Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2070: Playoff Hand-Wringing Returns

Episode Date: October 11, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley discuss some renewed fretting about playoff formats, long layoffs, and upsets, recap (31:44) Clayton Kershaw’s playoff career and consider how (if at all) it will affect his legacy, and then examine (55:25) the latest action in each Division Series, plus follow-ups (1:29:49) on multiple topics from the preceding episode (including […]

Hello and welcome to episode 2070 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley, Fangraphs, and I am joined by Ben Lindberger, the ringer. Ben, how are you? Well, in some parts of the country, the leaves are changing and there's a chill in the air and people are stocking up on Halloween supplies. And also, we're talking about teams having too much time off and Clayton Kershaw not pitching well and managers leaving starters in too long. So it is October. It feels like October in every possible sense, baseball-wise and otherwise.

And it's like, you know, these are the feelings. These are the beats of October. Some of them are sillier. Some of them are sadder. But all of them are pretty familiar. Are you worried about too much rest, Ben? Are you a rest truther? Let me tell you, people had takes about your conductor take. My stars. Oh, yes. I will save that for the end of the episode, just in case during the playoffs, people aren't most interested in the responses to my take on conductors. But yes. But as for too much rest, would a too much rest truther, I guess, would be that too much rest is bad, that the buy is bad potentially because teams that get to sit for four or five days are rusty and are at a disadvantage, even though they are the better

teams, I guess that would be the direction of the trutherism, right? That that matters, that that is harmful as opposed to helpful or neither neutral. And I'm in the camp of, I don't think this matters. I am not ruling it out entirely because if you think about it, I am not ruling it out entirely because if you think about it, there's got to be a point where we go from it being an advantage to being a disadvantage time off, right? I mean, you know, you take months off, that's going to be a disadvantage if you've not played. But if you have one day off, everyone I would think would think that that's probably an advantage. You get to rest. You get to line up your bullpen and everyone's a little bit fresher. So where is the line?

Where does it go from advantage to disadvantage or advantage to neither to just neutral? It's got to be somewhere. But I don't think it is as soon as some people are saying it. It's just based on fairly small sample results, right? Based on mostly what happened in the division series last year and how the division series started this year with the better teams going down 0-2 in many cases or at least 0-1 and struggling into game two. A little bit of a rocky start for the higher-seeded teams. And so we're having the debate again about whether, in fact, this does not help teams, but it actually hurts them.

So look, here's the thing. We don't have enough information about the expanded wildcard era. Have we landed on an agreed-upon moniker for this wildcard era what are we have we have we landed on a an agreed upon moniker for this wild card era because we need to distinguish it from the wild card era which meant yeah a different thing the expanded postseason era yeah you've got your your two wild card your dual your double wild card era there were always two wild I mean, two in each league. Your quadruple wild card era. Or you could just call it the 12-team playoffs, maybe.

Oh, okay. Yeah, sure. Okay. So we've had two years of this playoff format. So we obviously can't say a whole heck of a lot about what it portends for the future of the postseason. And I'm sympathetic to the anxiety here. I mean, I'm generally sympathetic to anxiety, but I'm sympathetic to the anxiety here when this started percolating as a topic. You know, I did what I often do, which is I was like, hey, Ben Clements, go write about this, won't you? And he was like, yep. We were kind of chatting

it through before he sat down to write. And I was like, I get the anxiety here. Like, I think that the danger of the expanded postseason format is that it sort of, it pushes teams more toward the middle, right? And you feel like maybe you win 54% of your games just to pick a number. And you might, you're in it. You're in the mix for a wildcard spot. And we want teams to view winning their division and winning it such that you secure a first round buy to be as attractive a proposition

as possible because it pulls the whole endeavor upward right it incentivizes teams to put as good a roster on the field as they possibly can it incentivizes them to add at the deadline, right? Like, we want that to matter. It's important that it does. And so I get it. But I think that in general, what we are witnessing is there's the idiosyncratic sort of weaknesses of each of the rosters involved here. There's the fact that, you know, this happened to be a year where all of the wildcard series concluded in two games and didn't require a third. But I think it's okay. I think it's going to be okay. I don't think that this is sort of like blunting the tip of the one seed spear, right? And it's a weird thing to worry about this year and have people say, well, look at what happened last year. I was like, you mean last year when the one seed in the american league won the world series

like that was what happened last year i remember them say advancing to the cs it was it was dramatic there were a lot of upsets other than that but there were a lot of upsets other than that but i think that when you look at this year's, you know, playoff field, you have, you know, the reality of the off days, set it up so that Los Angeles potentially has to face both Merrill Kelly and Zach Allen twice. Yeah. But like if Clayton Kershaw can get out of the first inning of his start, maybe that doesn't matter. You know, if that offense, which is very potent, is able to score more runs, that doesn't matter. You know, Philly, as a four seed, was fighting up until not the very end, but close to the end.

And so Atlanta was gifted a game one bullpen game. And like, they couldn't get it done against Ranger Suarez. Like, that's a deficiency of an Atlanta offense that has been pretty unstoppable for most of the year. I don't think that you can rightly look at that and say, well, Philly had too big an advantage because they had to throw their best starters in the wildcard round against Miami. You could look at it and say, well, this braves offense is so amazing and they got shut out it must be rust right like that that hasn't happened to them since what was it may they hadn't been shut out at home i think all season and they haven't been shut out at home since august of 2022 i think like it had been a beat like Like it really had been. Right.

So if you were inclined to draw conclusions from single game samples, then you might say, wow, this is the vaunted Atlanta offense. And wow, they were undone. They were overmatched. They couldn't convert. So therefore it is out of the ordinary and maybe it's because of the out of the ordinary schedule or amount of rest or something, right? So I get why people would wonder or would bring it up. I think it's a legitimate enough question to ask. And I would also guess I was talking about how there must be kind of a cutoff. There must be a point where it goes from being an advantage to not being one and then to being a disadvantage.

advantage to not being one and then to being a disadvantage. I would guess that that point takes longer to reach as the season goes on and as you get this deep into the season and the year, because as they always say at this time of year, everyone is banked up, everyone is tired. So I would think that having a little extra rest in October would be more beneficial than early in the season, you know? And yeah, I mean, you've been in this routine, you've been playing almost every day for months and months at this point. But as a lot of people have pointed out, like, yeah, you get the all-star break. Obviously, everyone's off at the all-star break. So we can't really use that to compare how teams do. But players get a little rest there. And little rest there and they sometimes have a nagging injury that will send them to the IL

or not even to the IL, but they'll just miss some games or things will happen. There will be a weather off day after a regular off day, whatever it is. Players aren't complete strangers to taking a few days off.

So I don't know that that would be just like so disruptive to the system. You know, if we were talking about weeks, I mean, really long time, sure. But a few days, I don't think so. But, you know, someone saying I think it matters and me saying I don't think it matters is ultimately not that helpful. ultimately not that helpful. But the study that Ben did, which is very similar to a study Joe Sheehan had done last year when this came up, they both came to roughly the same conclusion, which is that it doesn't seem to be the case on the whole. Now, both of them kind of focused on what happens in the first game back, which I think makes sense is defensible, right?

Because it's true that some of these better teams end up losing the series. But if it was a rust effect, then you would expect it to manifest itself most in that first game. Yeah, right. Because once you get that game under your belt, you're back in the swing of things, more or less. Right, because once you get that game under your belt, you're back in the swing of things, more or less. And what they found is that the home teams, the better teams, the better rested teams have done quite well, have done maybe even better than you'd expect them to do in the first game. Gorski went back in playoff history and found every time that a team had had a layoff of four or more days and their opponent had had a layoff of two or fewer days.

And this is skewed toward recent years, but going back as far as I think 1981 was the earliest one of these games and found that the home team, the team with the longer layoff, went 24-11 in those 35 games. And based on their records during the regular seasons, you would have expected 19-16. And then even if you account for maybe they have the better starters, they lined up their rotation. The other team had to use their top starters, whatever it is. You wouldn't expect them to do any better than 24 and 11. That's really, really good considering the caliber of competition in the playoffs. So if someone has a suggestion for why this layoff hangover effect would not manifest itself in the first game, but would then rear its head after that? I'm all ears. I

can't really come up with a good explanation for that. So when you kind of drill down to the game that this should have the most impact on, there doesn't seem to be anything there. It's especially strange when you think about the fact that most most of these teams and i think we know for sure that three of the four first round by teams and i imagine this is true of all of them they like it's not like they're like okay see you in a week bye you know like they do inter-squad stuff they scrimmage they try to like keep these guys fresh and are you know i'm sure balancing that against wanting to get the guys who really might have like a nagging something or other the time they need to rest and recover. But they're not just like sitting around as Ben, Dan and I said, well, they're not eating pudding.

They're not just sitting around eating chocolate pudding for, you know, four days or whatever. They're doing baseball stuff with the hope of, you know, striking the right balance between rest and staying sort of sharp and so again like i do think it's a reasonable thing to ask and i think that you know given the reasons that exist for why some of this the series are sequenced the way they are which seems like it has a lot to do with broadcast considerations, right? Both the emergence of this sort of like extra day in the NLDS is about wanting to make sure that there aren't like no days with baseball, at least that they have scheduled. That ends up happening when series don't go full, you know, five or seven. But, you know, they have additional time built in. I think it's a perfectly reasonable question to ask

and i think it's a good thing for us to keep an eye on because it is a new format and it's not unprecedented for baseball to make changes like this and then realize like whoops unintended consequence and one that we can't live with so i think it's perfectly reasonable you know to ask and if you're a fan of one you know if you're a Dodgers fan and it like makes you feel a little bit better to think that it's because there was too long of a layoff and you need that to like process what happened in the first two games of that series, like, okay, what, like, that's fine. There are, there are way dumber things to think as a fan. And I've thought most of them. So, you know, I think that if that's something that fans want to kind of hang their hat on, like, okay.

But it doesn't, at least at this juncture, seem to be something that is particularly well supported by what evidence we do have. And to your point, like, I don't, I haven't heard like a coherent theory of rest that would, you know, would result in result in you know rest being simultaneously good and bad i mean like smolts was on the broadcast being like well it's bad that the diamondbacks get so much rest because they get to reset their rotation and you know that's to their benefit and that's as much about a gallon and merrill as it is merrill kelly as it is anything else but they get to reset their rotation it's bad for the Dodgers because they're going to... And I'm like, John, which is it? Like, what is your understanding of naps?

Like, what does this mean? And to your point, like, why would it work out okay sometimes in game one when you would think that that rest would be the most pronounced and then, you know, have a less pronounced effect going forward? So I haven't heard, like like the theory of rest. Someone should write that, you know, little theorist brain over here going like, what is your understanding of how this should work? And then like, we should test it. The other thing is that in this era, teams can face game level velocity, right? Like they can train it. It's not like 100 years ago.

You know, if you want to practice, if you want to have sort of a simulated game, these teams have high tech pitching machines that can as close to perfectly as possible replicate the precise stuff of the pitchers they're going to be facing. Right. So it's not like if you're not playing in a game, there's no way to get game speed situations. You can do that now. And obviously, you can get whatever other exercise you want or need to. It's, again, not like the olden days where players didn't really work out or lift weights or didn't have training facilities. Ye olde days. Yeah, they can just hit the weights. They could do whatever they would normally do. It's never going to be exactly the same as a playoff atmosphere game, obviously. But I feel like it's closer than you could ever come before.

And in the first games, even in this year and last year, the home teams were 4-4, right? Even though they ended up losing some of those series. So, yeah. And I think another thing that people have maybe neglected, I mean, there's just a big benefit to not having to play an extra round, right? Even if there were a slight ding to your odds just because you're getting too much rest,

you still don't have to play in the toss-up 50-50 coin toss kind of wildcard round. So you're still getting a big advantage as a team with a buy, just getting to get a buy and skip that round and not have to risk elimination there. So there is still a significant advantage in that sense, as there should be, as we want there to be, I think. But don't neglect that, right? Just the fact that you don't have to put your season on the line in the wildcard round, you know, aside from anything about rest, aside from anything about lining up your rotation.

That's a big boon to you. And really, I think a lot of this comes down to just the annual consternation when we switch from regular season to postseason. It's a shock to the system. It is. It's inevitable. I think we all know this intellectually. We understand it's different and it's not as telling. I think we do.

We should. But somehow it seems like we forget that or once it actually rolls around and good teams start losing quickly to teams that we know or strongly suspect to be inferior based on their regular season performance. And in some cases, win total is not everything, right? Like the Rangers underlying quality as a team was comparable to the Orioles, if not better based on some metrics, at least to just name one example. But even though we understand, oh, playoffs are a crapshoot, everyone knows that's a cliche. And yet suddenly teams go down 0-2 and they start losing. It's like, well, wait a second, but hold on, that team was too good to be gone already. If you want an exercise that says, here is the best team in baseball. Well, we have that. It's 162-game regular season, right?

Like, that is the exercise where we can say with some amount of confidence, like, this team, that club, that's the one, man. Like, those are the guys. We have decided to have this other thing. And I think that you're right that we know, and not everybody knows, right? But intellectually, I think most people understand that once you introduce a three, five, seven-game series into the mix, even between teams that on paper have as disparate a quality as say, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Diamondbacks, because I think that they're like a really, you know, we're going to, if the D-backs sweep out the,

we'll get to that later too. But if they bounce the Dodgers in three tomorrow night, if they bounce the Dodgers in three tomorrow night, we're going to get another round of this discourse, I would imagine. And we know on paper the relative strengths and weaknesses of those teams. And I think from a true talent perspective, even having to wade through injuries and all of that, we can say like, which of these clubs is probably better. But like, that's, you know, a lot of ways, not the project of the postseason. The project of the postseason is determining who is able to win a three, five or seven game series. And then, you know, repeat a couple of times. So it's always going to be an uneasy thing to hold in our minds simultaneously because we do imbue the World Series with all of this power and meaning and like as well we should because we want that to mean something special to clubs so that they try to win it. And like, I want to be careful not to strip away the, you know, the weight of that accomplishment. Because if we do, I think we end up with worse baseball across the board, both in the post and regular season. But I do think it's useful to keep in mind, like,

these are different exercises. They tell us different things. They take on a similar form and obviously like they are directionally pointed the same way, I think, where it's like winning more is better, but they are a little bit divorced from one another. And, you know, if we can manage to keep that uneasy situation sort of in mind and feel a certain amount of comfort with it, I think that a lot of this consternation goes away. Easy for me to say, right? Like, I'm not a Dodgers fan, you know, I'm not a Rays fan. So it's easy for me to say like, you know, but and so I get it, it matters to those people. And part of it, candidly, Ben, between you and me, like, I'm ready to see some new faces, you me like i'm ready to see some new faces you

know i'm ready to see some new folks and so i i know that this isn't you know gonna be true across the board but like i don't know man like maybe the dodgers take a year off going further than than they do in this round and that's okay they'll They'll be back. You know, this isn't it for them. It's not it for Tampa. And again, like easy for me to say. They've taken some years off, not going further than the division series in the past two. But they're always there.

Yeah. They're always there. Right. And I acknowledge, again, easy for me to say, not just because I'm not a fan of those teams, but I'm not a player on one of those teams. And if you're a player on one of these clubs, like you only get so many shots.

So I don't want to be dismissive of it, but I think that the idea of a CS bracket where we end up with some like, you know, new blood is kind of exciting. I think it's nice. And I think that that's a good thing for the sport too, because you want, you know, if it's always the same, like dynasty type teams, like you can get a little rote, you know. And so let's mix it up a little bit.

And I'm not just saying that because if the Diamondbacks advance, more people I like and want to see will have to come to Arizona. It's not just that. It is that a little bit, but it's not just that. Maybe get some Mariners in the mix a little more often. Yeah. But I'm not taking the bait. Look, look, you keep trying to make me go back on my word. I see what you're doing.

I'm a woman of honor. I'm not taking that bait. But yeah, it's nice. If we end up with a little bit of a mixed field in terms of teams that we see a lot of and teams that are on the sort of upswing, I think that that's exciting. So, yeah, I think I wrote about this with the Dodgers a few years ago. I already wrote about how they were just postseason staples and we just see them every year. And I actually thought it was kind of nice, like in a kind of comfort TV way, like, you know, you turn on a show that's always in reruns or just has a

almost infinite number of seasons. And it's just kind of nice to have those characters on the screen again. I just kind of think it's nice as someone who's not rooting for or against them in a 12-team playoff field, which has room for new blood and also some old blood. I think it's nice to have a couple holdovers, you know, a couple teams that are kind of always there so that we have a playoff history with them. We go back with them. Obviously, these Dodgers are much different from the first Dodgers team to make the playoffs during this run, you know. But still, like you have certain— I certain cases, some of those characters who are the same and

have not changed, but well, they have changed in some ways, but still the same name, still the same face. But yeah, it's, it's nice because you have some continuing storylines and it's like, oh, remember when Dave Roberts did that thing years ago? Here he is. Will that happen again? Or it's the Clayton Kershaw baggage, which sometimes can just be a little bit tedious and tiresome because we've heard it so many times. And we can talk of previous games and plot points in those stories. But as long as it's not necessarily like Dodgers-Astros in the World Series every year, you know, mix things up a little bit. But yeah, I'm with you on what you said about the playoffs and the regular season. I remember talking and writing about this last year because, yes, you can have the attitude of this is just a separate tournament. You know, it starts over and you don't have this playoff tournament to decide which are the best teams because that's what the regular season is for.

At the same time, I think you have to think that there's some signal and meaning because if this were entirely random and if everyone thought it was random, then I don't know that we would watch. Like there has to be something at stake. It can't just be we won this meaningless thing that told us nothing about the respective qualities of the teams. We have to at least convince ourselves that it means something. And that's why I think a lot of fans will look at it as meaningful, as telling, like, this was actually the best team.

Or at least that they stepped up when it mattered the most. And that's why this is significant. Even if it just means we were the best team in October or we won the most games, which is not always the same as being the best team. But it's October. It's the playoff stage. We rose to the occasion and that says something about the character of this team, right? That's a way you can kind of tell yourself that this is significant and maybe it is, right? But you have to tell yourself that it means something because if it were all just completely unpredictable and

random, then what are the stakes? Why are we even watching? Right. So I think there has to be a balance, has to be a happy medium. It's like with rest, where you want some amount of rest, but not too much rest. You want like a Goldilocks zone of rest. You want the same thing, I think, when it comes to favoring the favorites in the playoffs. You want to give them some sort of advantage so that you recognize their status and you make it more likely that the better teams win, but not too likely because we still want the spontaneity and the randomness or why else do this at all. Why else do it? Right. But not too much randomness because it has to mean something

or it has to at least seem like it means something. So we give you a home field advantage and we give you that buy in that round. And Ken Rosenthal suggested and Ben Clemens endorsed, well, maybe you should reseed after the first round. You know, it wouldn't make a big difference, but it would make a little bit of a difference. And it seems like it would make some sense. But then when you start getting into, well, you could have the worst team in the regular season start a game down or, you know, like you can have the better team in the

regular season just have to win fewer games to advance and some other countries and leagues do that. And I get it. But that, I think, is maybe a little too far for me because it's just, you know, it defeats the purpose. And I'm kind of a regular season guy. You know, if no one had ever invented the postseason, I don't know that I would have been the one to invent it. I would just say, well, that was a good season at the end of September. All right. You won. You won the season. That's it. You were the best team. Okay. Well, now it's time for the offseason. Looking forward to next year. OK, well, now it's time for the offseason.

Looking forward to next year. Like if we didn't have two different leagues. Right. I wonder how long that would have taken to happen because, I mean, it already took a really long time to get anything other than the World Series. And if you didn't have an American League and a National League and, you know, the precursors to what we think of as the World Series now where you had two different champions and it's like, OK, let's pit the best of this league against the best of that league. Yeah. Nowadays, we don't really have significant differences between leagues. We just have the traditional naming difference.

So if you were to restart baseball now with sort of the same conditions, but without the history, I wonder, obviously you have playoffs in other sports and basically everything. So it's a proven formula and you get to put more games on TV and make much more money. So probably we would have it, but I'm just saying it took a long time to get to where we are with the playoffs in this current format. And a lot of it was like, well, we had two different league champions. So each one was the acknowledged champion of its own league. No one was like, well, we got to have playoffs for the National League to figure out which the best team was in the National League. We already know they were the best, but we have this other league. So now we've

got to figure out which was the best, pitted those two leagues against each other. Right. And then that sort of led to what we have now, maybe. So yeah, you gotta draw the line somewhere when it comes to giving an advantage to the better teams. Yeah. Like you don't, you want it to be exciting and entertaining.

I think that you want it to feel, gosh, I'm going to regret putting a specific number on it, Ben, but it's like, what is our understanding of home field advantage at this point? Like you're- 54% is that Jerry DiPoto number? Right. So you want it to be like, I don't know, 60 maybe. I don't know, you don't want it to be so outside the range that it feels like the other team can't be in it. And, like, in some ways, I guess it's funny to, like,

assume we can achieve that with a generalizable rule because, I mean, just like, again, look what's about to maybe happen to the Dodgers, right? Like, they are the better team on paper and they have one and a half starters right now, you know, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but not much of one. So sometimes like circumstance just happens and it happens at inconvenient times when there isn't enough time to recover relative to what you might expect if, you know, you had less severe injury earlier in the season or what have you. So, I don't know.

It's just a good thing to fret over. And then I hope that that maintenance doesn't prevent people from enjoying what we actually are being given. Because I think that there's a lot that's pretty exciting about the postseason, even when some of the games are pretty understood and well in hand. I don't know. It's kind of cool. It's cool to see like an upstart Diamondbacks team. It's imagine telling someone how that Braves-Phillies game was going to end. And then even if you told them and you like articulated it in a way where they could visualize it in their mind, if they wouldn't watch it, they would still go, oh, my God, like that was so incredible. And it was amazing.

Like the end of that game was so wild and so cool. So, I mean, again, not if you're a Phillies fan. But all of that to say, like, let's keep our eyes on this very specific prize, which comes with terms and conditions about what it says about the regular season. So about Clayton Kershaw, who looked like he could have used maybe months of rest, not just a few days. I think the more rest, the better possibly for Clayton Kershaw at this point. But it's funny. I kind of thought we were done with Clayton Kershaw playoff discussions, right? Because it seemed like he had gotten that monkey off his back when

the Dodgers finally won a World Series. He pitched well in that World Series. The Dodgers won both of his starts. I know it was 2020, but the playoffs were just as legitimate, just as full-featured as any year. And the Dodgers were so great that year. It's not like there was any doubt that they were going to make the playoffs over a full season. So he pitched better, and it seemed like, he finally had his year, and he got his ring, and that's that. And then this start happened, the worst start of his career, certainly the shortest start of his career. One of the worst playoff starts of all time. Maybe the worst. I mean, he's the first pitcher in postseason history to allow five or more runs before recording an out.

He got one out. And he had never failed to go at least an inning before in his career. So I think everyone was aware Clayton Kershaw is not at his best right now. And so that's the thing. Watching this always feels like there's some sort of extenuating circumstance or, you know, people are protesting too much. But often it's like, no, but he had this thing happen. We're always making some excuse for him. And sometimes it's a legitimate one except

after 194 innings it's hard to excuse all of that it's just that the current clayton kershaw pretty clearly seems to be pitching through injury or some some physical i mean you know his shoulder right like i i know he said something to the effect of he's okay, but he's not okay. No, I don't think he's okay. This feels like a situation where the day after the Dodgers get eliminated or the playoffs end, we find out more. Or maybe we don't because he tends not to share a ton about injuries. But there's something going on there. Dave Roberts has said previously that the shoulder

was not completely right. He hasn't gone more than five innings in a start since June, which was before he went on the IL. Every start after he came back from the IL in August was five innings or shorter. Now he did have a 2.23 ERA somehow over that span of eight starts with a 5.4 FIP. Yeah, I was just about to say the peripherals were less generous. Yeah, and the stuff, even by the latter day, still highly effective, but much more soft-tossing Clayton Kershaw standards. So he was not throwing great stuff up there, and the Diamondbacks were just completely crushing it. It's just he was not fooling anyone at all. Yeah. It went Marte double, Carroll single, Pham single, Walker double, Moreno home run, Gurriel ground out, Alec Thomas walk,

which honestly was as concerning to me as anything. Yeah, right. Longoria double and then Perdomo struck out, and Marte grounded out to first. It was... And by the time the two, as you noted, the two final outs came, like, Emmett Sheehan was already in the game. Kershaw was done after the Longoria double.

So, and then, like, the broadcast camera just insists on lingering on him in the dugout. And I understand, like, you know, the discourse demands its answer, I guess. But I don't know, we could, you can show him the one time and then you can be done, you know, and maybe you can stop talking about it after a while, Bob. Just like an insistence on talking about it in just the most gut-wrenching terms possible. So it was pretty bad. Yeah.

It was pretty, pretty bad. Pretty tough to watch. Not for Diamondbacks fans, I'm sure. But most people, I think, generally like and respect Clayton Kershaw or at least have derived a lot of enjoyment from his career and don't wish him ill. And, you know, they might root against the Dodgers at this point, just because the Dodgers are always in the playoffs. But there aren't that many people probably who are taking pleasure and delighting in Clayton Kershaw's playoff failures. And there are a lot of people who I think kind of defend him and maybe

fairly defend him many times, maybe bend over backwards to defend him at times too. A little bit. Yeah, there have been times. And we've been talking about Kershaw and playoff Kershaw for much of the existence of this podcast. So the story and the stats have evolved over the years. And so you go back some years, I think there is a sense of, I mean, A, there's always sort of the stat head sabermetric resistance to labeling someone a choker or attributing clutchness or the lack thereof to true talent and skill as opposed to just, you know, it happens. talent and skill as opposed to just, you know, it happens. And so I think it's always been hard for me to square the idea that Clayton Kershaw, maybe the best pitcher of his generation, just absolute ace in the regular season, cannot handle the pressure in October.

Like, it doesn't, he's such a driven, determined guy. Like teammates love him and count on him. It doesn't really make sense to me that he would just choke in the playoffs. And so I've always wondered also how it could be true that he could sometimes pitch well and then mostly not. It's like, okay, if you have a mental block or you're just unclutch or whatever it is, I mean, you know, put me out there. Yeah. We'd probably be flop sweating. And I mean, we would we would. Yeah. Now I would throw up all over myself. I wouldn't be necessarily much more likely to throw up in a playoff start than in a regular season start. They would both. No, no. To be clear, I would throw up both times. I would just be like, blah. Which is sort of what I'm getting at. It's like the level of pressure. I know, I haven't personally experienced it. You often hear players, ex-players, broadcasters talk about how it's a different game and all of that. And I'm sure it feels like that. And I'm sure there's

something to it. I mean, study after study seems to show that postseason experience doesn't really improve your performance in the postseason. But yeah, I'm sure it feels a little bit different. But how different does it feel? It's a difference of degree, I think. But like, by the time you get to that point, you know, so many games have been the biggest game of your life by that point. I mean, probably when you were in Little League, you know, the championship game felt like the World Series to you. Or if you were in the high school finals or championship or college or the, you know, every step of the way, like you feel. I mean, you know, I used to get as nervous about taking a test in third grade or something as I do about anything now. It's just, it's kind of, it's relative, you know, like things seem very important depending

on the stage of life that you're in. And so these guys have been so tested by the time they get to making a playoff start. They've already been playing just with incredible pressure and scrutiny and the stands packed. Clayton Kershaw, he's been through this so, so many times at this point. And so I could understand if someone was completely terrible every time and just was throwing the ball all over the park and it was just when he's in the regular season, he's great. Every single time he's been in the playoffs, he's great. Every single time he's been in the playoffs, he's been bad. I guess I could understand that. I would feel bad for the person,

but I could at least entertain the notion that he has an inability to perform at this time of year. But when you've had so many good memories and moments, then that suggests that it's not that you're incapable of doing it. So I guess, you know, all these things, it's like balanced on a knife's edge. And so you're a little more nervous than usual. That's all it takes maybe to make you worse. But look, there's no denying anymore that he has been worse. It's like, I almost hesitate to lump this start and this version of Clayton Kershaw in with all the others because it's like this is clearly not Kershaw. Yeah, he's compromised. It's not even post-Pete Kershaw.

This is Kershaw who's pitching through something. Yeah, he just seems like he's obviously hurt. It does seem like that, yeah. And there have been a number of times when once the playoffs roll around, he's had something like that, whether it's fatigue or the back is acting up. And so in the past, it's kind of been like, well, the Dodgers really needed him to take the ball here or his bullpen didn't support him or the rest of the staff is shorthanded, which is certainly the case right now. The bad bullpen support or his manager left him out there too long. It was thing after thing after thing. And it often seemed to be true. And yet even accounting for all of that, like clearly there's just no denying at this point

that he has been far, far less effective in the playoffs over almost a full season sample. So we can't completely write that off. I guess the question is just like, what do we do with that? What do we, how does that affect our perception of the career of Clayton Kershaw? I don't know that it like changes things for me that much. I think that when you're trying to understand his career in all its fullness, you know, I'd need to like go back and kind of remind myself of which of the years were the ones where like he was a little bit dinged up and he pitched anyway, and which were the years where he was like really young. Like the other thing, like some of these, he was like quite young. And then like, you know, which were the years where he maybe just didn't have it or it was left in too long or like the bullpen

goofed up or whatever like i'd have to go back through and and do that but i think that the benefit of trying to understand players careers in their totality is that it allows us to say the results on the field in these particular games of the postseason, some of them are good. Some of them are good. Some of them are fine. Some of them are really bad. Here are the results. And then you think about the context. Did game one of this DS go the way that he or the Dodgers wanted? No. But I'm going to remember that he is almost certainly hurt and he pitched anyway. And there's something admirable in that, you know, there have been times where like, they've just really needed him down the stretch to like do what they wanted to as a team to secure

the positioning they wanted in the postseason to win the division. And he did it. He was their guy who they turned to and who like really helped them stabilize their rotation at times. And if that means that he was more fatigued in the post season than he might otherwise have been like, that's important context. I think that you can understand why it's happened. And that doesn't have to explain anything away. It just helps you to get what's going on with this guy in much the same way that like understanding how his fastball moves helps you understand what's going on with him, right? To return to our earlier conversation, because there is still a contingent of baseball fans who view sort of postseason performance as this special, incredible thing, and it can, you know, be defining for a guy's career.

I think part of why you end up with this like defensiveness on the part of, it's not just Dodgers fans, like Clayton Kershaw fans, is that there's an anxiety that people aren't going to understand. No, like, you gotta know what it was like to watch this guy, right? I think that a lot of our, you know, consternation about him isn't about him at all, right? It's about how watching him made us feel. And the idea that that like his postseason performance would obscure all of that for many many more games than he has pitched in the playoffs is like very threatening to our understanding of baseball because there have been so you know like there are a lot of guys who are great starting pitchers but the combination of like how often they're used and whatnot means that like

when we look back on this generation of starters, there aren't going to be so many guys where we're like, that guy's an obvious Hall of Famer. That guy's an obvious Hall of Famer. That guy's an obvious Hall of Famer. And Kershaw is one of those guys. And so I think we like, it feels very threatening to our,

our memory of this era of baseball for people to be like well but he kind of sucks in the postseason and it's like no he doesn't he's the best he's going to hall of fame and it's like well maybe all of that's true at the same time and the people who are trying to use the postseason to invalidate his resume writ large are being very silly and the people who are maybe over defending him and trying to be like well no no actually it's fine it's like well okay but like let's be real though because like some of it hasn't been good and that's okay he's a hall of famer he's incredible like we are all so lucky to have gotten to watch this guy's career right so i think that that's a

a big i think that's a a a big i think that's a big big part of it that's a big part of it for any of this is part of why we do care about october because the rest of the year we are watching i mean not you and i and people who are like writing about baseball for a living but for most fans like they're watching their team and then like some of the national games probably and there are going to be people who are like really into baseball and they're watching a bunch of other stuff but like on average that's what it is and then you get talked tober and you get to be like that's my dude i'm gonna tell you about my guy right like one of these d-backs games they

were like and now the national stage gets to meet Corbin Carroll or something like that and I at first I went like what are you talking about like this guy's gonna be the NL rookie of the year but then I was like how many people are watching Diamondbacks games like that's actually not a an out-of-pocket thing to say like I bet a lot of people are watching Corbin Carroll play baseball in a meaningful sample that wasn't the all-star game for the first time like that's probably totally true so you know it's like when we all come together and so it feels like it means so much and so how dare you say the clinkers on the bed like i get it i really do and and i as i so often am as a person who was able to make all of those noises and appreciates how wild it is for me to be the person delivering this piece of advice would just invite all of us to like chill a little bit.

We could all just chill a little bit because he's great. Like there's just no question about that. There's nothing he's done in the postseason that invalidates the sort of luster of his career in its totality. But this is, you know, this is a weak spot in the resume. And not all of it, but like some of it is. But he has a 162 ERA in the postseason right now. A thing that I was able to find very easily

on our new playoff leaderboard. I was just going to shout those out. I'm so, so overjoyed that FanCrafts now has a postseason leaderboard. It's so... We've talked about this in the past, it's so hard to find playoff stats. It's so hard. Not anymore. Because we keep

them cloistered, we've decided that regular season and playoffs are separate things statistically, which I get. I think it's okay to keep them separated because some guys don't play in the postseason or don't play as much. But still, it's important. Baseball, we have to be able to look up what happened and it's often very difficult to. So the fact that FanCrafts now the postseason or don't play as much. But still, it's important. Baseball, we have to be able to look up what happened. And it's often very difficult to. So the fact that Fabgrass now has

postseason sets. Oh, my gosh. What a wonderful gift. Good job, Sean and Appelman. And I immediately used it to look up how bad Clayton Kershaw has been in the playoffs. But yeah, so I was talking to Rob Nyer on his podcast this week, and I said sort of the same thing. I was like, well, when you write his baseball obit, you know, you write his career summary when he retires. It's not in the first paragraph. It's somewhere in the piece probably at this point, right? Like it deserves to be mentioned that he had postseason struggles. But it's not at the top of the piece.

It's not close to the top of the piece, right? You're going to write about his regular season excellence and you're going to write about his Cy Youngs and the Dodgers success during his tenure and the fact that he won a World Series. And then, yeah, maybe, you know, it was certainly a part of the Clayton Kershaw experience. While we were all watching and appreciating Clayton Kershaw during his career, we were also marveling and hand-wringing and just wondering what the heck was going on with his postseason performance. So I think it should be mentioned and documented, but it also shouldn't overshadow all of the incredible things he's done. You know, just looking at the stats using the Handcrafts Playoff leaderboard, you can see, and I think I remember citing a stat like this years ago, but it's still true. He does have the biggest gap between regular season and postseason ERA of anyone with, let's say, 75 innings. And so that gives us 55 pitchers. And his gap is between 2.48 in the regular season and 4.49 in the postseason. That's a gap of two runs, 2.01. That's the biggest by a lot, by really just a lot.

David Price is at 1.3. And if you use FIP, which we can do, playoff FIP. Oh, my gosh. It's so nice to be able to look up playoff FIP. But he's got a 3.81 playoff FIP, which we can do, playoff FIP. Oh, my gosh. It's so nice to be able to look up playoff FIP. But he's got a 3.81 playoff FIP. Now, that is significantly lower than his playoff ERA, which would suggest, again, maybe a little unlucky, maybe a little bad bullpen support. But even the FIP difference of 0.99 is the greatest among players with 75 or more innings pitched. So it is anomalous.

And I think, you know, he has a negative career postseason WPA, win probability added. And he's pitched a whole lot of innings. And so do a couple other guys who pitched a whole lot of playoff innings, Tom Glavin and Greg Mannix. But to have a negative WPA after all these playoff innings, it's not ideal. And he has the seventh most playoff innings ever as we speak. And I think that's another thing is that in the past, we recoil when it comes to playoff performance because small sample, small sample. Nowadays, when you have expanded playoffs and more teams being in the playoffs, and then also some teams like the Dodgers being in those playoffs every year, you get guys who are accruing, you know, a sample with some degree of significance there. I mean, we're talking about a full season, essentially, of pitching.

So that's not nothing. And that has to be acknowledged. But I just, I resist, I guess I always resist or require extraordinary evidence to believe the claim that it's like a psychological issue as opposed to other things that are going on. Like you could say, maybe he's not a good playoff pitcher because physically he breaks down by this time of year. Right. And that could be still a knock against him, a legitimate thing. Like, hey, if you're the ace, you know, you got to be still ready to go in October.

Right. And at least late in his career, he often hasn't. You know, he breaks down. He's been a bit more fragile. So that's a legitimate knock you could have against him without attributing it to some kind of choker nature, right? Because there are so many cases of players who've gotten that label and then they shed it because, you know, even in not terribly distant years, I mean, like Barry Bonds or A-Rod to name a couple of players who aren't super popular anyway. But, you know, David Price, I just mentioned. I mean, so many guys who struggled in the playoffs and then all of a sudden they stopped struggling. And, you know, did they learn to deal with whatever mental block they were encountering? Maybe, maybe that was it. Or maybe

they just needed to play some more games and ultimately their talent would show out. Well, and I think this is part of why, even though we've really struggled and I imagine we'll continue to struggle to put like a specific, you know, value metric on it. Like, I think this is part of why people are so keen to understand sort of the sports psychology piece of it, because I agree with you. Like, I don't know Clayton Kershaw. I don't know the heart or the mind of the man, right? But I, it would surprise me based on just how he like comports himself in the postseason. If it was a mental block kind of a thing, it doesn't account for, as you mentioned, like the times when he has

been able to pitch sometimes quite well in October. But I don't want to downplay to the point of it being completely meaningless the idea of there being guys who have just like a particular heartbeat, if you want to call it that, or a mental process by which they are able to sort of stay within themselves which is a phrase that i think is weird but that's a conversation for a different day but like are able to sort of you know approach those games with the certainly the seriousness that they demand but don't view them as requiring a higher a greater degree of seriousness than other games, right? And I think we're going to struggle to be able to put it precisely because a lot of these guys who we think of,

I'm thinking of this in part because earlier today, part of why we are recording when we are is that I went to the media availability at Chase and you had a room full of people trying to get Corbin Carroll to articulate why he seems so unfazed by all of this, right? And even he wasn't quite able to, like, say for himself what it is more than just, like, having a routine and sticking to his routine and being able to kind of focus and having that be helpful. And, you know, maybe he would have been more expansive if he hadn't been in a room full of people, many of whom he'd

never met before. But like, even the guys who we think of as being able to do that struggle to articulate exactly how. And so like, how are we supposed to know what about what they're doing matters? Like they can't even tell us. So it's, you know, it's not nothing, but it's like, how are we supposed to know what about what they're doing matters? Like, they can't even tell us. So, it's, you know, it's not nothing, but it's like I don't want to attribute, I don't know, it just feels very, like, the armchair diagnosing. You know, it's not, it's, I just think it's, like, it's inappropriate for baseball players or serial killers. Like, we shouldn't do it for either demographic of people. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. Let's talk about a couple of series quickly and some notable games and performances here. And by the way, I meant to mention when we started with our conversation about playoff meaning and randomness and everything, it's unavoidable that the bigger you make the playoff field, the harder it's going to be for the better teams to win. No matter what you do, you can put in any measures you want to favor them, to hire the number of teams in the playoffs, all else being equal. It's going to be harder for the best team to win out. And obviously, MLB has embraced that. And I think a lot of people have embraced that. And so that just comes with the territory. So we just got to get used to it. It would be kind of moving almost at cross purposes to say, let's let all of them in, but also we want the better teams to win. It's just, you can't really have it both ways or it's extremely difficult to. So speaking of that, so let me tell you about another downside of making predictions, which, you know, I tend not to do. I eschew predictions mostly because

I just I don't think I'm especially good at them. I don't think I have any special soothsaying ability. And so I had to make a prediction for the Ringer entrance survey for the division series. One of the questions was, you know, give us a bold prediction for the division series. So my prediction, which I arrived at after not a whole lot of deliberation, was Trey Turner will get caught stealing, which of course did not happen this season. He set a record. He stole 30 bases. He didn't get caught. I'm not saying that was super bold. One of my colleagues made fun of me for that not being bold enough. But I thought, hey, okay, I'm at least predicting something that hasn't

happened this season. So in that sense, I'm going out on a little bit of a limb here. My first thought, the first thing that I thought about predicting was that the Braves would get shut out in a game in the division series. And then I looked and I saw, well, they did get shut out a couple times this regular season. So that really doesn't seem bold enough. I hadn't realized that they hadn't gotten shut out at home and that they would have home field advantage, which might have made it a little bit bolder. But I thought, OK, I'm going to predict the thing that hasn't happened at all this postseason as opposed to the thing that has happened at least a couple times. And, hey, you've got good Phillies pitching and who knows, it wouldn't be the weirdest thing ever.

But then as I'm watching game one and the Braves are getting shut out, the insidious thing about predictions is that once you make them, you can't help rooting for them to come true, at least if you're making a public prediction that other people see, or even if it's just in the group chat, you know, as long as it's not something you're making a public prediction that other people see. Or even if it's just in the group chat. You know, as long as it's not something you're saying to yourself, then there's like a tiny bit of reputation at stake. And so here I am watching this fun game. The Braves are getting shut out. It's surprising.

The Phillies are making fantastic defensive plays to preserve the shutout like that incredible Trey Turner double play that he started, right? And I find myself, someone with no rooting interest in this series, rooting for the Braves to score. Not because I want the Braves to win, but because I don't want to be kicking myself for not predicting that there would be a shutout, which is so silly because it's not like this was going to be some like career making prediction for me like oh my gosh ben predicted that they would get shut out right and then they got shut out nostradamus over here like give this guy a book deal to talk about this prediction or whatever like people probably wouldn't have noticed maybe i would have gotten one tweet like you nailed that

one or something but that's that's about it yet, because I almost made this prediction, I was rooting for the Braves to score so that I would not be kicking myself for not predicting. And then Trey Turner attempted a steal and I kind of wanted him to get caught because I was like, well, if I'm going to blow the one that I almost predicted, then I want to get the one that I did predict right. It's just, it's so, and I don't want to be thinking that way. I don't want to be thinking about like my main rooting interest here is that I want my prediction to look smart in retrospect. It's kind of like when people, sometimes fantasy players will say that like, this interferes with my fandom because now I'm rooting for my fantasy players against my own team that I root for in real life.

Right. So that's just another reason why I don't like to make predictions because I want to be appreciating the game on its own merits and not how it relates to me and how it makes me look. But it was surprising, obviously, that the Braves were shut out in that game. And then they were no hit for several innings into game two. So, you the big factor, which that was the impulse behind my almost prediction was like, everyone's writing about how this is the best offense ever, but it's still the playoffs and we're talking about a very few games here.

So even the best offense could be bad, at least in a given game. And that happens. I mean, it does happen on occasion. And it looked like they were going to go down very quietly until, I guess we can say, well, I was going to say until the most controversial managerial move of the playoffs thus far. And I guess that's true. Is it? Braves started hitting is the important thing. And Travis Darnot hit a home run and Austin Riley hit a home run. And then Austin Riley and Michael Harris II made excellent plays on just an absolutely riveting final play of that game two.

Where Bryce Harper gets doubled off on a ball at the wall. Like just super exciting late inning comeback from being down for nothing and looking like they were about to be on the brink so i am of the mind that and i know that like russell carlson for instance has put math to this sentiment with a precision that i'm gonna fail to but like you know i think we know that even maybe in in this year where the rules have shifted such to favor base running that teams can be a little overly conservative with their base running decisions. And I tend to be of the mind that you should make people make plays. There are times when you don't want to plan and then you're, boy, do you feel like a dummy.

you're boy, do you feel like a dummy? But I think that there are more opportunities to just like, try to get a guy to do a great thing. And teams don't always take full advantage of that. And I don't know what the consensus is on Bryce Harper's base running in that moment, because I'm trying to be on Twitter or X or whatever the hell less, but like, I can't fault the guy for going because if Harris doesn't make that play, like he scores from first and then it's a tie Twitter or X or whatever the hell less. But like, I can't fault the guy for going because if Harris doesn't make that play, like he scores from first and then it's a tie game. But boy, they really did get him, you know? And, but it took that.

It took that, like it took that, Ben. It took that. Yeah. No, I wouldn't call it a toot plan. He was definitely thrown out on base. But he was no nincompoop. No. No, no nincompoop. I. No, no nincompoop.

I don't think it was a good play. I mean, obviously, there's a lot of, you know, in hindsight, it wasn't good. But even so, I think it was maybe a little overaggressive because, you know, he could have stopped at second just to see which way it went. Like, if it had dropped, he would have gotten at least a third. And then there was, what, one out at the time time? Like you would have had more cracks at it. So, I mean, probably he would have scored if it had dropped and he was at second base. So he didn't really have to keep going. I think he even said that he probably shouldn't have gone beyond second. But it was a great play by Harris. I think it was a 45% catch probability. And that's without considering the pressure of

the moment or the fact that he was right at the wall. It was in a way an unprecedented play. The first time a postseason game ended on a double play involving an outfielder. The first postseason 8-5-3 double play. So I'm sure Harper was smelling that tying run, maybe got a little bit caught up in the moment. Part of it was less a mental error than a physical error of he just sort of slipped. He did slip a little bit, yeah. Yeah. When he turned to go back, they barely got him. They barely got him. And if he hadn't slipped, which was a result of his momentum being headed toward third, and then he had to turn on a dime and go back, and he just, you know, he had to gather himself. And that was probably the know, he had to, like, gather himself.

And that was probably the difference there. So it could have worked out OK. I think, you know, given the situation, I think it was maybe a little bit overaggressive, just given the cost of getting thrown out there versus, you know, it's like the break-even point. I know all of this is, like, why teams are maybe too conservative and certainly less exciting when it comes to these plays. But I don't think Bryce Harper, among his many talents, I don't think he's a good base runner. He's not slow.

No. He's above average sprint speed and really hasn't lost a step sprint speed-wise since, you know, the beginning of the StatCast era. He has sort of the same sprint speed. Well, it's because his arm is the thing that keeps getting dinged up, Ben. Yeah, right. You don't run with your arms. I mean, you do kind of run with your arms, but you don't run on them. But he has been below average by Fangraph's base running metric five seasons in a row.

Yes. You know, over the past. Yes. It's not a strength. He has many other strengths. No. I would say maybe he's a little over-exuberant at times. But I'm not sorry he did it because I'm not a Phillies fan and it was extremely exciting in the moment.

I think it was great. And, I mean, I don't really have a horse in the race either. I feel like I prefer a horse in the race to skin in the game. You know, I think that that's my preference because it's not like a shirts and skin thing, right? Like, yeah, it's like a weird, it's probably weird. You know, we hear stuff and you're like, that's probably weird. That's probably bad. So horse in the race. I mean, I know that sometimes the horses, they don't have a great time either. So what are we going to do? I thought it was great. I thought that it took a hell of a play.

I thought it took two hell of a plays. And I had, it was fine. Like, don't fall down. You know, that's my note to Bryce. But otherwise, I was like, meh, I like it. It's great. Let's go. So the earlier decision was Rob Thompson, Philly's manager, who was quite aggressive last postseason when it came to pulling his pitchers.

He let Zach Wheeler start the seventh and didn't have a high pitch count. What was it, 85 or something? But it was third time through the order. It was kind of textbook. On the one hand, he's one of the best pitchers in baseball. On the other hand, it's third time through the order and it's kind of textbook. On the one hand, he's one of the best pitchers in baseball. On the other hand, it's a third time through the order and it's a really good lineup and you don't want to let them get back in the game. And as good as Wheeler is, he does have a significant times through the order penalty. And at least based on projections and all of that, you would

think that the options that the Phillies had in that pen would have been better than Wheeler at that point. So he came in and he gave up a single and then got a strikeout and then gave up the home run. And maybe that makes the difference, that lets the Braves back in the game, that begins their comeback. And so a lot of people have been criticizing Thompson for making kind of that classical postseason managerial mistake of trusting your starter too long. Even though he's an ace, even though he was cruising, he'd gotten a little bit of trouble the previous inning, but nothing super serious. And again, you cited Russell Carlton. Russell Carlton has done the research on this too. And

Ben Clemens ran down all the considerations here. And yeah, I would think just, I probably would have pulled him there or think that he should have pulled him there. Partly because this is a different Phillies pen than it was last year. And there are just, there are more options, right? And also given the off days,

there was an off day before this game and there was an off day after the game. And because of the off days and because of the depth of options in that Phillies pen, I think you got to make the move here. There are other considerations, but yeah, I would say that was probably leaving him in a little too long. Did that make the difference? Who knows? If a fresh pitcher had come in, maybe the same thing would have happened. Maybe worse would have happened. We never know. But just based purely on win expectancy, I'd say probably not the best move.

It felt close to me. I would have understood if he had pulled him to start the inning. I was kind of okay with him going out there. I maybe would have been like, hey, you just gave up a single. That's good, bud. Like, let's be done now. Maybe that was the sort of pivot point for me. But, you know, I think the point that Ben made in the piece,

which is the right one, is that, like, it all comes down to how these guys execute, right? And you want the process to be good. I think that, you know, when we think about the, like the Burrios decision to me is still a more controversial one where it felt like they were locked into an overly fixed process, right? It wasn't flexible enough. And, you know, it's funny. Cause it's like Thompson, I keep wanting to call him Rob Thomas. Yes.

Even still, you know, been, been around a while, been the manager for call him Rob Thomas. Yes, I've had that too. Even still. Been around a while. Been the manager for a beat here. Every time in copy, I'm like, that's not his name. And then I'm like, yeah, it is his name. His name is Rob Thompson, not Rob Thomas. Anyway, it's funny that I'm saying, oh, the process here for the Blue Jays was insufficiently flexible and was overly rigid and like maybe it wasn't with philly which is funny when you think about like how ranger suarez was

managed in that first game and how you know it's clear that they had like a very specific scenario in mind for pulling him and it just happened to come later in the game than they were expecting because he was being so efficient and so you know maybe I'm drawing a distinction that doesn't really exist here, but it didn't feel as rigid. And I think that you want to have a general idea of what you're going to do and you want to know sort of what are the criteria we're going to use to evaluate when to pull a guy because, you know, he was doing so well. And then you're like, well, that ball's getting middle middle a little more than it had at any other point in,

in his start. And obviously some of them were middle middle in a way that ended up being really damaging to the Phillies. But I don't know. That one didn't strike me as like, wow, we got to come in hot with takes. I don't know if I'm sufficiently takey to host a podcast,

but I'm like, you might need to find somebody else. Yeah. Sports podcasts, especially. But as Joshi had noted, I'm like, you might need to find somebody else. Yeah, sports podcasts especially. But as Joshian noted, the Phillies seem to have a plan to go after the Braves with high-speed fastballs. It's not that the Braves were bad against high-speed fastballs this season.

They were just merely one of the best hitting teams against them, as opposed to being leaps and bounds better than every other team against slower pitches. And that worked for them in game one. In game two, those big homers came on an 82 mile per hour sweeper and an 89 mile per hour slider, which is not just who was in the game, but also what they chose to throw. And as Ben pointed out, there is the consideration of reliever familiarity, even if you have the options. And it's not a concern about rest and fatigue so much. There has been a study.

Cameron Grove, former Effectively Wild guest, prompted by a discussion on Effectively Wild with him, has looked into that and did find that there does seem to be a familiarity effect, a penalty that happens when relievers face a team a number of times within a short span. a team a number of times within a short span. So yeah, you got to give some consideration maybe to that and not giving guys too many looks at your relievers. But even so, I think I would have gone the other direction. But again, so many of these decisions that get hung on the manager, at least partly, it's hard to do that, at least statistically speaking. On the one hand, yeah, butterfly flaps, you leave Wheeler and things happen that way. If he had made a different decision, probably it would have had a different outcome, could have had a worse outcome, who knows. But usually it's based on what you know at the time, at least, just sort of a small difference either way. And you just hope it works out for you.

Ben, Ben, are you satisfied with our treatment of this subject? Because I have a little game for us to play. Sure, go ahead. But only if you're done. I'm done with that series, yeah. Okay. Have you, don't look, don't look. Have you seen the score of the Orioles-Rangers game?

Yes, yes I have. Sorry. Then we can'toles-Rangers game? Yes, I have. Sorry. Then we can't play my little game. So much for the game. It's not a fun game for the Orioles so far. But yes, I'm a responsible baseball media member. I'm second screening here. I'm keeping an eye.

I was going to. Yeah, sorry that you can't quiz me. I was going to have you guess. I was going to have you guess the score. Yeah, it's 6-0 Rangers as we speak. We are recording during the second of the ALDS Games 3. It's all my fault, so. Yeah, so.

Yeah. Okay, look, we talked mostly about Kershaw when we talked about Dodgers Diamondbacks and Corbin Carroll. I guess the only other thing to say about that series Dodgers down 0-2 A. Bobby Miller wasn't much better or longer lasting than Clayton Kershaw was, which was a disappointment and surprise. And so again, testament to the Diamondbacks for

making the most of their opportunities. But man, yeah. And the Dodgers bullpen has stepped up, right? We knew that Dodgers penned good the Dodgers bullpen has stepped up, right? Yeah, they've been very good. We knew that Dodgers penned good, Dodgers rotation bad. We just maybe didn't know this bad. So that has put them in a hole, but the bullpen has kept it close enough that they had a shot, at least in the second game, certainly, as good as Gallin was.

But the bats haven't held up their end of the bargain either. And this is kind of an ongoing thing with the Dodgers in the division series where they also have not been clutch. It's not just Clayton Kershaw. They have not hit well when they've needed to. I mean, runners in scoring position, high leverage moments, they're just not converting. They're just not getting those hits. And again, do I think that means something about the character of this team? No, probably not.

It's a really good offense. And if you played many more games, I'm sure they would outscore the Diamondbacks. But these are the only games that matter. And thus far, at least, they have not gotten the hits that they needed. No, they sure have not. And the Diamondbacks have gotten some really great production out of their bats and even some of the bats that have been like a little more prone to swoons have had their moments. So, yeah, they're up against it.

Now, if you're a Dodgers fan and you're like, please say something nice, you know, I guess the bullpen was good. Yeah, the bullpen has been really good. But say something optimistic, say something hopeful. Give us a little something to hold on to as we go into game three tomorrow. And I guess the first thing that I would probably say would be, well, you don't have to deal with Merrill Kelly or Zach Allen again yet. And, you know, F fought has been vulnerable at times his you know he's got sent down to the minors twice this year and it was for a reason now he's been better of late he wasn't great against milwaukee so how do you

balance those things against one another the d-backs bullpen remains vulnerable even though that they had you know pretty good showing so far themselves. And you do have literally Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman, so presumably that's useful and other good hitters besides. So I don't think that it's a far-gone conclusion that they're going home after Wednesday, but they're up against it. If you're a fan of one of the teams that might face

the Diamondbacks, you're very excited because they don't, they're not going to get to use Kelly and Gallen quite so often in the CS, just by virtue of how the off days are going to fall out. So there's that, but it's looking kind of grim. It's looking a little dire. But it's like you basically now you have a you could think of it as having a three-game series. But if you lose one of those games, you're done. So, like, you know, like it's kind of a grim situation. They don't want to get bounced for a second consecutive year in the division series to a second place NL West team. But they're facing that prospect and we'll return to it.

I don't love that division rivals face each other in the division series now. I mean, I know it's more aptly named that they do. But I kind of liked when you couldn't have that happen until later in the playoffs because, well, for one thing, I guess just to avoid the possibility of a team kind of cleaning your clock all season and then succumbing to you very shortly after in a short series. At least, you know, it had to be in a longer series before. but it's hard to get around these things with the way they're scheduling them and the play out and the television demands. So to shift over to the ALDSs, Houston is up two to one in the Astros twins series. So it's just kind of come down to the starting pitching, I guess, largely in this series. You know, Justin Verlander, to name another guy who had a reputation for not stepping

up in the postseason and has kind of changed that lately. He pitched well in game one. And then Pablo Lopez was brilliant for the Twins in game two. Schramper was shaky, as we were concerned that he might be, based on his recent performance. And then in Game 3, we had kind of a vintage Christian Javier performance. And, you know, he's not been as good this season as he looked like in the playoffs previously. But down the stretch, like his last few starts, he's kind of looked like the old Christian Javier and he looked really good again. Yeah. I didn't get to watch like a ton of that game because of my comings and goings from Chase, although they were nice enough to put it up on the

big board. So then I got to see a little bit more of it, but it really has been a story of the pitching. Just imagine how much worse the discourse would have been if the Twins hadn't won that game and then everything looks like it could have been a sweep. Again, a sweep. It's not a... We're going to talk about it.

We'll get there in just a second. Yeah. If I were the Twins, my goal would be to score more runs and allow a few of them. It's a hot take. I think that's a great goal. Yeah.

Javier did walk five guys, of course, in five innings. The twins had their chances. They went one for nine with runners in scoring position. And same with the Phillies in that game when the Braves came back. The Phillies had guys on constantly and just were not converting. It doesn't really mean anything. It's just that really matters in these playoff games. You got to hit with runners in scoring position. It's tough otherwise to win.

All it means is that baseball is really hard. Sometimes we should say that part because it's true. It's really hard. So many of the great plays in the playoffs come down to someone making a mistake or just doing something that you wouldn't normally recommend that they do. Like Sam wrote for his sub stack about the, the great Carl's Correa play in the wildcard bound and how he was probably like a little out of position and kind of like go in the wrong way. And, and it worked out wonderfully. And then the Austin Riley throw it i guess he

wasn't like out of position but you also didn't expect him to to be in position for that play right so so many of these things rely on just some small infinitesimal error or someone just being in a position to take advantage of something and it's like not repeatable or predictable, but it's all important in these games. And of course, the Jordan show is happening again. So Jordan is just scary. It's not a first for him, but you've experienced this as a fan firsthand. so yeah i feel like the twins do feel very marinersy maybe i've said this already not really the team itself but just like the trajectory of this playoffs right they get the monkey off their back and then jordan's there to be like hello i'm the reward oh no this isn't very fun at all i know that the answer isn't that he should just never be pitched to but he should be pitched to less maybe yeah like maybe we should pitch him less we should throw to him less than we are i mean i'm not doing it so what do i care but um i don't know i feel for twins fans um because it doesn't

get better and like they might rally to win that series and then it'll be sort of a moot point. But you think that your experience of it now is the worst, but then you realize that like, oh, now your home runs are going to be the ones they show next year if the Astros make the postseason. And to that I say, I'm sorry, but I bet more of them will feature twins in the 2024 playoffs

if Minnesota doesn't come back to win. If they do, then they'll probably stick with the Mariners ones because Houston advanced and won the World Series in that year. But yeah, he's just, he is such a cool combination of stuff. Like he doesn't always, you know, get into one, but when he does, it goes real far, and he is discerning. And, man, he really, like, it's just, it's big, feel-different-in-your-chest kind of power.

So, sorry, guys. And the Astros are not the only Texas team raking, because the Rangers are just obliterating Baltimore. So this game, at least, will be over by the time people are hearing this. It's looking over-ish as we speak. So if this is it, if this is it for the Orioles, I mean, you know, we sort of did like a premortem for them when we talked about the fact that like, this is not the finished product.

This is not the fully operational, mature Baltimore Orioles team that is going to emerge from this rebuild. And Orioles fans will look back probably and say, oh, that was just the beginning of a long and storied run. You can't count on those things completely, but they are as well positioned for that as anyone. And not even all of the parts have arrived. So they're just going to get better and better, especially if they spend at some point or make some moves. So that said, if they go down quickly to Texas here,

that's obviously going to be very disappointing in the way that, you know, like last year, you could have said, hey, you went from historically terrible to being in it right up until the end of the season.

Yeah, but then we didn't make the playoffs. Still disappointing. Or this season, hey, you won 100 games. You made it back to the playoffs. Yeah, but then we had a quick exit. It's still going to be disappointing. But, you won 100 games. You made it back to the playoffs. Yeah, but then we had a quick exit. It's still going to be disappointing. Yeah.

But, you know, I guess in our playoff draft, you drafted, I drafted the Astros offense. I think you drafted the Rangers offense, right? I did, yeah. Both of those offenses have performed quite well. Yeah. And I think, I don't know if you shorted Orioles pitching, but, you know, hard to apportion credit or blame there. It's a bit of both.

Good offense, not the best pitching. Kyle Bradish was fine. He was effective. He was good. Grayson Rodriguez, not so much. Yeah, that didn't go as well. And the Orioles kind of came back and made it close, at least in game two. And the Orioles kind of came back and made it close, at least in game two, or it kind of looked closer than it felt and was for most of the game by the end of it.

So, I mean, the Rangers are just, they look dominant right now. It's been a streaky team. Like, I don't know if it's fundamentally a streaky team, like this is just the quality of these Rangersangers or not but they have been streaky that is for sure to this point so sometimes they look like man they can't hit they can't win they can't pitch they're gonna be out of the running entirely other times they just will sweep people and they are just like that you can't beat them so right you know the first game was was very close it was a one run game the next one was a three-run game, but not for most of it. Yeah, it wasn't as close.

I mean, like, that bullpen remains vulnerable, right? Yeah. If you're going to take anything away. Like, they're very capable of coughing up a week. But they were able to hold on just long enough to not do that. Yeah. Like, I want to be careful not to sound like i'm gloating about how the orioles have performed in the postseason because my position specifically about our

projections of the orioles was that like this is a good team and it's it's incomplete it has vulnerabilities i think most of the playoff field has vulnerabilities so are they failing at times in the way that i expected i guess i think that like this is a really fun exciting club and this you know isn't going great but they you know seem perfectly capable of getting back up again after getting kicked in the mouth here so i think that we aren't done seeing this particular roster in the playoffs and probably a bunch for the, you know, the foreseeable future. And sometimes you just run into a team that's like going to hit a bunch of home runs. Like, what are you going to do? Sometimes that happens, you know.

It happens a lot with this particular lineup because it's pretty good. So if you're an Orioles fan and this result holds, you know, the score holds, and, you know, you're sitting at home watching the rest of the playoffs, like, you can root against the Rangers bullpen and you'll probably find some satisfaction at some point. You know, in some ways, I guess, it's good news for baltimore that like the the issues do seem to be

both very obvious and ones that are you know if they decide to spend some money theoretically solvable in this offseason right when you look at the teams where they are kind of offense needy, if they want to supplement with free agent, you know, signings, that's harder to do this winter because the markets, you know, the cupboard's not bare, but it's closer. And it's certainly not as robust as last winter was. So, if you're nervous that the Orioles won't spend money, I think that's a reasonable thing to be worried about also. But their needs are, I think, pretty clear. I think they can either address them by spending some money or if they're really keen to not do that,

they certainly have a farm system from which to deal. And as you said got they got a lot of guys coming still who are pretty exciting so i don't want to like force people to move on from their disappointment too soon because like i know how it feels to have been out of the playoffs for a long time and get back in and then you're so excited and then like although the mariners didn't win the division so i guess um got one on me there orioles fans but like you, when the dust settles, I think there's a lot to be optimistic about in Baltimore going forward. So hopefully that's some sort of a balm for the winter. Yeah. And for the Rangers, it's just like we talked about

how they're kind of like the AL equivalent of Atlanta, just the lineup depth, just top to bottom, no weak spots, at least in terms of the production this season. And we were all like, wow, Evan Carter is so good. And now it's like, oh yeah, they have Josh Young. He was like the young new hotness before he got hurt and Evan Carter showed up. He's also really good. And then Jonah Heim is good. And then Mitch Garver is good. And all these good, you don't expect them to have the hero moment necessarily, but pretty much anyone in this lineup is capable of that.

Is capable, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yep. They're going to be sort of scary, but, you know, the pitching remains vulnerable and maybe over a longer series that gets exposed or the bats go a little cold, don't get the great situational hitting or timely hitting. And then we're having a different conversation in a week or two. Yeah. I mean, this is why it's a weird exercise because it's like, you look at guys, you look at teams, they feel invulnerable sometimes. And then like, it's a new series against an entirely new club and,

you know, you start back at zero. So, yeah. Well, look how good the Diamondbacks bullpen has been in their series so far, two games, but,

but you wouldn't have said that was their strength. I know it's gotten a little bit better post Seawald and some of the other additions and changes they've made, but you wouldn't say it was a strength of theirs really, but, but it's performed really well. So that's the flip side of the Dodgers not getting those hits that they need.

It's the Diamondbacks pitchers and sometimes the Diamondbacks bullpen preventing them from getting those hits. So we will return to all these series that are ongoing next time, and maybe they won't be ongoing by then. And of course, we'll talk about the championship series matchups when those are set. going next time and maybe they won't be ongoing by then. And of course, we'll talk about the

championship series matchups when those are set. So lastly, in closing, I think you said last time that we were going to get emails about sweeps and the terminology of sweeps in the postseason and also about my hot conductor take. And boy, did we ever get emails about both of those subjects so many emails long weekend holiday weekends i'm blowing up all weekend and every subject line is like sweeps conductors or like sweeps and conductors sometimes it was a twofer yeah so as for the sweeps, the contention by listener Nathan was that we can't have a sweep during a playoff series, that nobody actually sweeps. This was a pedantic point because if during the regular season the team wins three of the first four, they still have to play the fourth game. But we don't say that they swept the series after three, whereas in the postseason, the series just ends. You don't play the entire scheduled series, all the games that you could have played.

And thus, maybe we shouldn't call it a sweep because you didn't win all the games. You just won as many as you needed to to end the series before the other team won one. And the suggestion was, we need some new terminology for this. Now, I would say at least half of the responses were probably, what are you talking about? We can absolutely continue to call these sweeps, which, look, I mean,

we're going to keep calling them sweeps, I think. We're not going to change anyone's mind here. I've called them a sweep like seven times in this episode, seven times in this episode. Seven times. Yeah. At least. As with many of the pedantic points, we all know what we mean and it's fine and there's

no confusion. But this one made me think and made us think, right, about the nature of a playoff sweep versus a regular season sweep. Now, I think speaking for the people who said, no, this is fine. I'm just going to quote one listener, Kenneth, who other listeners made the same or similar points. But Kenneth wrote, I completely disagree with the assessment of the term sweep that the previous email argued for. Nathan was right. The definitions change in the postseason, but it's the definition of series that changes, not the definition of sweep. that changes, not the definition of sweep. Sweep, as I think most people understand the term, simply means that one team won all the games that were played in a given series. In the regular season, of course, you play all the games as scheduled, so you can only sweep a series if you win all the scheduled games. As you covered extensively and hilariously in the run-up to the

postseason last year, however, a playoff series is actually of indeterminate length. I forgot that bit of ours, probably for the best that we didn't bring it back this year. We couldn't have. We exhausted it the horse's head. We remembered to brief people on how many games you had to win at each playoff round. Kenneth continues, it is only as long as it needs to be to determine a winner. So what is commonly called a seven-game series only means it could go for a maximum of seven possible games, not that

seven games are going to be played. If one team wins the first four games of the series, the rest do not need to be played. And I would feel fully justified calling that a sweep, as only four games were played and one team won all four. Yeah, that's fine. I agree. It's okay. I think as long as we don't say that

they swept the seven- game series or something, like maybe that would be misleading. But yeah, for the most part, and I think I even said something to this effect last time, just like, yeah, you won all the games that you could win that were played. So close enough. It's a little bit different, but it's still a sweep. The series itself is different. But among the people who wrote in to suggest alternate terms that we could use instead of sweep, I would say dust or dusting was the most common suggestion. So yeah, speaking for the crowd, Taylor said, often we see fans bring a broom to the park to jeer at the opposing club when a sweep is imminent. It seems fitting that we should use the term dusting, dusted dust for a playoff sweep for a few reasons.

One, a playoff sweep is shorter. They did not need the full slate of games to dispose of the opposing team. Although I guess a playoff sweep can sometimes be longer than a regular, regular season sweep. If you sweep a best of seven, if you win four, then that's going to be longer. No, you can't sweep a best of seven. You can't sweep a best of seven. I understand. No, no, Ben, no, no, no.

You know what this is? This is striking out the side. This is what people are going to do with this. So don't encourage them because that's what they're going to... So you're saying that you can't sweep a best of seven, even if you win all four? You can't say I swept the best of

seven series? Okay, but... I wouldn't say swept the seven game series. That would suggest that you played seven games and that would mean that you didn't sweep. So yeah. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. We almost started a whole new round of emails there. That was dangerous. So Taylor said you did not need the full slate of games to dispose of the opposing team. So a playoff sweep is shorter in that sense. What do we do when our house is only a little dirty and a broom is overkill for the job at hand?

We break out the duster. Dusting is a bit of a shot at the losing side. Number two, it suggests that they were so outmatched that we didn't need the big broom to deal with you. And it sounds belittling. And three, Taylor says, I'm a gamer myself. And you often hear players say, I dusted them when they've defeated an enemy with ease. I like the overlap here, and I feel it could help in leading to widespread adoption of the terminology. Okay. So I think that dusting is fine, but I'm worried about how this individual cleans their home because a broom and a duster are for

different projects. That's a different, you're cleaning different surfaces. I guess that's true. We've talked about dusting on the Patreon bonus pods. So there's a tease for you. Sign up for Patreon. You can hear us talk about dusting and hygiene and house cleanliness. Yeah. I have a lot of opinions about that subject. And ours differ to some extent. Nathan, the original question asker, suggested mop. So you mop a team out of the playoffs.

You saturate them, drag them around the floor, and then squeeze the life out of them until they are literally flushed down the drain. Oh, boy. Patrick said, I propose that since sweeping is a way to clean a floor and doing so in the postseason is more efficient, two instead of three games, for instance, although, again, sometimes it's four instead of three, it should be renamed to a more efficient cleaning method, the vacuum or the Roomba. The Rangers Roomba'd the Rays has a nice ring to it, in my opinion. A Roomba feels too...

Too brand specific or... Well, and too directionless. It's like, you know, I don't have a Roomba, but I'm given to understand that they just kind of bang around into stuff and they vacuum at the same time. Whereas, like, you know, you're doing stuff to win a playoff series. So, you know, give yourself some credit. True. Yeah. Yeah.

The newer Roombas will develop a sense of their surroundings and they will know where the obstacles are. So it won't just be bumper cars like, oh, I bounced into a wall. Guess I got to go another way. But they'll like have a map of the area. So I guess it's a little more intentional maybe. But yeah, I'm with you on that. And then listener Joe suggested advanced without loss.

So they went AWOL. We could rebrand AWOL as advancing without a loss, which is, I guess, one way to say it. We also got, like, snuffed. You know, you snuffed out their playoff hopes, your championship hopes. So, several suggestions, all fine and good and valid. Probably not needed, but we've hashed this out, and thank you for the many suggestions.

And thank you also for the many, many emails, I would say even more emails about my conductor take, which very briefly was just a semi-facetious suggestion. Semi, not entirely. Okay, I was going to say. No, I'm not trying to say

it was all a joke. You've got to own this, man. No, yeah. And I'm happy to own it because I received a lot of support. Not unanimous. Opinions were strongly divided. This really provoked just a strong response and a very divided response where some people are like, what are you talking about?

And others are like, you're completely right. Like, I'm with you. And from people who would know, you know, like we got emails from conductors, as we anticipated we would. We got emails from conductors, as we anticipated we would, and we got emails from members of orchestras and professional orchestras, itself with high level musicians, because we were likening this to bass coaches on the baseball field. And I'm saying, you know, usually baseball players, they know what they're doing out there, but bass coaches are sometimes helpful. I was suggesting that conductors are even less often helpful in that situation and that you could just kind of let the players play and they'd be fine. A lot of people said, absolutely. Like we even got an email from a conductor who was like, yeah, we're overrated. Like at least when it comes to the performance itself. And then

there were members of orchestras who wrote in like, yes, like, thank you. You know, I can't say this. Thank you for speaking for us. You know, it's like there would be a backlash. Some conductors are vindictive. They rule with an iron wand and baton, and we need you to be our voice here. And said, look, I can do this in my sleep. We've practiced so much. We're professionals here. Someone said, I make a point of making eye contact with the conductor once or twice a performance so that they think I'm looking at them, but really I'm not. Then there were others who said, yeah, absolutely, they serve a purpose. And again, I was just talking about during the performance. I know they serve all sorts of purposes off the field, so to speak, in terms of, you know, determining the program and prepping the orchestra. And,

you know, there's a concert master who's maybe different from the conductor who's playing an important part and is actually playing. I mean, that's the thing. I think some maybe orchestra members felt a bit miffed, maybe, that the conductor gets the biggest round of applause, and they're the one without the instrument up there, you know, which is something that prompted this for me because my daughter, Sloane, she went through a phase recently where she just wanted to watch videos of orchestras playing things. So we kept pulling up often like movie scores and she would just be like, orchestra, and we would bring up the orchestra, which was great and very cute. Except then she started imitating the conductor because the conductor's up there waving their arm and Sloane's there waving her arm.

And I wanted to be like, no, like emulate the violinist, emulate someone who's actually playing the music as opposed to the person who's just up there already getting maybe more credit than they deserve. I guess the applause they get is maybe in part for like the prep that they helped do and the practice and they got this orchestra into shape and determined the program and all of that. But also they're just like the star of the performance and they're the one up there who's not at least playing music. So anyway, we got some firm rebukes and we got some – and by we, I mean I. Yeah, I was going to say, you got to wear this one. Yeah, but I'm willing to wear it because I got enough support here to feel like I'm on to something. And a lot of people were like, I've had this thought. I've had this conversation, like somehow I touched a nerve here. This is like a hot button issue here, like the worth of conductors. I told you, I told you, Ben,

that we have enough people who do every kind of job in our wonderful listener group, you know, base. What are they? They're listeners. I don't know. They're the people who like the show. But some of them are Patreon supporters. Thank you so much. I knew, I knew we would get a bunch of emails. We would get so many emails. And you know what, Ben?

We got so many emails. We got so many emails. Yeah. But the conductors even, they took it in stride. They did. They were very gracious. There may be some conductors who swore off the show entirely and said, I'm never listening to this dreck, this drivel

again. They've insulted my profession and my vocation. But a lot of them wrote in They, they, they insulted the profession. He, but a lot of them wrote in and either supported me or, you know, politely and patiently

and considerately tried to enlighten me. But someone in our Patreon group said that the conductor bit reminded me of an old band joke. What do you do if a musician can't play well enough? Take away their instrument, give them a couple sticks, and make them a drummer. What do you do if they can't even play drums? Take away one stick and make them a conductor. Oh, boy. I didn't come up with this joke.

I'm just repeating it. And then what's the difference between an orchestra and a train? A train needs a conductor. Oh, wow. Some people have had like real hard times with conductors. Yeah, I'm not the first. And they are out for blood. Yeah.

And there are conductor-less ensembles and orchestras that have shown that it is possible. But yeah, look, I will concede that there is some utility to the conductor, even during the performance, but I will suggest also that it is perhaps overvalued or emphasized. That is what I will say. Baltimore has scored a run. It is the top of the fifth inning. There is a runner on first with two outs as we conclude this. I'm just saying that tomorrow I'm going to be trying to get stuff done. It's going to be a busy day. We might, well, we're definitely going to have three games.

We might only have three games, but we're going to have three games. I'm writing on one of them. It's very stressful to go to the ballpark. I don't normally have social anxiety, but I do end up having it in the press box sometimes, and I'm going to be getting all of these emails, and they're going to be for you.

Sorry for yelling. You could just archive those. That one's for Ben. I will. That's okay. I will handle it. That's for yelling. You can just archive those. That one's for Ben. I will. That's okay. I will handle it. There's been too many for me to answer each personally, but I appreciate each one. I started off answering all of them, and then they kept coming and coming and coming.

It's like I can't keep up with this pace. Anyway, all right. Well, we will update that Orioles game in the outro just in case you don't know where to get baseball scores except on the Effectively Wild podcast. And also, I should say tentatively, we are planning our first playoff livestream this weekend, we can say. So Sunday, right? Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. First game of the ALCS. our first of two Patreon playoff live streams where

we banter and we chat and we natter away during a game that is being played while listeners listen in and chat with us and with each other and we usually bring some pals on to help us talk because it's hard to talk for a long time. Such a long time.

The pitch clock helps but you can sign up for Patreon at the appropriate tier and also join our discord group for patrons only, which is where we did these last year, which seemed to go swimmingly. So I think we will do that again. Yes.

There were far fewer, like someone gets weirdly delayed by a lot for no good reason when we did it in Patreon than really any of the other services we've used. So yeah, we hope, we hope folks will join us. It tends to be a good, fun time. And, yeah, I guess we got to round up some pals, don't we, Ben? Yes, we do.

Yeah. All right. We'll work on that. All right. Here I am back for the outro to confirm that the Orioles did indeed succumb to the Rangers. The final score was 7-1. So the Orioles' playoff hopes for this season are definitely deceased. The Orioles are pining for the fjords. Condolences to Orioles fans.

And I note that Orioles.com, the headline there says, Sweep Sends Orioles Home. So I guess they're okay with that construction, though not with that outcome. Of course, the Orioles famously hadn't been swept since May of 2022, which is one of the longest regular season streaks ever. That's still alive. As Sarah Langs pointed out, the Orioles are the second team, excluding 2020, to be swept in a playoff series after not being swept in any regular season series of two or more games. The only previous team fitting that description? The 1998 Padres, managed by Bruce Bochy, whose Rangers just swept the Orioles. What a weird world.

A few more follow-ups to topics we talked about last time. First, on the topic of Tyler Clippard, who just retired, and whether he was the best or one of the best setup men of all time, I determined that by one definition, at least, he was or was close, just going by baseball reference war and setting some maximums for games started and saves. Michael pointed out, well, shouldn't holds be a consideration for the greatest setup man? And Klippert did indeed have a whole lot of them, 226, which seems to have been fifth all time if we retroactively apply holds to players who predated that stat. Seems like Mike Stanton leads with 266, and then Tony Watson, Arthur Rhodes, Joe Smith, and Tyler Klippert. And then Ryan noted, isn't an indication of a superlative setup man that they had one or multiple seasons in which their team's primary closer was either injured or traded, leading to them becoming the primary closer by process of elimination?

And yes, I think that makes some sense. I had almost DQ'd Klippard on the grounds that he had too many saves to be the quintessential setup man, 75 career. But the two seasons when he was, for all or part of the season, a dedicated closer, he was not the first choice. So for the 2012 Nats, Drew Storen was hurt. Manager Davey Johnson tried out a couple other guys. Brad Lidge and Henry Rodriguez, they were inconsistent. So Klippard stepped into the role. And then with the 2015 A's, Clippard started the

season closing because Sean Doolittle was hurt. Doolittle, who also recently retired. So it's not that managers were necessarily looking at Clippard and seeing closer material. It's just that he was the best setup man on the premises when the capital C closers were unavailable. And so, yeah, maybe that speaks to his qualifications as a great setup man. Also on the topic of former GM Paul Richards and his quixotic quest to trade one entire roster for another, specifically his offer to trade the entire roster of the 1964 Colt 45s, soon to be Astros, for the Milwaukee Braves roster. We mentioned that that would have changed baseball history in some significant ways. Henry Aaron would have been an Astro instead of a Brave for all those years. But maybe we undersold the impact there because listener Jack pointed out the Braves moved to Atlanta for the 1966 season, affecting for Aaron a change of ballparks from one of the tougher home run hitting parks in Milwaukee to what, until Colorado entered MLB, was the best home run hitting park in the majors.

MLB was the best home run hitting park in the majors. From 66 through 74, Aaron hit 190 homers in Atlanta and 145 on the road. If Aaron had been playing his home games in the Astrodome from 65 through 74, he without a doubt would have lost a large number of homers, such that he might not have reached 700 for his career, nevermind 714, much less 755. So yes, that might have really altered the course of some significant history. Not that it came close to happening. Meg was mentioning, by the way, that that sounded like an effectively wild hypothetical. I was reminded that it actually was one. Episode 1217, we talked about an entire team roster swap. And maybe it's not totally a hypothetical. in our Facebook group, and I know that there have been some similar situations in other sports. He writes, we wondered how fans would react if that happened. It would be the real test of whether we're just rooting for laundry. Well, it kind of sort of did happen in 1961 when Calvin Griffith moved the Senators from Washington to Minnesota to become the Twins, and the American League, to avoid losing the antitrust exemption, immediately replaced them with an expansion

Senators team. I have an older friend who grew up in D.C., and he said it was weird. The old Senators had some promising young players like Harmon Kilbrew and Bobby Allison, who became core members of the good Twins teams of the mid-60s. The new Senators, as expected, were brutal. He remembers going to games that first season with the Twins visiting and being emotionally confused. Now I'm rooting against guys I cheered for last year and for guys who six months ago I didn't know existed, that would be tough, particularly if you were a kid who didn't understand. There apparently was some backlash. The outgoing senators drew 740,000 in 1960, and the new senators drew 597,000 in 61 while playing a few more home games. And while having almost the same record.

You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pled some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay almost ad-free, and get themselves access to some perks. Cal Pringle, Icy Helicopter, Manu, Dan Love, and Ross Lambert. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the aforementioned Patreon Discord group for patrons only, as well as monthly bonus episodes and those playoff live streams we just talked about. We will send the deets to our Patreon people in a Patreon message when the day draws closer. You can also get discounts on merch and ad-free Fangraphs memberships and so much more. Check it out, patreon.com slash effectivelywild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site.

And anyone and everyone can contact us via email at podcastandfangrafts.com. Send us your questions and comments. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at ewpod. And you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with another episode later this week.

Talk to you then. Romantic, pedantic, and hypothetical. Semantic and frantic, real or theoretical. They give you the stats and they give you the news. It's a baseball podcast you should choose. Effectively Wild is here for you. About all the weird stuff that players do. Authentically strange and objectively styled.

Let's play ball. It's Effectively Wild. It's Effectively Wild. It's Effect wild. It's effectively wild.