Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 558: Mike Matheny Ruins a Perfectly Good Podcast

Episode Date: October 17, 2014

Ben and Sam discuss NLCS Game Five and respond to Mike Matheny’s post-game comments in real time.

Here's what happened this time, I'm sure that it's the last time I'm over going over it, it's over once again What am I gonna do with me? I blew the opportunity By saying something asinine, I've gotta watch this my mind I sure said the wrong thing right then Tried to forget by Sam Miller of Baseball Prospectus. Hello. Hello. How are you? Great. So we've been neglecting the NLCS, I would say. I don't think that's true. I think that's true.

I know. I think we've accorded the Royals the attention that they deserve, and we've enjoyed the Royals run as much as anyone, and there's lots to talk about, and the Giants and the Cardinals are teams that we've seen in seemingly every postseason for a while now. So I admit to being a bit more captivated by the Royals, but we will make up for that tonight. If there has been an oversight, we disagree on whether there has, but if there has, if we have not been fair and balanced in our coverage. Those are two different things. I don't think there's been an oversight and I also don't

think we've been balanced. The Royals are the most interesting team to talk about, and we talked about them more than any team along the way. Yeah. But I think we talked a lot about the Cardinals and the Giants. Yeah. Well, tonight we will talk about them more than we have been. I don't need to defend myself to you, Ben.

You're half the show. That's true. I take half the responsibility. Oh, I'm so upset. So we have plenty to talk about about these two teams tonight. Cardinals fans wish that we wouldn't probably wish that we would just go straight

to previewing the World Series, which we will do early next week. But for now, we have another great game to dissect and talk about. It was not, as it turned out, a one-run game. But for all intents and purposes, it was tied, obviously, until the end. So this is now the—I saw Cliff Corcoran note that this postseason is the first time in the wildcard era that none of the six division series and championship series losers won more than one game in a given series. So in that sense, it has been very lopsided. I think that the teams that were up in any given series, I think they went 12 and 3 or maybe 13 and 3.

So basically, if you are up in the series, you have won 80% of the games. Yeah, and yet that doesn't bother me at all. It hasn't felt really ever like any outcome of a game is decided, except maybe for the Royals just because it sort of seems inevitable and you have to keep telling yourself that it's not. But all of the games have been fantastic. Not all of them, almost all of them. And this was no exception. So we should, I suppose, start by talking about Adam Wainwright since we have devoted attention to him this week and speculated about whether he has mechanical problems or whether he's hiding an injury or not even hiding an injury,

just openly having an injury. What did you think about what you saw of Wainwright? I thought that some of the Fox crew, not the Fox crew so much as Harold Reynolds, but maybe the whole crew, I thought some of their talk early on in the first four or five innings was a bit much. They were acting as though, well, they literally said,

you know, the ace is back and so on. And it was like they said that I think after the, I think it was the fourth inning, maybe it was the fifth, where he had basically put two guys on and then got out of it because of a line drive double play. And the inning before that, he had allowed two runs. And so it wasn't as though he was dominant or anything like that. I wasn't charting pitches or anything.

It seemed to me that he had an extremely good curveball that was as good as any curveball that you expect from Wainwright. And it was good enough that he could throw it over and over. And either the Giants couldn't sit on it, or if they did, it didn't matter. And it didn't look like he had full confidence in his fastball. And then somewhere along the way, he did have full confidence in his fastball. Yeah, he was great his last few innings and of course this is the age-old debate about whether that matters whether the manager should take into account how the pitcher looked in the last inning or the last few innings when he's deciding whether or not to take the guy out and everyone on twitter was, not everyone,

everyone of a certain mindset was calling for Matheny to remove Wainwright. Maybe two innings before he actually did, but certainly one inning before he did, going into the heart of the order third time through the lineup. And then, what, in the seventh, he faced three lefties. There were three lefties due up third time through the order. And he left them in, and it worked out. And that was pretty smart because that left him Randy Choate for the ninth.

If he'd had to burn his loogie, then Choate wouldn't have been able to come in and shut down Ishikawa. That's right. Matheny's always thinking ahead. That's right. Matheny is always thinking ahead. Yeah, so we talked yesterday about how it seemed as if suddenly managers were taking the times to the order effect into account and removing guys as soon as they hit it. That clearly was not the case tonight. And maybe that is a matter of having your ace or not having your ace. Maybe it's easier to do when you have Jeremy Guthrie or Jason Vargas out there than when you have your horse or whatever word you want to use, your bulldog. I saw many animal words used to describe the pitchers tonight.

And Bumgarner went eight and Wainwright went seven. Give me an animal. Give me an animal. I'm going to see if I can find one. I think Wainwright was really an aardvark tonight. Wainwright and elephant turns up nothing, if you were wondering. I'm going to say bull. Wainwright and bull.

I saw bulldog. Not bull, though. He's okay for bull. Let's see. I might have to. Yep, bulldog. Yeah, a bunch of bulldogs. Yeah yeah bulldogs and horses are really cat cat no i don't think so yeah all right um yes so that was that seemed like a questionable decision to say the least to leave wayneainwright in. And so are we, are you more confident that this is a mechanical issue or that it was a mechanical issue then based on tonight?

Or is this just inconclusive? Is the fact that Matheny left him out as long as he did, does that tell you anything about Wainwright? Or does that just tell you something about Matheny? Dude, I don't even know. I have no idea with Wainwright right now. I mean, I guess it makes me think it's more mechanical. I mean, look, the fact that he's— I always try to avoid doing this because I have a hypothesis.

I think I've said it on this show before. The hypothesis is that say a pitcher throws 92 and he gets hurt, you would expect him to drop down to 90. But in fact, he manages to stay at 92. He just loses his mechanics. And so I have this sort of hypothesis that you'll see pitchers So I have this sort of hypothesis that you'll see pitchers who kind of the career collapse will sometimes be that like say he throws 92 on average and then he should be throwing at 90 but for a season he just keeps throwing 92 but poorly. And then the next year he drops to like 88 because it keeps getting worse and he finally gives up and so really poor really poorly described uh anyway so i i don't i i i don't think that keeping his

velocity is proof of anything but um i mean yeah he he kept his velocity uh he i don't know it's really really hard to say i guess let me put it this way ben i feel i i would feel more confident about adam wainwright in his next start than i obviously did about him going into this start i don't know uh the quotes his teammates quotes before the game had the exact opposite effect. It seemed like everybody on the Cardinals knew this thing that they just, they weren't allowed to say it out loud, but they knew, and they were really giving it away. And so there's so many competing pieces of evidence

that it's really hard to say. I don't know that letting him go deep into the game means anything. I think that if you're going to let him start, if you're going to let him pitch the first, then you probably will let him pitch the seventh if you think he's your best pitcher. So I don't think that would really factor into Matheny's head. I mean, either the guy can go or he can't go.

And if he's going, you're going to use him to win. That's why he's there. And Bumgarner was mostly great again. He gave up a home run to Matt Adams, another Matt Adams homer off the lefty. He gave up a home run to Tony Cruz. And Yadier Molina tried to talk his way into the lineup before this game.

But fortunately, Matheny must have read Zachary Levine's article about why that would be a bad idea. Didn't let him do it. Started Tony Cruz. Tony Cruz hit a home run and seemed to do some pretty good catching too. But then got to hit again, surprisingly. Yeah, right.

That was a very surprising one. That was one of the surprising things, yeah. And also, right, and Wainwright hitting for himself before coming in for the seventh also seemed surprising. That didn't seem surprising. That didn't seem that surprising to me, knowing that they had a short bench, knowing that there were two outs and nobody on.

I mean, with two outs and nobody on, you know, it's barely worth pinch hitting. Yeah, and particularly because the Cardinals don't really have a good pinch hitter. I mean, they have Tavares, who would have been against a lefty, or Dave Borges, and yeah, it's not pretty. So moving on, where should we go next?

Michael Morse. Who do you think is a better hitter, Wainwright or Tony Cruz? Is it? Tony Cruz, but it's not a huge gap probably. Career, 200, 230, 290 for Wainwright. Career, 220,270-310. So yeah, he's got 20 points of slugging and 40 points of OBP.

And is in his physical prime. Yes. So, right. So then Matheny leaves Wainwright in forever, seemingly contradictory to what the stats would say, as great as he had been pitching over the last few innings to that point. We know where the research seems to suggest that that doesn't mean that much. So he leaves Wainwright in.

That works out just fine. Then he brings Pat Neshek in. And you couldn't have done it. Second-guessing it. Second-guessing it. To let Pat Neshek face a rusty, right-handed pinch hitter in that situation is just... I mean, did you see the ball, how far it flew, Ben? I got some tweets to that effect.

I feel like Matheny's got to be held accountable for this. I received tweets about horses and bulldogs related to that decision, not to win or win or lose or live or die with your ace anyway Matheny made seemingly a right move there you could I guess you could you could quibble because right there were lefties coming up again although I mean I don't know whether Matheny anticipated the michael morse pinch hit appearance and maybe you don't want chote against a right-handed power hitter or any right-handed hitter for that matter but joking oh well right i mean whether whether or not nishik was the optimal

reliever choice for that inning he was for that batter at, at least, for Morse. Neshek versus Morse is a pretty favorable matchup for the Cardinals. Really can't criticize that. Can't expect anything to go wrong. It very much did go wrong. Michael Morse, who received a hitting tip from Barry Bonds before the game about getting his foot down in time or something or other. Hit a long home run. And so that's managing in the postseason. You leave your possibly diminished ace in forever against third time through the lineup lefties. That works out just fine.

You get your righty specialist against the rusty righty, and the rusty righty hits a home run. So that's just what happens. Exciting moment, of course, but nothing you can really criticize anyone for. That's one where you can just sort of celebrate the home run. And where do we go? And where do we go? Should we go to the ninth where Bochy leaves or changes his closer,

which is something that we talked about recently, how once you put your closer in, generally you stick with your closer until you win or you lose. And Bochy didn't do that. And I guess that is a good move uh or at least cassia didn't seem to have good command there was that grounder that was deflected and so that was going against him too but he was also kind of wild and threw a 2-2 fastball way up and in and then kind of a wild three two breaking ball too and didn't look great and bocce made the move for jeremy affelt who faced the lefty and and got the out and took the ball himself running like all the way from the mound to first base just sprinting to get the force play. Good move.

To bring in Affel? Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, very good move. Great move. Yeah. One of the really nice things about having a closer who hasn't been a closer a long time to have gone through three closers in a year is I imagine it makes it easier to do that.

And you might almost rather have that than a guy who's slightly better but way more established. I would say that the move that I was yelling for in that situation, although it was probably too late in that situation, but I thought that Juan Perez should have been in left field and Travis Ishikawa should have been out of the game at that point. I just didn't know why Ishikawa was still in the game in a situation that late. Right. He misplayed the ball early,

which reminded me that not all outfields are the Royals' outfield. It's kind of after focusing on the ALCS and covering the ALCS, I'm sort of surprised to see fly balls fall now or outfielders misplay fly balls. It looks strange. I forget that that's how baseball works for most teams. Yeah, and the decision to let Cruz hit, we sort of skipped over. Do you want to say anything about that? No.

We didn't really skip over it. Yeah, we mentioned it. Anyway, but he walked right yes that worked uh-huh uh so is there anything to talk about before we get to waka let's talk about waka okay so the elusive michael wait. Yes. I guess it didn't matter because they didn't get there. But given the short bench and really given how weak the lineup is, did you think it was too aggressive for Matheny to take out Matt Holiday, move the pitcher spot to the number three spot in the order, and then later to take out Matt Holliday, move the pitcher's spot to the number three spot in the order, and then later to take out Matt Adams as a pinch runner. Yeah.

I mean, it's still a tie game. I know you're playing to win. I know that supposedly on the road you play for the win, and at home you play for the tie or whatever. But, I mean, that was going to be a really weak lineup with not only that, but a pitcher's spot that you wouldn't be able to pinch hit for unless you burned A.J. Brzezinski at any point in the game.

Yeah, I thought so. Derek Gould tweets that every time it happens. It's not the first time that it happens that Holiday gets removed and then the pitcher's spot is batting third. That's kind of a Matheny move. And yes, it seemed a little risky in this game, in that situation. Okay. And then I guess while we're at it, is Tavares, again, we didn't play long enough for it to matter, but it's a tie game. Is Tavares against Affelt that much better of a matchup than Borges against Kasia that well actually Kasia was gone right so wait did Tavares pinch hit against

Affelt had Affelt been announced must not have been couldn't have been they must have been yeah they announced Tavares first but you kind of figured cassia might be coming out anyway but even if he wasn't is is borges against cassia that much worse a matchup than taveras against affeldt that you burn your last pinch hitter and take your you know

best defensive outfield off the field yeah um probably not Probably not a huge gap there. Okay, so Waka. So Waka has been MIA all October. He has been this year's Shelby Miller, everyone wondering where he was, why he wasn't pitching. Of course, the reasons maybe are sort of the same or sort of similar in that Waka missed much of the season, didn't have a ton of time to build himself back up. And with these missing pitchers in the postseason,

I mean, if you criticize the team, it's kind of a strange thing to criticize because the team wants to win. They want to use their best pitchers. So you have to assume that there is a reason for these pitchers not pitching because you would want Michael Wacca. The Cardinals know what Michael Wacca can do in a postseason. They saw it last year.

It's not like it's just a flight of fancy or something or a whim Mike Matheny decides not to use Michael Walker. There has to be some sort of reason. But because we never really... So fed up, yeah, so fed up with Puig that they're benching Walker. Right. Because we never get the reason,

it's sort of frustrating. You have to speculate about what the reason is. We assume there must be something. It's the same thing with Danny Duffy on the Royals. it's sort of frustrating like you have to speculate about what the reason is we assume there must be something it's i mean it's the same thing with danny duffy and the royals and we gather that there is something mechanically wrong there and we talked to doug thorburn about it this week and and you figure that's the reason but you also sort of wonder well maybe he could straighten out his mechanics or or it's it's a tough. But you have to think that there is a real reason or these teams would be using these good pitchers who are clearly good.

It's not as if the Cardinals don't think Michael Waka is a good pitcher. They must have thought that he was not Michael Waka. And so Waka had not pitched since September 26th. He had not pitched in any postseason situation. And there were situations where it seemed like Michael Waka would be a good fit. Even game four, the night before, when Shelby Miller went three or whatever it was, he had a ton of innings to get through and they did not use Waka for that. And a bunch of people asked Matheny why he wasn't using Waka.

And there were comments from Zalac saying that he was getting to the point, pregame comments from Zalac saying that it was kind of getting to the point where it would be difficult to use Waka at all just because he had been out of action for so long. And he'd been throwing strenuous bullpen sessions and everything but having not been in a game for so long he was it seemed like at the point where you would be afraid to use him in a high leverage situation with your season on the line and yet that is exactly when he was used That is the first time that we see Michael Waka in a 3-3 game in the bottom of the ninth where allowing a run means losing and losing the series and having your season be over. That's the time that Mike Matheny goes to Waka. And so let's talk about it in light of your research this week, which we kind of alluded to but didn't really go in-depth on.

But your research at Fox Sports this week about starters pitching in relief in the postseason, what did you find? Well, this was a different situation. This was about pitchers pitching on short rest in relief. So basically on their throw day, if you have to, it was based on the Giordano Ventura thing that happened in the wild card game. Remember that? I do. That was so long ago. That was a semi-controversial decision compared to this.

But yes, go ahead. So I look to see whether it seems obvious that since we know that starters, when they go to relief, when they go to the bullpen, get better, almost very consistently, almost all of them get better when they go to the bullpen. And since we know that starters as pitchers are better pitchers, basically, than most of the pitchers who are pitching really well in the bullpen, you would think that if you have a good starter like Ventura

or like Madison Bumgarner or like Michael Waka, that by putting him in the bullpen, he should be really super good. He should be a relief ace. That's not controversial. I think that we've seen it with some pitchers who've gone full-time.

Whenever Josh Beckett jogs in from the bullpen in a 2003 postseason or something like that, we all get super excited. It's a really exciting thing to have happen. So the problem is that we don't actually know how well they do on short rest. And therefore, it makes it one of those moves that is exciting and seems like it should work. But if it doesn't work, it has a ready-made narrative, which is, oh, he's not used to it, or he was pitching on short rest, or it's just too unpredictable. And so it seemed like one of those moves which defies the simple optimal strategy framework that some stat head conversations like to assume is there for most moves.

And so I just was curious to see what to expect if pitchers actually do get better, get the relief bump when they pitch in relief on their throw days. So I looked at every pitcher that had done so since 2000 in the postseason, and there's like 35 in those 15 years. There's been 35 times where a starting pitcher has started a game and then come back on zero, one, or two days rest to pitch in the bullpen. And I looked at how they had all done relative to how well they should have done using their Pocota projections. And I also looked at their velocity to see if they had gotten a big velocity uptick, because while the performance of 35 pitchers in relief is not a

particularly big sample, and we'll give you a number that you won't have a lot of faith in, velocity stabilizes awfully quickly. And you would think that if they're getting the relief bump in velocity, that that would be something that you could trust. So I looked at that, and it turns out that starting pitchers who move to relief for their throw day pitch almost exactly as well as you would expect a starter moving to the bullpen to pitch. They improve by almost exactly as much as you would, which is Tom Tango's famous rule of 17.

Strikeout rate goes up by 17%. Home run rate goes down by 17%. Walk rate stays flat and generally cut about a run off of their ERA or their run average. And that's about what we saw from the 35. Some of them were good, some of them were bad, but as a group, they outperformed their normal performance by about 20% strikeout rate and about 20% home run rate or a little more.

And their walk rate was flat, and their runs allowed were about one run less than their Pocota projections as starters would have said so it fits perfectly with what we know about the the bullpen bump it makes you think that um there's nothing particularly about going on short rest in the postseason that is unpredictable or intimidating however one thing about that that was interesting and that um clouds the conclusions a little bit is that um their velocity bump was not as as much as you normally get from a starter going to a reliever they only on average increase their velocity by about a half a mile an hour which is less than you expect normally some pitchers improved by by 2.5 miles an hour.

Some actually lost velocity, which made me think that, in fact, this could be a very complicated problem if you're a manager because you have to figure out whether you have the reliever who's going to gain velocity or lose velocity. This is not a normal occurrence. It's not a normal thing they're doing, and it does seem plausible that different pitchers are going to react different ways, and you can't necessarily just say,

well, on average they do this. You have to really know your pitchers and know how they look and know what it's going to be like. So anyway, I guess that's a long way of getting to Waka. The most compelling, to me, the fact that he hadn't pitched in a long time and was rusty or whatever, that, to me, adds some excitement and some volatility to it, but it's not necessarily a reason not to go to him.

I mean, you assume he's been throwing a lot. It's not like he hasn't picked up a baseball. It's not the same, of course, but he has, I'm sure, been throwing and working and practicing, and guys come back from injuries and you throw them into big situations all the time. but he has, I'm sure, been throwing and working and practicing, and guys come back from injuries, and you throw him into big situations all the time. The fact that the Cardinals wouldn't use him when they could have very often used a reliever is extremely important information.

Right. And makes you think, well, clearly Waka is not, he can't be an elite option. If he was an elite option, they would have gone to him, unless they were specifically holding him for long relief of the sort that yeah and that petite and gossman and uh rowark were being used and just that situation had never come up for the cardinals which maybe it hasn't they didn't play an 18 inning game i guess yesterday what uh how far yeah how did Yesterday How far How did Miller go? Four? Three and two thirds something? Yeah less than four

And Matheny Did say something about how he Kind of was that guy Like that was I don't know yesterday a couple days ago He said that he was kind of the designated Extra inning guy Which fine

But how do you Then go from that to this? That is the maddening thing here. I guess if you're using him as your extra inning guy, then you might think that he's good enough to pitch in the eighth, but you have other eighth inning guys. But you don't have other guys who can be the extra inning guy. He is sort of irreplaceable as the guy who could soak up five innings, right? Whereas, you know, if you're, he might be a little better than Seth Maness in the

seventh or a little bit better than, um, uh, Gonzalez in the sixth or whatever, but you know, they can do that. And so he's your insurance policy. He's the guy you break in an emergency. And you sort of know that at this point in game five of an NLCS that you're down in with a day off tomorrow, that it's time to kind of go. You break the rules. And so if, I don't know, he might have thought that Waka was his second best reliever all series,

but just not by so much that it mattered. And the bullpen worked really hard yesterday. I think that I might be misremembering, but I think those guys all probably pitched on Tuesday too. I mean, Neshek had pitched. This was his third day in a row, I guess. Yeah, so they ate a lot of innings yesterday, their third day in a row, and maybe now Waka starts to look, A, better in comparison, B, more like you have to kind of act desperately,

and C, I mean, like you said, they know their incentives to get this right are much higher than our incentives to get this right and they have a lot of information that we don't have so you have to assume that there's some internal logic to it probably and uh you know waka did come out and throw 97 miles an hour and so which is pretty exciting. Like, that's an exciting thing to have. Yeah, 98 I think he touched, but of course not with great command. Not with great command. Which may or may not have been a result of the rust.

It's hard to know. And the question is how quickly can you identify that? How quickly can you know that that's going to be a permanent feature of his appearance? Do you spot it in the bullpen? Maybe he had good command in the bullpen. Maybe he missed with two or three more pitches than we would expect a normal pitcher to miss with in his 11-pitch outing.

At what point do you go, oh yeah, he sure doesn't have it. Maybe it's pitch three. Maybe a good scout notices it immediately. Maybe we all noticed it on pitch eight. Maybe Waka was going to get yanked in the next batter. Maybe he should have been yanked the previous batter. It's really hard to say.

The fact is, the guy is better than every one of the pitchers that could have relieved him. He's unpredictable. And so there is a disaster quotient that you have to factor into the math, and maybe it was dumb. Maybe it was really stupid to do that. I'm not sure if it was really stupid or not, but clearly one of the scenarios of bringing in Waka is that a bad thing happens, just like one of the scenarios of bringing in Nishat is a bad thing happens, and the bad thing happened. Could they have foreseen it? Maybe. They know more than we do. Could they have foreseen it as it was happening? Or I guess that's not foreseen it, but could they have seen

it while it was happening and gotten him out one batter earlier? Sure. I think there's a pretty good case for that. I think that at that point, you're probably looking at Andrew Susak as a pinch hitter against Chote instead of Ishikawa as a pinch hitter against Morse. I mean against Waka and not as a pinch hitter. Two things wrong there. Correction segment. So I mean I would rather have, if I thought Waka was Waka, if I thought Waka was in a good place, I would rather have Waka pitch to Ishikawa than have Chote pitch against Susak. I don't know if Susak would have batted.

Duffy. It's probably Duffy. It would have been Duffy. Still, I think the point remains. Ishikawa is not like Ishikawa is a legit, awesome, big leaguer. And where a single wins it, duffy is probably just as dangerous and you know chote is much more prone to platoon splits much much more prone to platoon splits yeah you don't want chote facing a righty really in any situation there and there's right definitely going to you don't see the thing is that you wouldn't if they wait if if you get through ishikawa then you bring in Choate for Crawford

because they ain't pinch hitting for Crawford. Crawford's facing Choate. But if you bring in Choate to face Ishikawa, there's no way Ishikawa hits that because you have Juan Perez on the bench. He's going to go in for defense. So then you pinch hit with Duffy. Perez goes into left field,

and you've got a righty on lefty matchup with Choate on the mound. Yeah. goes into left field and you've got a righty on uh lefty matchup with chode on the mound yeah uh so the other options i mean he could have started with rosenthal in that inning and maybe that is the the tie game on the road thing or maybe he's not quite as confident in trevor rosenthal right now because rosenthal has been worked kind of hard he's looked a little shaky it's come in hasn't been that's probably an understatement he is still Trevor Rosenthal and maybe we should look at the larger sample than the smaller recent sample I don't know but that's the that's the decision that you trust your manager to make I suppose. He could have, I guess, gone to Maness or something once guys got on, once you needed a double play. You could bring in your double play

guy. Or you could have used Choke at some point there. Or you could have just brought in Maness. He could have identified that Waka was... In my Ishikawa Duffy math, Maness is also an option. He could have brought in Maness toaka was in my Ishikawa Duffy map. Manus is also an option, right?

He could have brought in Manus to face the left of Ishikawa instead of having Choate face Duffy. That would have also been an option. Yeah, so it seemed like Matheny went into this game determined to use Waka, and I don't want to try to get inside his head too much but he sort of just said that he was i mean he he had him up throughout the game uh in in earlier spots in earlier tight spots what on the seventh or eighth waka is warming up. He said before the game that he was available in a different fashion than he had been in

previous games this postseason, which I guess supports the idea that he was a dedicated extra inning guy and that now in an elimination game, he was not. I mean, that whole idea that you would have a designated extra inning guy who was actually your best one-inning reliever or second-best one-inning reliever and would hold him in reserve for the five-extra-inning game that rarely comes along, and I know it has come along a few times this postseason, but that seems like sort of not the best use of resources, I would say.

If you think Michael Waka is your best reliever or second best reliever, I don't know if I would hold him in reserve for the 18 inning game that comes along once in a blue moon, just because he's the guy who can do that. You want to try to avoid creating that game by preserving a lead or not losing a lead when you're ahead or tied. So I don't know that I believe that that position,

that that job description should exist even if you do have that guy. Yeah, I think I laid it out that way, but I think I agree with you. There does seem to be an internal logic problem with all of that. You would have to think that a lot of premises would have to be true. And the one thing that would make it more justifiable is if you said, well, it's not just the extra innings, but we're going to be really aggressive

replacing a starting pitcher who's struggling early in the game, and we're going to really want Walker to come in when they had the chance yesterday, and they explicitly did not do that. So I agree that it's probably a bit generous to assume all of those things are true. I'm looking at pitch counts right now, and I'm trying to decide whether he just simply felt that Manis and Martinez and Gonzalez were all tired.

They all pitched yesterday. Manis pitched through 26 pitches. And so I'm going to see if I can quickly find the Tuesday. Tuesday, of course, is a 10 inninginning game. I assume a lot of people pitched in that game. Looking it up.

So on Tuesday, Gonzalez pitched 14 pitches, Maness 6, and Martinez actually didn't pitch. So Martinez would have been fresh. So I don't think, yeah, I think that's probably not quite. Maness might have been. You might worry about Maness. Yeah, Maness didn't look great in his last outing who knows whether that's predictive or not but he was leaving his sinker up a lot and getting

getting hit and maybe maybe he's tired maybe you want to stay away from him and you have gonzalez i mean gonzalez he only pitched two days in a row, but he's not a reliever, really. So maybe you worry about him coming three days in a row. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, when we talked about your Donovan Tura in that decision, we were probably more understanding than most or less quick to criticize than most. And maybe that's the case with us in this decision, too.

There is another side to it, or at least there is a lack of other really appealing options in that situation. But I don't know. There's so much uncertainty. And it's not even really a thing we can analyze. Like we can't go back and look at the record of guys who were just sitting in the bullpen for three weeks and were never used. How did they do their first time back? Cause it's, I mean, that doesn't happen very often or when it does happen, it's not with Michael waka it's like with your mop-up guy who never pitched because he stinks and so we can't it's not really a thing that you can analyze like we can say he's rusty we can talk about the rust but we can't really quantify the rust maybe some pitchers would have no rust maybe others would have a lot of. And they can't know whether Waka would be one or the other because he hasn't really been in this situation before. So it's not a thing that you can analyze. And I don't know whether that is an argument in favor of it not being a terrible

move or it being a terrible move. Maybe if there are these many unknowns and you can't analyze and you can't count on what's going to happen, maybe that tells you not to risk it. I mean, what's really the difference between, I guess maybe the difference is rust, which again, I'm not a big believer. Well, sometimes I am and sometimes I'm not. But I'm not willing to just say rust and then say that that means that Matheny loses the argument. But what's the difference here between what Matheny did and what Ned Yost did going to Danny Duffy exactly once? I mean, it's the same thing. It's a different order. He didn't use him in the last game of those eight, but only once Danny Duffy has been deemed an acceptable pitcher for the Royals, and that situation was incredibly high leverage. It was the 10th inning of a tie game.

And Duffy isn't even as good as Waka. And Duffy's not even as good as Waka. And Duffy is basically the same, isn't he basically in the same role for the Royals he's the long man yeah and and he you and i would probably agree that he's better than at least half of that bullpen right he's better than fraser he's better than i mean i'd rather i would go with him over finnegan generally speaking i don't know again like we don't know that we don't know this full situation we don't know the mechanics we don't know any of these things. But generally speaking, just as I would say that Waka is probably better than the average Cardinals reliever, I would say that Duffy is probably better than the average Royals reliever. So don't all of these questions, why is he on the roster? Why is he being held? Why isn't he being used? Why is he being used when he is? Aren't all these questions exactly as applicable to the Royals? Sure. Everything has worked out for the Royals so far, but yes, sure.

Or you could talk about Tim Lincecum, who hasn't pitched once this postseason. And I don't know whether he should pitch this postseason, but the fact that they are carrying him and seem completely unwilling to use him ever is sort of strange. I don't know whether that is just in deference to his standing or his popularity or his past achievements or what, but they don't see him willing to use Lincecum either. Not that there has been a whole lot of mop-up man opportunities, and maybe that's why he hasn't been used, but they haven't used him in the 2012 way and and maybe they shouldn't maybe he's a worse pitcher now than he was that year even though he was pretty bad that year too remember how the mighty mighty boston's had it had a guy who would just dance nope

they did they had the guy all he would do is he like during the show he was a part of the band and like they'd all be playing and they'd have one guy on the stage and he would just dance the whole time and that's the lincecum lincecum uh so yeah and so after the game matheny ben car his name is ben all right i didn't didn't expect that he would come up in this podcast uh he'll probably be trending after this. That's our power. Skanking was, quote, his full-time job. You and I no longer have the most ridiculous job. You and I no longer have the most ridiculous job. So after the game, Matheny, I don't know whether he regretted the decision or regretted the necessity for the decision.

That wasn't clear. He said, I realized that I put him in a real tough spot, just a tough spot for him to be in, not the spot we wanted him to be in. And of course, if you're the manager, you can decide what spots you want to put people in. So there's that. But maybe he just means that you don't really want to put anyone into that situation after not using him. But then again, you can say that you should have found a way to use him at some point so that he would be ready to be used in this sort of situation. Anyway, he seemed to acknowledge that it was quite risky. At least, I guess you can say about Matheny that he is not managing with the media in mind that much is certainly true.

You don't make that decision if you are worried about being second-guessed because that was immediate, instant first-guessed by everyone, let alone second-guessed. So that suggests that either Matheny really did believe that Waka was his best chance to extend that game to push it into extra innings, or that he somehow got it into his head coming into the game that he was going to make up for not using Waka for all that time and would find a way to use him one way or another and was so locked into that mindset that he used him then.

I'm going to guess that that's not it. It does seem so obvious that they should have figured out a way to get him into some sort of situation. And so these are the games that they played in the NLDS. 10-9, 3-2, 3-1, 3-2. You got a moment in there? Got one in mind? Yeah, they're right. There hasn't been a time when you could just get a guy some work. There has not been those moments in this postseason

for really any team. Maybe the 8th and the 9th of game 1 against the Giants down 3-0, probably. That was probably the time. the ninth of game one against the Giants, down 3-0, probably. That was probably the time. But, of course, you have a fully rested bullpen. Right.

I mean, you have a very rested Waka. So that was probably the time. Yeah. And Waka said he felt fine. Randy Choate said he was available, and he had warmed up a few times already, but Matheny figured that the Giants would pinch hit for Ishikawa, as you said, which is reasonable and that makes perfect sense. So yeah, you're arguing imperfect options. You're arguing

that they should have used Rosenthal, who maybe is tired and has looked bad. You're arguing that they should have used Rosenthal, who maybe is tired and has looked bad. You're arguing that maybe they should have used Choate, who would have probably ended up facing a righty, which would have been far worse than Rusty Wakka against Ishikawa. Uh-oh, Ben, uh-oh. Yeah? Matheny, when asked about not using Rosenthal in the ninth, quote, quote, we can't bring him in in a tie game situation. We're on the road. Oh, no. Oh, no. Stop the podcast.

End it. Good run, Ben. All right. Our job is done. We're done. Didn't he know that we were out here trying to defend him, trying to find the ways that that decision made sense and he

repays us by coming out with the tie game on the road I hope that I hope that he'll use the I hope that at the end of that answer he'll use the catchphrase that me and my dad created from Athene when he was the Giants catcher

I hope he'll look up at the reporters and say do the math so ben when i was uh i remember hearing uh once about how during the cold war the u.s had a bunch of uh planes with like bombs like uh i don't know if they were nuclear bombs or what but they there were say there was a fleet of 24 of them, and 12 of them would fly straight at Russia from a base in Germany or something, and then right before they would get to the line where they would be in Russian airspace, and it would be war, they would get a signal to come back and they would turn around. And as they were coming back, the other 12 would be flying toward Russia until they got the signal just

before to turn around. And by the time they turned around, the other ones had come. So every minute of every day, as it was told to me, the U.S. had planes that were deployed as it was told to me, the U.S. had planes that were deployed and ready in case we had to go to war immediately. We would have these 12 planes with bombs right on Russia's doorstep, always right there. And that's what I think is with Randy Choate. I think there are 12 Randy Choates, and they're just constantly warming up in pairs of or in groups of like four. And when one gets tired of warming up, the other four get up. Yeah, around the clock rotation of Randy Choates. Exactly. They're still going during the offseason.

Oh, I'm so deflated by this Matheny comment. We were making a strong case and he just totally hung us out to dry right there. So we can't bring him in in a tie game situation is bad because the word can't. But then to end that sentence and then as though needing to explain to everybody

with a second sentence a second standalone sentence we're on the road like that really seals it. That really nails it. That just shows you the A second standalone sentence, we're on the road. That really seals it. That really nails it. That just shows you the level of logic that goes, oh, look it, you've already tweeted this. Yeah.

I'm so deflated. I mean, I don't know. If I were running a team and my manager made a comment like that, I think that'd be it. I think that would be it. I don't care how great a leader of men he is. I don't care how great a motivator he is. I can find another good motivator. There must be multiple great motivators out there. I can find one who does not lose with the season on the line because of

the book, because of roles that have been predetermined or silliness like can't use your tie closer in a tie game on the road. The Matt Williams argument, the Mike Matheny argument, the old pre-postseason Ned Yost argument, I think that's just like an instant dismissal, I think.

I can find someone better, someone who will not let his managerial moves be dictated because of that and who can do all the other things that the manager does well. That's, I just, yeah, go ahead. I like Bruce Bochy as a manager a lot. And, you know, sometimes it's hard to explain why. Even when you like a guy, a lot of times we hate managers and it can be sort of hard to explain why. But even when you like a guy, it's sort of hard to managers, and it can be sort of hard to explain why. But even when you like a guy, it's sort of hard to explain why.

But my favorite Bochy move of the year, and the move that I will always remember Bochy for forever and ever, is in a game, I don't know, probably late August or so, he went to his closer in a tie game. He was on the road, and he went to cassia and that's not a big deal i wouldn't remember it just for that i mean some managers do it occasionally but what happened next is why i will always love bocce and why why i will always remember this as the perfect example of bocce so he brings in cassia cassia goes one two three and then the

next inning because the next inning game He brings Casilla out again Casilla again, 1-2-3 And then the next inning, the next half inning The Giants score like 13 runs And so then Not 13, but I think 4 And so then he brings in

Whoever, whatever, some scrub To finish it out And as I recall Because he went to Casilla, he not only got to use who he considers his best reliever in a very important spot, but he got to use him for two innings, which seems like the most obvious math in the world.

You ought to be able to convince managers to do this just by going, dude, two innings. You get to use him for two innings. And so he got to use Casilla for two innings. And then by the time the so-called save situation, I think it was a three-run lead. So by the time the so-called save situation came up, it was like the leverage was down to nothing.

And so Casilla had a win probability added in that game of, I think, like.26. And then the quote-unquote closer closer in the game who most managers would have saved Kaseya for that moment had a win probability added of.01 and like that to me is just the entire argument in one game. Yeah, sure. Well, and we can mention that Travis Ishikawa is a really cool Well, and we can mention that Travis Ishikawa is a really cool story, by the way. We don't talk about the human interest angle all that much because there's not much to say besides cool story. That kind of encompasses everything about it. But Travis Ishikawa's baseball reference transaction log over the last couple years is interesting.

July 7, 2013, selected off waivers by the Yankees from the Orioles. July 13, six days later, granted free agency. July 18, five days later, signed as a free agent with the Chicago White Sox. November 5, 2013,

granted free agency. December 13, signed as a free agent with the Pirates April 23rd, 2014 Granted free agency April 25th, signed as a free agent with the Giants He's been all over the place Seemed like maybe his career was coming to an end And that was a pretty incredible moment

He almost retired after the last one Yeah Yeah, he almost retired after the last one. Whether or not it was a Matheny-enabled moment, it was a pretty awesome one. And Joe Buck showed the enthusiasm. He got into the moment. So that's that.

We tried. Matheny totally undercut us. He basically brought in Waka into our podcast right there. The decision to issue that quote and kill our vibe was possibly worse than his pitching decisions in that game. So that's that. I guess that's the series. And it wasn't all Matheny, obviously. The Giants played well. The Cardinals, in some ways, played poorly. But the managerial mismatch that we thought the ALCS was going to be between Buck Showalter and Ned Yost actually turned out to be the NLCS between Bruce Bochy and Mike Matheny, which maybe was also sort of predictable,

but that one actually went the way we expected. So there, we talked for longer than the usual episode about the NLCS. So we've, we made up for any oversight if there was any oversight, which half of us are not acknowledging. And that is it for this week. We will talk about what will probably be an exciting World Series if this postseason is any guide at all. On Monday and Tuesday, we'll probably have some good guests to talk about that. You can talk about baseball over the weekend at the very busy Effectively Wild Facebook group now approaching 2,000 listeners at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. We didn't get to emails this week.

That's also Mike Matheny's fault. We could have talked about some today if there had been a less interesting game. But we will get to them. We are saving them. We are seeing them. Please send us more at podcast at baseballperspectives.com. Please rate and review and subscribe to the podcast and please support our sponsor baseball reference by going to baseball reference.com subscribing

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