Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1923: The Umpire Perfect Game

Episode Date: November 1, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about umpire Pat Hoberg’s unprecedented “perfect game” behind the plate in Game 2 of the World Series, followed by musings on Nolan Arenado opting not to opt out of his contract, the Royals hiring Rays bench coach Matt Quatraro as their new manager, and Rob Manfred’s latest update on […]

I can't help it. You're perfect for me. I could care less. You're perfect for me. I've been waiting. You're perfect for me right now. In the moment. You're perfect for me. I've been waiting. You're perfect for me. I'm not perfect, but you're perfect for me right now. Hello and welcome to episode 1923 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? I could not possibly be more excited. Obviously, we had the second perfect game in World Series history. This is an umpire perfect game, but it counts in my mind. It counts for something.

Yeah, it sure does. They play the World Series every year. So maybe you think we're burying the lead here, leading with the umpire perfect game, but they play the World Series every year. They don't have an umpire perfect game every year. This is a first on record. So I am extremely excited, of course

referencing Pat Hoberg, hero of game two, who has been given a 100% perfect, accurate grade by umpscorecards.com and we will be talking to the proprietor of umpscorecards.com

later in this episode, Ethan Singer, who joined us back on episode 1702. And we talked to him about the site then, but we had to book him once more for the big moment here for Pat Hoberg. I just noticed that episode 1702, we started that episode by bantering about the zombie runner. That could come up again in this episode. So nothing ever changes, except now there's been an Umpire Perfect game. But people know I've been talking about Umpire Perfect games for years.

I wrote about this for the linear three years ago. And this is the first one on record, at least during the StatCast era. So congrats to Pat Hoberg. I know that this question will come up in the course of our interview because, spoiler alert, we already recorded the interview. But I'm going to ask you a question that you asked in the course of that interview, which was, did you watch this game live?

No. See, I was not able to watch as much baseball as I would have liked to this weekend because I was a groomsman in an old friend's wedding. That's right. And so there was a rehearsal dinner Friday night, and then there was a late afternoon wedding followed by a late night reception on Saturday. So I was able to get home in time to see the end of Friday night's game, which was extremely exciting. Yes. But I really didn't see any of Saturday's live. I was just trying to follow on my phone as best I could. And so I did not get to experience the perfect game in real time.

I was actually going to ask you. I assume you did or saw more of it than I did in the moment. Yeah, I did, yeah. So did you notice anything? Like, was there any chatter on Twitter? Because that's the thing about the Empire Perfect game. It's not quite as noticeable or prominent, you know, when people tweet out the results of the game.

No one was like doing the I was actually like I feel queasy about just like deep faked audio of like, you know, re-speecher type re-recordings of like people who are no longer around to give consent to their voice being used in that way. But I would like kind of to hear, you know, like the Don Larson calls by Bob Walsh and Vince Cully, just like, just transposed, just edited to be for Pat Hoberg again, so that we could get Vin saying, greatest game ever, baseball history by Pat Hoberg, or, you know, no hitter, a perfect game by Pat Hoberg. I guess the no hitter part wouldn't work, but that was how excited I was. But yeah, did anyone notice that this was happening in real time?

Well, I don't know what the Twitter scuttlebutt was because I'm trying to not be on there very much. But I didn't notice that it was a perfect game. It struck me as a well-officiated game, a well-called game. I feel weird saying well-called because a catcher calls a game also. It seems a touch ambiguous in this instance. But I thought it to be a good game, a well-umpired game. It's a tricky thing. First of all, I think we should acknowledge that even if this were something that were

blatantly obvious to every viewer as they were watching it it most people still would not care the way that we care about this like it's fine not at all to have particular interests right i would love it like i don't know if you know the broadcasters would be talking about it or whether they don't want to jinx it right and it comes down to the last play appearance right yeah it ends on a big call and it's like oh that was in the strike zone perfect game by pat hoberg and then that didn't happen jumps into the catcher's arms um no that that didn't happen at all is a funny thing about it that wasn't what happened but i i think that we are faced with a bit of a conundrum when it comes to this sort of thing right because i am of

the mind and i don't think that this is a either a particularly original or particularly controversial view that the best umpired games are the ones where you don't think about the umpire at all you know where you are you are not paying the least bit of attention to the umpire because the umpire has just called a good and solid game they have had a consistent strike zone they have not had anything particularly egregious they've had no cause for us to notice them and so looking back on it didn't think it to be remarkable which i mean as a compliment you know because i wasn't thinking about him at all. Yeah, no, that's right. Which is exactly what you want.

And so it is the sort of thing where, you know, Ben, if we're trying to get traction for something, if we're trying to get people to really dig in and care about it the way that we do, I worry about our odds of success because it is fundamentally asking people to do something that they don't want to do at all, which is think about the umpire. But yeah, I thought it was a well-executed evening at home plate. But as you mentioned, it was a pretty exciting game for reasons that had very little to do with the umpiring. Yes.

So, you know, there is that. Yeah. There is that. Game one was even more exciting, but it was there is that., I think. But yes, I guess on the whole, I'd rather have a game like game one with an exciting comeback and extra innings and no umpire perfect game. No umpire perfect game. A slightly less exciting game, but umpire perfect game. But still pretty special because this is something I've been thinking about for a while.

And yeah, even if you were inclined to watch this in real time, there's no way you could really because there's post-processing that goes on with these grading systems and you wouldn't be able to tell from even game day or from let alone the broadcast K-zone whether perfection actually

had occurred in the moment. And so it's not something you can appreciate as it is happening other than just to appreciate, oh, this has been a pretty good zone, you know, and the old cliche about like, it's bad to know an umpire's name, right? Because that means they screwed up somehow or they made the game about themselves. And so it is a testament to Pat Hoberg's skill that he's not a household name as an umpire. Although I, well, he will be now, I assume, at least in some circles, effectively while podcast listening circles.

Uh-huh. Yeah. I think it's okay for us to admit that we have very particular and bizarre interests. Look, I mean, that kind of went viral. Sure, yeah. People are into this. It's not the most esoteric of our interests. No, we definitely have weirder ones that is

that is certainly true yeah and i'm kicking myself because i meant to mention pat hoberg last week just because when i saw that he got the assignment like that's what they all say yeah i know you're shot in advance ben no one will believe me now but now i didn't expect him to be perfect i just meant to mention hey you, pay attention to Pat Hober because he's good. He is one of the umps whose name is known to me just because I look at umpire accuracy leaderboards and that sort of thing. Because I was reading an article about him in the Des Moines Register last week that was about. Oh, Ben. I was.

About how he got the assignment and it has the story like it's about him because he's from Urbandale and he just finished. He had played a round of golf in Iowa and he got a call and he had missed the call about getting the umpire assignment from Michael Hill, the SVP of on-field operations for MLB. And he knew what the call was going to be about. He knew it was going to be good news. And so he just started driving straight to his parents' house to share the news with them. He showed up unannounced so that they would be the first to know that he had landed the assignment. And he's perfect. And he said it was a really cool moment when he learned that he was going to get this. My grandparents were there too. He just kind of had a nice little moment as a family. And he's one of the better umpires, more respected umpires among people who

pay attention to umpires. And he's 36 years old. He became a full-timer, I think, in 2017 and had been a fill-in guy occasionally before that. And he's gotten some choice assignments before. He's worked three division series, a wildcard game, a championship series. He was on replay duty in last year's World Series. So they are appropriately recognizing his skill, but this was his first World Series game behind the plate. He was also doing the Field of Dreams game last year in his home state he got that assignment too so yeah pat hoberg good for him happy for him and uh he was the second most accurate umpire in the regular season this year behind jeremy rehack i don't know if that's how you say it rehack rehack but i can't believe you don't know how to say i know i'm worried you have like a secret room with pictures of them.

Do you have a Pat Hoberg jersey? Yeah, I have a little John Lipka shrine somewhere in my apartment, but he didn't get the call. But minimum 100 games umpired according to umpscorecards.com since 2015. It goes John Lipka, Jansen Visconti, Jeremy Rehak, Will Little, and then Pat Hoberg. So he has been one of the elite, and now he is perfect. So super excited. I am thrilled for him. I'm very excited for you.

I worry that in my initial response to your question that I implied that the game that was perfect was the one on Friday, which is not true. And so I don't want to imply that it was the one on Saturday. I know what the days are, Ben. Why would you think I didn't know what they were? Like, what would make you think that? Don't think at all. No, didn't cross my mind. Yeah.

But it's ironic, I guess, that I, and to a lesser extent, I suppose you would be excited by the Empire Perfect Game because we are people who like framing and who are not necessarily in favor of robot umps who would be perfect every time, presumably according to whatever specifications the system is given, right? And so people might say, well, if you appreciate perfection so much, then would you not just want to have perfection every time? But no, is the answer. Well, because then you'd have to for a human to to be perfect in this way to call 129 called pitches correctly yeah it is just extremely difficult that's why it hasn't happened as far as we know on record previously and so i appreciate the skill there and i appreciate as we've talked about many times just the the nuance of catcher receiving and all of that. And so if Hoberg is able to see past that and perceive what actually happened, then I'll credit to him. So I think I

can hold both of these ideas in my mind that I, in some way, value the fallibility of umpires because I appreciate the skill of catchers. And yet I also appreciate the skill of umpires. I mean, I do just like appreciate the human element, which often becomes kind of like a traditionalist talking point. It's a human element, right? I appreciate it for concrete reasons, though, like not necessarily because of the imperfection, but because it allows us to see the respective skills of the people, the parties to this decision. I get that it can be unfair to hitters and to pitchers sometimes if a pitch is called incorrectly that in theory they should have had. It can be unfair to people on both sides because if the zone is not called consistently

and predictably, then what are you supposed to do as a player? I get all the objections, but I can appreciate the umpire perfect game while also appreciating that catchers and pitchers, et cetera, are sometimes able to sway them as well. Well, I think that one of the things that I am sort of struck by as we look at this, you know, example of umpiring perfection is just, you know, how few calls really it is

that make the difference between someone who is merely very good and someone who is perfect. And I think that that just illustrates how good these guys often are at their jobs in light of and in spite of a skill that we both appreciate very much. I think that it makes sense if you understand our end goal to be preserving framing, because then you want people to be preserving framing because then you want people to be comfortable with human umpiring and its sort of accuracy. Otherwise, we would lose opportunities to monkey with it, you know, and that would be tragic because it's so very fun. So that's what I think about that. Although having seen the challenge system in the Fall League, Ben. Yeah, I know you're unportrait. I'm right.

I'm right about this. Like I'm not always right. I am often wrong, in fact. And I have gotten better at admitting that as I have aged. But I'm right about the challenge system. It is lickety split. It is clear. You know, it's going to add a whole new little wrinkle to what guys can do to be valuable.

You know, whether it's the hitter recognizing what his zone should be or the catcher or the pitcher. I'm just like, it's going to be so fun. Everyone should get excited about how fun it would be. It is the perfect way to, you know, split the wickets. I don't know what they are. You know, it's the thread the needle. Thread the needle is the wickets. I don't know what they are. Baby. Thread the needle. Thread the needle is the actual expression. So, yeah.

And, you know, who knows if we had been able to see that challenge system in action, would he have remained perfect? Don't know. I'm excited to find out about these things. I think it would be funny to see, you know, an umpire really try to press the point, you know, plead his case.

He won't do that because his whole idea is to have it go fast. But I just think that we should embrace the challenge system. It's the right way to do it. My idea is right. Yeah. No, you've persuaded me. I think I was initially resistant. I know, you're skeptical.

Yeah, I'm on board, I think, as a good compromise solution. And look, Hoberg, as noted, pretty young guy, one of the younger umps. And you definitely do see that on the whole, the younger umps conform more to the rulebook strike zone, which is not necessarily a function of their age so much as when they came up. They came up and they came up during this era where umpires were all graded based on the system and they didn't develop some idiosyncratic zone of their own prior to that. And so you do see that the younger umps or the more recently arrived umps tend to be more accurate as we grade these things now. And so because umpires on the whole are more accurate than they used to be and presumably getting more and more accurate maybe as the umps who predated these systems gradually leave the game. And you see just more and more conformity and everything.

Like we've reached a point where I feel like it's pretty good. Like no one's ever going to be satisfied completely, especially because we have K-Zone on the screen constantly. We have replays. We can see and replay an infinite number of times every mistake. And it is frustrating when there is some pivotal call that seems to go the wrong way. I get that. But umpiring, even though we complain about it probably as much as ever, if not more,

just because it's just the errors are so accessible to us. I think umpiring is better than it has ever been. And so the need for robot umps, at least sort of in an abstract sense, is probably less acute than it has ever been and so the need for robot umps at least sort of in an abstract sense is probably less acute than it ever has been but look we've talked about that many times i'm sure we will talk about it many more times to come as we get closer to one of those systems being implemented yeah i understand both sides all sides but i just wanted to appreciate what happened here and pat hoberg on the biggest stage. Yeah.

The biggest game of his life. Yeah. If only Justin Verlander could be more like Pat Hoberg. Wow. Yeah. Shots at JV. Yeah. You know what helps to combat the really egregious missed calls?

Challenge system. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. All right. Well, we're not done with this topic. We will be back with Ethan to break it down in even more detail and talk about how all of this happened on his end and how these things are calculated, etc. It's a fun conversation, I think. So, yes, the World Series, as we speak here on Monday afternoon, it's not all about Pat Hoberg. It's also about the Houston Astros and the Philadelphia Phillies. What? Yeah, yeah, I know. We can give some airtime to them too. They were not perfect, but we can still acknowledge their imperfect contributions. And the series is split as we speak. We are waiting now for a weather update as for game three, and maybe we will get one as we

are recording here. It's forecast looking a little iffy as we speak, but you, the listener, know how that turned out as you're listening. So we can talk a bit about games one and two. I guess just to get it out of the way, just a couple of non-World Series news items. So Nolan Aranato is staying with St. Louis. So they're bringing the band back, keeping the gang together. We talked about Adam Wainwright resigning for one more year. Noah Nardotto is now back with the Cardinals for several more years. Many more. So he had the opportunity to opt out.

And I would guess that the rate of opting out when players have the option to opt out, probably they have more often than not. I don't know what the percentage is, but often they opt out. Probably they have more often than not. I don't know what the percentage is, but often they opt out. But he has chosen now back-to-back winters not to opt out. Now, last winter, it was less in doubt because he was coming off a relative down year by Nolan Arnauto standards. This year, he's coming off a potential MVP year. And so there was more doubt about whether he would stay, but he decided to. So he's got 144 million coming to him over the final five years of the deal. I think the Rockies are on the hook for about 31 and a half million of that. So sorry, Rockies, you're not getting out of your

obligation to know. But this is a deal where I'm sure the Cardinals are happy to have him, right? Because he's only 31. He's coming off an incredible year. He is on a Hallzymborski ran the numbers, which Jay Jaffe had in his piece about this at Fangraphs, I think he had him at six years and 180 million is what he would be due, according to Zips. And so not only are the Cardinals getting him at a discount compared to that, but the Rockies are putting a good deal of the bill as well. So seems great for the Cardinals. This is not the first time that a Cardinal has decided to stay put, elected to stay with that organization. Perhaps that is a testament to the organization, to its consistent competitiveness. Nolan Arnauto was with seemingly a directionless organization with the Rockies who would not surround him with the talent to get him to the playoffs and field competitive teams. And now he's with the Cardinals where they do do that basically year in and year out.

So you can sort of see why he might be happy there. So the Cardinals have their whole infield essentially locked up for years to come and it bodes well for them and forecasts continued competitiveness for the Cardinals for some time to come, I would imagine. Yeah, well, and I think it's an interesting, you know, it gives us interesting insight. Like once you have cleared a certain threshold in terms of the amount of money you're guaranteed on a contract, you know, I think guys want to maximize their earnings. you know i think guys want to maximize their earnings but i think as you said like arnotta's situation demonstrates that once you have gotten over that hurdle where you feel as if the deal is fair it's representative of your talents it's done importantly right you don't have to deal with the vagaries of the market you don't have to test things in a year when you know you will also have

correa back out there and turner and obviously these guys don't play the same position as, as Arenado, but where you have like other big free agents and you wonder, where do I sit relative to them? You don't have to deal with any of that. And to your point, you get to, you get to say, this is a team that wants me and that wants to win. And that is important to me as a as a player i think it's obviously important to him and so it does give us like a really fun little window into the other stuff that might fit into an individual potential free agent sort of hierarchy of needs when it comes to assessing whether or not they want to test the market you know i don't think anyone doubts that he could make good money if he were to opt out but you know it's probably probably feels pretty good to be like no i'm gonna have enough money and now i'd like to go try to win a ring like that seems like it would be pretty rad what a nice thing to be able to do both i will say ben monkey with our uh our top 50 free agents a little bit though oh yeah yeah but but also hey

nolan thanks for doing it early pal you. You know, gave us time to adjust. So I think he's getting what he wants and the Cardinals are getting what they want. And I'm getting what I want. And the Rockies remain a weird mystery. So there you go. Right. Okay. And also the Royals have hired a manager.

Yeah. So Matt Quattro has now been hired. He was a perennial candidate and interview finalist. He had been a candidate. He had interviewed for seemingly six other teams, at least their positions, the Marlins, the Mets, the A's, the Pirates, the Tigers, the Giants. He's been a finalist for at least three of those positions, according to MLB trade rumors. And so he had come close many times. And now he's got the job. He's gotten a three-year contract with the Royals. He is 49. This is his first MLB managing gig, of course. And he is said to be, obviously,

he's a top candidate or he wouldn't be a perennial interview subject. But he's got the experience. He's a former minor league player who topped out at AAA and then worked as a minor league hitting coach and hitting coordinator. And then he became Cleveland's assistant hitting coach when Royals owner John Sherman was then a minority owner of that franchise. And then he went back to the Rays and he was their third base coach. And then he was their bench coach and the Rays personnel just perpetually getting poached. So whether it's coaches or managers or front office executives, everyone wants Rays in their team, in their uniform. So this is yet another example of that.

And the Rays, it's just kind of a fact of life for them. of that and the Rays it's just kind of a fact of life for them like not only do they lose players who get expensive and reach free agency often but it's kind of a revolving door with the brain trust there as well just because people look

at them being consistently competitive without spending a whole lot of money and they want that in their organizations so Quattro seems to be a respected candidate and now he will succeed mike matthini yeah i never know what to say about these yeah i don't know how he'll do i he'll probably do fine probably do well you know like yeah it's good it's good to have a new name you know and have a new a new name in the the ranks. But I never quite know how to respond to manager news.

It's like, oh, here's another one. Yeah, exactly. I guess in this case, it's somewhat revealing in what it tells you about the Royals, right? Because even if many organizations would have been clamoring for former Rays people, not necessarily the Royals under Dayton Moore, right? They were Mike Matheny all the way. There's probably a pretty big change from Mike Matheny to Matt Quattro. Does that mean that the Royals will magically be great at pitcher development now like the Rays are? I don't know.

But it does speak to some philosophical change because the Royals, for good or ill, they've been a somewhat old school organization. So to hire someone like Quattro does signal some sort of commitment to change, I think. Painting with a broad brush just based on where he worked, but one would imagine that he's fairly progressive and analytically oriented or at least analytically receptive. So he fits the bill, I guess. They had interviewed a number of other people. They interviewed Dodgers first base coach Clayton McCullough, which it would have amused me if the Royals manager had been named Clayton McCullough as a friend of the show, Andy McCullough. I imagine that his firstborn will

probably be named Clayton because he's a fan of Clayton Kershaw's work. So that would have been odd if that had happened, but that did not come to pass. Anyway, I don't want to belabor this point, but just because I mentioned this last time when Skip Schumacher was hired for the Marlins, like we're now, I think there are now only five managers who are not white guys at this point. Again, like I'm not imputing the choice here of Fetraro. Seems like he has the resume and everything. But when manager after manager gets hired and it's just white guy after white guy seemingly, sometimes it's new white guys. Sometimes it's retread old white guys. But really, we're down to five, I believe, if I'm not miscounting. You got Dave Roberts and Ali Marmel and Dave Martinez and Alex Cora and Dusty Baker.

This is presuming that Dusty Baker is invited back and decides to return to the Astros. But five is not a lot given the makeup of the league and the demographics of the league. And this is not progress in that respect. It's backward. We've talked about this. We had Chiquilla Taylor on to talk about this not that long ago, and it seems to be sort of more of the same here. So there's one vacancy left, the White Sox job. And it seems, based on the reported candidates and interviewees for that position, I know that they have interviewed Royals bench coach Pedro Grafal, who was also up for the Royals job, obviously, and Miguel Cairo and Astros bench coach Joe Espada, who like Quattro has interviewed everywhere, and Ozzy Guillen and Ron Washington as well. I think it's been reported that Espada is no longer in consideration and that Washington and Guillen are also unlikely to get this gig, which I guess would leave Grafal and Cairo and I don't know who else is in the running. So Yeah, I saw that. like if he hasn't already been so i mean that was uh kind of one of the objections or or things that people brought up when larissa was hired in addition to just the process just like the makeup

of that roster right so it seems like they're going in a different direction this time so that might make it six but still six out of thirty is uh not a high tally. No, it's certainly not representative of, as you said, the player population. And I don't think that it's really that representative of the broader coaching population, particularly when you look to the minor league ranks. So there's obviously still work to be done. And I think it probably underscores what we have talked about before. Certainly what we talked about when we had Shakia on that, like, you don't stumble into this stuff sort of accidentally. If you think that having a diverse managerial group is important to the game and will better baseball, you know, you probably need to design systems that sort of point to that outcome in a purposeful way rather than just hoping that you're going to stumble into it sideways because as the game has shown for most of its history, we don't tend to stumble into that progress.

It's more hard fought than that and hard won. So there will always be race is the other thing. There's always going to be this endless stream of desirable race candidates or whatever. So like you, I don't want to impugn the specific hierarchy. Like I said, I don't know how to evaluate these things yeah and i think that it's hard for public facing folks to do that with any like real certainty but yeah in any individual case it's hard for me to say oh how they hire this guy instead of that guy like you know i don't know

yeah and and who knows how they interviewed and everything. So it's just looking at the league wide rates, really, especially over time. It's just, you know, you raise an eyebrow. Yeah. And it doesn't strike me as there's nothing about this particular process that I know about that is troublesome. And also, my expectation is that if you are talking to a diverse array of candidates, there are lots of qualified candidates who are people of color. And so the odds that we end up with as white a managerial group as we have doesn't seem intuitive to me. So I think that, you know, it needs to be a continued area of focus for the league if they really care about, you know, diversifying that group. Because like I said, it's not going to happen accidentally. Unfortunately, that's not how progress tends to work. Yeah. All right. And the last little bit of news, not welcome news. This is an update from Rob Manfred about the zombie runner in an interview with Chris Russo. Sure sounds like

it's going to be back and probably permanent. So Manfred said the clubs like it, the players like it. And I think overall the fans like it. I think it does bring sort of a focus to the end of the baseball game in a way that has been positively received. It does bring a focus to ending the baseball game. It does. That's certainly true. Yeah. So look, not surprising. I have gradually resigned myself to this unhappily. And I've kind of been waiting for this. It was Trojan horsed in as sort of like a health and safety protocol, pandemic, COVID kind of thing, which was somewhat defensible.

But even at the time, I was- Seemed kind of goofy, which was somewhat defensible. But even at the time, I was kind of goofy. Yeah, goofy and also just sinister for me because I figured that they would get it in under the guise of that and then never let it go. Because, yeah, I'm sure the clubs like it and the players like it. And probably a lot of media members like it, media members who have to actually be at games regularly and cover them. But I don't know about the overall the fans like it part. I'd like to see Rob cite his sources on that one. I know that there's been some polling, some polls in the field about this. And I recall

that initially, like when this was first imposed, I remember a morning consult survey where it was quite unpopular among respondents. I think I may have seen a somewhat more recent that was 2020. I think I saw a more recent one where it was maybe less negative, but still not positive. And whenever Fangraphs or The Athletic has done some sort of survey, it's been like starkly negative, drastically negative. And that's among some subset of online baseball fans. And we are part of that subset. So again, like, I don't know, maybe MLB has done testing on this. Like they're always doing fan surveys and perhaps they have found that fans have come around.

I mean, you get used to anything, right? Perhaps they have found that fans have come around. I mean, you get used to anything, right? I'm sure that like in decades from now, perhaps I will not be as up in arms about this as I have been to this point. It'll just be a fact of life. It'll just be part of the wallpaper. And we get accustomed to things that we see and hear over and over again. And eventually we start to like them more or dislike them less.

So, yeah, you can acclimate to it. I still just hate it philosophically, and I wish we could be rid of it. And really, the fact that we don't do it in the postseason and that even if they extend this, I don't know. There's no word on whether they would extend it to the postseason, but it seems like they have been set to this point, at least, as this is a regular season thing. And when the games really count and really matter, well, then we will actually play them out, which to me just means like, well, don't we care about the regular season games too, though? Like, aren't they also important? Like, are we devaluing the regular season so much that it's just like, ah, to hell with it. Like, let's just get this thing over with. Like, in October, oh, then we actually care about playing real baseball all the way through. But like, do we really want to like send that signal that regular season games? It's like, I get like spring training. Sure. Like exhibitions, even like WBC and that sort of stuff. Like, fine. Like, I'm totally fine. Minor leagues. Like, I'm okay with all of that. But really, like, regular season still matters. Like, don't we want to at least like pretend that that still matters and that we want to settle these games with consistent conditions

and like actually have to have people earn their way on pace the way they usually do so so yeah like i guess i'm not saying that i want them to extend it to the postseason too i guess i should be happy that i get some scraps i get at least one month where we don't get postseason games marred by the zombie runner and we get to enjoy 18 innings of Astros Mariners or 15 innings of Rays Guardians or whatever it is. But the disparity, if anything, it highlights just like how ticky tack like doing it during the regular season is. Yeah, I completely agree. I think that, you know, when I say that the rationale was goofy in 2020, I mean, like the goal of keeping people as healthy as possible

in the face of playing baseball during the pandemic, like that made a good deal of sense, but it never struck me as a particularly like sincere rationale on the part of the league. It always felt like, well, we have an excuse to do this now that people aren't going to push back against because they want everyone to not get sick. And then we just got to continue it. I don't particularly care for it.

I'm not surprised that this is where we have ended up. It felt inevitable that this would be a more permanent fixture, but I don't like it. I mean, I'm surprised that the quote was able to be heard over its interviewer candidly, but here we are. Yeah, right. All right, so let's talk a little bit about games one and two. So I think you got to be probably pretty pleased

if you're a Phillies fan to get the split, right? I mean, after you come back from 5-0 in game one, and just with how game the Phillies have been to come back from deficits this postseason, once you fall behind 5-0 in game two, you're probably like, all right, it's only a matter of time until we come back again. Well, it sure did look like that, Ben. Sure did. Yeah.

Sure did. They were chipping away. They had chances look like that, Ben. Sure did. Yeah. Sure did. You know? They were chipping away. They had chances to tie that one, too. Just didn't have the clutchness in that particular game to do it. But really, you have to be pretty happy to get a split in Houston. Yes. Even with Nola and Wheeler starting those games, still, like, well, if we just go by Fangraph's zips odds, the Phillies' odds of winning the series have slightly improved, at least after these first couple games.

I think it was like 58-42 for the Astros before the series started, and now it's 56-44 in favor of the Astros as we wait for Game 3. So the scales have tilted slightly in the Phillies' direction because they split in Houston. So that's good. I think that game one was really exciting, obviously. That was just a great game. So Justin Verlander, I don't know what to make of this. I don't know what to say about this at this point. Like eight World Series starts now.

And look, eight starts is not a lot of starts. It's not very many starts. In the grand scheme of things. Yeah, you know, the thing about Justin Verlander, well, at least one of the things about him, Ben, he's had a lot more starts than that. A lot more starts. Hundreds of starts.

Hundreds. Many, many mutual starts. 482 starts in the regular season and in the postseason, lots of starts then to 33 and 34 games pitched. So I think the thing that confuses me. So look, he has a 6.07 career World Series ERA. It's very bad.

Not a lot of World Series starters have gotten that many World Series starts. But of those who have, he is the worst by that metric. Like it's just it's bad. There's no way to spit it as not bad. It's bad. But it is confusing to me like trying to come up with a scenario where this is like him choking i mean it is by one definition choking and that he has been bad in these big games but like the choking being attributable to nerves or anxiety or or

perfectionism or whatever it is because like he's been a perfectly fine postseason pitcher in theRA in 12 starts is 3.01. So he's been perfectly good in the first two rounds of the postseason. And then like twice as high an ERA in the World Series in eight starts. And I'm trying to come up with a scenario where like he is one of the best pitchers of his generation during the regular season. He performs at that incredibly elite high level, given all the pressure of the regular season. And then ALDS, ALCS, even more pressure. And he's perfectly fine in his usual self in those starts on the hole. And then the World Series.

It's like that's just too much pressure. Like the stakes are just too high. So I don't know. Like, I don't know what to make of it. Obviously he's facing good teams in those starts, but that's not enough to explain it. He's just, he's been bad. So whether it's just a random assortment

of eight starts and he's happened to be bad or whether there is just something that like pushes him just over the edge of like able to function at a very high level in a high pressure situation to unable to function at that same level. I don't know. It's weird. It's not what you would expect.

And it's obviously not what his teams would have hoped for or what he would have hoped for. So it was a big part of the narrative coming into this series and this start, like Justin Burrow under World Series redemption. And I guess he'll get another start probably. And we'll see if he's any better in that one. But yeah, not good. May I posit a theory?

Sure. I have a theory about what explains it. It's a very simplistic theory. So you might say, Meg, that's too straightforward an explanation. And if you say that, then I'll go, yeah, okay, fair. Here's my theory. Justin Verlander throws a lot of innings in a regular season, typically. And I think he's tired.

Yeah, it's possible. I think by the time he gets to the World Series, he's just tired. You know, I think he's a guy who takes a lot of pride in, I mean, not this year as he was coming back from Tommy John, obviously, but also now he's older. So you know what happens when you get older? You get tired. You get tired is the thing that happens

when you get older. But I just wonder if in addition to what I imagine to be the actual explanation for this, which is just that it's a weird bit of randomness that we'll never be able to fully explain and that he will think about it 3 a.m for the rest of his life yep you know maybe it's as simple as if you're a guy who throws you know as he did in 2019 223 regular season innings that your last couple just are kind of bad because you're tired what What if he's just tired, Ben? He threw 175 innings this year coming off a TJ at 39.

What a thing. Of course he's tired. It's amazing he has arms at all. Right. No, I mean, that's a perfectly reasonable explanation. I think it's overly simplistic, but I think there's something to it. You know, we should look into that. Right.

Yeah. Again, like I guess the fact that to it. We should look into that. Right. Yeah. Again, I guess the fact that he's been so good earlier in the postseason. Well, he wasn't as tired then yet. That's the thing. It's earlier. That final round, the adrenaline cannot compensate. Yeah, he had fewer innings on his arm, and then he had more, and he's like, I am burdened by great fatigue.

That could be. But he did not have his good stuff in this game. No. He was not getting swings and misses on the secondary stuff. And so this is partly on Dusty, I think, to some extent. Sure. Because he pushed him too long. I mean, a big part of all the previews heading into this World Series is about the Astros' bullpen, right, and how deep it is and how many great options they have.

Yeah. The Phillies' bullpen has been great thus far, too. But really, if you have that many pitchers at your disposal, and I know Justin Verlander, he's not your typical starter who you necessarily lift every time, third time through, even in the World Series. He's Justin Verlander. Yeah. But still, this did not look like peak Justin Verlander. No.

One of the reasons why you have a manager, in theory, as opposed to just like deciding Yeah. But maybe you should. level of effectiveness and can talk to the pitching coach and the bench coach and the catcher and the pitcher and sort all this out and figure out, okay, this is the time to make a move. And it sure seemed like watching from afar that that time came before feel bad for dusty because people were were bringing up of course game six of the 2002 world series almost 20 years to the day where dusty's team the giants at that point blew a five nothing lead and you know the common thread there is dusty baker and that this was the last time that a team had blown a five nothing lead in a series game and here's dusty again i don't think he did anything wrong in that first World Series game in 2002 is his bullpen which was good just kind of let him down but this time I think he let down the team a bit by not going to that bullpen sooner who knows what would have happened if he had right but I think this was clearly not peak Justin Verlander and he was making mistakes and the Phillies still had to take advantage of those mistakes. Yes, they sure did. And they did.

They sure did. And they were good too. And everyone who got those crucial hits and Harper and Boehm and Real Muto with his multiple big hits in that game, like kudos to them. They had to come back even though they had this deficit early on to a good team. They were not intimidated by that. They clearly like don't ever think that they're out of games. No, no fear in that team. No.

And that is not sufficient, but it is necessary, I think, in order to win and to have comebacks. Right? You can't take yourself out of the game when you fall behind early. And they didn't. And they got the hits. And Nola was not good either. And, you know, Nola was not good either. But Rob Thompson, I thought, had a very good game and was much more aggressive with his ace, right? And so he pulled Nola.

He brought in Jose Alvarado, which I thought was great in the fifth inning. Yeah. Definitely mentioned in my preview piece is that like as there's a lot of like the lefties were going to swing things more heavily left-handed Phillies lineup relative to the Astros' previous opponents in this postseason, and especially guys like Harper and Schwarber, who basically should be or is a platoon guy who is not platooned, but he's just way, way better against opposite-handed pitching. So that figured to be one of the big matchups. And also on the other side, Jordan Alvarez and Kyle Tucker, that figured to be big as well because the Phillies don't really have like dominant lefty relievers other than Alvarado. And so it would have been easy for Thompson to just say, oh,

it's the fifth inning. Like, let's go to Brad Hand or someone here. Right. And he didn't. He broke the glass and he brought out Alvarado to face Alvarez and Tucker. And then, you know, he had to bring in Ranger Suarez, right, to come in later in the game, which is, you know, kind of a gutsy move because he was scheduled to start game three. And I still like that move. I like just bringing in the starter on the throw day in the playoffs. Like, I don't know that it is smart actually i i like it just like in theory i don't know that it it works out always and and there was a a good post at fan crafts just about like what happens when back end rotation

guys pitch in relief in in the postseason and and it seems like it's not that great. It hasn't been that great. This was a post by Alex Isert, which I will link to, and the track record there, not strong. So generally, I like the idea of using starters and relief, and sometimes it works. It works for the Nationals against the Astros in 2019, but sometimes it backfires, and sometimes it seems like it tires them out, and they're not their regular selves when they come back to pitch out of the rotation. But Thompson was just really aggressive. He went to Alvarado to face those good guys. He used Suarez and then he brought in Dominguez to keep the tie in the eighth and ninth. And so he got five and two thirds shutout innings from the bullpen, which, you know, credit to the relievers, but also credit to Thompson for putting them in that position. Yeah, I think when we had Eric on to talk about the Fall League, but also the World Series, like that was the thing that that he noted, and I know you did as well that like, they seem to be adapting very quickly and making much more sound sort of managerial choices on

the Philadelphia side when it comes to their use of relievers in a way that is like really cool like it's just nice that there's like oh i gotta i got a course correct here so that we can try to win a dang world series and then in in that case it ended up working out for them now some of you some of you are still back on the the the theory i posited and you're thinking well meg how is it possible that it is a matter of fatigue when justin verlander put up a 13-5 era against the mariners in a much earlier round of the postseason and to that i say you know who are we to doubt the mighty offense of the seattle mariners you know who umpired that game pat holman oh how about that all right gotta look up his accuracy rate for that game i'm sure

it was perfect or just shy of it's not perfect i would just shy i course corrected just like rob thompson yeah i really want to put a p in his name and make him rob thomas every time i just want to do it every time and i think i end up saying it right maybe half the time yeah although i guess i have a couple years to get it right now that he's been extended. So yeah. And that bottom of the Astros lineup, we've talked about it, but it is very vulnerable. Just a lot of outs in the bottom of that lineup. I've seen some people calling for David Hensley to pinch hit, which has not happened since

the division series, or even to start a game over the options who are not hitting. And one of those, as we mentioned, Oled Misdias, just trying to get himself plunked to get on base. And really, that was almost a strike. It was not quite in the strike zone, probably, but it was pretty close. It was pretty close. Just to promote another Fangrass post.

Very fun post from Davey Andrews. Yeah, Davey did a nice job with that. Yeah, just like a video review of every time that a batter has drawn a hit by pitch on a pitch in the strike zone. Yeah, I'm going like, plunk. I'm going to get plunked. Has apparently happened 27 times, it looks like, over the past 10 years, including twice in the playoffs. So it takes some guts from umpire James Hoy there just to make that call and say, no, he leaned into that one. He leaned into it.

Which he very, very clearly did. He very clearly leaned into it. But still, like the default is you get hit, you take your base. Yeah. And you see this sometimes. It happens. Yes. It happened to Anthony Rizzo earlier this year.

And he was upset. He gets hit a lot. And he was deprived of a hit by pitch in this case. And yeah, I respect an umpire who especially like in the World Series will make kind of the uncommon call as opposed to just like the default, which is you got hit, you get, in front of a home crowd where they're going to say, hey, he got hit. He should take his base. And then you go, no, he should not lean into that. Diaz denied everything after the game. Oh, yeah. Like, come on, man. We saw it. Yeah, we saw it.

We saw it. It's okay. I wouldn't, you know, it's funny because it's like there's no downside to him admitting that that's what he did. Right? No one's going to be. We all know. People know. People watched.

Can't he just say, you know, I was trying to get one over, see what he would do, and it didn't work. Yeah, he could equivocate a little. I mean, just, you know. Yeah. Right. If you're an astro, I guess... I guess if you're an astro, even if you're of a more recent vintage, you probably don't

want to be like, no, I was using guile and potential rule breaking to advance because people tend to not have any reaction to that at all. They tend to be very measured. Yeah, of course. Then just to deny it, then you kind of look even worse because we all saw what was going on there.

So it's okay. He's far from the first to try to get on base this way. It's okay. It's a time-honored tactic. You work your way on however you can in that situation. So you might even appreciate just like the grittiness of taking one on the elbow protector. Yeah.

Like he didn't actually get a bruise here presumably. But still, to stick an appendage in the path of a pitch, it takes a little guts. I can't imagine it feels good even if you do have the elbow protector you know you're getting i bet when the elbow protector like reverberates it probably is a little ouchy i would think probably yeah i would think so yeah so you know it's okay you can admit it we will we will accept that i think i'd rather have him just come clean than not. So there was that. I also want to acknowledge Kyle Tucker

who hit two home runs in this game. He did! That was good, too. He accounted for four of the runs there by hitting those two homers. Really good! Robertson struck him out, I think, in the 10th, but he didn't get a whole lot of

offensive help in that game. But he did what he could. So, yeah, great comeback. Great game. Like, comeback and lead changes and all the rest. And kudos to Real Muto for the big game-winning shot. I think that people underestimate the degree to which being bashful and sort of coy can read in a charming way when you're engaged in something like diaz was like if you're just like i was trying to get on base and be bashful then people

are like oh oh you and that's you know because that's how everybody talks and then it's fine but yes we should acknowledge that the kyle tucker of it all the most ichabod Crane-looking baseball player coming up big in that moment. It is odd that the two best pitchers of this generation, Clayton Kershaw and Justin Verlander, both burdened by lack of postseason success to varying degrees and at varying times. But that's not going to be line one of the story about them getting into the Hall of Fame, but it's something that is associated with both of them at this point. So, you know, unless Justin Verlander like pitches a perfect game of his own to clinch in game six or something, then I guess that would get the monkey off his back. And Kershaw got it off to some extent, not fully, but really, like, both of those guys, you can say that they are the best pitchers of their generation, and I think you should say that, but also, there's this little, you know, huh, it's weird, it's kind of odd that they were not their usual

selves in the postseason. I don't know that it means anything, but it's a fact, so. I think it just means that everybody's tired, Ben. Yeah, everybody's tired, but not the hitters who were facing them in those games. Well, no. They aren't tired. Who knows why? Maybe they slept better. It could be any number of things.

All right. And then game two, kind of overshadowed by the James Hobart performance, frankly, but not a bad game in its own right. So this is kind of a throwback i guess like at this point from brevaldez going six and a third yeah it's like whoa retro yeah world series started to do that it was the first such start since zach grenke went six and a third in game seven of 2019 which was an extremely fun outing yes and yeah this is like this is like, this is the kind of game that I like on the whole, just like a starter going deeper and then turning over to the bullpen.

And it's like only a couple bullpen guys, maybe instead of several bullpen guys. So Valdez was great. We got another little like sticky stuff watch in this game, certainly on Twitter, you know, the Joe Musgroveve repeat this was not sticky ears this time but any astro starter or former astro starter i guess it's gonna come under scrutiny for for sticky stuff usage so in this game like farmer has these mannerisms i think

pretty consistently just like rubbing things and fidgeting and everything and and i think even the phillies said as much much that he looked basically the same doing these things, all these little fidgets and such the last time they faced him. So I don't know that this was out of the norm for him. And I guess the kind of odd part is that he switched gloves mid-game, which is not something you see all the time, at least if the glove doesn't break, which didn't happen as far as we know. So anyway, look, the antennas are always up, the radar, it's always circulating.

And when someone looks good, people wonder, is he too good? But yeah, no smoking gun here, as there wasn't with Musgrove either. He was just good. He's a very good pitcher and he was very good in this game. Very good in that game. There wasn't a smoking gun. There was a smoking bat. Ah.

Yeah. Are you referring to the Marquine Maldonado bat? Yeah, that was weird too. So like Maldonado using a Pujols pool bat which is apparently not legal but but not because of like the the specifications or anything just because like what it's a player safety thing right it's maple right and and this was a a material that has been disallowed because it is more prone to shattering and shattering into into shards in a way that could be... I think we have talked before about how remarkable, I at least find it, I think you shared this sense of awe, that we have just not seen something truly gruesome on the field with somebody getting impaled in a yucky way because of bat shards.

And I think moving on from this material was Was meant to minimize the potential risk of that. Yeah I did not know. That Pujols was using a model of bat. That had subsequently been disallowed. And that he was allowed to use it. Because he had been using it prior to. He was grandfathered in. Which is kind of odd I guess.

Because if it is a safety issue. It's always weird when there's like. You know helmet rules imposed. But then if you weren't using a helmet. You when there's like you know helmet rules imposed but then if you weren't using a helmet you don't have to use a helmet anymore but don't you want don't we want all of the folks to be reaping the benefits yeah right i guess i get it in that sense because i don't know like if your whole game was based on you not using a helmet maybe it's like weird to change mid-career or something but like i guess you'll probably get used to right? If everyone else is getting used to it, you could probably get on board. Like what if that player is hit in the head and has some serious injury and it's like, well, we said he could because that's the way he was doing it before.

Like would that be a great explanation? I don't know. With this specifically, especially if like it's not like it was in theory performance enhancing or it wasn't like he had a bigger bat than everyone else or a lighter bat or something. It was just a different material. Like, I don't know. It's kind of weird. Like if you think it's more likely to shatter and impale someone. Yeah.

It's like, is it more important to allow the player who is using that specific bat model to keep doing that? Like, I think probably Pujols would have been all right. Yeah. But anyway, whatever. So Maldonado, he doesn't get to use that bat anymore. The bat model that he rode to his silver slugger finalist status. Now he's been stripped of that. So he will not be the slugger we have become accustomed to,

Martina Maldonado being to this point. Anyway, so yeah, I mean, credit to the Astros for jumping on Zach Wheeler early, scoring some runs off of him. And I mean, the Astros offense did their job against Nola and Wheeler, like scoring five runs in games that those guys started. Like, that's good. So their pitchers just didn't hold up their end of the bargain in game one, Verlander specifically. But in game two, they did. Fromber was good.

The bullpen was good. And the Phillies were 0 for 7 with runners in scoring position, which will happen when you're facing the Astros bullpen and great starter. So yeah, I don't know that there's sort of a simple game to analyze, I guess, really. There wasn't all that much to it. It was kind of a throwback sort of simple. All right, really. There wasn't all that much to it. It was kind of a throwback sort of simple. All right, good. One starter just showing up and shoving and the Astros offense doing enough to win. I still can't believe that neither of those Kyle Schwarber balls went out, though. It remains.

I appreciate that the odds in any given plate appearance, even for a hitter who has as much thump as Schwarber does, who has exhibited as much thump both in this year's regular season and this year's postseason as Schwarber has. The odds are stacked against that person hitting a home run. Most of the time you don't do that, right? If you did, we wouldn't have spent so much time being fascinated by Aaron Judge this year.

So I get it, Ben. I want to make clear I get it. But then you watch it and you're like, but did that not how did it not go out you know yeah it had the second one right up against ichabod crane didn't have an inch to give in that outfield the second the second one out there and i thought oh boy here we go and then he just caught it harmlessly in the outfield do you think he'd feel insulted kyle Tucker, to be compared to Ichabod Crane? I don't want to hurt his feelings. I guess it's not, in theory, the most flattering comparison.

But it depends which Ichabod Crane you're talking about. The animated Disney one, Ben. That's the one I'm copying him to because that's the one he looks like. Right. So, you know, if you're talking about Johnny Depp playing Ichabod Crane, at least like physically speaking, I guess that would not be an unflattering comparison. But since you're specifying animated, maybe not as flattering. Well, but see, here's the thing that I would say. Kyle, if you're listening and you're like, Meg, that's rude.

I don't look like that animated character. I'd first say, you do and also the second thing i'd say is kyle tucker you had 25 stolen bases i am confident in your ability to get away from the headless horseman i think you would be much more adept at it than ichabod crane you wouldn't ride a mule you just run it'd be fine anyway he didn't have an inch to give much like ichabod crane in the The Hustlers Horseman, but he was able to secure the catch, and then Kyle Schwarber went back to the

dugout empty-handed, but it felt like he should have, you know, I know that it would be chaos, and I know we can't do it, and I know there's no way to do this, but it definitely falls in the category of, that's cool enough it should count for one run. Like, it should count for one, he doesn't have to, you know, there were were runners on base so i understand you don't want to reward the

guy for all of that but it just felt like you know it's a cool game baseball to come away with nothing yeah you know and they had him they let him run around the bases the first time when that ball went fell yes yeah that doesn't feel like two they could have spotted the phillies one run right anyway well if you're the phillies like you got to be happy with uh getting eaten two-thirds shut out out of your bullpen to this point so phillies bullpen even better than the astros bullpen at this point partly maybe because the astros bullpen was not allowed to throw as many innings as it could have but yeah really like if you had told phillies fans that you're gonna get a split coming out of houston probably be happy even though you have Nolan Wheeler in those games.

And if you told them that Nolan Wheeler are going to allow 10 combined runs. Right. And that they still get a split. Yeah. They'd be thrilled, I would think. Yeah. So game three is going to be wild. So the atmosphere in Philly as we speak, we still don't know if it's going to be Halloween or not.

Right. Or whether the weather will lead to a postponement. in Philly. As we speak, we still don't know if it's going to be Halloween or not, or whether the weather will lead to a postponement. But one way or another, the atmosphere, it's going to be very loud. You get the series home to Philly with a chance to win in your home territory. So that's what you want. I mean, you want to win two, obviously. That would be preferable to just winning one. But still, one better than none. Again, hope this clarified things for everyone about how many games it's desirable

to win. More is better. So that's about all I have to say about this series so far. It's been fun. I'm glad that it was not a sweep in one direction or another. I hope it gets extended even further. I gotta say, because this is one of my little hobby horses, my postseason peeves. I did not see a lot of people predicting a sweep, even though most people were predicting the Astros to win, understandably, on paper. Do we need to change on paper to like on screen or something because like usually we were looking on a screen these days anyway it's fine we all know what we mean by on paper what we mean it's like doing the the earmuffs for replay yes

exactly we know what it means skeuomorphism yeah yeah so because the estrus were were favored but most people appropriately pick them to win the series but i gotta say didn't see a lot of sweep predictions and this is uh a horse i have beaten i don't want to beat horses, even if they're dead. Have some respect for the horse corpses out there. But I was looking at all of the expert predictions at various places. No one at ESPN predicted a sweep. No one at CBS Sports predicted a sweep. No one at The Athletic, they did a survey of players and scouts and such, and no one there predicted a sweep. They didn't actually ask their players and scouts and such, and no one there predicted a sweep. They didn't actually ask their writers to predict the number of games, which I'm fine with

that too. We don't actually have to pretend that we have that level of precision. But MLB.com had a survey of like 75 MLB people and only two predicted a sweep. So again, this is good for those who have not heard my rants about this before. I think it is very silly ever to predict a postseason sweep because really just statistically speaking, if you are saying that you think one team is going to sweep a seven game series, you are saying that you think that that team is like 75 or more 76 percent likely to win each game or you know in the aggregate and and that just never happens in the postseason especially when you have good teams against other pretty good teams at least there's never that lopsided a matchup it is to me indefensible to predict a sweep so yeah no and and i've i've said this about predicting a seven game win as well too

because like and i'm i'm less harsh on people who predict that a series will go seven because i think look when people are saying a sweep or or will go seven they're they're essentially signaling like i think this team is a clear favorite or i don't think there is a clear favorite this is like a toss-up and's going to go deep. So that's essentially what they're saying by those things. And I'm kind of parsing what they are like probabilistically saying, which is probably not how they're actually thinking about it. Plus, they're probably just like, you know, sending a message or something like they're

not necessarily trying to be more accurate because who cares about predicting this accurately? No one can anyway and no one really thinks anyone can. and so maybe you just want to stand out and like be attention getting and if you predict a sweep and then there's a sweep you know the incentives are in favor of just like taking a bold stance one way or another more so than just like you know being the the calm measured here's what the probabilities say this is why I don't predict things if I can help it. But really, you shouldn't predict that a team will win in seven. Usually, I'm quoting from the article I wrote about this a few years ago, because essentially you're saying if you're predicting that a team will win in seven, you're saying that either it will be trailing heading into game six, which would mean that you're predicting that it will lose three of the first five games, or that it will be winning going into game six, but then lose game six, which would mean that you're predicting that it will lose three of the first five games, or that it will be winning going into game six, but then lose game six. And either of those is kind of odd if you think that that team is superior, and that's why it's going to win, then why would you predict either of those series? Like if you think it's a true toss up,

it's no more likely to go seven than six. But if you think one team is at least a little bit better, then it's more likely to win in six than seven. Than seven, yeah. Right. Not a big deal. But I think that you could potentially construct some scenarios where maybe just because of the starting pitcher matchups or something, you might think, oh, well, they actually are more likely to lose in game six but then win in game seven or something. So I'm less doctrinaire about that. Right. But the sweep thing, I just, I cannot countenance.

Feel strong feelings. Predicting sweeps. And I've gone back and forth with Joshian about this because, you know, Joe predicted a sweep in this series. He was one of the few to do so. And look, I'm a satisfied customer of the Joshian baseballletter. I've subscribed for years. I will continue to subscribe. I enjoy Joe's writing and analysis. But on this one issue, we just – we cannot see eye to eye and we have corresponded. it would go six. And then he tagged me on Twitter to say that he was going to say seven, but then my voice was in his head. So I felt like, okay, this is worthwhile. You've made an impression. Because I'm making a difference here, at least with one person. But then he went ahead and predicted a sweep in this series. And I just, I don't know what to say, Joe. I just, I can't,

I can't persuade him. I guess he's not a persuadable voter on this issue. And he always says in his previews like the prediction is the least important part of the preview. So he's not actually putting so much stock in his saying. But it just I find it distracting when after all the excellent analysis that precedes the prediction. And then we get this call that in my mind is inconsistent with the facts on the ground, which is that the Astros, you know, on paper better than the Phillies, but not that much better. Anyway, this is I just want to say I'm not sufficiently devoted to this issue to go back and see whether there were more sweeps predicted in the past. And we've actually made progress here as a society when it comes to sweep prediction. I'm just saying I saw fewer than I would have expected to given the consensus that the Astros were the favorite.

So I want to applaud everyone except Joe. Wow, Ben. I have, I mean, you just said a lot of words. Yeah. And I have two things to say in response to those words. The first is that one of my great joys in podcasting with you is discovering the issues on which you feel very passionately. Yeah. Because sometimes they align with my previous understanding of you as a person.

And sometimes they surprise me, you know. And I don't think that, you know, wanting there to be some amount of logical consistency is out of character for you. But I am surprised at the depth of your passion. I won't say taken aback because that ascribes more judgment to it than I mean, but I remain surprised. Surprise is the right word here. The second thing that I would say is that maybe the way to make your peace with this, if you were inclined to try to make peace, not because you are wrong, but so that you don't have to feel unnecessarily agitated about something that objectively doesn't matter, would be that it is not an expression of logic so much as of one of aesthetic preference, right? So maybe what the

authors who are, and I don't know that Joe would understand his prediction this way. I don't speak for him. But maybe what the writers who are predicting either a sweep or a seven game series are really expressing is a preference for how those games would play out and the kind of world series they would get to watch, not in terms of the greatest likelihood or the team that presents the most fearsome pitching or the strongest batters, but simply the literal kind of series that they prefer. Yeah, I could see that with seven. And to be fair, before I realized this game six, game seven thing, I used to predict things to go seven too. So I'm more understanding of that. But who prefers a sweep other than perhaps a fan of that team right would any

neutral observer want a sweep would that maybe want that well okay okay but okay just to get the season over with you relax so some of it might be that but also you know we spent a millennia debating the strangeness of the format in terms of it sort of incentivizing teams to be really good rewarding teams that are really good and so maybe what they are expressing is especially if they see the astros as the team that is likely in their mind to sweep what they are expressing is a preference for the postseason and particularly the world series to mirror the kind of dominance that we see during the regular season and the most persuasive way to do that would be for the astros who were at the very least one of the very best teams in baseball this year if not the best some would make that argument

i'm not expressing an opinion on that one way or the other. But the most persuasive argument is to say the Astros, who are easily the best team standing, and as the postseason progressed, seemed like the strongest team in the field, winning in a sweep, just goes to show that there can be some kind of a cord between the regular season and the postseason, and the team that is the best is the one that is rewarded.

So there you go. Relax, Ben. Yeah. Well, Joe is a regular season guy. I don't know if that's why. I don't want to pile on Joe. I'm just saying. I love Joe Sheehan newsletter.

Everyone go subscribe. I subscribe. I heartily endorse subscribing. And I'm only calling him out here because I have called him out face to face. Sure. And I think he's okay with my good-natured hectoring on this point. Sure. And I don't mean to suggest that Joe doesn't care about aesthetics because he does,

but I think that there are times when he might prioritize other things over aesthetics occasionally. And so I don't want to ascribe a motivation to him that he doesn't have, right? That might not be his reasoning at all. But I'm simply offering to you an alternate explanation, again, mostly so that you can let go of something that objectively doesn't matter. Doesn't matter, Ben. Yeah, well, I'm almost at the point of letting it go

because not a lot of sweeps predicted. I think we've all kind of come together. So you're not letting it go. You're declaring victory. Those are different. That's exactly right. Those are different, Ben. I'm spiking the ball.

I'm spiking the bat Reese Hoskins style here and saying that, yeah, we've all kind of realized sweeps does make sense. All right. So we should end with a pass blast before we bring on Ethan here. It seems like MLB and the teams have met as we have been speaking here and they have decided to kick the can down the road. So they decided not to make a decision yet. from 1923 and from Jacob Pomeranke of Sabre. And he writes, 1923, the radio star, the first baseball game broadcast on commercial radio, took place in August 1921, a Pirates-Phillies game carried by Pittsburgh's KDKA station. Within two years, the new medium,

often called wireless at the time, quickly emerged as a serious competitor to establish print coverage of baseball. In the spring of 1923, the BBWAA complained as more radio stations were given access to broadcast live coverage of games. In response, the Sporting News issued this rebuttal in its June 7, 1923 issue. Quote, The members of the Baseball Writers Association may not be of the broadest vision, but they are practical and true to type when they

object to radio concerns being given permission to broadcast baseball games, but we can't exactly agree with the writers that it will result in curtailment of baseball publicity. There was a laugh when it was suggested in these columns that the time might come when a ball game might be pictured on a screen in every home that had a radio set of its own. Little radio sets were not then sold in 10-cent stores, but the prediction that they would be is being borne out. Considering all the tricks they are turning in the air, we would not be inclined to join in the demand that wireless layoff baseball. We might live long enough to have it thrown up to us.

Sporting news editor J.G. Taylor Spink did, in fact, live long enough to see baseball on a screen in every home, Jacob notes, as he predicted back in 1923. The first major league game was broadcast on television in 1939, and the first World Series game appeared on TV in 1947, 75 years ago in Jackie Robinson's rookie season. So yeah, I knew that baseball clubs were wary of games being broadcast in their local markets. Apparently, writers, too. I guess writers wanted a monopoly on providing game accounts. Why would they read well, if they can listen to or watch the games, why would they come, right? And then I think gradually it was realized that, you know, it's still nice to go to the ballpark sometimes. And also you can make new fans who are not actually at the ballpark if you broadcast their games and then maybe they will come to the ballpark. And then many, many decades later, it turned out that getting broadcast deals was

more lucrative than actually having people come to your ballpark anyway. So the cart is before the horse at this point, broadcast wise. Do you think that when the accompanying article many years later was written about the role that broadcasting on TV would have in diminishing radio that they ran it as video killed the radio. Probably. Yeah. I guess that's what Jacob was going for with his heading. Perhaps the radio star.

Yeah. It's because everyone has as little self-restraint as I do when it comes to headlines. I think it's what we've learned. All right. So we will not end there. We will take a break there and we will be back with Ethan Singer of Ump Scorecards to tell us all about

the Pat Hoberg perfect game which we have not discussed enough to this point it is clearly the lead story of this world series that is how it will be remembered and we will dig into the details with Ethan in just a moment. And if I stray one day That's okay, baby And I'm behind you

100% of the time Well, we are joined once again by the founder and proprietor of Umpire Scorecards, Ethan Singer. And what a day. I thought this would never come, but it has happened. The Umpire perfect game courtesy of Pat Hoberg. So we had to have the creator of the site on to walk us through the momentousness of this occasion. Ethan, welcome back.

Thanks. Thanks for having me. So if someone was going to do this, Pat Hoberg was a likely candidate, right? He is one of the top umpires consistently, according to your site? He was. He was, depends on how you define likely. I mean, in terms of accuracy, he's definitely up there. But in terms of the fate of the universe, I think he was probably the most likely. And were you watching this game live? Or at what point did you become aware that this might be a possibility was it like you know the the process runs the algorithm does its thing and

spits out the perfection and then the alarms and the klaxons sounded and the confetti fell from the ceiling or were you getting tweets during the game people say like hey this is a potential perfecto here. He hasn't messed up. At what point did you become aware that this could be a possibility? Yeah, so I actually was not watching the game live. But I don't know if you saw, but at 10.30 when our bot starts tweeting, the tweet that initially went out said that there was an error.

There was some sort of something happened he broke he broke it he's just too good which is yeah which is rare and so around like 10 40 i saw that and started freaking out i texted my buddy who now is helping me run this and and so i started looking through like i can run it locally as well on on my sort of my end of things nowadays. And I was going through sort of just checking errors, like what could have possibly, like this never breaks. It hasn't broken in a very long time. And sort of as I, yeah, exactly. And as I was going through, in the back of my head, I was like, okay, it was Pat Hoberg, right? Like, could it be that something about no missed calls impacted our

run? And then I decided I was like, what the heck, I'll print out the accuracy before it breaks, see what happens. And there you go. Zero missed calls 100%. And I was like, oh my goodness, you know, then I went, we went as fast as we could to fix it. We sent out a little sort of, you know, it's worth the wait. Sorry about the error tweet, just to sort of get some eyes. But yeah, that's pretty much how it went down. Why was it an error? Is it just like built into the system that umpires are fallible? I mean, why did it throw an error when there was no mistake? Yeah, a bit of an oversight on my end. It's a little like technical, but basically to calculate how much an umpire impacts the game on the whole,

I sum this column in this spreadsheet for all of the pitches, which is how much that pitch was worth. But as it turns out, as an oversight, if there are no missed calls, that column is never created. And so it was returning this error that was like, I cannot calculate the sum of this column because this column does not exist. And then I realized that that was because there were no missed calls. And I think one of the things that I'm often struck by by your account is just how accurate umps tend to be. We get the odd game where somebody was clearly having a bad night, but while fans of teams that might feel they were on the short end tend to look at these and say,

ha ha, umpires are terrible. I'm often struck by just how accurate they are. So what was the difference in terms of true strikes, true balls, his accuracy on the evening? How slim are these margins between a regular old good Pat Hoberg performance and his perfect game? Yeah, great question. So his accuracy on this season is somewhere in the 95% region. Yeah, 95.5%. And we think we have a new model this year, which helps us sort of calibrate how well somebody is performing relative to what you might expect from the average umpire. So we think his accuracy this season is close to two points above what an average umpire

would be. And so in game two, we saw that by our sort of metrics, our models, that the average umpire would have missed 8.7 calls in that game across the 129. So I don't know exactly like what 95% or 95.5% of 129 pitches is. So I can't, or at least not off the top of my head. So I don't know how much, how many more he got correct than we would have expected him to get correct. But certainly versus the average umpire, he pretty considerably outperformed on that set of 129 pitches by a pretty significant margin. Yeah, that's 123.2 would be his expected correct calls, I suppose, based on the regular season

rate. So he exceeded his expected accuracy in that sense by almost six calls, I suppose. So we talked to you last year about how your model works, and I guess it's probably changed a bit since then. So how squishy is the concept of perfection when it comes to an umpire, right? Because if a pitcher pitches a perfect game, we know that no one reached base and there's nothing you can argue on about that. Of course, you can argue about the pitcher's role in it and how perfect the pitcher really was, but the way that we grade a perfect game, that's kind of the way it is. Of course, you have pre-replay. Of course, you have the famous Armando Galraga, who's perfect, but not called perfect, et cetera. But with an umpire, could you have reasonable

definitions of the strike zone that would produce a significantly different grade for this game? I mean, you know, how dependent is the specific strictures of your model and definitions of the strike zone, etc., which is kind of a judgment call to an extent in producing the perfect reading. Yeah, good question. There is definitely some squish. So for example, I mean, the way that I would sort of colloquially define what we consider a missed call is a call that we are sure is incorrect, even considering potential error in measurement. or like we are we are sure to some statistically significant degree, I think it's we are 90% sure. And so a perfect game in our particular definition is that never happened. There was no pitch where we were 90% sure at least was incorrect. And now

that doesn't mean that there were no pitches that we were 60% sure were incorrect, or 55% sure were incorrect, or 40% incorrect. But it means that there were no pitches that we were sure were incorrect. And I should just clarify, there are very few pitches that are sort of on that, like exact borderline for the most part, at least the margins of error that we use, or the potential margins of error that we use in our system, make it so that like most pitches are very clearly a strike or very clearly a strike or very clearly a ball. So it's unlikely that there are too many pitches that,

you know, using a different definition would have, you know, really swung one way or another. But certainly there is the potential for some squishiness. And then obviously there are some other questions like, what size of the baseball do you use? Do you, you know, incorporate like rounding of the corners of the strike zone? Do you, I mean, we talked about this last time. There's a bunch of different sort of subjective decisions to be made,

which also could be impacting whether or not it's considered perfect. And as we think about other umpires on this crew who might cycle through home plate duties during the World Series, are there other umpires that we should be on the look for as if we don't have other things to look for in a World Series? But is it possible? Are there guys on here who write particularly well by your guys' metrics who you think, huh, maybe we'll get a twofer here? Yeah, that's a good question. you think, huh, maybe we'll get a twofer here? Yeah, that's a good question. I know that just as a there are accounts that tweet out analysis of our data, which is that has been a sort of interesting development over the past season or so. But they have like all of the latest,

you know, who's umpiring which games, what their accuracy is. But I can definitely, I have it pulled up, I can look up some other names. Yeah. While you do that, I was going to ask whether there's any possibility that this game will retroactively be rendered imperfect at some point, right? Because models change and war values change. A lot of these advanced stats are based on constantly updated information. And so if a perfect game happens, it probably won't be taken away, although I guess some no-hitters have been reclassified

and retroactively rendered not no-hitters by MLB in the past. But if you were to update your model again or your definitions or you get more information or whatever, then could at some point this no longer be, could this be taken away from me as a umpire perfect game? Yeah, I'd say it's unlikely. For that to happen, we'd probably have to make a decision which makes our analysis more strict, which I think is not the direction that we want to go. I think is not the direction that we want to go. I think we're pretty happy with, especially the accuracy side of things, where it sits right now.

And any retrospective changes to the impact of an individual missed call would not change whether or not this is a perfect game, because again, no missed calls. So the only thing that would change it is changing our methodology around accuracy, which at least as of right now is not in the works. A couple other questions about this game specifically. So the expected accuracy for this game was in the 43rd percentile.

That was 93.24% expected accurate. accurate. So does that mean that something about these particular pitches and locations and counts, et cetera, made this actually a tougher than average game to call correctly? How is that metric calculated? Yeah, that's exactly right. That is the correct interpretation of that. Okay. So he didn't get a gift here. He had a tough assignment and was still perfect. I mean, yeah, just average 30 or 93.24 I see but what makes it easier or harder? Yeah so each individual pitch this was one of our big post all-star break updates this year but each pitch is assigned a likelihood that it's called correct and to be clear again called correct whenever I say called correct that is our

particular definition of called correct, that is our particular definition of called correct. So that things sort of match up across our statistics. But the likelihood of being called correct, like you said, is based on location, speed, vertical movement, handedness, and some other sort of extraneous factors like count. I forget everything that goes into the model, but you sort of get the idea. It's sort of just the average umpire in this particular scenario, what would they do? And then we sort of tally that up for the game. And we say, how many, you know, across all of these pitches,

how many would we expect the average umpire according to our model to get correct? And then you can see that, you know, 93.24% is how many they would be expected to get in this game, given Alan Porter for game seven. I would love to know, MLB doesn't seem to make umpires available for interview very often because I've tried to get John Lipka, who's another very highly graded umpire, I think the highest, at least career wise in your data set. I've sent out interview requests for him and that hasn't gone anywhere. I'd love to know just like, is Pat Hoberg like getting ribbed by the other umpires perfection or like are they feeling the pressure now you know like dead eye sonia has to follow perfection in game three i just i wonder whether i mean i don't know

whether umpires put any stock in these things because of course they get their own grades from mlb and we don't know what mlb's zone evaluation system or whatever it's called. We don't know what that said about the game two performance. For all we know, it might have said there was a miss, although on the whole, I think that metric tends to be fairly forgiving or tends to have higher than the publicly available metric accuracy grades. So maybe it was perfect. Maybe there had been other perfect games prior to this, according to that way of figuring things. But yeah, I'd love to know if we ever get a story. Pat Hobrick, you have a standing invitation to come on the podcast and tell us what this has

been like for him. Yeah, that is something that I think about quite frequently. I mean, it's sort of fun to think about these people do not get a lot of oxygen, especially the ones who do a really just fantastic job, do not get a lot of oxygen in the baseball community really as a whole. And Pat Hoberg was trending number 17 on Twitter yesterday morning. I don't know who saw that, but literally in the US. One of the first umpires ever to trend for how accurate the US is. For a good reason, yeah. Exactly.

So that was very exciting to see. So I would not be surprised if, I mean, trending on Twitter, there are a lot of eyes on that. So I would not be surprised if somebody sent it over or something like that. When the account tweeted that it had been a perfectly called game, was there any pushback in the mentions of your account on that idea? Was anyone like, no, he clearly blew this call in the fifth inning. What are you talking about? Or was the reception that the account received sort of in line with what your metrics had demonstrated? Yeah, the reception was overwhelmingly positive. I will say just off the bat, most people were really, really pleased to see, which is not surprising. But there were a couple people that disagreed. I think some people were sending screenshots from ESPN, Strike Zones, as well as some screenshots that they had taken

during the game from game day and saying, this doesn't match up with what I saw last night on the TV broadcast. This doesn't match up with this graphic. But one of my favorite updates of the last, maybe season and a half, is that we have fans now who will do the work of explaining things for us. So you can see in the comment section, people saying,

oh, well, there was post-processing that happens to these pitches. The TV strike zones aren't exactly perfect. People that have read our explainers online. So I think on the whole, people tend to agree with our analysis as it stands for this game. But that's not to say that there was nobody in the comments that had, at least on initial inspection, some questions or some disagreements. And I think one thing that causes some confusion, sometimes you had an overall accuracy of 100%, but an overall consistency of 96%, which is also better than average, but not perfect in the same way. So can you just refresh people's memory on what consistency is actually grading and how it's possible to be perfectly accurate

but not perfectly consistent? Yeah, this is a good question. And I think this is a bit of an edge case that deserves some, or at least implies that we should maybe think about consistency a little bit more. But to explain why it's possible, the way to think about consistency is

if you take every pitch that is thrown in a game and you throw it into a model that estimates at any given location, given the pitches nearby, what is the likelihood that a pitch that lands exactly here will be called a strike? So that's the first thing we do. We generate a model that can tell us that. So that's the first thing we do. We generate a model that can tell us that. And from there, we draw sort of this red squiggly line, very sort of weird looking organic shape around the boundary where that probability is 50%.

So the edge where going outside the edge means it's more likely to be a ball. And on the inside of the edge means it's more likely to be a ball and on the inside of the edge means it's more likely to be a strike so that's what we call our established umpire zone and then from there if there's any called ball which is inside the zone we say that that is inconsistent with what has been established and if there's any called strike that's outside of that zone we also say that's inconsistent with what's been established. So for right now, that's our measure of inconsistency.

But so, you know, you can see in the in the graphic, there's a bit of a white space on the on the top of the strike zone where the established strike zone is below. And so pitches in there would be considered accurate, but not consistent. So that is that is why it is possible. Got it. Okay. Yeah, I was going to ask, I know you said that you're unlikely to go back and sort of render this game imperfect, but I was curious if there was anything that a perfectly called game illuminated for you about your model that made you think, huh, maybe we need to change the way that we're thinking about that, or we're not being as precise on this measure as we ought to be? Was there anything else apart from maybe rethinking some of the understanding

of consistency that his good night illuminated for you? Yeah, I'd say the main one is the consistency. I think the rest of our metrics sort of make sense with 100% accuracy. The only other real consideration is whether or not we should have slapped a giant perfect game you know in in big bold text across the front of the graphic but uh but other than that i think perfect game bunting to exactly the all caps perfect game with the sirens on the tweet so that was yeah yeah do you know by the way whether it is harder to be accurate in the Yeah. Yeah. giving these cushy postseason assignments to the most accurate umpires. But I would imagine that it's probably harder to grade pitches accurately in the postseason overall, just because you have pitchers throwing harder and with more movement and everything. So I don't know whether you've looked at that at all, but do you know whether on the whole it is harder to call pitches correctly during the postseason just because of the caliber

of the stuff that's on display? I don't have a great answer for you. I could tell you that there are Twitter accounts online that you could find that would have a good answer. But I will say if anybody is curious, all of our going back to 2015, you can download our both regular season and postseason data and you could you could find out. I could look quickly to see sort of what the average is, but I wouldn't be able to give you too good of an answer, unfortunately. All right. And do you have any sense of whether this should have happened sooner or whether it's weird that it happened even now? Like your data goes back to 2015. That's a lot of games. Should this have happened in theory, statistically, probabilistically?

Like, should there have been a perfect game by now? Or is it roughly in line with expectations that this is the first? Or is it improbable even that there is one this soon? Do you have any sense of that? Yeah, yeah. Great question. So I think the question, it's not the easiest question to answer. There are some assumptions that have to be made.

I think the question, it's not the easiest question to answer. There are some assumptions that have to be made. I think right now we say average accuracy is just under 94%, like 93.8% or something like that. And so I'll just do a little back of the envelope calculation. But if each game has 150 pitches that you have to call, then we would expect one perfect game every like 14,000 games or something like that. But there are factors there. For example, not everybody's accuracy is 93.8%.

For example, Pat Hoberg is 95.5%. So in a game with 150 pitches, we would expect him to have a perfect game every just under 1,000 games. But 1,000 is still a lot. just under a thousand games but a thousand is a thousand is still a lot but pat hoberg got lucky in that he only had to call 129 which also increases the likelihood of a perfect game true true and so his with a 95 or 95.5 accuracy in a game with 129 pitches we would expect one perfect game every 379 games that meet that criteria, which is still, I mean, that's could be 10 or more seasons worth of umpiring for an individual umpire.

Wow. Right. So for any of these, it's obviously hard to say we should have seen it earlier, because all of these things are sort of inherently probabilistic, but it is certainly a very infrequent event. We should not really expect it to happen so often. It is very unlikely in general. Even one of the best umpires with the best accuracy in a game that did not have very many pitches would still have to wait maybe 10 seasons to have another perfect game. So you said 14,000-ish if're just using the the average rate without accounting for some umpires being more likely others being less likely i guess if that were the case then

that would be somewhat in line with where we are right because they're 2430 games every year except 2020 there were fewer so i don't know exactly offhand, but there probably been something like what, 18,000 or 17,000 something, I guess, going back to 2015. So that would be- Yeah, there's just under 18,000. Okay. Yeah. So not wildly out of line, I guess, with what you would expect just using those very simplistic back of the envelope calculations that you just did so yep yep yeah you realize that means that dan isonia is gonna call a perfect game tonight right i know i know and then i'll i'll eat my words yeah i guess hopurg is in right field for game

three so we need some kind of ump scorecards for right field umps to see if he is so perfect out there i don't know how many how many calls the right field umpire actually has to make over the course of a game yeah what is not many what constitutes a perfect umpire cycle like what what else goes into that other than the home plate appearance yeah i know right yeah good question i guess like if you do not call a home run on a pitch that was actually interfered with by a fan or something like that's a perfect game it's probably a lower bar in right field that it would be at hope plate i guess but we'll have to add that to the uh to the scorecard please do yeah is this like the

mountaintop for you like is it just gonna be a letdown every next time when when someone falls short of perfection or now that you know it's possible, it has been achieved, is this like, all right, I can't wait for the next time? Although I guess whenever, if ever, the next time happens, perhaps it won't be quite as thrilling as the first. Yeah, there's certainly some novelty. I mean, eyes get wide and oh my goodness, what is happening sort of moment when I first saw what the tweet looked like. But I think that it doesn't necessarily take away from impressive gains, or at least I'd hope that it doesn't for people that look at our scorecards. I mean, everybody knows it's an incredibly difficult job. So one person doing extremely well,

hopefully should not take away from many other people doing very well. And I'm certainly still excited to see 98, 99% games over perfect games, which is, you know, that is to say those have been increasing in frequency year over year by a pretty significant margin. And I don't think that that is taken away from how cool it is to see those. So I'm hopeful that this game will not take away too much from other games. Yeah, I'm glad that before the robots inevitably come in whenever that happens, or at least we get a challenge system or something, I'm glad a human achieved perfection at least one time just to show the new robot overlords that, hey, humans can do it too,

even if it's only one time in 18,000 games or something. So that's nice. I think even when or if we get robot umps, I hope that umpire scorecards continues, and maybe you can change it to robot umpire scorecards and it could just be 100 every time or at least you can track if the the system just uh blanks out for a pitch and misses one and is imperfect or if we do get a challenge system in some sort of hybrid which i think is our our preference then there would still be a use for umpire scorecards, even

in a robot umps world. So I don't know whether you're thinking, I'm sure we asked you about this last time where you stood on this, especially because you have some skin in the game now. You have an account with 300,000 followers and I imagine a fairly well-trafficked website. So in a sense, you're kind of not an unbiased party. Now you're dependent on continuing mistakes to drive traffic, I suppose, to your account. Yeah, well, for one, I will just throw out there this Pat Holberg game is our most liked, most retweeted, most quote tweeted,

most commented, most viewed, most clicked on tweet of all time by almost a two to one margin over I think the previous one was an Angel Hernandez game from earlier in the year. But so just in terms of traffic, I think people really enjoy seeing really well umpired performances, which is something that I'm happy to have at least contributed to highlighting.

And so I guess on the question of automation, I'm probably in the hybrid camp, though I'd have to think about it a little bit more. I recognize that as a person who, to some extent benefits off of umpires still existing. That makes me a little bit biased, but I do generally think that it provides some amount of entertainment value to some capacity to the game of baseball. But I do think that, I mean, obviously we see that it can have a big impact and impact the outcomes of games, which maybe is not the most ideal thing possible.

So to my understanding, there are reasonable best of both worlds scenarios. So, and I guess Pat Hoberg, probably not available for interviews now because he's got a game, he's got to be in right field. So have you been deluged with other requests? Like, is this an exclusive or are you like on the Tonight Show

or something to talk about the umpire perfect game yeah the the feedback to this one has been really i mean incredible i don't know if uh who saw but it was on mlb network this morning which was wild and just the feedback has been crazy i've got a couple yeah exactly exactly which was our first time but yeah i've seen a few other a few other people have reached out. So I think people are just really excited to see the perfect game, which is, I guess, to be expected. It is very exciting. People are just people are happy. It's a really impressive feat. And it was cool to be able to highlight that. Okay, so before we finish, just to circle back to the questions we posed to you during the interview that required some research, if you have answers for these things.

Still curious about just whether postseason games are, A, more accurate overall, but B, also more difficult to call overall just because of the quality of the stuff. And then secondly, also, we have a few more games at least during this series. So if you could kind of handicap the chances of perfection or not quite that, but just tell us the accuracy rates of the umpires to come, that would be wonderful. Yeah. Great question. So on the first one around differences in pitch culling accuracy in the post-season versus the regular season, we do see that the accuracy in the postseason versus the regular season, we do see that the accuracy in the postseason is slightly higher, but only by maybe a point or so in the postseason versus the regular season, at least in terms of the average accuracy in a game.

But we also see that just on the whole, the likelihood of a correct call is about the same, just on the whole, the likelihood of a correct call is about the same, which indicates that the difference is because these are, I guess, higher performing umpires for some reason or other are being more accurate. The expected correct is within a tenth or around a tenth of a point. Got it. So very close. Yeah. Okay. If that's the case, then the accuracy rate should be higher because at least in theory, if the system is working as designed, then the better umpires, more accurate umpires would be calling these games. Although obviously they judge the umpires on more than just their ball strike correctness. But even so, you would hope that it would be a higher caliber of ump. So is that the case for the remainder of this series?

What do your data show there? Yeah, so we have, so I can sort of go through these one by one. So we have Dan Iasonia's game three. We have him at 18th percentile in accuracy and 18th percentile in accuracy above expected and still below average in consistency and favor. So maybe unlikely to have another perfect game, but I guess, I guess you never know.

And then the next game is Trip Gibson and I'll pull up his page. We have an a percentile of accuracy, very high 97th accuracy above expected those only 77th percentile. So just discrepancies and i guess difficulty of pitches also very consistent but favor not quite as high the next game i have as jordan baker and jordan baker has let's look at his percentiles. 73rd percentile in terms of accuracy, 72nd in accuracy above expected, pretty much average consistency and also doing well on favor. Game six is Lance Barksdale.

Lance Barksdale has an accuracy percentile of the 82nd percentile, so that's pretty good. But it turns out he has had extremely difficult pitches to call apparently over this season, only in the fifth percentile and expected accuracy, which puts him at one or well in total 1.68% better than expected, which puts him in the 95th percentile, which is quite high. But below average on consistency and favor according to our metrics. So we'll have to see there, but maybe a perfect game is possible. And then...

It all comes down to game seven, Alan Porter. Exactly. Alan Porter in game seven. Let's see, what are our odds? He has got pretty good accuracy as well. So across the board, generally some accurate umpires, 75th percentile in terms of accuracy, but another umpire who has had a tough go this year, only sixth percentile in terms of expected accuracy. So another very high expected accuracy above

expected, excuse me, 93rd percentile and close to average in consistency in favor as well. I wonder if you asked umpires after the season whether they had a higher or lower than average difficulty grade, whether they would actually be able to suss that out or whether it just always feels challenging to them. Yeah, it's interesting. I've always thought that it would average out across the season. But no, there are real differences in difficulty of calling pitches. All right. Well, history was made and we know about it

thanks to Ethan Singer and his work at Scorecards. Of course, we'll never know if there was an umpire perfect game in the past. One imagines that there was given the rates and the probabilities

that we talked about, but we'll never be able to quantify that even from 2008 to 2015. I guess it's a different data source and we're looking only at StatCast era here, but still great to know. Very exciting. It has made this World Series more memorable for me and many others, I think. This is why we watch. This is why we tune in in just to see if the umpire could have his day in the sun finally. So everyone check out umpscorecards.com and at

umpscorecards on Twitter. You can support umpscorecards at umpscorecards.com slash support. Ethan is in college. I'm sure he could use some extra cash if you're interested in supporting his efforts here. So thank you.

And I hope you get on the Tonight Show sometime soon too. We'll see about that. I'm not quite sure, but we'll see. You can also follow Ethan's personal account at EthanPSinger, a little less active than the Upscore Cards account. But hire him, whatever he wants to do post-school, as long as you allow him to continue to operate Upscore Cards at that point. But his website also is ethansinger.me. Thank you, Ethan.

Yeah, awesome. Thank you very much for having me on. All right, that will do it for today. Thanks, as always, for listening. And thanks again to Ethan. If you check out his website, by the way, you'll see that he has two columns on there. One headlined, My Nerdy Interests. The other headlined, My Less Nerdy Interests. Baseball analytics is listed under the Less Nerdy Interests. So that probably gives you some sense of what the More Nerdy Interests look like. I should have mentioned, by the way, that Hoberg's previous high in a single game was 99.2% accuracy.

In the previous high by any umpire, it was a multi-way tie, was 99.2% accuracy. In the previous high by any umpire, it was a multi-way tie, was 99.4% accuracy. So there had been a game or games where there was one missed call in a game with more called pitches. So in a sense, you could say that those were just as impressive as what Hoburg did, but they weren't quite perfect. And that does make all the difference, doesn't it? I guess it's also possible that the umpire accuracy rate is slightly higher in the postseason, in part because umps just raise their game for more important games. There was a study last year. We actually talked to one of the authors of it on episode 1715, but it showed that umpires

do do better on more pivotal pitches. But that was like within a game, the win probability added, not necessarily the championship win probability added. So I don't know if they're able to raise their game for the postseason the way that, say, pitchers can throw harder in the postseason than they do during the regular season. There's still some decision fatigue that enters the picture for the umps, as we discussed on that podcast conversation last year. As you no doubt know by now, World Series Game 3 was in fact postponed, so the entire rest of the World Series schedule was just shifted back a day, each of the games as well as the possible off day. So slight advantage Phillies from the rainout probably,

just because they're the team with a little less depth and getting more time off benefits the team with less depth. So the Phillies get to skip Sindergaard for now and go with Ranger Suarez in game three, and then Aaron Nola on full rest in game four. And then supposedly, Zach Wheeler will not start game five. Thompson said he wants to get him some extra rest. We didn't note this, I believe, but his velocity was down in game two. So he's feeling some fatigue. So if he doesn't go, then maybe Sindergaard will go then, or Gibson. But if the Phillies are down at that point, I imagine Wheeler may be pressed into service anyway. Another benefit for the Phillies is that you potentially line up Ranger Suarez for a Game

7 start, which would be a big improvement over the previous alternatives. On the Astros' side, Dusty Baker's sticking with Lance McCullers for Game 3. He could go back to Verlander for Game 4 and then Valdez in game five, but it's sounding like it's going to be Christian Javier for game four, and he wants to get Verlander extra rest too. So Meg may be onto something with her fatigue theory. Baker, by the way, is planning to start David Hendley at DH. We mentioned that maybe he should do that, and he was planning to do that for game three and still is. I don't think we noted this, but Jose Altuve was three for four, had a big hit in game two, and that's pretty important for the Astros because if he's back, I mean, they got this far without

Altuve hitting at all. So if he's back to his usual self, then that would be a big boost for them. So stinks to miss out on a night of baseball, but better than trying to play through the rain. Turns out very late October, early November is not the best baseball weather. So you have to take the clear skies when you can get them and wait for them when you can't. And much as it's disappointing for Phillies fans not to get to go on Halloween and see their team, it probably does benefit the Phillies overall, which should be some consolation. And in the meantime, while you wait for game three or while you wait for whatever you're waiting for when you hear this, the New York Times had a fun

little interactive game called You Be the Ump, where it sort of simulates some borderline pitches and then asks you to call seven of them. I didn't do great. I did not make Pat Hoberg proud. I only got four of the seven correct, although I think I kind of got my bearings as I went on. I was just out of sorts for the first couple and blew them, but then I got on a streak late. I think I just sort of had to situate myself and get accustomed to the angle. But it's a fun way to test yourself and to see how hard what Hoberg did late. I think I just sort of had to situate myself and get accustomed to the angle. But it's a fun way to test yourself and to see how hard what Hoberg did was. I'll link to that on the show page.

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We will be back with another episode a little later this week. Talk to you then. Highlights playing in my head. Highlights of the living dead. Highlights. There's been a specter haunting Texas a Texas elephant They drank whiskey on the moon I heard some news that made me real Made me really lose the moon

Highlights, highlights