Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1761: Those Wacky, Tacky Balls

Episode Date: October 21, 2021

Meg Rowley and guest co-host Grant Brisbee catch up on some non-postseaosn news, including Grant’s elbow injury, MLB’s decision to provide housing for minor leaguers, and Rob Arthur’s research suggesting spin rate and pitch movement have recovered after cratering in light of sticky stuff enforcement, then banter about Laz Diaz’s strike zone in Game 4 […]

Years ago my soul went missing Looking for a life, no one but more Now it stumbles like the smile of a fool Looking to the sky for shelter from the storm All the lost souls. Welcome, you to San Francisco, a city that was built by fire trucks. Hello and welcome to episode 1761 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Raleigh, Fangraphs, and I am joined for this episode by Grant Brisby, the athletic, the host of Bags and Brisby, as well as the baseball barista podcast, Just a Mess of Podcasts.

It's Grant Brisby. Grant, how are you? I'm doing well. I'm doing very well. How are you? I'm doing okay. I have two functioning elbows, so I feel like I am up on you ever so slightly. We're going to talk giants in the back half of this episode. You're going to offer some advice to would-be opponents of the Los Angeles Dodgers. But before we do that, we have some banter, and I think we have to start. Grant, you recently went on the injured list what's going on with your elbow man I did it is a you know it's a sports injury it is a it's based in athletics so what had happened was I was sitting calmly watching

the Giants and Dodgers play in game three of the National League Division Series. I stood up when Gavin Lux hit a rocket into the wind with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning. It looked like it was a home run. It probably should have been a home run if not for the wind. So I stood up and then as it kind of approached the fence and you saw Steven Duggar settle under it, I ran to the TV to kind of get a better look, not like a hooray, but more just like, ooh, baseball moment. This is cool. And as I was doing it, my feet just slipped out from under me and I landed on my elbow. And my wife was right there. So it's not like we've talked about it. And at the time she just kind of laughed like,

oh man, you really ate it on that one. It was not me acting like a freak i have to just clear the record on that it was like a very simple slip whoop bonk oh oh ow so i mean i think that um it being kind of a weird freak thing is probably fun funnier yeah but how did you how did you then proceed with your with coverage? Because it's not as if that was the end of your postseason obligations. You had to go to theraines. Yes, I'm familiar. Yeah, it was very convenient because it just wrapped right around my elbow. And so I propped it up. And at the time, like I thought, okay, this isn't good, but maybe it's just a bad bruise, maybe not a big deal. And then it was the morning when I go, ah, let me just drop the kid off and go right to urgent care.

But after that, so I had a split for the first couple of days. And that was hard. That was really, I was using Apple dictation a lot, you know, hit the function control twice and go like, oh, well, you know, here's what the giant should have done, blah, blah, blah. And it worked very well. I mean, credit to modern technology, it worked better than I could have hoped, except Apple cannot tell the difference between pitcher like i throw pitches yes picture as in picture on the wall yes so every you know and apparently i used the word pitcher like 300 times an article and every time i'd have to delete it and with one hand just like go back

and go p-i-t-c-h-e-r but once once my splint got taken off, because it wasn't that bad of a break. I'm not wearing a splinter, even a sling right now. I wear a sling when I go out in public. But when I was in the press box, I could take my arm out of the sling and I could type. And there was a level of comfort there. So it wasn't that bad just for the first couple of days. for the first couple of days. Well, it's definitely going to have to be up there with the list of postseason injuries, including drone mishaps, injuries that keep one out of the postseason entirely like punching a wall. We will forever chronicle your elbow injury of 2021, but I'm glad

that you're on the mend because not being able to type when you're a writer is kind of tricky. It was tricky. And I will say that I hurt my wrist for months after the Cavaliers beat the Warriors in the NBA finals. I was holding a full water bottle. And when Kyrie Irving hit a three, I twisted it. And it wasn't like a punching a wall thing, but it was still like a sports moment. I have to react physically. And so I felt way dumber after that than I promised. This one was just me slipping. It wasn't that intense. So yeah, I have to react physically. And so I felt way dumber after that than I promised. This one

was just me slipping. It wasn't that intense. So yeah, I have felt dumber. Well, slippers right there in the name of the thing, but who knew that it would manifest so literally. One of the challenges of post-season baseball is that sometimes we lose sight of other stories that are relevant to the sport. So you have been kind enough to humor me, agree to humor me, and recap some of the things that have transpired over the last couple of weeks that we just haven't had time to address on the pod by virtue of there being so much playoff baseball. So we're going to run through a couple of these before we get to the Giants. And the first one is a bit of good news. I sound cautious because obviously the devil's going to be in the details with this. But last week, Jeff Pastner reported that Major League Baseball teams are going to

provide housing for minor league players starting in 2022, which is a long overdue announcement, right? And as I said, devil in the details. But we actually have some potentially good news about how minor leaguers are going to be treated by their parent organizations. Question mark. What was your reaction when you heard this, Grant? where he's talking about the benefits, the tangible benefits that could be there in treating people like human beings to an organization. It wasn't necessarily going to manifest right away. So you had to have an organization that was willing to see a return in a couple years, a few years down the road. At the same time, what we're talking about here, franchises, these billion-dollar franchises can buy real estate.

They can probably do some weird tax crap to write off the rent or whatever they're doing, operating expenses. I don't know. I'm a baseball writer. They can do that. They just write it off, Jerry. They can do that sort of thing. And they have an asset that they can sell for a profit. They're making their minor leaguers better and happier. It just seems like it should have happened years ago. Like once baseball reached this tipping point of where every franchise was a billion dollars or so, it should have been a no brainer a long time ago. So I guess good that it's happening now. way to alleviate stress that had to be impacting how these guys not only played baseball, just moved through the world. I mean, it seems obvious that if you don't know for sure that you're going to be able to make rent, that you might be less good at your job, right?

Like that kind of housing insecurity seems like it would just have obvious negative impacts, which as you noted, Russell has been documenting the various negative impacts of that for years now. What form do you ultimately think this is going to take? Because there are a couple of different routes they could go here, right? They could provide vouchers to players to alleviate the cost of housing. They could build their own dorms, as you mentioned. What do you think this ultimately ends up looking like for players? It makes sense that teams and franchises would use their resources to put money into an asset that they can control. They would have, you know, they're not dealing with third party landlords

necessarily, and they have something that doesn't necessarily decline in value, but appreciates. So that would be, I think, a longer term. In the short term, yeah, vouchers. I mean, that makes sense. Just anything that allows them to live like human beings, not eight to a room or something bananas with a hot plate. It's just like all those stories were like, oh my gosh, how is this possible? like the Cleveland and Cincinnati complex across the street from their spring training ballpark are dorms basically where, you know, when players are coming through to play in the complex league or for fall league or instructs or what have you, they put them up there and, you know, those guys like ride scooters to the backfields to play and stuff. And they just don't have to worry about it. And it seems like given how guys move around, potentially from affiliate to affiliate over the course of a year, you're not sleeping a bunch of guys to a room. The next year, we'll shuffle in some new guys

and make sure it's spiffed up, but that everybody has a place to go so that when you get to town, all you have to worry about is finding your way to the ballpark. You don't have to stress about going to Ikea. Right? It seems like a bad idea to have to navigate ikea like that's stressful for anyone even if you enjoy that sort of thing so i don't know like teams love nothing more than

real estate these days here's an opportunity for them to just acquire more real estate right i mean yeah just to get the whole free allen wrench out of the picture i don't need i don't need to see another free allen wrench those yeah just to have a whole mess of allen wrenches and weird yeah well right because what if you need it the next time surely they'll stop giving them away at some point they're sturdy and metal feels like you know when the apocalypse hits i'll need those i don't know ammunition food i don't know i just yeah they're sturdy it's part of my zombie survival kit well there will be more on this in the coming months, I'm sure. And as you said, the way that this manifests itself in 2022 might look very different

than the ultimate form it ends up taking because buildings do take a while to build. So we'll have to keep our eyes on it because we don't want to give credit and then find out that they're actually having to live in a Motel 6, which I don't know, motel sixes can be fine, but you know. They turn your bed down. I will say that, you know, this is just one step in that. What I want everyone to consider is the idea of what minor league baseball really is and what it means for a lot of these people where you're going to get spit out on the back end of your twenties, or maybe even into your early thirties without a skill that translates to like anything else. You have lost a decade that should allow you to build the rest of your career in whatever

you decide to do. And like baseball basically says you can't use that decade to build that. Sorry, it's all baseball. And so like beyond living wages would make that better. Like actual wages to where you feel like I can invest in my future. That's the next step. So soapbox over. Yeah. And I think that, you know, there's been discussion of this online that we'll just pay them a living wage and then they won't need this. And I think that the housing issue needs to be addressed as a supplement to living wages, not in sort of

isolation from it. Because even if you look, let's say you pay these guys to play baseball for the whole year and you're paying them 50 grand or whatever, and it graduates depending on how long they've been in the minors and what have you. Like, you know, we've all had to move and the startup cost of moving can wipe you out if you have to do it multiple times in a year. And God forbid you have to be paying rent on multiple leases. So it seems like given the unusual nature of the work that they do, where they're having to, you know, potentially

crisscross the country, and they're not going to be in any one place for, you know, the entire term of a lease that you want to pay them a living wage and make sure they have secure housing, that those things should be sort of coming hand in hand. But like you said, it's like you got to let these guys be set up to live the rest of their lives. And some of them go on to have jobs in baseball because that's the skillset they have. But it's not like every guy who plays in the minor leagues is, is, you know, catching on with a team to scout or, you know, work in a front office or what have you. So yeah, you need to make it sort of livable now and potentially livable later, right?

Absolutely. So we'll keep an eye on it. Hopefully it is the first step of several to make it, you know, sort of livable for the guys who are in it and not sort of unachievable for players who might want to continue their professional careers. If we make this stuff easier, then we get better baseball in addition to like being good humans. Both of those things are important.

We like to do both. Yeah. It is such a grim thing when you're like, yeah, treat people well. That's the market inefficiency. That's the ticket. Maybe in general. Maybe in life. Like, let's just treat people well.

Everywhere. Yeah, everywhere. Yeah. So that news was big. I think another bit of news that I wanted to bring up with you. Did you happen to, Grant, read Rob Arthur's piece from October 12th on how the sticky stuff crackdown has worn off? I did. You get a look at this at Baseball Perspectives?

I did. Actually, I read it the day it came out. Aw, so I didn't even have to sign reading. You were already on it. Well, for those of you who are listening to this who have not had a chance to check Rob's piece out, and we'll link to it in the show notes. Basically, we saw a precipitous drop in spin and movement that corresponded to the enforcement of the ban on sticky stuff.

And it has sort of crept back, right? We are seeing after a dramatic dip, an increase and at this point, an accelerating increase in the return of spin and movement. And Rob offers a couple of potential explanations for this in his piece. But I'll ask you, Grant,

do you think that these guys are just good at being shifty and they've found a new place to hide their goop? Yeah. I mean, that's got to be like the most reasonable explanation is that uh you know i think rob lays it out pretty clear like you can't just guarantee that there's something shady going on at the same time uh but boy you know to get all those gains back that quickly uh what's that about you know like it doesn't have to be total malfeasance as you hear my puppy play with a squeaky chicken in the background um it doesn't have to be like

malfeasance it can just be i don't who knows who knows what they found you know so that's the likeliest explanation so when they there are a couple of things here so they the guys have to turn out their belts they got to show them their gloves and their caps. I think that given the rules about how often starters and relievers have to be checked, like there is some amount of predictability to when they're going to have to present themselves. And, you know, if you watch games, you'll still see guys like, you know, putting their hands up to their hair and touching part of their pant leg repeatedly. So like if you were a pitcher where would you not a picture grant a pitcher a pitcher not a picture where would you hide your sticky

stuff uh you know where are they hiding it i'd be one of those guys that like pretends like he's he's really just going for something with his pinky in his ear you know just yeah you ever see those guys like i've never been an ear digger uh but maybe that would be uh something um yeah so are they using ear wax or you think they're risking putting spider tack in their ear oh god what would you do i don't think that most of these guys are going to their ears but what would you do would you just be like the wax is sufficient or are you damaging your long-term ability to hear with spider attack in there okay so maybe not the ear maybe not the ear uh perhaps on the bottom of a shoe you know you just you're going oh i'm getting dirt off oh you know that seems reasonable that seems reasonable so i guess the question is i think that there is the possibility that there has been some adaptation

in in pitch design that would account for some of this. But as you said, and as Rob points out in his piece, it just seems unlikely that given how long it took for spider tack to kind of make its way through baseball and then how dramatically the return of spin has gone, that they would be able to adapt quite this quickly. So with that in mind, where does this leave us in terms of how we deal with sticky stuff going forward? Because this is now a stated priority of Major League Baseball, right? They have said that it is important to sort of the competitive integrity of the game, that they curtail the use of these really effective foreign substances. So what does enforcement look like for them next year? Because surely they will look at this spin data and be like, oh boy. Yeah, I would think the first step is a universal substance.

You know, I understand that pitchers were not a fan of the idea of like, no, you know, you can't use anything when a lot of them were using like sunscreen or just, you know, these things that weren't necessarily spider tack that were kind of codified and accepted. And it wasn't even like a wink wink. It was just sort of like, yeah, this is a little bit better than rosin. Because baseball has agreed that pitchers should have a better grip on the baseball, which is why there's a freaking rosin bag back there. So if the pitchers are saying these balls need something a little bit better than what you have provided, baseball should come up with a substance. And then it becomes a matter of,

you know, spin rate parsing and trying to figure out, okay, like this guy is a little bit goofier than maybe the typical pitcher. Let's investigate him or at least keep an eye on him. Where is he going? Is he going to his shoe? Is he one of those guys that's digging into his ear with his pinky? Like, you know what I mean? It's got to be like on a case by case basis. But the first step is just provide the universal substance that is a little bit better than a rosin bag. Yeah. Where do you stand on the idea of a tacky ball? You know, I like all things tacky. I think it's a great idea. You know, like you would read those stories about baseballs coming over from Japan and the players going like, wow, this is fantastic.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, work with the players. Work with the pitchers. Work with the coaches. And gauge their reactions. Gauge what feels natural to them. Because I really do feel like a lot of this had to do with pitchers, players just reacting to the ball they were given.

Right. Like the Whisper Network wasn't about them banging on trash cans necessarily. It was just about, oh, I heard this works better. Oh, and there was an element of, OK, now I can spin it 7 billion times per minute. And that's a little bit different. But if you provide that universal substance, you'll make a lot of people happy right away. Right. And then you have something credible to point to to say, look look we're trying to meet you halfway on this right we're trying to give you an alternative to spider

tack and if you're choosing to go off of that substance like you're really this isn't about gripping the ball this is about being able to spin it and make the ball move more than it was so i i like that as a solution i like the idea of being able to say tacky balls. Oh, those tacky balls. Those wacky tacky balls. Those wacky tacky balls. You know, Ben has a baby and then we go nuts over here in his absence. Wacky tacky balls.

Well, you know, I will say that one thing I was going to get to, and Kevin Goldstein hated it when I did this, but I'm going to give you a Jeff Goldblum impersonation. And it's relevant to this. It's, no, I'm simply saying that life finds a way. And I think I'll let you recover from that incredible impersonation. I think that that's how you're dealing with pitchers. Like, they're just going to find the sticky stuff. It think that that's how you're dealing with pitchers. Like, they're just going to find the sticky stuff. It's just life's going to find a way.

It's like Jurassic Park, darn it. KG didn't like that impression? Kevin, he laughed at me. He said, that's a terrible, that's the worst I've ever heard. And it was like, oh. Yeah. I think I just whiffed it on his podcast. Well, but Kevin also says OPS is ops.

So, like, I don't know. We have some questionable takes over there. Well, again, I'm sure this will be another thing that we kind of watch over the course of the offseason when we're not trying to bang our heads against the wall with the CBA negotiations. But the spin, it's back. Spin is back. Here we are. We appreciate Rob doing such good work on the sticky stuff, as it were. Okay, now we're going to start transitioning into more playoff-related topics,

although we will broaden them out. And the first is we are recording this on Wednesday afternoon, so it is before the Game 5 of the ALCS and game four of the NLCS. In last night's game four of the ALCS, one of the moments that spurred controversy concerned Laz Diaz's strike zone. Did you engage with this game? Do you watch AL baseball after your team is out of the grand?

Do you know what's going on? Generally, I do. Generally, I do. I really do watch every ALCS game, every NLCS game, even when the Giants aren't involved. Unless it's the Warriors season opener. So I didn't watch all of the Astros and all of the Red Sox. I did, like I had a second screen up. So I guess I was watching it, but I wasn't listening.

I will say that whomst among us could have foreseen Las Diaz's strike zone being bad. Wow, that blows me away. But in general, like, yeah. Oh, boy. So I have a controversial take about this particular question, which is to say that I think that his zone generally was quite poor overall. And that might make what I'm about to say seem silly

because it suggests that he just committed another error rather than having sort of a defensible position about the particular pitch he was calling. I think that this call was, I think it was fine. Like I appreciate, and here I should say, because our listeners are probably saying, but Meg, there were so many bad calls. What possible bad call could you mean? And here I'm talking specifically about what could have been strike three to Jason Castro in the ninth inning, but ended up being ball two. We all remember Castro then singled to break a tie in the ninth,

and the Astros went on to score seven runs in that inning and ultimately beat the Red Sox. I thought that this was – it was a close – it was close, you know? Like, that is a robo-zone strike, most certainly, and I can totally appreciate why. Like, if you had called it a strike and punched – and Castro had punched out, it would have been like, yeah, it was a strikeout. But in watching in watching it it was like this is the exact perfect kind of pitch that one when we have the robo zone is going to piss at least some portion of the

population off right because it is it is right there like 60 percent of it is in one part and 40 in the other so I thought that this was fine. Like this is a big moment and that's why we care. But like it is not an inherently crazy pitch to have called a ball. But I guess like we have talked about this at several points over the course of the pod. There have been many solutions offered. We will end up with a robo zone but when we have one like will you miss calls like this being borderline do you think there should be some amount of discretion and judgment here or are you sitting there going gnash teeth this is ridiculous i will say like i come from i grew up listening to mike kruko and he would always say listen as long as it's consistent that is all you

want i'm looking at the strike zone from Las Diaz. I'm looking at the plot. And to the left-handed batters or the right-handed batters, I should say, the outside part of the zone was incredibly consistent all game long. He missed, you know, maybe two of the strikes that he was calling all night. But in general, if you could pepper that outside part of the zone, he would give it to you regardless of which team you're on. And that doesn't make me gnash teeth. It's annoying. It's not something I like. And I kind of am still on team robo-ump just because baseball has a lot of quirky things to appreciate and a lot of judgment calls and a lot of all sorts of things like that. They'll remain, they'll be in place.

And if you just do robo umps, I think it would be fine. But at the same time, I'm willing to overlook a home plate umpire's calls when he's consistent, at least all night, as long as you're like on the correct side of the spectrum of Eric Rager. I mean, you know, it can't be a foot in the other batter's box. But if it's within reasonable, and I'm looking at like the overhead view of the call to Castro,

and it's like, yeah, it's like a baseball's width. That's fine if you're consistent. Right. We were given the suggestion by a listener that instead of robo-umps, there should be a challenge system. And you would be limited to a very small number of challenges but in the challenge system you would be able to appeal

a particular ball or strike call and they would go to whatever the the robo version of the zone is to determine whether or not it was called correctly sort of like a boundary challenge in tennis i guess i don't know if that's exactly how you call that thing because I'm not a tennis person, but I'm given to understand that that is part of tennis. And so that seems like another option here where in this moment, Alex Cora could have said, hey, no, put the headset on. You got to look at that because it's very quick, right? We have the Hawkeye stuff right there in the ballpark.

They wouldn't even necessarily need to go to new york what do you think about a challenge system as an option to deal with these sorts of things my knee-jerk reaction is i hate it because i'm picturing that sense uh however like you said if you could just you know i don't know if you're throwing a flag or going like hold on and you push a button and then it's like green light red light because it would be that fast right i think i could kind of see it, you know, just like, oh, OK, let's move on. Like if it's that quick. Yeah. You know, I could see them tinkering with that.

Yeah. It seems like a way to avoid the issue that we're faced with here, which is like a decisive moment in the ninth inning of a playoff game potentially turning on a call that the opposing team finds to be fundamentally flawed right yeah it seems like that addresses some of the concern here i like that idea if only because i tend to think of the the strike zone sort of probabilistically and pitches like this being on the border where how they are received and presented sort of determine helping to determine whether or not they're called a ball or a strike like that is acceptable to me i know it

isn't to others so this sort of preserves that but yeah it is uh i don't want to say poor laz diaz because he's you know he's made some choices and now he has to live with them but you'd feel bad for nathan evaldi like i think we can feel bad for him. Like, he was out of it. And then he wasn't. And boy, wasn't he. Yeah. And that's exactly right. Where it is like, do you follow umpire scorecards?

Yeah, we had the great pleasure of chatting with the creator of that Twitter account on this very podcast. Fantastic. So it is like, I like how they do it with, it's not just the true strike zone. It's the established zone. And so with that sort of challenge system, how does that work with the established zone versus the rulebook zone? That would be my issue too. But I think you're making good points.

Well, the use of Eovaldi brings me to the next and final bit of banter that I had before we let you talk about the Giants for a little while, which is there's been a lot of chat on Twitter about the use of starters versus relievers. And I'm curious, like, are you concerned about the state of baseball as a result of pitcher usage in October? I don't want to say that it doesn't matter when starters are deployed because I like having a starter go seven innings. That is enjoyable to watch. But there's a lot of consternation and gnashing of teeth about how, say, the Dodgers in particular

are deploying their starters in relief moments. And I think we can debate how smart that usage has been in specific instances. But do you find yourself concerned about the the future of baseball as a starter pitcher usage in the postseason grant are you worried no not at all i mean i think that what you're seeing now is just going to be it's going to be a little bit cyclical because i do think that it's not all starters are created equal and that teams are going to get better at you know digging down into the minutiae of what makes an effective hybrid starter reliever kind of guy like a Julio Urias. Like,

is there something that makes him better to use in that situation compared to like Clayton Kershaw in post-season's past? I don't think it's just like, you can't just take the hammer that is a pitcher and use it as a screwdriver all the time. Sometimes you'll have pitchers who, you know, have little widgets on them that you can make them screwdrivers. But I think baseball teams will get better at figuring this out and it won't be so all purpose. So I'm not worried about it long term. Well, and it strikes me that some of the like, you know, there have been folks who have been concerned about like the early hooks that we've seen from some from some starters. And it's like, I don't know, do you really want Zach Reinke throwing more pitches last night? That wasn't going great.

I think that there's a difference between having a rigid plan going into a game that is informed by analytics and sticking with that plan, regardless of what the game state sort of gives you, versus reacting to what is unfolding in the game and being like, oh, right, this is a playoff game. Like at a certain point, we have to go home if we don't win these. So I'm going to pull this guy to give us what I perceive to be the best chance of winning. Like those strike me as fundamentally different approaches than and

they're being conflated as one. Yeah. And I think that baseball, you know, back in the day, the baseball games of yore, relievers were generally failed starters. There are exceptions, of course. But, you know, now relievers are guys that organizations can take and weaponize. And they can make them not just comparable to their very best starting pitchers, but oftentimes preferable. So, like, are you – what are you rooting for here? You're rooting for pitchers who throw less effectively than other pitchers? No, you're not rooting for that. It's just different window dressing.

You're still trying to maximize the effectiveness of every pitch that's thrown. And if it's a reliever that does it in relief of a starter, that's fine. You just want the most effective pitches, the matchups in in all cases yeah and i i think that when we look to the regular season like i quite like the idea of limiting the number of pitchers that you can carry on your active roster at any given moment right to try to incentivize teams to like have a real bench and minimize some of the pitching changes without you you know, risking injury to guys. But it just strikes me that the postseason is like a really different animal. And even teams that deploy their starters and relievers pretty traditionally during

the regular season are going to at least be open to less conventional usage patterns in October because they want to be playing on the last day and win, right? Rather than be at home. Like your Giants are at home now, Graham. Should we talk about your Giants now? I'm pretty sure that in our messages that I said I was not going to talk about the Giants. Did you not get those? I didn't get those. It's so weird. I feel like, have you watched i think you should leave i haven't watched it yet i feel like i have because of twitter yeah no it's it's a very twitter thing but like i feel like you know you asked me about the giants is like there's a a sketch where santa claus is asked about being

santa claus he's like i told you not to ask about that unprofessional anyways um yes let's talk about the giants let's talk about your giants and and you'll notice that i'm making them your giants this is all your problem grant yes your issue to solve i quite enjoyed watching your giants play baseball in 2021 and i'm sad that they're gone we'll start there yeah it is i think for a variety of reasons the most enjoyable baseball season I have ever covered. And it is, you know, people will say, what? What about 2010, 2012, 2014? 2010, I was not a full-time baseball writer, so I missed a lot of action. Sure.

2012, that was the year that this guy named Jeff Sullivan quit in the middle of the freaking season and left all the national coverage to me and Rob Nyer. And so I had to work like 60, 70, 80 hours a week because of Jeff Sullivan. So that year was a blur. And so I still am a little bit bitter about that. In 2014, I wasn't working quite as hard, but it was still like I was still doing national coverage at the same time as doing just Giants coverage. So boy, that was a lot of work. And so this season was very much, I got to focus on the Giants. I got to watch every single pitch and I liked it. In my old grizzled form, I got to wake up and go,

yeah, I'm looking forward to the baseball today. And that doesn't have to happen. That doesn't always happen. And I appreciated the heck out of it. doesn't have to happen that doesn't always happen and i appreciated the heck out of it how did the the final moment of their season hit you right because i think we can all agree that wilmer florist did not did not swing he checked his swing successfully in that moment and the first base um disagreed but when you look at this team and here they they are going to the final game of the division series, they were, you know, they had home field advantage, the whole thing. What was your reaction in that moment to what was a clear missed call, but not a guarantee to win if the call had gone the other way?

Yeah, first off, let me just announce that i pushed my rolly chair away from the press box after that call with my bad elbow so another dumb sports it hurt it uh it hurt both metaphorically and uh literally it was look the the instant distaste was uh it was it was a bad call it was a gnarly call but very quickly did I appreciate all the things the Giants did wrong in the game in the series, how well the Dodgers pitched them, how incapable the Giants hitters were at taking advantage when they did get something down the plate. The first pitch in that at-bat from Max Scherzer to Flores was a hanging breaking ball, just a meatball right down the middle. And, you know, maybe he's looking fastball.

I mean, you can't just guess with Scherzer's, right? I'm not going to blame Flores, but like the chance was there. And I wrote my kind of recap reaction based on the at-bat before with Lamont Wade Jr. where he almost, you know, hit the walk-off home run. He got a pitch and he drove it and it was a really good pitch. It was buried on the inside part of the strike zone. But like that's what I'm going to focus on more than like the woulda, coulda, shouldas. I do want a peek at what would have happened.

Like I really just want to, you know, just glimpse into that alternate reality and say, ah, you know, he popped out, he struck out, whatever. Like, you know, he's probably not going to get a hit, but boy, he coulda. And maybe he just, you know,'s probably not gonna get a hit but boy he could have and maybe he just you know sends one over the fence it was a tired max scherzer who ended up with a dead arm the next time out like yeah i don't know i want to peek yeah i mean i think that the likelihood that they would have ended up winning that game was was quite low just given the circumstances, but it feels very different when you are afforded your opportunity and the other guy just beats you or you're not able to capitalize, however you want to interpret

that. It's quite different when that opportunity feels snatched from you. It reads very differently, even if intellectually you're able to say, well, the odds that Wilmer Flores is able to, you know, drive something off even a tired Max Scherzer, given, you know, the handedness advantage and all that, it's pretty low. It does sort of still wrinkle in the back, like you have this little tickle in the back of your brain that's like, but what if, but what if he had gotten another pitch, right? Or another couple of pitches? Like, what, what would that have looked like? What if he'd been able to tire Scherzer out and then had ultimately reached? Like what happens in, you know, when the next guy comes to the plate, it is hard to dismiss that like little tickle, right? And you are asking asking giants fans to have the suspension of disbelief where you're asking giants fans like i have watched barry zito drive in an rbi single against justin verlander in the world series like i have watched travis ishikawa who is playing the outfield because the giants had adam duvall and said well we don't know where to put this guy let's get travis ishikawa in the

outfield like i i've seen hunter pence hit a baseball three times with one swing and send it into the outfield like a shanked punt. Like, you know, Giants fans expect this kind of magic. And maybe it wasn't going to happen with Flores. But if you're going to sit there and go, well, you know, he's over 17 against Max Scherzer in his career. And Max Scherzer holds hitters to, you know, 130 average on two strikes. I don't think it was going to happen.

Like, no, Giants fans don't want to hear that. Right. They know the magic can happen. Right. And none of us can remember what day it is, let alone what year. So if you had told me that they were just going to deploy even your bulls**t, I would have been like, sure, I believe you. Right, right.

I mean, just imagine like a Rangers fan being like, well, you know what Neftali Feliz is average against in two strike bounces and what David Fries. It's like, no, you want the magic. Right, yeah. You want to be, you want to either be beaten fair and square or beat yourself fair and square. Like both of those things, while disappointing, I think are preferable to not knowing what could have been had you gotten the opportunity that you were due. Well, that's the way it ended. But like you said, you liked this season. It was your favorite season to cover. Like when you think back on 2021 and what this team was able to achieve, what do you expect is going to sort of persist into future seasons? And what are you attributing to sort of like the magic of this year where they really dramatically outperformed what most of us thought they

would do coming into the season? I think the story of this season, and it bodes well for future seasons, is how well they maximize the 26-man roster. And what I mean by that is that every player who was taken at bats, every player who was throwing an inning, was probably deserving of a major league spot. And maybe there were some who were performing worse than others, and there were ups and downs. But in general, the Giants were not giving away plate appearances. They were not giving away pitches.

And that is, like, it sounds so simple, like, of course, but teams generally don't work like that. Like, there's always this guy, gosh, we can't not play Cody Bellinger because he's a former MVP. He's so talented. What are we going to do? We just have to keep running him out there and having him be one of the worst players in baseball. Like even the good teams have those kind of roster spots that they don't know what to do with. A player who's making, you know, $20 million that they don't want to cut, but you know, they can't quite figure out yet. The Giants just didn't have that this year. They're guys that maybe could have been like that, like Brandon Crawford, Evan Longoria were really productive. The relievers, if they were iffy,

they were swapped out with relievers who weren't iffy. And it was just a very ludicrously deep roster in so many respects so you have this really deep roster and i i think that like one of the things and they were good at this prior to 2021 it didn't hit in quite the same way that it did in this season but like this team was very adept at sort of trying out guys right um you know they brought in dudes who either were blocked in their previous organization or hadn't quite performed like expected to see if they could tweak them a little bit and then see if they did better and they had a number of those guys on their roster this year

and so you get the impression that san francisco can manufacture depth even if they didn't necessarily have it going into the theseason last November, but they are going to potentially lose some of their important pieces from this year. So Kevin Gausman is a free agent, Chris Bryant, Brandon Belt, Deeskalfani, Alex Wood, Donovan Solano, the list kind of goes on from there. So I'm curious what your expectations are in terms of how they are going to approach the offseason. Do you expect any of those guys to return? Do you think that they will be in the market for other free agents?

Will they just keep trying to like find the next Lamont Wade Jr.? What do you anticipate their approach to this offseason is going to be? I do think that Brandon Belt will be back. You know, there's always a chance that some team's going to i don't know four years five years out of something goofy seems unlikely given that he's 34 yeah no i just you you can't dismiss the the possibility that another team's gonna go goofy but assuming you know everyone's rational here i do expect brandon belt to be back that he fits on a shorter term deal which is what the franchise would prefer it's you know he's he's been around. He fits the philosophy. I expect him to be back. Chris Bryant, a little bit more of a wild card

because he's Scott Boris's agent. His market's going to develop slowly and there's going to be the CBA that messes with it. Gosman, I think, has a pretty good shot of coming back. Donovan Solano, almost zero chance because Tyro Estrada basically does everything he does, but better. So it's going to be an off season where they will have money to spend. They don't have a lot of guaranteed money, even after extending Brandon Crawford, even if they

extend the qualifying offer to Belt and pick up Posey's option and all these kind of high-priced moves, they'll still have like a hundred million to spend or something like that. So they'll get goofy, I think, with some pitchers who are dented cans but also have a track record. Like I'm not sure if Justin Verlander, but Noah Syndergaard, I think, would make a lot of sense for them in a lot of ways. A guy like Max Scherzer, who even though he's got an extra month in his arm, he wouldn't require a three-year deal. So they'll be able to play around.

I do think that they'll give a longer-term deal. So they'll be able to play around. I do think that they'll give a longer term offer at least to Gosman and maybe to Bryant, but they got money to spend. They'll figure it out, I think. Yeah, I should say Belt will be 34 next season. He is not yet 34. He is going into his age 34 season. Bryant seems like he is just really meshed well with the organization and the fans there. I would not be surprised to see him come back. He is a good organizational fit and they seem to really like him. Absolutely. And it seemed a little bit more obvious after they got him. Two weeks in, it's like, oh my gosh, this guy is perfect for the thing. He kind of scuffled in September, both

offensively and defensively. But I think if the Gi giants are going to give out a nine-figure contract to a free agent it's going to be someone who gives them options not just in 2022 but in 2025 and brian is as close to that as you're probably going to find on the open market like i could see the giants being skeptical of like cory seager you have cory seager and then he's a short stop and then maybe later on the contract he's a second baseman and maybe even further down the road he's a first baseman like you can see that progression going a certain way whereas bryant you know he's third base he's first base he's center field he's left field he's a floor wax he's a dessert topping like

you know all of that he's he's just, very versatile in a way that allows the Giants to mix and match around him, which is what they value. They value that flexibility. Yeah, that makes sense. They'll pick up Posey's option, right? You know, they will if they don't work on an extension. Like that might be, you know, because the option, I don't remember exactly, but it's close to 20 million. It's 22, yeah. Yeah, so they might say, okay, let's do two for $36 or something like that.

But, you know, Buster Posey's got new twins, like, at home. He's got older twins at home. Like, he has four kids. Lousy with twins. Just rotten with twins. At some point, his twins are going to fight Joe Maurer's twins. And we will, I mean, that will, listen. For twin supremacy?

Yeah, I think he's building up a twins arm race, personally. But it's not necessarily up to the Giants. He might just say, okay, that's enough foul tips to the face for me. And who can argue against that? So it's not all up to the Giants. Yeah, that makes good sense. I mean, it would be funny. It would not be funny

for you. And it would be supremely strange to see him in any other team's uniform, but a Giants uniform. But it would be funny if he took his two sets of twins to the twins. Yes, it would. You know, the twins, they I've I've wrote about this 100 times, but maybe it's not familiar to you or your listeners. The twins for two straight years had the ability to take Tyler Rogers in the Rule 5 draft. Yeah. And they passed him over. They could have had a bullpen with Taylor Rogers

and Tyler Rogers, literal twins on the twins. They passed. That is worse than selling Babe Ruth for No No Nanette. I mean, I was kind of hopeful. It didn't seem likely, but I was kind of hopeful. It didn't seem likely, but I was sort of hopeful that when the twins scuffled down, well, not even down the stretch, the twins were immediately bad.

It was really kind of shocking. But I wondered if they would send Taylor to San Francisco and then you would have had all the twins because they weren't going to have a trade the other way, but they could have just been like we we renounce all of our twins even the literal ones go and yeah and be free but they didn't and also i mean they also had caleb theobar and the giants right caleb bergar and so like the giants could have had caleb theobar caleb bergar tyler rogers and and Taylor Rogers. And it would have made baseball sense at one point before Taylor Rogers got hurt. Right.

See, everyone imagines that if smart internet people were able to run a team, that they would do a good job. But we would end up doing shit like this. And then it would be a disaster. Would it be a disaster? Because this is another thing that I mentioned ad nauseum in my day job. But the Giants, when they let Mike Stanton go as a free agent, reliever Mike Stanton, they had a compensatory pick in the draft and a first round kind of talent was there by the name of Mike Stanton. How do you not take that? It's funny.

And then Mike Stanton becomes Giancarlo Stanton. I think this is like the new money ball, funny transactions. Yeah, funny transactions. I mean, at the very least, it would amuse a tiny sliver of the internet. And that seems like something. Yeah. Well, I don't want to give short shrift to the American League, but since that series will continue on and we have you, Grant Brisby, expert in the Giants, I thought that what we could do is have you offer some advice, Grant, well, to currently the Braves and then I guess potentially the American League should the Braves falterlanta to really put the dodgers to bed and advance to the world series what what do you think the key is to defeating these dodgers

it's something it's uh it's kind of like an overarching grand theory i have and it's it's it's called like get lucky oh okay yeah it sounds dumb and it's it's like sounds dismissive but i swear to goodness like it's the dodgers have more talent than the Braves. The Dodgers have more talent than the teams that they will play. The Braves are talented. The Astros are talented. The Red Sox are talented. The Dodgers talent and their ability to weaponize their players and their strengths and minimize their weaknesses while also maximizing their opponents weaknesses is uncanny.

And they are just incredibly good at what they do. And you are going to have to, as another team, hope that Justin Turner is lost for whatever reason. You're going to have to hope that Cody Bellinger doesn't find his way out of the fog. You have to hope that you can maximize these weaknesses while they're present because these are very, very, very talented players. And if they all get going at the same time and you have to go Mookie Betts, Corey Seager,

Trey Turner, Will Smith, Justin Turner, Gavin Lux, Cody Bellinger, Chris Tate, like, come on, that's just a, that's a bananas list of offensive players, even without Max Muncy. So get lucky. Well, but you wouldn't attribute the Giantsants success against them

this year purely to that, right? Like it's the combination of the good roster plus things kind of shaking out the way that, that you need them to, right? It is. And it is like, it is the good roster and it is the Giants ability to weaponize their own players. They're, they are very smart at maximizing their opponent's weaknesses while, while maximizing their own strengths. Like, don't get me wrong. They're very good at that. But in order to win the National League West by one game, Cody Bellinger had to be two for 51 against them all season. Like he had to have one of the very worst seasons against a team, any team in the 2021st century. Like it's just- It was shockingly bad.

Shockingly bad against the Giants. And even if you make him all-time historically lousy against the Giants, make him 5 for 51 with a home run, that would have been enough maybe to turn the NL West. So yes, the Giants are good. Yes, they had an ability to get some of these hitters out when they needed to. They had the ability to hit Rios and Buehler at times. The margins were, you know, sometimes it just didn't work out for the Dodgers the way they expected it.

And I'm not sure how to transfer that to the Braves. Right, right. Yeah, it's a tricky, I mean, they're like a slasher villain, right? It's like if you don't kill them all the way dead, they're going to come back in the second or third act and like strangle you with, I don't know, a lamp cord. Yeah. It's like really, really bad stuff. Watching that game three, I was never convinced that the Braves should feel comfortable. It just felt like, yeah, here it comes.

They're going to get one player on, and it's not like they just pounded the ball all over the ballpark to get back. There was defensive positioning that was just slightly in their favor. You had a ball just get out of Dansby Swanson's reach. But you just feel like they're just so talented, as talented of a baseball team as I've ever seen. And that's not hyperbole. So what do you do against that? You just hope that you have the Cody Ross to their Roy Halladay. That's basically what you what you're hoping for. Right? Yeah, I guess that that makes some amount of sense. That seems right. So then

what do you what do you expect in terms of how the the NLCS the remainder of the NLCS will unfold? Do you think that that that freakish amount of talent just ends up being too overwhelming for Atlanta? I think with a 2-1 lead that Atlanta is still in a better place than the Dodgers. I'm not going to go goofy and say the Dodgers have it all the way. I'm still sort of like the animal part of my brain says, yes, the Dodgers will come back. But I think that that luck that I'm talking about the the wins at the margins have already happened for the braves they have it in the bank and now their talent can match up and they they can certainly win two games out of the next four like that is possible for them it might be the likeliest outcome uh compared to three

games out of four for the dodgers so i still I still would favor Atlanta in the series just because of the numbers and the odds. Yeah, I mean, the Dodgers are just so good. Yeah, they sure are. Even like you said, even when, you know, Cody Bellinger is playing like a shell of his former self and they don't have Max Muncy to deploy. It's just, they're a very talented roster. So that's the NLCS you expect.

Expect? You're predicting that Atlanta will emerge. Am I right to say that? Are you offering it as a prediction, Grant? I have predicted Dodgers in other podcasts, so I get to cover my bases and say, yeah, I think at this point I'm going to be rational because I'm on the Rational podcast on the Rational website. We did talk about tacky balls for at least two minutes. Have you considered backy talls? I will predict. I will use the Rational part of my brain and I'll say Braves.

Okay. So that's the NL side of things. And then what do you expect to emerge out of the American League here? Again, I follow it less closely, but I still have been following it. In all season, I have been dismissing the Red Sox. And maybe that's wrong of me. Maybe it's just because, you know, I was annoyed that there was another surprise team in the American League that people kept comparing the Giants to. But I, like, I just look at Chris Sale, Evaldi, Eduardo Rodriguez, Nick Pavetta, and I see talent. I'm not saying that the Red Sox rotation is rough or is bad. I just – I see a little bit more talent with Houston. And I just – I'm more impressed with the names and maybe all of this stuff is fluid in September and October.

Like Nick Pavetta all of a sudden is outstanding or something like that can can emerge but i still just look at like franber valdez and luis garcia and and and the lineup that the the astros can offer the the red sox lineup is great don't get me wrong i just the astros lineup i was expecting a little bit more before the season so my confirmation bias is already in place if that makes sense yeah makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, so I'll pick the Astros. But again, it wouldn't surprise me if the Red Sox won. So then we will have Astros, Braves, World Series. Who do you think wins a series like that? And also, do you root for anyone in that circumstance?

What is your approach to the postseason after your preferred team has been eliminated? I do have rooting interests. And this is a tough one because I am a neo-internet goon and I hate the tomahawk chop just as much as the next person. I'm not a fan. The Astros cheating scandal didn't bother me as much. Like it bothered me, but it didn't bother me as much until this year when the residue from that affected people going oh well the giants have figured right they're banging on that was annoying to me because i just don't think that they're banging on trash cans

metaphorically or literally so i do have a rooting interest in that uh listen i'm a dusty baker guy like i grew up my favorite baseball teams the reason i'm here talking the reason i'm a professional baseball writer is because i fell in love with the 1997 giants and that was a season that ended with uh you know dusty baker arms up barry bonds picking him up and then sliding around on the dugout roof in his cleats while everyone said barry get down um like i just that baseball season is everything to me and dusty baker drove me nuts as an internet nerd uh as a baseball nerd you know he would i did not agree with most of his decisions it drove me nuts in so many ways but i like the dude i just really really like the dude i was fired as a dishwasher at a restaurant so that i could because they wouldn't give me time off to take a bus from Ashland,

Oregon down to San Francisco and listen to Dusty Baker and Kurt Manwaring talk before a game. Like it was this season ticket holder thing that my mom had. And so I was able to, to just ask him questions and stuff like that. And so he's just like my dude, like I have a history with him and I want to see him make the hall of fame, get a ring, and this would be the easiest path to the Hall of Fame. Yeah.

I think that that's perfectly defensible. Someone, and I apologize to our listeners because I'm not remembering who now, someone in our Facebook group sort of offered the perspective. Because I think there is some consternation among neutrals about how to proceed here, right? Like the Dodgers just won. And, you know, Houston is tainted for a lot of folks still because of the sign stealing scandal. And Boston doesn't really get off on that score either. And they traded bets.

And so people are looking at them and saying, well, this isn't the most savory. And I think that the crowd experience for Atlanta is sort of souring for folks. And even setting that aside, I think that there crowd experience for Atlanta is sort of souring for folks. Even setting that aside, I think that there are plenty of people who would find it strange for Atlanta to win a World Series while Acuna is injured. That doesn't quite feel right, even though, what are you going to do? The guy just got hurt.

That's not anybody's fault. Someone in the Facebook group offered the perspective that like, you don't have to, you could just pick your guys, right? You can just pick your dudes. If you're wanting to have some sort of rooting experience as the postseason progresses and your teams are sort of falling to the wayside, which I think is a nice way to think about it, right? Because, and I don't say this to like absolve any bad behavior by anyone, but you know, every team has its thing, right? You know, I think that there's plenty of unpleasantness to go around, unfortunately. And so if you want to have that experience of being able to, to root for some particular

outcome, you can pick your guys and, and root for your guys and have that experience of it. And I think that's a nice, that's a nice way to do it. And I imagine Dusty is sort of swaying a number of people toward Houston's cause just because he is, at this point, I think in his career, pretty universally beloved and people want to see him get a ring. So that seems like good.

That seems like a sound approach. So that's your rooting interest. But who do you imagine emerges victorious if you're putting on your, you know, your very serious rational hat, which apparently is what we're known for. My prognostication hat. Before we move on, I do want to speak to that point real quick, is that that's a good philosophy in general throughout your sports experience. In that when the Dodgers won the World Series, before they won it, I made sure to think like in my head, like, okay, I will be thrilled for Eric Steven. He is a good friend. You know, my ex-coworker,

Hector Diaz, another ex-coworker, like a good friend. Like I love those guys. And so get someone in your head you will be happy for, and it makes the whole experience like better, you know? So just start there. All right. Prognostication hat. Prognostication hat. It's very serious business. Let's see. Braves.

I am impressed with the Braves. Like I'm more impressed. I'm very impressed with how they rebuilt the outfield on the fly. You know, I'm assuming that Jorge Soler would be back and then they would have, you know, Deval and Peterson and Rosario out there. like they have built a deep team on the fly I like Max Fried and Ian Anderson uh Charlie Morton when he's not walking every Dodger he sees I think I would go Braves I think I would go I think I would just I'm picking up if they can get past the Dodgers I think I like their just overall roster vibe I think as you know no no uh

prognostications just vibes here okay we are officially a vibes podcast we have entered the vibe space i i think that a lot depends on what the state of their pitching ends up looking like assuming that they advance and i don't i i think that there's a good chance that they just are undone by the pitching part. And it ends up being Red Sox, Braves. What a series that would be. So much red. See, the postseason is the argument for greater diversity in uniform colors. We just need a more expansive palette because you have all these red teams.

Where's the taupe? Well, we just need more purple. And someone should be bold and embrace pink. But we're cowards, so we never will but that houston offense is terrifying so that might end up just being enough on its own well um we will hold you to your prediction and um publicly shame you if it goes wrong so welcome to effectively wild we're apparently very mean right at the end grant i, I appreciate you coming on. What do you have to plug that you'd like people to check out? Well, as always, subscribe to The Athletic through one of my articles.

You know, click through, subscribe, let me get the credit. I don't get extra money for it, but I get like little brownie points. And I need those when I negotiate my contract. So subscribe to The Athletic. I don't want to plug anything other than i want to point out uh that throughout this podcast you might have heard my four month five month old puppy a honking a squeaky chicken and i just want every listener to know that at some point very early in the podcast she's she's a little we think she's a uh like a schnauzer poodle mix

she's not big she's like anyway she's not a huge dog she left a turd the size of a baguette behind me very early into in this podcast so if you want to go back with the knowledge of like the twist ending that i have been podcasting with a turd the size of a baguette behind me please i encourage it grant why did you not say something and we could have paused and you could have removed the baguette turd i don't know i just like i noticed it about halfway through and it just seemed like okay let's just power through and you know i've got allergies some stuff anyway so you know let's just do it you know i'm a. Well, between being in the press box with a broken elbow and podcasting through literal poop smell, I, you know, color me impressed, Grant.

I didn't realize that anyone's professionalism could extend that far. So I am quite impressed. You can also follow Grant on Twitter at Grant Brisby. I can't imagine there are many people who listen to this podcast who are not already familiar with your work, but just in case they aren't, check him out there where you will find dad humor and, you know, apparently updates on dog turds on occasion.

Could be true. Grant, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure. That'll do it for today. You can support Effectively Wild 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, keep us ad-free, and get access to a few special perks. Chris Miller, Caroline H., Brian Pfeiffer, Patrick Casey, and Michael. Thanks so much. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild, and you can rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast on itunes and other podcast platforms keep your questions and comments for us coming via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the patreon messaging system if you're a supporter thanks to dylan higgins for his editing assistance i'll be back later this week with new guest co-hosts and new episodes until then enjoy the rest of the championship series been good to know you this

dusty old dust is getting my home and i've got to be drifting along championship series. Straight for home all the people did run Singing so long, it's been good to know you So long, it's been good to know you So long, it's been good to know you This dusty old dust is getting my home I've got to be drifting along