Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1281: The Scary Sac Fly

Episode Date: October 11, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about an engaging Game 4 of the ALDS and sum up the Red Sox-Yankees series, the end of Astros-Indians, and the ALDS as a whole. Then they answer listener emails about working the count and avoiding the bullpen, why broadcasts don’t give screen time to streakers, and the best […]

And I can't go back, and I don't want to, because all my mistakes, they brought me to you. That brought me to you Hello and welcome to episode 1281 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello! I'm sorry that you don't get to see any more playoff baseball in person. Well, about that, I didn't actually see game four of the ALDS in person. I did something to my neck. I don't know what it was. It's one of those things where you hurt yourself and you don't feel it at the time and then you feel it later.

So I must have done something at the gym and then I left the gym and then pain started and pain got worse and pain is still bad. then pain started and pain got worse and pain is still bad. Podcasting through pain, but I'm kind of walking around very stiffly like C-3PO and turning my entire body when I want to look at something instead of turning my head. So I figured it wouldn't be the best time to be in the press box. So you were a late scratch for press row, but yeah, I did the same thing last week also in the gym. And I can tell you that neck injuries like back injuries are those injuries where you don't necessarily think so much about them at the time until shortly thereafter you realize that your neck and back are involved in pretty much every movement that your body does. And they engender next to no sympathy from anybody else. You can't tell someone, I hurt my neck, and then expect a conciliatory hug or something. It's just like, no.

That's the last thing you want. You don't want anyone to touch you. That's okay. That's a fair point. But when you say, oh, I hurt my neck, then that just goes in one ear and out the other because nobody absorbs that information. If you had a brace on your neck, you just kind of play. Anyway, so baseball happened.

I will say my editor was very sympathetic and she offered to just let me take the night off. But I bravely offered to blog through it and I did. But I don't know. We could talk more about being in the gym. How much do you bench, bro? Let's talk about baseball. Let's not talk about that. No.

I can, I actually, I think I hurt my neck because I was, I have my main computer in front of me bench bro let's talk about baseball let's not talk about that no i can all right i'd actually i think i hurt my neck because i was uh i have my main computer in front of me and then my baseball watching computer to the left and then i was just kind of staring to the left and i think that's what did it because when you have those like four game in a row marathon days it's not yeah it's already not good to be sitting at a computer but when you're sitting at a computer and like turned with your head yeah it really so gary sanchez almost hit a grand slam in the ninth inning. Yeah. So let's start with the Yankees losing to the Red Sox because I wrote about it.

Don't know if you did, but it was an exciting game in the end, although it wasn't for much of it. And well, we'll talk about the division series round as a whole. But this game, I mean, it ended up being a one-run win. And so whenever there's a one-run win, you can point to times when it could have gone differently and something different could have happened. And if Gleyber Torres were a little faster, I thought Gleyber Torres was faster before this last play. And then he was not fast. I looked it up and yeah he's not all that fast despite being young and a shortstop sometimes but if he had been half a

step faster maybe the ninth inning gets extended if Gary Sanchez had hit that ball a couple millimeters lower or something then maybe that ball goes out instead of being at the wall. If Brett Gardner jumped a little bit better or more accurately, then maybe he catches that Ian Kinsler double. So there were lots of times you could point to and say that, forget about managerial decisions, but things could have happened differently without changing too much. Yeah, it's the Sanchez one is what sticks with me, but that was a slow, well, I shouldn't say slow. That was actually remarkably fast for a Red Sox-Sanchez game. That game was kind of cruising along until the ninth inning.

And it was boring. Nothing happened. There were no real threats. The Red Sox went up early and then just kind of hung there. And I was just pleading that something interesting would happen toward the end. And God bless Craig Kimbrell for coming through for for all of us but for a division series round that we will talk about at least it did end on a high note I mean that I know it didn't end on a high note for for Yankees fans but that was as compelling a half inning as I have watched in a

very long time now if it had happened in a game five or maybe a game seven that's the only way it could have really been better but I mean from from start to finish you've got a pitcher who's just trying his hardest to get nobody out against hitters who just either just barely mishit a would-be walk-off grand slam versus then i think we all thought glaber torres was faster than he actually is and we can we can talk that, just that bottom of the ninth alone, for an entire hour. But I can't believe when Eduardo Nunez was with the Yankees, he was one of the worst defensive infielders that has ever played the infield. Not like Ryan Braun bad, but so bad that he couldn't play shorts up, but just barely good enough to stay in the infield, unlike Ryan Braun. Just a dreadful defensive infielder. Absolutely terrible.

Throwing error problem, if I recall. And then for him to make that play on the swing. We don't even have to go back to when he was on the Yankees, right? We could go back to, what was it? Game one? So that was, or game two? It was game two, right? Game two when he had throwing errors and was really shaky at third base, even though he was weirdly supposedly in there for defense, which he's never graded well at. But yeah, I mean, even in this series, he showed that he is not a defensive specialist by any stretch. Right. And so when Gleyber Torres hit his ground ball, there was 0% chance of me thought that Eduardo Nunez would be able to turn that play into an out. And when he threw the ball, I thought, there's no way that ball is not getting away.

And I thought that the Yankees are going to score with a tying and, I don't know, at that point, maybe even winning run on an Eduardo Nunez throwing error. But Nunez made a play I didn't think he could make. He apparently hurt himself in the process, which is something that happens when you get into your 30s. Sorry, everyone, if you're in your 30s, but you already know what I'm talking about. You just hurt yourself doing the things that you're supposed to be doing normally. So that play was shocking, I can tell you. Nunez, in his career as a second baseman, his negative 22 defensive runs saved.

So that's 22 runs below average as a second baseman and less than a full season equivalent. He's 10 runs below average third base. He's 42 runs below average at shortstop. And for good measure, he's been a below average left fielder when he's done that, which he did with the Giants last season. So Eduardo Nunez cannot play any position particularly well. He's racked up throwing errors through the years, but still, I don't know if it's poetic. It's kind of the opposite of poetic, but for Nunez to make that play and then for Steve Pierce, I don't know. I mean, you were watching the game to see Steve Pierce's face as he's in slow motion as the throw is arriving. Just an incredible way for that game to end all around, except for the instant replay review, which is just always a bummer.

Yeah, right. Well, yeah, and so Kimbrel got a beer shower coming in, or at least was very close to one, and then he didn't seem to have any command of his breaking ball, and at a certain point he just started throwing fastballs, and that worked pretty well for him he got helped out by John Carlos Stanton who swung at really two pitches that he had no business swinging at but particularly one that was just way I mean he waved at it and there was

like a lot of daylight between the end of his bat and the ball, which was a problem for him throughout the series. I figured out last night as I was working on this and Zach Cram, my colleague, was helping me look it up that his chase rate, I think according to what we could tell at the time before the websites updated, was 59.4% in this series, which is more than double his regular season rate he just I know he got a couple hits in one game but he just never really looked comfortable never looked right and you know you can scapegoat him I guess you can scapegoat really a lot of the offense we'll talk about that but in this ninth inning specifically he was the one who really didn't hold up his end of the

bargain and had an easy out and didn't advance anyone, and that was pretty ugly. Otherwise, people were working counts. They were getting hit by balls. Didi Gregorius had a single through the infield, and I don't know. Kimbrel has been in high-pressure situations many times in his career. Not many as high-pressure as this one, but I don't know. He looked like he was somewhat unnerved, but it's really hard to tell from face and body linkage whether someone actually is. So this was like an old school Yankees working the count, passing the baton,

and everyone kind of getting a rally going with really only one hit and a ground ball hit at that. And they scored two runs and left two runs on base, including the tying run in scoring position. So that's almost a more painful way to lose than if they just had never mounted the rally at all. The Luke Voigt walk in the bottom of the ninth was, to me, just a really tremendous plate appearance. And I know ultimately the Yankees lost. But if you look at game day, for Voigt and for Aaron Judge, who led off the inning, they drew four pitch walks. And four pitch walks are bad for any pitcher. That's not a good sign.

Pitchers who rack up four pitch walks tend to be bad pitchers. Craig Kimbrell, not a bad pitcher. But he walked Voigt on four pitches, Voigt being right-handed against Kimbrell. So that's not easy. And if you look at the game day plot, and this was evident watching the game as well, you just took four pitches that were like just barely low and away. And I know that when you get to 3-0, maybe that's a relatively easy take. That's not the pitch you're looking for. But to lay off the pitches to that point was really tremendous on Voight's part. And then for Kimbrell

to come out and just drill Neil Walker with the first pitch of the next plate appearance, that's when it seemed like everything was going off the rails. Like Giancarlo San just kind of gave Kimbrell the one let-up in an inning that was ultimately going to go against him. But the Gary Sanchez plate appearance is worth talking about here because Kimbrell got it with the bases loaded. And at that point, the game was, what, 4-2?

So it went out 4-2, bases loaded. Sanchez comes up. Kimbrell did his with the bases loaded and at that point the game was what four to two so one out four to two bases loaded Sanchez comes up Kimbrell did his job pretty well early on he got ahead of Sanchez 0-2 immediately with two high fastballs and as the count ran longer and Sanchez ultimately worked a full count against Kimbrell and Kimbrell wanted to throw a full count high fastball that's Kimbrell's bread and butter he's got a low breaking ball and he's got a high fastball and that's what he does. That's what he's been doing for however long Craig Kimbrell has been in the league. He's been one of the most unhittable relievers. But the full count fastball, the seventh pitch of the plate appearance that was supposed to be somewhere up by Sanchez's belt, the pitch that he had swung through the first two pitches of the plate appearance,

Kimbrell put over the middle of the plate roughly mid- maybe lower mid thigh i don't know the exact dimensions of gary sanchez's thighs he's a catcher he's got big thighs the kimbrough just essentially grooved a full count fastball swinging count 98 miles per hour could not have realistically located the fastball worse and sanchez hit a fly ball at 107 miles per hour off the bat. He just barely got under it. The ball carried to the middle of the warning Dracula field. It ultimately wound up being a sacrifice fly that cut the Yankees' win expectancy at that point in half. But I don't know if there is a clearer case of how mistakes are not always punished and actually how mistakes are generally not punished.

Kimbrel, with that pitch, tried his damnedest to end the game on a walk-off grand slam or double or whatever it was going to happen. And Sanchez just missed it. And I can't tell how much to ascribe to luck, how much to ascribe to just the way that batting and pitching goes. I don't know. You hold Sanchez responsible for the fact that he did get under the ball too much I think the launch angle on his fly ball was like 46 degrees or something absurd nobody hits a home run with that kind of

launch angle unless you're pulling the ball in Houston but that was a miserable pitch could not have thrown a worse pitch in the moment except for maybe a pitch well out of the zone that would have walked him but the fact that Sanchez just got under it I can't even imagine what that would have been like to watch as a Red Sox fan because I almost threw up and I couldn't care less yeah right it was pretty scary I'm sure so the story of this game until that ninth inning was sort of similar to the story of game three even though the scores were not similar. In Game 3, of course, Boston blew out the Yankees 16-1. We didn't get to talk about that, but everyone was blasting Aaron Boone, I think fairly, for how he handled the fourth inning in that game. And it was very

surprising to me that he even brought Luis Severino out for that fourth inning because he had looked pretty shaky, didn't seem to have his best stuff. So he brought him back out for the fourth. Then he allowed him to load the bases and still stuck with him. Then when he finally, finally made a change, he went to Lance Lynn, which I don't know whether he did that because he hoped to get a ground ball and get a double play and get out of it with a minimum of damage, but it seemed like probably Chad Green was your better option there because A, he's more likely to get you a strikeout, B, he's more experienced coming in with runners on base, and C, you want Lancelin to give you length. It's only the fourth inning, and he can give you a couple innings if

you need it, and if you bring him in and burn him which is what ended up happening then you don't get that length and you end up having to use austin romine to pitch an inning so he kind of handled all that poorly and he brought in lynn and lynn gave up four runs and then he went to green and so he used green anyway and burned lynn and it was a bad sequence but they were already losing by the time that he went to the bullpen, and it was 16 to 1. So, you know, there's only so much you can blame the manager for a 16 to 1 loss. Maybe he could have kept it close, and, you know, unless you think that, like, the score affects the offense and the offense just shut it down once they went behind or something and

maybe things play out differently in an alternate universe than maybe but otherwise it's a blowout that's usually not really the manager's fault but you would think that coming off that experience getting criticized for how he handled his rotation in his bullpen he would not make the same mistake in game four. And he said before the game, he said, you know, we're going to go with Sabathia for, I think he said, quote, a couple, two or three innings. So two or three innings. And he said that he had eight innings from the top four bullpen guys. If he wanted it, he said Robertson could go to, Britton could go to, Batances could go to, and Chapman could go to, which in theory means you only need one from Sabathia if you want, and then you can just bullpen the rest of the way. So I don't want to

say that there's no way that CeCe Sabathia should have been the pitcher to take the loss in that game. I mean, Sabathia could have come out and give up a solo homer on his first batter faced, and that could be the difference. And in that case, he loses the game. But otherwise, you just don't want Sabathia to be the one who loses that game for you, because as heartwarming a story as it is that he has found a second wind in his career, and he's a long-tenured Yankee and everyone likes him and he is standing in the clubhouse and if he's not a Hall of Famer he's as close as you

can get to a Hall of Famer he probably is a Hall of Famer or should be given what the standards for starting pitchers should be these days and so I know it's probably hard to take that guy out after two innings when he hasn't allowed a run, but he wasn't missing bats. He wasn't looking overpowering. I feel like you just got to say, wow, we got two scoreless from CeCe. Maybe bring him back out to get Benintendi, the lefty, to start the third. But after that, you've got five righties in a row, mostly dangerous hitters. They've all seen Sabathia already. And especially once Benintendi gets all seen Sabathia already. And especially once Benintendi gets on, Sabathia hits him. Now you've got the leadoff man on, five righties

coming up. They've all faced Sabathia already in this game. And you can go to Robertson and have him face all these righties. It's just inexplicable to me that you would leave Sabathia out there and have him lose the game, have him give up three runs in that spot. And I just don't get it. And after the game, it didn't sound like Boone had learned his lesson. He was saying, you know, I liked what I saw out of CeCe. And I think it was a sound decision to stay with him there. And there must be people in the Yankees front office who are tearing their hair out, presumably not Brian Cashman because I don't know if he has any, but other than him, just because you build this Super Bowl pen and you go trade for Robertson and you trade for Britton and you sign Chapman to a big money deal and you develop Patensis and you salvage his career and you give your manager all of these weapons and then he just sits there with the 38 year old soft tossing lefty and doesn't make the move right now i i i agree with you

completely on this one it is perplexing and what i what i especially don't get in this year i guess i can say first of all yeah there were after ben and tenny came up against sabathia to lead off the third there were five righties in a row but But, I mean, more important than that, the only lefties in the Red Sox entire order were Benintendi and Jackie Bradley. Bradley was the sixth batter due up after the five righties. And I don't think you really live in fear of Jackie Bradley in the platoon split anyway. So you've got Benintendi, you've got Bradley. So at that point, you let Sabathia face Benintendi. And it seems like you have a plan, and that's it.

That's the end of it. You don't let him face Steve Pierce. Steve Pierceve pierce is a dangerous hitter they're all dangerous hitters except for christian vasquez who incidentally hit a home run in the game but i what i don't get in this era this is the era uh the first year of diminished managerial autonomy and this is the new york yankees the new york yankees are one of the most forward-thinking analytical highly funded just well thought out organizations that exists in professional sports anywhere and they hired aaron boone an inexperienced television commentator slash former baseball player to to be the the spokesperson for for the company but you have to think you have to assume that before each

game before the series absolutely and then before each, Boone and the front office would have come together to hold like a strategy meeting. And they would have laid everything out. And so what I don't know, I haven't read anything to this effect yet, is where either the miscommunication breakdown was or if this was something that the Yankees front office supported. But I can't imagine that it was for the reasons that you already said. It's you just, there's no reason to let Sabathia get as deep as, as you did or in the game before that. And I know this,

that game is a long time ago now, but Boone said after the fact that the whole plan was that he wanted to go to Lynn to close out the fourth. Anyway, this is literally Lance Lynn that we're talking about as being like the Yankees shutdown guy in the fourth. That's when you go to, but Dan says, or Britain or any, any of them. them and now i i understand at the end of the day chad green

threw three and two-thirds innings in this series he had three walks and no strikeouts he didn't look great but you know batances was good and britain was good and chapman was good and robertson was extremely good and you'd also know ch Chad Green is better than those little statistics, you build a team like this specifically for the playoffs. That's something we've known this even since last season when the Yankees' bullpen was great. And I just don't quite understand how it was allowed to get to this point, not just because of Aaron Boone's decision making, but I don't know how it got away from the Yankees to even allow him to make those decisions. Because I cannot for the life of me believe that the Yankees front office was like, yeah, we want Sabathia handling the third inning because it doesn't add up.

It doesn't make any sense. No, it really doesn't. And Boone's getting lots of abuse for that and he should. And it kind of highlights, I mean, maybe it's the problem with hiring a completely inexperienced manager. I mean, I know that Cora is a rookie manager too, but he's been a coach. He's been a coach on successful teams. Boone hasn't. And that has been an issue with other managers like that who've been hired kind of just coming off their careers and they're young and you figure they can work well with players and the media and they're receptive to front office input and hasn't always worked out well because then you get into the games and it's kind of difficult to actually manage the tactics. But again, you would think that that would be part of the receptiveness to front office input would be, tell me how to manage, like, you know, how do I run a ball game? And especially in the playoffs when you can game plan out every scenario and you

can decide what order you want things to happen and you can just play it all out before it actually happens so i i don't understand how you get to that point but we haven't given the red socks enough credit or debited enough from the yankees bats because that's ultimately what it came down to probably even more than boone's decisions in these last couple of games, particularly. The Yankees drew three walks in their last two games. This is the team that led the league in walk rate, I think, led the majors in unintentional walk rate. And they drew one walk in game three and no walks prior to the ninth inning of game four. And it wasn't that they were swinging at everything or, you know, they were making contact. They only struck out four times in game four. And it wasn't that they were swinging at everything or, you know, they were

making contact. They only struck out four times in game four and I think seven times in game three. So they were making contact and it just wasn't powerful contact and they weren't getting much out of that contact. And it wasn't well-timed contact because I think they hit 154 with runners in scoring position in those last couple games so that's not good and most notably they didn't hit a home run in those last two games which is weird because as you mentioned even Christian Vasquez hit a home run he's hit three home runs this year minimum of 250 plate appearances he is the second worst hitter during the regular season this year in the major leagues the only one worse sandy leone the other red sox catcher so he's the guy who ends up providing the winning run with a home run and granted it was a

yankee stadium home run of the highest sort, just first row in right field. But that is what you expect the Yankees to do. And they had, prior to this game, hit home runs in 71 of 82 home games this season, including the wildcard game. And they had only once gone homerless at Yankee Stadium in back-to-back games. And that was way back in April, first week of April, April 7th to 8th. Guess who they were facing in those games? The Baltimore Orioles, who had the highest home run rate in the majors this year. They were facing Chris Tillman and Mike Wright Jr. in those games, and they didn't homer.

Now, no one cares, no one notices when it's April 7th to 8th, but when it's October 8th, then it ends your season. So, it's just one of those weird things. You can either say that they did a bad job or you can say the Red Sox did a good job because

I think they also pitched well. Tell me one thing about Mike Wright Jr. Off the top of your head, tell me one thing about Mike Wright Jr. Well, I know that his and Chris Tillman's home run rates combined this year was 1.5 per nine because I looked that up when I was writing. And I know that he pitched 80-something innings, I think, this year. But that's about all I know about Mike Wright Jr. I guess I know that he is probably the son of Mike Wright.

There you go. Yeah, that sounds like it's reasonable. So, yeah, the Red Sox were good. You can look at this series. Again, we'll talk about the division series round overall, I guess, in a few minutes. But for this series in particular, the Red Sox out hit the Yankees 279-214. They out OBP'd the Yankees 358 to 295 and they out slugged the Yankees 429 to 321 the Yankees as you said didn't really walk

and they didn't really hit for power certainly later in in the series now it's easy I think what was it was it Didi Gregorius who nearly hit uh he had like a foul home run I think in game four I could be thinking of somebody else and then of course Gary Sanchez like could not have missed a home run by less when he uh when he nearly hit his grand slam so of course the Yankees came close of course it doesn't really mean that much and if you if you look at strikeouts and walks in the series of Red Sox and Yankees were were pretty, and they hit the same number of home runs. And the Red Sox bullpen was exposed as a potential weakness, and we know what kind of faith Alex Cora had in his bullpen because he went to Chris Sale to handle the eighth inning in Game 4,

which worked out swimmingly. Sale could not have looked better in the inning. But, I mean, you look at it, and we're so accustomed to thinking, well, the playoffs is when bullpen weakness can be exposed that's when it's a real vulnerability and the Red Sox to their I don't know credit I guess but they were able to to squeak through just on the strength of the starting pitching that got them deep enough Nathan Iovaldi I know they would seem there was there was thought before the Red Sox knew who they were playing in the first round, Nathan Evaldi wasn't even going to be in the rotation. It was going to be Eduardo Rodriguez if they faced the A's.

But Evaldi made the rotation. Then he allowed one run over seven dominant innings. And Rick Brasillo threw, I think, some like 75% of his pitches for strikes, maybe even more than that in game four. So the Red Sox did a phenomenal job coming into the series. game four so red sox did a phenomenal job coming into the series i thought the yankees were were just the better overall baseball team for the for the playoff season but one of the things that that assertion depended on was that the yankees would use their players in the situations that called for it and that's ultimately not what they did and of course when you were looking at a series where one team is outscored 27 to 14 you can't really walk away and say well it was the manager and this is this is the time

of year when managers tend to get blamed as if they are a lot more responsible for outcomes than they are this is an old podcast trope managers barelyagers barely shift the odds, but they do shift the odds. And for all the things we can say about what happens on the field and how much luck is involved and what actually takes place on the field, managerial decisions aren't luck. That's at least something we can point to as saying this process was bad. And what is, I think, abundantly clear at the end of this year is that the Yankees process was bad. It was worse than the Red Sox process where Alex Cora had to piece together a bullpen and he managed to do it and they held on to their leads. Yeah, Cora used Porcello out of the pen.

He used Sale out of the pen. Aaron Boone didn't have to do that sort of thing because he had the bullpen he had, but he still just didn't use it. Whereas Cora kind of manufactured relievers that he didn't even have. And I will say that Red Sox relievers other than Kimbrell, so the Red Sox setup core, which was supposed to be their Achilles heel here, had a 2.45 ERA in the series in 14 and two-thirds innings. Now, that is including a couple innings that Sale and Porcello pitched, but still, even the non-Sale, Porcello, Kimbrell guys were pretty good. I think if you looked at

FIP, they probably weren't that great. I don't think their strikeouts and walks or anything were that wonderful, but they prevented runs, which is something that coming into the series seemed like the biggest mismatch in the series would be the bullpen. And ultimately, it really didn't hurt Boston much. And I think, I mean, A, it's just a product of bullpen variability. We've talked about that from season to season. So obviously from month to month, week to week, playoff series to playoff series, there's really no predicting any of it. But it's also that I think when these teams have super pens, it really matters whether they get out to a lead or not, because it's a different team when it's trying to come from behind than it is when it's trying to protect a lead that it already has. And I remember this being something that I talked about and wrote about when the Royals first had their super pen back in 2014, 2015, that they were just a much better team if you look at innings when they

were ahead versus innings when they were behind. I mean, once they got up, they were like one of the best teams in baseball, but when they were behind, I mean, once they got up, they were like one of the best teams in baseball, but when they were behind, they weren't especially adept at coming back. And so that's kind of the whole thought about the Yankees' Super Bowl pen was that they would get leads at some point and then be able to shut down the Red Sox. And they had very few leads in the series, which you can blame on the bats, you can blame on Boone, you can blame on their starting pitching for being bad, whatever it is. But it took the bullpen out of the game to a certain extent. Right. Now the Red Sox are going to advance to face the Houston Astros, who are better than the Yankees in that they don't have any weakness.

They have the bullpen and the rotation and everything else. They have everything. And I was talking to an industry person yesterday. He was just basically saying, I don't think people understand how amazing the Astros are this season. They're better than they were last season. There's not a weakness on the roster. Like who on the Astros, who's the worst player?

Is it Tony Sipp who struck out more than the batter in inning this season? And he's just a specialist anyway. Is it like, is it Tyler Dwight? I mean, I don't really care about Brian McCann as the backup catcher in this instance. Marisnyk or Tony Kemp. These aren't bad players. These are useful players. Right.

Miles Straw or something something i don't i don't know everybody everybody serves a purpose but the astros are going to be the astros are great they don't have the astros i know louis severino is a phenomenal starting pitcher but given how his second half and playoffs went i don't know where he ranks right now like if if we were to project everyone based on what they've done recently if we were to use recent trajectories like depending on how well how highly you think of Severino right now he might still be worse than the Astros worst starting pitcher that they're going to use in the ALCS and their bullpen is great and features Lance McCullers who's also one of the better starting

pitchers in baseball. Colin McHugh is someone no one's written about for years, but he was quietly one of the more dominant relievers in baseball this year. And also the Astros can hit. And even though the defense is not great, they have Marisnyk to come off the bench. And they don't allow balls in play because their pitching staff is so good. So the defense doesn't matter so much. So the Astros are going to be i didn't think i would be able to say this because the yankees were so good but the astros look like they're going to be even more of a challenge to the red sox who do have what seems to be a

vulnerability at the back of the bullpen the astro the red sox have a really good lineup and a really good defense and a strong starting rotation depending on what you think of david price in the playoffs but the last third of the game is going to make a big difference. Anyway, I don't know. Is there anything else you want to say about Red Sox and Yankees in general before we move on to, I guess, the division series at large? Well, just I suppose that I'm sure Yankees fans are taking this in stride and handling it all philosophically and taking the long view,

but it was a successful season overall. I mean, they won 100 games and they deserved to. You could argue that they were even better than they showed and maybe just as good as the Red Sox, even in the regular season. And they accomplished a lot. I mean, they broke the all-time home run record. They broke in two rookies who will be somewhere close to the top of the AL Rookie of the Year ballot Their surprise errands from 2017, Judge and Hicks, were still really great They found Luke Voigt out of nowhere This is a team that started the season with an opening day payroll that ranked 7th in the majors

Which is uncharacteristically low for the Yankees. And they won lots of games and were good and should be back next year and every year forever. So maybe Aaron Boone will be a better tactical manager next time around. I don't know. But you just look at the season as a whole, and I don't see how you could not call it a success. I know there's the old cliche about oh it's not a success unless you win the world series in New York and sure I'm sure a lot of people feel that way but this is not how baseball works this is a successful season you didn't do a lot of voices you know that was a that was a that was a voice that caught me off

guard a little bit it's a little bit deeper than your regular voice i think basically just like if ben had a cough my talk radio collar or something but yeah okay it's not a success unless the that's not even a voice i'm just being louder so yeah i think it's the playoffs are hard because even when it's not just the wildcard game when you get eliminated after a series it just feels like it happened quickly. Now, if you're watching at home, these things don't happen that quickly because every game goes four hours. It seems like series lasts forever. But I was just thinking about the Rockies being eliminated.

The Rockies were eliminated, but the Brewers like four or five days after they celebrated in Wrigley Field moving on to make the LDS. And things just happen. They end so fast. It seems like if you lose in the wildcard round or the LDS, it still just kind of feels like the playoffs were a blip. Like who remembers the Diamondbacks in the playoffs last season? And they played the Dodgers. Then they won that wildcard game against the Rockies. It was dramatic, but they were just barely there in the grand scheme of things. And I don't know, I just think about when you were designing a baseball team and thinking about how deep you want to get. When you're like the Dodgers or the Yankees or the Red Sox or whoever, it seems like the goal should at least be the LCS.

You know you can't bet on getting to the World Series or winning the World Series because the odds are just against you. But the Division Series round is just over in the blink of an eye. And Yankees fans, I know they can think about like the wild card game against the A's. That was a success Aaron Judge brought everyone to their feet immediately but otherwise one of those in-between seasons I agree with you it is when you get the benefit of time a month from now people will be able to reflect and say wow this is a really good year for the Yankees and they're only going to get stronger when they get Manny Machado or Bryce Harper or whatever the hell they're going to do

this offseason but I don't know it when you have the loss and to the Red Sox in particular, it's going to take a little bit of extra time to get over it, especially because Aaron Boone gives people a reason to think it could have gone differently because it wasn't just that the Yankees were outplayed. It's that they were outplayed and outmanaged. And that has to be extra frustrating. Right. Yeah. It would have really taken Boone off the hook if the Yankees either hadn't scored in that ninth inning or had scored four runs or three runs and then won in extra innings or something. That really would have helped him because then you couldn't point to his moves in this game and say that they made the difference. But now you kind of can. So we should talk a little bit. We didn't get to talk about the end of the other

two series other than the Brewers Rockies series and it's going back a couple days by now but because it has some bearing on the next series I know that you looked up and kind of quantified how soundly the Astros thrashed the Indians in that division series so give me the numbers okay this is post trying to fangraphs and it is titled the Astros gave the Indians an all-time beating I wanted to go with ass kicking but I thought that that might be a little inflammatory for a fangraphs headline so I I kept off there when I wrote this so there have now been 309 completed playoff series on record when I wrote this there were 308. It was pending Red Sox Yankees.

So just out of 308 or I guess 309 series, all-time playoff series, not counting the wildcard one-game playoffs. The Astros Indian series featured the third highest average run differential per game. The Astros outscored the Indians by an average of five runs per game. Third highest ever. Now, the Astros, in terms of batting average, they out hit the Indians by 183 points. That is the greatest difference for any series all time in the playoffs. The Astros had an OBP that was 225 points higher than the Indians OBP, that was the greatest difference in any playoff series all time. The Astros out-slugged the Indians by 393 points in the series.

Not only is that the greatest difference in the history of all playoff series, it's the greatest difference by almost 100 points over the series in second place. So therefore, when you have the biggest difference in OPP and the biggest difference in slugging, the Astros and the Indians had the biggest difference in team OPS of all series, all time. I know it's hard to listen to numbers on a podcast. I want these numbers, if you've read the post, that's great. If you haven't, I want these numbers to sink in. The Astros OPS was 619 points better than the Indians OPS in the series. 619. The Indians OPS in the series by themselves was 418, which means the difference between their OPSs was like 150% what the Indians did. Not only is that the biggest OPS difference of all time in any playoff series,

it's the biggest difference by damn near 200 points. The Astros clobbered the indians we've never it didn't feel it didn't feel like such a mismatch at the time because all three games were close going into the final third and going into like the seventh inning the indians had a chance in every game so it's not like this is like just a blowout from from the get-go it didn't have that feel of like when the red sox played the cardinals in the world series and every game was basically over from the start but just based on the final numbers this was like a comical mismatch and here's the funny thing so there have been 309 completed playoff series

again looking just at ops differential which I like as an estimate of who outplayed somebody else, OPS differential, Astros Indians this year, of course, had the biggest ever differential, but Brewers Rockies this year had the fourth biggest ever differential, and Dodgers Braves this year had the seventh biggest differential all time three top seven series out of 309 playoff series in baseball history three of the most lopsided series by this measure came this year in the round that just completed and i think it i think it helps to support the impression that i certainly had that there were maybe like three or four worthwhile games in that round but otherwise it was kind of a kind of a bust in terms of the entertainment factor lots of playoffs to go but

there were i mean what we've got the first game of the brews rocky series that was that became fun at least toward the end the first and last game of the yankees red sox series was pretty good and game three of the dodgers-Braves series was pretty good. But otherwise, just a bunch of nothing. Yeah, it was not great. It was, what, only two games over the minimum and just not a lot of lead changes, not a lot of games where you look at the win probability graph and marvel at the peaks and the valleys it just didn't play out like that so i'm hoping that the championship series will give us more exciting games they almost have to so one thing i thought was interesting about this thrashing that the astros administered here

was the comment from mike clevenger and also apparently some anonymous people in the Indians clubhouse too. Clevenger said, I'm going to keep it really short. We were a little bit, I don't know, kind of had our backs against the wall before this started when it came to the analytical side. There was an article in The Athletic about how seemingly the Indians felt that they had just been, I guess, underprepared or outprepared or over-scouted by the Astros, that the Astros had out-thought them as well as outplayed them, which is interesting because, I mean, there's no way to tell from afar whether any game, any plate appearance has to do with advanced scouting, but it could be the case because this is the time of year when

teams pour a lot of resources into that. They sit on series, they look at video, they break down all the stats, they spend weeks identifying all the tendencies of their likely opponents. And so every now and then we do hear the story about, well, there was someone tipping a pitch and that was picked up on, or like when the Royals were winning, we kept hearing about how they picked up on things that the other team did or didn't do and were able to exploit that. And so I don't discount it, but it is kind of fascinating that the comment came here between the Indians and the Astros, because, I mean, the Indians were one of the early adopting sabermetric teams long before Jeff Lunau got to Houston. to the players and synthesizing all of this

information and giving them kind of actionable intelligence. So I don't know why the Indians players felt that way. Like they just seemed to think that the Estras were anticipating everything and knew their weaknesses. And we can't really say whether that's the case, but the fact that they felt that way is thought provprovoking. And it could be partly that the Astros just have this aura of the most cutting-edge team that knows everything. And so maybe they psyched out Cleveland a little bit because you just figure that if everything's going well for the Astros, maybe it's that they had these secrets. But I don't know. It's possible that that is an edge for them too. Right. Now, when you hear these quotes from the Indian side, the Indian side doesn't really know what's happening on the Astros side. I think they're just kind of assuming how the Astros were prepared. I don't know. Maybe they've read what the Astros, what they talked about last year when they had their run, but this does, when you get into the playoffs, far more than in the regular season,

advanced scouting or advanced preparation becomes more of a key. Every single team, at least that's analytically responsible, will do this. And I know that when you know who you're going to be playing, then you have different people in different departments who are coming up with different reports, trying to analyze what the weaknesses, what the strengths are of your opponents. You do a little bit of this in the regular season, of course, but things just happen so fast. And in the playoffs, you have the benefit of advance warning of who you're going to be playing. And so I, this is, again, this is one of those things that kind of makes a difference

around the margins. I don't mean to like demean the Royals at all, but I can't imagine the Royals were getting really advanced scouting reports and like really high level analytical reports before they won the World Series. So clearly it's possible for teams to thrive even without getting the best data possible. And a lot of players don't want to have all that information, but I do think the Astros, we can say pretty conclusively are like highest possible tier of analytical progressiveness and implementation. That's been their goal from the beginning. They've been maybe the most analytical organization of baseball for however long the front office has been in town.

What is that, five years now, something like that? Six or late 2011 was when Luna was hired. something like that and six or late 2011 was when luna was hired and one can assume that over that span of time the astros began just like number forward analysis forward just trying to break everything down into cold hard facts and then over time you begin to learn better how to implement those things how to communicate those things to the players and one can assume that the astros have figured that out because they are a machine. They are better than anyone else in baseball, or at least they are in the highest tier in baseball in pretty much any category you can imagine. I was reminded yesterday that the Astros have like the second best farm system in baseball also, which is just a complete absurdity because the Astros do everything well. And the Indians are a team that I think you assume does everything at least fine.

And we know that they are a progressive organization. And I guess I don't, it's hard when you have these quotes that are sort of on background or in Cleaver's case, not on background, just given to you, given expressed to the media straight on. You don't know what they have and you don't know what the astros have but i can see how in a series like this i mean it would be to me it would be almost unforgivable to not at least tell people here are the other guys pitches here are when he uses them here is where they go and it seemed to be suggested that maybe the indians didn't even

have that and that's something They have to have had that. They have to. People have had that forever. Yeah. Yeah. That's step one of advanced preparation, right? Right. But I mean, I guess if you're facing the Astros,

maybe it doesn't matter what pitches they throw because they're all so good. Right. Yeah. Well, all right. So that was that. And then there was the end of the Dodgers Braves series, which was very predictable and not very suspenseful. So Dodgers won that one. And we'll do, I think, more of a preview of the two championship series tomorrow. We'll record an episode.

We'll have it up before Friday night and you'll get a link to that. So we'll talk more about those series. Should we do just a couple playoff themed emails to close this out or are there any more thoughts on any division series uh only one just one little factoid here so as just one measure of how interesting the division series round is you've got four series four best of five series so there is a minimum total number of games played of 12 right that's three wins to zero wins for every series there's a maximum number of games for every series of five each series so 20 games overall so in the division series era we just saw 14 games played in the division series round that is tied for the second fewest the last time that we saw this few games in the division series round was 2014 14 games played only once has there been the maximum i had forgotten about this but

back in 2012 all five division series went to the maximum five games so that has only happened once in 2015 it got to 19 games played but from the standpoint of someone who is glad to not have to be up late watching and thinking about baseball every single night it's nice to get a little bit of a reprieve on wednesday and thursday before getting back into the swing of things, but it is a lot more fun when the series are exciting. And if we had had more ninth innings like the Red Sox Yankees game four, that would have been okay. But yeah, I will be excited to move on. All right. So few questions here. And this is a very prescient question from listener Micah, who sent this in just at the beginning of Game 3, so before any of the Boone bullpen screw-ups. And Micah says,

out of the game earlier, but against the Yankees, I find myself rooting for the Red Sox to somehow score without encouraging Aaron Boone to take out the starter so that the Sox can avoid the Yankees' bullpen for as long as possible. My question is, if a team wanted to keep the opposing starting pitcher in the game for as long as possible to avoid the other team's bullpen, what would be the best strategy to do so? They would have to try to swing early in at bats to keep the pitch count low and would have to score enough runs to feel comfortable winning without scoring so many that the opposing manager feels it's time to dip into the bullpen. Should they swing at the first pitch of every at bat and hope they hit three or four home runs, try and pull Ellsbury's and get a bunch of catcher's interferences?

Yeah, I mean, if you could make it it happen you get catcher's interference and fielding errors and then you just just soft contact first pitch soft contact the entire time you score like 30 runs and the starting pitcher ends the game having thrown 95 pitches and you're just looking around like what just happened to me i allowed zero earned runs in the game but i guess realistically i i agree with the with the standpoint that yeah it has changed the way that for people at least who were thinking about this in this way, it has changed the way that you watch people bat against starters because a long at bat just brings you closer to the death part of the bullpen where all the good pitchers are supposed to come out. So you would encourage more first pitch swinging, which I think is something that you should encourage more of just in general in this era for reasons we've talked about before two strike pitches are so good you don't want to face pitchers when they are ahead you want to get to them earlier when they're closer to the zone so you are swinging more early now teams are not just thinking of pitch count right they're also thinking

of times through the order so you want to be able to i don't i mean you want to maximize the amount of damage you can do through like two trips through the order almost regardless of of pitch count but i don't know what you just you want to keep the starter yeah you want to hit first pitch homers i guess it's kind of what it comes down to you want to you want to maximize the damage but you want it to happen fast because you want the pitcher to get two times through the order and that's 18 batters faced but i mean every starting pitcher should be able to throw enough pitches to get two times through the order provided he's not an opener so i don't know

if this i don't know if there's anything to this aside from well this is just the way that it is now and all bullpens are good i don't know if there's like anything to exploit yeah i don't know face aaron boone i guess it's the best thing you can do but yeah i i wrote about this or am writing about this as we speak kind of uh a written version of my little rant about how i dislike how bullpenning removes some of the the story of the game or at least removes the starter's central role in the story of the game. And this is part of it, just that working the count was kind of a cool thing, because obviously it still benefits you to work the count just as an individual hitter. I mean, you want to swing at strikes and not swing at balls, and that will serve you well. But in the past, there seemed to be

that will serve you well. But in the past, there seemed to be a cumulative benefit to it so that if you could assemble a lineup of strong hitters who were taking good at-bats, then there would be a benefit over and above the benefit in those individual at-bats in that you would knock the starter out of the game, you'd get into the soft underbelly of the bullpen because teams had starters and they had closers and maybe they had one lights out setup guy and then there were just middle inning arms who were unspectacular and you could score off those guys and that was good because there was like a suspense that was building up there was a sense that you were progressing towards something you were getting the starters pitch count up you were going to knock him out of the game and then you were progressing towards something. You were getting the starter's pitch count up, you were going to knock him out of the game, and then you were going to get to feast on the bullpen. And now you don't get that at all because the bullpen coming in is bad news compared to

the starter on his second or third trip through the order. So I agree with the premise of the question and I kind of lament it. I mean, maybe in the regular season, there's still some benefit to getting the starter out early, but in October, there just seems to be zero. So I kind of miss the days when that mattered. Is this going to be a Ben Lindbergh opinion piece? It might be my second opinion. Wow. Look at this. A data-driven opinion piece. You've branched out in more ways than one. I know. It's going to be like a column with an opinion, but also like five graphs.

It's going to be a weird combination of things. All right. Ryan, Patreon supporter, says, Growing up, I was told that broadcasts don't air footage of fans who run on the field because, quote, they don't want to encourage the behavior. With adult eyes, this makes sense from everyone's perspective except the network. MLB wants to keep the games moving and ensure players aren't harassed. Stadiums especially want to avoid liability.

But why wouldn't networks want to encourage fans on the field? Wouldn't fans being chased and tackled by security guards provide good content, So I actually sent this to our pal, Jason Benetti. I figured as an actual professional broadcaster, he would know the answer to this question. And he then related to a TV executive and talked to this TV executive. And here's what he gleaned from this conversation. A few bullet points he told Jason that Jason can share. One, TV doesn't want to contribute to 15 minutes of fame for someone. And that is sort of something that Jason speculated on his own. Just the idea that if you show it, that you encourage it and more people will do it because you're getting TV time. Well, can I say that local news does the opposite of that. Local news is nothing but 15 minutes of fame for individuals every single day.

Yeah, and the second bullet point here, the downside outweighs the upside, according to this TV executive in his estimation, because, for example, say the person running on the field has a weapon, which has happened, right? Say there's some sort of tragedy and you are training your cameras on it and it's happening live. That is a problem because the next point from the executive related point is that legally showing something that could be construed as incendiary might create other collateral liability. So I guess the idea is if you televise this and something goes wrong, then A, you might subject yourself to some sort of sanction for showing that, and B, you might get sued or something for encouraging it or tacitly encouraging it. So it's just kind of a cover your ass sort of thing. I guess the opposite of that in the case of streakers, but it's like playing it safe and not wanting to encourage anyone to do anything stupid and dangerous. Yeah. And like I was going to point out the same thing as you, that oftentimes, I don't know what the breakdown is because these things aren't televised, but oftentimes these people on

the field are partially, if not entirely naked, which is just, that's a big TV no-no. Yeah, right. That could potentially be a problem too. And I kind of, I think there are entertaining streakers. I mean, when they're out there those are great because it's john boyce and i think it would be fun to see like stat cast stats on the streakers like i want to see what is their sprint speed compared to the average major league player show me one of those darren willman diagrams of like the fielders moving all over but show it to me for the security guards tackling this guy who's running around like a chicken with his head cut off. That's what I want to see from my stat cast, but I guess that would be construed as encouraging this sort of behavior too. But somewhere out there, the data exists, presumably, right? In some database somewhere, there is

tracking information on some streaker who was running around in the outfield. Right, because everything is tracked, right? Like you can't, the cameras don't know who's a player and who's not. It's not like the players, as far as I know, are wearing like GPS tags or something that's embedded in their necks. So this data does. Now, if you email Darren or Mike Petriello, they would either tell you, we don't have a diagram of this, you're being ridiculous, or we're legally not permitted to share this diagram because of the same idea. But that is where you could get the perfect blend of analysis, but also just like, I don't know, pop culture of the moment virality, because that would really up the John Boyes game. Because that would really up the John Boyes game Or I don't know

I guess the counter argument to that is it would make it worse Because there's a strong appeal in like poorly mapped MS Paint plots Of where somebody ran Right, exactly All right, and then let's see I've got another one here This is from Brian He says, playoff hypothetical

Say each playoff team could purchase the services of one player From a non-playoff team for the October run. We've answered questions like this in the past, or Sam and I have, about kind of, you know, if you could take a player from the team you just defeated, which player would you take? Or how much would you pay a player just to play for you in the postseason but brian wants to know whether the best play is to go straight for mike trout or do you take a top line starter jacob de grom or do you take a top reliever what type of player do you target if you can have anyone for a playoff series well it depends on the construction of your own roster right so if you are the red socks i would think that you are looking for the most dominant relief pitcher who hasn't advanced

because it's something that, I mean, the Red Sox are not hurting for a Mike Trout equivalent. Now, well, now that I think about it, I think Bradley Jr. is maybe not. Okay. So if you're the Red Sox, you go one of two directions. Probably you go for Mike Trout. But if you are, oh God, if you're the Astrosros you're just like pass uh if you're if you're the brewers you're looking for you're looking for jacob degrom uh and if you're the if you're the dodgers okay if you're the dodgers no it's trout again it's always trout it's it's trout or no one i guess because in the playoffs even with the the relief pitcher waiting it's still mike Trout. He's so

good. Yeah. Well, yeah. Well, so that's why this question is even interesting. I mean, if you just said who's the best player, it's Trout, but Trout is no more valuable in the playoffs than he is in the regular season. Whereas you can have your top starter start twice in a playoff series. You could bring them out of the bullpen in between if you want. You can use your top reliever, I don't know, four times or something in a five-game series. You can push him to two innings per appearance if you want. So those guys are proportionately much more valuable in a short series than they would be over the course of the regular season. Whether that closes the difference entirely between them and Trout, I don't know. I mean, if you looked at just like a breakdown of win probability added or championship win

probability added or something, getting the right shutdown reliever in at the right high leverage moment, that could be the most important thing that swings a series. But you don't know in advance that you will definitely get that moment or that that reliever will shut down the opposition in that moment. So you're right. It depends very much on your roster construction. But I would guess that for most teams, it's probably like the ace. I think you would go with the ace, like the rare guy who is actually able to go three times through a lineup potentially in this day and age and be worth it. Yeah, so that would be this year. Let's deal with some actual names.

So the A's made the playoffs, so Blake Trannon is out. So we're looking at Mike Trout, Jacob deGrom, and I guess Edwin Diaz. It's like these are the choices that you have to make. And Diaz could go one inning, maybe four or five outs. He didn't get stretched out very much. DeGrom, great. I think that for me, he would be the National League MVP. And then in the playoffs, you could use him more.

So that would definitely make him more valuable. That would put him in trout territory. But you still aren't going to have DeGrom coming in for the high leverage late outs, so there's only so much you could do with him. But I do... Okay, it's... Yeah, it's going to depend on the team construction. And if you're the Brewers, I guess you go for DeGrom

because their outfield is good. If you're the Red Sox, I think you just go with Trout and just try to bludgeon your opponent to death as opposed to getting a one-inning reliever. But it does obviously get close, and if Mike Trout were any worse, then this question would be more difficult. But I still can't help but think it would be Trout.

Right. All right. Well, I guess we can end there, except that we haven't played the Stat Blast song, and I want to play the StatBlast song, so I'm going to make this into a StatBlast. It's a question I already answered, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's to de-stablized. So this is a question from Matt R. That sounds sort of inconsequential, but I think it's kind of interesting.

So Matt says, with shifts happening, are there more line drive double plays? In the Dodgers-Giants game, this is going back to the end of September, Yasmany Grandal was caught off the bag on a Max Muncy line drive that was caught by a fielder playing further up the middle than normal. The announcer, Oral Hirscheiser, said Grandal didn't have a chance because of how it was hit, but in the past, would it have been a single and Grandal scoring instead of a double play if the Giants defense was set up normally? So the way that I tried to answer this question was with Baseball Savant, and I looked at line drives with a runner on and just looked at what percentage of line drives with a runner on have led to double plays, and it is 2.4

percent. 2.4 percent of the time this year when there was a runner on and a line drive hit, it turned into a double play. Now Baseball Savvant lets you go back to 2008 and search for things like this in 2008 the earliest year i could do this 2.8 percent of line drives with a man on turned into double plays and 2009 was 2.7 percent so those were actually higher now i don't know whether line drives were being classified a little bit differently in 2008 than they were in 2018. That is possible because line drive is usually a human decided category. So that's maybe not a perfect comparison, but basically no huge change here. And I think that's kind of interesting because that seems always to be the

case when we look at shift-related stats, whether it's just BABIP or whatever, like it doesn't seem to have changed much. I mean, if you look at ground balls, for instance, there are definitely more to the pole side that are turning into outs, but there are fewer to the opposite field that are turning into outs, and it sort of evens out, no pun intended. And you can argue about whether maybe the fact that it hasn't changed is a credit to the shift, because if not for the shift, it would be even higher and hitters would be hitting the ball even harder. But on the whole, we just haven't seen a whole lot of evidence that the shift, which has continued to become more frequent. And I have to imagine that there is solid basis for teams deciding to shift more often. No one shifts more often than the Astros. And we've just been talking about how

advanced the Astros are, but it's just hard to pick out of the league-wide numbers. That's interesting. I would have expected some movement, but I guess when you think about it, infields are shifted because of where they expect grand balls to hit. Grand balls tend to be pulled. Line drives and fly balls, it kind of goes in the other direction. Most fly balls tend to go to the opposite field

and line drives tend to be more spread out. This just is a function of the physics of the bat and ball impact. So infield defenders are shifted to the grand ball in mind, not with a line drive in mind, and line drives are not hit to the same areas as ground balls. So I guess in that case, shifting seems not to have made that much of a difference. In fact, it might have worked very slightly against this. So interesting.

All right. So a rare episode ending stat blast, and we will stop there and we'll talk more about the next series coming up on our next episode okay you can support the podcast on patreon and if you want into our nlcs game one simulcast where we will talk and answer your questions during the game you must support the podcast on patreon at patreon.com slash effectively wild five listeners who have already Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. It's been great fun in there lately. Big game threads for every game. You can send your questions and comments and feedback of all forms to me and Jeff via email at podcast at

fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system once you sign up. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. Sorry we didn't get to that blockbuster Kyle Bearclaw trade today. That'll have to wait for next time. Fun fact about Kyle Bearclaw, I used to think of him as the embodiment of effective wildness. People sometimes ask me who's the pitcher who is most effectively wild, and at the time, I guess this would have been 2015-2016, his first couple years in the majors, he was extremely effectively wild. Sub-3 ERAs, high strikeout rates, but was walking like 6 per 9, just wasn't giving up any homers. Since then, the strikeouts have come down, the walks haven't come down all that much, the home run rate has gone up he's no

longer quite as effective but for a while there he was a pretty good choice so that will do it we will be back to talk to you all very soon In a new direction So how will I know I've gone too far Stop thinking that they only live in a new world I finally know what it's like Stop thinking that the only thing I love Is a high-level love I'm going to find