Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2228: Clear and Convincing

Episode Date: October 9, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the latest home run predictions (by Carlos Estévez and Lawrence Butler), top closers blowing leads, the compelling, competitive postseason, highlights of recent games, broadcasters invoking momentum, replay controversies, and Padres-Dodgers bad blood, plus follow-ups on green screens (or the lack thereof) on baseball broadcasts, fun-fact qualifiers, and the […]

What's the greatest podcast of all? If you love the game of baseball It's effectively wild It's effectively wild When men land back In back rally Meg Rowley of FanGraphs and I am joined by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Well, I feel prepared to talk about the postseason by some of our previous podcasting.

Much as that long regular season, the grind of it all gets guys ready for October baseball, I feel pre-prepared by some of the topics that we have discussed this season because they have come back with a vengeance in the postseason. We've got controversial calls being allowed to stand during replay review because of the call in the field, something we've talked about this year. We've got the green screens. I have an update on the flickering players on baseball broadcast. We've got closers blowing it.

We've got Carlos Estevez predictions. And that's where I think we have to start because there are certain times when I worry that the rabbit holes go too deep, unaffectively, that sometimes we'll return to a topic two or three times. And I wonder whether anyone is with us, whether anyone cares. Now I saw some people who were delighted by the Carlos Estevez prediction deep dive that we did over the course of two or three episodes a while back, but I just never expected that to encompass so much reporting, talking to Carlos Estevez's ex bullpen catcher who was present

for the supposed prediction, talking to the reporter who had written about the prediction, getting multiple tips from insiders within the league who sent us camera angles and radio broadcasts that were inaccessible to the public to try to cooperate this prediction. This was again a prediction that Carlos Estevez supposedly made a few years ago back when he was with the Rockies and the circumstances of it were sort of unusual. And what we discovered over the course of that investigation,

what we discovered so many things really, but one thing we heard from Carlos Estevez's bullpen catcher at the time is that he is a prolific predictor. He is liable to just spout off predictions. He's someone who is known for that. And so I was not at all surprised when after an extremely memorable Mets-Fillies

game two on Saturday, we got another report about Carlos Estevez being prescient, knowing exactly what was going to go down. And this time I thought, you know what, I am totally prepped for this because I know everything there is to know about Carlos Estevez and his tendency to make predictions. So I got to read you this lead, which comes to us from the same author, Alex Coffee of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who is in the Carlos Estevez prediction reporting biz. Yeah. And the headline is Carlos Estevez called the momentum swinging homers in a Phillies win that is a reminder going into game three.

Here's what Alex wrote. Carlos Estevez was sitting in the Phillies bullpen on Sunday night when he saw Jeremy Hefner walk to the mound. It was game two of the National League Division Series and there were two outs in the sixth. Hefner, the Mets pitching coach, wanted to talk to Luis Severino. Trey Turner had just hit a single to put a runner on first. Bryce Harper was up next. Estevez knew what Hefner's message would be.

Pitch around, he said. Nevertheless, the Phillies reliever turned to Orion Kirkering and made a prediction. Now I guess he's already made a prediction at this point because he's predicted what Jeremy Hefner's message would be. But here's the second prediction. He's going to hit a home run right here, Estevez told him. Harper took a sinker inside for a ball, swung at a sinker low, fouled a sinker inside,

took a fastball above the zone, and launched the fifth pitch. He saw another four seam fastball, 431 feet to centerfield. As Nick Castellanos walked to the plate, Estevez turned to Kirkering again. If he throws another slider to Castellanos, he's going to hit a homer, he said. So he's going double or nothing here. Sure enough, Severino threw Castellanos not one's going to hit a homer, he said. So he's going double or nothing here.

Sure enough, Severino threw Castellanos, not one, but two sliders. He drove the second one to the left center field seats for a game tying solo home run. Estevez threw his hands in the air and jumped off the bench. I called both, he said, and they both hit it. I was like, I should play the power ball. Great anecdote, unless you have already got it on good authority that Carlos Estevez is just a rampant predictor. He's just making predictions left and right. And so I've really got a question even more than usual, whether this is newsworthy. Now, not everyone is quite as clued in to Carlos Estevez's past prediction tendencies as we are here at Effectively Wild as we've made sure our audience is. But unfortunately, this is discounted somewhat in my mind, just knowing that Carlos Estevez

very well may be predicting a home run at all times. Everything. Yeah. Just constantly issuing predictions and every now and then he just so happens to be right. So I guess it casts some doubt on the significance of this or it can be kind of a wet blanket, but I was almost tickled by this because I just knew that it was something Carlos de Stavros does now. And so I feel like I know the guy even though I don't.

And this just felt like a signature move by him. So I don't think he should play the power ball because unless he just always plays the power ball, just, I don't know that this actually signifies that he had his mojo going on that day or just that this was publicly reported, which it probably not always is. I would just like to note that you shouldn't play the powerball every day. You shouldn't play the lottery every day. It's a bad use of your money. But I will say that when the jackpots get over a billion dollars, that's $2 worth of fun. Just get a little wish casting going.

Think of the sunken living rooms that you could have if you had a billion dollars. It's useful for us to recall in moments like this, just like how precisely and how attuned to the intricacies of Carlos Estevez's prediction game we are, and let it be a little fun for other people, because know, because they don't know and they're like, oh my God, very powerful witch out there. But look, if you are a serial home run predictor, you have to keep up your serial home run prediction game in the postseason.

You can't slack off because people are going to think like, are you saying something with that? Are you admitting to something about your perception of your team in these moments? You can't invite that kind of doubt. So much of the postseason is about good looking vibes. You don't want the vibe of being like, well, I said every other pitch in the regular season that a guy was going to hit a home run, but then we get to October and I acknowledge that the pitching is generally better. So I don't know, good luck out there, boys.

You can't be doing that. That's a violation of the vibes contract that you've established. And if anyone is attuned to the minute to minute microscopic changes in vibes and how they might affect a team, I would submit it is the Philadelphia Phillies because, you know, the degree to which their fans vacillate back and forth, you know, between assuming it's over and then being so back. You got to play your part. Even if cosmically, it's over and then being so back. You got to play your part, even if cosmically it's nothing, right? It doesn't, Carlos De Ceva's predicting a home run has no bearing on whether the pitch

ultimately results in a home run unless he's thrown it. Then it might have something to do with it, right? But absent his participation in the actual pitching event, him sitting out there and going, you're going to hit a homer, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter any which way. But I still think be part of the vibes, be on the vibes team. Yeah. I'm well actuallying Carlos Estevez's prediction to some extent here, but I'm not suggesting

that Philly's fans should not enjoy it. I'm well actuallying Carlos Estevez's prediction to some extent here, but I'm not suggesting that Philly's fans should not enjoy it. Take pleasure in your team hitting huge home runs in the postseason. And I'm not someone who tends to believe that there are certain players who really reliably raise their game in October. I tend to think that clutchness to the extent that it exists

is just the capacity to tune out the unusual circumstances and keep doing you, keep doing what you usually do. And so it's not really raising your game, but it's just maintaining your game at a high level when others maybe might be taken out of the game. And so that probably should apply to your prediction tendencies too.

If you're saying, if you are someone who is inclined to make predictions in the regular season, don't let the postseason throw you off your game. Keep making your predictions. So Aaron Munoz, Rocky's bullpen catcher, who told me back in September, he was known for predicting a lot of wild stuff. He was known for that maybe within certain circles,

but I think now with our help and Alex Coffey's, he's becoming known for that to the public at large. So now we know this about Carlos Estevez. The predicting has now broken containment to the point that players who are not actually in the game, who are just spectators are now issuing predictions too. So we were clued in to an interview that was done with Chris Rose,

who talked to someone after the Mets Braves doubleheader. Chris Rose talked to Lawrence Butler of the Oakland Athletics, famously not either the Braves or the Mets, but a different team entirely. And Lawrence Butler, he's childhood friends and rivals with Michael Harris II. They're both from Atlanta.

They played with and against each other a lot. Harris is getting married and Butler is a groomsman. So they're tight. And yeah, Butler took a red eye to fly back after the A's last game to see the Braves and Mets. Yeah, play that last game of the regular season, double header against each other. And he, according to his conversation

with Chris Rose, issued a prediction that Francisco Lindor was going to hit a home run. Even though you were rooting for your boy, Money Mike, what was your reaction when Lindor went deep in the ninth inning? I called it. I just remember him playing against us when we went to New York, bro, on fire right now. He hasn't really slowed down since then. So I'm like, big moment. I mean, he's a big moment player, big time player. So I mean, he was kind of due.

So I'm like, I'm just going to go ahead, take my hat off, give him a hat drop and call the homer. And of course he went to run home. I don't know what to do with this now when we've got players who are not even directly involved in the game, who are not a participant, they're not on either of the participating teams now they're issuing predictions and then claiming credit for it publicly. This is a long running, effectively wild bit that I flirt with retiring because it's just so common.

We would have an update on every episode, it seems like, in season, almost not a day goes by without someone telling us, alerting us to a player prediction. It's just, it's too much. Like there was a time when we went away from talking about it and then it kind of came back lately with Carlos Estevez and others,

and now Lawrence Butler is pioneering a new type of publicly reported prediction. But it just really makes me question what percentage of homers that are hit in Major League Games were predicted by someone, some player, because it has to be a high percentage to the point where I'm almost ready to call for a moratorium on reporting predictions just because you can count on it. You can find someone if you just canvas the clubhouse. It seems like you can almost certainly turn up someone who is on the bench or in the bullpen who said that so-and-so was going to hit a home run because why not? It's fun to just throw out a prediction if you're out there spectating.

I think it's going to have to rise to the level of a really notable prediction now where it's someone who has established themselves as a rampant predictor like a Carlos Estevez or a Jackson Churio who's done it multiple times. Or it has to be something out of the norm, a really impressive prediction or Lawrence Butler predicting a homer in a game he's not even in and then publicizing that. So we just, we got to approach the predictions in moderation here because we would be swamped. This would just be a predictions about baseball podcast. Yeah, we would be overwhelmed, you know, and we already have so many things to talk about. So we do. Yes. Including lots of memorable postseason action since the last time we talked.

Now we did our first of two playoff live streams for Patreon supporters on Saturday during a frankly interminable Dodgers Padres game in which there were many, many mid inning pitching changes in a way that caused us to remark that this felt very much like a pre pitch clock or pre three batter minimum game. So that in itself, although it was close for a while was not one of the better games of the weekend, but there have been some classics and one of the themes has been closers blowing it and sometimes taking the loss.

Now Carlos Estevez in that game when he issued the prediction, he also pitched and hopefully he did not predict that he would allow a home run because he did not. He pitched a scoreless inning. However, other closers have not been so lucky, including I would say a trio, a trifecta of closers who are among the best in baseball, if not the best. So we talked about the Devin Williams home run that he allowed to Pete Alonso in the wild card round and just how automatic Williams typically has been.

I guess you could throw in Ryan Presley and Josh Hader in game two of the Astros Tigers series, though I wasn't counting them in my trio. Edwin Diaz gave up a game two, he blew a save and I guess ultimately didn't take the loss, but that was in that wild back and forth affair, game two, which had just so many swings and Diaz, you know, you kind of give him a pass

because he's just been worked hard lately and he's come up big a bunch of times, but he did blow a one-run lead in the eighth in that game and gave up three runs in fact. And then of course, most memorably, most shockingly of all, Emmanuel Classe, whom we had discussed as someone who in another era might have been a Cy Young front runner in the American League, gave up just a breathtaking home run hit by Kerry Carpenter in game two of the Tigers Guardians game that accounted for the sole scoring in that game. The first three run homer, Emmanuel Classe, has ever allowed the just three earned runs on one swing after having given up five

earned runs all season. All season. Yeah. At 110.8 miles per hour, it was the hardest hit ball he'd ever allowed. It was, I think his first home run given up to a lefty. Obviously he didn't give up many home runs at all to anyone. I mean, he was basically untouchable. Right. But his first one this year, like he, of all the home runs he gave up, ain't a one of them that was to a lefty this year. You have to go back to 2023 to find one. Yeah. I mean, how many home runs did he actually give up this year? It could have been a maximum of five. It was two. Yeah. So yeah, the first against the lefty isn't actually really that much more impressive than just saying it was his third home run allowed all season, I suppose.

I mean, he has no Declan Cronin who allowed only one, but next to Declan, he's pretty solid. And that came on the heels of, of course, just a Cy Young-esque start by Tarek Scoobel, who did what everyone wants and expects Tarek Scoobel to do. But the Guardians pitching was up to the task to that point too, and they were just trading zeros. And then Klaas A, of all people, getting burned. So we've seen some closer, those three guys, Klaas A,

Williams, Diaz, you could not go wrong picking them as maybe the three guys you would want on the mound if you had to pitch a scoreless inning. They're up there in projected fit, projected ERA, whatever it is. Williams and Klasay are two and three in the Zips rest of season projections right now. Obviously there is no rest of regular season, but the projections are still there. And Diaz is number one in FIP and Klasay is two. So they're all kind of in the top 10, top 15 range, often top two or three. And all three guys got burned. And I guess that's what you want in October.

You want best against the best. And it's one against the best. And it's one of the bests getting beat. Let's maybe start with Carpenter versus Closet because it's like the most recent. Kerry Carpenter, when you look at his splits versus righties, like he's like Aaron Judge. He hits like Aaron Judge.

He hits like Aaron Judge. And then you're like, why doesn't this guy play every day? And then you look at his splits versus lefties and you're like, oh, okay, well that's fine. Cause he does not hit like Aaron Judge against lefties, but he has incredible power. He hits righties very well. And I don't know that I would have thrown in

three straight sliders if it had been me. You know, you might be sitting there listening and saying, well, you shouldn't throw him anything because you're pretty bad at baseball, Meg. I don't have a slider, so I don't have any. I don't have a slider, but I don't know that he was, he being classy, I was like hitting his exact spots. Michael Rosen like did a pitch by pitch breakdown of that home run for us at Fangrass today, which is very fun and people should read. And you could just tell that like some of these pitches were not finishing quite where you wanted them to.

That last one sure didn't. But I think that would I in general characterize Kerry Carpenter as like one of the best in a complete game sense, getting my arms around the totality of what he brings to the field, probably not, but I think there's a good argument to make that if you need a pinch hitter late and you know you're going to have righties coming up and that Cleveland's going to bring in their lights out guy and you have Kerry Carpenter on your bench and you know how he hits against righties, I think that's pretty good. So dramatic.

I love it when guys, I think it's fine to just be excited about your own performance. I enjoy watching guys have the adrenaline of the moment kind of wear off and then have the moment sort of cascade over them again. Because the broadcast found Carpenter in the dugout after he hit the home run. Every human emotion crossed that man's face in the space of like 20 seconds where just like disbelief that he had done that, disbelief that they had managed that, that they had not wasted that scooble story. Also I keep trying to go Zoink scoobs and make it. I've tried a lot

of different Photoshop's. I'm not happy with any of them, which is why I haven't posted them. But every time I just go zoink scoobs, that doesn't even sound as bad. I'm going to find it. Don't worry. We're going to dial it in. We're going to dial it in over the course of the postseason. And look, it might be relevant for longer because of games like yesterday's. But anyway, dramatic, wonderful, when you have that kind of tense back and forth between pitchers to have like that kind of catharsis as like the emotional endpoint of the game, I find so satisfying, right? Like, you know, it would have been a real shame. I know that there wouldn't have been a zombie runner, but like to have that kind of go to

extras maybe and have it be, you know, you dink and dunk some hits and then all of a sudden, you know, the game has concluded. No, give us the big boom in a moment like that, right? Like give us the big cathartic home run. Very satisfying. I find I've been, I gotta say these playoffs have been great. This season has been really good so far. Really good. I mean, maybe not all of the pitching changes in the game that we live streamed, which I was worried would

kill you. But other than that, really good. Yeah. Great matchups and also the games have delivered. The baseball has been entertaining. There have been some duds in there, obviously, but we are tied one-one as we record here by the time people hear this, that will no longer be the case. But as we record on Tuesday afternoon, all four division series are tied at one.

That's the first time that all four division series have ever started that way. And so that is extremely exciting. And Ben Clemens, other Ben, ran the numbers on two of this weekend's wild games. There was the Royals Yankees game where there were five lead changes, which was a postseason record. They were all kind of like one run changes. And the game itself wasn't quite as exciting maybe as the

extraordinary Mets Phillies game that the Phillies ended up winning by one run. And Ben found that if you add up all of the changes in win probability over the course of those games that they were the best nine inning games since 2020. So just in terms of like the total amount of win probability, changing hands, and that tracked with how entertaining those games were. And especially when you've got the Mets-Fillies rivalry enhancing all of it and then Tiger's Guardians and just so many storylines as we have discussed and a lot of these games have delivered. So yes, I think Carrie Carpenter succeeding there is great because sometimes in the postseason,

you get total randoms who become heroes and that's fun. Guys who aren't actually that good, but they just have their moment in the sun and that's fun and unpredictable and that's just the epitome of the postseason. But also sometimes you get guys who are good, at least good in some specific way, and they're not nationally known. Tigers fans know Kerry Carpenter can hit and that especially he can hit righties. I don't know that a national audience knows that or is even all that aware of Kerry Carpenter at all. But he has been in that specific way, as you said, just a really fantastic player over the course of his career.

This is his third big league season. He was sort of unsung. He didn't come up particularly young. He wasn't a top 100 prospect or anything. And yeah, limited player. He plays in the corners. He's not an unbelievable defender or base runner or anything. And yes, the splits career versus righties. 897 OPS versus lefties 588. Now he has faced righties in about 85% of his career plate appearances. So the Tigers are well aware of this tendency and they have platooned and deployed him accordingly. And there is a use for that sort of player.

And it's this use, it's sending him up there when you need a big hit against Emmanuel Classe. Now he has been so good against Reddies that if you look 22 to 24, so the past three seasons, minimum 800 plate appearances. Again, he doesn't play every day. He's had some injuries in there, but if you set the minimum at 800 plate appearances, he has been the 17th best hitter by WRC plus overall, not even versus righties, just overall because he has mostly faced righties.

So that's a 136 WRC plus. He was at his best this season. If you do limit has mostly faced righties. So that's a 136 WRC plus. He was at his best this season. If you do limit it to against righties and you set the minimum at 500 plate appearances, then he has been the 10th best hitter in baseball, 148 WRC plus between Kyle Tucker and Raphael Devers, like just below Gunnar Henderson, just above Mookie Betts. That's the kind of hitter he has been against righties. And I don't know that the national audience knows that, but

they know that now maybe because he hit this Titanic huge home run against of all people, Emmanuel Classe. And I joked that when Devin Williams gave up that home run, that there's some mom in Milwaukee who is thinking of Devin Williams as a choker, just like my mom thinks of Marianne Rivera. Perhaps there's a mom in Cleveland who is thinking that of Emanuel Gose. Now, of course it's not fair, but it's their lot in life, right? It goes with the territory of being a closer because you can be great all season and not blow a save for several months and hardly ever allow a run. But whenever you falter, it's bound to be in a big game and you're going to be the goat in that game.

So you could be like Lucas Erceg who had a rocky outing, closing the Yankees out on Monday and gave up a homer to Jess Chisholm and had the tying run come up and ultimately nailed it down. But very often when you do stumble and you give up runs, those runs are really going to hurt. And people are going to remember that because you pitch long enough for good enough teams, you're going to get reps in that situation. And even if you are Mariana Rivera, you're going to have a couple extremely memorable blown saves and losses on your resume, even though you're maybe the best postseason pitcher of all time, inning by inning or not even inning printing. I don't know that you even need that

qualifier with Rivera because he just had so many postseason innings even going one or two at a time. So yeah, it did seem like a bit of an error in judgment in Klasay's case when, I mean, he threw like 78% cutters this season and it's famously one of the best pitches in baseball, right? So probably there haven't been that many times where he threw three sliders in a row, particularly when it's not going well, right? Like when the slider doesn't seem to be moving the way he wants or in the location that he wants. And I guess the more you do it, double and triple up, the less predictable it gets. But also if you have Kasei's cutter, it's kind of the classic like, well, you don't

want to get beat on your next best pitch, which sometimes you should be beaten on not your best pitch because you can't just throw your best pitch all the time or it won't be effective because everyone will be anticipating it. But also three in a row when you're Klausse and you've got the cutter. But to be fair, typically Klausse's slider is nasty too. It wasn't as effective on a per pitch basis run value wise as the cutter this season, but over the course of Klausse' career, the slider actually rates better. It's just that this outing, everything was up.

So yeah, it was a mistake and also Carpenter crushed it. So. He crushed it. So Philly got a great game out of Zach Wheeler, who like Tarek Schuipul did his part and delivered the Cy Young caliber kind of performance that you expect and hope for out of someone like Wheeler. He held up his end of the bargain and then as soon as he got removed from the game and I was almost, I was glad that he didn't get pulled with a low pitch count because then you always get a round of, oh, they pulled them too quickly and manager mistake and saber

metrics, rabble, rabble, rabble, right? And we didn't get that here because he was clearly like at the point where he would be pulled. And then the Mets took advantage of the also strong Phillies bullpen. This was going back to game one and you just kind of have to hand it to them at some point. Like you just, you keep it close, you wait out that starter getting pulled and you always hear on these broadcasts that the opposing team is happy when that starter gets pulled. Even if you're bringing in a bunch of flame throwing fireballing relievers that just like, get that guy out of here. Cause like clearly we can't hit him. And psychologically, I would understand that,

even if you would think like the numbers would say, yeah, you want to go to the pen. Whereas maybe if you're on the field, you're not feeling that maybe, you know, the players on that pitchers team are thinking, just leave it in there. We want to see him a fourth time through cause no one can touch him today.

Maybe the other team is saying thank you, even though the numbers would certainly suggest making a change there. That team just feels ineffectual against that guy on that day. Sometimes it really is just about waiting out the ace and then attacking not the underbelly of the bullpen, sometimes the good part too. But the Mets obviously have had their comeback mojo going since that doubleheader and really all season I guess they led the majors in comebacks, right? So they have a good offense and they have had a knack for coming up big in those spots

and you feel bad for Wheeler who did all he could do, but sometimes it ends the breaks because pitchers don't go the distance these days for the most part. Yeah, I think that we are prone to overrating the danger or at least I think folks in the dugout sometimes are prone to overrating the danger of a reliever coming in versus the starter staying in, right? Like at a certain point, even with very good starters, you might prefer that they go a third or fourth time through the order. But I also think that they're, you know, it's not like complete games are completely unprecedented in today's game.

They're just very uncommon. And I think you forget, I think that you forget the trepidation, right? Like, you know, maybe in the moment, the Mets dugout was like, oh, thank God, we don't have to deal with Wheeler anymore. But they don't remember if they felt like that, right? Because it worked out great for them, you know, in that game. They're like, this bum of a bullpen, let's go, you know, like, I think, I think that you just, I don't know, you just feel away. Yeah. And we know the numbers say even if you're cruising, even if you look great, that doesn't

mean you're likely to continue to do that or more likely than you would be in general. And we've seen that this posting too. Look at Carlos Redon just mowing down the Royals early on and then- Until not. Yeah, until not, until he didn't. Right. And Wheeler had thrown 111 pitches. So again, totally fine. There have been some kind of controversial managerial either hooks or slow hooks, like

I guess Carlos Mendoza leaving Jose Quintana in arguably a little too long, right? That was maybe a mistake. And I am always happy when we don't have to fixate on that because that's just been such a staple of postseason coverage and not always second guessing, often first guessing too, but it just, it becomes a broken record to have the whole analysis of the game revolve around, should have kept him in, should have pulled him. It's just a little rote at this point because we've all kind of embraced and accepted and resigned ourselves to the third time through the order penalty. It does still sort of surprise me. I know it shouldn't after all this time, but the way that broadcasters talk about momentum so stubbornly within games where the quote

unquote momentum has already shifted multiple times, it can't possibly mean that much because if it meant something, then that earlier lead would have held up. And I am fine with talking about momentum in a descriptive sense, but it really does still seem like broadcasters talk about it in a predictive sense, like in a, this team has the momentum and therefore is more likely to win than this other team or to come back. And I just don't know how in the face of games like that, where you have so many lead changes,

where if you graphed the momentum or who had it at any given time, it would look a lot like the win expectancy graph. How can you keep those ideas in your head at the same time, where you're watching this back and forth affair, where this team has the upper hand and that team has the upper hand, and then suddenly one team retakes the lead

and you talk about how they have the momentum now and how this is big because the other team was coming back and then they, you know, shut down innings and blah, blah, blah. I just, I don't get it. Like I know if you're probably particularly prone to that, if you have been a player and you've been on the field and you have felt what that feels like, I don't doubt that there is some way in which it feels like, oh, okay, we're rolling now.

Like we got the big moe, I get that. And yet in some of these games where there are several lead changes, that would seem to disprove the importance of momentum swings, because if it can just swing back the other way, that's not meaningful momentum. I don't understand why we make so much of it. So if you want to say like we need another word. We need another word. Yeah. I think that's what it is because momentum implies that that team is kind of going to keep moving in that direction. Unless like acted on by another force, which I think of a boulder rolling downhill, right? Like that is what I think of when I think of an object gathering momentum. Like, whoa, look at that rock, get out of the way,

right? Unless there's a barrier, it's going to crush you. And like, that's not how baseball works a lot of the time. And it's certainly not how it's worked in any of these series. So I think you're right. We need a, I wonder, can I offer a theory, if part of the growing popularity of discussing things in terms of vibes is like trying to capture this, right? Because it does feel like we are at peak deployment of vibes as a concept. I've already talked about them on today's episode, Ben. I've already been all about these vibes and how you gotta be about your vibes. I do wonder if that is part of why we see people, at least some subset of people,

starting to gravitate toward that. They're trying to capture this notion where you feel like you got a good thing going and it's likely to continue. But sometimes a rock like rolls downhill and then there are those nets to catch landslides. And then like, guess what? Guess what has arrested the movement as well as the momentum. And now you're driving below it and you're like, wow, my car is fine.

Got a vroom vroom. So moments like this, I have sympathy for Scott Boris. I want to say that. I'm like trying to find the right analogy. But- There's friction. So you've got your mass, you've got your velocity, but then there are impediments, there are obstacles, there is an opponent. Right. It's not drawn. Yes, it's just, yeah. You know where you're gliding. there is an opponent and yes, it's just. It's not drawn. Yeah. You know where you're gliding.

There's been studies looking for some effect of momentum and it just, there doesn't seem to be anything. So I'm fine with, yes, it's something that kind of captures the idea that there's been an excitement swing here that this team's fans are currently psyched and this team's fans are dejected. When we go beyond that to suggest that this team is now, let's say, less likely to come back or less likely to triumph because the

momentum is on this team's side. And I suppose there's something to the idea of momentum. Like if you take the lead in the postseason and you've got a good bullpen, well, now you're more likely to hold onto that lead. Maybe that you're a better team when you have the lead beyond a certain inning. If you can entrust great shutdown relievers with the ball beyond that point, then let's say if you're playing from behind relative to the rest of the league, this has been a hallmark of other teams.

Even I think the Royals of a decade ago, where it was like when they had a lead, they were better than average compared to other teams with similar leads at similar points in the game. And then when they were behind, not so much because offense wasn't so much their strength. It was like when they had a lead, then they had the great defense and they had the shutdown bullpen and they could keep that lead better than most teams. So there's something to that maybe, but yeah. Like if you find yourself talking about the momentum on multiple sides of the same game and attributing some significance

to that other than just vibes, then I think you've gone wrong. But I recognize that it's tough to resist, especially if you're on the scene and the place is rocking and you're feeling it and you're seeing the players emoting, then yeah, you can get caught up in that and you should get caught up in that. But also there should be a little voice in the back of your head that's saying, yeah, but you know, that other team was winning until like that happened. And you know, like they were then riding high and now they have fallen low and turnabout is fair play and that can happen again. LS FLEMING I do wonder, you've inspired another thought

in me, which is that I wonder if part of what the momentum discourse is trying to capture is just like grappling with probabilistic thinking and we struggle with that, I think. I don't want to call out any individual broadcaster, but I just think culturally we don't do a good job of thinking probabilistically and having a good sense of how deterministic probabilities are. And so yeah, maybe what they're really trying to say is you have a good bullpen in the lead in the postseason and a lot of the time when teams have those two things in concert with one another, they win baseball games. But you're maybe either not comfortable or not able to articulate that case in precisely that way. And so then we end up with momentum. And it's like, well, so maybe it's that, you know, maybe it's about that, Ben.

Well, maybe it'll help to have wind probability on the screen at all times so that we can all become more familiar with the concept of probabilistic thinking. I just don't think that it's necessary. I do wish that we did a better job educating people on probabilistic thinking, and I don't want to be so fancy about it. For instance, I think this is a thing we're seeing, not to bring up politics, but we see momentum discourse in the context of campaigns all the time too. We're seeing some of that now where enthusiastic Democrats from July are panicking. Part of that is that I think in general people on the left have a higher rate of generalized

anxiety disorder. She says with sympathy. And so there's a sense of a vibe shift when the polling hasn't really moved in a way that would necessarily drive that. And you can try to remind yourself of that as much as you want, but you're still panicking at three in the morning and you say that as a swing state voter. And so like, you know, just like pick a completely random example. So-

No, just on the day that we're recording this, Nate Silver wrote a post for his sub stack Silver Bulletin, which is- Are you admitting to being a Nate Silver sub stack subscriber, Beth? I'm not a subscriber, but I do read it fairly regularly and I- What's it like? What's it like to be in the mind of a man who seems to be in the throes of a debilitating gambling addiction? Just saying. He is very much more enthusiastic and interested in gambling than I am.

Lord. Certainly. So some of the poker illusions are lost on me. But I think his read on where the election stands is not bad and he takes a lot of flack from both sides because he's often saying something that one side or the other doesn't like, but his recent post is all about the fact that, I mean, he has the race as like 55-45 Harris Trump right now. And the whole post is basically like, that's the closest thing

to a coin flip, which sounds self-evident to me. The headline is 55-45 is a really close race, which I wouldn't even think would need to be a post. Yes, that's almost as close as it can possibly be. But evidently, that is not how a lot of people think of it, that if it's anything other than like exactly 50-50, now some people misinterpret those probabilities and think it's like 55% of the vote versus 45% of the vote, which obviously is not what it's saying. But even people who understand that it's a probability

of victory or defeat, still like when it swings anywhere from a coin flip to the point where you would say that one side is favored or one candidate is favored, then it's like, well, once you swing over into that category, you don't maintain the appropriate understanding of just like, yeah, but it's the closest thing to a coin flip. It's like a slightly weighted coin perhaps, but you know, it basically might as well be a coin flip. And that's before you factor in polling errors and everything,

which I guess the projection does, but you know, I saw the headline and I was like, well, yeah, 55, 45 is a really close race. No, no kidding. Why do I need to read about this? But evidently a lot of people do. So that does sort of speak to that lack of understanding of things that way. And I guess our brains just aren't really

wired to think of things that way. And so you need to kind of constantly remind yourself. And baseball can be helpful, I think, to look at things in that way. It certainly helped me. It has, if nothing else, offered me a welcome distraction. Thank you, 2024 postseason for being so good and keeping my mind quieter than I anticipated it would be. Yeah. Anyway. On Saturday, there were three replay reviews that were kind of controversial because they all, well, they appeared maybe to be cases where the initial call on the field led to the replay review decision because it was a call stand.

It was not a call confirmed or call overturned. And we've talked about this before, whether this should even be a thing, whether we should give priority to the call on the field, which is what MLB's replay review process does. The ump makes the call on the field and then the replay ump has to have clear, pretty convincing definitive evidence in order to overturn that. And if it's not definitive, then the call stands. If you can't conclusively say the call was right or the call was wrong, then you just default to, well, the person who was on the scene, Johnny on the spot made that call, then that stands because we just can't quite tell. So there were three calls like this that from some replay angles, at least it appeared that the initial call was incorrect. And then the call stood upon review.

So there was a Trey Turner potentially being picked off at first call. There was Freddie Freeman, surprisingly stealing second base on his banged up ankle. And then... Was that the play where his pants ripped just so wide open? It was. Yes. Okay. I didn't even remember that that was reviewed.

I just remembered the pants. Yeah, right. We did not need replay or many angles to confirm that his pants were torn. They definitely were. The other one was Jazz Chisholm being ruled safe on a steal at second. And this one was actually quite consequential. The others arguably didn't end up mattering that much.

But Jazz, who slid in under this tag by Royal second baseman, Michael Massey, he was ruled safe, the call stood, and then he scored on a single by Alex Verdugo. And that was the go-ahead and winning run. That was the difference in a 6-5 Yankees victory. And MLB came out and said, so Royals manager Matt Quattaro, he said, they just said there was nothing clear and convincing to overturn it. And if he had been called out, that call would have stood too. So just acknowledging that, yeah, we just couldn't quite tell.

And MLB said in the statement after viewing all relevant angles, the replay official could not definitively determine that the fielder tagged the runner prior to the runner touching second base. Additionally, the replay official could not definitively determine that the runner failed to maintain contact with the base as the fielder was applying the tag. that the runner failed to maintain contact with the base as the fielder was applying the tag. And again, it has to be clear and convincing evidence. Quattraro called it kind of like a court system. You have to clear and convincing. And what does that mean? Clearly we're saying

that there was evidence to overturn it, but we're talking about a fraction of an inch at high speed and all that. I understand how difficult that is on everyone involved. So we talked about this early in the season, whether this standard should stand, whether this call should stand to set up the replay review process this way. And I don't know if we have any new thoughts that we didn't express then, but it continues to come back to at least cause a lot of agitator for fans because when you see that angle and you know, there were like freeze frames and freeze frames can be kind of deceptive, but also sometimes telling and all of these were like, oh, it looks like there's just the tiniest sliver of daylight there. And they all did kind of look like that to me, that maybe the call was incorrect, but I wasn't 100% sure that it was incorrect. So it's just like clear and convincing. What's the standard? Is it

beyond all reasonable doubt? Is it just a preponderance of the evidence? Is that what it should be? Should we just forget about the call on the field at all? Sometimes there are times where the up on the field might have a better view of it and you might not have the perfect replay review angle, but also sometimes maybe the replay ump is a bit biased by the fact that he'd be overturning a colleague and going against this precedent that was already laid down like any judge,

you look to precedent, right? And whether it's conscious or unconscious. Well, maybe not any judge. Maybe not any judge, you look to precedent, right? And whether it's conscious or unconscious, well, maybe not any judge. Sorry to everyone who's like, Meg, talking about politics, don't mind it on the pod. This is a new episode for you, apparently. I'm surprised too. Who knew? So should we do a wave altogether with that standard? And then we were talking about, well, could you cut the umpire out of the replay entirely? And that's probably not feasible in every angle on this timeline, right?

Like sometimes you're just going to get the shot of that calling safer out. And then how can you put that out of your mind? But if you did tell them just, Hey, forget about that call entirely and make the call based on what you see, I think we would see more calls changed. Would that be better or worse? I don't know for sure. And people are going to be pissed either way, obviously, if it goes against your team, then you're not going to be happy about it. Yeah. I remain lightly in favor, and I might've expressed this thought with greater conviction than I am right now, but I remain lightly in favor of disregarding the call on the field, right?

I don't think that the purpose of replay is to adjudicate the umpire's call. I think it's to determine what happened or that should be what replay is for. I like this idea of it's like, are we establishing a criminal or a civil standard when it comes to replay? What are we talking about? Right? Look, the purpose of replay is to as best we are able with all of the cameras at our disposal and the ability to, in moments that are bang bang on the field, to use the fact

that we can slow that stuff down afterward and determine what happened. Jazz looked out to me. I appreciate that it's a close call. I don't know that if the standard were different and what they were attempting to do is say, here's what happened, and they had decided he got his toe in there, I don't think I would have been apoplectic about that because it is quite close. But I think that the folks in the replay center should have to have the courage of their convictions. Don't be mice, don't be cowards. Say what you think with your whole chest, let that stand.

And then, you know, I guess I'm also a little bit skeptical, not skeptical that it matters, but I want to like invite the folks in the Replay Center to say like, why do you care if the ump on the field gets huffy? Who cares? You got to get it right. You got to get the call right. You're right to say that a lot of the time it doesn't end up mattering that much, but sometimes it really does. And like you said, it made the difference in that Yankees-Royals game. I wonder if it's a thing that they will look at, if there will be some sort of philosophical shift,

maybe not as a result of the call at second base in that game. Again, it was very close and I think that, you know, you don't wanna maybe use that as justification to upend the whole system. But when high speeds, super slow mo kind of camera looks were introduced to broadcast, the league was receptive eventually to the notion of like, oh, we need to expand replay

review and allow this to happen because we can't have the folks at home knowing a call in the field is wrong and then letting it stand. That is a problem within the game that we both have the technology to solve and philosophically need to. And I wonder if there will be sort of a change of thinking around this stuff because prioritizing like, and this is a very, I'm being a little bit of an asshole when I say it this way, but like prioritizing not having the folks in the replay center like offend the sensibilities of the empire on the field is like a really bad motivation to care about within the context of replay. And I don't think it's quite so, you know,

trite as that, but it's like, who care? Who care? It doesn't matter. Like, get the call right. The call getting, getting the call right is what matters. Let's make sure that the, the purpose of this system is sort of oriented around that goal. You're not going to get it right 100% of the time. And that's like the unfortunate reality that we have to live with. But if we didn't have replay, we'd have to live with that reality, only we'd be even more annoyed. Right? So, this is, I think the system operates fairly well.

And I think that quite often they get it right. I don't think that there's like a crisis of replay or anything like that, but I do think this is an area that we should keep thinking about because I don't think that it's necessarily the right standard that we're employing here. BOWEN Yes. And I know there are people who are anti-replay entirely or think there's been replay creep. And I know sometimes it's worse in other sports and football and you end up with existential, philosophical, epistemic questions like what's a catch anyway? And how do we define these things that you'd think you know it when you see it?

And there are people who say, well, you should only be able to watch replays at game speed, or you should only have so long to review it, or you should only have so many angles and all that. And I get what they're saying, but I think on the whole, things are just better this way. I'm just, I'm generally pro replay and I think maybe people are forgetting how infuriating it was. It was maddening. It was like, try to claw your own eyes out kind of maddening. It was so annoying. It was the worst. It was the worst. Yeah. When a meaningful call would go against your team and it was clearly and obviously incorrect. And yes, people are saying, well, yeah, if you watch on a game speed replay,

then you would be able to detect the clear and obvious ones. And really we just don't want the ones that are by a hair or some fraction of a millimeter or you slide off the base and come off and get tagged and that sort of thing. I'm sympathetic to that last point, but yeah, I just, if we have the technology and generally we do, I do like the idea of getting these calls right. I'm not going to talk about Robo Ops right now because that opens me up to a whole, what, you want to get the calls right? I know, I know there is some slight inconsistency there, but also there are some mitigating factors and things that I appreciate.

Yeah, we don't have to re-litigate that again. Yeah, or we will, I'm sure at some point it will come up again. Yeah, it's the long off season. We got to talk about Zomben. Yeah. So I have some follow-ups here. I guess we could briefly talk about beef if we want. The risk of talking about Dodgers Padres beef is that there may have been more beef by the time this episode is out. But we should cover the existing beef, right? We can talk about the beef to this point.

Yeah. So what we can certainly say is that there are no controversies about opposing players hugging Manny Machado in the Padres-Dodgers series. That is not the debate at hand here. Just the opposite, in fact. Manny Machado has re-embraced the villain role, but also embraced the leader role. It's kind of an interesting contrast here.

And also we've just got stupidity on the part of some small number of Dodgers fans who are throwing things on the field. It's hard even to recount exactly the blow by blow here because a lot of it is silly, but some of it is understandable. And also we were saying we want rivalries and we want heated sports interactions

and we want teams to want to beat each other and have some small amount of bad blood, like not to the point where actual blood is drawn, but just, you know, sports kind of controversies and rivalries. And here we're getting maybe a little more than that. So this really came to a boil in game two of the Dodgers-Padres series. Obviously, a lot of history with these teams going back a few years now. No love lost in some cases.

Now, there were some things that were really nice about this game, I thought, such as you Darvish pitching a gem, excelling in front of that LA crowd, which I thought was really nice. Obviously, he missed a lot of time this year for personal reasons and he comes back and he's doing his darvish thing and just spinning a zillion different types of pitches and flummoxing the Dodgers hitters. And the last time he pitched as a Dodger, of course, were the two unfortunate world series starts against the 2017 Astros.

Nice for him to have this redemption of sorts pitching against the Dodgers. And then you also had, so Jirx and Profar robbed a homer, really nice play against Mookie Betts early in that game. And he trolled and he taunted a little bit and he no-sold the catch. He kind of passed it off as a home run to the point that Mookie passing first base, raised his fist and triumph.

And then profile the prestige. He revealed that actually he had caught the ball long, which was like, it's funny. You know? Now I understand. Yeah. Now if you're a Dodgers fan, if you're a Dodger, I can understand being a bit miffed about that where he's trying to dupe you into thinking that you hit a home, but you know, all in good fun.

At least it was at that point I thought. And then there was other stuff later in the game where Fernando Tatis was getting heckled and he was dancing in response to that. Dancing at the Dodgers fans. We're fine at dancing. We're fine at dance-offs. No one gets hurt there. Well, some people might get hurt dancing, but not in this case. And then we had additional controversy where after Tatis

was doing the dancing and also he had hit really well, right? And he had a homer, he had multiple extra bass hits and then he got hit, what was it? Leading off the sixth by Jack Flaherty. And this was interpreted as a reprisal as, you know, guy who's been hitting you and has been demonstrative plunking him. Now Flaherty of course denied it and said, why would I in that situation? We're down two runs. Like I've gotten the last six guys out.

I'm not going to intentionally put Fernando Tatis on base, which certainly seems right to me. I mean, it would have been extremely ill-advised of him to put Fernando Tatis on base on purpose in that situation in an important playoff game when you're already trailing. So I tend to believe that, yeah, he just lost his command of that pitch. I get that players in the heat of the moment are not looking at the win expectancy chart, although I would still implore them to consider the situation sometimes like that.

That is relevant, right? Anyway, Manny Machado took exception to that, also took exception to Flaherty inflaming things, I guess, by when he got out of that inning, was really crowing and celebrating. And after he struck out Machado, and then some of Machado's teammates were drawing at Flaherty about that, and then informed Machado

that Flaherty had been yelling at him, right? So it just goes back and forth. And yeah, and then there is the incident in what was it? The seventh where Profar, who is, uh, has not endeared himself to fans in the outfield corner, people are throwing things, people are throwing balls in his general vicinity, then there's a delay of games, security comes out, the PA message gets sent, you know, we get the, the PA message gets sent. You know, we get the, the Simpsons style, you know,

just some sort of sanity, it's a black day for baseball. Right? Right. No pretzels were being thrown on the field, but beer cans were. Oh, but beer cans were. Yes. So, so that happened and that stopped the game for a while and Darvish to his credit, didn't get iced by that at all.

Just came back and finished the inning, so good for him. And Machado, gosh, there's so many layers to this. Like an onion. Yeah, tracing the drama here. So Machado, I guess it was in the eighth that he delivered a speech to pep up the Padres in the dugout, and this was like his big Jason Hayward rain delay moment, which I think a lot of people were like,

this is the moment Manny Machado became president kind of thing. Cause like Machado has been known as not a demonstrative leader, like obviously an incredible player, but not someone who is necessarily setting the tone vocally or verbally. That was one of the themes

of those Padres post-mortems last year when people were blaming their lousy luck on a lack of leadership or rudderless clubhouse or whatever. And people were saying, oh, you know, Manny Machado, he's not the type of leader you want. Well, here he was stepping up and pumping up his team and the team responded. So there's this big moment for him. But then also, I guess already by that point, it's hard for me to trace the sequence of events, but already by that point, I think he had responded to the plunking and the yelling and everything by throwing a ball after between inning infield practice in the direction of the Dodgers dugout in the way that infielders often do as opposed to tossing that ball to the pitcher. If there's some blemish

on the ball, they'll just. Right, it's just scuffed in some way. Yeah. Yeah. They'll just toss it out of play and someone will retrieve it. That's nothing out of the norm. But in this case, Machado, well, it wasn't an underhand toss. It wasn't a soft toss. It's not as if he was firing it at full speed or anything. It was bouncing, but it was in the direction of the Dodgers dugout, which was protected by a screen. I don't think he was trying to hurt anyone or anything, but I think it's plausible at least that he meant to send some sort of message there. There are multiple angles. It's like the Zapruder film on this thing, like multiple grainy high home shots of this thing have surfaced, much like our Carlos Sestegas deep dive turned up these multiple angles that

showed that he was actually warming in the top of the ninth in the bullpen that day. multiple angles that showed that he was actually warming in the top of the ninth in the bullpen that day. So we have some evidence here, you know, interpretations differ. Dave Roberts says that he felt like Machado was throwing it at him, you know, in his direction that he felt unsettled by this. Machado, you know, said he was throwing it to a bat boy, right? But there didn't appear to be one in that vicinity. And infielders will often throw those balls to their own dugout. Yeah, right. But the Dodgers dugout was the closer dugout.

Yes. And the Dodgers home dugout is on the third base side and the Padres home dugout is on the first base side, though obviously Manny has played for the Dodgers and and Dave Roberts, so there's history there which could play into all of this. It wasn't a light toss and Machado said I throw balls all the time in the dugout, but he also like when he was questioned about whether he threw it hard, he then responded, did Flaherty throw the ball hard at our guy? Which if it was not intentional, if you're trying to allay suspicion, that's probably not the response you would have. No one was endangered by this. It's kind of overblown, but also I think it's quite

possible to suggest, if not likely, I don't know what our standard of evidence needs to be here reviewing this replay, but it seemed to me that there was likely some sentiment behind that. So that's where things stand as we record, and hopefully that's where this will end, but you never know. If someone throws it Machado and we get warnings and benches clearing, then that would not shock me, but it would dismay me slightly. Okay. Do you want to know my take on this? Yes, please. My extremely considered take from minutes of analysis of the different camera angles that have been made publicly available about this. Okay. Here, I think a couple of things.

I think it is fair, given prior behavior on Manny Machado's part to like have a little less of a benefit of the doubt given to his behavior in this moment. Cause like he's been prone to be, you know, a little bit of a cad, you know, a minor villain to be puckish, to be perhaps willing to slide hard, right? Yes, against Orlando Arceus actually, one of those times I guess they made up. Orlando Arceus is actually going to factor into the back half of my take here. I think it's fine to not extend to him the same benefit of the doubt that we might to someone else. I also think that like that cuts both ways where like let's imagine, I don't know, that

Xander Bogart or Jake Cronenworth or another member of the San Diego Padres in field had done the same thing. I don't know that it would have necessarily received the same degree of scrutiny that Machado's throw did. So like, that's a, you want to keep that sort of balance of doubt and benefit thereof in mind. I think a couple of things. I think it's perfectly plausible and looking at the video, this is what it looks like. The man in Machado put a little extra mustard on that throw, right? There's like a little bit of whoop on that throw.

I do not think that that throw was dangerous though, right? And I don't think that he was headhunting Dave Roberts. Was it a little bit rude? Was it a little bit- Was it pointed? Right, was it pointed? Yeah, yeah. Yes, it was.

But I don't think that it was dangerous, which I think is an important sort of qualification to put on it here. It mostly felt like the kind of thing that might happen in a tense game between division rivals when baseballs and beer cans have been thrown at a couple of your teammates, right? That feels like it's in the air. It's crackling, right? Should he do it again? I mean, probably not because I think that the points have been made, there's enough

tension. You want to de-escalate rather than further escalate these sorts of things because rivalry is fun and good and jawing at each other can be fun and good and a little bit of chicanery can be fun and good, but like a benches clearing brawl in an enjoyable postseason series, not fun and good, right? You don't want guys to get hurt. You don't want guys to be made unavailable by suspension. So that's an important thing for everyone to keep in mind as they go into San Diego.

We want cooler heads to prevail. I'm going to say something about the Dodgers now. And I want to preface this by saying, I know that the way that I'm going to express this thought is mildly problematic. I want to acknowledge that upfront. I think that if you are the Dodgers and you feel offended by Manny Machado's behavior and think it was rude, that that is a perfectly reasonable reaction. And if you want to stand at your locker and say, what he did was unacceptable and we're

going to show him that on the field next time by winning this series, awesome. But as Orlando Arcea showed us last postseason, don't volunteer to be a whiny little b***h. Just don't do it. Don't volunteer to be whiny. You should bleep the last word there, Shane, because people are going to know what I mean. And I get that that's not a great word. I'm a feminist. I know how it cuts. But don't do it. Don't do it. Because to return to the notion of vibes, these things are delicate, man. The vibes are delicate and what you should do is like lean in to the tense frott. Don't sit there and act like you were imperiled by this task to the dugout. You

were not imperiled by that task. I don't think it was dangerous. So just don't come across as the whiner because the public sentiment around this stuff can shift in a profound way. Is that totally fair? No, but vibes aren't fair, Ben. They're vibes. They're in the air, man. So that's what I think about that.

Sorry for being like a touch problematic, but I just think it's the right phrase. It's the right turn of phrase for this moment. Okay? And as long as it doesn't advance beyond this, then look, no one has gotten- I just think it's the right phrase. It's the right turn of phrase for this moment, okay? And as long as it doesn't advance beyond this, then look, no one has gotten- The phrase or the action on the field. Yes, as long as you don't escalate your problematic behavior on this podcast.

No, as long as the Padres and the Dodgers leave it there, and this might be famous last words, but obviously we will follow up if that's not the case. But if it doesn't go beyond this point, then fine. No one has gotten hurt because of this stuff. It's just, it's gamesmanship, it's rivalries, it's bad blood, it's some bitterness. It's people who care about the competition, who feel the stakes and have played each other a lot. And in some cases don't like each other, or at least don't like each other

in sort of a sports way. Right now, yeah. Yeah, and it's sometimes good to have a heel, someone who plays the heel role, and Manny Machado has played that role in the past, and sometimes you can get kind of tarred with that brush, and it's unfair then, your actions are perceived in light of those past actions,

and you have changed, you have reformed, but also sometimes past actions do kind of predict future results, right? So I think it's helpful to have someone that teams can kind of pile on in a sense, and it can be fun to have a Tatius who's dancing at Dodgers fans or a profar who's taunting Dodgers fans, as long as though those fans then don't respond in a stupid way, which no one ever approves of throwing stuff on a field. Like no one, no one ever thinks that's a good idea. And I don't know if there was just intoxication involved or what, but like your own players

who you're there to cheer for, they don't want you to do that. Like they think you're adults doing that. So just don't, you're embarrassing yourself. You're affecting the competition. It's not about you. Don't make anyone feel unsafe. That is a situation where someone legitimately can feel unsafe.

Not this pointed toss to the dugout, but people throwing stuff on the field. Well, who knows what they're gonna throw? Who knows if they're gonna jump on the field, which happens, right? Like these things, there are incidents in the past where people who've actually gotten attacked and seriously hurt, right? So, so you just never know when you don't want to feel unsafe on the field.

And so don't contribute to that feeling of a lack of safety, aside from the fact of you're just disrupting the game. Can we please go back to watching this good postseason game, not people cleaning up beer and balls from the outfield and people ringing the fields standing there with their walkie talkies. That's not what any of us wants to see. So that's always wrong and intentionally throwing at people in a like actual pitch way is always

wrong in my book, but, or virtually always. But you know, if it doesn't go beyond that, then it's just, okay, the series has some juice, you know, these teams care the way that that fans care. It enhances the experience as long as it doesn't go beyond that point. So hopefully cooler heads will prevail. And I think I want to clarify two things. One, I join you in the don't throw things at players on the field. Don't ever do it.

Don't do it even one time. Based on the footage that we've seen, I don't think that either Pro4 or Tatis were like jawing at and taunting the fans in the outfield just out of the clear blue nowhere. I feel like that had, it had the vibe of a vibes, man. Now it's a, now I'm overusing it. I hear myself. I know. I agree. But it had the feel of a dialogue rather than a monologue. So put it that way. And I just want to clarify, I'm using, because Shane's going to believe it, I'm using the problematic B word, not the problematic C word because this is an immense rights podcast. I'm not, I'm not taking problematic B word, not the problematic C word, because this is in a men's rights podcast.

I'm not taking that kind of a heel turn. Relax. You draw the line somewhere. Yeah, I mean, one has to, right? And a very firm line must be drawn there if we're being completely candid. So yeah, don't volunteer to be a whiner. That's a less problematic way of putting it. Don't throw things at players, and everyone on both the Dodgers and the Padres takes stock of the stakes of the moment, as I'm sure you all will, because even though you are

emotional human beings, you are also adults and competitors and want to advance, and don't do anything to jeopardize your ability to do that. You want to lose if you do, having done everything you can to compete, and you can't compete if you're not on the field, Ben, famously. So, there you go. Well, maybe it will look like we were wise and we realized that things would calm down, or maybe in retrospect as people are listening to this, it'll be like, silly Ben and Meg. You don't even know what's coming. How innocent, how naive you were,

appealing to the better angels of the natures here. So we'll see. I have a few follow-ups. One is about the green screen or lack thereof. So the ads which have continued to bother me, it's not on every broadcast, it's not on every channel, but it has been, yeah, it's been really eye-catching, really front and center,

especially on some of these broadcasts where the digital ad is projected like on the right side of the plates, like behind the right-hand batter's box. And then it's just a constant, the umpire's mask is flickering, the hitter's hands are coming in and out of the frame. It's really noticeable and bad. And we got an interesting email from Harry,

subject line, postseason digitally overlaid ads, adding to the discussion on the podcast the other day about green screen ads in which you said there must be technology to make this more convincing and stop the flickering effects, there is green screens. Postseason broadcast did use actual green screens for a while to project digital ads onto and we never had this issue because they're designed to project things onto.

I've attached a photo from the 2022 World Series, I'll link to this on the show page, which clearly shows the literal green screen which was used to put ads on. So this is a photo not from the broadcast but from actually in the ballpark and you can clearly see just a green rectangle behind home plate. on. So this is a photo, not from the broadcast, but from actually in the ballpark. And you can clearly see just a green rectangle behind home plate. You can't see the ad. This is what people in the park saw. That was what was physically there, just a green screen. Okay. So Harry continues, we are forced into the conclusion that MLB has done away with actual green screens so they can squeeze out the few extra dollars they receive

by having that physical ad space available for people in the park to see. It really can't be that much money at all and yet they're willing to throw the quality of the post-season broadcast down the toilet just so they can have it obscene levels of penny pinching. So he is suggesting that we had a perfectly fine solution which is that you forego having an ad in that space in the park.

So there are some number of eyes that are not on an ad, the people who are physically present, but for everyone else who's watching at home from afar, they don't get the distracting off-putting flickering because it's actually projected on a green screen and therefore it looks convincing and seamless. So I reached out to a couple people I know in broadcast production, one who works on

local baseball broadcasts and one who works on national baseball broadcasts. And I ran Harry's hypothesis by them and his explanation, like, is this what is actually happening here? It's that we used to be a civilization. We used to just have actual green screens. We used to have a society, yeah. Yeah, and now we just don't. And you know, Harry sent a follow-up

where it's a picture from the 2013 World Series where David Ortiz used a green bat grip. Oh, yeah. And it had the home plate ad projected onto it. Yes, this would happen. I remember this happening. But that was rare and that was about as bad as it got. And Harry says, there certainly weren't any disappearing limbs. Notice there how they also used to make the effort to superimpose the ad on close-up angles. There really has been a deterioration in broadcast quality

on this point. So again, reached out to a couple of experts here. So the local broadcast person, both of, neither of these people wanted to be named as a somewhat sensitive subject. So I have redacted the identifying details and names here, but the first person I spoke to said, I'm really glad you brought this up. I know the baseball world was losing their mind about a dugout interview in the ninth inning of a postseason game, but I was going bonkers about the fact that their virtual signage

was glitching out constantly. Oh my gosh. Next time you put a game on, I want you to count the number of sponsors you see on the screen from the centerfield camera. That's not even taking into account the logos on the helmets and jerseys. It's all greed. They used to use green screens to chroma the ads onto the background, but now they're just

overlaying it onto the boards that already have ads on them. And because some of those ads are LEDs that change every inning, I'm guessing the software that is manipulating the virtual signage would need to be recalibrated every inning to look halfway decent. It drives me crazy. Yeah. This person also said even during the regular season I'll put our game, our broadcasts on MLB TV, and they're overlaying their own ads over our ads. It's just greed to the grossest degree. Don't even get me started on the ads on the pitcher's mound.

It's becoming hard to even pick the ball up at the point of contact between the pitchcast and the virtual signage. There's a fine line between sneaky ad placement and right-handed hitters being literally swallowed up by a Capital One sign during the biggest game of the year. They are setting themselves up for something very embarrassing. And look, I'm fine with some number of ads. I guess, you know, there's always a compromise between art and commerce and I probably can swallow the ads on helmets and uniforms more than some people can too.

But this, I can stomach just some logos and stuff, but like when it's actively like flickering in a way that distracts me, like attracts my eyes, like our eyes are programmed, you know, where our attention is drawn to change and movement and that's what we're seeing here. And this person also told me that, you know, they have to frame the center field camera wide enough to show all the ads that their preference would be to have

a tighter shot, like to get closer to the action, but they have to keep it wider in order to show the ads on either side of the plate. And that is kind of annoying. I guess I wasn't really aware of that. I don't mind the standard stock angle. That's not something that has actively bothered me. Maybe now it will that I'm aware of annoying. I guess I wasn't really aware of that. I don't mind the standard stock angle. That's not something that has actively bothered me. Maybe now it will that I'm aware of this, but this flickering and the lack of green screening,

that really gets my goat. And so when I directed this message also to someone who's worked on national broadcasts, this person said, there's so much to unpack here, not sure where to start. The current system is essentially the same as the NHL. It erases what is in the stadium slash arena and replaces it with different advertising.

In theory, this is advantageous because it allows the team to sell ads in the stadium. Sell ads on the local broadcast or the national broadcast. For local, it might have different ads for the visiting broadcaster than the home. Different ads can also be applied downstream of the production to sell ads to Mexico, Latin America, Asia, et cetera.

In theory, this can be an effective business model for all parties to optimize revenue. It's hard for me to believe that MLB is just randomly implementing this without the awareness of the local teams, but I really don't know. This is a technically challenging approach. It takes more computing horsepower

than a relatively simple chroma key type of approach with the green board that you've seen in one form or another for generations. In my opinion, this new system works well on the NHL, but for whatever reason, the performance has been less consistently successful in baseball. Some of the challenges include changing light,

uniforms that are similar in color to the background, and the fact that the players are constantly occluding the sign. It needs- Right, because they move. Yes, they do. It's a sport. Standing there almost all the time in some cases.

It needs a high level of performance, and I would honestly say it is not delivering as consistently as it should be. Wow. On performance, and I would honestly say it is not delivering as consistently as it should be. Wow. On another note, I would also say that the neon green board is an eyesore that has lived on for 25 years now, and I don't think that should be acceptable either.

Everyone in the stadium can see it. This is a sport that is passionate about its stadium aesthetics, and everyone sees a big neon green sign right behind the home plate. In most circumstances, the TV audience also sees it on cameras other than the center field camera. The green board is also a far from perfect solution.

In theory, this is a system that can be aesthetically better and produce more revenue with customized advertising. In practice, its performance is coming up short right now of where it should be. So this is not just us or listeners of Effectively Wild ranting and raving about this. This is broadcast experts, people who have been involved on the production side

on local and national baseball broadcasts. And they too are frustrated and are acknowledging that this is not working well. So I have not reached out to MLB yet, perhaps I will to see if this is a concern that they will acknowledge or whether there's anything that they're thinking of doing differently here just to bring it to their attention. Yeah, if I do it if I... Yeah, maybe they don't know, Ben. Maybe they haven't thought... Yeah, maybe they're just, they're not watching the games.

I'm so glad that you brought that up, man. It's like really not consistent with the vibe. Bringing this to our attention. So glad you flag. That's like really not consistent with the vibe. Bringing this to our attention. So glad you flagged this. We will immediately rectify the situation. Yeah, right away. Yeah. So if I get a response from MLB about this,

I will follow up on the follow-up, but I think it's good to know that this is not, in our imagination, this is happening. This was not happening before. There is seemingly a simple solution, perhaps not an simple solution, perhaps not an ideal solution because you still are stuck with the green screen, but probably better than what we've got going now and that it would seem to be a cash grab behind this.

Now if Emily tells me there's some other motivation for this, fine, I will update, but it certainly seems like this is about maximizing revenue and I'm fine with maximizing revenue as long as there's no clear and obvious, clear and convincing to use the replay review language evidence that this is really compromising the quality of the broadcast. If our only options are green, in the ballpark, not, I think I'd prefer that. And that's a little selfish because generally I'm watching on TV and so does that compromise the way that it looks for fans in the ballpark? I mean, maybe, but I don't know that I think that an ad for Blue Cross Blue Shield is inherently

nicer to look at than a green screen thing that they're going to just, I don't know, pick an advertiser, right? But it does seem like some greater consideration should be given to the aesthetic concern here because it can, in addition to being distracting, like legitimately make it difficult to follow the path of the ball. And like, that's ridiculous. Once you're in that territory, you need to make an adjustment, I think. Yes, absolutely. And yeah, just from a utilitarian standpoint,

there's so many more people watching on TV. And not all the people in the ballpark can even see the- That's the thing, yeah. You know what I mean? No one is really watching from the center field camera angle because the batter's eye is out there. And so you're not really looking directly head on that green screen if that's what's there.

It would be an oblique angle if you can see it at all. So I don't think it would be that bothersome. Yeah. I mean, I think that if you're out in the outfield, you can see the ad behind home plate, right? You don't have to be dead on to be able to see it. But yeah, it does strike me that we've maybe lost the thread on this a little bit. And some amount of modification would be. Because you can still sell ads, right?

That's the thing. It's like maybe the objection here really goes back to the home club and whatever agreements they have with their local advertisers. Because maybe having the green screen there was a problem for some of those. But just figure it out, you know? Figure it out, I think. All right. A couple other follow ups. One, remember we talked about that OptaStats fun fact about Pete Alonso and the home run

that he hit and we were trying to parse it very carefully to determine just how many qualifiers were in the stat. We agreed that it was fun regardless, but we were marveling at how fun it was, despite how many qualifiers there were. Again, Pete Alonso of the Mets is the first player in MLB history to hit a go-ahead homer while trailing in the ninth inning or later of a winner take all postseason game. And we differed slightly maybe over whether this was four or five

qualifiers and we just kind of agreed to say it's at least four qualifiers. At least four. And the fact that it's so fun is extraordinary given all or five qualifiers. And we just kind of agreed to say, it's at least four qualifiers. At least four. And the fact that it's so fun is extraordinary given all of those qualifiers. Well, we got two emails, I think, from two different Jonathans, one of whom is a Patreon supporter

and sent a short and snappy version of the response. And the other sent a longer and more detailed version of their response. And I will read the latter. So this comes from one of the Jonathan's who says, listening to the discussion on episode 2227 about Pete Alonso's clutch, ninth inning homer that catapulted the Mets into the NLDS, I knew I had to write in regarding the number of qualifiers in Alonso's first in history feat. How can you not be pedantic about baseball?

Let's review the number of qualifiers as the two of you did verbally on the show. Pete Alonso of the Mets is the first player in MLB history to hit a go ahead homer. There's one while trailing, two in the ninth inning or later, three of a winner take all for postseason game five question mark.

That's what we were sort of stumbling. Did you need, did this count as a qualifier? Cause could you have a winner take all that was not a post season game? And I think we talked about, well, you could have a tiebreaker, right? And yeah, so Jonathan goes on to say, you discussed tiebreaker games and concurred that a single tiebreaker game

does not constitute a winner take all game. No argument from me here. However, I can say without a doubt that the Piedmonts of Statt does indeed have five qualifiers. Why? Because remarkably, not only is it theoretically possible that it would require five qualifiers, the four qualifier version of the statement is actually provably untrue. In other words, simply removing the word postseason from the above statement renders it false. Let me explain, there's actually a different player who's the first player in MLB history to hit a go-ahead homer while trailing in the ninth inning or later of a winner-take-all game.

Interestingly, he not only played for another New York-based team, but his home run was hit precisely 73 years to the day of Pete Alonso's blast. It's none other than Bobby Thompson himself when he hit the famous shot heard around the world to win the NL pennant for the Giants on October 3rd, 1951. In circumstances unlikely to ever occur again due to rules changes and playoffs expanded beyond the World Series, Giants and Dodgers tied for first in the NL at 96 and 58, played a three game playoff to decide the pennant. Of course, it came down to the deciding third game winner take all, Thompson hit the walk off homer

with two runners on and the Giants trailing four to two in the bottom of the ninth inning. Obviously, the Dodgers were eliminated and the Giants advanced to the World Series. But this was not a postseason series. As reflected in the regular season stats, the Dodgers record ultimately stood at 97 and 60 with the Giants finishing 98 and 59. All player stats from the three games were compiled into the regular season record.

So there you have it. I suspect whoever wrote up the Pete Alonso feat realized the necessity of including the word postseason in order to make the statement true. So I don't know whether that's the case or not, but I buy this that the shot heard around the world is why we need this extra postseason versus regular season qualifier and that that should count as a qualifier. I think, I think you've nailed it. Jonathan's. I think I'm convinced it, Jonathan's.

I think I'm convinced by that, but I also think that while it is necessary to make it true, it feels like an assumed fact to me because I don't think we would care about it in quite the same way. I mean, the circumstance you're describing is so, I don't know. I get it. Yeah. Okay, fine. Yeah, sure. But like, meh. There's a subsequent Optistats stat about the Kerry Carpenter Homer, which was Kerry Carpenter of the Tigers is the first MLB player to hit a two out, two strike, go ahead Homer in the ninth inning of a postseason game. Since Kirk Gibson did it in game one of the 1980 World Series.

I thought it was so fun. I thought it was fun too. If we count the qualifiers here. We included it in Laura Liz Gamer, in fact. He included it. Because I think that's fun. I think it's a fun fact. Of course it's fun if you can tie it back to a legendary postseason homer. But if we count the qualifiers here, so now it says first MLB player. Technically, I guess that's a qualifier, but I don't think we need MLB is not itself a qualifier in the stat, right? Cause I think we just sort of accept.

I think that that was meant more as like, he's the first major leaguer. Like I don't think that they were really trying to offer that as a qualifier. I don't think they were, no, right. It's not like, well, a minor leaguer did this in a minor league post-season game. So yeah, right.

So it's within the realm, like we all just accept that, yeah, we're talking about major league baseball here. So maybe that's just there to clue in people who are not baseball fans. Like we're talking about baseball, right? So, okay. So not that two out, two strike, go ahead Homer in the ninth inning of a postseason game. All right.

Well, two outs, qualifier, two strike, go ahead, qualifier. Go ahead, Homer. I mean, Homer is not a qualifier, right? That's just the thing. Well, you could have a go ahead hit that isn't a home run. That's, yeah, that is true. Okay, I guess Homer's a qualifier too.

So, okay, so go ahead is a qualifier. Homer is a qualifier. Ninth inning is a qualifier. Postseason game, that's a qualifier. Okay. So that's six qualifiers. Amazing. And then since Kurt Gibson did it, I don't know that that in itself is a qualifier. Like, I guess it's sort of a qualifier to say. Yeah. And also when you have two strike, then you're bringing count into it. And so if you didn't have the Gibson 1988, you'd probably need to say like since 1988 anyway, because that's when

we have the pitch count data. So maybe that's kind of convenient, I guess. So maybe that is a qualifier. That's why he did it, for future convenience. Yeah, because... Right. Kirk Gibson, he's like, this will be useful to nerds later. Yeah, so if you didn't have the since Gibson, then you'd probably have to say since 88, and that would definitely be a qualifier. So maybe that's a qualifier. So maybe it's seven qualifiers.

Amazing. And yet, I enjoyed it. So fun. Oh, so fun. Maybe we should talk to the mad genius behind the Optistats account. I don't know if this is AI driven or what. I know they have statistical tools that can help you come up with these convoluted facts. But also, I feel like there's a ghost in the machine.

There's a mind behind this that was like, well, let's direct it to look for this situation. Or maybe even made the connection that, oh, Gibson did that too. Let's see if that's happened at any other time. So yeah, we should have like, yeah, maybe an episode that's just like talking to the fun fact finders and all of these like baseball fun fact accounts that tweet these things

where it's like, how did you find that? Or how did you think of that? It's the formerly known as stats by stats people, right? Like that's what the OptiStats account is. It's like the fun fact Twitter account of the, I don't remember what Stats by Stats got re-branded as. Stats Perform is now? Yeah. Yeah. Right.

I think it's a minor American tragedy that they're not stats by stats. I loved Stats by Stats. I wanted a Stats by Stats t-shirt because like what a, it's like, well, yeah, I mean, but by the stats, what are you talking about? The stats are by the players. What is stats by stats? Amazing. I can't believe they changed it. I think it's, again, I think it's a tragedy.

And then last follow-up. So we talked about the Reds hiring of Terry Frank Kona and we talked about how there has seemingly been an uptick in teams hiring people to prominent positions without complying with the SEAL League rule or getting an approved exception to the requirement to interview a minority candidate for these things. And at the time there had not been much reporting about how Frank Kona became the manager of the Reds and clearly it all came together quickly. And so it seemed like this was another case.

However, I have since read some reporting by Gordon Wittmeyer of the Cincinnati Inquirer and it is a TikTok of how the Francona hiring happened. And there was another interview before the hiring happened. The Reds did interview and actually, I guess, do multiple interviews with Freddie Benavides, who is the Reds bench coach and took over as the interim manager at the very end of the season after Bell was fired. So yeah, they did interview him. Now, you know, the story makes clear that Francona was their top choice and it was more about like, would he want the job? Would he feel like he was up to the job health-wise? And so they were kind of, you know, they had talked

to Francona, like he had hemmed and hawed a little and so they, you know, moved on and they put a list together and they were, you know, identifying their other top candidates and they had their eyes on Skip Schumacher and David Ross and Will Venable and also Benavides who was on the short list and it it does say that they did interviews with Benavides for multiple rounds of interviews and and that he crushed it and everyone felt great about it and then despite that Francona was like yeah I'm in and in. And then we're like, oh, well, he was our top choice. So maybe it's another case of just going through the motions. I don't know. You know, maybe they were really giving them a fair shot there, but they obviously had their eyes on Francona, but they did go

through with that at least. So I don't want to impugn them on that point. Yeah, we do not want to besmirch. I think the broader uneasiness is probably still fair, but yeah, it does sound like there was at least a compliance with the rule, how spirited it is. I guess we don't know for sure, but yeah. The story also notes that after they made the decision to fire Bell late September, the Reds, GM and Pobo started brainstorming managerial candidates, potential replacements, and the two of them together came up with more than 100 potential replacements before they stopped, which kind of blew my mind.

I mean, it seems like overkill probably, right? I don't even know if that's an undesirable job for a manager. You might think, oh, the rents, they should kind of be on the cusp of things. Like that, you know, not a terrible situation to walk into. I think it's a pretty desirable job. Yeah. But even if you thought you might have to persuade people to come, you're not going to get past your top 99 choices.

Definitely not. Maybe it was fun for them to brainstorm, but I'm sort of surprised that they've developed that long a list. I could see if you asked like the entire front office to submit names and then you had a bunch of different candidates from people and then you combine those lists. But if it was just two people,

you get to a hundred, more than a hundred. Like at a certain point, it's like, well, we're never going to get down this far on our draft board, our preff list for managers. And I also just love to see that board. Cause like, if you're coming up with a hundred names, there must be some unorthodox candidates on there, I would think.

Like there must be some off the wall choices. It can't just be all the bench coaches. Like I'd love to know how many of those people I'd love to see. I don't know if they had like a war room with the magnets on the board and everything, but I'd love to see. I don't know if they had like a war room with the magnets on the board and everything, but I'd love to see who was on there. Like who was even within the realm of becoming a major league manager when you're just sort of spitballing, like were they all dudes or were they not all dudes? Were they all people with managerial or coaching

experience or not? Like who is the most just you would never think of this guy. They'd probably never say yes. Maybe it's not a guy at all. Like who would be our wild pie in the sky? Like why not? Let's try it. I'd love to know just who came up because you know, if you're compiling a list of more than a hundred names, hopefully they're not all just like a bunch of bench coaches and minor league managers because that would be boring. Yeah, man. That would be really fascinating because I think that one of the, not criticisms of the

media, but like sometimes when we have these conversations, like I do feel while I have the spirit of the thing right, like philosophically, I think I'm correct. And while I'm, I feel confident that like there is talent to be had across broad demographics whilst I do sometimes feel like I'm a little out of my depth because I can't have, I don't have always a ready list of names. Like, oh, well you should hire that guy because we're just not in a position to have observed, you know, all of these folks at work every day in a position to have observed all of these folks at work every day in a way that would make me say, like, yeah, it's that guy. It's that guy over there. And so I would be curious like who are the names that are circulating. And there's reporting on that stuff. And I

think depending on who you talk to, there is like a list, but mine is not 100 people long. So that would be really fascinating. The last thing I'll say, I felt remiss in not offering our condolences to Brewers fans last time when we talked about the Brewers being eliminated. It's hard sometimes to focus on the team that got eliminated because we have to talk about the team that continues to play.

And there's a whole off season to talk about these things. I said something quick about tough break for the Brewers. They've never won a World Series, et cetera, right? But they've had a rough run in October. Of course, there's this streak that everyone is aware of, right? Where the Brewers have made the playoffs, the postseason, 10 times, nine of them in years when there was a division series and every team that has defeated the Brewers has gone on to win the pennant, if not win the World Series altogether.

And so they've got this streak going, of course. And the Diamondbacks beat the Brewers last year and then they make to the World Series, right? It was the Braves in 2021. It was the Dodgers in 2020. It was the Nats in 2019. It was the Dodgers in 2018, the Cardinals in 2011. I don't have to recount the whole history. I'm sure Brewer's fans know it by heart. Yeah, they're like, aren't you supposed to be offering condolences here, Ben? Yeah. But I felt bad because on top of that benighted October history that everyone trots out. I also saw this tweet from John Heyman before the brewer's

bodies were cold. This was like the morning of October 6th and Heyman tweeted, Willie Adamus, spiritual leader of the brew crew has been the target of the Dodgers, the Braves and the Giants in the past. And they're seen as among the possible landing spots. Brewers would love to keep him, but understand he's probably out of price range. LA with Friedman-Raiselink, possible favorite.

So it's kind of twisting the knife, like the dust just settled on their postseason, the grave has not been filled in, and already we're talking about another big brewer's free agent departing, and they've weathered those departures, and Craig Council left, and Corbin Burns left, and a lot lot of people wrote them off and even by the playoff odds, they were less than a 50-50 shot to make it back to the playoffs.

And then they basically ran the table and won the division, almost no contest. And it was, I think, one of the more impressive surprises to me of the season that the Brewers just won the Central kind of uncontested, just going away after the losses they had suffered and of course, you know, get North East back in the burns trade and how that paid off and they lost Stearns, of course, you know, the architect of some of those previous playoff teams and just didn't miss a beat. And the Cubs meanwhile did the Cubs who went and poached council from them, they missed the playoffs, right?

So the regular season was really a triumph for the Brewers. And I just want to give them their due on that before we move on to prognosticating about how they're about to lose their maybe most valuable or second most valuable-ish, depending on which war you look at, player of this off season. And it's a bummer for Brewers fans that they're always kind of written off when it comes to contending for players and they've kept Christian Jelic. Sometimes they will rise to that challenge and they will outbid people or at least pony up enough to keep that player, but usually not. And yet, they've managed to find a way to keep on trucking and to not really rebuild and to keep putting a competitive product out there on the field.

And I wouldn't put it past them to do that again. And one of these years, they will not be the team that loses to the eventual pennant winner. They will be the pennant winner and perhaps even champion themselves. So yeah, tough, tough luck, tough loss and would be a tough loss to lose Adamas as well. But you know, who knew that Adamas was going to be as good for the Brewers as he's been when they traded for him. That's just yet another player acquisition slash developmental triumph for them. So just a really well run team when it comes to constantly competing and surprising people. So, you know, don't want to make you feel forgotten Brew Brewer's fans or dunked on.

I don't feel your pain, but I sympathize and empathize with it. I think that they are in the category of team. It's not a completely flush comp with Tampa, but Tampa, but this is a team that I think really does want to win. I wish that they had greater budgetary resource at their disposal because I think that it's a smart front office and they do a lot of good work, but they are in a position where they are very often competing. And I think that that difference in motivation distinguishes them from some of the bottom feeder teams who also, to be fair, are spending less money than even the Brewers are. But I think it's a meaningful distinction, which isn't to say that they

shouldn't spend more. And we all know my philosophy on this stuff, which is that you should just have as wide a path as you can with as many different avenues to competing as possible because sometimes players are going to be bad. They're going to underperform really good player dev organizations still produce guys who don't live up to expectation and aren't able to sort of carry a team forward. But yeah, they're in an importantly different and distinct category from some of the other lower budget teams. So there you go.

Plus they got the barrel man and he looks cool. And they got that weird mustachioed gentleman and his mustachioed mother who I think is delightful. So they got stuff going for them. I always have affection for going to games while it wasn't American family field when I was in grad school, but American family field. Plus there should be more ballparks where you can tailgate. That's a take I have. And if they do Liz Adamis, you can slide Ortiz over there. I guess that's some consolation. You have a ready replacement, but we can discuss that.

You have a Wally Adamis at home. Yeah, I guess so. I mean, he is like, We can discuss that. You have a Willi Adames at home. Yeah, I guess so. I mean, he is like maybe the, who's the top free agent position player this year. It's probably after Soto, it might be Adames, right? It's literally Juan Soto. But yes, after Soto. Yeah, probably Adames.

I haven't thought about it very hard yet. That's next week Meg's problem, not this week Meg's problem. All right. So as we finish recording here, all of these series are just kind of hanging in the balance here according to the Zips odds. That's always nice. And yeah, it's a 53-47 according to Zips, Yankees over Royals. It's 55-45, Guardians over Tigers.

And as we covered, 55-45, it's a close race. Then it's 53-47 for Dodgers over Padres. Then the only one where there's really any separation according to projections is Phillies over Mets, which is 62-38. Though I don't know if Phillies fans are feeling a 62-38 level of confidence. Perhaps they are. I guess Mets and Phillies fans, you know, it's very much just, yeah, it's over. We're so back as you said. The momentum is changing. Yeah. The vibes are, they vastly between incredible and rancid,

sometimes in the space of the same half inning. It's incredible. Yes, all these series are poised almost in the center, could swing either way. And so next time, like Gandalf, we will meet again at the turn of the tide when we have seen more action and someone has a lead. Or I guess by that point, maybe it'll be Tutu.

It'll be back to a dead heat. Well, after we recorded, Meg sent me a tweet that she wanted me to mention in the outro. It was by Bob Nightingale who tweeted, Dodger's second baseman Gavin Lux downplays Manny Gate and says it will be no issue when the game starts. Quote, there's a little rivalry here. Emotions run high. See, this is the way to do it, Meg said. This was a de-escalation.

And so was the game itself, though emotions ran high again in the stands. Petco was loud, and the game was good, but no funny business. No fans throwing things on the field, no players throwing pitches at opposing players, no bad blood boiling over, just a one-run game that the Padres won 6-5 taking a 2-1 lead in the series, as did the Mets over the Phillies earlier in the day. The run of good games continues, as does the run of games with sorely missed green screen behind home plate.

So our final four game day of the postseason coming up on Wednesday could be a decisive day in a couple of series. I will leave you with one final follow up. I cited the Cincinnati Inquirer earlier in the episode. That's how I'll end. I talked last time about the pitching triple crown and the origins of that term and the SNEDDian choir earlier in the episode. That's how I'll end. I talked last time about the pitching triple crown and the origins of that term and the modern definition, which seemingly didn't arise until the early 80s or so,

that the pitching triple crown was understood to be lowest ERA and most wins and strikeouts. Well, other other Ben, well-known word nerd Ben Zimmer, did some digging himself on newspapers.com and found, he says, the suggestion for a triple crown based on most wins, strikeouts, and the best ERA as early as 1968 appearing in the Sound Off column by Cincinnati Inquirer sports writer Lou Smith. It was attributed to Inquirer reader Art Ferris, but the very same suggestion was credited

to two other supposed readers in 1969 and 1970. I think Lou Smith may have been taking a lazy approach to the sound off column, not expecting anyone to check on whether these were real people or not. But the newspaper databases never forget. And it's true, August 31st, 1968, Art Ferris, quote unquote, in Hamilton writes, I would like to start a crusade for pitchers.

In the inquirer, I read about the batters and their accomplishments, topped by triple crown winners in batting. I would like to propose a triple crown winner for pitchers to include the most win strikeouts in the best ERA." Lou Smith answers, the hitters must not be your friends, Art. Nevertheless, a splendid suggestion. Then the next year, June 4th, 1969, HRT in Silverton writes in to say, I would like to start a crusade for pitchers. Exactly the same first sentence that Art Ferris wrote the year before and the same last sentence too. I would like to propose a triple crown winner for

pitchers to include the most wins strikeouts in the best ERA and yet again Lou Smith answered the batters must not be your friends. Finally April 8th 1970 Bennett Warner of Hamilton wrote I'd like to start a crusade for pitchers. I'd like to propose a triple crown winner for pitchers to include the most wins strikeouts in the best ERA and And again, carbon copy answer from Lou, the hitters must not be your friend. So yeah, it certainly seems like Lou Smith was recycling supposant letters and suggestions from readers, replicated verbatim every year with the same response, which we would never do here at Effectively Wild.

All of our listener emails are extremely real and our responses are wholly original unless we repeat ourselves unintentionally. So yes, that does seem a little lazy. I did determine though that Lou Smith was a little long in the tooth by then, and in fact he retired in 1968 when the first of those suggestions appeared. He just continued to write his sound off column for a while in retirement. So hey, maybe we can give him a pass on apparently plagiarizing himself. I'm sure he wasn't the first or last writer to fabricate a reader response. He thought it was a good suggestion. And hey, I guess it was.

It was later adopted more widely. And maybe we owe that to Lou Smith, Art Ferris, HRT, and Bennett Warner. We also owe the continued existence of this podcast to its Patreon supporters who have gone to patreon.com slash effectively wild and signed up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad free and get themselves access to some perks. Those supporters include the following five, who I assure you are very real, Matt Bowdron, Eli Wachtel, Tyler Bradley, Kali Moogle, and Hunter Allen.

Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the effectively wild discord group for patrons only monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams, one more coming up later this month, prioritized email answers, discounts on merch and ad-free FanGrafts memberships, personalized messages, autographed books, and so much more. Check out all the offerings at patreon.com effectively wild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via email. Send your questions, comments, intro, and outro themes to podcast at fancrafts.com. 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 Effectively Wild. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash effectively wild, and you can check the show page at Fan Crafts in the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today.

Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with another episode a little later this week. Talk to you then. Effectively wild, effectively styled, distilled over chilled beats, effectively mild. 1228. You sent us back a thousand episodes. Oh, yeah. So I did.

Hello. All right. Let's try it again. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. Yeah, so I did. All right. Let's try it again. God, what year was it even when it was, where were we in time? Was that during the pandemic? Let's see. 1228 was 2018.

That was the Jeff Sullivan era. Oh my God. Okay. I got to get- 2228, very important distinction. I gotta get amped about volcanoes for a second, get in the right mind space. Okay, let's try it again, shall we? All right. If anyone is listening to this at the end of an episode, it's because I wrote 1228

instead of 2228 in our little recording window. That explains this whole easter egg. Okay. Hello and welcome to episode... Okay. Three take my egg. Here we go. Mm-hmm.