Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1599: The Mostseason

Episode Date: October 7, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about potato chip sponsors, playoff games at neutral sites, juiced-ball suspicions, ALDS bad blood, how Pedro Martínez approached playoff starts, postseason MLB debuts, and the power of Giancarlo Stanton, then answer listener emails about how 2020’s shortened season will affect future pitcher workloads, what counts as a “crooked number,” […]

I don't wanna, I don't wanna be your moneylender I do what I want to, I don't wanna, baby, I don't wanna I ain't gonna, I don't wanna be your moneylender Do what I want to, I don't wanna, baby, I don't wanna But you can try me at home And it feels alright But I ain't gonna So try it, what I am I'm flying, wow Hello and welcome to episode 1599 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters.

I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Doing okay, thanks. How are you? I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Doing okay, thanks. How are you? I'm doing okay. Alright. We're recording on Tuesday morning, which is an odd time to talk, because we're about to have four more baseball games. So whatever we do right now, we will be out of date by the time this episode comes out.

And so maybe we will just sort of steer into the skid and do something that will hopefully be evergreen, or at least will last a little longer, which is emails, because we don't really get a chance to answer many emails during the postseason. It's just a frantic time, and we're always reacting to games or previewing games, and those episodes don't have a long lifespan. So I think there are probably, maybe there's like a silent majority of effectively wild listeners who are not even tuned into the games because their teams are eliminated. So maybe they just want general baseball talk. I don't know. Baseball is a regional game.

I would guess that our listeners are maybe interested in what's going on, even if their team is not playing. But still, there a an element of that once your team is eliminated there's a tendency to look away look ahead to the offseason into next year do you think that that means i'm going to i'm going to advance a theory ben okay do you think that that means that it's actually good that the astros made the postseason and have advanced into the division series round because outside of Houston sorry Astros fans most people would like your team to lose I think that that's the popular consensus some of that is very fair some of it is probably people enjoying an excuse to be fussy

at Houston so there's a mix of that we We'll acknowledge it. But do you think that means it's good that Houston has advanced and is ahead in its series because now the disinterested fan has a reason, albeit a negative one, to engage with the postseason a little bit because they can be like, ah, I want those Astros. They're scamps. There's a villain. So even if you're not rooting for someone, you're rooting against someone. And I think a more satisfying villain in some ways than the Yankees who, you know, we won't

spend much time recapping the action from yesterday. Because as you said, those games will be, they'll be old hat by the time this goes live. Ancient history. Yeah. We won't even remember. We won't even really remember how Garrett Cole looked pretty good and how the Rays kind of fell apart late there. So we won't remember that. But what we will remember is those Astros, their scamps. No one talks like that. But it's, you know, we're recording on a Tuesday and it's kind of early and I've only had half a cup of coffee. So I guess we've learned something about my own early morning routines. Yeah, I've only had half a cup of tea. This is going to be a low energy podcast.

Ben, we're going to white knuckle our way through. Should I make us predict winners for games that will be over by the time this episode goes live? No, thank you. Okay, we will then not predict winners for the ALDS brought to you by Utz and the NLDS brought to you by Doosan. The AL games have the Utz girl. I think she's a girl. I don't think that I am infantilizing her.

I think she is meant to be a child with a glove catching a bag of Utz in the stands that has been present in both LA and San Diego. And it's the vintage at Skrull, and it's okay. That one's okay. So now I'm expecting a giant Doosan crane in the outfield in both of the Texas ballparks just as an answer because I'm sure the Doosan folks were looking at it, and they were like, oh, we can have it catch a ball?

I didn't even think of that. It's a rush job some some lucky uh sign making business owner in the in the arlington and houston area is like wow i didn't expect to be doing this at midnight yeah let me ask you let's let's give a little more free advertising to i guess uh it's it's not free the advertising that they're getting on mlb broadcast but connor in our facebook group posted a picture, just a screen cap from a game, where there are literally five UTS ads on the screen.

So there's one like superimposed on the back of the mound. And then there are four just right behind home plate, like all of the billboards or fake billboards behind home plate, whichever it is, they're all saying uts are presented by uts or whatever and in the comments there was quite a coastal divide it seemed like in awareness of this brand and i know uts because i'm an east coaster and i think it's an east coast brand and it's everywhere here and you've lived over here obviously so i i assume that you are maybe more aware of uts than the average west coaster because there seem to be a lot of people who are kind of confused about what this product is. when I lived in Wisconsin, I don't truthfully have a solid answer on its regional availability

in the Pacific Northwest. But yes, it's uts everywhere. Uts for days, so much uts. And I was just relieved that it wasn't a Romanette. Well, there were plenty of those too, so don't worry. Oh, my stars. I don't want to talk about this for one second longer than it takes me to ask the question but are you guys okay are you guys all right i'm i i'm worried about the men of america um yeah i mean that statement could cover all manner of sins i think that this screen cap that connor took is also an opportunity to highlight the difference that has emerged between the two ballparks we have seen so far in terms of how they have handled cardboard cutouts in what is supposed to be a neutral ballpark. San Diego opted to just remove the cutouts from immediately behind home plate. That area had been quite heavily populated with cardboard Padres fans in in prior instances but has been has been wiped

clean in Dodger Stadium they put I don't know who those fans were they were not the typical Dodgers fans behind home there was there was nary a merry heart to be seen so they looked some of them were in ace gear but not all of them so I don't know who they were and they decided to be classy and not put a single trash can back there. So they either are better people than I am or they got to talk into. But I'm very curious to see what the approach is in Arlington and Houston because I notice things that are silly. Yeah, it just it was sort of strange to watch these teams play postseason games in neutral parks and to see them play in California. A couple of non-California teams, that was very strange.

It was maybe also strange to see how well the ball seemed to be carrying on Monday. But Dodgers stadium day game, it was dry and hot. And so I guess that probably explains it. But I got people asking me immediately, is the ball juiced again? Which is, you know, that's kind of where we are in baseball now, where whenever the ball seems to be carrying pretty well for a day, everyone assumes that the ball is different and the ball is juiced now, which is not really an unreasonable assumption given how much the ball has fluctuated over the last couple of years.

And last postseason, it seemed like the ball was less juiced. All of a sudden, it's entirely possible that it could go the other way and have it be more juiced. So not saying that's what it was. It's just that baseball has invited these questions by being so shady about the ball or at least unable to control the conditions so that every time there is a ball that seems to die or a ball that goes farther than you expected it to. And there were outfielders who seemed to be fooled by it too. So everyone was kind of expecting the ball to behave a little bit differently. But that's just where we are in Major League Baseball now where no one really trusts the equipment or considers it

consistent across games or seasons. I have found that I have gotten worse at judging the ball as the season has progressed. I think because the field mics have been lowered because of all the swears, because of all the wonderful swears, which serves to sort of fool you in two respects. First, it's harder to sort of truly hear the ball off the bat, which is not always a perfectly reliable indicator of distance,

but is an indicator of distance. And because we are no longer hearing the throaty, lusty swears with quite the same volume, I don't know that there's any indicator more reliable than a big old... I'm going to say a bad swear, and I would like Dylan to bleep it because sometimes children listen to this podcast like I don't know that there's any indicator quite as reliable as a starter going when it's like oh he got all of that one and it's going out of the ballpark so we we're not hearing that as reliably

either so yeah there were a number of outfielders who thought they had a play sometimes I think assuming that the play at the wall would be quite difficult and perhaps quite close but yeah i i was having a doozy of a time yesterday properly gauging distance although when john carlo hit his grand slam i was like oh that's gone yeah oh no this is quite bad for the rays because that's that's gonna go far so yeah when he hits a five ball i just sort of assume it's a home run and then work backward from there because sometimes with him like he hits balls that off anyone else's bat would not be home runs and that's one of my favorite things about stanton is that he will hit these like opposite field low liners or something where if you look at the trajectory

it's like no one has ever hit a home run like that in recorded history. But he does because he hits the ball harder than anyone else. Even this year, he had the hardest hit ball. I think he's had the hardest hit ball in every season of the StatCast era. And that's despite barely playing in a couple of those seasons. It's just like he can hit the ball 120 plus miles per hour and no one else can match him, even if they have many more chances at it. And so, yeah, when he hits one of those balls and looks like he thinks he got it, then I assume he got it. Yeah, he hit on opening day.

He hit that very, very long home run. Tony Wolfe decided he wanted to write about it and asked me if I thought it would be sort of a gimmicky headline, a little bit of clickbait to say that he hit what is probably the hardest hit ball of the year already. And I was like, no, I don't find that gimmicky at all. I find it highly probable because he has a tendency to do that. Yeah, I would think so yeah and there was uh despite all of the concern about bad blood or not even concern but maybe excitement about bad blood between the teams that played on monday there was no real manifestation of that i guess not yet no not yet by the time you hear this who knows but late in that yankees race game i guess there was a semi-controversial Gleyber Torres stolen base up by six runs. I don't know if there will be any fallout from that. That would be sort of silly. have been some like some interesting breakfast encounters or something like they all seem to be

i guess going to breakfast at around the same time like i would honestly think that staying in the same hotel might actually serve to quiet some of those tensions like if part of it is just about like they're the visitors and we're the home team and in this case you're all in the same quasi bubble and you're staying in the same place and you're like bumping into each other in the halls or at breakfast or whatever i would think i don't know maybe like the more time you spend around each other away from the field the more you see oh they're just people just like me just in this strange situation we're in this uh together and maybe that would lead to

lower tensions but i guess we'll see if any of that flares up over the rest of the series yeah i think that they are inclined very early in the going to behave as grown-ups and i agree with you there is nothing more humanizing than uh navigating a hotel breakfast and realizing you have grabbed the wrong kind of milk for your purpose. So, yeah, I think that they can be adults. They have that capacity. I don't want them to actually fight because close contact between large groups of people just makes me inherently anxious in this pandemic age.

But a little chirping would be fine. I could get some good chirping let's just let's have some chirping you know good nature chirping you can be antagonistic and not be a jerk that can be a difficult needle to thread but it is one that we have capacity for I believe yeah Pedro Martinez was

one of the ones who was saying something about Gleyber Torres is still in base I think he was saying like you just don't want to poke the or don't want to wake the sleeping giant or whatever. Just, you know, don't aggravate the Rays. You're already beating them. Also, I heard Pedro talking about his postseason strategy, which I thought was sort of eye-opening because they asked like, well, how did you approach your postseason starts? And Pedro was like, well, I would go into a game and I'd look at the lineup and, you know, there were only one or two guys I had to worry about. And so I would just focus on those one or two guys. So he was like, you know, maybe if like

Sheffield and A-Rod were in the lineup, I would focus on those two guys. And maybe I'd pitch around Sheffield and I felt like I could handle A-Rod better. But, you know, I only felt like I had to worry about one or two guys. And it's like, oh, well, yeah, you were Pedro Martinez. So that's how you would approach a postseason start, I guess, feeling like you were invincible against most of the hitters in the lineup. But probably your typical mortal pitcher does not look at a lineup and say, well, I can just disregard those seven guys because i'll be fine against them like you kind of have to worry about all the hitters generally if you're

not pedro martinez which is like that was one of those examples of like you know sometimes uh great players will make good coaches or managers or whatever but often you do hear the opposite that it's just like hard to teach things because you were so great that it's hard to generalize from your experience and if you're just like do what i did and what you did was like have incredible elite talent then maybe that doesn't transfer so well so if like pedro were a pigeon coach and he went into it the postseason start and he was like all right guys gather around uh Here's what you should do. Just forget about these seven guys. Just worry about this superstar here.

He's the only one who can actually hurt you. Yeah, that probably wouldn't work so well for anyone else. Yeah, I just can't imagine what it would feel like. I can't imagine what it would feel like to be Giancarlo Stanton in the batter's box and know that you could do that. Not that you're going to do it every time. Right.

You're you're a realist. You've been injured. You've had to battle through things. You are not you know, you don't have to be disabused of the notion that you are immortal or anything like that. But to know that you could be. What would that feel like, Ben? Yeah, I'm not the best at anything. I mean, I'm good at some

stuff i don't say that like i'm you know bad at everything but i'm not the best i'm not the best at anything and that's fine like i've made my peace with that i managed to exist in the world but gosh that would uh that would that would be something should be something imagine how much harder it is not to swing When one of your swings can produce A majestic grand slam That's hit like 120 miles per hour Or something That must be more tempting

Alright let's get to some emails Some of which will be sort of Playoff related Others of which will not Henry says How do you think this year's reduced innings loads will affect starting pitcher innings in the next few years? Will starters, even veteran starters, jump from their 70 innings this year back to 180 next year, or will they have to build innings totals gradually

over the next several seasons? If we get back to a full schedule next year, how many innings do you think veteran starting pitchers will throw? What if there's another short season after two short seasons in a row? How many innings do you think veteran starters would throw in 2022? I think that it's going to be variable. We can perhaps point to, you know, I guess guys who have come back from serious elbow injuries might be something of a framework that we can use to navigate this question. And there, again, it can be kind of variable depending on the timing of, say, a Tommy John surgery relative to, you know, when he has a surgery relative to when the season starts. I don't think that it's going to take everyone two or three seasons to regroup. If for no other reason than most starters are not going from throwing, say, 200 innings to throwing however many innings they threw this year.

But I wouldn't be surprised if there are pitchers who teams are just a little more reluctant to hurry back. teams are just a little more reluctant to hurry back. Who would be a good, who's a good example that we can look to for this year? Hmm. So for example, let's maybe use Clayton Kershaw as an example. So Clayton Kershaw threw 171.1 innings in 2019 and threw 58.1. He had a full, like what would be considered a full starter's load this year, right? And how many innings, Ben, do you expect that Kershaw will aim to pitch?

Not that he necessarily will exactly, but what do you think he will aim to pitch in 2021? I think if you ask Clayton Kershaw, he'll probably aim to pitch ailment or something but i think given that he seemed fine after he came back in august i don't know that he would actually approach next season any differently in terms of his target right so i think that there are there are definitely going to be guys who have just a lower innings total that they aim for going into the season, understanding that they're going to have to build up the arm. And I think a lot will depend on how normal we are able to anticipate the 2021 season being because I think some of the concern around starter innings this year, you know, some of it was just the reality of the season and its length and how many

starts a frontline guy could get in in the course of a 60-game season. But I think the teams were absolutely more conservative with their expectations around starters this year because of the strange kind of re-ramp up to the season. So I think that if we go into 2021 with the expectation that guys will come to spring training, they will build up their arms, and then we will start on 162 games, I think the answer is really different than if the pandemic is making it seem like we might have an abbreviated season, or we might have more starting and stopping again. So I think that some of this will depend a lot on how typical the ramp up to opening day looks like, would be my guess. Yeah, I think it would change off-season training routines possibly. Like, I don't know, maybe you start training sooner, you don't need

as long a layoff because you didn't pitch as many innings this year. But I would think, like, obviously the trend has been toward shorter and shorter starter outings over time and lighter workloads, and so maybe this will exacerbate that to a certain extent. But, yeah, I would think that if you have a whole offseason to train normally and if you have a regular spring training, like, if everything from here on out looks normal, then I would think probably by the time the season starts you'd be thinking about things roughly the same way that you would otherwise like you're right like we could look at the example of guys who missed a season or missed part of a season with an injury but even

that's a little bit different because then you're coming back from an injury. And granted, a lot of pitchers will be coming back from injuries because a lot of pitchers got hurt this year or so, which was probably a product of that strange ramp up to the season. And so in that sense, there will be more pitchers who are dealing with the after effects of that. And so there might be more caution, not just because of the low innings totals, but because of the low innings totals, but because of the arm issues that a lot of pitchers encountered. But if you made it through the season unscathed, then I think if you have a whole winter to build up appropriately, you could probably go into next year targeting, you know, 180 or 190 or 200 or whatever it is that top of the rotation guys actually can achieve these days yeah i think that it'll be it'll be dictated as much by what the schedule looks like next year

as anything else and of course underlying pitcher health but that's always what is at play for how many innings a guy is going to throw the following year so i would imagine that there are, especially for pitchers who are already in their off season, that like you said, they might end up taking a shorter layoff before they start throwing again and then start ramping up in anticipation of a normal spring training and a normal opening day. I'm more, I don't know that optimism is actually the word that I want to use here, but my expectation is that next season will look a lot more like a normal season, sort of regardless of what the pandemic picture looks like, in part because MLB managed to pull off a 60-game slate this year. And so I think the framework for what pandemic baseball looks like

is already kind of established with some, you know, tweaking either to make it more open to fans or less open depending on the state of the disease in the U.S. next year and sort of how, you know, this weird plan to sell World Series tickets goes. Yeah. So I think that guys can have sort of a reasonable expectation that next year will look more normal, both in terms of season length and start date. And we'll probably be planning toward that end this offseason. So I don't know that we'll see a lot of 200 innings guys next year, but that would probably have been true regardless of the state of the pandemic or the duration of this season so henry asked what would happen if we missed multiple seasons or had multiple seasons shortened in 2022 would there be lasting effects i mean i don't know maybe after a couple of years i i just don't know that it makes that much of a difference in terms of how built up your arm is if there's one shortened season or two shortened seasons, do you still have to build up roughly the same way at the end of it? I would not be shocked if long-term there were actually some positive effects on pitchers' arms from this.

This is not something that you normally get in the middle of a career for a healthy pitcher, just a season that only lasts 60 games where you don't have those heavy workloads. And it would not surprise me greatly if maybe you saw longer careers on the other side of this or fewer entries after this just because a lot of pitchers just had kind of an enforced rest period this year of a few months that they would not have had otherwise. And I think more pitchers got hurt because of the ramp up to the season. There were also maybe some pitchers who could have been helped by it in theory because they were coming back from an injury and didn't have to get back on the mound in real games as quickly or just because you know you throw fewer pitches

you do less damage to your arm that's just a basic relationship i think and so yeah i could imagine that you know down the road you might see someone attribute their longevity to not having to have pitched a full load this season and yeah and you know, maybe if someone opted out, let's say, and you just get like a refresher year, you just rest for a year. You know, let your ligaments and tendons and muscles and everything heal in a way that they don't typically even over a full offseason. You know, it might be different to have a whole year off or most of a year off as opposed to just half a year off. Maybe there's some regeneration that happens there. Regeneration. All right.

Question from Frankie. In the seventh inning of Marlins-Cubs game two, Chipper Jones said the Marlins put up a crooked number after scoring two runs. I know this is similar to your insurance runs discussion from a few shows back, but this one feels even more egregious. I know that in the seventh inning and beyond, run scoring tends to dip, but two runs hardly feels crooked. Is there such a way we could quantify crookedness? Does it vary by teams involved? The Cubs are offensively challenged and will have a hard time mounting a comeback, or situation two runs late in an elimination game is a big deal but hardly insurmountable well my first problem with

the concept of crooked numbers i'm so glad you asked ben it's really frankie who asked but yes i passed it along a lot of numbers are crooked just they look crooked yes they're not not crooked they're crooked they look crooked they're not they're not straight they're not not crooked they're crooked they look crooked they're not straight they're not straight yeah most of them are not symmetrical which i don't know is it is that important to the to the consideration of crookedness well if you look up the actual dictionary definition of crooked which maybe varies by dictionary but but just going on dictionary.com, it says not straight, bending, curved, which, I mean, in that case, basically any number except one is crooked. That's the only number.

I think, I mean, even zero is curved. So it's not straight. I tend to think of crooked as like off kilter a little bit more, like just, you know, diagonal maybe or at a right angle or something. Like I don't think of a circle as crooked so much as I would think of just like a branching road as crooked. I don't know. Or a tie as crooked, like maybe a straight line that is just off straight. A tie is not crooked if it is perfectly placed, but then you move it a little to the side and it is crooked. And it's not that the tie itself has changed, it's just the angle at which the tie is hanging.

So you could quibble with even zero being a non-crooked number. But I think the spirit of the thing, obviously, is like you're scoring some runs. So it's, I mean, I think the definition, I guess to refer to another dictionary, in this case, the baseball dictionary, Dixon's baseball dictionary, says any number greater than one and less than 10 in reference to the lack of straight lines for numerals 2 through 9. A high-scoring game is one with crooked numbers. A 1-0 game is one in which neither team was able to post a crooked number. It actually lists the first reference to crooked number as a Roger Angel New Yorker article in 1993 where he attributed it to Tony La Russa calling high scoring lines crooked numbers.

So by that definition, Chipper Jones's usage is totally fine here in that there were two runs scored. That's more than zero. It's more than one. Therefore, it is crooked. Less than 10, though. It specifies less than 10. Yeah, that's kind of, I guess that would be. Or fewer than one. Therefore, it is crooked. Less than 10, though. It specifies less than 10. Yeah, that's kind of, I guess that would be. Or fewer than 10.

Yeah, multiple digits. If you score 11, then it's not crooked because it's two ones. See, that's where it breaks down. Because I think that there is the actual, like, aesthetic consideration of a number that is crooked. There is the actual like aesthetic consideration of a number that is crooked. And like, and I think part of why I am getting, why I always get mixed up here is that like eight is like a symmetrical number. Yeah, no, that's right. It's a symmetrical number.

And so you could fold it over on itself and it would be the same. So that's part of why I get jammed up here. And then the other component to this separate from the aesthetic consideration of the actual physical number on the scoreboard is the idea that it is it has been a big inning right that it has been and so if you were to score if you were to score 11 runs in an inning you would i would think of that as a crooked number even if it is not aesthetically consistent with the concept of crooked numbers because it's 11 runs you're like really you're really in trouble then so i think that trooper jones's definition was fine but that

when you start to approach edge cases the concept really just breaks down because how many times have you even really scored 11 runs in an inning that's i think that they're probably like who has to deal with that we do because we are on effectively wild and our listeners ask these questions yes yeah i'm fine with what chipper said but i agree that if you said you want to put crooked numbers on the board, like if you score two in, in every inning, then you're blowing out the other team. So like, you know,

if you, if you put crooked numbers, then that's good regardless of what the number is, as long as it's more than one, like if you can keep doing that, you're going to succeed consistently. But yeah, when I think of crooked numbers,

I don't know. It's a little higher to me, maybe, but technically true. And i think of crooked numbers i don't know it's a little higher to me maybe but technically true and i think of like you know three is a graceful looping number it's just a it's a couple of like c's it's like a couple of half circles but i guess there are parts of it that are kind of crooked i don't know it not straight. But depending on where you cut it, also symmetrical. Yeah. I'm really stuck on the symmetry thing. I think that crooked as a word is the real source of the issue here because it implies sort of a muddled aesthetic concept. And I just think most of the numbers are crooked. Yeah. They're mostly crooked, but that's fine. That fits the definition, but seven's the most crooked number, I think,

is what I've arrived at. Sevens. And also fives. What's up with fives? Why do we write them like that? I don't know. All right. Chris says,

can we talk about the Dodgers and their 117 so far win season in baseball references simulated season? Is this something to be excited about how likely is it that the dodgers would have actually done this if the season had been played in full so according to the final standings in baseball references simulated season the dodgers went 121 and 41 that's uh that's pretty good wow they they won won the NL West by 38 games over the Rockies, actually. Who knew? The Padres finished fourth in the simulated season.

Wow. Yeah. Baseball Reference was using out-of-the-park baseball, 21, to simulate the schedule. And they started doing this when there was no actual baseball season going on, and they thought it would be fun to follow along with the simulated season. I think maybe we talked about it at the time and it was actually just sort of sad and depressing, or at least we found it that way because it just sort of reminded you that real baseball was not happening.

But anyway, the Dodgers finished with what would be the best record of all time. So is that impressive? Is that enjoyable in any way um no i don't think so and i don't say and and to be very clear i don't say that to knock the persistence of the of the baseball reference folks i think that it is it is uh nice that they finished the simulated season because it being left undone would be would be unsatisfying for someone like i play sim league baseball and so i appreciate sim league baseball but also you know i just have limited capacity to care about other people's fantasy or fantasy adjacent pursuits and so no i don't especially care about that in fact the most perhaps interesting and noteworthy thing there is

the rockies finishing second yeah right yeah it's just like if you simulate the seasons enough times then you'll end up with some anomalous historical record result. Right. You know, it's like Sam used to do those articles about like Pocota simulations where really wacky stuff would happen and the worst team would make the playoffs and everything. And, you know, it's you get those kind of runs if you run it over and over and over again. And what we're interested in is where things kind of converge, where the average is. is where things kind of converge, where the average is. And so if you were to simulate the 2020 Dodgers season 100,000 times,

they would not win 121 games. They'd win a lot of games, but they would not win that many. And so the fact that there was one simulation and that it ended up being so extreme is not all that interesting to me. ended up being so extreme is not all that interesting to me. Of course, you could say that the actual season itself is basically just one simulation that gets played out, and that's the one that is in the record books and that we think of as sort of cemented for all time, and it just happened that way and could only have happened that way. But of course, it could have happened many other ways. And if the real Dodgers in real life had played their season over again,

some of them would have gotten hurt who didn't get hurt. Some of them would have stayed healthy who did get hurt. There would be different luck. I mean, there'd be all sorts of different things that would happen that would lead to different results. And so there's nothing really inherently more reflective of true talent, I suppose, about the one season that is actually played than the one out of the park 21 season simulation that we got. But, you know, it's just more satisfying to see it actually happen in real life, I guess, than to see it happen on a computer as they say that's why they play the games plus like this in real life flesh and blood version of the dodgers was on like 116 game yeah it's 16 win pace in a normal season so like we got these dodgers yeah yeah i've said it's like

one of the the tragedies of the season is that we don't get to see the Dodgers strut their stuff over 162 games and see them make a run at it. And I think they could have. But the fact that the fake Dodgers did in out of the park just doesn't excite me very much. Ultimately, you have to do it on the field for it to mean something. I mean, it certainly confirms the idea that the Dodgers are good and have a ton of talent. But again, we didn't even necessarily need the simulation for that. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Question from Andrew. I love the discussion of Corbin Burns, and it got me wondering if there could be some single measure of a pitcher's luck over a season or career. Matt Cain is the most

recent pitcher I can think of who was closely associated with hard luck. In the Bay Area, this phrase was attached almost any time his name was mentioned, but I never knew what this actually meant other than that he didn't win 20 games despite being good. I looked around and found a Medium article which calculated tough luck by matching up win-loss record and ERA+, but it didn't seem very satisfying. Is traditional pitcher hard luck just an inherently flawed concept if it is based on whether pitchers get awarded wins? Would a better measure do something like calculate something like runs allowed divided by some

factors of essentially good pitching, ball strike, ground ball, and walk ratios, batter's exit velocity? Someone who has more run score despite pitching quote unquote better is a harder luck pitcher etc so he wants to know how we would define hard luck what is a hard luck pitcher it's felix yeah that's definitely a type of hard luck it's felix i mean i think that my definition of this would be really superlative pitching that I'm using win-loss here as a measure. Understanding it is flawed, but I think it is actually very illustrative of the kind of bad luck that I want to describe.

I don't have it at my fingertips, but he pitched some absurd number of starts where he allowed two runs or fewer with X number of strikeouts and took the loss he had some crazy number of like very high game score games that his team just could not score any runs so i think that uh just shocking lack of offensive support is one kind of hard luck and is often the most painful kind of hard luck because the cruelty of baseball is that you you are the starter and you do all that you can and even in games where there is no designated hitter this applies you can't really move the needle in terms of run scoring you can't and all you can do is sit there and strike out a bunch of guys and throw a bunch of pitches and go back to the dugout and be like well

i guess maybe they'll get them next time but probably not and that has to feel terrible so my definition is the entire career feels ridiculous yeah at least in like the early 2000s to the mid-2010s. Yeah, and just being one of the best players ever, never to make the postseason, even in an era when there were more postseason teams. That's hard luck just to be on a team where your teammates are not good enough to get you there. And so you never have that moment,

even though you certainly contributed toward making a playoff team. So yeah, I think that's a good definition. It's kind of interesting that Andrew mentions Matt Cain as a hard luck pitcher because I actually remember early in his career thinking of him as this fit beater. Like that was a big conversation about Matt Cain. Through 2014, Matt Cain had a 264 BABIP, and thus his ERA was lower than his FIP by a considerable margin. He had a 3.39 ERA to that point and a 3.72 FIP and a 4.15 XFIP. So his runs allowed often sort of outpaced his peripherals and so if anything you might think of him as lucky i i don't think it was pure luck i think he probably had some talent for getting a low babbitt although in the final few seasons of his career that deserted him

along with pretty much everything else but But I think maybe the definition has changed from win-loss and run support to really being more about Babbitt and how well the pitcher pitched according to the factors directly under his control versus the runs allowed. It seems like, yeah, you might still talk about Jacob deGrom being hard luck

in that he's the best pitcher in baseball and he doesn't win that many games because the Mets don't give him great run support and he doesn't get great defensive support. at this point than you would about someone who had like a good ERA and a not so good win-loss record just because we all pay a lot less attention to win-loss record these days and we all consider it much less reflective of the pitcher's performance because just we know that it has to do with run support and bullpen and all these other factors and so I think the the definition has sort of shifted over time. I think that that's true. And I think that your answer is more rigorous than mine, but also mine is right too. Yeah, Felix is still a good answer. Right. I think that those are two definitions of hard luck that are really pointing toward the same phenomena, which is other people on the team sort of letting you down,

right, in a way that you can't control. You've done all you can, and you've been let down, whether it's bad fielding or insufficient run support. And then I think, you know, the other kind of hard luck pitcher, which is probably the saddest version of all, is when your own body lets you down, right? The perpetually injured but very promising and talented pitcher is, I think, another kind of hard luck where the call is coming from within the house in a sad sense and you're just never quite able to live up to what you might be if your body were able to sustain itself over the course of a career. So I think that's the saddest kind

of hard luck, really. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. I've talked and written before about Eddie Smith, the pitcher who pitched for the Athletics and the White Sox and other teams in the 30s and 40s. And by some definitions, he is an extremely hard luck pitcher in that, and I'm cribbing from the baseball reference page draft we did at the Ringer earlier this year where I picked Eddie Smith's page. Although he retired with a 108 ERA+, he had a winning record only once among the 552 pitchers with at least 1,500 innings pitched and an ERA plus of 100 plus or better,

indicating that they were at least league average at preventing Runs Smith's 392 Winning percentage 73 And 113 is the worst by 21 points and if we raise the ERA plus bar to 108 his is The worst by 44 points And he had terrible luck

In terms of translating his own Pretty good run prevention into wins and losses Because he just played for a succession of terrible teams and terrible hitting teams. And so he was hard luck. But I think in that era, wins and losses were sort of more reflective of the pitcher's performance than they are now because you would get complete games all the time, whereas now often half the game is not even the starting pitcher.

So I don't think you get that as much but yeah i think your your two alternative definitions of hard luck are equally valid there are a lot of ways to be unlucky it turns out and they're all sad yeah all right sam says one of the best features of baseball is just how many games have been played. There have been so many games for two main reasons. Each season has a ton of games, and there have been baseball seasons for about 140 years. If you

could hold the total number of games that have been played in baseball history constant, would you be more interested in a sport that has a professional league that extends hundreds of years, maybe back to the American Revolution, but had barely any teams or games for a long time? Or would you be more interested if baseball history started around 1965, but there were twice as many professional level teams?

So you get the same number of games, but you can either have them going back much further, just with fewer teams and games per year, or starting more recently, but you can either have them going back much further just with fewer teams and games per year or starting more recently, but having many more teams and games per year. I would opt for more recent and more teams in games. And I think that one of the hidden benefits of opting with more recent is that you're also prioritizing post-integration baseball. That's true. So you have a more representative talent pool from what you're drawing and thus better baseball. So I would opt for more recent and more games

in part because of the stuff I just said and also because I think that when we're shifting from sort of appreciating the history of the game to trying to understand baseball as it is now, that is a more useful data set from which to draw. So my answer would be more recent, more games, more teams, and more kinds of people playing professional ball. Yeah. Because I think that's more interesting and more useful to us as current analysts.

And we can appreciate the history of it, but it was baseball that was so different from now that our capacity to do much more with it than sort of appreciate it as the progenitor of this thing we like is sort of limited. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, I was and am kind of inclined to go the other way with it because of what you said, that it was so different that it's not really useful for analytical purposes. Now, that is true. And yet I do sort of find it fascinating to see the evolution of the game over time. being integrated or not integrated, as you said, that is a definite negative against the answer of going back farther in time, because then you'd just be excluding more and more people, probably. So that's one of the worst parts of baseball's legacy and really of the entire country's legacy. And baseball is just part of American history in so many ways. But I think it would be sort of

fascinating to see how baseball had evolved over the course of, say, three centuries, you know, instead of just a couple. I mean, it already seems like baseball is pretty ancient compared to other major American sports and its origins go back much further than, say, the Red Stockings or the National League or the National Association or whatever. And so you can trace baseball's history back just about to that point if you want to. But it would be sort of interesting to have one league that just had that continuity over that extraordinarily long time. And you could monitor the rules changes.

over that extraordinarily long time, and you could monitor the rules changes. Like if we were a few centuries into baseball history, then who knows how we would have found the next incarnation, the next refinement of baseball. I think it would be, I guess, just in terms of like digging into the archives and the records, you'd come up with all sorts of discoveries that had been hidden and forgotten and there'd just be a lot more history to know which would be sort of a positive like on the one hand i think a lot of fans just basically toss out 19th century baseball already right and except for a few very famous figures, you don't know a lot of

the stars from then. And so I guess you could say that, well, if you had early 19th century baseball and even 18th century baseball in the same organized league, no one would really pay attention to those years anyway. And so what's the point of having them? And I guess that's a valid argument too. Like if we already have forgotten a lot of early National League history, then if there were a century more of National League history, then how would that actually be benefiting anyone?

So I can see it both ways, I think. But I would sort of just like longer history, I guess, just because there would be more to know, more to research, more twists and turns and developments. It would almost be like being able to fast forward a century from now and see how baseball has changed. Like if it had formed as an organized entity a century earlier, then we'd be even further along that path. And I guess the good news is that it still exists in this scenario, which is nice and not at all assured. I just love how every conversation you have about anything is like, oh, the optimism of assuming a future. So I have one question for you, Ben.

Do you think that if we had centuries worth of baseball and could look back on it, that we would have settled the batting around debate? Because if the answer is no, then what is it good for? No, I mean, I have settled it in my own mind, but I will not revisit that. This is not an invitation to start that debate, listeners. Don't be boring and start it up again. That would be, you're above it. You can opt to be above. Yeah.

And the quality of play would be so low in that early baseball. Just atrociously bad. If it's like colonial times and there's like whatever, a few million people in the whole country or however many it was at the time. And everyone was busy like farming or writing the Constitution or fighting England or whatever. Having diphtheria. Yeah. I think you know even among The people who would have been permitted To play at that point

It would have been a small percentage Of the population and it would have Just been terrible terrible baseball That would not be at all comparable To today's and Yet I don't know like the idea Of having continuity between That terrible baseball

And today's incredible baseball through the same league or even like the same franchises. See, the downside, I think, of the more recent incarnation of baseball is that like a big part of baseball's appeal is the generational ties that develop, right? And like, you know, I don't know, my ancestor was a fan of this team and passed it down to me and that gets passed down to the next generation and so you have whole families whose identities you know part of it is around being a baseball fan or a fan of a particular team and so if baseball had come about in 1965 even if there had been twice as many teams or games, which like, hey, that's just too many teams and games, I think.

So that might just that would water down the product, too, if there were twice as many games and teams. And also it would just be kind of overwhelming to watch that amount of baseball. be kind of overwhelming to watch that amount of baseball and you know would the league even be able to support that many games and teams in that many different cities are there enough markets to make that viable but apart from that like baseball would just be a more recent thing and so you wouldn't have had time for those bonds to really form and and set deepen. And so you just wouldn't have as much history. Like it's kind of fun even now to say that like, you know, what was it the other day, the two teammates who hit home runs,

multiple home runs, was it Tatis and- And Will Myers. Right, Will Myers. They go deep twice and win postseason game. And it's like, oh, this is the first time this has happened since Gehrig and Ruth and Ruth in the called shot. And even though you do have to attach an asterisk, you know, mental or otherwise to all pre-integration records, it's still kind of cool that something can happen in 2020 and you can say, oh, the only other time this happened was 1932 and so if baseball had only come about in 1965 you you just wouldn't get those kinds of cross-generational comparisons i think you have to put an asterisk on it because the way willmeyer spells his name is doofy but yes i agree like that part of part of it is quite satisfying and to be able to reach that far back

is really cool. I've been working on a dip theory, a dips theory pun for the last 10 minutes while you were talking. So that's a thing I'm noodling on. I also just realized from looking at Will Meyer's

baseball reference page that his full name is William with two L's. So he had choices and he made this one, but that's not name is William with two L's. So he had choices and he made this one. But that's not the point of this conversation at all. I think that there is a lot to be said for that sort of historical pull. And that part is really great. And I also think that we are more inclined to appreciate that occupying the particular sort of niche in baseball that we do than like every fan and i think that every fan likes to be able to look back on seasons past

and especially if you're a fan of like a franchise with a long and proud history being able to reach back is is pretty great but i also think that for average fans like the shelf life of that probably doesn't go back as far as we really expect it to and so you know like yankees fans would be like oh to lose ruth what would we do you know how all yankees fans talk like that but i i think that increasingly the history that feels the most relevant to us, you know, like it scooches up over time. It scooches. It's got a little wiggle to it.

So, yeah. But I think both answers are defensible. Now I'm imagining like the ancient Greeks playing baseball and then tripping because they're wearing togas. They would probably baseball in the nude actually so that's its own can of worms to grapple with.

Sliding would be difficult and possibly painful. In both cases, right? It would be painful in the one and difficult in the other. Sliding in a toga, whoever heard of such a thing? I would not want to see the TBS base cam if you had players wearing toga. Whoever heard of such a thing? I would not want to see the TBS base cam if you had players wearing togas.

Or the nude, for that matter. I'd be like, oh, dear. I enjoyed how just wholesome TBS broadcasters' excitement about the base cam was. They were so happy about the base cam. They were so happy. It was like, here are their shoes.

Yeah. And they're like, I saw the base cam a couple times. was like all right you know that's cool like yeah it's it's sort of what i would expect like it's it's cleats and you're sliding into the base like i welcome it into the stable of many camera angles in baseball broadcasts i'm happy to have it and i thought it was funny that they were like it took us four years to get a camera in the face or something, which I'm sure it probably is harder than it seems or it would have happened sooner. But also, I don't know, you see it once or twice

and you kind of understand what that looks like for a player to slide back in. Anyway, good job. I think that sometimes the Sky cam that we saw on mariners broadcast legitimately cool but sometimes you get a new camera angle and you're like oh i get why this wasn't in regular rotation yeah i get it yeah and oh i meant to mention by the way that it was kind of cool to see shane mcclanahan make his major league debut in the postseason the rays reliever the first pitcher ever to make his

debut in the postseason like I talked last week about Alex Kirilov and how he had an unusual debut in that he started a postseason game as his first ever major league appearance for the twins but Shane McClanahan first pitcher ever to make his debut in the postseason. And there have been a lot of postseasons, so that's pretty impressive. It's just there have never been postseasons like this one. So you're going to see strange stuff in 2020. But that was pretty cool. I even heard people speculating about maybe the Padres will start Mackenzie Gore or something, and that will be his major league debut in a start and that would be wild like you

can imagine these things happening that the barriers between minor league and major league are sort of erased when there is no minor league at least for this year yeah and then you have like the weirdest baseball reference pages yes because you don't have any stats i mean you do but they're they're postseason stats those aren't the same kind of stats so you don't have any stats. I mean, you do, but they're postseason stats. Those aren't the same kind of stats, so you don't have a 2020 line. Right. It's just, I mean, I'm sure that Sean probably hates that. Yeah. I would guess.

That would be my guess. I don't know that we like it either, but it just results in very cool stat pages. We're like, this is so weird. All right. results in very cool stat pages. We're like, this is so weird. All right. This is a question from Max who says, I was giving batting tips to a novice the other day and the first piece of feedback was telling her to keep her hands together. It's been widely accepted as the correct way to hold a bat and hit and feels correct since that's what we're all accustomed to doing and seeing. Let's say it turned out that this was always wrong

and not keeping your hands together was actually a superior way to bat. What kind of evidence would you have to see in order to change your belief? How long do you think it would take major leaguers to start hitting this way? Not saying it's a better way to hit, just speaking hypothetically. Gosh, I think probably at some point it was a good way to hit or a viable way to hit and you did have some hitters who would not only choke up but maybe have their hands apart just to yeah just to give greater bat control just because like batting technique the the optimal batting technique changes it's not always always the same batting style that is correct

because the ball changes and pitching changes, and so hitters have to change in response to that. So if you have a dead ball and it's a contact-oriented game and you have rocky infields or whatever and it actually pays to just put the ball in play, then the batting techniques of that time are going to be far different than they are today, where it really pays to put the ball in the air. And everyone recognizes that home runs are supreme, and so you want to take a power swing.

So you want to have your hands together. So these things do change, and we see batting techniques and pitching mechanics and whatever else change with them. So it's not just a far-fetched hypothetical. These things happen. Yeah. Yeah. But then what does it do to bat speed? Yeah.

Hands far apart like that. It seems like it would really kill your bat speed. Yeah. It's definitely just a slap hitter's approach. Yeah. I think I would need to see Mike Trout do it. I think I'd need to see it and then I would go. And then here's what would happen.

Mike Trout would do it. And if he hit like 400, then I would go, but it's Mike Trout. Yeah. 400. Then I would go, but it's Mike Tripp. I've had some real doozies of movie references of late, Ben, and I'm about to lay a whopper on you. Did you see the great gymnastics film, Stick It? I don't think I may have missed that one. Jeff Bridges is in it. That's how you know it's good. So anyway, there's a moment in Stick It where one of the gymnasts lands a very difficult gymnastics thing. And I'm not a gymnast.

And she does not get the score she's expecting. And one of the judges explains to Jeff Bridges that they don't want the young women to attempt such dangerous tricks because it can lead to injury. And so the implication being that one should not embrace a degree of difficulty above one's level of skill and i think that that that uh magtrout doing that would be evocative of that great moment in cinema history for me i have seen movies recently i have seen like recent films and they have been good ones. It hasn't just been like bad stuff.

I watch good movies too and recent ones. I'm not one of those people, I promise. I saw Parasite, it's fine. It's good to have a broad range of references. I think that's okay. Everyone should just be glad that the only thing I reference isn't The Mummy and Volcano. I've probably seen those two movies more than any others because I'm a winner.

Yeah. Anyway, I think, yeah, if you look back at Dead Ball Era stars, I mean, like Ty Cobb held his hands apart and Hans Wagner held his hands apart and it made sense at that time. Now, it probably would not make sense, but for this change or for any other change, I think it could happen pretty quickly because we've seen it happen just within the past few years, right? As hitters have gone more toward uppercut swings or at least angled slightly upward swings and have tried to hit the ball in the air, and that is partly, I think, a response to the ball behaving the way the ball is behaving, but also maybe just a belated recognition that it's good to hit home runs and to hit the ball in the air, even under more normal circumstances. And those things have

changed. We see the launch angle change by the year. We see different mechanics kind of come into vogue. And I think all it takes is like, as you were saying, just seeing a very influential superstar have a lot of success with it. And then there are copycats. Or today, I think you get more concrete and immediate feedback because you have like exit velocity and you have expected weighted on base and you have all these things that tell you if what you're doing is producing a better outcome like you can get in the batting cage with some machine that is measuring the expected outcomes of the balls you're hitting there and you can tell pretty much immediately if you're hitting the ball harder or on a better trajectory and then you know okay i should keep doing this. So I think a change would be adopted pretty quickly these days, actually, that you're seeing more and more of that. And yeah, I don't think Hands Apart would be an easy sell. But if the data backed it up for some reason,

then I think you'd see people be persuaded by it. Yeah, I think that's probably true. Okay. I have one last one here to bring things full circle. It's about pitcher workloads. It's also a little bit about Trevor Bauer. Just warning you ahead of time here, but it is about a different aspect of Trevor Bauer's performance than we discussed on our last episode.

So this is from Stefan who says, Trevor Bauer has had a history of saying he wants to sign a deal in the offseason where he pitches every fourth day, meaning three days of rest. In a pregame interview before he faced the Brewers on September 23rd, he mentioned that three days of rest was optimal for his recovery. He then went on to toss a gem. I was curious about this. Trevor Bauer is notable in many ways. Yes, indeed. But especially in the way he has been data-centric in his pitching, maybe even before it was popular.

Is there anything to this? It certainly is interesting to me that he would make this claim, advocating his data supported this, and then would go out and pitch in a way that validated three days rest is optimal for his recovery. Is there really a method to the madness? So Ben, I know you helpfully sort of pulled up how often he's even done this over the course of his career, which is not very often. I don't think that it is unreasonable to think that different bodies react to rest in different ways. to think that different bodies react to rest in different ways. And I also think that we have to account for the fact that there is an orthodoxy around the number of days of rest that are

optimal for a pitcher to maintain a pitcher's health. And so I think it is possible that Trevor Bauer does do well and is able to pitch effectively and pitch very well on three days rest, but has not often been afforded the opportunity to try it, right? So that his data set is in some ways artificially limited by the orthodoxy around pitcher health. So there's that to consider, but there's also the idea that we should consider that that orthodoxy is not just orthodoxy for the sake of it, that it is informed by a lot of many, many years of research into many, many pitchers and how much rest they do well with, right? And the days of rest that is typical for a starter can vary league to league, right? So some international leagues, pitchers go less often or more often what what have you so i

think that it is possible i do not know that we have an especially compelling data set at the moment although you know he is never so happy seemingly as when he is like in his skivvies with electrodes to test stuff so i don't know what trevor's gotten up to away from our view, right? I don't know. I don't know. He might get up to all manner of things. And so I don't think that we should just assume that optimal days of rest are one size fits all. I think that there can be a range there and that his body might function a little differently and that he is likely not the only guy whose optimal number of days of rest might vary from orthodoxy but

i appreciate the reluctance on the part of teams and and frankly pitchers and their representatives to sort of test the boundary there because if you're wrong you might end up with a bum elbow right or a bad shoulder and so i think that given the construction of teams as they are currently constituted there's not really a ton of incentive to find an answer to that question yeah because i would imagine that the benefit that you would accrue between a guy who say does better with less rest versus more is probably erased by the the trail of bad elbows and arms you would leave behind you for all the guys who are like no five days is great give me five yeah and so i think that's my my answer to that question and i regret very much the use of skivvy like i i not going to say we should edit it out.

I think we should keep it. But I want everyone to know that I am also unhappy with me right now. Yeah. If you look at Bauer's career history, so three days rest, four days rest, five days rest, six plus days rest. His strikeout to walk ratio actually declines with the more rest he has, so he's only made three starts. This is in the regular season on three days rest, and in those starts he has a 7.3 strikeout per walk ratio. He's pitched quite well. With four days rest, he has a 3.02 strikeout to walk ratio and a 3.68 ERA. He's pitched well. With five days rest, he has a 2.74 strikeout to walk ratio, 4.65 ERA, and then six plus days rest. That's 30 starts. He has a 2.31 strikeout to walk ratio, albeit with a fairly low ERA. So I guess that sort of supports the idea maybe that he doesn't benefit from extra rest. I would bet that if he's making this claim,

he's basing it on something, some sort of testing, as you said, with electrodes or something or other. We know that he has tested and demonstrated the effects of foreign substances in the lab and perhaps now also on the mound and i would guess that he has done the same here whether it's with some sort of measurement of muscle recovery or maybe just actually measuring his stuff when he is pitching you know whatever in the lab after a certain number of days. So there might be truth to it in his case. And he is, by modern standards, I suppose, a workhorse, at least in terms of pitch counts. He tends to have high pitch counts, although he's not the most efficient pitcher, so he doesn't have huge innings totals.

And he hasn't had an arm injury or at least a notable arm injury to this point in his career. So, you know, maybe he does just have a rubber arm or maybe he has optimized his mechanics such that he puts less strain on his arm. Who knows? But then again, maybe not. And maybe he would break to like almost every pitcher eventually breaks. So like it might be in Trevor Bauer's long-term interest not to start that often, even if he thinks it is. And even if he has some reason for thinking it is, ultimately, like the more you pitch, probably the higher the risk that you're going to hurt yourself is. So there's that, but there's also, and I think this is the most interesting aspect of this to me,

is that let's say that you did think that he could pitch on three days rest all the time and that he'd be great. In theory, he'd be even more valuable to a team and he'd get an even bigger contract because he could pitch more often and he could pitch more innings and that would be great. But how do you actually deploy that pitcher? How do you use that pitcher who always wants to start on three days rest if every other pitcher wants to start on four days rest? You just, you can't really do it. If you have a regular rotation, it would be kind of tough. I guess you could skip guys sometimes and just start Bauer extra times, or you could have him come in out of the bullpen and give you some innings. So there are ways you could do it, but given how rigid rotations tend to be in modern baseball, I think it would be tough to really make the most of it without causing a huge headache for

managers and also subjecting other pitchers on that staff to that pitcher's preference. Right. It's almost as if he's expressing a preference for something other people don't share and then hoping it becomes orthodoxy. That's not the point of this conversation. Right. I think that deployment becomes really tricky. I suppose that it might afford some flexibility that is appealing, particularly if we end up with postseasons that resemble this one where you have series where you go on three days rest you need to be able to sort of position that pitcher in a rotation in a way that is conducive to the success of other pitchers on the staff and so i think that my conclusion after this conversation is the same as it often is with um any subject that involves Trevor Bauer, which is I beg of you to chill, Trevor. Calm down. Relax. Stop it. Yeah. Even though there are so many great pitchers

today, it does seem like everyone always needs pitching. Maybe not everyone, maybe not the race, maybe not necessarily the Dodgers. But I think because you have starting pitchers going less deep into games and bullpen pitchers pitching less often in back-to-back games and back-to-back-to-back games, there are always innings that need to be filled by someone. So if you did have this ability, then probably you could get used in some way if a team was daring enough or incautious enough to just let you go. And by the way, if Bauer does follow up on his stated intention to keep signing one-year deals everywhere, that might make it more likely to happen just because, you know, if you're a team that is only committed to this player for one year and you don't really have to worry about that player's long-term prospects and that player is accepting the risk and even welcoming or embracing the risk, then

you might just say, well, one-year deal. Just let him see what happens. And if he breaks, then he brought it on himself and it's some other team's problem. I'm going gonna be really curious to see what his market is like because i think that i don't know how this the substance stuff is gonna play right on the one hand we as we've said he is clearly not the only pitcher who is doctoring the ball and so i don't know that he is necessarily all that aberrant but also the difference between between Trevor Bauer conducting an experiment and Trevor Bauer not doing that seems to be notable or at least potentially notable. And there's, you know, like there's the hymn of it. So I'm just going to be really curious to see what his market ends up looking like. Right. Yeah.

Will people accept that his spin rates this season are what they will be going forward right or if this is some sort of point that he's making will he stop making it or because it's such a high profile case of of a pitcher benefiting from these substances seemingly will there be some kind of crackdown will he be made to stop at some point and then will he still be as effective so yeah, yeah, I'm sort of fascinated by that, too. All right. So I suppose we can end on that note. And as we were recording, there were some reports that Mike Clevenger appears to be perhaps the presumptive Game 1 starter for the Padres.

Oh, wow. Or at least will be pitching in this series. By the time some people are hearing this, they may know more about that than we do at this moment. Oh, wow. the Padres would say, not soon enough. Yeah. All right. Well, Sam and I will be back next time to actually talk about the division series action that has happened up to that point. And then you and I will reconvene for another conversation later this week. So I'll talk to you then. Sounds good. Well, as you and we know now, Mike Clevenger did start and he didn't last very long.

Got pulled in the second inning after 24 pitches. He tried, but his arm wasn't up to it, and now the Padres are in a hole. There is no Mackenzie Gore, but there was Ryan Weathers. Ryan Weathers, 20-year-old lefty for the Padres, made his Major League debut in Game 1 of the NLDS, joining Shane McClanahan now in an exclusive two-member club of pitchers who have made their MLB debuts in the postseason. Weathers had never pitched above a ball. What a weird season in so many ways. And man, Meg and I were just talking about Giancarlo Stanton's power. Little did we know what we were about to witness. Much more to talk about, and check your feeds because Sam and I will

be back with another episode about the games sometime soon. In the meantime, you can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks. Paul Schulte, Corey Hare, Matthew Piseski, Colin Briskman, and Dave Lyne. By the way, one of those perks always is that we do two live streams of playoff games. So we will be bringing those to you sometime soon. We usually do them in the later rounds when there are fewer games going on. So stay tuned for timing.

You have to be a Patreon supporter at the $10 a month level or higher to access those streams. So if you do sign up now, you will be notified about when and where you can tune in. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can rate review and subscribe to effectively wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments coming for me and Megan, Sam via email at podcast,

the fan graphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. If you are a supporter, thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. Dylan, a Portland resident. Let me know that he was not aware of Utz potato chips. So the Utz East coast bias is real. We'll be back with another episode soon.

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