Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1276: Reviewing the Regular Season

Episode Date: September 28, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the MVP races, the definition of value, Jacob deGrom, and Christian Yelich, plus an investigation into teams’ international practices, CC Sabathia’s costly hit by pitch, whether steroids were really responsible for steroid-era home run rates, and (don’t worry) Willians Astudillo. Then they review the 2018 regular season, including […]

Yn ystod i fyny, mae popeth yn ffyrdd o'r cyffredin. Yn ystod i fyny, nid yw'r byd yn y diwedd. Nid yw. The End of the World Baseball podcast. I didn't say that with Hub Talk this time. Brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Jeff Sullivan. Van Graff's joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Hello, Ben. Hello. How are you? I'm doing all right. I think everyone is exhausted this week, but we're going to talk about baseball. I was wondering on Thursday, we didn't need to get into what was going on, but I wonder if any work got done anywhere in America.

I think realistically, it was effectively a day off. I think't, I think, realistically, it was effectively a day off. I think the people spoke. This is a democracy. People decided we're going to take the day off. And, you know, realistically, Friday should be a day off. Long weekend in advance of the playoffs.

Anyway, the playoffs do get started in baseball next week. And we were talking about this. And this episode will go up before the official end of the regular season. But when we have our next podcast, which will be on Monday, then the playoffs will of the regular season. But when we have our next podcast, which will be on Monday, then the playoffs will be beginning on Tuesday if there's not even a game 163,

which is a possibility, I think, still. Yeah, of course, it's still a possibility. So our next podcast will presumably be forward-looking. So this one, we will take the opportunity to go backwards-looking and just kind of review the season, the year that was in all of baseball. And the first question I want to put to you, and this is of pertinence at the moment, is I've been

going back and forth on Jacob deGrom. I think he's clearly the deserving Cy Young winner in the National League. I don't think that's really much of a question. But where do you stand, if you stand anywhere, on Jacob deGrom as the MVP? Because I can't quite figure out what my brain is thinking, but I'm going to try to figure out what it's thinking as you talk right now. I put you on the spot. Well, I will note that Max Scherzer is pretty close to Jacob deGrom. And in most years, I don't think it would be bad to cast a vote for Max Scherzer with this sort of season.

And if you look at some stats, it's basically neck and neck. Scherzer with this sort of season. And if you look at some stats, it's basically neck and neck. But I think deGrom has the narrative going for him somewhat counterintuitively. I think I've said before that in a way his win-loss record, which is now 10-9, I kind of wish that he had a losing or even record and would win the Cy Young Award with that. But still not the sort of record you associate with the Cy Young Award winner. I think that actually helps him in that it brings attention to how good he has been and how misleading that record is. And so now it just seems like a foregone conclusion that he will win that award, and I think he should. As for the MVP, I mean, I'm kind of in the camp of wanting the two to have separate awards, and they they don't so I would like for there to

be an award for the best position player and an award for the best pitcher and if you want an award for the best overall player that would be fine too as currently constituted we have an award for the best pitcher and we don't have an award that is specifically for the best position player, although it typically is. This year, though, the gap in value between DeGrom or the best pitchers in the NL and the best deserving player. I mean, as long as pitchers are eligible and we're going for the most valuable player and I don't personally care all that much about context and teammates and where you are in the standings, I really can't mount a very strong argument against him. Right. Now, as far as the Cy Young is concerned for, whatever it's worth, I know that there are better numbers to look at than this, but DeGrom and Scherzer have thrown nearly as many innings as one another. Scherzer is at three and two-thirds more than DeGrom. DeGrom's thrown 217. Scherzer's at 220.2. Anyway, DeGrom has allowed 48 runs, and Scherzer has allowed 66. That's a pretty

substantial gap to have to bridge. So yeah, obviously, Scherzer's been absolutely amazing. 300 strikeouts. I don't care what era we're in. 300 strikeouts is a lot of strikeouts. But DeGrom, I think, has faced slightly better opponents i would assume haven't looked that up but i would assume and also just 18 runs that's a a large it's a big river to ford you're you're going to get swept away by the current if you try to for that river so when you you take that to the mvp i get i hear the argument a lot that pitchers have their own award, and so the MVP should go to the position players. But the MVP has gone to pitchers before. The precedent has been set. So it's clearly not an award, at least I don't think it's been interpreted as an award, that

should only go to position players. And it's strange to me. There are a lot of different ways to define value. That is the whole reason why we have this conversation every single year. Every single year, we have the same conversation. I don't know if anybody's picked up on that. It's identical. And we're going to do it again. We're not going to settle anything now. But it hasn't been interpreted as a position player only award in history. And I understand wanting them to have separate awards, pitchers and position players totally understand it. I wish that they did too. And this is where someone will bring up that Hank Aaron award and look, nobody cares. Nobody cares about the other words. And I get it. But you can

want something, but it doesn't seem to be the system that is set up. And so there's so much conversation about what value actually means that it's bizarre to me that we're in a position where people can't even agree on who's eligible for the MVP. And my perspective is that it's the most valuable player. And player refers to anyone who's on a roster and it should go to anyone. And I don't like the idea that pitchers can just straight up be excluded. Like, if you were of the opinion that the MVP should go to a player, does that mean that you would not give DeGrom even a 10th place vote? Does he just show up nowhere? Or is it just like a slight edge that you give to position players? Yeah, I think it's like a tiebreaker. I mean, I think that he is eligible under the current system.

And so pitchers should be able to win the award. I would prefer if each had a separate award, and then maybe there were a separate unified award, but that is not the way that it is set up and the way that it has been set up. So yeah, I'm not arguing that he shouldn't win because of that. I wish we had a system where it would be set up differently, but under the current system, I'd be fine with him winning the MVP award. Right. Okay. So let's accept now and move on from the fact that there are still, there are a number of voters who will presumably dock DeGrom or any pitcher substantially because people just think this should be a position player award. Whatever. Moving on from there, let's pretend that that bias didn't exist. Let's pretend that everyone is looked at on an even field. even field we i guess we could go over this bit by bit but people will talk about how a pitcher only goes every five days and a position player only goes it goes every single day just about now

i think you and i and everyone is on the same page like that's true but of course pitchers face a lot of batters in a game and position players do not face the pitchers a whole lot in a single game it all works out. Like everyone gets hundreds of played appearances or batters faced. So like the impacts are similar across the board. So now I'm going to read a couple of numbers here. Just based on, I don't know which war to use. I guess we'll go with the 50-50 war that Fangraphs has popularized a little bit.

I'm not going to explain that. Just accept it and move on. So at Fangraphs, the leader in war, and it's the same regardless really what war you're looking at, Jacob deGrom leads the National League. He's at 9.4. He has an advantage of more than a win over Max Scherzer in second place and two and a half wins over Christian Jelic in third place. So that's a big lead for Jacob deGrom in war. Now, if you look at win probability added, you might be inclined to think, well, how high could Jacob deGrom's win probability added be, given that the Mets couldn't score any runs or give him any support? He lost a bunch of games or they got no decisions. Well, that's true. But also, that means a lot of his games were very close, which means he was pitching in a lot of high leverage spots. Jacob deGrom, according to win probability added, was 1.3 wins above Max

Scherzer in second place. And he was almost two wins above Aaron Nola in third place. And Christian Jelic is behind deGrom by like two wins by win probability added. That does not, of course, factor in Christian Jelic's defense. It doesn't factor in, I don't know, Matt Carpenter's defense or Javier Baez's defense. Defense isn't a part of it for win probability added for position players. And for pitchers, defense is just everything gets folded into the pitcher's credit. But where we are now, DeGrom pitched in a lot of extremely close games. He pitched exceedingly well. He never allowed more than four runs in a start. He never allowed more than four runs in a start. Every single Rockies pitcher this season has allowed four runs in every first inning it's just

unbelievable so rockies are good this year they don't deserve pitching criticism no i understand but their first innings have been dreadful after that though they've been that's true yes and uh and i should i should say incidentally as we're recording this rockies are in first place there's only three days of baseball left for things to normalize. So this is really quite incredible. There's a reasonable chance the Dodgers could miss the playoffs. Anyway, maybe we'll talk about that a little later. What this comes down to, and you have written about championship probability before, which I like as a stat.

Thank you, Dan Hirsch. Dan Hirsch comes up in every podcast, just like Williams has to do, who, by the way, drove in four runs on Thursday, although he also struck out, which was too bad. So what this comes down to is if you accept that pitchers and position players are equally eligible for the MVP, then it comes down to how much weight do you put on a team's position in the standings? Can you be valuable if you are on a bad team and the Mets are a bad team? Because Kristen Jelic is probably the favorite. He's been so good down the stretch. And I don't know, maybe even Javier Baez would finish in second place at this point.

There's some value to his versatility that I don't know if we know how to weight that properly. So Jelic, go to the playoffs. Baez, go to the playoffs. DeGrom doesn't even remember what the playoffs feel like. So what does that matter? And I was trying to think about this on Thursday night, what is the point of the regular season? Is the only point to make the playoffs or is the point to try to give yourself as much of a chance to win in any single given game. Because if the point is just to win as many games as possible and every single game is viewed in isolation,

then I think that you have to consider DeGrom the rightful winner because he has done more to improve his team's chances of winning every time he's been on the field than anybody else in the National League. And yeah, the team isn't going anywhere, but I'm not convinced that everything is just about the playoffs. But I'm not so wedded to this position that I couldn't be convinced by a compelling Ben Lindbergh answer to the contrary. Well, I mean, I think perception-wise, the regular season used to be everything because that was everything for almost all teams. I mean, you had the World Series and

that was it. There were no playoffs. And so what you did in the regular season determined how your season was perceived. And it should, frankly, because it's the more telling indicator of the quality of your team and how you can sustain performance over six months. And the playoffs are totally different and prioritize different aspects of team building. And also, I think we all acknowledge that it's largely random and doesn't tell you all that much about team talent. And so we've all decided that that's okay, that it's fun, and that we really enjoy it. And it's a tournament and that's okay. But also, I think if a team doesn't do well in the playoffs, then it is perceived to have been a failure, even if it had an incredible regular season, which really is not fair, I think. I mean, if the Red Sox go in and get swept in the ALDS or something, they will be perceived to have been disappointing, I think, when in reality they've won more games than any Red Sox team has ever won

in the regular season. And that is really impressive. So I do think that in general, we are underrating the regular season these days. But for award voting, I don't know. I mean, if you interpret value in a way that precludes anyone from winning if their team doesn't make the playoffs, I do not share that opinion, but I understand that opinion. I mean, it is one interpretation and one fair interpretation of value. It's not the best player award, as we always say. And if you said it's the best player award, that would resolve some of these disputes, I think. But I'm sure that the BBWAA is happy to have these disputes every year because,

hey, free columns and free podcast discussions. So that's how we end up with this year after year. But, you know, I wouldn't object to Yellich winning the award either. Again, this is, this is, this distills down to the same conversation that takes place every year. Usually it's a built around Mike Trout, which I guess this year it could, again, be built around Mike Trout because he's got just as strong a case as mookie betts although well that's i don't know maybe we'll have that conversation later but value can be taken to such an extreme that if you're going to talk about who is more valuable to a team based on performance then do you also consider what that player costs christian yellow just costs very little jacob de crom i guess

i don't know these salaries off the top of my head, but there are salary concerns that you also can take into account. When you start folding in things that go beyond just how a player did on the field, then it gets absurdly complicated where you can say that the most valuable player in any league is a player who did the best while making the league minimum salary because that's just an unbelievable amount of flexibility. And I'm not sure that you can do anything to – I'm not even convinced that's the wrong perspective to take. But I don't think anybody wants an award on that because I don't think anyone wants to include made up my mind and I am coming to the conclusion that it's actually impossible to make up one's mind on what this is supposed to be, which is maybe the intent or maybe it's just a happy coincidence because it does lend itself to the same conversations over and over and over again. Any MVP article, you link it on Twitter, then regardless of your position, as long as you take one, then you're going to get one of two kinds of people who, one of three kinds of people, I guess, who are mad at you.

One, MVP has to come from a winner, or the MVP has to be the best player, or the MVP should be a position player because pitchers already have their own award, etc. Even though, by the way, Shohei Otani could win the Cy Young even though he's only half a pitcher. So there's some lines being blurred here or maybe matt davidson in 2019 so i don't think there will ever come a day when voter opinion has consolidated around this so that it points in one direction and then at that point i don't know i don't know what we are deciding on when we get the votes because if like half of the voter pool if if a third of the voter pool is like it's got to be a position player and a third of the voter pool is like well it's it's got to be a player who was on a playoff team and a third of the voter pool is well it's got to be the best player then what the hell is the result and i don't yeah i don't know i don't

know what it's worth at that point if we're not all voting on the same thing then i just don't understand what the point is yeah no you're right You can't look at the voting results and say, well, the writers thought that this guy was just better than that guy, which you'd think that this would be about, but it's not that. But maybe it's for the best that it's not that because that would be an increasingly easy argument in this era when we have things quantified better than we used to. Although even then, it's not always easy because you have different versions of war and different ways to, you know, especially with pitching value, how do you measure that? And what do you prioritize? And what data do you use? So even there, you'd think that there would be a clear cut answer and there

isn't. And so this continues to defy a simple response. So I look forward to talking about this with you in 2019. We can set our calendars same day. In the same way that this is the same conversation and in the same way that this distills to the same points, you can say that you would wish ideally that pitchers have their own award and position players have their own award. would wish ideally that pitchers have their own award and position players have their own award but if you think about if you want to think like what did the founders intend when they were creating baseball awards and they were like handed down from a mountain chiseled into rock slates then you would think that the MVP would be intended to go to the best player does it not make the most sense that there would be a best player award? Wouldn't it be weird if the award didn't exist for the best player? So given that, I think one reasonable

interpretation, and now I know maybe you could call this like voter activism or something on the baseball voter part, but you would think that if the intent is presumably to have an award go to the best player, then we should treat it as if it's an award of the best player. And there, you raise the point that you could say, well, maybe that is too easy. Maybe there's not enough of a controversy. Like, we have all these advanced numbers, and you can go in so many different directions. You could say, oh, well, we'll just vote 1 through 10 from the war leaderboard. But it's really, it's not that easy at all.

And the error bars around, like, a war figure can be pretty significant. What this has really made me think about lately is even if he ignored Jacob deGrom, which by the way, pitch was very complicated because on the one hand, the Mets have had a bad defense, but on the other hand, it seems like Jacob deGrom hasn't been hurt by his defense. So I don't know what you're supposed to do there. But even on the hitter side, just take a simple by this, just look at Christian Jelic and Javier Baez. Jelic, I think, is relatively easy to understand. We know how well he's hit, and we have a pretty good idea of how well he's defended because we have good numbers for the outfield. But Baez is legitimately complicated because we know how well he's hit. We don't know

quite how well he's fielded because the numbers for infield defenders are not so good. And there is legitimacy in the point that he has covered three premium positions for the Cubs. He's played second base, shorts up, and third base. Jelich is just kind of a corner outfielder who sometimes plays center, which whatever, that's fine. But Baez has been able to fill in for Addison Russell. He's been able to fill in for Chris Bryant. He's played a good second base. The Cubs have had more versatility because of him.

And I don't know how to value that. And so just based on that alone, even a best player award would still allow for a lot of voter interpretation because there are so many different ways. You could make the argument that J.D. Martinez has been more valuable than his war because he's made other players better. You can make that argument. And I couldn't even call you wrong. We talked about that a few weeks ago.

So even a best player award in this era would still leave a lot of room for nuance and interpretation, which I like. Our numbers are not that precise. And it just it bothers me that every year we have all these different arguments about what we're supposed to be measuring because it just makes me care about the award less. Yeah. Well, we should probably move on because we have a whole rest of the season to get to. Oh, Lord. What else?

So Williams Estadio struck out on Thursday. That was disappointing. I watched it happen. It sucked. I wrote a whole article about Estadio not striking out in the month of September. It went up Thursday afternoon within three hours. He had struck out. He also worked another two, at least two full counts

over the course of the day, which just, it's not at all what Estadio was supposed to do, but then he singled in a run. He, I think he, well, he singled in two runs. He doubled in two runs. He drove in four runs. all what Astadio was supposed to do but then he singled in a run he I think he well he singled in two runs he doubled in two runs he drove in four runs so Williams Astadio doing well he's got his own like gifs that the twins twitter account tweets out where he's like playing with a mascot or something so like Astadio clearly has caught on anyway he's really good three strikeouts at this point three strikeouts it's absurd so I guess we should get to what

our intent actually was because we've already now bantered for half an hour on the podcast. So I have a few quick things to mention before we do. All right. So first of all, the CeCe Sabathia thing from Thursday. I am conflicted about this because on the one hand, I never approve of any player intentionally throwing at any other player. approve of any player intentionally throwing at any other player. On the other hand, this is the most badass way that you could potentially do that, I think, in that CeCe Sabathia, he was two innings away from activating a clause in his contract that would give him an extra $500,000. And I guess Austin Romine had been hit earlier in the game. And so Sabathia hit the Rays catcher, Jesus Sucre.

Usually you see more prominent players involved in this sort of beanball war. It's just Romine and Sucre. But anyway, he hit him and then he just grabbed his crotch and faced the Rays dugout and screamed at them and cursed them out and was gone. And to his credit, he hit hit him, what, in the legs or something like, you know, he didn't get up near his head or somewhere where you're very likely to hurt someone seriously. Still, I don't really approve of anyone throwing at anyone at any part of their body because I don't think pitcher's command is so precise that necessarily they can control exactly where they hit someone. And if you're trying to hit someone in the butt, I think that probably increases the odds that you hit them in the neck or something. So I think in general, disapprove. But if you're going to do it, I mean, this is the way to do it, I guess, because like there wasn't even any, you know, oh, I didn't mean to. It slipped.

Like there wasn't even any, you know, oh, I didn't mean to. It slipped. Like I don't know when the last time was that we saw a pitcher just come out and so clearly acknowledge that he was trying to hit a guy that he, you know, didn't even have the weak excuse that everyone sees through. So I don't know. If I were the Yankees, I mean, this was a team-building gesture. This is the way that clubhouses work. I'm sure Sabathia's decision here

was very much appreciated. And you'd think the Yankees should either just pay him that half a million or put him in for two innings on Sunday or something. I mean, not that Sabathia is going to be hurting if he does not get this half a million dollars. He has made or will have made about a quarter of a billion dollars by the time this year is over but that doesn't mean he doesn't deserve it and I don't know this was just a spectacular and explosive way not to make that extra money so tsk tsk CC and yet if guys are gonna do it they should just do it this way, I think. And, you know, hopefully there will come a time where no one does this and, you know, no one hits each other with pitches to send some sort of message.

But if you're going to send the message, just send the message instead of just kind of weaseling out of it. Yeah, right. This is an era where I know a lot of people are concerned about teams not giving players as much money as they used to get. But like if the player does something like this of his own volition, then you can't really be too concerned about him making less money.

CeCe Sabathia is among the 1% of the 1%. He's doing just fine. I think that his line as he left field looked into the raised dugout and said, that's for you, bitch. That's something that like, he's going to be buried with that line on his headstone. It's just, it's one of those lines you can't forget.

And really maybe more. So Romain wasn't even hit. He was buzzed. His tower was buzzed earlier in the game. Yeah, the ball didn't make contact with him. And then Sabathia went after Jesus Sucre, which, whatever, I'm not really sure anybody would have noticed in a game that was, I think, an 11-run game at the point. But I think the image that really sticks with me was Yankees right fielder aaron judge confronting the entire tampa bay rays september roster expansion bullpen yeah who you got in that fight judge or expanded i mean yeah this is essentially like like what 40 human-sized horses or like one horse-sized human basically yes that's exactly what this is and it's only a shame that they didn't actually take

to battle because then we would have figured something out but like what's i guess well i was gonna say like what's sergio romo going to do to aaron judge but then you know romo might consider himself part of the starters at this point so i don't even know what's going on with the opener yeah a lot of raised pitchers they're weak from throwing one inning to open the game all year so they're not ready for a fight. All right. And then I also wanted just to mention there's a lot we don't know about this story. But Jeff Passan on early Friday morning reported that there is a federal grand jury that is investigating MLB's international dealings and has subpoenaed some officials.

And, I mean, this we don't really know how deep this goes. It could go extremely deep, or we know that it involves Hector Oliveira, who I haven't thought of him for a while. But we know for, you know, historically, MLB's international player development system has just been incredibly corrupt. And, you know, teams have from time to time been censored for something. And Kapolela with the Braves obviously was banned from baseball for life, which we don't know exactly what he did, I guess, but seemed disproportion exploiting young international players. And so now this is actually being investigated. And there are FBI agents who were involved here, lawyers from the DOJ. And I mean, I don't know, this is something that I would think probably every team is a little bit nervous about right now. So I don't know whether this will revamp that system. I know MLB has made some efforts to try to get things more on the level, but I'm sure things are very much still corrupt in a lot of ways. So I will be curious to see where this goes.

Yeah, because it's still early Friday morning for me on the West Coast, I haven't yet had a chance to read the story. It's in my bookmarks. I'm going to read it after the chat that follows this podcast. But yeah, I agree with you. And when we've seen teams disciplined in the past we saw the braves discipline saw the uh the red sox disciplined if you go back a long time you saw the jim bowden of the athletic.com he was disciplined for the behavior of his staff and now that's going back a while but this is i don't mean to assume the worst of everyone but i would assume that every single team is doing something that they're not supposed to be doing. Of course, some teams are probably doing things that are worse than others. And of course, it's not all the team's responsibility. Some of it is just the people who end up getting involved. Anyway, I can't really put that kind of behavior on Major League Baseball shoulders, even though I suppose they play a role. they play a role anyway the point here being that everyone everyone is doing something they shouldn't be doing this is the talk when the red sox got disciplined all the conversation was about how

they were just the team that got caught now the braves might have gone above and beyond what other teams are doing i don't really know but that's the key i don't really know and the uh the federal grand jury is likely to figure some things out so uh this is oftentimes when one team gets penalized you get fans of rival teams are just like making making fun, saying like, oh, your team shouldn't have been doing whatever they were doing. And look how much inferior your team is. But like everyone should be sweating a little bit around the collar because this is something that could affect every single team in baseball. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, the whole system is set up to encourage this sort of thing.

And we'll see if that actually changes. actually changes. Last thing, I wrote something that is up now at The Ringer re-examining the steroid era in light of the recent revelations about the ball and its impact on home run rate. I would just encourage people to go check it out and see what they think. I will link to it in the usual places. But I am really curious about this because, you know, we've all just decided that the steroid era, that is the name for it, steroids must have been responsible for the record-breaking home run totals that we saw and just the league-wide home run totals that we saw. But we've seen just in the past few years that the ball can be entirely responsible for an even higher home run rate than we saw in that era. And we've seen time after time when there's been some

dramatic change in offense, it has been because of the ball or because of some change like the strike zone or the mound being lowered. So it would be unprecedented in baseball history for that to have been entirely unrelated to an equipment change or a rule change. It's possible, but I kind of lay out the arguments in the article for why maybe it was the ball all along, or maybe it was partly steroids, or maybe it was some combination of both. And I think a lot of people have made up their minds on this issue already, but I hope that some people will have an open mind and look back and wonder how much it was the ball. Because the factors that have caused the increase in home

runs now, no one was even testing for at the time. No one was looking at the drag on the baseball back in 1993 or 1998 or 2002. So no one knows if the ball was just flying farther for the same reasons that it is today. So it's completely plausible, I think. So have you subpoenaed baseballs from different eras in the past and submitted them all for MRI examinations? I have not. One could, and there have been various investigations that have seemed to suggest that there have been differences, and there were differences in that period compared to earlier periods. But it's tough because you really have to get a big sample, and no one knows exactly how balls might change over time time and if it was a game-used ball or it wasn't a game-used ball.

So it's hard to do that sort of science on old baseball. So I don't know that we will ever get a definitive answer. But in my mind, it is more of an open question than I think it is in probably a lot of people's minds. It's frustrating. It's frustrating. There's a tendency, and this cuts across all stripes, that humans will, in the moment when something is going on and maybe there's a variety of explanations, then people past? Then I think it's only natural that we just start to distill around one single explanation and just the simplest possible explanation for what took place. And so as a lot of time has passed, people just think, yeah, steroid era, everyone calls it the steroid era, therefore it must have been steroids. And there's just probably even a closed-mindedness to re-examining the question, which is, granted, that's right in

your headline. That's the whole idea. But it's so much more difficult of a battle to take on after the fact, certainly so long after the fact, because it's relitigating an era where people think, well, it's just easier for me to say it was steroids. Therefore, I'm not going to bother. So good luck, Ben. Thanks. Yeah, it's the availability heuristic, right? One of the cognitive biases. It's like the most accessible memory or the thing that stands out the most in your mind. You just attribute everything to that because it's simplest. So, you know, there was a lot going on. There was expansion. There were different ballpark sizes. I don't think either of those was actually responsible, but people were talking about

it at the time and not so much because of what we know now. But let's move on to 2018. Well, now that we have like less than 30 minutes. Yeah. Well, we talked about on Thursday privately, we discussed a few possible prompts as we reflect on the season. And one just occurred to me, although maybe it's something we should keep this one for when the playoffs are over i guess but as sam has written about at espn they're like the moments that a season is remembered for you know right and uh because again maybe maybe this is uh one version of the availability heuristic as long as you're throwing around scientific

buzzwords which i was unprepared for just always have the good words for everything but we will you know like sam had written about like the image of Jose Altuve standing next to Aaron Judge in 2017. And that's just something that sticks out in your memory, even as everything else fades away. So it'll be interesting. And I guess we can put a pin in that one for another four or five weeks. And then we will probably have an entire podcast dedicated to that. Sorry, Sam, we're going to take your article and turn it into a podcast. Maybe we'll have Sam on.

Yeah, we can have Sam on. For this particular episode, I guess let's try to fly through some prompts so i was thinking uh one i was thinking like favorite event favorite single event but i don't i don't think favorite is the right word but like what is what for you from this entire regular season is like one specific event one specific play that just stands out in your mind very clearly, that you don't need to think to recall it. It's just like something that's just embedded now in your brain. What do you got? Yeah, I mean, this is probably cheating, but I was going to go with a week instead of a play, which is just Shohei Otani's week in April when he was worth one win above replacement in just one week because he homered

in three straight games, including one homer against Corey Kluber. And then he just dominated the A's. It was his second start against them. He went seven scoreless. He gave up one hit. He struck out 12. And it was just a demonstration of everything we had thought of for years. It's like, you know, that gif of Ron Paul, like shaking his hands and smiling and it says it's happening. That was me during that week because it was happening. The thing that we had dreamed about and envisioned for years. This was the fully operational super weapon that the Angels had signed. And here we were seeing just on both sides what he could do

And you know we didn't get a whole lot of other Weeks like that because of the injuries But the talent was there We've talked about Shohei Otani enough But that week I think is just Emblazoned on my mind that was the most Excited I have been about Any individual player performance

This year. Alright that's a pretty good one So I don't have a week. I have one play, and it's an Alex Bregman play, sort of. And it is from April when the Astros were playing the Padres. I might never forget about this. Bottom of the 10th, 0-0 game. Do you remember where I am? Yes.

Yes. Yes. Bottom of the 10th, no score. The Astros had a runner on second and two outs, and Alex Bregman came up against Phil Matan and he hit a sky-high pop-up right in front of the plate. And Eric Hosmer charged. The Padres' infield converged. And the ball dropped.

And Derek Fisher scored from second base on a walk-off infield pop-up by Alex Bregman. At this writing, that is the third most valuable play of Alex Bregman's season. The fan graphs play log reads, Alex Bregman singled to first, parentheses, fly. Closed parentheses, Derek Fisher scored. It was worth WPA of plus 39.4%.

Alex Bregman, of course, also responsible for another walk-off win where he reached on an error to the catcher where Jonathan Lucroy threw the ball away down the line. So Alex Bregman, two of his five most valuable plays this season have been just complete defensive catastrophes. Absolutely no reason for them to have happened. And I was thinking about this.

Now, I don't think Alex Bregman is going to win the MVP. I don't have a vote for the AL MVP because I think Mookie Betts is a more reasonable case to win the award but if you were to talk about Alex Bregman as the American League MVP one argument would be that well he has been his numbers reflect that he has been clutch this season he's been response he's he started plays that wound up being clutch for his team but like if you have this pop-up this ridiculous is there anything more symbolic than Eric Hosmer, the Padres' biggest investment that they're ever going to make for as long as they exist, charging in. And it's not all his fault.

And sometimes you just lose the ball. It's fine. I don't hold this against Eric Hosmer too much, but he's just standing there and the ball drops. I think it was behind him and Bregman wins the game and then everyone charges. It's like the Astros should have come out of the dugout and just circled Eric Hosmer because he is really the player who is responsible for that walk-off win. But like, what do you do for value there?

Like if you're talking about the MVP and that's a walk-off win, that's like half of one win basically that Bregman's ball in play gave the Astros in that circumstance. What do you do with that? How much credit do you give to Alex Bregman for an out? Right. Yeah. I don't know. Sam tweeted the other day that Bregman has made the last out of a game three times this year, and he has four walk-offs, which I don't have an easy way to check how rare or impressive that is, but it seems somewhat impressive. And yeah, that play, I don't know. I mean, if you were going by like expected weighted on base of Alex Bregman's batted ball it would be extremely low but uh in that case that's not what happened and you know

have we even like talked about Hosmer this year like we haven't even mentioned him really and it's funny because he signed this eight-year contract one of the biggest free agents and he has had a sub replacement level season according to fangraphs and that is so not notable that we haven't talked about it it was like well yeah of course i mean did anyone expect him to be good not really like i mean we thought he might be you know decent but no one thought he was actually good even though the padres did and so the fact that he's been a below league average hitter not for the first time and that he has been a sub replacement level player not for the first time not shocking i guess disappointing

because there was some hope at least that he had found a a slightly new level offensively last year but no not at all so no yeah not not anything and you know it it's been easier to ignore because one eric hosmer hasn't been like Chris Davis level bad. And also the Padres haven't been anywhere close to the race. So it just hasn't really mattered that much. But yeah, it's in the early stages of becoming a disaster. Like I don't think Eric Hosmer has forgotten how to be a good player.

God knows he's kind of doing that like, I guess, like odd year magic kind of thing, like reverse San Francisco Giants, where he's just gone from replacement level to good to replacement level to good. Doesn't make any sense. He's inspired by Ryan Rayburn. But something that I guess we'll talk about more in 2019 when the Padres are presumably better and closer to the race. And it's like, well, Eric Hosmer has kind of screwed him because now Will Myers, who they've also made a big investment in, is playing third base. Will Myers, third baseman. Yeah. And so there's just have less flexibility. Realistically, next year, for all I know, Eric Hosmer could be the worst starting player on the Padres. And he will also be the most expensive starting player on the Padres.

So have fun, Dave, Cameron. Trying to figure that one out. By the way, Alex Bregman and Wilmer Flores both tied with four walk-offs this season. And David Bode has three already. David Bodie has three. And just because I'm already here, I will tell you that last year, the league leaders in walk-offs, well, it was Mark Trumbo who also had four. I don't care. I'm just going to skip on to the next prompt.

So that was the favorite event. So as we reflect, I guess, what changed about baseball this year? In what ways did baseball become different that are likely to stick with it? I think there's at least one pretty obvious answer here. Well, is that the bullpen revolution, the ongoing change in bullpen usage? I think that is one thing, right, is that we've seen the opener, we've seen position players pitching at a higher rate than ever before. We've just seen a willingness really to do whatever works in the bullpen, even if it is not what has traditionally been considered the best strategy or a strategy at all. So that seems like it will continue. Yeah, and that was the answer that I arrived at as well.

I'm sure there are more things to point to, but yeah, I think it's, it's the opener. The opener is one of the ways in which 2018 will be remembered. There's a lot more going on. You can say, oh, the Braves are advanced ahead of schedule, whatever. That's fine. And there are things about individual teams that have changed and we'll get to that, but yeah, just league wide, definitely the opener and how that is going to change the way teams are already thinking about their starting rotations. There's no going back from this point, not as long as the Rays are 88 and 71, even despite getting blown out by the Yankees. some some preseason narratives what were we talking about in march that now i guess look pretty silly and i will volunteer one okay in spring training i remember investigating because you and i have both identified that spring training numbers can be indicative of what's likely to happen in the season ahead and and one thing that we have not seen happen this year

for a variety of reasons is that the home run rate stopped going up. It went back down. The home runs, the whole home run explosion, it's still there. Home runs are still up relative to like five or six years ago, but it's back around like 2015 or 2016 rates. And so for all the concern that there are just nothing but walks and strikeouts and home runs, the strikeout rate has budged a little bit, not by very much. And the home run rate has gone back down. So for all the concern that baseball is going to be nothing but home runs, it has not happened that way. So that

is one preseason narrative that I think we can file away and no longer have to worry about. Yeah, I mean, it's still like the, what, second or third highest home run rate ever. So it's not like it went way down just, you know, as far as a percentage of home runs on contact. But yeah, it has not continued to increase unchecked, which we were worried about. So that's true. Although we were worried about, you know, strikeouts continuing to climb and obviously they have, but that was the easiest prediction you could possibly make about baseball this year. I think, well, people were saying that Shohei Otani wouldn't be able to hit in the big leagues,

so that was one. Scouts, anonymous scouts, saying that maybe he wasn't ready for the majors, he was like a high school hitter. Yeah, not so much. I think that really the big preseason narrative was about the super teams and the vast gulf in the standings

between the best teams and the worst teams and whether the season would even be entertaining at all. And I guess kind of a mixed bag on that one. I mean, certainly you did have big differences in some cases. I mean, you have the Red Sox challenging the wins record and the Orioles challenging losses record and a 60 and a half game gap between them. You had the AL pretty much sewn up somewhat early, but you still have chaos in the NL. You have the Nationals not making the playoffs. You have the Dodgers in very real danger of not making the playoffs. You've got the Brewers neck and neck with the Cubs. So I think in the NL, that has really put the lie to the suggestion that there was no hope and faith in baseball or that things were settled before

the season started. But, you know, it was all that. It was tanking. It was, will anyone even watch baseball this year? And there has continued to be hand-wringing about attendance, which is down just a tad over 4%. So, you know, that's something to keep in mind. It perhaps is related to that. Could be a bunch of other things, too. But I think it's safe to say that there was something to those concerns, but they were a bit overblown. Yeah, it's funny thinking about the tanking. So much conversation about the free agent market.

And the union filed a grievance against the Marlins, the A's, the Pirates, and the Rays for not, I guess, spending enough or not being open with how they were spending. The A's, of course, go into the playoffs. They're 33 games over 500. The Rays, most other years, would be going to the playoffs. They're 17 games over 500. The Pirates are two games over 500, even though no one's paid attention to them ever since the Crescerta trade. And then the Marlins are, well, the Marlins are there too. And they have basically the opposite record of the A's. So the Marlins were bad, but Marlins were always going to be bad. But the other three teams have been really surprisingly

strong, remarkably strong. I shouldn't say surprisingly strong necessarily, but as for the super team era, and that was another point valid to bring up. I had it in the back of my mind. And before the year, I don't think anyone was wrong to talk about the super teams. But what I think got lost, or at least what was underestimated, is the vulnerability of any good team in baseball over the course of a full season. Because you can look at the Nationals and they've just been worse than expected. You can look at the Dodgers and their wins and losses are worse than expected.

Now their actual performance, you could argue, has actually been quite terrific. They have one of the best underlying records in all of Major League Baseball, but they've been vulnerable because they have just not timed their performance as well. They've just laid it on in low leverage situations and they've struggled. Last I checked, according to the Fangraph's clutch statistic, the three worst clutch hitters this year have all been Dodgers. And that's just something that's going to drag a team down. And so you can look at the American League and like the four super teams are all going to the playoffs and they're all the four best teams in the league.

But in the National League, I don't think the Nationals, yeah, they obviously looked strong and the Dodgers obviously looked strong. i don't think it was wrong to have those teams favored in their divisions but it means something no team is that locked into any certain position not even the dodgers because clutch timing can ruin anything for example if the mariners were in the national league west they'd be two games behind the dodgers and they suck yeah or you could talk about teams in the AL central, what they would, you know,

what the rays would be doing in the AL central. I mean, they have like the same record as the Indians basically. Right. Yeah. Yeah. The rays are one game behind the Indians, same record as the Dodgers.

They're two games ahead of the Mariners. So you can, I don't, this was not an unusual year in teams just performing weirdly. This is just you. And we might run into this again next year. Whenever the projections come out, we're going to see teams. We're going to see probably pretty wide division gaps in a lot of divisions of baseball.

And we're going to say, well, it looks like there won't be any races, but this year NL West still has a race. NL Central still has a race. NL East has changed just in the past month or so. The AL West has had the A's. They were in first place, not even that long ago. It's just even in the AL East, the Red Sox took a little while to pull away from the Yankees. The AL Central, well, whatever. There's no reason to talk about the AL Central. So there were a few more prompts to get to. I don't know how much time we'll have,

but I guess if we were going to compare relative to where things were before the year and relative to maybe what we expected to happen by the end of the year, which team's fortunes are maybe higher or lower now, like not only in the present, but also like long-term vision now, considering maybe what we would have expected six or seven months ago? Well, I think the Rays are up, certainly, not just in the fact that they were good this year and better than really anyone expected, but also the fact that they have a really good farm system now. They made that great trade with the Pirates that seems to set them up well for the future. They seem to be back to having a young core that is there or on the way that you can look forward. young core that is there or on the way that you can look forward. And yeah, it's going to be really tough to beat Boston and the Yankees anytime soon, but they seem like they're set up again, which, you know, they never bottomed out or got terrible, but it seemed like maybe they had

run out of inspiration or they just weren't developing players or drafting players as well and weren't really, you know, pulling one over on the league the way that they had been able to before. And for one reason or another, they are back to kind of doing that, and there's the opener too. So I think them probably. I think the Braves probably. Obviously, they were ahead of the timeline this year. Everyone thought they were getting better, but they have really shown that they've got a great core, and it's not just pitchers. It's position players, but the pitchers are pretty talented too.

I mean, they look like the best bet to win this division going forward for years to come. And on the downside, I don't know, maybe the White Sox, I guess, just in that they haven't made the sort of progress you would want to see. just in that they haven't made the sort of progress you would want to see. You know, there was some thought that things might come together really quickly because they did have some high-level prospects or rookies who were already in the majors, and that just hasn't happened. Kopech is hurt. Some guys have gone backward. So there just hasn't been as much progress as you'd want to see there.

But I don't know who stands out to you. I had a hard time with this one. Yeah, I know. It's a little hard you. I had a hard time with this one. Yeah, I know. It's a little hard, but I think the Twins have gone backwards. They were supposed to compete this year, but you look this year, they've gotten next to nothing

from Miguel Sano and Byron Buxton. Barrios has been just fine, but even like, this is more subtle, but Max Kepler hasn't taken the step forward at the plate that I think a lot of people have been expecting him to do. So the Twins just, it's been a really disappointing year.

Now I think that there's some more legitimate reason to worry about their future, regardless of whether or not they continue to employ Williams as to deal. I think you can look at a team, the Marlins stand, everyone knew the Marlins were going to be bad. I think a lot of people figured they would be the worst team at baseball. But for the Orioles, there might be more attention shed on the Marlins but no one had any expectations for the Marlins this year and they were bad right away but for me sort of a I don't know if canary in the coal mine is the right expression here but I was I figured so much of the Marlins season for me was going to come down to the performance of Louis Brinson who currently as I, has a war of negative one, has a double your surplus of 57. He's got 30% strikeouts, 4% walks.

Louis Brinson has shown a few signs, I guess, of being better than this. But I figured Brinson was the big guy of all the pieces they got. They traded Marcelo Zuna. They traded Christian Jelic. They traded Dee Gordon. They traded John Carlos Stanton. Like, whatever. Starling Castor has been fine.

Who cares? They got Louis Brinson. He was the best player they got in any trade. They gave up Christian Jelic. And obviously we can't go back and say they should have known Jelic would be so much better and this would all happen. But that trade looks terrible now for the Marlins because Brinson has been bad. And if you look at the Ozuna trade, you know, the only Marlins position player who's been

worse than Lewis Brinson is Magnera Sierra, who has a war of negative 1.4 and a wrc plus of i'm not lying here 20 20 yeah he uh he has an isolated power of 0.014 he's got zero home runs so brinson has been very bad sierra has been very bad i know like brian anderson's been a fine everyday player and i know that there have been like a few minor pitching developments like trevor richards has an interesting change up and caleb smith whatever then he got hurt but the marlins even though i know it's a rebuild even though i know this is just like the first year they've really been committed to it this is quietly gone i think very poorly for them and then just like with the white socks these things can change overnight players can surprise you when they're young there's talent in the marlins organization

but just based on brinton alone he was he was the thing for me that they would have to root for. And he's been a catastrophe this year. And as for other teams, I mean, ugh, the Giants. That just sucks. Yeah. I mean, I guess there's the Angels, just in that they had a really exciting offseason. I think I picked them as, like like my most likely disappointment or something coming to the season, but I think I probably also picked them to be a wildcard team. I don't know. I try

to forget what I predicted as soon as someone makes me do it, but I think there was a lot of hope for them coming into this year and they were exciting and watchable in a lot of ways, certainly with individual players. But, you know, another Mike Trout missed the postseason. Didn't really probably change their future or what we thought of them going forward, but this was supposed to be the year where things came together, and it certainly did not. They are in fourth place by quite a bit. Yeah. Okay, so two more prompts. We can do this quickly. One, is there anything in particular we learned about Mike Trout this year? That was it. Like, you know, and we've seen him do this time after time where he identifies a weakness and then quickly makes it into a strength or at least not a weakness anymore.

He did it with his arm. He did it with hitting high fastballs. He did it with maybe being too passive early in plate appearances or at least against certain pitch types. I mean, he's always changing and improving. But this one I think was maybe the most surprising or impressive to me because I just figured, you know, his defensive stats for the past couple of years just had not been that great relative to center fielders. And I figured, well, you know, maybe he's just no longer kind of great at everything. He's just, he's become an even better hitter.

He's still the best player in baseball, but maybe he's no longer a standout defender. And no, it turns out that he really kind of is. And just because he decided he was just going to go all out and he was really going to focus on this and get good jumps and, you know, do everything he could to maximize his defensive ability. And right now he ranks 16th among all outfielders in outs above average. So, you know, he's maybe not Harrison Bader, but he is really, really fantastic as a center fielder, despite also being the best hitter in baseball. Yeah.

So for Trout, I think one thing that's funny to me is he's got a career high rate of contact when swinging pitches in the zone, career low rate of contact when swinging pitches out of the zone. So that is interesting to me because as it happens, you wouldn't think this would be possible. But last season, Mike Trout had what was then a career high in WRC Plus. And this season, he has a career high in WRC Plus. He is just getting better. And another way he's getting better, or at least not, he's at least turning back the clock. So when Trout was a rookie,

he stole 49 bases out of 54 chances. That's really good. This year, he has stolen 24 bases, and he's been caught only two times. So at least according to Fangraph's numbers, it's his best stolen base season since he was a rookie. So just in so many ways, the only thing that went wrong for Mike Trout, the season aside from, you know, the team he plays for, is that he got injured and missed some time. Because otherwise, this is, he would be having maybe the best season of his career so okay last thing this is a prompt that you sent over we'll do this quickly but if anything is there anything that you regret writing this year yeah

i was thinking about this and you know i think the fact that less of my writing output is baseball related now helps me in the sense that i i rarely feel like i have to force a baseball piece and so if i write one it's like something i really want to write or believe in you know that I rarely feel like I have to force a baseball piece. And so if I write one, it's like something I really want to write or believe in. I don't feel like I'm just kind of stretching or pushing because I need to write something. So I think there are fewer of these for me this year. As you mentioned, we both wrote our pieces late in spring training about how home runs seem to be up again and would probably be up again, and they are not up again. But, you know, I don't feel too bad about that one because, whatever, they're barely down. And at least it showed that we were probably not going to get like a new ball that would wipe away all the homers or something. And it was about the three true outcomes, and those are up.

So it's okay. On May 3rd, I wrote, Is Pete Kershaw Gone for Good? On May 3rd, I wrote, is Pete Kershaw gone for good? And after I wrote that kind of, you know, not burying Kershaw, but just pointing out that he's not the same guy anymore, he had a 2.4 ERA in 112 and a third innings. Still really good. 103 strikeouts and 19 walks. But I think it was still fair to say that Pete Kershaw is gone for good. He's still not throwing as hard

as he used to. He's throwing a lot more breaking balls and off-speed stuff. So yeah, I feel kind of okay about that one. And I noted in there that he could still be really effective even with diminished stuff. Last thing, I think on April 27th, I wrote an article about Andrelton Simmons and Didi Gregorius, and they were both off to amazing starts at that point and from that day forward simmons had a 103 wrc plus and dd had a 100 wrc plus so it's not like they cratered but neither of them kept up their pace but i feel okay about that one because they both ended up with like five win seasons. They were both really good. They were both better than they were last year. And it was kind of about how their careers mirror each other and they grew up playing together. And, you know, it wasn't just like,

oh, their stats are amazing. They're the new best players in baseball. So those are some that, I don't know, I guess I might tweak a little if I could go back and rewrite them, but I'm not ashamed of them and wishing that they could be deleted from my archive. Right. I think you and I are both, maybe out of necessity, we're fairly good about when we write our articles, we add a lot of qualifiers to them and we never take, you know, we just don't take positions. That's kind of the thing that we both do. So even when we write an article about a guy, I think we say enough to say like, well, you know, this might not keep up or this could just be a short-term thing. So like, you know, we don't like publish bad hot takes is one way to put it. But I'll say looking back, there are some, a few things, one thing that jumps out

to me, and this isn't something I regret, it's just funny the way it worked out. I remember back in when the Rays were doing their whole alleged teardown, something I wrote was that the, when the Rays traded Steven Souza, they replaced him with Carlos Gomez, and I was amazed by how similar Souza and Gomez have looked in recent years. So I thought, oh, if the Rays made that trade, they got some prospects, and they replaced Souza with a similarly good baseball player. So this year, Carlos Gomez has been worth a war of negative 0.5.

He's been really bad for the Rays, and Steven Souza for the Diamondbacks has a war of negative 0.5. So that one worked out, I guess. They've been identically bad for both teams. So it wasn't wrong, but I was also completely wrong about how that one worked out. But there are a few things that jump out to me. So one, this is in large part because of injury, but I was kind of a high guy early on on Aaron Sanchez. I thought he developed a pretty good change up i know sanchez has had some injury problems this year but sanchez

has thrown a lot more of his change up this season almost a quarter of his pitches have been his change up i liked the way his change up looked and he's got the worst era of his life he uh he's got really bad numbers across the board aaron sanchez has not worked out i was the high guy on lucas giolito early in the year i liked some things I saw from his mechanics. He's been dreadful. I even took the opportunity not too long ago to write another briefly positive article about Lucas Giolito because it looked like he had then made some changes during the season that showed signs of progress, and he has been bad since then. So I'm just done.

I'm done with Lucas Giolito. He could become good, but I'm not going to be the first guy to spot it. I'm just hands done with Lucas Giolito. He could become good, but I'm not going to be the first guy to spot it. I'm just hands off to Lucas Giolito. I learned my lesson. Around the trade deadline, I wrote something that was positive about Adam Conley, which I know is weird, but I thought, oh, look at this guy. He's like an interesting looking lefty reliever. It looks like he's really made a good adjustment to the bullpen. Since I wrote that article, basically, his ERA is five and a half. He's sucked. bad on adam conley and the funniest thing i think even at the time i knew this wasn't going to be real but early in the season freddie freeman like stopped swinging and i was like oh

it looks like freddie freeman is joey vato now because they had like the same discipline profile freeman just was taking pitches he wasn't that aggressive and it's like oh my god he's really turned it he's got a career high swing rate this This season, Freddie Freeman is 56% of all the pitches he's seen, which is more than any season before it has passed. He's just swung at like everything in the zone. Freddie Freeman is not Joey Votto now. Freddie Freeman is Freddie Freeman. He's a very aggressive hitter. He's a very good hitter.

But that was the blip of all blips. It's like that time when Ryan Goins became a good hitter for three weeks. There's no way. But I wrote about that too. So unlike you, I do it with force. Anthony goes, exactly. Another greatest hit of Jeff Sullivan. I thought Anthony goes could

be something. I thought Carlos Pagera could be something. My bad, my bad, my bad, and my bad. I promise my thought processes are always with the best intentions in mind, but I get a lot of things. I don't know if it's wrong, but definitely hasty. Let's go with hasty. Well, you write a lot of posts, and you are often the first to be writing about a certain subject, so it takes some bravery to be the first into the breach and say that bad player is good now,

but it helps you pick up on a lot of breakouts and surprising performances that other people write about later. So I think on the whole, it serves your readers well. And oh, yeah. And I guess that's one more thing that I should throw out. This was written last offseason. Last December, I had said my current favorite breakout pick. It was Cattell Marte. I liked a lot what I saw down the stretch. Cattell Marte, pick it was Cattell Marte I liked a lot what I saw down the stretch Cattell Marte technically this season pretty good season WRC plus of 102 he was a average player but he didn't really do anything special he didn't really break out he just got moderately better so on the one hand hey I picked a guy who is better than his projections but on the other hand

no he's uh he's lost playing time to Daniel Descalso. All right. Well, I'm sure we will talk much more about the 2018 season as we go on. But it's been a fun one and looking forward to the playoffs. So on Monday, we will have a guest and we will preview the playoffs with him and maybe with each other. And we'll set up all of the matchups and it'll be fun. and maybe with each other and we'll set up all of the matchups and it'll be fun. So enjoy the last weekend and root for NL chaos and tiebreakers and we will reconvene next week. By the way, following up on a story we have discussed previously,

Melissa Reedy Russell, the ex-wife of Addison Russell, expanded on her public comments. She spoke to Jesse Rogers of ESPN about why she has decided to speak out now there's some pretty powerful statements in there and russell's paid administrative leave has been extended through the end of the regular season one would think that a suspension will be forthcoming but regardless of what happens with russell reedy russell's comments are worth reading for everyone so i will link to those go check them out i should I should also note that Jacob deGrom did it. According to baseball reference, he has 10.1 wins above replacement to go with his 10 wins.

So he just barely, barely crept over there, but he did it. You have to count his hitting value, but you should. So Jacob deGrom becomes the second qualified pitcher ever after Eddie Smith in 1937 to finish with more war than wins. You can support this podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Five listeners who have already pledged their support include Patrick Green, Joe Muehlenhausen, George Bremmer, Nick Wilwert, and Matthew Whitrock. Thanks to all of you.

You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. We're approaching 8,500 members. You can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms if they allow reviews and ratings. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. Please keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming. I don't know when we'll get to them, but we will continue to do email shows during the playoffs, just maybe on a slightly different schedule. You can email us at podcast at fangraphs.com or message us through the Patreon site if you are a supporter. So thanks for sticking with us through yet another regular season.

And thanks in advance for sticking with us through yet another postseason and offseason. This podcast never goes on hiatus. So have a wonderful weekend and we will talk to you soon. And everyone stands When we all hold hands At the end of the world