Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1132: There’s No Hibernating in Baseball

Episode Date: November 3, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan discuss the end of the season and the challenging (if somewhat merciful) transition to offseason mode, the resolution of the World Series and an underwhelming Game 7, the best and worst World Series performers, the significance of the Astros’ victory, the difficulty of repeating as champion, the outlooks for the […]

Hello and welcome to episode 1132 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I am Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs, joined as always by Ben Lindberg. We are celebrating our first podcast recorded in the off season. Hello. Hi. Hi. I'm okay. You sound positively buoyant today.

Could that be because you did not have to watch a long baseball game and immediately write about it last night? Look, I'm not a dancer. I'm not a dancing person. No, neither am I. Put music on, making breakfast, dance in the kitchen. Now, I mean, look, I'm alone. My girlfriend was basically gifted a weekend trip to Hawaii by her boss.

So she's just there by herself. Her boss couldn't go. So she's gone. So I'm celebrating my offseason as a lonely person. But nevertheless, I'm going to miss baseball soon. But right now, boy, not even a little bit. Well, there comes a point in the offseason where, yeah, you miss it just as someone who loves baseball and as someone who still has to write about baseball in the offseason. And it gets very difficult to do so at a certain point. But yeah, I mean, I don't know.

The postseason is exciting. And in the immediate aftermath, I think a lot of people are very sorry for baseball to be over. I don't know if there are any fans and people who just watch baseball who are happy that it's no baseball game and at least in my case I don't have to write anything about baseball it's uh it's something of a load off but I don't want to act as if we didn't enjoy what just transpired because we really did except for game seven we didn't enjoy that so much yeah game seven was was kind of kind of dull we'll talk about that in a few minutes and yeah obviously this is coming from a different perspective if I were just a baseball fan and I didn't have to write at three in the morning, then I would think, oh, that was a lot of fun. I wish baseball would never end. And I thought, I look forward to the playoffs every year.

It's a struggle. It's grueling. And you kind of lose your evenings. But, you know, it's all for a good reason. It's a lot of fun. But I am personally glad that the busiest part of the year is over after one month. Daylight savings is coming up. And for the second year in a row, the Angels provided us an immediate transition into the offseason by just being like, oh, the world's years is over. Here's a move. Yeah. Already written your first offseason post. You

just very smoothly transitioned into that. You didn't write up about any of the options being picked up or declined. I was hoping to see a nice Jeff Sullivan investigation. Yeah, Nathan Ivaldi option picked up. Yeah, I mean, that's always the part that I think depresses me a little bit when the post-World Series news breaks and we're supposed to pay any attention to that like you go from you know a game where every play is moving the championship odds a significant percentage right i mean certain plays hits are swinging the odds of who will win the world series by whatever 20 50 sometimes it's just deciding who wins the world series if there's a walk-off or something everything is momentous not that the whole goal of the season or all that matters in

the season is who wins the world series but that is ultimately what everyone's trying to do and so you go from this situation where every play has a massive impact on that to like everything every bit of news having almost zero impact on that like i don't what do you think the biggest move in terms of championship win probability added let's say or the equivalent you know championship world series odds whatever would be from an off-season signing trade a transaction an injury like whatever. The biggest news that has the biggest bearing on who will win the World Series in 2018. What will that swing be? Okay, I'm going to cheat here. I'm going to cheat here because I'm going to go with a theory that Shohei Otani.

Well, first of all, we'll also talk about this. Let's see if he does come over. But let's say he does come over and let's say he wants to join the team that has you, Darvish. This is a rumor. I don't know if it's actually going to happen. Kind of skeptical it's actually going to happen, but let's say that it does. And in my head, I keep thinking, Cubs. So obvious the Cubs would sign Darvish

and get Otani. Who knows? But let's say they do that. I mean, that would boost their World Series odds by, what, probably between 5 and 10 percent? Maybe 5 five percent maybe ten is too aggressive if they get the two of them together yeah yeah five definitely i would think yeah but that's about the upper limits and we're talking about getting you know maybe the best pitcher available or one of the best free agents available and a player who has the potential to be, I don't know. Well, we'll talk

about maybe what he has the potential to be. Hopefully we'll have opportunities to talk about that this winter, but probably he's likely to be the best pitcher available and is also a hitter. So I guess getting the two of those guys together, that's big. But yeah, almost any move just has a minuscule impact on how likely a certain team is to win the World Series. And so it's tough to go from everything mattering to most things not mattering that much, at least in the sense that we can predict that they will matter. So that's a jarring transition, but I'm with you. It is somewhat liberating. I'm planning to just have like a

lost weekend with a bunch of new video games that just came out. I hope you're hiking somewhere or doing something outdoorsy and we will live our best lives. It's not possible. The weather has turned. I have no girlfriend this weekend. The weather is bad. I can't go outside. So I think I'm just going to, my goal I think is to watch the entire new season of Narcos tomorrow. Oh, okay. I'm only halfway through it, actually. I've been going slowly, so maybe I'll do that with you. What is it?

Is it 10 episodes? I think it's 10, yeah. 10? Yeah, okay. What's 10 hours on a Saturday where I'm not doing anything else? Sure. You talk about maybe Otani and Darvish swaying the odds between 5% and 10%. I don't know what that would be for the Cubs.

George Springer's leadoff double in Game 7 swung the championship odds 6.2%. So just for some perspective, the biggest offseason dual transaction almost imaginable would be about as important as George Springer hitting a double down the line. Yeah, this is hard. At least like the news yesterday, Justin Upton signing an extension with the line. Yeah, this is hard. At least like the news yesterday, Justin Upton signing an extension with the Angels. At least that was more significant

than like the Angels trading for Cameron Mabin last year. I like like Upton was going to be a big conversation point this winter. Who knows where he was going to go? He's a legitimate good everyday outfielder. He's only 30 years old. So I appreciated the ease of the transition

because otherwise, if you have no moves aside from, you know, options and players declaring free agency, then it's kind of hard to know how and when to shift into offseason writing because it's just like, well, we just spent all this time invested in in the playoff race. What are we what are we going to do? What are we we can still write about the Astros. But, you know, at some point you have to move on. And and I guess it's also kind of refreshing to remember that now we can reach out to the fans of the rest of baseball. Yes, that's right. That's a month where we're writing about only 10 teams and then eight and four and then two

and then one. So there's a whole lot of people out there. The overwhelming majority of baseball fans probably don't care that the Astros just win the World Series. Yeah, right. And also, I mean, offseason moves are sometimes interesting to write about for reasons other than the impact they'll have on who wins the World Series. Sometimes it's interesting just to analyze how are teams valuing players and what are they paying for and how much are they paying for it. So that's always something at the beginning of an offseason you can kind of calibrate. Okay, what is a win worth now, roughly, what are teams prioritizing, that sort of thing. So even though the moves themselves don't really have the same import, for the most part, it's, you know,

for people like us who are trying to think along with front offices and track that evolution, that's always a fun thought exercise at least okay why did this team want this guy how does he fit in and why is he making what he is making and uh you know or if it's a trade just why did this make sense for both sides and what does this tell us about baseball writ large if anything so that's uh you know i think that's the thing that I still love about baseball analysis is that often you do get a satisfying answer. And that's a fun thing about your posts in particular because I feel like you're always doing some sort of investigation and often coming to a conclusion. Not always. Sometimes the conclusion is who knows, I don't know. Whatever. But often there is a question and there's an investigation of that question. And then there's an answer to that question based on previous performance or comparables or something. And most things in life don't really have that sort of certainty. And even baseball doesn't in a lot of ways. But those are the kind of posts I still enjoy doing, like probably my favorite post of the postseason that I did,

maybe not the most memorable or most read or anything, but the thing I wrote about Dallas Keuchel versus the Dodgers was like a fascinating question to me and a satisfying answer to me, because I theorized that maybe Keuchel does worse against selective hitters. And fortunately for me, the data backed that up. And even more strongly than I imagined, there was something there, it seemed like. And you can just look up those numbers and get an answer to that question. Or at least you can if you know smart people who are able to look things up more efficiently. And that was fun. You kind of feel like a detective for a little while. You're coming up with a theory. You're seeing whether the facts

support it. You're coming to some sort of conclusion. And it may or may not matter, but just as an intellectual exercise, it can be very stimulating. Yeah, I really enjoyed your Heigl post. I like the way that you laid it out. I love the simplicity of the analysis of just like, here's how he is against disciplined and aggressive hitters. But it's the kind of thing that it kind of takes the postseason stage to make you even think about because during the season you just think oh he's a he's a good pitcher whatever who cares about a specific matchup but it's it's so rewarding when you can find a sort you know any editor is going to want something that's like what's a key to this series because people are always looking for keys

of the series and it's like it's impossible to write those things because it almost never matters. A key to the series is to be good and get lucky. But the Keichel Dodgers thing, it made sense. Keichel wasn't great in the series. He was fine, but he wasn't outstanding. And I like the way that you went about it. I think it's the thing that you wrote in the playoffs that's most memorable to me just because I appreciate the elegance and the simplicity of the research. I guess in the playoffs, not to take it again from a writer perspective, but you know, okay, so the Astros

won the World Series. It's really hard to write something sort of unique or original about that because everyone's going to say the same thing. Oh, they were rebuilding, Sports Illustrated said they'd be good, and then they were good. Way to go, Astros. It's like a throwaway article. It's like every writer should just get together and identify one guy who should write the Astros article and then we can just all link to it. Like we don't we shouldn't all need to write about how the team won the World Series. It's plainly obvious what they did. But I like the posts that are more unique, more original, more that no one else was going to write that Dallas Keuchel post. And I'm glad that you did. I don't know how much it mattered. But, you, but the playoffs are a time

when the writing is generally about things that just happen. And it's hard to know why they happened, but they did. God knows why game five was game five, but it sure was. We might never see another game like that. But the fun of the off season is this,

even though I think every executive knows that if they get their dream, the team will make the playoffs and then it's just going to be chaotic. This is when you kind of get to see the thought processes, the sort of bigger picture. Teams are trying to maximize the odds now. And there's still that behavior in the playoffs, like with the Dodgers taking Rich Hill out after 18 or 19 batters.

You can still see those thought processes, but this is more about a full season or several full seasons as opposed to, okay, we're trying to control the single game entropy that we're going to be faced with. And so I think it's kind of fun. I think it's fun to look at the Angels. Why would they keep Justin Upton? Aren't the Angels bad? Well, yes and no. They have a really talented starting rotation and none of them can pitch because all of them are constantly injured. Well, you know, that's kind of interesting. What kind of upside does this team have?

They don't have a lot of recognizable talent outside of Trout and Upton and Simmons, but any number of their starting pitchers could be good next season. And it's just, I don't know, it's fun to evaluate team behavior. I'm basically just restating what you said about five minutes ago, but I figure that the longer I talk, the more time you have to think of the next point. Yeah, well, just from a podcasting perspective, there are benefits and drawbacks to October. The one benefit is that really neither of us has had to think of a topic for a month, which is great because, you know, that gets challenging during the winter sometimes when there's no

actual baseball or baseball news to talk about. But it's also fun because this is not usually a podcast that sticks solely to the games that are going on and what is happening in these games and the strategy. That's something we do a much higher percentage of our talking time in October than any other time of the year. So I know we have a couple ideas that have germinated that we've thought, oh, that might be a good off-season podcast idea. Anything goes in the off-season if you're trying to do a baseball podcast three times a week. So we'll probably get weird on occasion and somewhat silly, and sometimes we'll struggle to try to think of something to talk about. But I do enjoy being liberated in that way.

Do you have any, you've already done a podcast on this, but do you have any closing thoughts on game seven or how the series or the season went? Anything new to say about the Astros or the Dodgers? Yeah. I mean, I think the series still ranks among the best. We're not going to remember it as the best or very close to the best just because it ended the way it did and there was very little suspense in game seven although I mean and I hit it at various points could have easily made it very competitive the Dodgers of course stranded 10 runners went one for 13 with runners in scoring position so one or two hits here or there and it's totally different but

they never got those hits and we didn't know it at the time, but the game was essentially decided, you know, two minutes in basically when the Astros had a two nothing lead. And so there wasn't that thrill and intrigue there. I think if you go by the baseball gauges, championship win probability added over the course of a series stat, I think it's still ranked ninth all time, which is, you know, pretty special, but it didn't really end on a high note except for Astros fans. So that was disappointing. And, you know, the game itself, there were manager moves that you could critique, of course, there always are, but so much of it just came down to the Dodgers not getting that hit when they needed to. So I think, you know, a lot of the post-game discussion has revolved around Clayton Kershaw.

And we had that discussion in our podcast right before Game 7, where we, you know, basically said he's not going to start. And there's probably no compelling evidence that he should start. And the fact that he pitched so well and pitched so long, which I think was the more unpredictable part of it. Of course, you wonder what might have been, and it's fair to wonder and it's fun to wonder unless you're torturing yourself as a Dodgers fan. But, you know, I certainly didn't see him going four innings in this game. And I would have thought that you would have had to use Darvish at some point anyway and you know use him in relief and who knows if he was tipping pitches or something maybe the same

thing happens no matter what sequence you use those pitchers in so I mean credit to the people who first guessed that and talked about it before the game but I think mostly people are looking at it afterward and saying well he went four squirrels innings and look what the actual starter did they should have switched those guys which is probably not the greatest thinking yeah and at the end of the day the doctor scored one run you know so right whatever you know darvish darvish was not good it's really interesting i mean i the moment is past so now like darvish had these two two of the worst games he's ever had, certainly in terms of missing bats. He only missed four combined bats in two starts. And one of those was on a like a missed bunt. So realistically, he only missed three bats with swings. His previous career low over two consecutive games was 13. So like Darvish was not good. But on the other hand, you look at him in game three, and he was just allowing line drive after line drive and and in this game he had he allowed the lead off double but then it was basically grounders the other way and an error and then of course the home run yes it's not like

darvish was getting clobbered he just wasn't missing bats and then with the dodgers look okay it feels like every cory seager and cody bellinger bet this october was the same it was the low inside curveball now the astros in same. It was the low inside curveball. Now, the Astros in particular throw some really good low inside curveballs. That is kind of their thing. The at bat that I keep coming back, well, I guess there's two. And they're both featuring Chris Taylor.

There was his line drive double play, which just annihilated a potential rally. And that's a bummer, because if you have a rally that ends, or a potential rally that ends with a strikeout, you think, well, OK, that's it. At least there's closure. But when you line into a double play, that's just brutal.

That is nothing but bad luck. Taylor did what he wanted to do, and he got the worst possible result he could have gotten on that play aside from lining into a double play where the ball ricochets off of his forehead. And he also gets a concussion. That would be even worse. But I have never seen that happen. And then later, I think it was the sixth inning, the Dodgers had scored a run and they were putting something together and Taylor was batting against Charlie Morton. And then with two strikes, Morton threw just this like perfect low inside.

What is it? I don't know if he throws a change up or a splitter or a split change, but something with that kind of movement, which he very seldom throws. But I wanted to write an entire article about that pitch, but I thought that was kind of just seeing the trees for the forest or whatever the reverse expression would be. It was a beautiful pitch. Morton does not use it very often at all. Took some real balls to bring it out and throw it in that situation. to bring it out and throw it in that situation.

So I think that having looked at it, aside from Taylor lining into the double play, this was a game where the Dodgers squandered clearly a bunch of base runners and they missed an opportunity to make this a classic game seven and therefore a classic series. But I think that when the Astros actually got into those stressful situations, the pitching was just good.

It just got better. Like Bellinger and Seager just didn't really miss pitches they could have hit. They were just pitched really well. But the lance mccullers hit four guys he had four guys that didn't happen and he didn't allow a run it's what an unbelievable conclusion like mccullers sucked it was not it was not good and the astros allowed one run like it gets lost and mccullers is a really good pitcher and charlie morton's a really good pitcher and the astros allowed one run. Like, it gets lost, and McCullers is a really good pitcher, and Charlie Morton's a really good pitcher, and the Astros did well, totally deserve the World Series.

But in a game where everyone's like, oh, the Dodgers should have started Clayton Kershaw over a legitimate, awesome starting pitcher, Hugh Darvish, Lance McCullers hit four guys in barely over two innings, and he survived. That doesn't make any sense. No one hits four guys. Yeah, right, and no one has ever hit four guys and won in a

winning game or something like that. Wasn't there a fun fact about that? There's a bunch of fun facts. I think he was the first guy to ever hit four guys in the playoffs, period. But he was the first guy in baseball history to hit at least four guys in a game and not allow a run. Oh, right. Yeah, that's pretty crazy, which is, you know, kind of an indictment of the Dodgers timely hitting here. But yeah, I mean, that's just the way it worked out. It was very weird. And of course, George Springer was the deserving MVP. You wrote a post about him. And going back to the baseball gauge, course he by championship win probability added had the 10th best series ever in a well in a postseason series of any kind really and the best since

let's see I guess really the only recent one who comes close well you've got bum garner is at number three all time in 2014 and then davries, number four from the 2011 series. And I guess on the flip side of that, you have Hugh Darvish, who ranks 10th worst of all time by the same metric. And the only really recent ones are Byung-hyun Kim in 2001 and Mitch Williams in 93. So we got a question about that. I guess this would be the time to answer it. This is from listener Rob, and he points that out, that Darvish ranks that low or high, however you sort that leaderboard. And he wants to know what we think. Is he really the worst starting pitcher in one World Series in modern times? And he says, I initially thought

it was kind of unfair that he was getting so much of the blame when I thought the offense with runners in scoring position and Roberts managing the bullpen had a lot to do with it, but this really made me think, what do you think? And he wants to know whether the methodology is fair in assigning blame and praise and whether the mainstream narrative is right, and this is a disaster of historic proportions. He also wants to know what we think this costs Darvish in free agency, if anything. Yeah. So I don't think it's going to cost him that much in free agency. I think people still know that he's a really good starter. Maybe he was tipping pitches. I don't know. Maybe that's like an offseason post. But this is it's always so hard to try to figure out if someone's tipping pitches. We just don't have the angles

that we need. So I don't think there's any reason to believe that Darvish is bad now. And if you're a team that's trying to underpay him because you think, oh, maybe his stock is down. Well, someone else is going to think that the stock is down. And the market has a way of normalizing itself, especially when you throw in the potential Otani connection. But when you're dealing with when probability matters, they're not entirely fair to pitchers. I'll say that they're not fair to anyone really because they strip away defense. It doesn't like if a guy gets like Chris Taylor lines into a double play. Well, Taylor gets the penalty for that right or wrong. And with Darvish, he I'm almost certain he's penalized for the Cody Bellinger error on the Bregman ground ball in

the first inning that reduced the Dodgers championship board also winning expectancy by about 10 percentage points. So I'm pretty sure that that is counted against Darvish, which isn't really fair. He's not the one who screwed up. He got the ground ball the other way. He got the result he wanted. So in a sense, it's not fair. Pitchers are penalized for the defense that happens behind them, whether it's good or bad. And so Darvish, not quite as bad as his number would suggest. On the other hand, Not quite as bad as his number would suggest. On the other hand, he was very bad.

So whether he's like the 10th least valuable World Series player ever or not, he was bottom 20 and bottom 25. He had a terrible series and he had his bad games at the wrong times. I'm not going to say that the game was over at 2-0, but it most certainly felt over at 5-0 as soon as George Springer left the yard. That swing had a certain sense of finality to it. Very clean swing, very, very obvious and beautiful home run that Springer hit. And yeah, that kind of felt like it. So Darvish, terrible, terrible Dodger. Not the only Dodger who deserves blame, but terrible Dodger in the World Series, which is too bad because he was so good in his first two playoff starts yeah yeah i don't think he'd lose any money just based on clutchness or anything like that he did have good starts in this postseason but i think if anything

the things that would be concerning would be as you mentioned the pitch tipping because this is not the first time that there have been pitch tipping rumors and stories surrounding him so that's somewhat i guess you know if you're if you're worried about him just not getting the full advantage of his stuff because he keeps tipping pitches and has been told about it and aware of it before right he tweeted something about pitch tipping and thanked jeff passon right or or acknowledged jeff passon i think after a start you're right this season when jeff wrote about that and darvish thing about pitch tipping and thanked Jeff Passon, right? Or acknowledged Jeff Passon, I think, after a start of the season when Jeff wrote about that and Darvish linked to it and said thanks or something. So if he's aware that he's done it in the past and he's not able to

stop himself doing it, that's somewhat concerning. Or if you worry that this had something to do with the baseballs, he was one of the people who said that the baseballs felt different and that it was affecting him. And, you know, he's somewhat reliant on the slider. And if you think, well, who knows what is happening with the baseballs at this point? Maybe if they were slick in the World Series, maybe they'll be slick during the regular season next year. Who knows? And maybe this will just be Darvish's kryptonite and he'll never be good again. I think that's unlikely, of course, but maybe both of those things are somewhere in the back of a front office's mind this winter.

So not how you want to enter your free agency period, but I think the large sample of Darvish being good will help him here. Of course, he's maybe not the pitcher he was when he first came over just for other reasons. He had the injury. His stuff maybe has not been quite as unhittable. His results during the regular season have not been as good as they ever were. So that's part of it, too. Was there talk that baseball was going to ask Rawlings to create a tackier ball so that they didn't have to use the mud anymore wasn't that something yeah at some point that was a story I don't I don't know that

anything ever came of that that was publicly reported but yes that was what like a last offseason story yeah I think so and in any case so I don't know look we we don't know if the baseballs in the world series were really slick if they were we don't know. Look, we don't know if the baseballs in the World Series were really slick. If they were, we don't know why. I think that there's some interesting evidence. Brad Peacock feels like a potential smoking gun here. Just because he didn't use his slider, which is suspicious. was going on with Brad Peacock in the series. But yeah, with Darvish on the balls, then you'd figure maybe that's just a fleeting concern. But I wonder now, let's say that the Astros figured that Darvish was tipping pitches.

Certainly they were swinging as if he was, just in that they made a whole bunch of contact, contact hitting team, but they didn't make contact against everyone. So clearly after game three, you're not going to say anything. You're not even going to tell the media, oh, he's tipping pitches.

But now Worldennis is over. Darvish is a free agent. Do you think that anyone, if Darvish was tipping pitches, do you think that anyone on the Astros might reach out and be like, hey, just so you know, here's what we saw? Because, you know, the players get along.

I don't think Darvish, even Darvish and Gurriel, I don't think are angry at one another. So I wonder if at this point, now that everything is played out and players are a lot friend angry at one another. So I wonder if at this point, now that everything is played out and players are a lot friendlier with one another, then I think maybe fans want to think that they are. I don't know.

Do you think that someone would tell them? I wonder. I tend to think that if you're a hitter and you know about that and you know that you might be facing Yuv Darvish next season, maybe your self-interest just prevents you from doing that. I don't know. If you're good friends with Darvish, season maybe your self-interest just prevents you from doing that I don't know if you're like good friends with Darvish maybe you would do that but I would have to think that you

know it's a competitive game and there's lots of money at stake for everyone and so a player probably wouldn't of his own accord reach out and say here's what you're doing wrong because I mean maybe if it's like uh you know carlos beltran was seeming to allude to that in a post-game interview maybe he retires i don't know if he if he does uh but having won his world series finally and sort of you know losing playing time and slipping as a player maybe he decides to retire at this point and if he were to do that maybe he has nothing to lose he could he could say something but he was he was a teammate of the dervishes last year too so maybe there's a there's a bond there

yeah could be so yeah but if i were a team looking into signing him i would definitely try to i don't know talk to players talk to coaches figure out what was going on there and and whether it's correctable just you know it probably is but I wouldn't want to be worrying about it. It's funny. I just got an email with 2018 regular season prop bets and also off-season signing prop bets, which I don't really solicit these emails, but I wrote an article for The Ringer not so long ago about Game of Thrones betting and how people bet on the show and what's going to happen in the show. And as part of that story, I emailed with some people who work at sportsbook sites and ever since then have just constantly been

bombarded with odds for things. So one interesting thing is that 2018 World Series odds, according to this site, the Astros and Dodgers, both exactly the same. So, you know, one team won, one team lost. But in terms of the outlook for next season, Vegas, or at least the sportsbook considers them identical, essentially. The other thing that caught my mind here, maybe this is a full episode we could do on things like this at some point. But the leading candidate to sign Shohei Ohtani, according to this, is your Seattle Mariners. Oh, really? I don't know what the rationale is there. But yeah, it goes Mariners, Dodgers, then Cubs, then Angels, then Yankees, and then the field.

I'm beginning to think that the leading candidate to sign Shohei Ohtani will be the Non Ham Fighters because I don't know. You want to talk about this? You want to try to talk about this? Because I'm not going to lie to you. I don't know how to. Yeah. Is this weird and complicated? Is this sort of the topic? Because if so, I have one more thing to bring up, I guess. Oh, I didn't. I didn't have a topic. Okay. We're just doing this. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, I don't, I mean, I wrote about the Astros after the series Michael Bauman wrote about the Dodgers for my site, The Ringer, as well. And you mentioned that everyone's takes are sort of similar. My take focused on the fact that, yeah, this was predicted, but it wasn't really predictable. I mean, k know, kudos to Ben Reiter and SI for

getting that right. And they should, of course, take the bows for doing so. But of course, that was kind of, you know, a tongue in cheek prediction at that point that probably not a ton of thought was devoted to. They were trying to sell magazines, etc. And I think that, you know, this was, I put it, predicted, but not preordained. And the fact that they had this tanking strategy, which was smart and I think has been proven to be the correct course for that team at that time, they were still unlikely ever to have everything break right and win this World Series because all you can really do as a team, there are no dynasties anymore. We haven't seen a team win back-to-back World Series since the Yankees did it for the last time in 2000.

It's really hard to do at this point in baseball history. There are 30 teams, maybe with more on the way. There's luxury tax. There's revenue sharing. There's spending limits on the international and amateur markets. amateur markets. Every team is smart and is not really giving away wins unless it's with an eye toward putting those losses to work, in a sense, and getting high draft picks and losing less in the future. So it's really hard to just start a season and feel confident that you can win a World Series. No one can or should do that in baseball now. So the fact that this all came together for the Astros,

I think, is an endorsement on their process, to use the word that they use, but that just didn't have to work as well as it worked. And every team that wins the World Series had a lot of smart moves that turned out to work well, but also a lot of dumb moves that just didn't hurt them, or a lot of things that went way better than they ever expected them to go and of course the Astros inherited Springer you know the the Lunau regime inherited Springer inherited Keitel inherited Altuve and a lot of those guys took leaps I mean I don't think that Lunau would have ever anticipated that Keitel would be a Cy Young award winner that Altuve would be a probable MVP, or even that

Marwin Gonzalez, a guy he traded for just after he was hired, like hours after he was hired, would ever turn into what Marwin Gonzalez was this year. So you need your big swings to connect, but you also need your small swings to turn out to be big swings sometimes. And the Cubs definitely had that with guys like Arrieta and Hendricks who were smart moves, smart pickups by them, but I'm sure exceeded their expectations. You just need all that to happen, and then you need a bunch of things to break right.

And the Astros went to two Game 7s in this postseason, and either could have easily swung the other way. And the Dodgers have won five consecutive division titles, and they still don't have a World Series, and that can happen very easily. So the Astros are totally set up to be back here year after year, as are the Dodgers, but there's no guaranteeing that that will be the case, and there's certainly no guaranteeing that they will win another one. So I think even though there was a plan and we could see it coming

and we knew they were going to get good at some point, I think even though there was a plan and we could see it coming and we knew they were going to get good at some point, I think this was still unlikely and should be cherished and savored just like any series by fans of that team. Marwin Gonzalez just posted a 907 OPS. He had a very good season, multi-position player, etc. Do you know, take a guess oh he batted 2199 times in the minor leagues guess his minor league ops like seven no okay 650 660 minor league 660 ops barbara gonzalez a friend of mine years ago this is like half a decade ago or something maybe even more he was interviewing for a a job with the astros and the Astros happened to be in Seattle at the time.

And my friend, as part of the interview process, he watched a game. He watched an Astros game in Seattle with members of the Astros front office. And while I obviously won't go into too much detail, they were watching a game in which Marwin Gonzalez was participating, and they were all laughing about how Marwin Gonzalez was not good and just kind of a guy who was on the field because the team was terrible and he was trying to move on and and do some other stuff eventually. So even even the Astros five, six years ago were like, no, he's filler. Marwin Gonzalez is filler. Yeah, things happen.

It's bizarre. Like Brad Peacock became a super valuable member of the Astros and he became really valuable. Yeah, pitching in this game yeah who would have predicted that Morton Morton at least you the Astros deserve credit for being like okay look his his stuff played up he had a very interesting start to 2016 let's sign him give him a shot I think that was a brilliant signing by the Astros I liked it at the time obviously I like it even more now Brad Peacock he was again filler he might as well be Brett Oberholzer or something but then last year he's in the minors and teammate Jordan Jankowski whoever that is Now, Brad Peacock, he was, again, filler. He might as well be Brett Oberholzer or something.

But then last year, he's in the minors, and teammate Jordan Jankowski, whoever that is, is like, look, this is the slider I throw. Peacock picks it up. Great. It's one of the best sliders in baseball. All of a sudden, Brad Peacock is one of the best pitchers in baseball, at least by the rate stats that he allowed. Dallas Keuchel, this season, allowed a weighted on base average of 273. Peacock, 274.

What? That doesn't make any sense. So like there's so much that goes into a championship team or even just like a really good team. The Dodgers didn't fix Chris Taylor. Chris Taylor fixed Chris Taylor. The Dodgers just happened to trade for him and then have him fix himself over the offseason. Whatever. Which is not to say that teams can know, teams can't in some instances

have huge player development successes and make a player much better or sometimes spoil a player in some way. But often that's the case. It's like a hitter, you know, goes to see a private instructor or as you're saying with Peacock, just talks to a fellow player

who happened to be on the team. So I guess that's kind of the astros doing but they you know didn't necessarily put those two guys together and say hey you know you could learn from this guy try his slider that happens sometimes but you know i mean a lot of that is just sort of the random occurrences that propel one team to the world series and and another team not and who who knows whom to credit for that? If anyone, it just happens. Yeah, I think that one of the biases that comes out of having the Cubs win last year and having the Astros win this year is that the narrative will therefore be, look, they tanked and it worked

and it was all worth it in the end. Absolutely true. For those two teams, it's all worth it in the end. And, you know, maybe they were just a little bit ahead. But, you know, the Padres tanked. Where are they? The Braves tanked. Their rebuild is stuck. It looks like it might even go backwards now. The White Sox have tanked. Who knows what they're going to do? The Tigers are trying to tank, but they don't have any talent to trade. So they're just going to suck for a while and not do anything. Every team has at least the outline of like a coherent, progressive plan at this point. This is nothing like we've talked about this a million times. Every single is like, we want to get good and we want to stay good. And we use the numbers to do that. It's like, okay, that's great. And every team, just about every team, at least employs some really smart people who are helping the team work toward that goal. And every single

season, 29 teams fail. If their goal is to win the World Series, only one team gets to do it. And so, yeah, every year, the team that won the World Series will have put together and implemented a terrific plan to get good and win the World Series. And all these other teams with plans won't have. The Astros are not more brilliant than the Dodgers, but has it all been worth it for the Dodgers? They still haven't won a World Series. Look at everything that they've done. They've built a five-time running division champion, and we might as well say probably six-time running division champion. They're going to do it again. Why wouldn't they? But they haven't won the World Series. It's nothing against them, except it's also everything against them. It's out of their hands, but that blows, I'm sure, for them. What a

miserable feeling it must be, because why should what the Astros or Cubs did be any better than what the Dodgers have done but yeah baseball baseball is gonna get you yeah yeah no I think we should devote a whole episode to that maybe maybe Monday because we're running out of time here but we in the past on this show have done sort of uh you know lessons either lessons we should learn from the World Series winner or the postseason or lessons that we shouldn't learn that will be learned from those things. Like in the past, Theo Epstein has said that, you know, whatever the World Series winner did, that will be what teams or media members maybe say is the way that you win the World Series. And, you know, you'll

get some copycats or people saying you have to do things this way because the World Series winner did things that way. So I'd like to devote more time to that, to what we can learn from who won and how they won, and also what some people might infer from that that maybe we shouldn't. But we could get to that at greater length, I think, in the next episode. But I did want to mention, I mean, both of these teams are just totally stacked for the long run. And I think that has kind of been the case for most of the teams in the playoff field this year, which I think we've mentioned before. Just there aren't really any teams that kind of look like they're on their last gasp or,

you know, running on fumes. And this was their last chance to have a respectable season. And now they're heading into the dark days. There weren't really any teams that fit that description this year. And you could totally, I mean, I wonder how many of this year's playoff teams will be the projected playoff teams next spring. Like I'm guessing a pretty high number, which does not mean, of course, that next year's playoff field will be the same. It almost certainly won't, but they might all be the favorites to be back. So I think that the Astros and Dodgers in particular, and I wrote about this in my piece after the World Series,

but you're familiar with the NAFE projection and player evaluation system. Yeah, look, I was going to say, you screwed up because you only wrote a paragraph about this. This is an article. You need to write a separate article about this. Yeah, well, I mean, the information is not public. And because this NAFE system, which is, you know, co-created by Adam Guttridge, who has written on the internet at various times, former Brewers employee, and this system is licensed to teams, so they don't just give it away, but they give us writers little tidbits here and there. And so this system basically evaluates and projects every player at any level of professional baseball and probably amateur ball too. But they have a number which is just kind of the total asset value of every

organization. And that's a cold clinical way to put it, but players under team control at every level of the organization, majors and minors, just how much are they worth based on their contracts and based on their projected performance? And the Astros are just far and away the leaders in this category. It's not really all that close. There's a $244 million gap between the Astros and the next team, which is the Indians, and the Dodgers are third. So both of these teams just are in very enviable positions. And of course, the Dodgers have all the money in the world and some of those bad contracts are coming off the books. The Astros were only like 17th in payroll this year, and they will be in line for a revenue rise after the World

Series and might've been anyway. So both these teams are just, you know, stacked and set up and in all likelihood, they will both be back and have more cracks at this. And that's just, you know, in the Astros case, I mean, they had contributions, of course, from 30-something guys and Redick and Verlander and McCann and people like that, Redick and Verlander and McCann and people like that, but they just have that core, that quartet of Altuve and Correa and Bregman and Springer, all guys who are extremely productive and still in their primes or not even at their primes and are, you know, either making the league minimum still or making a reasonable amount of money from the team perspective, probably a team-friendly amount of money. So if you start with a core like that, you can build around that,

and you should be back year after year. So I think both of these fan bases can look forward to many more good things ahead. I'm trying to find exactly this data point that I wanted to find. Okay, so you mentioned Josh Reddick. Let's just confirm. Where did Josh Reddick end up in these playoffs? Good Lord. Okay, so championship win probability added for this year's playoffs.

This is now combining all the rounds. George Springer, the leader, very fitting World Series MVP. He was the Sports Illustrated cover boy, cover guy, cover man. I don't know. Cover man. George Springer, championship win probability added of.529. Does that mean he improved the Astros' chances of winning at all by 53%? Is that what you think? Yeah.

Something like that. Yeah, that's a lot. Way to go, George Springer. I'm going to read from the bottom now. 231 players appeared in the playoffs. Hugh Darvish, last place. Yep. Minus.413. Ken Giles, second last.

Minus.336. Another potential smoking gun for the balls being worse in the playoffs. Couldn't throw a slider. Third worst, Josh Reddick. We've got Josh Reddick at negative.267. He did deliver the important, almost accidental hit. It's the Red Sox that kind of sealed the series. But Josh Reddick, unclutch. Yeah, yeah. the important almost accidental hit it's the red sox that kind of sealed the series but

josh reddick unclutch yeah yeah i still don't know if it's reached the point at which it's like actionable information because that was the thing when you i don't know you wrote about it maybe for the first time before his most recent contract and yeah and his most recent contract like basically paid him what you would think he would be paid based on his stats, context, independent stats. And I actually when I wrote about it, I talked to someone with the Astros in the Astros front office. And I said, was this even a data point for you? Did you even consider the fact that he has this historically unclutched record? And he said it never came up, which, you know, I mean, I guess he maybe was not necessarily privy to every conversation, but I think probably would have been part of a conversation about this. And so the Astros evidently just said, yeah, we don't care. This means nothing. And I wonder whether they would still think that's the case, whether, you know,

I would think that's the case. I just, I don't know, because I'm so hesitant to say that clutchness or unclutchness is actually real, even in giant samples. But man, Reddick is, I think the way that you usually put it when you're asked about it is, if it's real, he's the one player who is likeliest to have it be real. Pretty much. And aside from your earlier point, probably the main reason why we can't expect there to be any dynasties anymore and why we

couldn't think of the Astros as a potential dynasty, it's not because the Astros can't build a great team every year. They're in position to do just that based on the NAFE measures that you already said. But you look at that and yeah, the Astros can be great again, but the Astros can be great and the indians and the dodgers and the cubs maybe the nationals almost certainly the yankees there's just too much competition for one team to dominate it's just

not reasonable i don't know i don't know if there's too many playoff rounds that you have to get through yeah definitely too many playoff friends i don't know if this is just sort of an anomalous era in baseball where there are so many great teams i don't know if you can sustain sustain having, what were there, six, seven great teams this year, even eight. I don't know what you do with the Diamondbacks. The Diamondbacks could have won a World Series some other year, but they just, do you even remember they were in the playoffs this year? I don't know. Like their vacations are probably already over if they've been out of the playoffs for that long. But like there's just so many great teams. I don't know. And all of them look like they're in position to be really good again. So it's nothing against the Astros. he's coming over. And if he is coming over, where is he going to go? And how is he going to be used?

That is obviously the most compelling offseason storyline, but also potentially not one at all. Yeah. So I wanted to ask because I'm a little unclear. So I just wanted to ask you, put you on the spot, to see if you understand this any better. So there's some sort of hiccup. I think it was first reported by Joel Sherman, at least in American news, that Shohei Otani might not come over this winter.

And the reason is because the posting agreement between Major League Baseball and the NPB expired. So it needs to be renewed or revised or something. They need a new agreement. And under the expired terms, the Japanese team could, what, they could receive a maximum of $20 million. Right, under the current agreement. Under the Justice Party agreement, yeah. Yeah, which is a revision of the previous agreement, which, you know, was basically highest bidder. And that was tough because teams had to submit like blind bids. And then the team

with the highest bid would get the opportunity to talk to the player. Now it's just 20 million. So any team that is willing to pay 20 million can get in on the negotiations with the player. But yeah, that agreement is up too. So they have to figure out what it's going to be now. Yeah. So I think if I read correctly, according to your reports, Major League Baseball and the NPB would like to just renew the same terms. And with Otani being such an exceptional player, every single team in baseball would say, okay, here's 20 million, we want in, and we want to negotiate with him. So that much is known.

What I'm unclear on is how exactly this is a hiccup for Otani. It's like the idea seems to be that he or his representation, he still hasn't chosen an American agent, which some people have decided is interesting. He has a Japanese representation, and the MLB Players Association is somehow involved because he'll be a future member of theirs. And they're trying to figure out a way, I guess, so that Otani can get a bigger payday through this. But I just don't see what it actually means. I don't understand,

I guess, the current hiccup unless he's having second thoughts about coming to the States and making the league minimum. Do you have any clearer read on what's potentially taking place right now? I'm not sure. I'm just looking at Sherman's article. He says that the posting agreement expired Tuesday. The sides, though, were close to an agreement to move to a system whereby the Japanese team losing a player to MLB would receive a percentage of the deal the player signed with an MLB club, believed to be between 15 and 20 percent. However, Otani's team, and upon him fighters, refused to give its needed vote to the deal unless the ready pitcher was grandfathered into the old deal, whereby the fighters would receive the maximum $20 million in exchange for posting him.

So I guess the concern here isn't so much that Otani would have an issue with this, but that his team would, right? Because we know that Otani is limited in what he can make because of Major League Baseball's very strict and sort of silly and unfair to players, basically, agreement whereby you can only spend so much on the international market because they want to keep those costs down. And so Otani's not going to be making $20 million, and he's not going to be making enough that if the team gets 15% to 20% of what he makes, that it will be $20 million. We're talking about a pittance here, right? Because Otani, what's the maximum he can get with this contract? Do you remember? It's like five something, I think, million.

Yeah, right. And so, yeah, and it varies a little bit. You know, there's a hard cap, but some teams can spend more than others. But yeah, so if his team is looking at getting like a fifth of that at most, we're talking about like a million dollars for losing Shohei Otani, which is not appealing. about like a million dollars for losing Shohei Otani, which is not appealing. So I guess that is the sticking point here that his team won't agree to post him because they're agreeing to post him earlier than they have to because he wants to come over and has seemingly requested that they do that, or at least that's what the most recent reports suggested. So yeah,

if this changes in the way that MLB wants it to change, then this would be bad for Nippon Ham and maybe not worth their while. So I don't know why Japan's league would want to agree to this anyway, especially, I mean, given the fact that MLB has these hard caps, they're basically just giving up any possibility of profiting from losing their players. So this seems very unfriendly to NPB, if I'm understanding it correctly. Yeah, they shouldn't do that. And I think we would both like Otani to come over for me, for two reasons. One, I want to see him play.

I want to see what he can do in the major leagues. And secondly, content. Well, most importantly, I don't want to read any more articles about what could Shohei Otani be in the major. We get it. He can hit and he can pitch. Just let him come over and get it over with already. Either he comes over this season or just, you know what? Never come over at all. I don't care. Just get it over with. Yeah. All right. You've got a chat. I just want to mention we have Effectively Wild t-shirts for sale at Fangraphs right now. There are still some left. I think Appleman ordered a hundred in the initial batch just to see what the interest would

be. I think at least half of them are gone already and I haven't even mentioned it on the podcast. So if you want one, limited quantities still available. You can go to Fangraphs. There's an Instagraphs post just about this, but I will link to that in the Facebook group and on the podcast post at Fangraphs. And it's a cool shirt. We helped design it. Paul Swiden helped design it. And Aaron Gershman, a designer, helped design it. It is a black shirt.

It says Effectively Wild Fangraphs Podcast on the front and then on the back it has mike trout's heat map from fangraphs with each box on that heat map containing three effectively wild memes essentially things that have been talked about often over the course of the show memorable catchphrases or topics and they kind of correspond to the hot zones and the cold zones how often we have actually talked about them on the show so i like it a lot and i'm glad that it is a real shirt now. And if you want one, go get one. And if they're sold out by the time you hear this, then maybe we'll order more and we'll let you know when they're available.

All right. So you've got a chat. Thanks to everyone for listening throughout this whole season. This was the fifth, I guess, full season of Effectively Wild, which is crazy. It started mid-2012. So Effectively Wild has been around for at least parts of six seasons, which is sort of scary. But thanks to everyone, more people are listening than ever before. More people are in the Facebook group and talking about it all the time.

It's still a great community and a lot of fun to do. So thank you very much for following along. If you like it, leave us ratings and reviews or tell a friend or whatever you can do to help out is appreciated. So it's been fun. And thanks for your first full season with Effectively Wild. It has been a pleasure to podcast with you. Thank you for making it so easy. This podcast has been around for the entire Rise of the Astros.

That's true. Yeah. We kind of won the world series in a way i guess in that we still exist which for baseball podcasts a lot of turnover in the baseball podcast space but i guess we haven't ended in part because no one has hired us to run teams and win world series for them which jason parks and kevin goldstein both stopped podcasting because they were hired by baseball no one has hired us to run teams and win World Series for them, which Jason Parks and Kevin Goldstein both stopped podcasting because they were hired by baseball teams and now have World Series rings are about to. So that's probably the better outcome. Congrats to them. Well, also congratulations to us for not working for baseball teams. There are advantages to that too. If you'd like this podcast to continue into a seventh season and beyond, you can help make that possible by supporting us on Patreon. Just go to patreon.com slash effectivelywild.

And five listeners who've already done so include Nick Roscoe, Dan Hirsch, Chris Jarrett, Parashar Basay, and Brian Riley. Thanks to all of you. Thanks as well to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance on this episode and this season. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. The stove is already hot in there. There will be baseball discussion at every hour of every day, even during the slowest baseball news times. So get involved if you haven't already. As mentioned, you can leave us a rating and review on iTunes. That helps us too. If you're looking for something else to listen to,

Michael Bauman and I have a breakdown of game seven in the world series of our own up on the ringer MLB show feed. That show too, we'll be continuing all winter, although just once a week. And we rely on your emails and your comments and questions even more during the winter when there's no actual baseball. So please do keep your questions and comments coming via email at podcast at fan crafts.com and, or via the Patreon messaging patreon messaging system thanks again we will talk to you next week Can't find the hidden face.

It's in our minds.