Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1924: Hot Tip

Episode Date: November 3, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the percentage of MLB fans who are paying close attention to the World Series, discuss the White Sox filling MLB’s last managerial vacancy by hiring Pedro Grifol (along with Charlie Montoyo as bench coach), and then reflect on a few aspects of Game 3 of the World Series, […]

That's a tip from you to me And it's worth for sure I don't ask myself for nothing anymore My peace is freedom from the masses Cause the masses cannot see That's a tip from them to me Freedom from the masses, cause the masses cannot see. That's a tip from them to me. And now I know for sure, I don't need nobody's help now anymore.

Hello and welcome to episode 1924 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. We are recording on Wednesday afternoon, which means that we are recording before Game 4, just to situate everyone in time here as you're listening. We are in the past as you are listening, but you know that. Just trying to tell you how far in the past we are. So our plan is to watch game four and then live stream during game five.

So Patreon people, potential Patreon people, this is one of your alerts that we will be doing our second and final Patreon playoff live stream during game five on Thursday evening. Alert, alert, alert. Yes. Yeah. The alarms are sounding. And then we plan to podcast on Friday after game five. Who knows? Maybe the World Series will be over by then.

But perhaps not. Could be true. Maybe not. Probably not. But maybe. What would your preferred alarm sound be? Would it be like... I kind of like the Star Wars, obviously I would say Star Wars,

but the Star Wars alarm that the Empire sounds like when it's time for the TIE fighter pilots to scramble. It's a very haunting alarm sound. Either that or something silly like maybe an awooga, which is not so much an alarm as a horn, I suppose. An awooga. Yeah. So I never know whether to lead with the World Series or lead with other stuff.

I assume that many of our listeners are watching and paying attention to the World Series. I don't know what percentage. Well, look, it's a regional sport, right? Yeah, but like. 28 fan bases eliminated, right? So who knows how many people are like, oh, we got to talk about the Phillies and the Astros again. Who cares? Talk about my team.

Okay. So today our episode will be about the Pittsburgh Pirates. No. Well, Ben, I think you've made a couple of mistakes here. Here's the first one. Okay. There is, I think for many, there's one fanbase, right? There is one fanbase that is encompassing the 28 other teams that were eliminated,

and that is the Phillies, and then there are people who are rooting for the Astros. And it's a little simplistic because I think there are neutral observers who are like, some of these Astros are pretty fun, and there are plenty of people who have continued frustration from 2017, but like Dust dusty baker you know like there's there's they're just nl east fans who have a grudge against the phillies sure yeah like maybe you're just like look i i don't like the astros but i hate the phillies more because i like the mets like maybe that's your your santa claus and you got booed in philly, although now you got cheered in Philly. So even that wrong is undone. Yeah, I mean, I don't...

Why would we try to contain the feral, weird, horny energy of the Phillies fan base? It's perfect. I haven't got... Much like the all DH roster, I don't have any notes. Got no notes. You're all delightful. Yeah. Well, I think that

at this time of year, people expect to hear about the World Series on their baseball podcast, so we will play into their expectations. I do think that probably some people have mentally moved on and are looking ahead to next season, but perhaps those people are not going to be listening to a national baseball podcast anyway. Maybe they're only listening to local baseball podcasts that cover their team. So I would imagine that people who listen regularly to Effectively Wild are interested in the sport as a whole and the league-wide landscape. And there's nothing more prominent on that landscape right now than the World Series. Not telling anyone anything that they don't know. Just the only non-World Series news, really, of note as we speak here is that the final managerial vacancy was filled.

So the White Sox have a manager. They're going with a youth movement at manager. They have hired 53-year-old Pedro Grafal. And he is a former minor league player, longtime future manager, right? Longtime manager candidate, has interviewed many teams many times. They have decided he's their man, and he has decided that Charlie Montoyo is his man as bench coach, it seems like, reportedly. So Montoyo, former Blue Jays manager and Rays bench coach, will be backing up Grafal. so that seems like a strong tandem at the top there.

And I guess the only kind of wrinkle here is that Graffal had been with the Royals for years. He'd also been with other organizations, with the Mariners, but he's been with the Royals since 2013. He was their quality control coach. He was their catching coach. He was most recently their bench coach. And he has interviewed for their managerial job twice. Now, once it seemed like they were pretty set on Mike Matheny to begin with, but he just recently during this recent round of interviews interviewed with the Royals and they opted not to hire him and to hire Matt Quattro, as we discussed recently. So I guess

you might think that that sounds odd, right? If he's this respected future manager candidate and he's been with the Royals for years and he's been up for their job, why wouldn't they just hire him? Does that bode ill or something? Should White Sox fans be worried that the Royals did not hire the in-house candidate? I don't think so. I think that there could be any number of explanations for that, really. Who knows? Maybe he had better interviews with one team than another or something, but I doubt it's even that. It's probably, well, it could be a combination of things, I guess. One thing maybe is that when you take a certain job with a team or an organization or any company,

probably many of us have been in this position where you start in one capacity and then maybe your employer sees you as that person, right? As that position. And sometimes you have to go elsewhere to get a step up because you got hired to do one thing and maybe you're allowed to grow in that job and keep moving up the ladder, but maybe not. Maybe they see you as this and not that, and you just have to go elsewhere for someone who will give you another bump up. It could also just be that they wanted to make a change, right? They wanted to bring in someone from outside the organization. The Royals have not been super successful of late, which is almost certainly not Pedro Grafal's fault, but he was there.

plate, which is almost certainly not Pedro Grafal's fault, but he was there. So if you want to send the signal that, oh, this is a new day for the Kansas City Royals organization, we're going to do things differently, and it's going to be a bit of a break from the past, then I guess you would not be inclined to hire the bench coach who's there, right? And it could also be, I don't know, a perception that maybe you want a certain person to tackle a rebuilding team and another person to tackle a team that is expected to win now, that is more veteran. Maybe the strengths are different. It's not so much developing players as winning with players who are already good.

Who knows? But there are any number of reasonable explanations that I don't think cast any kind of aspersions on him. It's just kind of one of those strange things, I guess, that he had to go elsewhere to get that gig, but good for him. think cast any kind of aspersions on him it's just kind of one of those strange things i guess that he had to go elsewhere to get that gig but good for him yeah i mean like there's a lot that goes into these hiring processes and it could be any of the things you mentioned it could just be like they got they got blown away when they were interviewing external candidates like there's

there's a lot that can that can go on there and don't have, again, like, I don't think we have terrific insight into the particular qualifications or how one substantiates those in a managerial interview as outside analysts, because we don't, you know, like, we can't observe that stuff. And we can't observe the process once the hire has been made. So I think we are a little bit on the outside looking in on these things. And I think it'll be, I think it'll it'll be fine like the resume here is very impressive so yeah absolutely any reason to be like oh gosh this is gonna go terribly which isn't something you can always say for white socks hiring so no that's the good news right yeah you're striking out in the right direction yeah

the good news not only did you get someone who seemingly has all the credentials and and checks all the boxes but also it doesn't seem like it was a case of Jerry Reinsdorf saying, this is going to be our manager. I don't care what anyone else says. So that's a good thing. This is the normal managerial hiring process, as far as we can tell from afar. And yeah, sometimes you click with one person and you click more with another person. Who knows?

Anyway, glad he's getting that chance and that all these vacancies are filled, or at least all the vacancies that are existing right now. So we don't have to revisit our discussion, I guess, from last time about the rates of the demographics of managers. Not that anyone hiring changes things all that appreciably. But last time we talked about this, which was very recently, every vacancy this winter had gone to a white candidate, and this one did not. So that's a slight change. Again, it's six out of 30 now managerial jobs held by non-white managers, which is not a lot. Obviously, it doesn't really reflect the population as a whole. It doesn't reflect the player population all that closely. And that's something that I

think the league still needs to look at. I think Rob Manfred was asked about this and basically intimated that his hands are tied to some extent, that teams just make their own decisions when it comes to hiring and there's only so much that he can do. I know there's been discussion about strengthening the so-called ceiling rule, which is the MLB equivalent of the Rooney rule in the NFL. Again, we've talked about that. I will link to all the sources that I've been linking to every time we bring this up. But this is not another hiring in that same trend that we were just talking about. All right.

So we should talk a little bit about game three, I think, even though it will be semi old news by the time people hear this, there will have been a game four. We cannot tell you what happened in game four. But I like how you said we're coming to you from the past. And I was like, are we ever coming to them from the future? Not yet. Not yet. But I wouldn't put it past us.

So game three, I think there are some interesting things to say about this that will hold up, even though there will have been a game subsequent to it. So obviously, this was a Phillies rout. Yeah. It was 7-0. The Phillies just walked all over the Astros in this game. It was an offensive showcase for the Phillies. It was a pitching showcase for the Phillies. It was a pitching showcase for the

Phillies. The Astros were trounced. So the Phillies scored early. They scored often. They hit five homers. Bryce Harper, Alec Boehm, Brandon Marsh, Kyle Schwarber, Reese Hoskins, all went deep and they swung the balance of power in this series of entering game four. As we speak, the Phillies are now favored 63-37-ish, according to the fan graphs Zips Odds, which is understandable in that they have a lead. They only have to win two of the next four games at most to win the World Series. Not in a row. Doesn't have to be. No.

I think Phillies fans would like them to win two in a row so that they could celebrate at home. Yeah. They were doing a whole lot of celebrating on Tuesday. That atmosphere looked very fun. Yeah, it sure did. Even from afar. I mean, it was a madhouse. It was delirium.

It was just wonderful to watch. Bad love. Yeah. There are some things we can analyze here, and some of them don't matter all that much ultimately because, again, the Phillies were much better than the Astros in this game. The Astros did not hit. They have not hit all that well in this series. They have not hit all that well in the postseason, frankly. It's been their pitching and defense kind of carrying them.

It's been their pitching and defense kind of carrying them. They do need to hit to beat the Phillies. And they didn't in this game, which renders some of the other conversations we can have about tactical decisions almost moot, although they're still interesting to discuss. But ultimately, you do have to score a run to win a baseball game. And the Astros failed to do that. So I don't know that this was going to go any differently if that was going to be the case. So this was just a laugher for the Phillies. This was just fun.

This was just, hey, we're home. It's not raining. The pressure's off early. And Bryce Harper homers on the first pitch he sees and then everyone just goes to town. And boy, did he homer on that first pitch. He sure did. Goodness. Goodness.

Yep. That was emphatic. It was an emphatic homerun. Schwarber's even more so. I guess when Schwarber hits him, they go a long way, which is true of Harper too. But boy. It turns out when you assemble a team of DHs, sometimes they're like, oh, the hitting part is what we're good at, you guys.

Yeah. Except apparently one of those DHs, Nick Castellanos, is now a defensive wizard too. Yeah. Seemingly good for a great sliding catch every game. I don't know what's happening there, but that's great if Nick Castellanos is suddenly going to be a great fielder too. Then that's a nice boost that I don't think anyone anticipated. Stephanie Epstein wrote a piece about this for Sports Illustrated and talked to Castellanos. And he had an explanation for why he has been so good on defense this month.

And he said, baseball in the postseason has really locked me in. The honest truth is a lot of times on defense, I struggle with focusing for 162 games. My mind is really fast and wonders. But with this atmosphere, it's unbelievable. Being locked in on every pitch, I think my jumps, my anticipation has just gotten better, which is interesting, right? We talk about players sometimes raising their games in the postseason. Pitchers throw harder. Nick Castellanos fields harder and focuses harder in the field, which is sort of fascinating. Makes me wonder,

how can the Phillies simulate a postseason atmosphere all season long so that the Castellanos can get that focus and those great jumps in anticipation all year? That'd be great, but maybe that's too much to ask. Yeah, like how do you replicate that feeling without like kidnapping his family or something horrifying but yeah he's definitely um he's definitely had a couple i like how sort of similar to one another they have been too right he's like i found i found a move i like in this move works really well for me i'm gonna do this the sliding grab thing yeah it made me think can i ask a like a completely unimportant question ben can i ask you a really unimportant question ben can i ask you

a really unimportant question how many pairs of pants do you think a baseball player goes through on average in a season and postseason for that matter huh that is interesting so like how many they have in rotation or how many are rendered unwearable yes over the course of both so both because you know like in any given baseball game you going to see by the end of the game, at least one guy who has a tear in his pants. They tend to get, especially around their pockets, they seem to be particularly vulnerable if they've had snacks shoved in there and then they have to do a sliding thing. They seem to fare better on grass than they do on the dirt. If you're having to slide around on the infield, that seems to cause more ripping than sliding around in the outfield other exceptions to that rule and i would imagine that like during the season like some of

those pants can be mended you're not just throwing away perfectly yeah that's what i wonder i wonder like how great the damage has to be right before they're like well we got it before they're yeah yeah we got to get you new pants because there's there's a rule in the rule book about having to be covered up because i guess they don't. And needing to be covered up, like needing to address uniform issues quickly, I think because they're worried that the tears will tear further and then you'll be like bare ass in it on TV. And that would be very in keeping with this Phillies team. I don't know.

They just have like a vaguely horny energy about them. I really respect it. Yeah. It's fun. Yeah. They embody Gritty in some ways it's fun to watch chaos agents

gritty should sub in for the fanatic for this series because this team just feels more of a gritty energy coming from this team it has more gritty vibe than it does fanatic vibe I respect that yeah I think that's a good take but so I've just been wondering about that like how many you know you get to a point where

you're like these pants have questionable structural integrity so there's that of it and then you might get to a point where you're like these pants can hold together but like we're a professional outfit here we need you to look look good out there you can't have these pants because the tear is too pronounced or you know like i'm sure sometimes they they meet with stubborn stains and they're like we just gotta you know because you're i think you're uniform like it has to be uniform so you can't be all marked up with dirt and grit and stuff so anyway i was just wondering about um yeah how many pairs of pants how much does it vary by position because i imagine that it does you know i would expect that like committed base stealers or based base steal

attempters probably tear their pants more because they're sliding around out there yep yeah infield sliders yeah i wonder and players who poop themselves do you just throw that in the laundry or do you say let's let's just dispose of this and start over yeah well okay so so bad important here to note that like i don't think they're actually bare assing it under there and so you don't think it penetrates hopefully you got a line of defense between you and the pants you know and again we don't know of anyone who has pooped themselves such that it was obvious on their pants right archie bradley famously couldn't really tell except for him telling us. So I don't think we're having like blowouts every night.

Even when guys were like, I got to get out of here because otherwise I'm going to poop myself in front of us. It was a blowout on Tuesday, but not that time. But yeah, I do wonder because I assume in the minors, you probably patch those things pretty often. Yeah. But in the big leagues, hey, you're in the show. Like let's get those things pretty often yeah but in the big leagues hey you're in the show like let's let's get a good clean pair of pants here so i wonder we should in the

depths of winter we should have like a clubhouse attendant on to ask these important questions because i can't recall ever noticing or often noticing a repaired pant right like where you see like oh there's a patch over something or like you can tell that this was obviously sewn or stitched or something. I've never noticed that. Like you see the hole in one game and then the next game, there's no hole when it starts and it doesn't look like it was. Intact pants.

Yeah, right. So I don't know. I would imagine that probably go through at least a handful of pairs of pants. Yeah. Half dozen pairs of pants. Sounds about right. Well, and, you know, I don't know how sewing works, but maybe, you know, they're more vulnerable to ripping after they've been repaired, right? Because there's already been a tear in the fabric. Anyway. Anyway, I think what they should do with Nick Castellanos, maybe they should just like give away free tickets just out in like you get free tickets and in exchange you have to do your best to convince Nick Castellanos that

it's a playoff atmosphere whatever that entails so maybe that would work you're really saying to Philly fans come interact with players in the outfield more than you already do you think that's safe you think that's a good idea? Good point, yeah. Well, I mean, when he says like his mind is really fast and wonders, I mean, obviously there are players who have like ADHD and have medication for that. I don't know if Castellanos is one of them or should be one of them or whether there are things that a team psychologist could help him with, right, in order to focus and keep his mind from straying

from pitch to pitch. I mean, if that is actually a persistent problem, I don't necessarily believe that that's the only thing holding the Castellanos back on defense. I think there might be some physical limitations there in addition to maybe mental ones. But interesting. Anyway, it's not something I expected from the Phillies. Like we expected them to bash. So if the bashers and the mashers also make great sliding catches, then it is tough to beat them as it has been all month. So I think there were a couple things that you could question Dusty Baker about in this game. Right. And again, ultimately may not matter all that much.

this game right and again ultimately may not matter all that much like unless you believe that maybe keeping it close matters to an offense or or would have changed the way that ranger suarez pitched let's say and so if there had not been as big a deficit then maybe the astros would have hit right the fallacy of the predetermined outcome as michael k puts it often but if everything on the astros offensive side had played out the way that it had played out, then it really didn't matter what Dusty Baker did. But there were, I guess, a couple of first guess or second guessable decisions. One was starting McCullers in the first place, which some people did question when that happened. And the idea was that maybe they should have just skipped McCullers or started Javier and then just gone to Verlander. Now, I'm sympathetic in that, well, you proposed the theory last time that maybe Justin

Verlander's World Series struggles have something to do with fatigue. And I believe Baker did say that he wanted to get Verlander more rest. See, I'm a genius. You are. So maybe you had to start McCullers. I think if it you had to start McCullers. I think if it did come down to McCullers versus Javier, there is certainly an argument for Javier in that Javier has been better this season at least. And you could argue that Javier is maybe a better matchup for the Phillies than McCullers is stuff-wise. The Phillies, they are good against breaking balls in particular and just like off-speed stuff. So I was just looking on Baseball Savant. They have the seventh highest weighted on base and third highest expected weighted on

base this regular season against off-speed and breaking balls. They had the 10th highest Woba and expected Woba against fastballs of all kinds. And if you break it down into types of fastballs, they are better seemingly against four-seamers. So against two-seamers and sinkers, which is what McCullers throws, they were 19th in Woba and 10th in expected Woba.

Against four-seamers, which is what Javier relies on, They were 5th in Woba, 7th in ex-Woba. So again, they seem to do more damage also say that maybe he's a better matchup and that the Phillies have struggled somewhat against two seamers and sinkers. Just the way that things were this season, I couldn't say for sure. And this probably was just not the best Lance McCullers has been. Like Lance McCullers, when he faced them at the end of the regular season, he shut them down. So it depends on the day. And you want to maximize your chances, of course. But I think his command was not the best. And credit to the Phillies hitters for putting good swings on him. And then, of course, there's the whole tipping conversation, which we can get into. But there's that conversation about should

McCullers have been the guy? And then there's the second conversation about should McCullers have been left out there as long as he wasn't? I think that one is probably more clear cut, right? You know, he gave up the couple early homers. You're down for nothing. Then he settles in. He has a couple good innings. And then Baker leaves him out for what, the fifth was it? A third time through the order. And he gives up more runs. Now, again, maybe at that point, it's out of hand anyway, knowing what we know now about the Astros not scoring in this game. But Dusty Baker did not know that the Astros would not score and would not amount to come back. So you put that together with game one, where he seemingly stayed too long with Justin Verlander, and that was a game where potentially that may have cost them. That kind of makes you concerned, you know, just looking forward in this series. Maybe he learns his his lesson but if that is a mistake that he has made multiple times in the series then it means that he may make it again right and this is not a team that should be sticking too long with starters no there's no reason to that's the thing

like famously have a really good bullpen including two starters in it who would be getting, you know, starts on most other playoff teams. a homer and then I couldn't get anybody loose. Now, I think you could say that he should have had someone warming at that point if he was going to try to go out by out, batter by batter with McCullers. He also said when it's 4-0 in this ballpark, you don't want to go through your whole pitching staff because 4-0 in this ballpark is really nothing the way the ball flies here. And I guess what he was saying is that being down 4-0 is not that bad, that it's not an argument for hooking McCullers, but really it's an argument for hooking him quicker, if anything, because again, he's saying like, you can come back from 4-0. That is not insurmountable for this team in this ballpark. And so you should be even more aggressive as Rob Thompson has for the most part in this

series. So you should not just concede. I mean, I don't know that Baker was leaving with colors out there because he was saying, well, we're done. So we'll just have him eat some innings. I think he probably thought that he was the best option at that point. But I don't know how you think that because you can come back from that. And the Astros have such a great bullpen and such a deep bullpen that you don't really have to worry about going through your whole pitching staff, not this, like Will Smith hasn't pitched in forever, you know, throw him out there. Luis Garcia, like get these guys some reps, even if you don't want to go to your late inning leverage guys. Like there are just so many options.

And this is not Justin Verlander. This is Lance McCullers. This is not necessarily a guy who you have to ride as hard as you want to usually ride Verlander and stay with Verlander. So I don't get it. That seems to me to be a mistake. Maybe not a costly one in this instance, but it speaks to a pattern that is kind of concerning. Right.

And, you know, like you've said, it's going to look worse because of the lack of scoring. But he did not put his staff in a position to, like like hold the line well and then allow the offense to come back they weren't able to do that so like you know if they had lost 4-0 instead of 7-0 does that really alter anything no they still end up losing the game you know the Phillies are still able to maintain their highest leverage arms and save them for later they're still in a better pitching position because of the delay or the rain out from the day before right like some of those factors are just going to be ones that the astros have to deal with regardless of how long the colors and regardless of the margin by which they lose but you know they are in a position now where

it's hard it's hard to come back you know it's not insurmountable they've done that before dusty's not wrong you can score a lot of runs in that ballpark but i don't think that he put his team in the best position to sort of maintain a surmountable margin even if the bats weren't able to do what they needed to anyway like we can still find fault with the process there it just doesn't make a ton of sense, particularly when you're coming off an extra day of rest to be so stingy with deploying your relievers. It's not like you have to send out your highest leverage guys. Like if you want to hold them back until the margin is tighter, I think that makes a lot of sense. But like, you know, why don't we see Ryan Stanek earlier

than we did? Why didn't we see yourek earlier than we did why didn't we see Rikiti earlier than we did they have guys in that bullpen who can eat a couple of innings at a time right like it's not like they have to send out the one inning guys either so it was a little befuddling particularly given that you know McCullers is a pitcher as you said who's like gonna be on a kind of short leash potentially anyway, just because of how few games he ended up being able to throw in the regular season. So I found all of that very confounding. But I also will admit that at times I was just like, home run, go far. You know?

Yeah. I mean, the fact that McCullers is the first postseason pitcher ever to give up five homers in a game and that no starting pitcher had allowed seven earned runs in a World Series game since 2004. Obviously, that is a credit to the Phillies and it's a knock against McCullers. But also it suggests something about Dusty, right? Which is that usually if you're on track to give up five homers or seven earned runs, you don't get to stay in the game because it's the

World Series. So you get yanked. And so this was just a slow hook, I think, given the circumstances, given the stakes, et cetera. So you hope that Dusty would learn from that and use his great weapon of this incredibly deep pitching staff, which is all we talked about coming into the series. And got to give credit to the Phillies' bullpen, which has stepped up. I mean, the Astros' bullpen has also been very good. It's not like the Astros' bullpen has blown up. The only problem is that it hasn't been given the opportunity to pitch enough potentially. But really, I think both bullpens now, Joshian had this stat in his newsletter, the starters have allowed 23 runs in 30 innings combined.

The relievers have allowed two runs in 24 innings. So the bullpens have been lights out, which was expected for the Astros and a little less so for the Phillies. But the Phillies bullpen this postseason, 2.45 ERA in 55 innings. Now, I know this Phillies bullpen is better than a lot of past Phillies bullpens, but it's not necessarily the one you would have pointed to and said, yeah, this bullpen is going to be nails all October. But we've seen this before. Like sometimes a team has a great bullpen month and that can propel you to a title. And it's not necessarily the team that you expected. I mean, we talk about how bullpens can be unpredictable over the course of a full regular season. So over the course of a single postseason, all bets are off and really anything can happen. And so the Phillies bullpen has really stepped up as did Suarez. Suarez was really great too. He was excellent. And he just looked, I mean, I know that this might be kind of squishy or whatever, but boy, he just looks so calm out there. You know, like he's so reassuring when it's going well.

Slow heartbeat. Slow heartbeat. Exactly right. Like he is, you know, if you as a scout are trying to like help people understand what that term means like suarez is the guy to point to he just looks so even keeled he's so and then after he had this big smile and i was just like yeah dude you you pitched a great game you got all this run support you all love each other it's so it's nice yep so this may have changed by the time people are listening to this but as we speak it could could be despair. It's the Phillies.

You really vacillate between extremes here. Yes, but right now everything is coming up Phillies between the rainout, which benefited them more and led to some more advantageous starting pitcher matchups and rested bullpens. And then winning this game and then winning this game without having to use Alvarado or Dominguez or Robertson or Eflin. So you're going into these next games with a very rested back of the bullpen. And home field advantage is negated now over the rest of this series. So things are looking good. It's far from over. And I would imagine that this series will go back to Houston. Certainly the odds are in favor of that. But nothing would surprise me. Nothing surprises me in any postseason series ever. So I have lost the capacity for surprise when it comes to postseason baseball, which does not mean I've lost the capacity for fun and enjoyment and delight. I can still have those things. So McCullers tipping, right? A lot of the conversation

was about tipping. So we've had sticky stuff controversies in this postseason. Now we've got a pitch tipping one and you got to have your pitch tipping in October conversation that always seems to surface at some point. So there were a few pieces of evidence, I suppose, here. I mean, A, the fact that McCullers got rocked. Yeah. And then Bryce Harper somewhat suggestively talking to Alec Boehm, right? Yeah. Seeming to give him some sort of tip after his Homer and prior to Boehm's Homer. And so people started to talk about that.

And then, of course, you get the frame-by-frame breakdowns and the GIFs and the screenshots. You get the frame-by-frame breakdowns and the GIFs and the screenshots. My default position when it comes to pitch tipping, I believe in its existence. I'm not saying it's Bigfoot or anything. Pitches get tipped. But I am skeptical in any individual case and I guess skeptical about the magnitude of it. Like, look, I'm sure there have been times where someone was very obviously tipping and the team picked up on it and they just rocked him because of that. But I would imagine that it's not always so obvious. It's not always so easy to go from picking up on pitch tipping to capitalizing on the

pitch tipping, much like sign stealing. We know that even when you know what's coming that doesn't necessarily mean you can hit it and also it can be kind of distracting sometimes if you're trying to pay attention to the banging of a trash can or some sort of pattern that the pitcher is supposedly exhibiting and meanwhile you're trying to react to the actual pitch so it maybe gets you out of your routine a little so there were people who were absolutely convinced that McCullers was tipping and people were talking about leg lifts. And Pedro Martinez said there was no doubt in his mind that McCullers was tipping. Hey, he knows a lot about pitching, you know.

Sure. I'll link to his analysis. And he was talking about how McCullers was lifting the glove above his head higher on certain pitch types than others, et cetera, et cetera. I just, I don't know. Like McCullers denied it. He said he wasn't tipping. I don't know whether that's evidence either way. Do you think if you're Lance McCullers, like you might be lined up to pitch again in game seven,

would it be better for that to have been the product of tipping? Like would you feel better about yourself if you realized, OK, I was tipping. That's why they were knocking me all over the park because I was very obviously giving something away here. Or would you, well, feel embarrassed that you, a veteran pitcher, a veteran postseason pitcher, which maybe was a factor in Baker's mind, too, that colors has so much postseason experience and even World Series experience. is mine too that colors has so much postseason experience and even world series experience so would you feel shame that you allowed yourself to give away what you were doing so easily or would you feel better about it because it's like okay it was tipping all along and if i can just correct the tipping then i'll be golden next time well i mean i don't know that i'd feel shame it's not a moral failing i think that i would certainly feel better if it were tipping i don't know that I'd feel shame. It's not a moral failing. I think that I would certainly feel better if it were tipping.

I don't know that I would say it was tipping though. I don't know that I, if you're playing five-dimensional chess or whatever with the Phillies, and I think that we should entertain the possibility that the Phillies are little tricksters and that there was no tipping. Harper really did look like he was sitting on that pitch and not just because, like, it got thrown right down the dick and he hit it really far. Like, he looked like he was sitting

on that thing and Boehm looked like he was sitting on that slider. But, you know, I think that there is something to the idea that these guys are just, like, really good hitters who executed well. And maybe they thought it would, like, mess with the astros if they like you know whisper to each other because the most recent example of this where we were all convinced it was that a guy was tipping was the astros against glass now in what 2019 yeah right and they did that thing where they all like oh stand around like they got a little secret they want to tell yeah and boom like he wouldn't divulge what harper said he was so coy it was like people can probably tell by the way i've been talking about them i just find myself so charmed by these fillies just find them to be

very charming they get to have their little secrets and they nuzzle each other and they seem like they all like each other so much it's really nice so they might be kind of messing around too but if they aren't and they really are noticing something and you lance mccullers are like yeah i was tipping and i know how to fix that your incentives to say yeah i was tipping are pretty low right because maybe they think they're going to be able to exploit that again and yeah you don't want to like let them know that you know yes but it would some some game theories yeah games going on here yeah i guess like this presupposes that like if he was tipping, he knows he was tipping. Like I guess it's possible that he didn't know he was tipping even if he was.

I mean, if he had known in the moment, then he would not have done it. So, you know, maybe he hadn't even seen video yet at that point. Who knows? That's the other thing is that like we can't even see exactly what the hitters are seeing. Right. Like, you know, so I mean, maybe we get some angles. the other thing is that like we can't even see exactly what the hitters are seeing right like right you know so right i mean maybe we get some angles but like first of all like teams are using all kinds of like you know high speed video like behind the plate kind of like picking up on this

sort of stuff or like mechanical data you know markerless motion capture that is picking up on these things so they have all kinds of more sophisticated tools than we do where we're like giffing this stuff from like a center field angle, you know, where you may or may not be able to see whatever the hitters in theory would be picking up on. So I just, I don't feel equipped to pronounce a verdict either way. So yes, I understand what about the prospect of a guy tipping is really fun and exciting for people to dig in on. You're right that it feels like every October we have a guy who gets kind of knocked around

and we're like, he's tipping pitches. Let's go to the tape and find it. And it's not that you can't see anything that might give away that a guy is tipping his pitches from the center field camera like you can see some of it but you can't see first of all like you said what the hitters themselves are actually seeing you're not looking at it from the perspective of an advanced scout you don't have access to all of the data that teams have and you don't even have a sustained shot on the pitcher most of the time, right? Like, I went back through this morning and I was looking at stuff to be like, well, you know, like, is the glove height different?

Is he, you know, McCullers like pulls his glove sort of to his belt when he's coming set. Like, is he doing that differently? Is it not as tight to his body? Is, you know, is there something to the light left idea and the main thing i came away from with that is boy it would be nice to be able to just watch lance mccullers uninterrupted throughout these couple of innings to see if we can see anything at all so it's not you can't see anything i think it's fine to speculate about i do wish that outlets like john boy would like chill about it a little bit because

i think they put out stuff that and they're not the only ones to do this but it's like you know you put stuff out there like he's definitely tipping or he's definitely not it's like you don't know and so i don't think that you know we have to put these things out there in such definitive terms and when you have like a bunch of twitter followers now everyone's like he's definitely tipping no he's not he's not tipping at all we're gonna fight about it forever and it's like you could just say it sure is hard to tell from here and you know if how much engagement would you get on that tweet i don't know but maybe that shouldn't be the purpose right yes of course yeah yeah the incentives are not aligned for expressing a reasonable, healthy amount of uncertainty, unfortunately.

You mean the take that says, maybe he was pitching and maybe he wasn't. A breakdown wouldn't do super well? He was definitely pitching. I'm pretty sure of that. Yeah, tipping, sorry. Tipping. He was pitching. I mean, how badly does one have to pitch before we start to say, is that pitching at all really?

Was it in Lansford Colors? Was it an imposter all along? Probably a lot worse than Lansford Colors. So I just, you know, like it's fun to think about and to take a peek at. It makes fans feel like, you know, we're playing along, like we're involved in the game, like we're playing amateur sleuth here. We're a little Sherlock walks here you know testing our our metal against the pitcher so it could be fun to dig into but i do think that people get too definitive about it yes i think our expectations should be reset as to how much we can say with

any degree of certainty you know advanced scouting isn't trying to figure out like cattle mutilations you know there's no grand conspiracy or anything here it's just you know if if if there was you know an advanced scout for philly who noticed something about mccullers either when they faced him at the end of the season or you know in their work subsequent to that because i'm sure that you know philly's had people advancing the american league teams sure then hat tip to that person if they keep these guys up. And to the, again, to the Phillies themselves for actually being able to action that, right?

You still have to go up there and hit so many home runs. It's just like a bushel, a peck, you know? So I don't want to be like, you know, I don't want to yuck anyone's yum like it's fun to talk about pitch tipping i just i just wish we could do it with greater responsibility particularly if we have like 200 000 twitter followers i guess it's good even if he wasn't tipping it's it's good for the phillies to have that in his head i suppose yeah even just what i'm saying what if they were up to mischief what if they are just a bunch of vaguely horny mischief makers?

Love it. Because if they face him again in this series, it's like, well, I don't think I was tipping. But was I? Yeah. I saw this video that said I was. See, that's way more fun. That's way more fun. So now it's in his head.

Right. Yeah. And he said, I got whooped. End of story. This has nothing to do with tipping. Clearly, they had a good game plan against me and they executed better than I did. And I think it's worth mentioning that tipping is not necessarily the explanation. It could be sequencing. It could be pitch patterns. It could be just being too predictable, not in the sense that he's doing something physically different, but just with the sequences of pitchers that he throws. Like he throws a lot of breaking balls. You know, he doesn't throw fastballs to lefties a lot. Like it's a pretty predictable approach.

I think a friend of the show, Lucas Apostolaris, mentioned that I think it was the most non-fastballs to start a game this season, except for a Whistler opener game. So it was just a lot of that. And look, like Harper, he homered on the first pitch after two outs right so unless he picked up on something while he's like in the hole or on the deck circle i i guess it's possible one of the other hitters who made it out before him perhaps

i guess what three hitters because there was a runner on base could have flagged something potentially i think what five homers, I think they were on like four different pitch types or something too, which again, you know, it wasn't like they were hitting only the same pitch type over or two or something. And I think there's a lot to be said for just the Phillies being smart and anticipating what he was going to throw just because of his patterns more so than seeing something. And Ken Rosenthal had a good article about that in The Athletic. And I'll just read a little bit there. Poor execution, yes, but strong anticipation by the Phillies too. Before the game, several Phillies recalled Schwarber's leadoff homer off a first pitch

fastball from McCullers on October 3rd, joking the left fielder wouldn't see a fastball all night. He wasn't going to throw me one, Schwarber said, and McCullers didn't. Afterward, the Phillies talked about how Boehm knew to expect a fastball in his first at-bat, remembering that in Game 2, Maldonado expressed visible frustration after Boehm hit a ninth-inning double off a Ryan Presley curve. Sure enough, McCullers threw Boehm a first-pitch sinker. Sure enough, Boehm hit it out. That's intelligent baseball from an intelligent team. For all the intrigue about what Harper said to Boehm in the on-deck circle, such conversations are not unusual. Maybe Harper was reminding Boehm to hunt the fastball. Maybe he was simply offering encouragement. It wasn't necessarily an aha moment. That's good to point out. And in this article, again, quoting Nick Castellanos praised the Phillies analytics team, saying the group excels at picking up the tendencies of opposing pitchers. Castellanos, though, probably was referring more to pitch selection and sequencing than tipping. The Phillies knew McCullers wanted to throw his slider. Early on, they detected weakness in his body language. And then in their Lions den of a ballpark, they pounced. So again, like maybe it's just looking at when McCullers tends to throw things using the information they had from previous matchups and applying it and then having good swings. It could be as simple as that or some pitches missing their location. So it's, you know, it's fun to talk about.

But I think, yeah, I never have any great degree of certainty when it comes to this. I think, yeah, I never have any great degree of certainty when it comes to this. Now, if it comes out later in some post-World Series piece, you know, like 2015 Royals-style story where we find out that such and such advanced scout picked up on this thing and, yeah, the Phillies knew that. Well, great. Then that would be good to know at that point. And I guess we will stand corrected for our skepticism. But I think it's it's always smart to be somewhat skeptical about that not saying don't talk about it don't speculate it just the certainty i just i don't have it yeah apply the appropriate caveats so that everyone

doesn't come away being like this is definitely what happened i i think ben that i misspoke and said that bum hit his home run off a slider and i was wrong it was a sinker it was it was it was marsh who hit one off a slider but then again so did reese hoskins so you know there's some stuff to know about them and their home runs yep all right well again there has been another game as you listen to this since we are speaking so i guess we can move on from the world series we can catch up on that next time and again we will be live streaming during game 5 so just a

couple more things to mention here wanted to just bring up this article that's been going around this week by Derek Thompson in The Athletic Derek Thompson writer for The Athletic also I suppose I should acknowledge don't you mean The Atlantic oh sorry

I do that all the time though writer for The Athletic also, I suppose I should acknowledge. Don't you mean The Atlantic? Oh, sorry. I do that all the time, though. Yeah, no, I do that too. Let's leave it in because I always say The Athletic when I mean The Atlantic or The Other Way Around. He is a writer for The Atlantic. He writes places with words. Yeah. He also does a podcast for The Ringer, which I suppose I should acknowledge. Kind of a colleague.

Anyway, he wrote this piece for The Atlantic called What Moneyball for Everything Has Done to American Culture. Subhead, you can make a thing so perfect that it's ruined. And this was Derek basically examining his own lack of enthusiasm for baseball. Used to be a baseball fan. Doesn't care about baseball anymore. And he is pinning the blame on baseball being solved, essentially, by analytics and that those solves have pushed the game in a spectator unfriendly direction. And then he is broadening this point out to apply it to many things in culture and society as a whole. As things get just increasingly quantified, you identify the most effective thing and then things get more homogenous and samey. And I don't know that this is a new idea. It's something that we've certainly talked about as it pertains to baseball many times on this podcast and analytical

sabermetric circles. This has been kind of a common talking point, just the effect that analytics and that sabermetrics and that identifying the optimal ways to win at the sport have had some unintended consequences. Now, I suppose I don't dispute any of the observations about baseball being less entertaining in certain ways because of strikeouts, because of a parade of pitchers, because of velocity, all of that. certain ways because of strikeouts, because of a parade of pitchers, because of velocity, all of that.

I guess I wonder to what extent that is responsible, solely responsible for the place of baseball in the cultural landscape or for many devoted former fans slackening of appreciation or enthusiasm for the sport. If we could do an alternate history where we didn't change anything except for the fact that the MLB strikeout rate and velocity and pitchers per game or whatever else were the same as they were in pick your previous era, right? If we kept everything else constant and just changed the game aesthetically and stylistically in certain ways to make it maybe more entertaining or more like it was before, would that account for most of the quote-unquote decline in baseball or the decline in market share

or mind share or however you want to express that? I mean, I think a lot of it is just that almost everything, except the NFL, I guess, is less popular than it used to be just because everything is fractured and it's post-monoculture and there are just so, so many entertainment options that I don't think there was any way that MLB could retain the same share of the spotlight that it once had because almost nothing has been able to do that.

Like the most popular events, again, maybe other than football, like award shows and whatever else has kind of been a unifying force in the culture. Everything just has fewer eyeballs on it than it used to be. The most popular TV shows are less watched than TV shows used to be, et cetera, et cetera. So it's just kind of a competition. But I just I don't know. I don't know how much of it is baseball being broken because sabermetrics worked too well. And that accounts for people just flocking away from the game to the extent that they have.

I wish I knew that. I wish we could tell. But basically, he is making this argument. He is saying that Moneyball and everything that's followed from Moneyball has been catastrophically successful in many ways that we have discussed. I'll read this one paragraph because I thought this was perceptive. So the religion scholar James P. Kars, if that's how you pronounce it, wrote that there are two kinds of games in life, finite and infinite. A finite game is played to win. There are clear victors and losers. An infinite game is played to keep playing. The goal is to maximize winning across all participants. Debate is a finite game. Marriage is an infinite game. The midterm elections are finite games. American democracy is an infinite game. A midterm elections are finite games. American

democracy is an infinite game. A great deal of unnecessary suffering in the world comes from not knowing the difference. A bad fight can destroy a marriage. A challenged election can destabilize a democracy. In baseball, winning the World Series is a finite game, while growing the popularity of Major League Baseball is an infinite game. What happened, I think, is that baseball's finite game was solved so completely in such a way that the infinite game was lost because you have these misaligned incentives this is me not derrick now where teams are doing what helps them win and the things that help them win may not help major league baseball and the sport of baseball as a whole win attention and affection i always struggle to respond to arguments like this because i very like first and foremost want to acknowledge that like not only not only am i like a captured

observer of the game right it would i don't know what it would take but it would it would take a lot more than it would for your average fan for me to throw up my hands and say, no, I hate this. I'm done. And obviously, some of that is how I feel about baseball as a pursuit in an entertainment product. And a lot of that is personal and professional. But I'm not the typical fan. And even when I wasn't professionally invested in baseball, you know, I don't think that from a numbers perspective, like I would imagine that there are more fans who view the game through what we might understand

to be like a quote unquote traditional lens than there are whose first sort of principle is an analytic one. So there's that, right? There's that layer of things. And like we have talked before about like what we notice, what you would just notice if you, without knowing any of the discourse around home runs or strikeouts or balls in play, if you just went to the ballpark, I don't want to say you woke up from a coma and then you went to

the ballpark because you'd probably be confused by a lot of other stuff. But like, you know, if you're just like a casual observer of the game and you go to the ballpark because you'd probably be confused by a lot of other stuff but like you know if you're just like a casual observer of the game and you go to the ballpark and you're watching a game like i remain a little skeptical that what you would notice without someone telling you is boy there are a lot more strikeouts or boy there are a lot more home runs or boy there are a lot fewer balls in play because you know when we aggregate these things the number becomes big but when you sort of disperse it down to the individual game level, you're not talking about that many more of any individual one of these things, right? Right. So I'm always a little skeptical of like what or at least curious maybe would be a better way to put it. Like I'm always curious, like how much of that perception is being informed by what you're seeing and how much of it is being informed by being primed to see that. Now, we have some aesthetic issues with the game. And I think,

you know, we we too would like to see more balls in play. We also acknowledge that the sort of balance of power between pitchers and hitters is maybe more out of whack than is conducive to as fun a game as possible. But I also think that we should, you know, if you're a person who likes baseball and hasn't been sort of lost to the game the way that it sounds like Derek has, there are countervailing forces to some of the things that he's talking about. Yeah, I'd like to see a more balanced offensive approach i really appreciate that even though we still have annoying unwritten rules controversies every year that the game is more expressive and that it is more open to players personalities than it was when i was a

kid right so that's something that adds levity and buoyancy to baseball that was really purposefully tamped down when we were younger. And so I think that there's more season to season push and pull in the game culturally than is often acknowledged well settled as this as arguments like this often make it out to be i think that the the mechanism by which teams determine what strategies are optimal and where they can you know pursue an inefficiency that other teams aren't looking at, I think the mechanism of that, the methodology is very well settled, right? Where even for teams that still integrate a lot of scouting data into their analysis, because that's all scouting is, is providing you with data, you guys. They are trying to model that in a way that is rigorous and scientifically based and often involves people with degrees in kinds of science that I don't understand, right? And so I think that observation is correct. And I do think that the relentless pursuit of optimization can lead to a lack of biodiversity, for lack of a better word, in the game. But I

think that it's more unsettled than this like necessarily allows for but to bring all the way back to what i said in the beginning of course i think that i'm in the weeds with all of this so you know that that might be a limitation to my own analysis of like of how this stuff looks because you know of course i'm gonna notice the difference between baseball a couple of years ago when only Houston, not only Houston, but mostly Houston was like looking at guys with fastballs up in the zone that had a particular fastball profile. And now everybody's looking for those guys. So we got to look for something else in the draft.

Like, of course, I'm going to know that. But why would Derek know that? That's fine that he doesn't know that or care about that because like that's not his beat. So yeah, I doesn't know that or care about that because like that's not his his beat so yeah i don't i don't know i do think that like the broader observation that a relentless push toward optimization leads to sameness is like a good insight to have and it certainly affects baseball as much as it affects other things i think the manifestation of it in baseball versus forms of understood infinite culture like say music or movies is different because yes you know if you're a studio you care about your movie winning from a box office perspective but if you're a critic or a just a movie goer you don't care about that you know

and some people including me can be a little exhausted by like all the comic book stuff. But some of that stuff is fun. So I don't know. I don't think that it's not that that isn't a force in other forms of pop culture. But I think the manifestation of it is different in a game that people watch a lot of Marvel movies. It's just a fact. People like Marvel movies. That's why they watch them and that's why they make them a lot. stay popular longer and you have the same sort of blockbusters repeatedly. I think that in that sphere, in that arena, it's different from baseball, well, in many ways. But for one thing, teams are trying to win games primarily. Of course, they're trying to make money, which would mean trying to be entertaining. But as we've talked about many times, I think how entertaining the team is is somewhat divorced from the money-making potential of the organization now, which is perhaps one thing that's a very different goal from trying to maximize the popularity of the sport. Whereas if a studio is trying to make money, well, they're trying to maximize the popularity of the movies that they make, which is somewhat better aligned. Now, that might mean that you please critics a little less or you make fewer of a certain type of movie, let's say. And personally, like a lot of that is true. I mean,

there's certainly more sequels and reboots and a lot of IP that is recycled over and over. And look, there's an appetite for that clearly. And a lot of that is about minimizing risk in the absence of a monoculture, et cetera. But I think there's still a lot of variety. I think like there's more of everything than I have time to consume. And I try to keep my finger on the pulse as much as I can, but I can't keep up. So even if you say, oh, they don't make that many whatever mid-budget movies anymore or rom-coms anymore or whatever it is that is a little less common, it's still too common for me to actually watch all of it.

So it's like, I don't consider it to be that huge a problem personally. But I think in baseball specifically, you know, people talk about how the NBA, the NFL have, if anything, gotten more entertaining, more popular as they have gotten, quote unquote, solved as people have passed more, as people have, they have gotten, quote unquote, solved as people have passed more, as people have gone for it on fourth down more, have shot three-pointers more. It is maybe more homogenous, but not necessarily worse. Some people do believe that it's less entertaining. Other people do believe it's more entertaining.

Yeah, people really hate three-point shots, man. They're really out on the three-pointer. Yeah. And I think Rani Jazeera made a point that maybe the difference between those sports and baseball is something very fundamental, which is that in baseball, the defense starts with the ball. And Rani noted that the more analytics advance, the more of an advantage there is in being the first mover because the other side is always reacting. So that might just be a baseball problem more so than other sports. And that's why baseball has been hit hardest by this, I think, by this idea that solving it makes it less entertaining in some way. But also, and I think this is an important point that wasn't really addressed in the piece, is that this is not an inevitability. It's not that there's no way to come back from this and that the sport is ruined and there's no recourse because it's just figured out.

Like you could have that conversation about, say, chess, for example, where computers have gotten so good at chess and have essentially solved chess and a lot of other less complicated games, too. And so everyone kind of knows what the optimal moves are and they can memorize certain sequences and you can't beat the computer. And so maybe there's no way around that. But in baseball, you can change the rules maybe more readily than you can in chess, right? And if anything, this is on MLB for not tinkering as much as, say, the NBA and the NFL do, where they're constantly changing things. But in MLB, there's more of an adherence to tradition and a resistance to change and maybe more of a complacency where a lot of these changes, they can be fixed, right? The solves can be unsolved if you just change the rules.

And we've talked about so many ways to do that, whether it's moving the mound back or whether it's limiting the number of pitchers on the active roster or whatever it is. And to its credit, MLB has finally gotten around to doing this, right? And whether you think they're doing it in the best possible way and they've chosen the most efficacious changes to make, Well, we have disputed that and we probably will, but I think they have the right idea now, which is that, yeah, this is the role of the league is to step in and say, okay, teams have gotten too good at this. They have exploited the rules as they exist. Therefore, we need to just change the conditions so that these strategies that are working too well cease to work so well. And then you can kind of roll things back.

And it's not a blank slate, but it's blanker, right? And so I think that's what it's really kind of incumbent on MLB to do. And I think that's what it's doing now. So if anything, I don't know that it's on the analytics or that baseball is forever screwed because of this i think it's just that mlb was sort of slow to take action and react and recognize that this was happening and that it would actually need to have some reaction to the action so that's where we are yeah yeah i think that that's all i think that that's right you know and it's like i don't

know enough about how the music industry operates to like say anything, but it's like, was it better when like, it's not good now the way that they do the charts, but was it better when the music labels could be like, this is just what we like and think is good. And that's what you're going to get. Like, that seems like it's, you know, got its own problems too. So, and I, I offer that mostly to agree with your point, which is that like there is, there's what the data yields and then there's what people do with it. And we don't

have to listen to, you know, particular interpretations of data that's given to us. We can decide, I want to, we want to prioritize other things other than this being the optimal strategy or the decision that's in perfect alignment with the model. We can choose to prioritize other things. And because it's all pretend, not the data, but like the game, it's not gravity, right? We decide. We decide how far apart the bases are. We decide how many pitchers a team can roster.

We decide how tall or short or, you know, why the mound is going to be. We decide all of that because it's a it's pretend it's all made up so we get to we should i think when we are confronted with these moments where we're like something feels off kilter we should look at them not as a requirement that we be constrained by the data but as an invitation to a broader imagination about the game and what we think is good or bad about it. And I think that we have at times and will, as you said, continue to take issue with the

particular manifestations of the league's imagination. But that's where the solution lies is in reimagining the game to what we want it to be. Because it's not gravity. So I mean, it is importantly and very strongly affected by gravity, mind you. we're watching this postseason and people are talking about the velocity and the strikeouts, right? Like the average four-seam fastball this postseason so far, 95.2 miles per hour. Good thing they changed the flames graphic minimum on the broadcast from 95 to 97 because the average four-seamer now would be getting flames if they were still at 95. That's up from 93.9 during the regular season, which was also a record but of course it's even

higher because well for one thing postseason teams tend to be better and better pitchers tend to throw harder and so you just have harder throwing pitchers making the playoffs for one thing and then you also have those pitchers throwing toward the top of their velocity range. So they're just reaching back for a little extra. And then, of course, you have more aggressive managers, for the most part, at least, who are making pitching changes more often and are bringing in fresh pitchers. And the bullpens are just totally dominant. And so Ben Clemens just wrote about this. The strikeout rate is extremely high this postseason. It's 26.5% as we speak. That's up from 22.4% in the regular season, which was mercifully down a little bit from recent years.

So really, it's way up, and the conditions point to that. And generally, the postseason style play is a leading indicator. And it kind of shows us a preview of the future of regular season baseball if left unchecked. So you could certainly look at these playoffs and say, gosh, everyone is throwing so hard and everyone is striking out. And that is true. Now, can you actually notice the difference between 26.5 and 22.4? I don't know. You can certainly notice the difference between 26.5 and half that, I guess. But these subtle differences, they look large and loom large on a leaderboard. I don't know that you would be able to quiz

someone just having watched a game and have them actually notice that. But it's certainly noticeable that everyone throws extremely hard, that it's not uncommon to see a hundred, that even the breaking balls are really fast. And again, I think that's something that can be solved, that can be corrected, at least to some extent. So it's not interfering with my enjoyment of the postseason for what it's worth. You know, like the fact that everyone is throwing incredibly hard and striking out a lot, it's not good. I don't think it's a good in the aggregate. But on the other hand, this has been incredibly entertaining and the upsets and the great teams and the great players and this Phillies team and this series. The fact that everyone is a flamethrower, not necessarily

impairing my enjoyment of the postseason. But again, we're not the typical prospective baseball consumer. Yeah. And I don't want to like, I don't want to give Derek a hard time. But it was kind of funny for this piece to run when it did. When I was like, this postseason has rocked. What do you mean? This postseason has been so fun.

Yeah, it's been really fun. But also, the postseason is a time when either a look-in audience or a more casual audience or an audience that used to be invested and no longer is checks in and writes a thing. So I think that that's fine. I just was like, but can I introduce you to the vaguely horny fillies because they might change your mind about some stuff yeah right okay so i just wanted to end with a quick stat blast here something like ERA- or OBS+. And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways.

Here's to Deist-a-plast. So, I gotta play a little clip here, which comes from Larry Anderson on the Phillies broadcast early, I believe, in game three. So I'm going to play about a 30 second clip here tonight we've got dan isonia at the plate the crew chief jordan baker at first lance barkdale at second alan porter at third in left field james hoy in right field pat hoberg that's brought to you by banks law hard-working attorneys for hard-working people pat hoberg mr perfect yeah who made that up geez get a clue. Like that gets four Pinocchios. There is Kyle Tucker. the day after his perfection or the game after his perfection and question whether he was in fact perfect and who could possibly come up with such stats. No, it's fair to question. We questioned it when we talked about it.

But still, give the guy some credit. So come on, Larry. How dare you? Pat Hoberg's perfection made me wonder something about umpire accuracy, which is how does umpire accuracy affect offense and scoring? Because you could say that a more perfect, that a more accurate umpire is almost a preview of what we might get in a robot umps world where everything is accurate or at least conforms to some preset strike zone and my prior has been that robo umps that that having a strictly defined and strictly observed strike zone would benefit hitters i think just because more predictability i think and maybe you could look at whether it would increase or decrease the size of the zone,

and that kind of depends on how exactly they set the specifications. But I think just having the predictability of knowing exactly what is a strike and being able to anticipate that and have confidence in that, I think on the whole, that would probably benefit hitters. So that was my expectation. And I thought that maybe by examining the most accurate umpires and the least accurate umpires and seeing what offense was like in the games that they have umpired, maybe that could give us a little sneak preview and an indication of whether that is, in fact, the case. So that if we now impose robot umps and we have perfect accuracy at every game

unless the system malfunctions, then maybe this would be a sign of what the offensive effects would be. So I got from Baseball Perspectives and Lucas Pasteleris data on offense when each umpire was behind the plate. And then I linked that up with data from umpire scorecards and our friend Ethan Singer. And then I looked to see if there was some kind of correlation between umpire accuracy and offense home plate umpires during that span. I limited it to umpires who had home plate umped at least 40 games.

So that took me down to a sample of 76 umpires. of 76 umpires. And first, I just ran a correlation between umpire accuracy and various offensive stats. And it worked out the way that I expected that it would. So my hypothesis was kind of supported here. These are fairly weak correlations. They're like in the 0.2-ish range mostly, but like everything moves in the direction that you would expect it to, or at least there's a correlation there. So for example, there's a positive correlation between umpire accuracy and runs allowed per nine. So the higher the accuracy, the higher the runs allowed per nine tends to be when that umpire is behind the plate. Same for ERA, same for batting average

and on base percentage and slugging percentage and home run rate and whip and walk rate. Strikeout rate is the opposite. So the higher the umpire accuracy tends to be, the lower the strikeout rate tends to be. It seems like maybe the only exception is ground ball rate, which goes in the other direction, where the higher the umpire accuracy, the higher the ground ball rate, which would work against offense on the whole. So I'll put this spreadsheet online and link to it if you're interested in the specific correlations. But basically, weak correlations in the direction that I would have expected in just about every case. Strike

rate also. So the higher the umpire accuracy, the lower the strike percentage. So that checks out. And then as another check, I just divided the sample into two. So I had 38 umpires in each sample. And then I also divided it into quartiles. And I took the top quartile and the bottom quartile samples of 19 umpires a piece or the 38 in the top half and the 38 in the bottom half and then i just compared the weighted offensive stats of each of those groups and again there is some signal there as well it's it's not huge but there is some difference. So for example, the top half of umpires, this is the top half in terms of accuracy, had a 4.56 runs allowed per nine, and then the bottom half in terms of accuracy, 4.45. little more than a tenth of a run per nine scored more when the more accurate umpires are behind the plate. Or if we look at that in terms of ERA, it's 4.19 ERA allowed when the more accurate umpires are behind the plate, 4.07 when the less accurate umpires are behind the plate. And it just kind of

follows from there. It's a difference of a couple points of batting average and a few points of OBP and maybe five or six points of slugging and on and on, right? And then I looked the top quartile and the bottom quartile also. So taking more extreme groups of the more accurate and the less accurate. And again, it's very similar, in some cases, a more pronounced difference than with the top half and bottom half. So the ERA gap is like 4.2 for the top quartile accurate umpires and then 4.06 for the bottom quartile. And again, I will link to this if you want to see the specific numbers. It's not all that interesting to read a long list of numbers, but small differences in the direction that we would expect in all of these

categories. So essentially that kind of confirmed what I was thinking, that in general, the more accurate the umpire, the more their calls conform to the rulebook strike zone, the better offense is when those umpires are behind the plate. So that might suggest that if we go full on toward accuracy and we have robot umps, then there would indeed be a boost to offense. So that supports what I was thinking. And I guess if you want more contact and more scoring, et cetera, I guess that's another argument in favor of robot umps. I have expressed some reservations about the fact that if you have robot umps, then you get rid of the tendency for the zone to expand and contract depending on the count, which a lot of people I think look at as a benefit that it's unfair that it's inconsistent. But as I've

noted, it does give a leg up to the disadvantaged party. So if the pitcher is behind in the count, they get a leg up. If the hitter is behind in the count, they get a leg up. And so you would have more non-competitive plate appearances essentially where you would not kind of give a boost to the party that is currently in the hole. So I think that might be bad. But on the whole, I think offense would increase slightly if they were to just implement the robot zone like immediately, like right now. Now, all of this, the big caveat is that when and if they do impose some sort of automatic strike zone, they may very well change the contours of it, right? Because you wouldn't want some pitches that are technically strikes, like maybe some curve that just dips down and catches the very bottom of the strike zone. But basically, no one thinks it's a

strike and no one would call it a strike. So they will probably make some tweaks and they have made some tweaks in the minors to change the dimension. So if they change the dimension significantly, then really all bets are off because they could decide to make it more offense friendly or less offense friendly. But all else being equal, I think the predictability of it would help hitters. And I think these results are some evidence to kind of corroborate that as best we can without actually seeing it in action. Yeah. Is that a benefit for you? I guess many people would consider it to be, but I don't know.

I guess I like the idea of just having more contact. However, I don't think this is like the most efficient way to do it. That would not be the reason to do it. It might just be a nice little perk on top if you already want that system just for consistency's sake. I guess. I really do wonder, this is sort of related to my question about how much do we notice strikeouts? How much do we notice the missing balls in play? How much do we notice the home runs? I wonder how good a sense the average fan has of like what the zone really does right like how

how people calling the zone impacts the game in particular accounts in particular circumstances like I I think they they think they want one thing they definitely want something but I don't know if they're gonna get what they want like what they actually think they're gonna get you know oh yeah there could be all kinds of unintended consequences or right you just might not like in practice what you think you'd like in theory yeah because they're like gonna get so mad at those curveballs that clip the zone you can get so mad about it yeah yeah and i i will say that that the connection between how accurate the umps are and how pitcher or hitter friendly they are, it's not so strong that being very accurate means you're definitely hitter friendly and vice versa. In fact, it varies quite a bit. In this two-season regular season sample, there was a three-way tie for most accurate ump between our boy John Lipka, our other boy Pat Hoberg, and also Jeremy Rehak, who I mentioned the other day too.

The official umps of the Effectively Wild podcast. Our boys. That's how I always refer to them. That's my boy, Pat Hoberg. Umpires take a lot of abuse. There should be fans of umpires. I'm not. refer to them. You know, like, that's my boy, Ben. Umpires take a lot of abuse. Like, there should be fans of umpires. I'm not. Look, Ben, you know me.

I feel bad that they get booed as much as they do. I don't know that I am as close to, like, getting a jersey. You know, Ben, Ben, you know what this means? What? Okay, so next year, you will be in this magic zone of Halloween, right? Where you will want to do Halloween because of Sloane, but Sloane will still be too little to express a preference for a costume. Yeah.

And so you could be an umpire. You could be Pat Hoberg, and she could be the strike zone, and you could just hold her. It would be adorable. Or you could get, if she could be the strike zone, and you could just hold her. It would be adorable. Or you could get, if she's not into costumes, you could get a onesie with a picture frame on it and draw a baseball in the middle. She could be pitch framing. We're going to work on it. We have a whole year to workshop this.

File these ideas away. Yeah, we're going to get there, though. Anyway, those three were tied with a 95.2% accuracy rate. And in terms of whether they were offense-friendly or not, all over the map, basically. Just Libka, very accurate umpire, and was the ninth most hitter-friendly of the 76 who umped at least 40 games. Rehack, also same accuracy rate. He was the 48th most hitter-friendly of the 76. And then Pat Hoberg, same accuracy rate.

He was 70th out of 76. So Hoberg, at least in this sample, was pretty pitcher-friendly. Lipka, pretty hitter-friendly, even with the same overall accuracy rate. So there's going to be some variation, obviously, because it depends on who's pitching when those umpires happen to be behind the plate and who's catching and all of that. And hopefully that all kind of comes out in the wash

when you look at the full sample, but it might not for an individual umpire, even over multiple seasons. Anyway, there's not that big a gap in the accuracy rates in general. It goes from 95- know, 95 something to like 92 something. So that's probably why an even bigger gap doesn't appear in the offensive statistics is that there's not that huge a gap in the accuracy rates. That's improved over time.

If you did this on a game level, if you looked at like the umpire accuracy on a game level and then match that up with the offense on a game level maybe you'd get an even stronger single there so if anyone wants to do that or perhaps i will do it in a future stat blast but that might be even more telling anyway thought that was interesting and lastly i will give you the pass blast this is of course episode 1924 and thus this pass blast comes from 1924 and from jacomeranke, Sabre's Director of Editorial Content and Chair of the Black Sox Scandal Research Committee. And he headlines this 1924, The Razzing Fan. This is very topical. Philly's third baseman, Alec Boehm, came under fire earlier this season when he grumbled about the hometown fans booing him at citizens bank park wait and sorry can i interrupt you sure i'm gonna interrupt you and by extension joe davis who gave what i imagine was also a sanitized version of this story and i think that there should be a

special like exemption from potential like fines for swearing on the air to tell this story because he didn't express my love to Spillers. He said, I hate this place. Yes, he did. Right. And it was great. It was great. And Philly's fans forgave him.

Yeah, because he was like, that was too much. Yeah, right. He was like, you know, it was a tough moment and I didn't mean it and emotions got the best of me and it was frustrating time and they gave him an ovation and all seems to be forgiven. So that's great. He apologized and that's that. Anyway, continuing, but Philadelphia fans earned their reputation for blunt honesty a long time ago. Back in 1924, they were called out publicly for their rowdy behavior. According to this article that appeared in Collier's Eye on June 7th, the razzing fan

must go. Dan Johnson, president of the American League, thinks the leader of ill-natured booing in the stands should be ejected. This enthusiast not only begins to swing others to his way of thinking, but is annoying to the fans who wish to sit peaceably and enjoy the game. Philadelphia is the worst city in the league in this practice, Mr. Johnson says, and he believes the continual criticism of the players is largely responsible for the poor showing of the team. He holds the fans are justified in a certain amount of criticism, but he deplores the noisy, ill-bred type who hurls insults from the stands, believing he is immune from responsibility. And Jacob concludes, Philadelphia, of course, had not won but two terrible teams to boo in 1924. The Phillies lost 96 games with the lowest scoring offense in the National League, while Connie Max A's won just 71 games to finish in fifth place, 20 games behind the Washington Senators.

Wow. Wow. Yeah. So Phillies reputation long established. Yeah. But also when you're winning, it seems like a really, really fun place to play and to watch a game, even from afar. Yeah.

And if Ben has his way, they'll be there to heckle Nick Castellanos to keep him sharp. Yes, indeed. All right. Well, I'm recording this outro after game four, which means I now know,

as you do, that this series is tied up again because the Astros held the Phillies hitless in game four a combined no-hitter a five nothing game brilliant start by Javier no need for Dusty to have a quicker hook with him so we've now had a perfect game and a no-hitter in this world series asterisk umpire perfect game double asterisk combined no-hitter. And according to the zips odds I'm looking at, the Astros are now up to roughly 60-40 favorites. Because, of course, they now have home field advantage. They are guaranteed to go back to Houston.

And they give the ball to Justin Verlander and Frambois Valdez now to try to finish off the Phillies. And look, I'm sure everyone and their mother has made this point, but could there be a better illustration of the lack of evidence for momentum, or alternatively for Earl Weaver's framing of momentum as the next day's starting pitcher, than this, than going from game three to game four? Both in Philly, crowd pumped up everything we said about how the Phillies walked all over the Astros in game three, ignited everyone's excitement. Phillies hitting homers left and right, looking completely in command. They've got the big mow, and then they go from five homers and seven runs to no hits. I know I'm probably preaching to the choir when it comes to this podcast audience and momentum,

but boy, the Phillies felt like a team with momentum after Game 3, and boy, did that perceived momentum fizzle in Game 4. So remember this the next time this concept comes up. I guess we were onto something with Javier being a better matchup for the Phillies than McCullers, and I think it's safe to say that Javier was not tipping his pitches. Anyway, another brilliant display for the Astros pitching staff, and the Astros batting order did just enough, including the top of the order, that came up empty in game three. I guess we could say it's a whole new series. And one way or another, we're going to get baseball this weekend.

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editing and production assistance. And of course, we will be back with one more episode before the end of the week. Talk to you soon. Yet to arrive. And I know life is getting shorter I can't bring myself to set the scene Even when it's approaching torture I've got my routine