcher who pitched 70 innings this year in baseball and i i don't know if you saw his his post game quote which i thought was delightful he basically said, well, I knew I was going to give up some home runs, so I wanted to be able to do something at the plate.

That's good. That's self-deprecating, I guess. Triples retiring. Yeah, I don't know how normal it is, but when I was watching the replay of the game and also, I guess, the game live, after Bradley tripled and the Rockies went out to change Neshek to Jake McGee.

They didn't just change him. They brought in a new pitcher who was Jake McGee. It wasn't sort of a transmogrification thing. But the little score icon said Bradley on third base, 8-5 Diamondbacks, but the video showed Archie Bradley in the Diamondbacks dugout, and he was just getting hugs and taking a drink. And I guess maybe I haven't paid close enough attention to what happens during a pitching change,

but if someone's on third base and then there's a delay in the game how often does the player on third base just go into the dugout for a little bit to hang out because when when McGee came in for the bullpen the camera just caught Bradley being like oh crap and then he had to sprint back out to the field right so we have had two more games, of course, since we last spoke. Red Sox-Astros, Yankees-Indians. And by the time many people are hearing this, we'll be a game behind you in that future, which is the present for you podcast listener in just about every series because this is crazy Friday with every kind of baseball going on. So how do you consume a day like this? Do you have a strategy? Do you just sit yourself down and watch every pitch from beginning to end? Or do you make yourself get up or go outside at some point? So I've been doing this as a full-time job since 2010. And I't remember if the the four game playoff days have existed for all i guess this would be the eighth year of that but they've been going on for at least a while we've

had these these stacked days because i don't know how else you avoid it there are two of them every year we've got it today we've got it on sunday and i don't think i always go it's exciting i love that i'm going to do my my chat and then when the chat is over, there's going to be a baseball game. And for me, it's at 11 o'clock in the morning. That's absurd. It's Friday. I love it. I know it doesn't quite feel like playoff baseball, but still, it's something that's on. It's like a Cubs game on a Friday afternoon.

Anyway, I always go into it excited, and I love it, and I love it, and I've never, I've never before made it to the fourth game. I don't even, I can't even try. I sit, and I watch it. And I've never, I've never before made it to the fourth game. I don't even, I can't even try. I sit and I watch and I think about it and maybe I'll tweet about it and maybe I'll analyze it. But by the fourth game, I just, that's too much baseball guys. I can't do it. So tonight, what is it? Dodgers Diamondbacks is the late game. 730 for me, 1030 for you. Unless you're a Dodgers or Diamondbacks fan, you're not going to be watching that baseball game yeah well it is it's a lot of baseball in one day but do you have a strategy

not really in in the past i i have i think just watched every pitch probably but i don't know that i'll be able to do that today because i have family stuff to do later in the day so i'm going to miss some baseball at some point but it is, especially because there's that foreboding in the back of your minds or many people's minds who are watching baseball now where they're thinking ahead to a few weeks from now, a month from now, whatever it is, when there will be zero baseball on TV or on our minds. And that is a scary prospect for a lot of people. And even just, you know, four games in one day is a lot fewer games than we have had like every day almost for the past six months or so. It's just that these games actually matter more.

Yeah, that's a legitimate point. There's usually so much baseball that's going on. 15 games in a day on your your given tuesday or saturday or or whatever but the difference is that today there's four games you might actually want to watch so it is so much and i think one of the tricky things about it too and maybe this is just trickier for for someone like yourself or myself as opposed to the average fan but like it's already because of how crazy today is it's already too late to write anything about anything that's happened like you can't write about thursday baseball anymore if you're going to

write about baseball that happened yesterday, you need to have written it yesterday because it's too late. Everyone's moved on. You could write the world's greatest article that explains what's happening with Chris Sale right now, and it doesn't matter because by the time that you publish it, the Red Sox will have another game already going,

and people have just moved on. It happens that fast, and yeah, everyone's going to miss it when it's gone but at least baseball does have a a somewhat gradual wind down process you kind of get used to two games a day or four and then it's one or two and then it's one and then it's and then it's all over yeah right and it presents a problem for a podcast or two just because we we have to find something to talk about and hopefully it will be interesting to people who are maybe four games in the future relative to us

so but all we can talk about is what has actually happened in our timeline well i would think that we have at least four episodes that we could dedicate individually to luis perdomo triples that's right one of them seems to have been a ground ball to left field in San Francisco. I didn't watch the rest of that video because we're recording this podcast right now, but that's a mystery. It happened in Perdomo's last game of the season. Huh, that sounds... Do we have sprint speed numbers for pitchers? Is that... No, probably not, right right they probably don't meet the minimum to appear on that mlb leaderboard uh let's find out minimum 10 opportunities so i'm just gonna do a control f per domo nope nothing there yeah it's probably a bad thing for a pitcher to sprint 10 times in a season at least on the bases if you're sprinting to cover first base or something sure but if you're

sprinting to get to first base that's probably a little riskier than you need to be i think it's it's a worthwhile point to remember this is one of the reasons why pitchers don't triple or steal bases because they're really good at pitching but they are just bad i know it sounds weird to say they're bad runners but like they're bad runners relative to how well base runners run i'm going to keep going back to that little experiment rob nyer tried to run with myself and matthew cory a few years ago where we were trying to see if we were faster than david ortiz and we could sort of get we could match or barely exceed his time to first base but ortiz was so quick getting the third not because he's fast but just because he knew how to

run the route around the bases and like I know I know in theory I know how it's supposed to look the whole rounding the bases to and not going in a straight line and not cutting your momentum too quick or whatever the words you want to use are but even David Ortiz who probably never tripled in his life don't at me on that he was so efficient with his movement that he was able to get the third base in whatever it was maybe 12 seconds I think Archie Bradley got the third base in 12 point something and I don't know how that compares to usual Bradley was motoring pretty well he used to be a quarterback so at least we know he's a little bit more athletic but there are just so many little nuances to, I don't know, I guess I'll call it like baseball running, that the average pitcher just doesn't really need to know or get accustomed to because it's not what they do.

And let's face it, how often is a pitcher really going to be sprinting like that? And so they don't triple because, for one thing, they don't hit the ball hard. When they do, the pitchers seldom really need to push it to third base because you can just stop at second and everyone's going to be happy that you didn't strike out. And you're just also slower and you don't want to get hurt. So there are fewer triple opportunities relative to doubles in the first place. But the baseball running is complicated. I used to laugh when the Mariners had Jesus Montero and he had to spend an office learning how to run.

Those are the organization's words. But there's kind of something there. Not that, I mean, pitchers run better than Jesus Montero did. That was an odd gate. But it's not just straight line running. You're not running poles. Yeah. running. You're not running poles. Yeah. And we've seen some pitchers get hurt and miss the rest of the season because they pulled something or hurt something when they were batting or running. And

it's just usually not really worth the effort. And possibly there's some after effect from being tired from running the bases. Maybe we saw that in Bradley's case, but I don't know. Maybe that would have happened anyway. I know I've seen some analyses at some point about whether pitchers struggle after being on the bases, but I can't remember what the conclusions were. was nothing but what what happened so Altuve hit three home runs and the Astros teed off but Chris Sale started for the Red Sox and I was trying to analyze I focused my analyses on Chris Sale because I was trying to figure out I don't know how aware you are you might have a general sense that you know Sale has gotten worse down the stretch and Corey Kluber got better and so Kluber has passed him we assume in the Cy Young race but I didn't really know what Chris Sale's decline phase this year has looked like have you taken a look at what's happened no I have not no I

know that he has been significantly worse but I haven't dug into the details of that but yeah that was one of the things that was scary for Red Sox fans I I think, coming into this series was, A, just the rotation after Sale, but also just Sale himself. And was this the Sale who was looking like a Cy Young favorite all year? Because that was kind of the consensus about this series. The Red Sox have to win the Sale starts, or at least one of them or something. They have to have Sale pitch well to win this thing. And Sale did not pitch particularly well. So yeah, tell me what's behind this decline. Well, that's what's hard because I have a number.

But okay, so I'll just tell you over Sale's last six starts, this seems to really isolate when things have gone sour. And even over that stretches the areas like in the fours. So whatever. But over six starts, this is beginning on September 3rd. Chris Sale has thrown 35 innings. So whatever. But over six starts, this is beginning on September 3rd, Chris Sale has thrown 35 innings, so 35 innings over six starts. He has allowed, you might not believe this,

we're talking about six starts, 12 home runs that Chris Sale has allowed. However, nine walks, 50 strikeouts. Everything is outstanding. The velocity is there. The stuff is there. Looks like Chris Sale mechanics are all as weird and ass-backward as usual, but everything is there. The walks are there like chris sale mechanics are all as weird and ass backward as

usual but all everything is there the walks are there the strikeouts are there the the regular strikes are there the unhittability is there except that like whenever batters have hit the ball it's left the yard and this is one of i don't know how many years i've been doing this but this remains like the most difficult thing to analyze because as a pitcher or as a hitter or as anyone involved in baseball, you know that a home run is like the most, But at the same time, we know home run rate and home run allowance is just incredibly volatile. And if you were looking at this performance window, like if this happened in the middle of the season, you would look at Chris Allen and think, well, the home run rate is elevated, but based on the walks and strikeouts, he's still elite because his walk and strikeout

rates have not moved. They have been dominant all season long. So he's gotten worse, but the velocity is there. His mechanics seem like they're there. I looked frame by frame like I usually do for like an hour and a half. No foot movement. Couldn't find anything. Uh oh.

No foot movement. There's something weird going on with his like glove arm that I can't figure out. If you watch Cressel's throw. I think there's always something weird going on with Cressel arm that i can't figure out if you watch chris sale i think there's always something weird going on with chris sales arms so i know i mean he's been in the majors for like more than half a decade and still i can't believe that he throws the way he throws but if if you watched recent clips there's like his he's following through and then his glove arm goes in some weird position that i can't even mimic like in a static way so I don't know how his body is ending up in the place that it is but he's still he basically looks like Chris

Sale and everything is there but the home runs are way up so from a writing or analyst or even just a fan perspective you look at this and you think I can't think of a reason why this would be happening aside from well that that sucks for Chris Sale and the Red Sox. But I think to try to explain this in case people might not be so familiar with the analytical perspective, we've got Sale. We're talking about six starts here, and he's given up 12 home runs. That's a lot of home runs to give up. I think there was a year Roy Holiday allowed like eight home runs all season. Just something absurd.

So, no, I think Sale has the highest home run rate in baseball. Over the span, it's not even particularly close. But it is hard to reconcile sort of in the Craig Kimbrell way we talked about in the last podcast. I don't know how you reconcile someone who has been so good by the walks and so good by the strikeouts because you can't have a strikeout-to-walk ratio like Sale has had without being dominant. Those are indicators of hitters being dominated. And home runs are an indicator of the pitcher getting clobbered. without being dominant. Those are indicators of hitters being dominated. And home runs are an indicator of the pitcher getting clobbered.

And it just, I have not been able to make sense of how those two things can happen aside from its almost randomness. I could find tiny little differences, like Sale hasn't been burying the slider exactly the same, but it's just like, I guess it doesn't make sense that a pitcher would sort of have his whole game go hit or miss because it seems like if you were throwing so many good pitches that you would expect some sort of like gradient right where you have so many really good pitchers and

then a diminishing number as you go down the scale all the way to bad pitches but i guess maybe maybe the only conclusion here is sale has been throwing like 20% really bad pitches and 80% really good pitches. And I don't know, in terms of trying to write about that in a way that talks about what it's going to be like going forward, you just wouldn't expect that to keep up. But at the same time, this is hugely important to the Red Sox and to Sale. I have sort of run into, I guess, writing paralysis because I don't know the right way to portray this, as you might be able to tell from the way that I'm talking about it on this podcast. Yeah, there have been some cases where like a control guy, like a guy who has a good strikeout

to walk ratio will also have a very high home run rate. And at times with certain players, there are like a couple archetypical examples of this but i'm having trouble coming up with them where you know like you won't walk towers right yeah so i guess that that makes sense but yeah like guys who will have good strikeout to walk rates and and in some cases maybe just playing good strikeout rates too but they will always be around the plate and that seems to in some cases perhaps be correlated with having a high home run rate. So you'll have some numbers that look really good and other numbers that look really bad. But that kind of picture is probably not like sale in the stuff that still has and the crazy strikeout rate that sale has. So I don't know that that really applies. But this is relevant, I guess, also when talking about Masahiro Tanaka, who is another pitcher we'll see soon in game three of the Yankees series. And this was a question that I wanted to get into the email show, but the email

show was long as it was. This was a question from John, and he says says i've had a lot of fun watching aaron judge this year his home run feats should be commended and they have been what i haven't seen is appreciation for a home run related achievement getting far less press despite being almost as impressive watching judge every day means that every fifth day i have watched masahiro tanaka serve up home runs at a rate that is honestly unfathomable. His home run rate is currently blowing the lid off of Jaime Garcia's 2016 all-time MLB record, 21.3% to 20.2%. And Tanaka did finish the season at 21.2 home runs per fly ball. And that is an all-time record, at least for a qualified starter.

And John says he is doing most of his damage to the Yankees with his fastball, which is coming close to the worst fastball run value per pitch ever recorded at Fangrass he'd have a higher value for that if he threw his fastball more at some point in the second half I became fascinated by his starts because his ability to pitch extremely well seems to be intact while also allowing a lot of long balls a couple of long balls each start. Do either of you see another pitcher getting close to his record? Where would this record rank for you in terms of random happenstance, records occurring in a very strange baseball era? And clearly it is not just Tanaka.

He's a victim of his circumstances to some extent. He's in 2017 when everyone's home run per fly ball rate is kind of artificially raised and he's in Yankee Stadium, although I believe he's actually pitched much better at home, oddly. But that's part of it. But the gap between his ERA and his ex-fip, his expected fip, which at Fangraphs is a stat that kind of tries to normalize the home run to fly ball rate. Just say, okay, that was random. What else did the pitcher do? And according to everything else he did, he's good. So if you take that out of the equation, he is the pitcher, let's say there's 75 pitchers this year who threw at least 150 innings. If you sort by ERA minus XFIP, the gap between Tanaka's is the biggest in baseball by like three-tenths of a run.

So what do you do with that? Is Tanaka actually good? The Yankees seem to have decided maybe he's not all that good because they're only starting him once in this series, which is something you could quibble with if you think that his XFIP is more reflective of who he is. But it's really hard to say whether it is random and bad luck or whether he is just grooving a higher percentage of pitches than you would expect given his other success right and his his case is weird because in 2014 it's always hard to talk about like era and xvip out loud but we're doing it anyway in his rookie year his era and xvip were

basically the same sophomore year basically the same. Sophomore year, basically the same. Last year, his ERA was far better than his XFIP, and then this year it took off. So it's obviously a strange and weird case. I don't even know if teams know quite how to deal with this, but if you look at the quality of Tanaka's stuff, this year he's actually got a little more than he had last year in that he's throwing more than a mile per hour faster than he did last season last season when his era was was so low but it looked like he had

a better fastball and then this year his fastball has gotten obliterated so it just it's all over the place in tanaka you see i think for some reason i have it in my head that like splitter pitchers tend to end up with some sort of weird elevated home run rate and that's probably conjecture or just anecdotal but it could be sort of a situation where these guys are so good at avoiding contact out of the zone like Tanaka's gotcha when he goes out of the zone but like you brought up yesterday when we were theorizing about Craig Kimbrell maybe that it's just a case where Tanaka is so good when he's in front of you maybe he's just so good at getting you to miss out of the zone but when he pitches throws a pitch in the zone, that's a mistake,

and he doesn't have overpowering, overwhelming stuff, and so it makes them somewhat easier to hit. So it could just be a situation where some pitchers' mistakes are more hittable than others. I don't know how that would actually make sense. It's really difficult for me to wrap my head around, but at the end of the day, if you look at a pitch that allows a home run, those pitches tend to be bad pitches, not the pitches that were supposed to be executed. And so when you have a full season, right, like Tanaka's, it would be really easy to say, well, next year, his home run per fly ball rate

is not going to be 21.2%, because that is extremely high. But I mean, would you figure it's going to be higher than the league average? I think that you probably would. And in that case, then if you expect someone to end up higher than the league average, then that implies that you think there's something about that guy that makes him a little more home run friendly. Like he pitches in Yankee Stadium, for one thing. But you're right. He was much better at home for some weird reason this year. Yeah, that's a weird thing.

weird reason this year. Yeah, that's a weird thing. It does seem like some teams are citing home road splits like in a single season as their rationale for starting a pitcher in a certain game, which is not new. That has happened in previous years too. And I never know whether they really think that or whether that's just what they're telling the public or whether they have reason to believe that those splits are more meaningful than most people would because certainly single season home road splits is i mean unless you think that there's something about a player that lends his skills to a particular park or hurts him in a particular part which is true and in some players cases it's just i don't know, I would think that at this enlightened time, it's unlikely that teams would be making the decision to start a guy or not based on having a higher ERA in whatever 12 starts or something on the road or whatever it is. And

I wonder when we hear that sort of thing, is it just that there's something deeper going on and that's just what they're choosing to tell us? Or is it that I guess maybe at this point of the year, you kind of defer to the manager in making these decisions and maybe a manager is more likely to use that as evidence than a front office person would be. We might as well just keep using Tanaka here. So this season, as you mentioned, this season at home, Tanaka had an ERA of 3.22. And on the road, it was 6.48. That's bad. That's a big split.

You would want Tanaka, given those splits, pitching at home. Last season, Tanaka had a home ERA of 3.86 and a road ERA of 2.34. I don't know what you do with that. I don't know why you would expect Tanaka to get all of a sudden a lot worse at home, but still be basically fine in Yankee stadium it doesn't make any sense so there are so many things that go into home run splits so the point doesn't need to be be laborious i guess you were right in that it just doesn't really add up that someone would have a big home road split that matters if it seems like it's extraordinary if it seems like it's different

from his track record it would be a weird justification. But sometimes I guess if you have, I don't think these decisions are so much just on the manager. Like, did you read Andy McCullough's piece about Clayton Kershaw and game five of the 2016 MLDS? Yes, I think so. Maybe in one sense it's weird to read about a decision that happened a year ago, but whatever. It's a really good article, and I think that some of the real import is in how it lays out both how tightly things that happen in the playoffs can be controlled or designed, and then how easy it can be for sometimes those things to go off the rails. Like, for anyone who forgot, Clayton Kershaw closed out Game 5 of the NLDS last year against the Nationals, and he was not supposed to pitch because he had started game four. So he was not supposed to be available,

but the Dodgers just couldn't find the outs otherwise. And so Kershaw essentially forced himself into the game, which is what you're able to do when you're the best pitcher on the planet. But one of the things that the article lays out is how it was the entire front office and Dave Roberts would get together to sort of come up with a strategy and at least for game five they all got together and they tried to strain together outs they tried to find 27 outs for the Dodgers to get so that they could eliminate the Nationals move on and and face the Cubs so I would assume that when you are in the playoffs certainly I would assume with teams in this day and age you just don't have managers really making their gut decisions without getting input from the front office. And you would assume that no matter what the manager might think, front office people are going to be giving the numbers and they're going to be analytically responsible.

But when you're citing home road splits for someone starting a certain game or a different game in the playoffs, then maybe all that is is the manager saying, well, I kind of want this guy to pitch this game and I don't really want to say that it's a gut feeling. So I'm going to have to throw out some numbers because generally most people aren't going to call you on the numbers. They are, for a lot of people, I think that if you cite a number in an explanation,

then that means it's objective and fair and that's it. That means, oh, he had a number, therefore it makes sense. And then you're not really going to get called on it so i guess it's a way of sort of alleviating potential pressure on your own shoulders yeah that's right yeah i remember writing something a long time ago it's like 2010 i don't know why you would remember this but there was wandy rodriguez had notable home road splits at the time. He was known as a guy who was really bad on the road. Like 2005 to 2010, that's what I was looking at at the time. He had a 3-4-9 ERA at home and a 5-2-1 ERA on the road.

This was obviously much larger than the typical split, and that was after about 1 a thousand innings in total. And so people were taking it kind of as gospel that Juan Rodriguez was actually worse on the road, like significantly more so than the typical pitcher. And let's just see what happened. I have not. He had another five or so years to his career. I do not know. It's possible that he was the outlier and he sustained this. But let's just see a bit of live looking up splits on this podcast. Doing the exact same thing as you.

Yeah. So, well, maybe you can save me some time because you're an ace stat looker upper but i'm on it as best as i can be right now so let's see what we can get okay so let's okay this is this is all this is all going to be live so we have no idea i'm going i'm comparing rodriguez through 2010 that sounds right to rodriguez after 2010 yes that's that's right. That's not okay? Okay. So Rodriguez, through 2010, he had a 3.46 ERA at home. And on the road, it was 5.03. Worse by a run and a half. Yeah.

And I think he was worse in like every way. I had a table in my article. He was like worse in home run rate, worse in walk rate, worse in strikeout rate. It wasn't just like a BABIP thing or something. He legitimately had worse peripherals on the road by a lot. Yeah. Okay. So what was that?

Right and a half difference? Okay. So after, at home, he had a.398 ERA. And on the road,.395. Yep. So. Perfect. Baseball.

Yeah. So he was one of the more extreme examples over a period of several years and then pitched just as long after and had even smaller than the typical split. I don't remember what parks he was in. I guess he was pitching for the Pirates mostly in that period. are better at home and he had zero split after that point now of course i guess you could say it's possible that he learned how to pitch on the road and maturation and experience taught him how to do that but i think it's more likely that it was just a random fluke and you take enough baseball players you're gonna get just strange splits for no reason and so i don't know if teams are actually weighing these things heavily in their postseason decision making but unless you have talked to the pitcher and he has said i am just terrified when i'm out of this park or in this park and please don't start me there i just can't

imagine it making a difference in in how i'd line up my rotation i hope the pitchers actually talk like that one of the the weird the weirdest thing about rod about Rodriguez and his splits is I guess that means that he had a way lower home ERA when his home ballpark was Houston and he had better road ERA when his home ballpark was Pittsburgh. So those are two ballparks at the opposite end of the extreme spectrum.

So Rodriguez is sort of a, well, you know, I don't have the word for it, but that's fine because who's thinking about Juan de Rodriguez anymore? Well, I'm glad that worked out because it could have completely demolished my point if you continue to be the same way but thanks wandy yeah got a little lucky well is there is there anything else you would like to discuss we have about 10 minutes and i'm i'm not going to lie to

you came into this woefully unprepared for what we were going to talk about because you know it's a playoff so you figure there's enough to just kind of go on a whim but we've got i don't know four games coming up and the Yankees are... Well, we have the Yankees and the Red Sox are in a hole, but the Red Sox also burned their ace, and the Yankees are starting CeCe Sabathia against Corey Kluber. So it's really easy to look at the Red Sox and the Yankees, and you can get ahead of yourself because I think even today,

and even for us, at least speaking for myself, I know that when i look at a game the first thing i look at after looking at oh here's here the team's playing is the starting pitchers because that's the information that's listed right there on any page that's the teams and then the starters and then it's really easy for me to look at the yankees and the indians and see sabathia versus kluber and think well the indians are up to open the series but of course we know it doesn't work like that and as an example consider that trevor bauer just threw a dominant game one for some reason against the yankees so or uh or for the red sox chris sale now technically chris sale had the second best start of the playoffs

this year when he was pitching he was still better than john gray louis severino zach cranky and the other one irvin santana already forgot that the twins made the playoffs good for them yeah so you know you look at these things and it's it's so easy to just kind of assume which is dangerous because as joshian pointed out sometimes archie bradley triples and that is just it no matter how predictable you think baseball is it's going to follow an unpredictable course so that's the fun of it but it's also what we're going to see the national league open up which as you were listening to this the national league has already

opened up so uh congratulations to you you know more than we do at this moment how often does the podcast audience know more than the podcast recorders in this case 100 of the time yeah happened yeah yeah so through four games so far we have not seen an upset or a surprising result really the team that was favored to win the game or win the series has won all four games so far and i don't know what you can say about how the game one outcomes changed the rest of what you think of those division series that we've seen start. But obviously, I think the Red Sox are hurt more probably by their Game 1 loss in that it was a Chris Sale start. It was the one that they had among the best chances of winning, even though Justin Verlander was starting for the Astros. And having lost that, now they face the prospect of possibly losing without

seeing Sale again, or that could happen if they get swept, or just shakier starters than Sale, obviously. And the Astros' offense was amazing all year and just beat up Chris Sale, and that's got to be intimidating too. So have to be even more nervous than you were initially as a Red Sox fan, and I know Red Sox fans were not feeling particularly confident to begin with. And as for the Yankees series, that kind of went the way we were talking about too, just in that if the Yankees don't get out to a lead, if the Indian starter is better than the Yankees starter, then that's a big problem for the Yankees

because they don't get to use their bullpen to the best advantage. And that's what happened in game one. One thing that I did see thrown around on Twitter and that I wanted to bring people's attention to is Red Sox made an early out on the bases. Dustin Pedroia was thrown out at third base for some reason with two outs as Mitch Moreland was trying to score. Now, the way it worked out is that Moreland did score just before Pedroia was out. So even though the, I think it was the second inning, even though it ended, they at least got the run. But it was still, I don't know why there was an out made at third base.

I don't know what Pedroia was doing, but whatever. He's a big leaguer and I'm not. So I think probably many fans think that their team doesn't know how to run the bases, which is, eh, that's fine. You're a fan of a team. Believe it whatever you want. This year, the Royals, this is according to baseball reference reference and they have a stat that's called outs on the bases this does not include caught stealings those are considered separate events the team that was caught stealing the most

was the rangers and the angels and the astros well that's weird lots of al west bad base running anyway so this year the royals were out on the base the least often they had 37 so-called outs on the bases the diamondbacks had 38 as 37 so-called outs on the bases. The Diamondbacks had 38, as you wrote about much earlier this year. The Diamondbacks, very good base running team. So third place, Astros, 69 outs on the bases. Second place, the Yankees, 70 outs on the bases. First place, Red Sox, 81.

A nice, healthy 11-out gap between first place and second. I don't know what it means, especially when you consider that the Red Sox were unusually efficient with their base stealing. They were very good at stealing bases and not getting caught when they were doing that. However, I don't know how you just like poo-poo an 11 out difference for outs on the bases. That's a lot. That means they made an out on the bases on average once every other game. If you are curious, they made, I don't know

how you make eight of those at first base, but they did. At second base, they made 25 outs. At third base, they made a league-leading 19, and they made league-leading 29 outs at home. So that's a lot. The Royals made eight. That was the lowest number in baseball. So the Red Sox did make a lot of outs on the bases this year. So at least for Red Sox fans complaining that their team doesn't know how to run the bases a little bit justified this year that is a very large number of outs on the bases yeah there are a few things that I think every fan believes about their team and often that's an erroneous belief like I think every fan thinks that their manager is terrible at managing a bullpen for the most part, maybe a couple exceptions, but for the most part, that's something every team's fan base complains about, and probably running the bases could be another one. And I've seen, I wrote an article about this once at BP,

that every team's fans think that their team is especially susceptible to young pitchers, like pitchers debuting, or just rookie pitchers who are not very good. Like every fan thinks that their team like always loses to those guys. And I once did an article where I just like collected evidence of almost every fan base making that same complaint, which obviously cannot be true of every team. But I think it's just one of those things that really sticks in your mind when it happens. Like when there's a matchup where some rookie comes in he's making his major league debut or maybe he's just started and he's not like some dominant unhittable top prospect type and you lose to that guy it is especially galling because you think oh this is a game we can win so when you

lose that one you remember it and enough of enough of those games happen that you start to think this is a trait of my team, but it's really not, probably. So there are probably other things like this that people all complain about, which is only natural. But yeah, sometimes that complaint is accurate in this case. I guess that's true. So we have about five minutes left until I'm going to be late for my chat. So one thing I wanted to just mention before we move on, I don't know if Jose Altuve is going to have any more three home run days in the playoffs. Probably not, but I don't know. I kind of hope he does it every game just for the hell of it. That would be historic. So Altuve, obviously pretty short, small dude. Interestingly, him and Dustin Pedroia, these are two of maybe the two best or at least two of the best second basemen

in the game. And they're both really little dudes. But this is not meant to poke fun at Jose Altuve. Why poke fun? He's amazing. He's one of the best baseball players. Probably will win the American League MVP award this season, and he would deserve it. But one of the interesting consequences of him being just a little dude, and you can contrast this with Aaron Judge,

is that because Altuve is so small, he has what would be for him a unique actual strike zone from knee to the belt. But I haven't checked to make sure this is still true, but at least it used to be true that when Altuve was batting, he would see a lot of high called strikes and he wouldn't see very many low called strikes because I would assume when you're an umpire and you have someone like Altuve standing in, you just, you can't really adjust the strike zone on the fly as much as you should like if you're an umpire you figure you have average baseball players and they're going to have average strike zones and i can't imagine that it's that easy to to move a called strike zone up or down

based on a hitter's specific dimensions it's got to be really difficult so you can sort of understand why when Altuve would bet he would have a more conventional strike zone and therefore a higher strike zone than he would quote-unquote deserve so that's not something that would be unique to Altuve in the major leagues that's something that he would have been dealing with his entire career because he's always been short he's always been shorter than the competition at least since puberty i guess so that just means that like i think it was the first home run al tuve hit against chris sale it was it was a high fastball now it was over basically the middle of the plate but it was above the belt and al tuve just thwacked it he beat the crap out of it and and that's nothing that's too unusual but just what it means is that Altuve in order to be successful has had to be successful in sort of a different way from your

average major leaguer and he's not just like a good hitter he's a very very good hitter who has to hit with relative to his own body an atypical strike zone which I think is interesting in the same way that Aaron Judge has to do the same thing because he has like a big gigantic strike he has like a dresser as a strike zone basically over home plate and he makes it work but but for Altuve he has to hit those high pitches and he is able to hit those high pitches because those pitches are more likely to be strikes against him so I I like that among all the things that make Jose Altuve extraordinary he has basically had to develop a way to be good that is different from how most players have to be good. Yeah. All right. Well, you have a chat to get to, so I will let you get to it not 10 minutes late for

once. You'll see. It's still going to happen. All right. Well, we'll talk again after a lot more baseball happens. So long. So that will do it for today. And I should mention, because we didn't have time to talk about it on the podcast, but

he is the unofficial player of the podcast. I have a new article up at the ringer about Rich Hill, Saturday's game two starter for the Dodgers against the Diamondbacks. Just when you think Rich Hill couldn't get more fascinating, he has somehow found a way to do that. We talked on the podcast about Rich Hill early in the season when he was struggling and he had the blister issues. And then even when he was on the mound, his control was off and he didn't have his good curveball anymore. His curveball, as we discussed on the podcast, was actually the worst curveball in baseball at one point in mid-June.

And he has completely reinvented himself again since then. And he's become a fastball pitcher, which is crazy because Rich Hill throws about an 89 mile per hour fastball most of the time. And yet somehow he's been about as successful as ever since he started throwing the fastball much more than his curveball, which had not been his calling card for over the past season plus ever since his initial reinvention, he had been relying heavily on the curveball. Now, not so much. And yet he still misses a crazy number of bats. He has the second highest whiffs per swing rate in baseball on his four-seamer this season. Behind Jacob deGrom, who of course throws like 96, it makes no sense that Rich Hill is out there throwing 89 and still getting a crazy number of strikeouts with the pitch. I tried to make some sense of it in my article. Maybe it's something Jeff and I will talk about on the podcast sometime soon, but I came up with a few theories and explanations for how he's doing this,

but I also just kind of threw up my hands at the end. Rich Hill is a folk hero for all of us. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Five listeners who have already pledged their support include Jake Devon, James Smith, Alex McHale, Nathaniel Roberts, and David Metcalf. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectivelywild. And you can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes. Reviews are always appreciated. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance. Effectively Wild on iTunes. Reviews are always appreciated. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance. And please keep your questions and comments coming for me and Jeff via email at

podcastandfangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. And again, remember, Jeff and I will be doing a couple live chats during playoff games sometime soon for Patreon supporters at the $10 level and above. We'll be sending out info on the timing for those games to those supporters sometime soon. So have a wonderful weekend. Enjoy all the Division Series baseball. We will talk to you early next week. Autumn comes again so near

Leaves are falling fast I fear Turn the heat on, wipe your eyes What you have can never die Now is the time Let her know why What cannot be And I know I know I Why can't I be my own son? Yes, I can