Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1280: The 1.8 Percent Strike

Episode Date: October 9, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Scott Oberg and the difference between good and bad balk calls, the Brewers sweeping the Rockies and the state of playoff bullpenning, the Astros juggernaut, Dodgers vs. Braves, Ronald Acuna’s grand slam, and the new Clayton Kershaw, the anomalous playoff performances of Kershaw and David Price, the Yankees’ […]

Hello and welcome to episode 1280 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast with Van Graffs, presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Van Graffs. Hello. Hello. How are you? I'm doing okay. So we have one division series concluded. We have a few more still going, at least as we speak. Perhaps not as you listen.

There is just no way around that. You and I were just talking about how we should schedule these things during the playoffs so as to avoid being outdated, but there's just really no way to do it. So we just kind of have to live with knowing that by the time you hear this, there may be more baseball, which doesn't mean that we can't talk about the baseball that has already happened. So let's talk about the Brewers eliminated the Rockies. That's easy. That's something that will be evergreen, at least for a couple of days until people stop caring and then the Brewers have a

new opponent. But I wanted to, did you, do you watch the game that they played on Sunday? Yeah. Well, at least I had it on in the background while I was doing some book work. So yes. Yeah. Okay. So there's, there's a lot we could talk about with regard to the brewers and the rockies and and we'll get to the maybe the bigger stuff but in the smaller stuff scott oberg had a bach and i wanted to talk about this specific kind of bach a little bit this is a well-known bach anyone who's pitched is familiar with the bach but in the sixth inning he was two nothing brewers and the brewers had runners on second and third curtis granderson was batting with two ads against scott oberg who's pretty good and scott oberg was digging into the rubber and for some reason maybe he always does this i

didn't think to check or care but he tried to flip the ball to his hand out of his glove and he dropped the ball and uh and that was a buck the brewers responded and the umpire was like yeah that's you're on the rubber and then he dropped the ball that is by the rule book that was a buck. The Brewers responded and the umpire was like, yeah, you're on the rubber. Then he dropped the ball. That is by the rule book. That is a buck. Run scored. Maybe related to that, maybe not related to that. Two pitches later, Scott Oberg threw a wild pitch

that allowed another runner to score. I don't know if Scott Oberg threw a wild pitch because at that point he just didn't care anymore. He was just too upset and frustrated with the moment. But the intent of the Bach rule, I don't think this is a stretch, the intent of the Bach rule is so the pitcher does not deceive the baserunner. Now, as has been discussed a million times, the pitcher is still permitted to do any number of things

that deliberately deceive the baserunner. So the Bach rule itself maybe shouldn't exist in any form. But certainly the dropping the ball Bach, we've seen this a few times. I think, isn't this how the, is this, I don't remember if this is what Dylan Flora did against the Mariners in August when the Dodgers lost in a walk-off buck. That's ages ago at this point. But Johnny Cueto had this happen to him in the wildcard game, right? I feel like it's several years ago when the Pirates crowd was on him and the ball slipped out of his glove and that was a block and everyone was like he's intimidated or he just dropped the baseball but what is it what's accomplished by that

bach call it doesn't deceive anyone you shouldn't do it i mean you look stupid let's be honest but why not just call a dead ball and then everyone looks at the pitcher be like hey look that guy's that guy's stupid what what is accomplished by this being a balk? Why did the Brewers get a run because Scott Oberg dropped a baseball and it rolled five feet away from his feet? I don't know. We talked about this not long ago, right? Or I talked about it on MLB Network. And I think there are certain types of balks that you probably want to stay balks because they actually could be deceptive or disruptive. I know that Bill James, for instance, has the extreme position that I think there should be no box because if you deceive the base runner, then it's on the base runner that he shouldn't

have been deceived. Why do we make it easier for them? And I sort of understand that. But on the other hand, I think there are certain types of box that it probably just makes the game better to prevent them. But this type of box, just the clear accident that absolutely no one is being deceived by, that it's just a lack of coordination. I don't think there's really any reason to penalize the pitcher other than just shaming him for not being able to complete the act of throwing a ball or transferring the ball between his hands. But I can't imagine that you could do that in such a way that a base runner would be like, oh, he's going, he's throwing. I'm going to leave the base now because he just dropped the ball completely. So I don't really see the point either

yeah that it was just then thankfully i guess the rockies didn't try to come back and then make this a moment that mattered because the rockies were terrible they were one of the worst teams that's ever played a playoff series and they were now when i when i was watching the game on sunday it was like it was dark and cloudy and cold in Colorado. And I don't want to pretend like I'm some sort of armchair psychiatrist. But, boy, the Rockies' body language. They just looked like they didn't want to participate in the series at all. And thankfully, to a certain extent, they didn't participate in the series at all.

The Brewers just kind of coasted. You could say that the Rockies retired from having played so much. But the Brewers also had to play an extra baseball game. So, whatever. Anyway, it was a silly balk. Not the first time we've seen that bach i know that you did go on mlb network and you participated in some entire bach segment uh so that was thankfully separate from this podcast we're not just going over old material but what are what were the what were the extreme cases where you did think uh box are necessary anded? I'm trying to think. I'm trying to remember because there are like 13 different things that can be a box, I believe.

And Sam did a kind of a taxonomy of box at Baseball Prospectus a few years ago and went through each kind or almost every kind and kind of classified whether it even made sense that it's a box or whether that you can even tell that it's a Bach. So there's the kind that is rarely identified as a Bach but probably should be according to the rulebook. So Sam has this in his article. The rulebook wording is, the pitcher, while touching his plate, that's the pitching rubber, makes any motion naturally associated with his pitch and fails to make such a delivery. So this is kind of like when you do like a knee pop sort of. You just spin and throw to first sort of, but like you kind of could be starting your motion before you do that.

And that is, I think, rarely called as Sam described it. And I think that's probably you could come up with cases where the box should be called, but isn't. There are just as many of those that I think are genuinely deceptive. There's, I think, the stopping on the way to the plate, having to pause and come to a complete stop like at a stop sign that one i think is is probably important the rule book says the pitcher following his stretch must a hold the ball in both hands in front of his body and b come to a complete stop this must be enforced umpires should watch this closely pitchers are constantly attempting to beat the rule in their efforts to hold runners on bases which is a weird bit of

language in the rule book that it's like someone who just hates tricky pitchers they're always trying to get by this rule and the rule book is telling umpires watch out for this so i can interrupt you right there yeah actually because i i saw something this morning that i'd forgotten about so uh just cut from the the wikipedia page for box the major league record for the most box in one game is held by Bob Shaw who had five box in a game on May 4th, 1963 while pitching for the Braves against the Cubs. Four of the five

box came when the Cubs' Billy Williams was on base, one in the first inning, then three more in the third inning. In the latter frame, Shaw walked Williams and then proceeded to box him to second, third, and home. Shaw's box were blamed on his difficulty adjusting to a then-new, quote, point of emphasis in the rules. Umpires were told to enforce the section of the balk rule strictly that required the pitcher, when going from the stretch

to the set position, to come to a complete stop with his hands together for one full second before pitching. The rule had been virtually ignored before. Yeah, there's, if you listen to this week's Infinite Inning podcast, Stephen Goldsman's show, he does a good story about how this became an issue with Dizzy Dean and Ford Frick because there was an earlier period where this was briefly enforced and Dizzy Dean really didn't like it and did sort of a protest. So with a lot of the Bach rules, it's like, you know, it can go unenforced for years and then suddenly someone decides, oh, this is in the rulebook. We should actually pay attention to this and send a memo around to the empires.

And then suddenly it becomes a thing again, at least briefly until everyone stops paying attention again. And it's always sort of disruptive. Another kind maybe is just the kind of classic Andy Pettit type pickoff that is often not ruled a block but sometimes is. I mean, when you don't step toward the base that you're throwing to, that is, you know, I guess the rulebook says, at any time during the pitcher's preliminary movements and until his natural pitching motion commits him to the pitch, he may throw to any base provided he steps directly towards such base before making the throw and obviously there are a lot of pitchers who do not step directly toward say first base when they are throwing to first base and i don't know you could say well the base runner should just uh be adept enough to pick out the real ones from the fake ones. But that can be tough because, you know, I guess the extreme version of that,

you could just do your regular pitching motion exactly and just like, you know, step toward home plate almost, but sideways throw to first. And, you know, that would be very deceptive. And if you're going on first movement, as a lot of runners do, and that first movement looks exactly the same as it does during the normal delivery, then, you know, that's definitely deceptive and maybe in a bad way. Right. And I guess if you were a pitcher, you're a left-handed pitcher, this only works for left-handed pitchers, but if you did your leg lift and then you, if you saw the runner going while you were

in your delivery, then you could, in theory, just step anywhere and then throw to first without the block rule. And then you would just have pickoffs at the wazoo. So, now, granted, there are far fewer stolen bases against lefties anyway because the lefty is looking right at you the entire time. It's much, much more difficult to steal against them. So, yeah, I guess your examples convince me in that you don't want to disincentivize the running game. The running game is fun, so you should have some protections in there. But the dropping the ball part of the Bach rule, it's not deceptive in any way. I guess it deceives people into thinking that you're a competent pitcher until you drop the ball, and then it is revealed that actually you are not.

But if you are a runner, what does this look like from the side? you are a runner i get what does this look like from the side you have a glove and you have a hand and then a ball comes out of the glove and then the pitcher suddenly has to respond to it frantically because the ball has escaped but if you drop the ball the ball's not going to go far so no runner is likely to try to advance right at that point because unless like you drop the ball and it hits the top of your cleat then you make a kicking motion at the same time like that would be absurd but realistically ball is not going to go anywhere it's going to go maybe five or ten feet away not far enough for anyone to bother to try to advance and so it seems like it should just be a dead ball ball comes out of your glove umpire waves his hands to the side and says dead ball everyone looks at you you're dumb everyone goes back and the play resumes so i don't i get it like it's a rule every pitcher knows the rule

uh we've seen it with quato saw with oberg saw with other pitchers and so pitchers know they're not supposed to drop the ball just as a rule of thumb if you are playing a sport that isn't basketball don't drop the ball that you're in possession of and if you are playing basketball recover possession immediately. That's the point. This is dribbling. I'm talking about dribbling. Do people dribble anymore

or is it all just passing and running? I don't know. I haven't watched basketball for a while. But in this case, it's a rule in the rulebook. Everybody knows it. I guess I just wonder why it's a rule in the rulebook. I don't know what this saves,

what this accomplishes. It seems, well, anyway, we've talked about this for 10 minutes so we can talk about something else now. Yeah. So, right. The Rockies looked bad. I think we can all agree. I don't know, you know, I'm sure they did want to be there. I'm sure they wanted to win the division more, but they got into the division series and it's all the same once you get to that point. So I think that, you know, we talked coming into the series about how it hurt them that they had their best two starters

used in Game 163 and the wildcard games. So they didn't get to use Marquez until Game 3 and they never got to use Freeland. And so that is bad because they're a strangely constructed team. It's a team with a good starting rotation, but kind of a top-heavy starting rotation, and then a pretty good bullpen, particularly later in the year, and then about three good hitters, and that's it. And they didn't hit.

And, you know, it's not surprising. Like, you look at it and you think, well, this is kind of what we were saying all year long, even though the Rockies' score runs typically. They are not always a good offensive team. It just looks like they are because of Coors Field. And this was not one of the better offensive Rockies teams. And that showed here. Now it's three games and, you know, you can have a very good offensive team that doesn't hit in three games.

So it's not like, oh, yeah, this is exactly what we thought the Rockies were. And this is what they are. And they showed us that in this series. But it's kind of like that. And they didn't get to use Freeland. And the Brewers are, I think, a good team that use the bullpen a lot in this series. And that plays to their advantage. Yeah, it's funny.

You can look at the Rockies. And what really was the problem with them was that they didn't hit the ball at all. They scored in one inning of the 28 innings that they played. And like Sensatella is not Friulianor Marquez and Tyler Anderson is not Friulianor Marquez, but combined those two starters

allowed just three runs in 11 innings. So they were fine. But yeah, the fact of the matter is that the Rockies scored all of two runs. They scored them both against Jeremy Jeffress to force extra innings in they were fine but yeah the fact of the matter is that the the Rockies scored all of two runs they scored them both against Jeremy Jeffress to force extra innings in the first game that's the game that they lost it's a series you look at it and I think the week and the series in particular it went perfectly for the Brewers and I will explain why right now because this is how talking works the Brewers used Brandon Woodruff, Juliusius chassin and and wade miley to start and

the brewers threw 28 innings in the series and combined those starters or in woodruff's case initial out getters whatever i don't we'll work on this they combined for 12.2 innings pitched which is as you'll recognize less than half less than half of the innings that the Brewers threw in the series. And in all three games, they used Corey Knabel, Jeremy Jeffress, Joakim Soria, and Josh Hader. Corbin Burns also pitched in two games. And if you go back to the game 163 against the Cubs, they also used Soria, Knabel, and Hader in that game. So Soria, Knabel, and Hader have thrown in four consecutive games for the Brewers. And now that they swept the Rockies, they get to recover if they have ample downtime. So not only did the Brewers get to use their pitching staff exactly as they wanted to in in the first series, but now they shouldn't have any sort of constraints moving forward into the NLCS, no matter who they face, and they get to do this again. So this is one of those things, when you go into the playoffs,

and I write a post every year where I try to rate the playoff teams based on their actual rosters, but what inevitably trips me up when I do that is that we don't know how heavily the bullpens are going to be used, and in the Brewers' case, the bullpen was used for more than 50% of the innings, which is, I think, how this team is constructed. They have such a deep bullpen, and Corbin Burns has really come on strong. He had a great Sears, even though he only threw four innings, five strikeouts, no walks. He throws really hard. He's one of the Brewers' relievers who does that.

So you look at this team, and it's easy. You look at the pitching staffs against Rockies Brewers, and you think, well, the Rockies have the better rotation, and the rotations throw more innings. Therefore, the Rockies could have the better pitching staff. But they don't, and it was demonstrated because the brewers bullpen is so deep they really don't need even two turns through the lineup out of their starters and so the fact that they were so good so overwhelmingly dominant 30 strikeouts and a walks and 28 innings only 14 hits and two runs allowed now they get all this downtime moving forward this this could not this whole week could not have gone

better for the Brewers, which maybe isn't a surprising thing when they haven't lost for like a half of a month. Yeah. So coming into Monday, we are at league-wide counting all teams, 48.6% of innings this postseason have been pitched by relievers. I am sort of expecting that it will end up over 50, or at least I thought it would end up over 50 coming into this postseason, but even 48.6% would be a record higher than last year, which was a record. And as you noted, the Brewers, they got 12 and two-thirds innings from their starters and 15 and a third innings from their relievers. And really even some of their starter innings were kind of actually reliever innings. So Jay Jaffe pointed out at Fangraphs that they

had the fewest innings pitched by their starting pitchers of any team that has ever won a division series. And that's how they're going to do it. that's how they're constructed to have to do it and you know it worked perfectly fine in this series and so it's unfortunate for the Rockies that they are gone so soon but you know if you believe in regular season performance determining postseason performance then this is just in the sense that the Rockies were the team with the lowest run differential in the majors that was in positive territory. So no other team had a positive run differential, but a lower positive run differential. So the Diamondbacks had a higher one, the Cardinals had a higher one, The Rays had a higher one. The Nationals had a higher one.

All those teams you could make a pretty good case were actually better than the Rockies and did not end up in the playoffs. So Rockies had been outscored for most of the season just up until their really good run at the end that got them here. So, you know, it's kind of weird that they were here at all. So that probably doesn't make Rockies fans feel any better, but that is kind of, you know, they were sort of the team that we thought they were in this series.

Yeah, pretty clearly they were the weak link of the teams that made it into series play, and now they are gone. I mean, to whatever extent that we want the playoffs to reward the better teams, that makes sense. As you said, the now they are gone. I mean, to whatever extent that we want the playoffs to reward the better teams, that makes sense. As you said, the Rockies are gone. They would have been the real underdog coming in. Something I didn't realize as it was happening, but maybe you realize this, Christian Jelic in the series,

he had eight at-bats and he had six walks and zero strikeouts. So Christian Jelic has continued his Bondsian stretch. He is into his third consecutive. I mean, this has been going on since what? The All-Star break, essentially. So we're at like three solid months of seeing Barry Bonds, kind of. It's a bit of a different process, but not really. Not in terms of the outcomes.

So I don't know how much more Bonds Jelic has in him, but outcome so i don't know how much more bonds yelich has in him but maybe i don't know it is a coincidence that yelich was coached by barry bonds in miami but maybe maybe bonds like bit him in the neck one day and it just took a while to infect or i don't know make better i don't know what is it like a virus you know these things better than i do but would you say that you're infected by a superpower? It's kind of a philosophical question, I guess. If you saw Venom this weekend, I guess in Venom, it does seem like sort of an infection. It's a symbiote. But in most cases, I don't know, I guess it changes your DNA. So at that point, probably not an actual infection anymore it varies case by case basis

but Jay also had a stat that the Rockies had the second fewest total bases ever produced in a division series they had 18 total bases in this series and the Rangers had 16 in

losing to the 98 Yankees so whatever way you use to slice it and rank their offensive performance, it was lousy. And I'm kind of sorry that Kyle Freeland didn't get another chance to pitch in the series just because he's been so impressive. And obviously he's living his childhood dream with his childhood team. And you kind of got the sense from his short rest start that he could just pitch every day and be fine. I'm sure that's not the case, but he looked like that. So, you know, coming into game three, it seemed like, yeah, the Rockies are down 0-2, but they have a pretty big starting pitcher advantage in games three and in a hypothetical game four so it wasn't unrealistic to think that they could get back in the series but you have to hit to do that and they did not you mentioned and jade mentioned the 1998 rangers let's just just for a moment the texas rangers in 1998 they made the alds remember there was no wild card round at that point so they

made the alds they faced the yankees they They were outscored 9-1, and they were swept. They lost 2-0, 3-1, and then 4-0. The next year, they get all the way back to the ALDS. They face the Yankees, and they're outscored 14-1, and they're swept in three games. They lost 8-0, 3-1, and 3-0. I can't imagine how it feels to make the playoffs two years in a row, see the same opponent, have the same outcome, and score a total of two runs in six games. The teams, I looked at every series ever completed,

and the teams with the fewest runs scored in a completed series, it's a tie between the 1998 Texas Rangers and the 1999 Texas Rangers, both in the LDS, both against the Yankees, both having scored one run. The Braves had a chance to uh had the Braves been shut out on Sunday by the Dodgers then they would have been the worst they would have scored a total of zero runs or three consecutive shutouts but of course they did not get shut out in large part thanks to Ronald Lacuna and also Sean Newcomb but I don't know how much we should talk about that since there will have been another game by the time this podcast goes up but I don't know yeah what

do you want to say well Twins fans probably know the feeling of being shut down by the Yankees in the postseason too. So it happens. But I was going to say that speaking of not hitting, we could talk about the Cleveland Indians in the same context because they are not hitting either, although they are facing the Houston Astros and a lot of teams don't hit when they face the Astros. So it's, I guess, not quite as glaring. And again, there will have been another game by the time you hear this. Perhaps they will have hit, but when you're going up against Verlander and Cole and maybe the best bullpen in this playoff field, it's not even counting the really good relievers they left off the roster. That is, I guess, somewhat more explicable or excusable.

Right. It's different when you're talking about the Brewers and the Rockies because that series is complete. Now, maybe the Astros-Indian series will be complete by the time this podcast goes up, but I'm more forgiving with two games, and then when there's three and the series is over, it's more official. But yeah, the Astros pitching staff is just in absurdity right i mean we're all on the same page and francisco lindoro is able to hit a home run and whatnot but there's not there's not a weak link like maybe maybe tony sip is like the weak link of the astros pitching staff but he's

only there at a phase like one or two guys realistically. And you look at what the Astros have been able to do. The Indians don't strike out as a team. And like the way that the lineup begins with Brantley, Lindor, and Ramirez, these are not strikeout prone players. But the Indians have already struck out 24 times, 68 bats against the Astros with only four walks. Again, this is all through two games. So if the

Indians erupt in game three so be it it's not our fault it's the Indians fault or Dallas Keuchel's fault but the Astros pitching staff is just so good Garrett Cole uh I can't I can't spoil anything being a Cy Young voter but I would just like to bring everyone's attention back to Garrett Cole because Blake Snell got so much hype down the stretch because of his crazy second half. But Garrett Cole was amazing all season, which Blake Snell wasn't. Justin Verlander also was amazing all season. Ryan Presley was not, but he was very good, and especially down the stretch.

You look at the pictures the Astros have used through two games. Cole, seven innings. Verlander, five and a third innings. Presley, two and a third innings. Osuna, two and a third innings. And McCullers, one inning. I know that the Brewers have a really, really good bullpen, but then the Astros have like the Brewers' bullpen,

but also if the bullpen were a rotation, two. So like this might be, we'll see how it plays out because the Indians have had some really great staffs, but this is a contender for the Astros' pitching staff is a contender for the best ever pitching staff, I think, that has made the playoffs and been constructed for the playoffs. And if somebody gets hurt, they have depth to make up for it, which makes it all the more absurd. Now, like the Indians, you look at them and you've got Kluber, Carrasco.

I don't know what they're doing with Trevor Bauer right now because he's pitched twice out of the bullpen, even though he was supposed to be in the rotation. And Clevenger is in there and like Andrew Miller hasn't looked so healthy. But when he's going well, he's great. And Brad Hand, etc. You can see there are elements of a really, really good pitching staff here. And the Indians have had a great postseason pitching staff before. But the Astros postseason pitching staff is almost genuinely unbelievable. It's going to be incredibly difficult for the Indians to have a chance in this series.

Yeah. I mean, watching them in the first couple of games, it just seems like, oh yeah, this team's going to win the World Series again because they just look that dominant. But of course, next series rolls around or even next game rolls around and they might not look that way anymore but it is a really good team I mean I think that coming into the playoffs we thought they were the best team even though they did not have the most regular season wins they're just so good in every area and they're going to be really tough to beat it's uh it's almost I, it's so hard to repeat as a champion when you have all these different rounds and all the small sample variants and even if you have the best team there's a really good chance that you're not going to win it's different from when you just had to build the best regular season team

and then win one seven game series that was hard but more doable than it is today. There's just an extra few layers of randomness added in there. So if we actually do get repeat champions, that's something that we haven't seen in a while, right? Since the Yankees. So I think that would be quite an accomplishment. And we'll see if the Astros get there. But right now they look very scary. If you were to put yourself in the position of a player,

and let's say, okay, so you're an Astros player and it's 2018, and you just won the World Series. Are you more motivated to try to win the World Series after you've won the first one or after you've won two in a row? Huh, I don't know. I mean, it seems like the first one is special, but if you had a chance at being a dynasty, is three what you need? I mean, it's almost like two is like the qualifier for a dynasty at this point, just because it's so hard. consecutive years so I don't know whether you can count that or not and in the years that they won they often weren't even the best team at least during the regular season so I don't know if that

counts as one I would think that probably the first time I mean after you've won two in a row it's got to seem almost routine right nothing is as enjoyable the third time you do it as the first time or at least as as memorable and special probably so i i think the first time probably so on the one hand the han dynasty lasted 426 years but the sheen dynasty only lasted 15 years so maybe you only need 15 row so i don't know we could we could argue whether it's you have to go for centuries at a time or you've just more a decade and a half is is enough but as an astro i wonder the astros won 15 consecutive world series who would be on all 15 and i will uh i'll begin with alex Bregman as a candidate. Maybe Jose Altuve in some role.

I don't know. We'll talk about this in, I guess, 13 years and see where we are. But yeah, I don't know. I don't know what would count as a baseball dynasty. Two in a row would be incredibly impressive. But I guess, as you were saying, realistically, the National League and the American League are quite different. The National League was better than the American League this year overall because everything counts.

But the American League, I think not secretly, the American League was more top-heavy. The best teams are just better. The best teams in the American League outplayed the National League and interleague play. They are great. I think maybe the Dodgers match up. But outside of that, like the Astros, Indians, Red Sox, and Yankees, and Dodgers are probably the five best teams in baseball.

Four of those are in the American League, eliminating two of one another. I don't know if the Dodgers are going to make the World Series. We'll see if it gets that far, but in a sense, the World Series has the potential to be like a let-up for whoever advances out of the the american league not to say that the team is definitely going to win but as good as the astros are like just imagine if you will uh another alcs between the astros and the yankees and it's great there's not a there's not a weakness in the bunch except i don't know maybe like the yankees fourth starter i guess if jay hap goes out there can be like, this is the game where the Astros have to pounce. But otherwise, like last year's ALCS was great, and there's no reason why this one would be any worse,

not to take anything away from the Red Sox, but I think the Yankees are better. There's a lot of good players in the playoffs is the point. And for all the talk we've already dedicated to the Brewers and the National League, the American League is better. The teams playing are better. Yeah. Well, so as we were just talking about, you can look utterly dominant for a few games

and then not in the next game or the next series. And that's kind of what happened with the Dodgers and the Braves in game three. The Dodgers were incredible. They were just steamrolling over the Braves in the first couple of games. And the Braves were seemingly just chasing everything, like the Dodgers are this ultra-disciplined offensive team and the Braves

not so much, and they were just sort of made to look silly by Clayton Kershaw on Friday, who is a very different pitcher than he used to be, and we can talk about that briefly but in game three of course the Braves win to survive and extend the series 6-5 at times it looked like the Dodgers were going to come back and take it but ultimately the Freddie Freeman solo shot proved the difference but really the big blow was Ronald Acuna's grand slam which I don't want to asterisk the Grand Slam because it was impressive and Acuna's amazing and he's the youngest player to have a Grand Slam in the playoffs ever, right? Beating Mickey Mantle in that category. But man, I don't know what happened to Walker Bueller in that inning. Was it the second inning? And he walked Sean Newcomb, of all people,

candidate for the worst hitting pitcher of many, many terrible hitting pitchers, walked him on four pitches, just seemingly lost the strike zone and went 3-0 on Acuna. And then Acuna just stood up. He was taking all the way. he didn't even get into his crouch and maybe partly because he wasn't in his crouch but also seemingly just because the umpire felt

sorry for him or at least it certainly seemed that way like Gary Sederstrom was the home plate ump and it was like bordering on uncomfortable it was like you, it wasn't like ankyl type wildness. Like he wasn't, you know, throwing the ball to the backstop or anything. But anytime you see a pitcher, particularly a young pitcher in the playoffs, just seemingly unnerved and we can't tell what was going on in Walker Bueller's head. All we can tell is just what is on his face and what happens to his pitches but looked like he just lost the strike zone it was just a bout of wildness at a terrible time to have one and so 3-0 we know that historically speaking the strike zone on 3-0 is much bigger than the strike zone on other counts and you can say that that's bad and it's dumb

and the zone should be the zone and it should never change. But we know that it always does and that umpires do kind of act as a corrective. Like they kind of keep the party that's down in the plate appearance up just by changing the strike zone. So if it's 0-2,

then the strike zone is relatively tiny. And if it's 3-0, the strike zone is relatively huge. And I think that is probably frustrating at times, except that pitchers know it's the case and hitters know it's the case, and it's not really a surprise. So you can plan for it and exploit it if you're smart. And I think it probably makes plate appearances more competitive because as much as we look at the numbers like league-wide on 0-2 and say that once you're down 0-2 you're in big trouble you're probably not going to get on base it would be even more drastic if umpires did not do what they did if the zone were the same on 0-2 as it is on 0-0 then numbers with 0-2 I mean it would be like you could just give up

on a lot of plate appearances once it got to that point. Anyway, that's a digression, but it sure as heck seemed like that 3-0 pitch was just kind of a gift by Sederstrom, just a pure pity strike. And I looked up the numbers in the Baseball Prospectus database, which includes called strike probabilities for every pitch thrown. And it's based on the location and the pitch type and just, you know, where the pitch is historically have pitches there like that been called strikes.

And the called strike probability of this one, the chances that this would be called a strike, 1.8%. So fewer than two out of every hundred pitches like this gets called a strike so maybe it was just a random thing that would have happened happens from time to time but sure seemed like the the context of the situation dictated that call and i guess cedar stream was trying to help bueller but ultimately he probably would have helped him more to call that a ball and walk acuna and force a run-in with the bases loaded than to then have bueller come back with a meatball on 3-1 and have acuna destroy it yeah

this was very nearly uh something that was going to be an article and now at this point it just doesn't matter anymore that much but i I'm looking at comparable video right now because the 2-0 pitch to Acuna was a high fastball, 96 miles per hour. The 3-0 pitch was a high fastball, 98 miles per hour. And I'm looking at the screenshots back to back to back, and they were maybe like one inch apart, maybe two inches. I'm not looking at the actual data, but like the second pitch was maybe a little bit lower,

but there's a body language component here. Maybe also at the 2-0 pitch, Acuna went into a bit of a crouch to make the pitch look higher. At the 3-0 pitch, Acuna just stood up and backed away as the pitch was being delivered. And you never know in a case like this, whether it's because it's the 3-0 zone

that cedarstrom expanded or whether it's because he just didn't approve of ronald acuna assuming the walk now you can see it's hard this is a kind of a bit of a zapruder thing it you can't fault as an umpire i don't think you can't and i don't think cedarstrom did fault acuna for backing away just taking all the way batters do that all the time. Perfectly fine to take all the way. But then Acuna started to walk. This is the 3-0 pitch. Acuna started to walk to first base, and then Cederstrom signaled the strike, and Acuna didn't like that very much.

So it's hard to tell how much of this was Acuna's bad body language, assuming the walk, which no umpire likes. There's Acuna standing up as body language, assuming the walk, which no umpire likes. There's Acuna standing up as the pitch is on the way, which an umpire could kind of rightfully interpret as, well, you just made your zone bigger because look at where your belt is. And that's kind of what the rule is. And then there's the 3-0 pitch aspect. So regardless, it was a call that just about, I can't say it cost the Braves a run because Acuna still had a three-in-one count.

So it cost them a clear fraction of a run, right? I don't know how to run the math here, but it was clearly an important call than the Grand Slam. So it didn't really matter. Like literally the next pitch, it a it was a grand slam but even when that happened the Braves pitching staff is talented in that all pitching staffs are talented but the Dodgers lineup is unbelievably good and even when with the Braves up five nothing I was thinking like this there's a long way for this game to go and there there were multiple points along the way where I thought well now this game is the Dodgers are going to win this game

and Max Muncy at the tying home run in the top of the fifth make it 5-5 of the and then in the top of the sixth Matt Kemp led off with a ground rule double leading off the top of the sixth 5-5 game that's when I went downstairs to have some dinner and i just assumed well the dodgers are going to now win this game so camp doubled he ultimately did not score uh chris taylor grounded out in the top of the sixth the bases loaded to end that inning he granted out in a two and one count and leading off the bottom of the sixth freddie freeman hit a home run but then in the in the top of the eighth aj minter got into a whole bunch of trouble but he got yasiel puig grand out with two on and two out but then in the top of the ninth i don't arodas viscaino had a very bipolar inning the braves were winning 65 at this point and then

viscaino came in and jock peterson worked a tremendous at bat and then ripped a single off the wall one of those almost double kind of singles hit the ball i think 111 miles per hour and then erotis v's kind of walked justin turner and it fell behind max muncie three and oh and i don't have as you and i have talked about before we wish we had like pitch count win expectancies which we don't but yeah when you're behind someone as good as max muncie three and oh with two on and nobody out at the top of the ninth of a one-run game, you are effed as a closer. But Vizcayena, to his credit, was able to work back, and he struck out Max Muncy. Then he struck out Manny Machado. Then he struck out Brian Dozer.

And the inning just flipped immediately. And of course, the pitch that put away Manny Machado was also a wild pitch. And so two runners moved into scoring position with Brian Doster at the plate. So it got interesting. I can't tell how impressed I am by the ninth. Clearly, I'm impressed by the way that the ninth inning played out. But also, Arodas Vizcaino got into a mess of his own making. So it's one of those, I don't know fernando rodney saves in a way where you

think like you did really good to clean up your own mess but yeah i do i like uh the the strikeout pitch and if you didn't see it or if this is a distant memory now because the dodgers and braves have played again in the time since it could be a distant memory but the pitch that machado struck out on was like way it was a breaking ball way out of the zone. Horrible looking chase if you just look at it as a screenshot. But previous to that, the first two pitches of the at-bat were like perfect, low away, I think it was like 98 mile per hour fastballs or something, just absolutely perfect fastballs. then when v scanner threw that that two straight breaking ball that was probably like two feet out of the zone it's a it's a testament to how good stuff is and how similar pitches look because machado's chase swing is something that looks unforgivable but then if you put yourself in his place you've got what two tenths of a second to try to figure out if you're seeing a fastball or a breaking ball. And Vizcayano had already set Machado up to look at a low away fastball that was perfect and 98 miles per hour.

So, I don't know. It was really good pitching right after it was really tense, bad, ineffective pitching. So, I don't know how Vizcayano was able to flip the switch between the 3-0 pitch and then the next one. But really, really fun inning. Really fun game. I'm glad it wasn't another sweep, even though it would have meant that there was no baseball on Wednesday, which I wouldn't have minded. But that's fine. That's just a professional complaint.

But three hours, 36 minutes. But it ended. It was a really fun game. There haven't been, to me, I don't think that there have been a lot of like particularly fun playoff games yet and this is this is i maybe the one that i'm going to remember for for a while and this kind of made it feel more like it's the playoffs now yeah i agree and now the braves will have to face dick mountain to survive and i guess i wanted to say about Kershaw because he looked so good on Friday. I mean, he went eight innings. He allowed two hits, no walks. He threw 85 pitches, so obviously extremely efficient, and 63 of them were strikes, which is a really great ratio. three strikeouts, of course. And so people were saying, how did he only have three strikeouts? Was this actually a good game if you only have three strikeouts in eight innings? And obviously, over the course of a full season, it would be difficult to be good with that sort of ratio

in today's game. But I don't know. I mean, he seemed like he was just inducing weak and frequent contact from the hitters here who, as mentioned, were aggressive and were chasing. And he was just moving pitches around and changing speeds and all the things that you say about pitchers when they are not flamethrowers, which Kershaw is not anymore. And so he is completely adjusted how he is pitched. You know, even when I wrote about him early this season, he had started throwing fewer fastballs, fewer four-seamers, because he just doesn't throw his fastballs hard anymore. And he really went all in on that fastball-averse approach down the stretch with some success. He just throws a ton of sliders now. In that start, he threw 32 four-seamers, according to Brooks Baseball, and 38 sliders. So he now throws, he's like almost Tanaka-esque in his four-seamer avoidance, and he threw

14 curves. So he's probably just not going to get as many strikeouts. And he didn't get as many strikeouts this season because he doesn't have that blistering fastball anymore. hopefully he's entered a period of his career here where he can sustain the success for a while even without the velocity just by you know as the cliche goes being a pitcher not a thrower i mean he was always a pitcher and a thrower i think which is why he's like the best but even if he has just one of those abilities now, he's still pretty good. And, you know, he's got to strike out more than three batters every eight innings he pitches, I think, if he wants to continue to be a great pitcher. But in this game, it just looked like more of an example of the Braves beating themselves or being beaten by Kershaw in a way other than just strictly missing bats. being beaten by Kershaw in a way other than just strictly missing bats.

Right. And if you look at Kershaw during the year, just as a fun little demonstration, on the first pitch of any given plate appearance, he threw his fastball about two-thirds of the time. And against the Braves, he threw it about one-third of the time. Almost half of his first pitches were sliders. So just fun little evidence. It's always interesting to look at single playoff games and see what adjustments are being made for an opponent because if you are if you're the dodgers if you're any playoff team you just have a little extra time to plan for what you're going to do in a given game versus what you do in the regular season when things are just always on the move so pershaw was doing something a little different he never really threw that many sliders on the first pitch during the season, but it's something that he did. And his stuff is just still so good that

I think in any individual game, you can understand that you have hitters who are swinging defensively and you are able to generate soft contact. And I think it's an easy thing to buy for a start at a time or a few starts at a time. The reason it's a hard thing to buy for an entire full season at a time is because we just don't have that much evidence that it's true but if we did have evidence of being able to generate soft contact clayton kershaw has actually always been one of them he's always generated results that suggest that he gets less than perfect contact and it's i think one of the things that makes it so hard to understand why soft contact generation isn't a sustainable skill is because it seems like it it should be you'd think that if you have pitchers you have particular command or particular stuff then you'd think

that there would be more evidence than there is but to kershaw's credit he is one of the people who has always beaten his peripherals. So even if he did suffer from a strikeout decline, he still looks like he would be really, really good. And so I guess we can come back to the conversation of does he opt out? Is it going to come down to this month? I guess I don't know if he's going to pitch again. The Braves could suit the rest of the series. But even there, Kershaw would pitch in game five so we have not seen the last of Clayton Kershaw presumably in

2018 but this is going to be one of the questions that underlies everything I mean he'll probably still return to the Dodgers no matter what but I don't know you are looking at a guy who clearly isn't what he was but he is able to demonstrate that he's still so good so i still don't have an answer but i'm i have clearly gone from he is definitely not opting out to i can actually start to see it again and it's uh it's fun it's fun to be able to put to rest the clayton kershaw playoff narrative but i guess dav David Price is picking it up for Kershaw. Yeah, well, about that, we should transition to that series. But I have a listener email that is relevant here.

So James says, I just watched David Price get pulled in the second inning of his most recent rough playoff start, and it got me thinking, which pitcher has the biggest gap between his regular season and postseason ERAs? Somehow this is the hardest thing to find of all time. In fact, even finding the highest postseason ERAs, which I could then just compare by hand, is impossible, at least to my best hour-long research. Do you guys know how to find these numbers? I'm honestly curious if anyone has as poor a split as Price, at least in as many innings, because I kind of don't think there is anyone else out there like him. And James is right. We've talked about this before, I think. Postseason stats, like as far as most stat sites are concerned,

and you can lump fan graphs in here if you want, just like don't exist. It's like, it's so hard to, I mean, we have so many incredibly detailed numbers on everything now down to the batted ball. But if you just want to find out like how good a pitcher has been in the postseason, I mean, you can look up his postseason record, but it's really hard to do like complicated queries with postseason information just because, you know, historically like we look at regular season stats and postseason information just because historically we look at regular

season stats and postseason stats are sort of unofficial in a sense. I mean, they have a lot of impact on certain pitchers' reputations, which is the funny thing. How you perform in October, I mean, when you think of certain guys, it's like the first thing you think about them is, oh, he's an incredible playoff pitcher, or he was a terrible playoff pitcher. And yet the stats themselves are hard to find, which I guess makes sense historically, because there didn't used to be as many playoff stats. There was only one playoff series for most of baseball history, and the Yankees were in it every year so you didn't really have to look at at postseason stats as much now you kind of do but anyway my solution when I

can't find something as always is to ask Dan Hirsch for it because he has access to the baseball reference database and he was able to look this up easily or or I assume it was easy. I shouldn't assume, probably, but he sent it to me quickly, and he sent me a list of just every player's regular season stats and postseason stats for players who pitched in the postseason. But I limited it to 75 innings, which just so happens to be exactly David Price's innings count in the postseason, now 75. exactly David Price's innings count in the postseason, now 75. So there have been 53 pitchers to date, I believe, who have thrown at least 75 innings in the playoffs, obviously skewed toward recent years and Yankees who were in the playoffs every year. But the biggest differentials in that wrong direction, number one, David Price, who has a postseason ERA now of 5.28 and a regular season ERA of 3.25. That is a 2.03 run difference.

Number two, Clayton Kershaw. What do you know? 130 innings in the postseason. innings in the postseason. That is a 4.08 ERA in the postseason, which is actually 1.69 worse than his 2.39 regular season. So they are the only two guys in playoff history with this many innings who have been a run worse in the playoffs than they were in the regular season, which kind of tells you that's why we've been talking about David Price and Clayton Kershaw in the playoffs for seemingly forever now. It's because they really are outliers in the sense, which, you know, we can continue to argue year after year about whether this means anything. And it seems like Kershaw is now changing the narrative to the point where

I think he's had enough good playoff starts lately that he's not being tagged with this so much, but poor Price is not. And just in terms of pure results and earned runs allowed, there is a reason why those two guys get so much scrutiny. And I'll just note, this is kind of interesting, there are eight pitchers in this many innings who have an era at least half a run worse in the postseason but there are 22 pitchers who have an era at least half a run better than their regular season era in the playoffs which you might think is weird because like a yeah the the weather is colder and maybe that suppresses run scoring, but the opponents are better. So you would think that on the whole pitchers would be a little worse in the playoffs. So it sounds sort of strange that there would be 22 guys who were that much bad in the playoffs, you A, don't get postseason starts, and B, your team probably just gets eliminated and you don't have the chance to

accrue 75 playoff innings. So it's just skewed in that way, but that's why it looks like that. But it goes Price, Kershaw, and then the other guys with half a run worse ERAs in the playoffs, Kevin Brown, Al Leiter, Don Gullet, Roger Clemens, Pedro Martinez, and Max Scherzer. And then the bottom of the list, or the best part of the list, guys who've been better in the playoffs ERA-wise, Waite Hoyt is at the top, 1.76 runs better. top 1.76 runs better and then you get orlando hernandez el duque mariano rivera steve avery kurt schilling dave stewart red roughing christy matthewson art neff bob gibson cliff lee john lester david wells madison bob garner i could go on but i won't so uh one thing let's just see if i can run some math here so uh el duque hern, for example, has a career postseason ERA of 2.55. That's very good. His career regular season ERA is 4.13. But, of course, he threw almost all of his postseason innings between 1998 and 2002 with the Yankees,

during which his regular season ERA was actually almost the same as his as his career era so that was a bad example to bring up but I wonder I wonder if in a case like this one of the potential small sources of bias I don't think that you said that these were when you don't make the postseason in every season that you pitch in the regular season of course and so one of the potential pitfalls here is that you could have your regular season numbers based on seasons in which you didn't make the playoffs and maybe some of those seasons are going to be worse and so if you have guys who have a better era in the playoffs well maybe they only pitched in the playoffs in the seasons in which they were better pitchers but anyway this is all theoretical i haven't tested it nor do i care to test it with someone like david price what's interesting is it's really

easy to be analytically dismissive of the playoff narrative. And in Price's case, here's why. In the playoffs, compared to what he's been during the regular season, his strikeout rate is almost exactly the same. His walk rate is almost exactly the same. And that's all you need to know. If you look at Mariano Rivera, for example, his postseason career versus regular season career, his strikeout and walk numbers did almost exactly the same thing, except that in the playoffs, Mariano Rivera was not easy to make good contacts against, and David Price has apparently been much easier to make good contact against for reasons I can't explain.

But David Price's regular season career BABIP is 287. His career postseason BABIP is 288, which is interesting. So what this really almost all comes down to is that in the regular season, David Price is allowed basically one, he's allowed 0.9 home runs per nine innings. And in the playoffs, that's almost doubled. And so when you allow home runs, there's nothing worse for a pitcher to do than allow home runs. But you look at Price, and in the playoffs, he's thrown those 75 total innings with the bad ERA and a bunch of home runs. And if David Price just did this in the first half of a season, we would look and say, well,

it looks like most of his numbers are normal. And he's just, this is all based on like the flukiest numbers, like the noisiest numbers that we have. So when someone's home run rate is out of control, we generally assume, well, that's probably nothing. So if David Price were to be given another 75 innings, based on all the analytical principles that I've ever been taught, I would assume, well, he's going to be good. He's going to be David Price. Where this gets interesting is you wonder, now, to a certain extent, David Price pitching in relief last year in the ALDS. I know the Red Sox lost, but Price threw six and two-thirds shutout innings of relief over a couple of appearances.

He was quite good. He had six strikeouts. He just looked like a good pitcher, like David Price is supposed to look, except out of the bullpen, like the first year he ever made the playoffs but yeah you wonder at a certain point if the conversation gets so i don't know omnipresent and just negative that it yeah i could see how a narrative could start to almost become real as it pervades david price's brain like now there's the every single time he takes the man of the playoffs if he ever gets the opportunity again this is all i was going to talk about until he does something great and then realistically he'll need to do it a few times until it's uh till it's killed then people move

on to whoever is next in line but i'd not to suggest that david price is especially vulnerable to what would essentially amount to like peer. But I do wonder if these things can become self-fulfilling because even if you are able to identify, like, I've just had bad luck and I know that I'm better than this, it's likely to now be in the back of his head more than ever because when you go an inning and two thirds and you get booed off the mound

against the Yankees at home in the ALDS, it doesn't matter how unlucky you might have been in the start. Maybe Price's stuff was fine, but that's the kind of thing that you would think would have to linger. And for Price, he knows his team hasn't won the games he started in the playoffs. He knows that full well. So I am forever on the player side of these conversations because I think it's just cruel and unfair to see this guy

can't perform in the clutch David Price can perform in the clutch his very first year as a rookie he performed in the clutch with the Rays but that being said there is no ignoring the results and I think that even though it is somewhat cruel to just pick on David Price I don't think that it's an uninteresting conversation, if that makes sense. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it has to be demoralizing just to get booed off the mound after you've been your team's best pitcher, certainly in the second half of the season. I don't want to say that they're there because of David Price, because they won so many games that he probably could have just disappeared and they would have made the playoffs anyway, but he was consistent and good, and all of that is just wiped away by one lousy playoff start,

which is just the unfortunate reality of how players are perceived. Those games are important, and they're what fans remember, and if you have this reputation and another start confirms the reputation, then it's going to lead to boos. And as you said, he has made big starts in his career. So it's hard to say that he's a choker and he can't perform under pressure because he has. And Joe Sheehan just wrote about this, kind of the history of Price in big games. I mean, you can go back to his college career, and he won big games in must-win situations. And then, as you mentioned,

when he came up in 2007, just after being drafted, he was really good out of the bullpen for the Rays. And then in, what was it, 2013, he pitched the tiebreaker against the Rangers, and he pitched a complete game to get the race into the playoffs that year. That was a big start. That doesn't count as a playoff start, but it was a must-win. It might as well have been a playoff start, and he was great. And then,

as you also alluded to, there was last year in the ALDS when the Red Sox were down 2-0 to the Astrosros and Doug Pfister got knocked out and then Price came in and threw four shutout innings and the Red Sox won. pressure but then the next time doesn't i don't know or is it just that i mean it's not a tiny sample but it's a small sample compared to his overall record and he has inarguably been worse and less successful and his teams are 0-10 in the playoffs in games that he's started that is as joe gerardi used to say it's not what you want. Granted, as Joe Sheehan pointed out, Price's teams have scored a total of 21 runs in those 10 games. So that is DeGromian run support.

But I think that it's kind of a complicated legacy. And you kind of just root for the player, you know, aside from rooting for any particular team, you root for the player to shed this label because you don't want him to have to spend the rest of his life as this guy who's perceived as someone who couldn't perform in the postseason when he did so many other things well. And there are these counterexamples. So still hoping he gets out from under this. But at this point in his career, he's already kind of dug a deep hole for himself here. I can't imagine.

David Price is not going to opt out because that would be stupid. He's got a lot of money coming his way after the opt-out clause. He's going to take it from the Red Sox. He might have to just to escape the city. I mean, that's what I've imagined. Like, it's virtually automatic. He will not opt out because there's so much money. He will not match that money as a free agent.

But that doesn't mean he's not going to have, like,'t know maybe he'll just go off the grid go to like a chinese garden in the city and just like sit and meditate and think is this what i need to do to myself because no matter what with david price pitches down the line if he makes the playoffs again in the future this is going to follow him everywhere either until he retires or until he he does better it's unfortunate for him that that tiebreaker game doesn't count as a playoff game because it effectively was but it does skew everything it would end it would it would cut that losing streak that he has like in half or or something like that so that much is too bad david price knows that he has performed in in big spots before but i would uh he would if not for the like 100 plus million dollars we'd be talking about sure would be tempting to just leave boston behind

because it seems like david price will forever have to be perfect to escape criticism in boston which is not unique to him it's kind of how it is for almost every player in in boston but i mean i don't know what what does he have left four years and like 114 million or something like that the specific number doesn't matter i think that's more or less what it is but i mean if he could get four years and 80 million as a free agent is it worth 28 million dollars just go away from boston and it's the answer is no but that doesn't mean that he's not going to at least think about it yeah so if you had told anyone that the red sox starter was going to last an inning and two-thirds you would have expected this to be more of a blowout than it ended up being since we were all talking about how bad boston's bullpen is and they kept it close

until the seventh when gary sanchez hit his second home run of the game and should have counted for two because it was so long. Was it 479 feet over the monster? I didn't think that Aaron Judge's home run earlier in that game would be topped in the same game, but it was. The Yankees are just so big. They're just so large. The Yankees are just so big. They're just so large. They have so many players who are just towering over everyone and throwing super hard and big and Batances is huge. And I don't know, it's just, it's kind of a fun, just almost superhuman sort of roster. And I was thinking, like, I wish there were more ballparks that you could hit home runs out of, because I really enjoy just aesthetically the sight of a ball being hit entirely out of a ballpark. And I was trying to think, because Sanchez's homer left Fenway,

which is not unusual, but it left it in a part of the park where it is unusual because he hit it pretty close to center field and it still left. How many ballparks are there where you can actually hit a ball out? Like, obviously, there's Fenway, there's Wrigley, Dodger Stadium, you can occasionally hit a ball out. Like obviously there's Fenway, there's Wrigley, Dodger Stadium, you can occasionally hit a ball out. I know that Stanton's hit a ball out of there, Piazza hit a ball out of there. So those are perhaps not coincidentally the oldest ballparks. You can technically homer out of all those. You can homer out of AT&T, you can homer out of pnc and those are good because then you get the the splash landings but there aren't many others that i can think of you can hit it out of minute made yeah that's

true racks right when yeah you can hit it out of minute made i guess when the roof is open, it doesn't happen often, but it has happened. Camden Yards, I guess you can kind of hit it out of, like you can hit it onto Utah Street, which is like between the ballpark and the factory, the warehouse. park like it's closed to traffic it's like where fans are milling around and having food and stuff so i i don't know if that technically counts as out of the ballpark it's it's kind of part of the ballpark but i don't know i i can't think of because most of the modern parks have like a concourse out past the outfield seats and so it's really hard to get it over that too so i don't know that there are many others maybe target field can you get a ball out of target i don't know you can hit it out of safeco above the left field bleachers it takes a lot but i think yeah people have done it in batting practice uh-huh yeah yeah occasionally you hear about the batting like there's uh there have been yankee stadium home runs that left in batting practice, like in that little sliver where you can see the subway.

You can see the train go by. I don't know that anyone has done that in a real game. No one wants a home run hit out of the stadium through a sliver. It's got to be over something. Right. Yes. Yeah. It's such a magnificent sight.

And I guess if you could do it in every ballpark, it wouldn't be. It wouldn't be as impressive. It's rare and special when it happens. I mean, I think in this genre of home runs, I don't think anyone can top the Glenn Allen Hill homer in 2000 that he hit not only out of Wrigley and across Waveland Avenue, but onto the rooftop of a neighboring building. That, I mean, I don't know what was coursing through Glen Ellen Hill's bloodstream when he hit that ball. I think you know. And I don't know what was in the ball, for that matter, at that point in baseball history. But just in terms of sheer— that might be my favorite home run

to watch ever i mean not like for drama it was a may regular season home run but just in sheer i mean the power that ball just i i don't i guess the the estimate i don't know exactly how far it is said to have gone but it looks like it was just farther than any estimate i don't know exactly how far it is said to have gone, but it looks like it was just farther than any estimate. I don't know. I love that homer. I'll link to it. If you haven't watched it lately, just revisit the Glenallen Hill homer. There's an old homer that was hit when I was growing up.

It was Mark McGuire and the Kingdome against Randy Johnson. I don't have a video in front of me, and I didn't even get to see it because there was no MLB TV at the time. front of me and i didn't even get to see it because there was no mlb tv at the time but at least the way that it was conveyed to me the story is that mark mcguire hit a ball essentially through the back wall of the kingdom just like through the concrete and like i know there's a lot more that goes into these things like pitch velocity doesn't really add much to fly ball distance you know we've alan nathan we have to thank for that research but like if you if you think about like the the biggest home run that ever would have been hit, you essentially think of someone like Mark McGuire making perfect contact against someone like Randy Johnson. And so that's one of those ones that I don't know, maybe video exists out there with as far as Sanchez is concerned.

I will say it was there's a funny sequence and Sanchez might be a little upset with himself because in the top of the fifth inning against Ryan Brazier, Sanchez was behind and he stepped out of the box and Brazier called him he was like get the F back in the box and Sanchez came up and took like a mammoth swing and struck out swinging and then he came back and he hit the ball out of the ballpark in the seventh against Eduardo Rodriguez if he could have just switched the sequence of that I'm sure he would have been thrilled yes definitely yeah he did style the homer a little bit he watched that one go which is probably not unrelated to being told to get back in the box but anyway just impressive power displays all around for the yankees which was the case in the wild card game too john carl stanton just doesn't really look together right now he just kind of looks like he's screwed up mechanically, but that could

change at any point, and then you'd have a really intimidating lineup. So this is a toss-up as we speak. The first game in the series was a one-run game, and this one was more competitive than the final score makes it look. So exciting series, and we thought it was pretty even coming in and it is even as we speak so i don't really know what will happen here but chris sale we we talked a lot about chris sale and he got his velocity back he you know wasn't throwing the hardest he's ever thrown but i think it was his highest average velocity since april i believe, in this game. It was like 94 something. So either he was sandbagging and taking it easy during September, or he really did fix his mechanical issues, or the playoff stage amped him up. I don't know what it was, but he was good.

And he couldn't get past recording, what, the 15th out, which is going to be a problem because he hadn't even pitched in the sixth inning since July. And I know that the Red Sox wanted to get as much length as possible to stay out of that bullpen, but I just don't know that he can give you that at this point. But just five innings of really good pitching was enough for them in that game barely so he looked back to well close enough to his his usual self it's funny the red sox won 108 games during the regular season and as far as i can tell the the two prevailing narratives about the series is that david price can't pitch in the playoffs and the red sox have a terrible bullpen and it's like people just assume that the Red Sox are like screwed in this series. And they're tied with the Yankees who are also very, very good.

And I just have this natural instinct to disagree with like any narrative that pops up. I don't know if it's just some sort of like instinctive contrarianism or something. But like the Red Sox don't have like a Brewers bullpen. They don't have a Yankees bullpen. But their bullpen is fine. It's like probably as good or better than four of the five bullpens in the National League. They still have Craig Kimbrell in their bullpen. Of course, they don't have one of those super bullpens like you see in the American League.

But like, you know, you'd think, oh, the Indians bullpen is great. And then Andrew Miller comes out and looks like garbage when he pitches. And so the narrative, just if you hear a narrative just to just don't don't don't pay attention to it i don't know it's weird that the red sox have always been swung as some sort of like underdog against the yankees because they are coming off like a franchise best season i don't know i think the yankees are a little bit better i think the yankees are more likely to win the series by a small amount but the red sox have enough pitching they should and could be fine and if they lose well the yankees have like an absurdly good lineup we can talk all we

want about like the yankees analytics and how forward thinking they are but they basically just like you said they just got giants they just got people who hit the ball the hardest and they got people who throw the ball the hardest and they're like look at us we're brilliant like this this didn't take necessarily that much in the way of work and player development. It turns out that at its core, putting together a baseball roster is not that complicated. You just get people who hit the ball hard and throw the ball hard. But I do wonder. You mentioned Jean-Claude LeSan, who struck out five times in the series out of 10 at-bats so far.

And I kind of stopped paying attention to him during the year. But it is of some note that his strikeouts went backwards this season. He lost all of the gains that he made last year with the Marlins, and he went back to striking out three times as often as he walked. He went back to striking out 30% of the time. Giancarlo Stanton, very fun player. Probably not exactly what the Yankees thought they were trading for, so that's just one of those things to watch.

I know people gave the Marlins a lot of crap for that trade, and it would be fun to have him still in a Marlins uniform, but I don't think that they're too upset about getting out from underneath that contract because this has a pretty good chance of going wayward, but that's something for us to talk about maybe in the in the winter time yeah i wouldn't be shocked if he recovers somewhat and has a pretty i mean he was pretty good but i wouldn't be surprised if he has a better offensive season somewhere in his future before the decline comes but it's it's a little scary that he went the wrong way. So anyway, we have talked for quite a while, it turns out. Yeah, we did it.

Yeah, wow. All right. So I guess we can end here. And next time we will have more baseball to talk about. I don't know. I'm probably going to go to game four of the Yankees-Boston series. So I don't know. Maybe we'll talk after that and do emails and get back up to speed and preview some championship series.

We will play it by ear, but we will be back to talk to you sometime soon. Okay, so quick PSA. It looks like Jeff and I will be doing our first of two playoff live streams this Friday, Friday evening. That'll be NLCS Game 1. So if you are a Patreon supporter at the $10 level or above, anytime before Friday, you will get a message from us with a link to that live stream. It'll just be me and Jeff and maybe some guests chatting while we watch the game

and while you watch the game, taking questions from listeners in the chat room. Those are always fun. Looking forward to it. As I speak these words, the Astros have already eliminated the Indians. The Dodgers look like they're on the verge of eliminating the Braves. So nothing we said in today's episode is really all that different now. Meant to mention, by the way, I sort of screwed up the stat blast last time. I said something backwards, was the listener email from Jacob about 100 lost teams defeating 100 win teams after they both got to those century marks. Just to clear up any confusion, the Orioles, of course, did it twice this year.

They beat both Boston and Houston after getting to their 100th loss. The five previous times that that had happened, it was the Athletics beating the Yankees, not the other way around. In 1954, that happened twice. And then Boston beating New York in 1932. And St. Louis beating the Cubs in 1907 twice. And then Boston beating New York in 1932 and St. Louis beating the Cubs in 1907 twice. I think I said the Browns by mistake last time. It was actually the Cardinals. Cardinals beat the Cubs twice. So those are the seven times that a hundred loss team has beaten a hundred win

team. Thanks to those of you who pointed out that that came out wrong. I'm working with playoff brain combined with book brain. It is not a good combination. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Following five listeners have already done so. Ian Larson, Timothy Cullen, Ben Lennertz, Elaine Maddox, and Brennan Jordan. Thanks to all of you. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild. And you can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. I haven't seen a new review in a while.

Keep them coming if you haven't left one yet. You can contact me and Jeff via email at podcast.fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. And we will be back a little later this week. In the middle of a lonely night Got caught in the hallway light For a minute you were getting close I suspect I've seen a ghost Later this week. Singing April, May and June Bye-bye, that's your only tune.

Singing April, May, and June, my love, you come and go. Seasons change and flowers grow. By and by, the highway glow. You roll fast, but the night rolls slow.