Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 307: The NLCS Unpredictability Episode

Episode Date: October 15, 2013

Ben and Sam discuss the improbable outcomes of the first three games between the Cardinals and Dodgers.

I think the Tigers certainly have the talent to go all the way, but I won't be surprised at all if they get bounced in the first round. Good morning and welcome to episode 307 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from baseball prospectus. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg. Ben, how are you? Okay. Just a leftover from yesterday.

As you all recall, I emailed Gabe Kapler to find out whether bunting repeatedly at a wounded third baseman would be a breach of unwritten rules. And Gabe did not think it was. And so I guess a team could do it. So that's nice to know. That's nice to know that that is one rule that has not yet been unwritten. Although I am curious. I would like to see someone do it just because I would like to see what the reaction would be. Because it does feel like it has all the elements of an unwritten rule waiting to be not written.

In the sense that it would be sort of an effective but not quite natural way of playing the game. It seems like the sort of thing that CJ Wilson would have an issue with. This seems like the sort of thing CJ Wilson is always complaining about. So I wonder if players would have a problem with it, but I'm all but certain that at least one columnist would have a problem with it. Yeah, probably. There was some discussion of it in the Facebook group, and there were people on both sides arguing the issue, but I guess I'm going to go with the major leaguer probably has the best idea.

Yeah, I believe that Gabe is probably correct as to the state of the rule. It also seems interesting to wonder whether it would be a different response depending on the third baseman. If it were Alex Rodriguez playing third base, I don't know that anybody would be moaning for him.

If it were like Unieski Betancourt or Joaquin Arias. I'm not sure anybody would care. But Miguel Cabrera seems to be beloved. And he is playing he's got this sort of hero narrative

about him because he's playing through the pain. So I would imagine that a lot of people have invested emotionally in that narrative. So it might go down worse if it were miguel cabrera okay because it's not just that he's it's not it's not if they were bunting at him because he was a bad defensive third baseman i think that would probably go by without a without a without a uh a mention but he's uh you know he's he is playing through pain and that doesn't necessarily

have to be held up as this great achievement or this great moral act but it is I've heard it repeatedly during various games so anyway do you want to say something? I was going to go back to a couple other old pieces of business

so whatever you want. No, go ahead. Okay, so last week I talked about Jeff at Amador, the Astros prospect who was gigantic, who I saw down at the AFL. And I mentioned that he was listed at 215 pounds and that it was completely ridiculous, and we were speculating about how that happened. we were speculating about how that happened. It turns out that his official weight is 315. At minorleaguebaseball.com, he's listed at 315. And also at Baseball Prospectus, he's listed at 315. But at Baseball Reference, he's listed at 215. I'm guessing maybe this was just a case where Sean Foreman was looking at the data one day and saw someone at 315 and just thought it was a typo or something and fixed it. This man is so fat.

I'm looking at him now for the first time. I don't even think those pictures do him justice. He is so fat. He just has no waist. He's just, it's really incredible. It's incredible. To see him in action just up close was like. It's interesting because if I saw him, I mean, if I saw him on the street, I wouldn't think twice.

He doesn't look like an unnormal human being, but he looks so odd on the field. He looks, you know, he's the opposite end of the Altuve spectrum, right? He just looks odd next to anybody else. There is nobody else on the field who makes him look like he fits in. Yeah, and I picked him to write a report on because he's just so strange that I wanted to try to figure out whether he's actually a player. And I kind of concluded that I didn't think so, but I couldn't look away. There were all these top prospects on the field that I should have been paying attention to, but I just couldn't really tear my eyes away from Amador.

Anyway, 315 seems to be his official weight, at least according to some sources. I have tweeted at Sean Foreman to see if I can get his weight raised to 315 on Baseball Reference because it seems like a shame not to have it listed at that correct and unbelievable weight. You should try to get a nickname for him on Baseball Reference too. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. We'll think of some. Okay. Maybe. Not right now. No, not right now.

Uh, write in if you have a good nickname for him. Um, and then the other thing. I mean, it's the, it seems like the obvious thing would, would just be to call him like, like fat, fat, like, like fat. Cause he's got, he's got fat almost in his name. Yeah. Right. Like with a, with a pH. Matt Adams, fat Adams.

That's the. Yeah. Like, like there's gotta be something with fat where it's spelled with a ph or something anyway um the other thing i came across this i only call matt adams patch adams and is that not the going nickname for no i don't think so for matt patch adams nope um the other thing i came across a study, and I don't think it's actually a new study, but I saw it linked today, about it's called When Corrections Fail, the Persistence of Political Misperceptions. Ryan Kenney, where we were asking him whether he's found people to be receptive to his views and whether he's actually able to persuade people to adopt his viewpoint or whether they just kind of retrench and just, you know, subscribe to their own viewpoint that they came into the argument with even more. And so this thing is about, it's called the backfire effect, which is what results when you argue something with a person and present arguments that counteract or contradict their view.

Yeah, their opinions get stronger. Yes, right. So this was – they did it with political beliefs. I would guess that it applies also to baseball beliefs. But it was like, you know, they surveyed people on what their political beliefs were. And then they presented them with negative information about some political candidate of the party that they vote for. And instead of being persuaded by that, they just, Persuaded by that, it strengthened their resolve.

And the explanation was they interpret the backfire effect as a possible result of the process by which people counter-argue preference-incongruent information and bolster their pre-existing views. counter argue unwelcome information vigorously enough they may end up with more attitudinally congruent information in mind than before the debate which in turn leads them to report opinions that are more extreme than they otherwise would have had um which suggests that maybe telling harold reynolds all season that wins are not a good stat uh has maybe just makes him even more inclined to to think that wins are a good stat. But it also goes on to say, it's important to note that the account provided above does not imply that individuals simply believe what they want to believe under all circumstances and never accept counter-attitudinal information. And basically it says that if there's enough negative information provided,

eventually the person acquiesces to it. So yeah, individuals who are confronted with information of sufficient quantity or clarity should eventually acquiesce to a preference inconsistent conclusion. Gotta love the academic language. But basically, if you hammer home the argument enough and they hear it in enough places, eventually they can be persuaded and their mind can be changed. So maybe Brian's right that we should all be pushing these things, and that's the only way it'll work. I meant to bring this up during that episode, and I forgot to, but there was an article that

Ezra Klein wrote for The New Yorker about how a president can sway public opinion on his issues, the issues he cares about. And it seems like all the research suggests that the best way to do it is to never mention it, because as soon as the president opens his mouth, half the country immediately identifies itself in opposition to him. And so the more a president uses his sort of bully pulpit to try to raise awareness of an issue, the stronger the opposition to it gets, no matter what the issue is.

So basically the best thing a president can do is just shut his mouth and work really quietly legislatively to try to get something to happen, but never actually give a speech or talk about the imperative or anything like that. And that's sort of how I feel when I see loud conversations about the importance of a particular sabermetric viewpoint.

I figure it's probably safer to not give people something to be opposed to and to just sort of go about your life and make it a part of the way that be opposed to and to just sort of, uh, you know, go about your life and make it a part of the way that you analyze things and, um, to have it subtly, uh, seep into the consciousness through general peer pressure. Anyway. Yeah. Uh, one more thing from yesterday, I guess, uh, we talked about whether any hitter has ever come out and said, Oh yeah, I was trying to hit a home run. Yes. pointed out that Matt Stairs said this, like that Matt Stairs said that's all he ever does. I'll see if I can pull it up.

But yeah, there was a, yeah. So this is Corinne who wrote, who found an article from 2008 in which Matt Stairs was quoted as saying my whole career even back in the early days my approach was try to hit the ball out of the park and it's something i enjoyed doing in batting practice i try to hit every ball out of the ballpark i'm not gonna lie it's fun i try to hit home runs and that's it i'm not gonna hit a single and steal second base the biggest thing is to get up there swing hard and elevate um and matt stairs i uh

this reminds me that matt stairs is also uh the answer to a question i once asked an agent when i asked if he'd ever had a player who just said get me the most money i don't care where it is the agent thought about it and said yeah matt stairs and i miss matt stairs he was fun yeah do you think that matt adams is the new matt stairs um he seems like a straightforward fellow just kind of goes up there i mean more i mean more i mean more as like combination of body type player type yeah player type uh skill set and public uh adoration yeah there's potential there. He has to play for like 10 teams probably and hit some big pinch hit homers, but he

has the profile. Yeah, I imagine that both of those things will happen. The question is whether he will be limited to that. You know who Matt Adams reminds me of more than anything? Amador. No, Chris Carter. Those guys to me, they have this same sort of weird swing

that doesn't seem like it's in the zone very long, but they're giant, and so when they connect, it goes forever. But you watch them swing, and you think, that will never hit a baseball. Yeah. All right. Carter rarely does. Can I get to my question now?

Sure. Well, this might be the end of the show. I might just ask you this question and we'll decide we've had enough. I want you to... Wait, I don't know if this... It probably doesn't work as a question. So never mind. I'm going to just tell you. I'm going to tell you the answer to the question. I was going to have you guess the median pitching

line for a starting pitcher in this postseason. You know what I mean? Because it seems like there's been a lot of pitching but it's too hard to get there's too many components of it so i'm just going to tell you what the median pitching line is uh the the median pitching line in this postseason is mike minor who beat clayton kershaw oh no sorry who beat zach granky uh in i think game two of the nLDS. Miner went six and a third, allowed eight hits, one walk, one run. It was earned, struck out five. That, by game score, is the median pitching line.

And that's a really good line. Yeah, it's pretty good. It's a little bit deceptive because there's a lot of hits there. There's a lot left on bases there. It's actually the median game score is 57, which isn't that extreme. I think that during the regular season it was 54. And so Mike Miner has a line that looks better than a normal 57. And game scores are kind of always a little bit above 50.

So it's a little bit of a conniving fun fact. But I thought I would share it with you anyway it's, it's a little bit of a, uh, conniving fun fact, but, uh, thought I would share it with you anyway. Yeah, that's a good one. Um, so I've been listening to some other podcasts that I listened to catching up on older episodes because I, I wasn't listening to any podcasts while I was out in Phoenix. And so I've, I've listened to a few playoff preview shows, uh, that have previewed series that are already over or are ongoing now. And they're all wrong. They're all terribly, terribly wrong. You know, nothing wrong with the process of the previewing.

Smart people saying perceptive things, but just completely wrong. Just all wrong um examples and it makes no i i'm sure we if we had previewed anything we would have been all wrong it's just we did preview things you wrote a previous series and i wrote a previous series yeah i guess the the one you want to pause should we pause this and then go read each other's and find one thing to make fun of the one thing that we previewed on the podcast i think was the the reds pirates wild card game and that turned out to be fairly accurate um but i i guess it's mostly just i mean this this cardinals dodger series that i'm writing about i certainly the the fact that one team is up 2-1 is not surprising, but the way that

it's happened really has been pretty surprising. I mean, you would have predicted probably the opposite outcomes for every game. Like the Dodgers lost the Granke and Kershaw games, and the Cardinals lost the Wainwright game. And, you know, the Cardinals played pretty sloppily tonight. They made a few mistakes, many of them by John Jay, who's had a pretty terrible series defensively and not great offensively either. And then there was also the Descalso base running mistake where he got doubled off on a liner.

And then there was the Colton Wong not throwing directly to the plate when they had a play on Crawford. And I don't know, none of these things is predictable. You wouldn't have predicted that each team would lose the game started by its really good starter where they had a mismatch with the other team starter you wouldn't have predicted that the cardinals would make a bunch of fundamental mistakes yeah i don't know just i mean what are we even doing here yeah it's true there there's there's nothing to really confirm here i guess you could say like the cardinals the back of the cardinals bullpen has been really good. You might have mentioned that in a preview.

You might have mentioned that Michael Young isn't very good at pinch hitting. There's not a lot of stories that have come true. What are we doing here i don't know um i don't know i wish i had a takeaway from it i've been watching these these games and trying to

pick out some things but there's not there's not a whole lot that i've noticed that has a whole lot of predictive power it doesn't seem like it's just sort of notice that it has a whole lot of predictive power. It doesn't seem like. It's just sort of pitchers are pitching well. I mean, is the fact that there's been so little run scoring in these two series and so many innings without hits and the Dodgers going 22 innings without scoring, is that reflective of anything or is that just it's a few games and it happens? I mean, scoring is lower in in the

playoffs i guess because of the weather if anything and i know we've we've kind of argued about the weather good pitching beats good hitting thing before and i don't really think it does and you kind of thought it it does i guess if i remember right. But I don't know. I don't know what to say. It's just, it's been good baseball. It's been fun to watch. And probably the teams that most people would have picked before the season are the ones that are still playing. And that's sort of nice to see.

I like to see strong teams being rewarded by going deep into the playoffs. But as for the actual outcomes of the game, it's just kind of variance and unpredictability, what we usually say about the playoffs. Are you following what Carlos Beltran and Adam Wainwright are complaining about? Today? No. What happened? Me neither. I'm only seeing reactions to them saying something like i don't um this is bad podcasting i was hoping you would have an answer apparently they've uh

they've they've called unwritten rules on the dodgers oh puig i don't know i see i see a tweet beltran on puig uh when you try to do those things you get attention you don't know. I see a tweet, Beltran on Puig. When you try to do those things, you get attention. You don't want to wake up nobody. I guess that's referring to Puig pimping his triple. Oh, okay. So he pimped a triple. Yeah.

That's what it was. He thought it was gone. He put his arms up and did a slow trot. And then he sort of, he like kept pimping it with one hand and then started running with the other hand for a while down first baseline. And then eventually really started running. And he made it to third standing despite coming out of the box really, really slowly just because he's Puig and he doesn't need to get a good jump. He can still get to third standing up.

But I don't know. Unwritten rules. I mean, Puig also did a thing where he didn't slide into second to break up a double play, and he got a little bit of abuse about that on the broadcast. But I don't know. Remember when we were talking about – it was the episode where we had russell on and we were talking about all the hot takes about puig and i read those quotes from the plaschke article or maybe it

was the scott miller article where he was saying that for every win puig contributes to the dodgers in the postseason he'll take away two with fundamental mistakes or something like that. And it's not really the case tonight. He did an unwritten rules violation. He did a rookie mistake. And he still helped the Dodgers win the game because he hit a triple. Drove in a run, and he's good at baseball. I'm watching it now do you think that he kept his arm up to try to like camouflage what he was doing like uh i was doing

i meant to do this all along i'm just really into triples yeah right uh i'm not sure if that was it or whether he still had some hope that it was going to go out and he could just sort of seamlessly continue to celebrate. Yeah, that is pretty embarrassing. Yeah, a little bit. But who cares? Oh, and okay, so Wainwright's complaining about Adrian Gonzalez, who did a—he doubled at some point, I think, and on second base he just did a very emphatic celebration

toward the Dodgers bench, arm pumping and that sort of thing. I don't know. I mean, nothing that we haven't seen 100 times before. I tell you what, when Juan Uribe put on that bear costume and then went over to the Cardinals dugout, though, that was too much. That was across the line, yeah. That was, yeah.

So do you have any feelings about Ricky Nolasco pitching? I don't know. Is it confirmed? This is already the third hottest take I've ever gotten. I expected them to go back to Grinke if they lost this game. And we don't, do we know for sure that they're not? Is it official? I don't know.

I don't know. Twitter official. Yeah. I mean, I guess I would probably go back to Granke if it were me, but I don't feel that strongly about it so if Granke pitches on short rest then Kershaw pitches on short rest too yeah and then you either have to go back to Ryu on short rest I mean you'd have to use Nolasco three four five six space now Ryu would pitch on full rest.

But then would you have to use Nolasco? Oh, wait. Yeah, no. Sorry. Yeah. I'm wrong. Ryu would pitch on short rest in game 6. And then Nolasco in game 7? 4, 5, 6 space.

Well, and then Granke on short rest, presumably. So you'd basically be having four guysinky on short rest presumably so you'd basically be having four guys pitch on short rest uh in order to keep from having the last go ever throw a pitch yeah that seems extreme it's yeah i mean they're when mattingly said that if they were facing elimination if they were down 3-0 then he'd go to granky i think he said that um so now that they're they're down 2-1 but not facing elimination i'd probably still do it um but i don't know we talked about the the postseason starters and the short rest and and the stats with those guys not being

so great so uh yeah i mean having doing it so that you can get Kershaw instead of Nolasco in basically a one-game swap seems defensible. But having all four of your guys, all four of your starts be on short rest seems a bit extreme. I don't see how you can do that. I mean, I don't know. I don't know that I would really want Ricky Nolasco. I mean, it really is kind of amazing that the Dodgers can spend $220 million and have it pretty much go well for them, and yet they still have Ricky Nolasco pitching for them when they need to win. I mean, it's an incredible sport.

I tend to think with the Dodgers, my first response when they start winning is like, oh, Jesus, it's so pathetic. It's just baseball like always. One team goes and spends all this money and goes and buys a championship. I feel bitter. I feel cold toward them. Then I realized, no, it's just really hard to keep a baseball team together. If you can spend the money, every team would if they could.

It's still super-duper hard. It kind of makes me feel bad for them that they can't do more. It's impossible, this dumb sport. But, I mean, Ricky Nolasco, as a fourth starter, is not that bad, really. I mean, would you rather have Lance Lynn in game four? I mean, that's who the Cardinals are starting. I wouldn't say that he's any better. You wouldn't say that?

Probably not. I mean, I don't know. Nolasco was good this year, right? Except for the, I mean, he tanked at the end there. His last three starts, it was. He had three bad starts to end the season. Before that, his ERA was like 3.1. I mean, he's in the last go.

I mean, he's not that good. He's been a below-league-average starter for the last few years. But he's not an embarrassment as a four starter i don't i mean he certainly had a better season than lynn and it's he did have a better season than lynn this year and lynn had a better season last year and the year before although the year before wasn't much for lynn so i guess yeah i i guess i'm sort of thinking that nalasco is probably the pitcher that we saw last year not this year and lyn Lynn is probably the pitcher we saw last year, not this year. But I don't really have a great reason to say that.

It's sort of surprising that Shelby Miller is not a factor here. He's just not being used at all. I can understand why you would start Kelly. I don't think that Kelly is as good as his ERA says he is, but you'd still think, and I don't think the Cardinals have really said why Miller isn't pitching. So there's been some speculation that it's maybe his, his innings count or fatigue, or I think I read something just sort of of I think he lost some velocity toward the end

of the season was probably just fatigue and they don't want to push him and they don't want to risk him which is understandable I suppose but it seems like he's he he hasn't pitched in a couple I mean he basically has has been able to rest. I'm surprised that he's not strong again. I mean, clearly when he was strong, he was one of their three or four best pitchers. He was their second best pitcher. And so I wonder how long he needs to chill out. I mean, it's been 20 days since he started a game.

You would think that the arm would be strong. I mean, he wasn't that good in september so it it made sense that he wouldn't be there maybe in the division series and i don't know how it works um but i would think that if they threw him out there tomorrow he probably would have some some some gas especially i mean with with the adrenaline and it's you know it's the one start he has to make in the series so you're not like going back to him necessarily right away and you know if he's the fourth guy you get one start out of him in the lcs one start out of him in the world series i'm surprised like i'm not yeah i'm not saying he could do it i'm surprised that he

can't if that's the case yeah me too and he he is on the roster which is he is yeah sort of strange if you're gonna carry well the cardinals if the cardinals had a worse bullpen you might say oh you know they're they're getting good value out of him he'll be this like incredible eighth inning guy but they don't need that they they have the bullpen yeah uh someone just left a comment on at BP on Zachary Levine's recap of ALCS game two and said, I'm disappointed in all the strikeouts and low scoring games this postseason. I remember 1968 and not fondly. Pitchers are dominating and the games are not as interesting. Every time a hitter gets two strikes, I expect a strikeout i love the game but give me more offense anyone else on board are you on board i'm not but that's just personal taste i totally understand why it's is boring to some people yeah um i've enjoyed it pitchers duels are fun um i like strikeouts more than almost anything so yeah me too although i like strikeout and i like walks so yeah well as we've discussed it it could get to a point where it's overkill

i think um i don't know if this is it though for me i still still like the strikeout still like to see jansen and rosenthal come in and just blow everyone away um but I could see how that would be tiresome to some people balls in play are also exciting uh I can only I can only think of two games that have been that have had comebacks and there have certainly been more than that but in my mind I can only think of really two games where one team jumped out to a lead and then didn't win. I'm thinking of the game yesterday, obviously, and the game four of the AIDS Tiger Series where Dan Straley had a three-run lead and then blew it. I mean, we've talked about where that point is where the strikeouts get to be too much,

and it was where a three-run lead feels insurmountable. Yeah. And I wonder if I'm just selectively remembering, but it does feel like the games are pretty much locked down at this point if you get a lead. Yeah, it does. And that's probably not a good thing if that were the case. I wonder what the – you don't have any idea what the strikeout rate

like the league average strikeout rate this postseason has been to you is there a quick way to look that up because I wonder if this is sort of a a preview of which way the game is going and Zach kind of made that point when he was talking about the Tigers

strikeout staff versus like the Red Sox strikeout offense and how it was sort of a preview of what's to come in baseball if the trend continues towards more strikeouts. Maybe you could say the whole postseason is like that because it's a bunch of really good pitchers and hard throwing staffs and maybe managers being more willing to bring in relievers or, or to use starters in the bullpen. And so this is sort of a preview of, of how things would be during the regular season.

If the trend continued upward. Are you clicking around to see if you can find something? Not very effectively. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not getting anything. All right. So where do you stand on these two series right now?

Do you have any feelings about who's going to win what? No. Right. Well, I'm going to go with the team that's winning one series. I'm just going to stick my neck out and take the one that has a game lead. And as for the other series, I don't know. I would have predicted the Tigers if I had been previewing that series.

So I see no reason to change my pre-series pick at this point. Sounds good. I'll take that to the bank. Okay. All right. Are we finished? Yeah, I'll talk to you tomorrow Alright, and tomorrow will be email show, maybe

unless we decide to talk playoffs so send us emails at