Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1279: October, Continued

Episode Date: October 5, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the difficulties of postseason scheduling, both opening games of the NLDS, a better bullpen game by the Brewers, the Rockies’ decision to pitch to Mike Moustakas, what Christian Yelich is doing differently, the composition of the Braves and the depth of the Dodgers and Astros, and Chis Sale’s […]

Bring me a team of replacements, just in case the place I'm taking's my own, own, own, own, own, own. Three, oh four, I love us. Three, oh four, I love us. Hello and welcome to episode 1279 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from FanCrafts presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg, a bringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of FanCrafts. Hello! Hi Ben, I wonder about these days when you get the four playoff games back to back to back to back. And it's something that I get excited about slash dread every year. And it happens generally twice. And we're going to have this on Friday. We're going to have this on Monday.

You get the four games all in a row. And if you want, you can watch like, I guess they're not all strained exactly together, but you could watch like 12 to 13 hours of consecutive baseball if you wanted to. But whenever I think about that and whenever I think about expressing anything about that, how many people who aren't writers or how many people who even are writers do you think try or make any kind of effort to watch that? I mean, people work for one thing where this is a Friday and a Monday. But also most people just want to watch their team or like one team, whoever the bandwagoning. So like this feels like it's one of those like writer specific and like niche writer

specific kind of opinions. Because even a lot of writers are covering one team primarily or at the game, at a certain game, so they can't see all the other games. So there probably aren't that many people who are actually sitting down and marathoning all of these games. But I do feel for fans in the postseason when they can't see the game of the team that they've been watching all season long. I don't know if it's late at night it's think of the children they can't stay up to see the game if it's during the day then it's people are at work but it's tough because usually baseball is kind of a constant and most of the games are in the evening and at least during the week and so you can look forward to having that as your nightly entertainment and then the most important games of the year come along and you're in a conference call or something at work and i guess you know you can maybe have it on if you're lucky or or watch it online or if

you're not blacked out or maybe listen to the radio or something but it's not the same i mean what's the argument against having just all the games at normal like after conventional work hours just all at the same time i mean basically i mean you'll have like west coast east coast whatever depending on who's who's alive but why i know that the the league doesn't want to have the games overlapping too much because of i don't know league reasons but and there are tv contracts that muddy the water somewhat but fans don't want this i i say that as someone who's been a baseball fan and remains a sort of baseball. Now, granted, this layout is good for me, for you, for people in our position,

but we're not the target audience here. We're going to have to deal with it no matter what they do. So why have this game at 2 o'clock Eastern time? I remember when I was at college listening to the Padres play the Cardinals in the playoffs. I forgot what year it was, but whatever the year, the Cardinals always beat the Padres in the playoffs.

But it's something I remember listening to in like the middle of the afternoon while I worked at a lab in Connecticut, which I didn't mind, I guess, because I was working in a lab in Connecticut. But still, if you were in San Diego, that's a morning game. Why?

Not only is it inconvenient for the fans of the team, but this is a soft argument, but it makes it feel more casual. It doesn't feel like a playoff game. Like, I can't imagine having, like, a winner-take-all Game 5, which, granted, I guess Games 5 wouldn't happen that early in the day. But, like, an elimination game, one of the most important games of the season, and the season and it's happening and like the sun's up in the middle of the sky it's like a birds are chirping on a tuesday it's just the the setting isn't appropriate right yeah i assume it's just the selling tv rights when you have overlapping games is probably less lucrative or not possible i'm i'm sure they're maximizing revenue here and baseball is this regional game. And so you can't probably have every game on nationally in prime time.

I don't know, but it is kind of a bummer when some people can't see their team play in the playoffs, especially if you're rooting for a team that is not in the playoffs every year. And so it's sort of a special thing. But I don't know. That's the way it is. So we've got four games, and that's exciting. But by the time a lot of you hear this episode, many of those games will be over. So we probably won't get into the minutiae of previewing each of those games, but let's talk about the games that we have already seen, at least briefly.

Let's talk about the games that we have already seen, at least briefly. On Thursday night, the Brewers won, the Dodgers won, the Brewers' initial out-getter, as they call it. That bullpen game worked pretty well. The problem was actually their final out-getter, or who they hoped would be their final out-getter. Jeremy Jeffress actually blew a game. But otherwise, it went according to plan i think i saw a stat that the brewers got 21 swings and misses in the first eight innings of that game and that that exceeded the maximum for any of their starters this season i think 20 was the maximum number of whiffs for any brewer starter through eight so the bullpen was dominant and christian yelich was good and

hit a homer and then drew a pivotal walk later in the game and they ended up walking off corbin burns he was an interesting bit of the season he's clearly got good stuff good fastball good slider but he comes in he throws hard he was a guy who came in after brandon woodruff with the initial out getter and then the subsequent six more out getter i guess brandon would you have had an abbreviated start but corbin birds is going to be an interesting guy to keep an eye on because he could be one of those live playoff arms who just comes out of nowhere. The Astros

have Josh James on the roster who's going to try to do a similar thing, but Burns this year not to focus on Corbin Burns. He was not the most important player in the game, but he had a really, really low contact rate allowed in the major leagues this year. His record rate didn't quite match up with it, but something to watch because he looked very, very good.

And honestly, all of the Brewers pitchers looked really good except for Jeremy Jeffress. But I was surprised at the end, came down to Adam Adovino working his second inning. And I know they talked about this a little bit on the broadcast, but the circumstances were that Adovino was pitching. There were two outs and there were men on the corners and he was facing Mike Moustakis.

And on deck was Manny Pena. One of the things about manny pina that's interesting is that he's a pretty good defensive catcher but the other thing that's interesting is that he was a terrible hitter he does not hit well and he is right-handed with both of which play into adam adovino's i did adovino damn it smolts adam adovino play into his strengths so i was surprised that when adovino uh was facing moustakas that he didn't just walk him to load the bases i know that's a risk i know he's not he doesn't limit walks to such an extent that it's comfortable having him pitch with the bases loaded but i was surprised in that moment that the rockies chose to pitch to moustakas instead of pina moustakas being left-handed

and it, I mean, the way it worked out, Adovino got ahead 0-2 and then he just, you know, gave up a line drive, so what are you gonna do? This is all little negligible odds shifts, but it still surprised me. Yeah, and on the second to last pitch, he almost got the foul tip strikeout. It was so close. They showed a slow motion replay and Moustakas had tipped it back into the glove and it just like rattled around Wolters' glove. It like hit one side of the glove and then it hit the pocket and then it hit the other side and then it bounced out slowly and he couldn't quite catch it. And that would have been the end of the inning, but it was not.

And Adovino has been great all year, but his command has seemed somewhat off in this game and his previous game. So he got the job done in that previous game and did not in this game. But anyway, Brewers, we thought were favored heading into the series and now obviously are in even better position than they were. Yeah, I wanted to talk about that last Adovino plate appearance real quick because if there's one thing that people know about Adam Adovino, it's that first, okay, two things. One, it's Adovino, not Adovino. So that's one thing that most people know about him.

But for another, he has a really, really good slider. That's his thing. He has like one of those Frisbee sliders, throws it all the time. So the last plate appearance, Adovino against Moustakis,as you probably know this many people listening to this probably know this but adivina threw four fastballs 95 95 96 96 all of those fastballs were in the exact same spot to moustakas they were like slightly higher than the middle and they were slightly more away than the middle they were virtually identical pitches and none of them were his best pitches. And now, this is one of those, I don't know, Mitchell Lichtman kind of arguments where you go into it, and it's really easy to say after the fact, always after the fact as a fan,

how do you throw the same pitch four times in a row? But this is where the game theory is so interesting, because Adovino was asked about this after the game, and he was saying, well, you know, everyone knows that I throw a lot of sliders. have a good slider and I was just trying to read what what Moustakas was was looking for and so by staying away from the slider that you can like put yourself in the position of Mike Moustakas you're up there and you're thinking all right I know this guy has a funny delivery and he has a really good slider he's going to try to backfoot it at me eventually. Well, he didn't do it on the first pitch.

Okay. Well, he didn't do it on the second pitch. He didn't do it on the third pitch. All right. I mean, it's Owen too. He's got to do it. He did not do it on the fourth pitch. Now, Moustakis hit the line drive.

You could say that he was on it. Not that anyone was saying he wanted to throw that pitch higher than he did. But this is one of those situations. There's going to be a lot of situations in the playoffs this year where we'll look at a pitch sequence and think, well, he could have done something different. But we honestly, we can't say that ever. We can say that a pitch was not executed well,

and Adovino would agree that his last pitch was not executed well. But keep in mind, the previous pitch, which was virtually identical, got a foul tip that was nearly the third strike in a row, nearly the strikeout. So it's just one of those things where we can't criticize pitch sequences pretty much ever at all. If you're Adam Modavino, you could throw 100 fastballs in a row and maybe by like 75 the hitters think, I don't know if he has a feel for his slider today. But with this one, I don't think if he has a feel for his slider today. But with this one, I don't think that you can be critical of the sequence. It's just an interesting sequence to look at,

because I don't know how many times Padovino has thrown four identical fastballs in a row this year. Now, I have not read your most recent Christian Jelic post yet. Did you pinpoint how he became Barry Bonds in the second half of the season? No, I just identified correlating facts. I mean, look, here's the thing. We're talking about Christian Jelic. He's hitting well. What is the one thing we've always suspected would happen if Christian Jelic were going to hit better?

He would hit fewer ground balls. Bingo. He has been hitting far fewer ground balls over the past two months. Now, something that is interesting about what Yelich has been doing like there's no swing change here Yelich is not going to change his swing he doesn't need to change his swing his swing is great he's a very very good player but what you can do with a swing is change your approach change the pitches that you go after change your aggressiveness your selectivity whatever and what's what's happened is Christian Yelich's launch angle, if you will, his average launch angle has not really moved that much first half to second half,

which you look at that and you think, okay, well, there's nothing here going on. His ground ball rate has changed quite a bit. He's hitting more balls in the air. And so what Jelic has done, he's still hitting some grounders every so often. It happens almost half the time, honestly, and sometimes you just get on top of a pitch and it goes into the dirt. But what I did do is I isolated where he's made his best contact, and I like to do that by looking at batted balls hit at least 100 miles per hour. Nice round number. Everyone loves the number 100, unless you're a salesman, then you love the number

99. So I looked at everything Yelich has hit, 100 plus miles per hour, and then I looked at everything he launches at, 100 plus miles per hour. And then I looked at the average launch angle. Because I don't really care what a batter does when he makes bad contact. Because the batter is not intending to do that, right? Like if you hit the ball 60 miles per hour, who cares what the launch angle is? You made a mistake. So by isolating the good contact, all of a sudden, his launch angle has changed a lot. From the first half to the second half, it's changed almost 10 degrees. His average good contact launch angle has changed a lot from the first half to the second half it's changed almost 10 degrees his his average good contact launch angle has gone up the second most of any hitter in baseball

that's interesting to me because what that tells me is that Yelich is intending to hit the ball for more power so I'm I mean maybe that is a swing change I guess but I think more likely it's just a a change in mindset a change in the pitches he's trying to attack. So it looks like Christian Jelic is trying to hit for more power, and not to spoil the surprise, but it started working like two months ago, and he hasn't stopped. He has one of the best second halves, genuinely,

one of the best second halves in modern history. All right, and Braves- Braves Dodgers there wasn't a whole lot of suspense here Jack Peterson hit a home run in the first plate appearance for the Dodgers and that ended up being the winning run because the Dodgers did not allow a run Ryu was really great for seven innings a lot of people were wondering why he was starting and not Kershaw it really doesn't matter and Kershaw gets extra rest and Ryu was great. I mean, the decision was fine whether or not he was great, but he was great. And the Dodgers hit a bunch of home runs and Muncie, of course, hits a home run and walks three times. I mean, Dodgers are really good. We said this yesterday and you know now they're up one and they have Kershaw

and Buehler so that's a pretty scary spot for the Braves to be in yeah so I was looking first of all I'll point out that this season Ryu and Kershaw very similar if you look at them now now granted Kershaw threw twice as many innings but if you just I know he's Clayton Kershaw threw twice as many innings, but if you just— I know he's Clayton Kershaw. Like, I'm not an idiot, but I will just— Like, Ryu and Kershaw had the same walk rate. Ryu actually had a higher strikeout rate. Kershaw had the worse ERA. He had the worst FIP minus. He had the same X FIP minus.

I don't need to get into numbers like that, but Ryu has been really good. He's been super good. He's basically where he was before he started having injury problems so between Ryu and Kershaw you pick your lefty with a the curveball here but then you look at the game itself and yeah it was kind of got kind of got boring after a while it's just like the Braves never threatened so as soon as Max Muncy hit his three run homer we should just have like a whole month of podcasts about max muncie because my my goodness yeah i don't know if there's been a player who's more overachieved his preseason projections but anyway rio is great looking at

the i was surprised looking at the fan graphs playoff odds and i think maybe you were looking at these too because the playoff odds gave, coming into the series, the Dodgers a 3-1 chance of advancing over the Braves, which is huge. You don't expect that. And then I was like, well, why do the playoff odds do that? The Braves this season were good. But the thing is that the Dodgers were a lot better,

and I know that the record doesn't reflect that. But if you look at the, Fangraphs has a projected standings page. And if you just looked at how the playoff rosters project, I know this is going to sound weird. But the Braves actually project as like a 500 baseball team. I know they just won 90 games. I know that. But just based on the projections, they project it like a 500 team, and the Dodgers project it much, much better than that.

When you have a team with a Dodgers projection against a team with a Braves projection, it turns out in a five-game series, the better team is expected to win like 75% of the time. Now, the Braves are presumably a little better than projections, but this is not a great team. It's not a great pitching staff. There's not a bunch of pitchers I would trust.

Fultonavich I like enough, but he lasted all of two innings. And the Dodgers have the far superior lineup. They have the better depth. I don't think this is like a 3-1 chance series, although now that the Dodgers are up a game, it probably is worse than that. But the Braves are a real underdog, and they did not do anything to change my opinion on that and get one. Yeah, and speaking of just like live playoff arms and hoping to catch lightning in a bottle,

the Braves just kind of have a new bullpen for this series. A lot of the guys who pitched the most innings for them, Dan Winkler, Jesse Biddle, Shane Carl, they are just not even on the roster. Shane Carl, they're just not even on the roster. And instead, it's like Tukey Toussaint and Chad Sabatka and Freed and just all these guys who barely pitched in the innings for them this year. They're just kind of going with the guys they think have the live arms and are going to be better right now. So it's sort of risky. But I think, you know, they can't really compare to the dodgers talent so they have to take risks and i don't know whether those risks will work they do have of course charlie culberson

who brian snitker said has probably been arguably maybe our most valuable player probably been arguably maybe our most valuable player i What does that mean in the end when you introduce enough overlapping caveats? Like what are you doing with the probabilities there? Yeah, it means Freddie Freeman is your best player or Acuna is your best player. And you're just saying something nice about Charlie Culberson, who has filled in at positions and has gotten really clutch hits and, you know, is now filling in for Dansby Swanson. And he's certainly been better than anyone expected he would be, including the Dodgers who traded him to the Braves. So he's been good and probably, arguably, maybe the Braves' most valuable player. So speaking of new bullpens, this isn't exactly

the same thing, but i don't i don't know if you have taken a look at the the astros playoff roster have you no okay well it's great i'll tell you that part you'll you'll figure that out oh right they like left off half a playoff roster off their play so here here are pitchers who did not make the astros playoff bullpen did not make the astros playoff bullpen br did not make the Astros playoff bullpen, Brad Peacock, Hector Rondon, Chris Davensky, and Joe Smith. All of those pitchers are good. All of those pitchers not only struck out at least a batter in any, Brad Peacock, this year, 336 pitchers threw at least 50 innings, 336.

Brad Peacock was 12th in strikeout rate. He had the same strikeout rate as Brad Hand. He had a better walk rate than Brad Hand he was he had a better walk rate than Brad Hand you know the Indians best relief pitcher he's he's like he's basically Adam Onovino he's there with Jose Leclerc like the Astros left off Rondon led them in saves this season yeah so Peacock Rondon Smith and uh and Davinsky could be like the four best pitchers in most teams' bullpens. And the Astros don't even—it's not like they chose bad pitchers to take over. They just have so many good pitchers.

I'm glad that Josh James made their playoff roster because a lot of people don't know much about him. That's a Carson Sestouli thing. He's just like a kid who comes up and throws 100 miles per hour and strikes everybody out. I like that he's up to be in the playoff roster. He's got a fresh arm. But I just couldn't believe how much depth the Astros pitching staff has. And I wonder, you can see this with the Braves too.

You can see this with a few teams, a few pitchers who have been left off playoff rosters. There is so much it seems like anecdotally so much emphasis that teams put on like how a reliever's final month and you look like all these relievers who have been left off rosters like struggled in september over very small samples but they had like high eras or a bunch of walks not many strikeouts and i don't know what it is but it makes me wonder whether this is like a small sample size over reaction or whether we should take these small samples to be more credible and more meaningful because maybe they

are just signs of pitchers who have run out of gas. I get by that relievers run out of gas down the stretch, but it's just always funny to see a team being like, well, this guy had a 9-8-2 ERA in September as a relief pitcher in like seven and a third innings, so therefore he's not going to pitch in October. That seems absurd, but I mean, none of us know as much as the teams do. Well, speaking of running out of gas down the stretch, Chris Sale, we talked about him briefly yesterday. I wrote about him now at The Ringer. We'll probably just talk a little bit about him and then get to some emails so as not

to have this entire episode be out of date by the time you hear it. So Chris Sale, we're not going to have a stat blast today, but I have a sort of stat blast that I performed for this article that includes TOPS+. Don't say we're not doing a stat blast. Just say that it's a stat blast. Okay, yeah, everyone will stop listening if we say there's no stat blast. So this stat does have a TOPS+.

So Chris Sale just has not been the same guy this year, certainly. I mean, he's barely pitched in the second half because he was on the DL twice with shoulder inflammation. But historically speaking, over his whole career, Chris Sale has not been the same guy in the second half of the season and specifically in September, October of the regular season. So I looked for all active pitchers with at least 500 total innings, and I looked for guys with the worst TOPS+, that is, their OPS allowed relative to their own overall OPS allowed. The worst TOPS plus among active pitchers with at least 500 total innings in the second half is Chris Sale. He has a 117 TOPS plus in the second half. And then the worst pitcher in terms of September-October TOPS plus also Chris Sale at 141.

And that is a pretty big gap. And that's not even because of this year, really. I mean, I guess it's a little bit because of this year, but he pitched okay when he was pitching. He just mostly wasn't pitching. But he just has a history of not pitching as well in the second half of the season and particularly late in the season. And you could speculate about why that is, whether it's because of his build, and he's such a string bean, and he wears down and who knows maybe that's unfair maybe it's not that but he has just historically shown that and that's even including his time as

a reliever which probably skews things a little if you just look at his splits as a starter by month he is just worse at everything basically in September. His velocity is lower. His strikeout minus walk rate is lower. His home runs per nine is way up. So that's like the big thing is that he just gives up lots of dingers. In August, he gives up 1.1 homers per nine, which is a lot higher than in any previous month. And then in September, October, 1.5. And a lot of it is BABIP also, but he also just gives up a ton of hard hit balls late in the year too. So he's just, you know, coughing up a bunch of meatballs, it seems like. And, you know, Chris Sale at his worst, like his career monthly splits as a starter in September, October 3.84 ERA and 3.84 FIP. So that's the best month for a lot of starters, but it's by far Chris Sale's worst month. And so I think that makes him mysterious and fascinating right now. I think he's like the player I'm most interested to see how he performs in the playoffs because it's a really big deal for Boston.

big deal for Boston, whether you have the ace Chris Sale, the first half Sale, or the September-October Sale, the guy who doesn't go deep into games and isn't that good when he's pitching because the Red Sox do not have a great bullpen. It's probably the biggest area of mismatch between them and the Yankees. They do not want to go reliever for reliever. They're not going to win that war. So they need their starters to be good and to go deep into games and right now nobody knows whether Chris Sale is capable of that and he's coming off the start with the worst average four-seam fastball velocity of his career his max velocity was down significantly too he says it's mechanical Cora says it's mechanical Sale says he's straightened it out that it was an extension problem that he wasn't driving the way he wanted to and that he's straightened it out that it was an extension problem that he wasn't driving the way he wanted to and that he's fixed it but who knows we will see on friday and

in any of his subsequent starts but he's got to be good i think for the red sox to really make a run right nothing nothing changes the calculus quite like a pitcher whose velocity is suddenly dropped off without explanation and i i don't remember mean, we've talked on this podcast before about Patrick Corbin and the weird thing that he did this year. I forgot how recently we talked about this. But one of the things that you'll notice about Patrick Corbin when people go back and evaluate his free agency cases is that all of a sudden between starts this year,

he decided to lose three miles per hour off all of his pitches. No reason was given, and then he was fine. He just kept pitching and he kept striking people out and absolutely no idea what happened there never seen it before generally when that happens it's bad so chris sale you depending on how you look at it you could say he's lost six miles per hour is yeah when he came off the dl every start got a little bit worse in terms of how hard he was throwing. We've been through enough injury

scares. People keep waiting for Corsale to be hurt. Eventually, in 10 years, he's finally going to go on the DL with a rolled ankle and people are going to be like, we knew it! You keep thinking something's going to happen. We're already at heightened awareness. When you see a velocity drop off like this, it looks bad.

No pitcher would invite this to happen to himself. So the explanation that it's mechanical, I understand. I want it to be true. I try to assume that things aren't injury related. But this is not a problem that just started. His velocity has been down for a few starts in a row so i just wonder why wouldn't why didn't they try to fix it before if they did how come now we should believe that they've been successful in fixing it as opposed to before because in the last

start it was worse than ever like you said yeah worst velocity of his career yeah and you know who knows maybe he was pacing himself or taking it easy. I mean, the Red Sox were just kind of coasting down the stretch, and Sale was trying to heal his shoulder, and maybe he wasn't pushing himself the way he will be in a playoff game. And sometimes if you have an injury, it leads to mechanical problems because you're trying to protect that part of you that was weakened, and maybe you don't even realize it, but that can happen. That happened with Corey Kluber in the middle of the season. He had the worst, I think it was seven start stretch of

his career as a starter, or at least since his rookie season, he was just pretty bad for several starts. And he had had a knee problem, a sore knee, and he had gotten an injection to try to help the sore knee. And then he was still bad after that and everyone was thinking well his knee is still busted but he said no it's not the knee the knee's fine it's just mechanical because you know he screwed himself up when the knee was sore and then he fixed whatever it was and he was his usual dominant self down the stretch so it's totally possible that that could happen for Chris Sale but the velocity drop is worrisome the whole history of him pitching worse late in the season is worrisome and we will see he is facing the best

hitting team in the league and again that's an area where he just really needs to be good I mean I don't want to say that any player is totally pivotal and the team can't win without him like weird things can happen and chris sale can be terrible and then the red sox bullpen can be great for three games and that'll be that but if you had to pinpoint one factor that could swing this series for me is which version of chris sale we see how many times do you think we are going to see a graphic or hero announcers talk about the postseason history of the red sox starting rotation are we are you as sick of this i mean so here's what here's what i'll tell you now uh so far i've seen no references to it because the series hasn't begun and i'm already

tired of it yeah because what sale has basically not been in the playoffs and david price of course has a bad playoff history and rick borcello i think has a bad playoff history and has nate jovaldi been in the playoffs i don't remember well here's the thing even if he has it probably hasn't been for very long so i'll the answer i'll tell you the answer is no no jovaldi has not pitched in the playoffs so that makes him the most successful member of the Red Sox starting rotation I guess in playoff history but I don't know I think we've talked before about how there's almost certainly nothing there but this is one of those things that it's it's serves a purpose in that it it does serve as a narrative you can honestly say we know for a fact David

Price does have an era over five in the playoffs what that means i don't know who cares he's two and eight if you like assigning records to people so you look at price and he's throwing like 73 playoff innings and his strike outs are okay and his walks are like i don't want to like dive into and analyze the numbers but it is interesting although you could also look at Price last year in two. You remember, I had forgotten, but he did come out of the bullpen for the Red Sox last year, and he didn't allow a run over six and two-thirds innings. So I don't know how long these things are going to stretch, but if we're moving on,

I think we're moving on from the Clayton Kershaw postseason narrative, then I guess the Red Sox rotation is going to be next. There's just so much, the perception of there being so much pressure on the Red Sox now, and I get it because they, what did they, tie their all-time win record or something, or the most wins for the team in like 70 years. Yeah, something like that. But the fact of the matter is that now they're in the playoffs

where the Yankees roster is at least as good as theirs is, and everybody is good. And odds are, odds are very good red sox are not going to win the world series but i'm sure that if and when the red sox lose people will handle it with maturity yeah russell carlton once wrote inspired by an email to this podcast actually about how you never really have a favorite to win i mean you have a you have a favorite you have a favorite to win. I mean, you have a favorite, you have a team that's most likely to win in the playoffs, of course, but you never have a team that is more likely to win than the field. Because in order to have that, I think he calculated that you would need a team that won

113 games during the World Series could be even a 50% favorite to win the World Series at the start of the playoffs. And that's, you know, probably a real 113 wins, not like a lucky 113 wins. So you just don't really get that kind of team often or ever. So it's always kind of a toss up. All right, let's do a few emails here. David Berry, Patreon supporter, says, Postseason hypothetical for you guys. How many consecutive seasons of losing in the World Series could a team go before that manager is fired? Follow-up, is that number higher or lower than it was 15 years ago?

My guess is higher. Losing in the World Series. Did the Buffalo Bills have the same head coach for the four straight Super Bowl losses? You're asking the wrong guy. Well, I'm gonna tell you what. I bet by the time I'm done with this sentence, I will probably have the answer to it. However, there is also a semicolon, a decent chance that I won't. Why is this Wikipedia page so complicated? So the Buffalo Bills. Okay. So in 1990 to 1993, Buffalo Bills, Mark Levy was their head coach. He was the head coach for a team that lost four consecutive Super Bowls. So the answer

to your question is that I have a comparison from a completely different sport from three decades ago. And in that case, they kept the same coach. Now, I don't know if this is true, my sense, because football is stupider, that football is more reactionary to losses and things like that. So I would think that if there were going to be turnover, that you would see it more likely to happen in football than baseball. And in football, it didn't happen in the one case that I can think of where a team did something like this. So I think if a team went to the World Series four years in a row, you would keep the manager, you would try to keep many of

the same players. That's a hell of a baseball team. Very disappointing baseball team, but it's still a very good baseball team. I think that you keep the manager and relative to 15 years ago i guess yeah it's more likely you would keep the manager i guess than before i think that in any case the team would keep the manager but certainly now there's just so much job security when you're good that i mean joe gerardi accepted i guess but right otherwise yeah well that's what i was going to bring up. I mean, I think obviously it depends why and how you lose the World Series. I think like if the manager makes some glaring, unforgivable mistake every time, then he'll probably be let go, I think. So if he doesn't do anything wrong and it's just the randomness of a short series, and he's great at his job, then I think he could hang on to that forever, basically. Like, I don't know that he would ever get fired if he doesn't,

if there's no cause other than, I don't know, superstition or something. So I think in that sense, teams are more likely to not fire a guy for a bad reason and just to make a change for the sake of making a change. So I think you could probably go longer. But on the other hand, if there is something you're not doing all that well, I think you are now more likely to get replaced than you were previously because a team is not going to keep you. I don't think just because you're making the World Series,

they have to feel like you're actually the manager that gives them the best chance. And Joe Girardi got within one win of getting to the World Series last year. And he was replaced because seemingly the Yankees didn't like how he interacted with young players or, you know, incorporated analytics or both or whatever it was. So I think in that sense, the manager is seen as more disposable these days because he's kind of a cog in the machine rather than the leader who is doing everything. And so I think the front office would consider him more fungible, more replaceable. And in that sense, I'd say that the number is actually lower in some ways today. Okay, question for you. Let's, two different managers. So one of the managers leads a team to the World Series and loses four years in a row. All right.

And the second manager leads a team to the World Series five years in a row, wins the first one, then loses four in a row. Which of those managers has more job security after the four consecutive World Series losses? I think definitely winning the one gets you a longer leash. I think definitely winning the one gets you a longer leash. I mean, it's like Bobby Cox lasted forever with one World Series win and otherwise not even getting there most of the time or not winning, even though the Braves were in the playoffs year after year. So, yeah, I think once you win one, because then you can't say that the manager like can't he doesn't have what it takes to get them over the hump or something. He did it once. So, yeah, I think that gets you indefinite job security. I can't figure doesn't have what it takes to get them over the hump or something he did it once so yeah i think that gets you uh indefinite job security i can't figure it out just i was thinking of joe

madden when i was bringing this up and there's all this talk about how the cubs could have parted ways with joe madden because they're just they feel like they're underachieving but on the other hand they have not parted ways with joe madden so maybe it's all just media speculation but i do think there's at least some kind of argument to be made that if you win one and then you don't, then people are more likely to feel let down as opposed to thinking like, oh, we keep getting almost there. We're just a coin flip away. But I don't know. I could be full of crap. Yeah.

All right. Another question. You know what? I'm just going to make this a stat blast. I lied. There's a stat blast. I just want to make this a stat blast. I lied. There's a stat blast. I just want to play this song. They'll take a data set sorted by something like ERA- or OBS+.

And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways. So this is a question from Patreon supporter Jacob Mooney, who says, Feel free to take this question as a general guessing game if you've no way of knowing, but the Orioles beat the Astros on the last day of the regular season, and earlier they beat the Red Sox on game 158 of the season. That means that they twice, as a team with 100 losses logged already for the season, beat a team that had already logged 100 wins. How many times do you think this has ever happened? Has 100 loss team ever beaten 200 win teams after all three got over their thresholds? No, actually, we're about to answer another one, sort of. But this is not easy to determine, but Dan Hirsch of Baseball Reference answered it very quickly and easily. Well, for him, it's easy.

For us, it's easy. For us, it's not. But the answer is that the Orioles doing this, having 100 losses and beating a 100-win team twice this year, that was two of the seven times it has ever happened. So it had only happened five times before this year and not since, actually, 1954. In 1954, the Yankees beat the Philadelphia Athletics twice, September 24th and September 26th. And in 1932, the Yankees, it's usually the Yankees, beat the Red Sox on September 25th. And then 1907, the Cubs beat the St. Louis Browns twice in October. So it had only happened those five times, and it's kind of curious that it happened all in years before the 162-game schedule. I was sort of expecting that if this had happened, it would be then, because it's easier to get to 100 wins, 100 losses, if you're playing more than 154 games.

But nope, first time this had happened since the 50s. And I don't know, I guess maybe there were more lopsided teams at that time. There were teams that were barely contending and competing, and then teams that had all the talent. So maybe it was just more common as a percentage of teams to get to 100 wins or 100 losses, although, you know there were fewer teams overall not only did the orioles beat the astros in the last game of the season but they actually held them to one hit they won four to nothing they out hit them eight to one the orioles pitchers were jimmy yacobonus paul fry and michael gibbons so one of those pitchers good

one of those pitchers uh i don't know kind of like pitch fxc interesting that's paul fry uh well if you get into that over the winter then one of those pitchers being jimmy yack bonus the astros started charlie morton then brad peacock pitch then chris defensky then josh james colin mckew and some colors finished by raymond guduan but the astros lineup was springer altuve regman gonzalez guriel gaddis reddick stacy camp like not a terrible lineup and look one game is one game but i think that any game where you get one hit by the 2018 baltimore orioles is a game of some import and so it is interesting because look obviously nothing to play for at all astro is doing nothing but just trying to stay healthy not trying to get hurt and ruin the postseason. But something to be said about the impact of giving a shit,

because I don't think the Astros would have cared at all about that game. And it just so happens that they lost. Now, I don't know what the Orioles were playing for either in that circumstance, but you can say that even though this is the last game and no one was paying attention, maybe they're all playing for their jobs or something. They're trying to make a good impression the Orioles maybe just trying to get as many wins as possible because like it's more embarrassing to go 46 and 116 than 47 and 115 oh my god they were bad but still it's interesting that they that they one hit the Astros in that game now you could also say it's just as interesting that the Astros won all three of the previous games in that same series. Yeah, right. All right. Jenny asks,

since the recent wave of teams using an opener, I'm wondering why teams haven't shuffled their lineups accordingly yet. It's my understanding that starting pitchers are known to each team ahead of the game. So why wouldn't team A just put the bottom of the order up in the first inning if team B is starting an opening pitcher? It seems obvious since the number of teams using an opener is so large, considering how slowly baseball typically adopts such a drastic change. Are managers afraid to disrupt some sort of balance that happens when a lineup is pretty much the same for a whole season? What am I missing? Well, you are, what I guess you're missing is that if you put the bottom of the lineup at the top then the bottom of the lineup players will get more plate appearances and that's bad so that's what teams are that's what teams are trying to avoid now you can you could say that

there's also maybe something to the idea of players get accustomed to the lineup positions that they're in you could also say as the contrary argument that pitchers get accustomed to the roles that they have and then you start using the opener, and it doesn't matter anymore. But if you look at a team like the Astros, frequently they'll start with Springer, Altuve, and Bregman. That's three consecutive right-handed hitters, and those are probably their three best hitters. And so the Astros wouldn't really want to move them around too much, certainly not as long as Carlos Correa is not at 100%. You can look at what the Angels were also vulnerable to this

because they had a right-handed top of the lineup, and you want your best hitters up there, and even with the platoon disadvantage, you'd still rather have George Springer, Jose Altuve, and Alex Bregman at 1, 2, and 3 than, I don't know, which way is Jake Marisnyk bad? Is he a righty or is he a lefty? I've never had to think about this before. He's a righty, so that's bad.

What about Martin Maldonado? Does he bat righty? Nope, he's a righty too. Okay, well, what about, I don't know, Tyler White? Is he a, no, he's a righty. Jesus Christ. The Astros have a bunch of right-handed hitters on the team. I don't know, let's go with Marwin Gonzalez.

I think he's switch hits, right? So you'd still, but I guess they bat him lead. Anyway, I think generally it's just not worth the effort because the manager would look at it and think, well, I still want to give my best hitters the most plate appearances. It just so happens that, well, I guess we're going to see a righty to start things off. But, you know, if you have a good lefty, maybe you want to put him up there. Like if you're the Cardinals, for example,

and you hear that the Brewers are going to use Dan Jennings as a lefty to get Matt Carpenter out to lead off the game, maybe move Matt Carpenter to second instead of first. Like that, you could probably get away with. Now, I don't know if that changes the Brewers' calculus, but still, it is something you can tweak. But importantly, it's important to understand, these things make such a small difference.

The opener is like it's so not dramatic a shift in the chances of winning that it's more of a dramatic shift in how we tell the story of the game. But it really doesn't do that much for a team. We're talking like maybe 1% odds of winning, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, our, our attention to it has been somewhat disproportionate to how much it actually helps. It's just a, it's a novel thing and it's a bold in some ways.

So we've talked about it a bunch, but yeah, I think the, the bullpen game, which we should distinguish from the opener, the bullpen game which we should distinguish from the opener the bullpen game is is a bigger advantage if you do it in the right situation i think but that's something you probably can't do quite as often but you can in the postseason so all right question from jeff in san francisco in episode 12, Ben responded to an email in which I asked whether Madison Bumgarner was preferable as a hitter to the 2018 version of Chris Davis. I must admit to being a bit surprised when Ben definitively answered Davis. That was back in June. Chris Davis didn't get better in 2018. After a quick look at Fangraphs, it seems that Davis's 2018

stats are comparable to Bumgarner's career hitting numbers. In retrospect, would the Orioles have been better off if Bumgarner had taken all of Davis's at-bats in 2018? For the purpose of the question, assume that Bumgarner doesn't get hurt in spring training and hits without the rust of inaction. If not Bumgarner, is there another pitcher that could have been better? Can I say it? Can I say it? Can I say it? Yeah. Madison Bumgner this year had a WSU plus of negative one. Yes.

Yeah, Madison Baumgartner is not actually a good hitter. I don't think he's good for a pitcher, I guess, but again, this year he hit 159, 174, 205. I mean, I still don't think that there is any

if we could replay this season a million times, I don't think there's any pitcher other than like Michael Lorenzen or Shohei Otani or someone, like someone who's kind of a two-way player or can be. I would take over Chris Davis because, A, I mean, Chris Davis had a 46 WRC+. There were still only six pitchers who finished above that with at least 30 plate appearances, and that's even with small sample randomness. And Zach Greinke is the only active pitcher with at least 100 career plate appearances and a WRC plus of at least 50, and he's at 53. So there just aren't actually any good pitcher hitters, and I don't think Davis is actually a true talent 46. I mean, he's bad, but I don't think he's quite that bad probably

if you replay the season a million times. So I just don't think there is any pitcher I would take over Chris Davis as bad as he was. Now I want to share a fun fact with you that I only just discovered. Okay, so this year there were 77 pitchers who batted at least 30 times. Bumgarner batted like 46 times or something. Unsurprisingly, if you're out there listening, pitchers see a lot of fastballs when they're batting because they are bad. Clay Buchholz saw the highest rate of fastballs, 84%.

Brandon McCarthy also 84%. Terrible hitter. If you're listening to this, Brandon McCarthy,arthy you suck at hitting but you know that chad bettis mike fultonavish dan straley bad hitters all around 80 fastballs i'm going to read to you the bottom five the bottom five fastball rates for pitchers as batters this is a rate of fastballs seen so fifth place tyson ross 60 whatever fourth place joe musgrove 60 whatever third place mike montgomery 59 whatever second place in first place they're basically together madison bumgarner and michael lorenzen 42 42 the separation between them and the next pitcher is enormous 16 percentage points lorenzen and bum garner are the

only two pitchers that other pitchers face and actually think about and lorenzen is good and bum garner has been good but this year was was not so the lowest rate of fastballs in his career not a surprise because pitchers are onto it but it turns out this and this is something that sam sort of alluded to when he was talking turns out this and this is something that sam sort of alluded to when he was talking about position players pitching this is something that i think you are also essentially arguing here about davis when pitchers care about the batter then the pitchers are really good and when pitchers are batting against pitchers pitchers are inclined to take that off but as soon as you do something or at least a little after you do something that makes

people notice the pitchers are going to pitch you hard and then they're going to they're going to put you away that's why bummer and it was bad yeah so as truly truly terrible as pitchers offensive stats are overall it's skewed by the fact that most pitchers facing those pitchers are like taking a break during that play it's like if they were all max effort and trying to go after him like they would any regular hitter, then the numbers would be even worse. So I think there's some distortion there. And even so, pitchers are terrible at hitting.

And that's why Lorenzen this year was a very good hitter. He slugged 7-10, and that's with pitchers trying to get him out. So Michael Lorenzen could be actually good. Madison Bumgarner, not so much. All right, and then Matthew asked the question. I'll just summarize it to save some time.

Basically, there is a dysfunctional front office, and the GM signs the bad Chris Davis instead of the good Chris Davis. And Matthew wants to know, how long would it take the GM to finally realize that his team got Orioles Chris Davis instead of Athletics Chris Davis? Assuming 2018 quality of play, if the GM only looked at box scores,

what if the GM also looked at traditional stats? What if the GM also looked at advanced stats? So how quickly could he tell that it wasn't just like good Chris Davis in a slump? It was actually the different Chris Davis. We're keeping the same performances, you see what he said? And he can't talk to anyone. He's not watching his team.

He's not watching. Now I'm going to tell you, there's one distinguishing feature about each one of them that i guess the gm just doesn't realize doesn't know a month i guess yeah i right the the basic box score stats i mean that would take a while because he doesn't know that he doesn't know what the final stats are presumably so he just sees the the slump and the guy hitting well so i mean any good hitter can have a terrible month no not well i don't know if he doesn't know that like that they end up having such drastically different seasons then it would take a long time right because he doesn't know that chris davis is going to be the worst player in baseball he knows chris Davis from before. So that kind of, I guess,

should we say it's like 2019, but they repeat their seasons basically. So he knows that Chris Davis was terrible already. That makes this a little easier. So in that case, the thing is, Sam and I talked, I believe it was on episode 988, we answered a question. What the hell? 988 we answered a question What the hell? How quickly Mike Trout, you could distinguish Mike Trout from

other players. I'm sorry, how did you do that? I didn't actually. I did some research and I asked a few long time listeners if they remembered this and Dennis Austin of Badge to the Pet actually was able to pinpoint

988. So that was not a miraculous retrieval by me. But we talked about, like, if you just had a bunch of stats and the names were anonymized and you didn't know who anyone was, how quickly could you discern Mike Trout? And I don't remember exactly what we said, but I think that it really makes all the difference if you have the advanced stats. But I think that it really makes all the difference if you have the advanced stats, because if you have like stat cast and, you know, plate discipline stats, and I mean, you can tell one hitter from another based on a single batted ball or a single throw from the field, I mean, or a single runtime from home to first. So if you have that stuff, you can tell, oh, this is not that guy. It's this guy. So if you have that, I mean, instantly, but if you just have the basic box score stats or traditional stats, it's going to take a while because there can be random variants in good and bad players' performance. Now, here's the thing about this hypothetical. So we're thinking, how long is it before the GM realizes that they signed the wrong Chris Davis?

Made a terrible mistake. You have to be open to the idea that you signed the wrong Chris Davis. You have to have in your mind the inkling of a possibility that, oh, I have signed the wrong baseball player with the same name, which is not something that would occur to an executive after any amount of time, because presumably you're, how do you conduct a negotiation? Okay, forget that part of the hypothetical, I guess. Nothing face-to-face here. No press conference, even though you signed a prominent hitter. But it would take, if somebody came up to you after like a month and a half, and they're like, hey, hey, just so you know, I don't know if you know this, you signed the wrong Chris Davis. Then you'd be like, oh, oh, I see it.

But until then, you'd be like, there's no way. This is an embarrassing sump. I made a mistake. But it hasn't even crossed my mind that I just straight up signed the wrong baseball player. It would never occur to you as an option. Just like it would never occur to someone. We've had that Clayton Kershaw hypothetical of like he gives up a hit on every pitch or whatever or every ball in play. We've had a few of those hypotheticals.

And it would never occur to GM to be like, oh oh he's cursed it's a curse and it's real yeah yeah and the other complication here is that these two chris davises in theory are sort of similar hitters i mean they're both kind of low to medium average ish well one is a 247 hitter and the other is worse than that but you know neither one is like a batting title contender they both sort of strike out a lot one more than the other but you know they're they're powerful sluggers who like dh and stuff you couldn't even like tell from the position in the box score necessarily so i mean if you had that if you had you know like one of them is stealing a bunch of

bases in a game you could probably figure out that it's the it's a different guy or something but neither of these guys really does that so that complicates this too i think in that you know in theory they're similar sort of stylistically yeah no absolutely they have had very until this season their numbers were a great parallel with one another. One of the Chris Davises was more inconsistent than the is, what would happen if a rule were added to baseball that ruled that the batter were out if a fan successfully threw a ball directly at a runner from the stands? Would this strengthen the benefits of home field advantage, given this would happen to away teams? Would batters be incentivized to run faster and more deceptively around the bases with jukes and sidesteps would teams try to put fans with stronger arms in the outfield stands

obviously this would be a dangerous rule but maybe it could be fun let me tell you exactly how long this rule lasts first game of the season somebody hits a home run 300 baseballs come flying out of the stands all of them in the direction of the guy at second base. There would be mass imprisonment and fines, and the commissioner would be like, oh, my God, what have I done? So this would, in theory, okay, it wouldn't even improve home field advantage because the odds of a fan hitting the runner instead of one of the defenders, there's a lot more defenders than there are base runners after a home run, I'll have you know.

So, you know, you try to hit him, and you might hit a second baseman who's not paying attention or a first baseman or god help you the the starting pitcher or the opener i should say so this would make a difference it would be a terrible difference and he would last about one home run yeah i mean i love the image of the base runner taking evasive maneuvers on his way around the base pass without going out of the baseline i guess but the stutter steps and like side to side i love that but the problem is that if this were a rule then the runner would actually be on the lookout for this i mean the reason that it happened with stanton is that he was not even looking because why in the world would he be this would not be something you expect but if you have the knowledge

that there's a rule that you could be out if someone hit you with a thrown baseball then you your head would be on a swivel you'd be looking around and it would be really hard to hit a guy from that far away if he knows that the ball is coming so i just i don't see it happening i mean how how rarely do base runners get hit by batted balls and that's harder to avoid because it's going so much faster in the distance and so much shorter and this would I mean yeah I don't think you should just put like shot putters in the stands or something just sprinkle them all over the outfield to try to get extra outs it was only a few ball parks where this could happen anyway you got like right field in the Yankee Stadium and of course

you got the Crawford boxes inston like you got to be close enough to the base runner because most people can't throw a ball like 300 feet i can't throw a ball 300 feet most people can't it takes it like a professional quarterback so you just end up to be on the on the top of the green monster you get some extra distance from absolutely so yeah that that fan had a built-in advantage like credit full credit to the fan i should well should i even say full credit the fan should we be encouraging this probably not but it was impressive all right we will end there by the way one more thing about sales that i meant to mention i'm going to play a very quick clip he was asked on thursday to talk

about his success against the incas this year and well you'll hear his asked on Thursday to talk about his success against the Yankees this year. And well, you'll hear his response. Chris, can you talk about your success against the Yankees this year? No. So I don't know whether he was responding to the lazy talk about phrasing or whether he meant that he didn't want to give away any secrets that had served him well against the Yankees or whether he meant that those games were in April and June and it was a long time ago and it has no bearing on how he'll do now. But that really was all he said. I checked the transcript. Just no. All right, then. I sort of respect it. So as I record this outro, the Astros are already victorious. Their parade of right-handed hitters, who we talked about earlier, eventually broke through against the right-handed Kluber. In theory,

that should be an advantage for the Indians' right-handed staff, right-handed lineup for the Astros. But it was not in game one. Astros won 7-2 with a bunch of home runs. Brewers are currently leading, as I speak, as the Rockies' not-so-great offense continues to struggle. So you can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Just go to that site, sign up, pledge some small monthly amount. It's quick and easy.

Helps us keep doing the podcast. And at some point this month, Jeff and I will do a couple of live streams during games for Patreon supporters at the $10 level and up. We'll be announcing when that will happen sometime soon. Following five listeners have already pledged their support. Ross Wasserman, Matt Edigson, Adam Schwaber, Dan Roberts, and Adam Yarkovsky. Thanks to all of you. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild.

There's always a very active game thread for every playoff game going on. So it's a good second screen experience or third or fourth screen experience this month. You can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. And you can keep your questions and comments and other forms of feedback coming for me and Jeff via email at podcastoffangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. Please enjoy a full weekend of playoff baseball,

and we will talk to you early next week. Life is a short, warm moment And death is a long, cold rest You get your chance to try In the twinkling of an eye 80 years with luck or even less So all aboard for the American tour And maybe you'll make it to the top

But mind how you go And I can tell you cause I know You may find it hard to get off