Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 563: October Off-Day Emails

Episode Date: October 24, 2014

Ben and Sam banter about non-playoff news, then answer emails about postseason teams and search for the most exciting playoff games ever.

I have a feeling that there must be a time I'll get a chance to go home I'm so tired of being here alone But I'm just a traveler in time Trying so hard to pay for my crime Good morning and welcome to episode 563 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus, presented by The Play Index at BaseballReference.com.

I am Ben Lindberg of Grantland, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Prospectus. And my Midwest tour is over. I'm back in the studio. For good? I don't know. Depends on the Royals and the Giants, probably. So I was looking at my route. ESPN arranged my travel. I had no say really in what flight I took or where those flights took me. And so the route that I ended up taking was New York to Charlotte to Kansas City. And then on the way back, Kansas City to Minneapolis to New York. So I looked at the distance from Kansas City to New York and compared it to the distance from Minneapolis to New York.

Yeah. And Kansas City is 1,192 miles from New York. Minneapolis is 1,197 miles from New York. So five miles. But that's on ground? Yeah. That's Google Maps driving directions. It's conceivable that it's shorter in the air because the equator and the thing, the longitude, latitude.

It's conceivable. It's conceivable, but probably not likely. How far is it north to Minneapolis from wherever you said, Kansas? Let's see. It's 437 miles. I will. Let's see. It's 437 miles. If StatCast had been tracking me, I don't think my route efficiency would have been very high on that trip. Did you have that thought in the air, or did you have it just now? No, I had it just now, looking at this map.

You took the Nori Aoki route. That's right. Speaking of Nori Aoki ned ned yost suggested that he might be benched he might just go with the all dyson plan in these nl games is that is that too much is he getting carried away with the dyson plan uh i haven't gamed this out but it's harder to use Dyson in the NL, right? For some reason? Yeah, well, let's see. Andy tweeted that Ned Yost acknowledged the possibility that Dyson might start. Aoki has more value off the bench than Dyson as a pinch hitter. I would say that I would rather have Aoki in the field for six innings than Dyson, generally speaking. I think Dyson, you know, he's a very poor hitter. However, you might make up for it because they don't have another left-handed bat at

all. As I joked in the preview that they don't have any left-handed bats off the bench except for Gerard Dyson, which is to say they don't have any left-hand bats off the bench and um so aoki will by the way uh i like that we're sticking to our bold stance of mispronouncing his last name consistently and together to the nothing about how i've pronounced his name over the last few weeks has been consistent i don't think. I plan to drive this Chevrolet right over the cliff with you. Anyway, Aoki is a good, well, I mean, he has no platoon split. So I guess in that sense, it's not necessarily like super duper ideal. But they just don't have any left-handed pinch hitter and they're going to need one. I mean, there's like virtually no chance that at some point Sergio Romo isn't going to be in there in a close game.

You know, or Kasia ori, and any one of those. I would love to have Aoki off the bench. So, maybe pinch hitting for Dyson. You're not telling me the decision has been made, but you're telling me that Yost is considering it, and this seems like exactly the sort of decision that you should be considering. Yeah, sure. No harm in considering it. I hope that he doesn't make his decision in a 90-second span while people are listening to him mutter incomprehensibly

about the pronunciation of two hitters' names. I hope he puts more into it than we are, and therefore I will defer to him. I'm sure he will. He's the new Ned Yost. I have the utmost confidence in him. I do too. Yeah. There was one other comment made today non-playoff related

that I just wanted to mention quickly. Did you see what Pat Gillick said? No. So Pat Gillick, CEO of the Phillies, former GM, of course, successful GM pretty much everywhere he went and was sort of the architect of the Phillies teams that won the World Series. Maybe the greatest GM. Could be. Could be. In the conversation.

Yes. And some have suggested that he, well, he did build the Phillies World Series teams, and then the teams that he left behind maybe have been sort of run into the ground since then. Anyway, he is now back as the CEO, and he said that the Phillies are not close to contention, which is not really something that we've heard from anyone with the Phillies lately. He said, I wouldn't think 2015 or 2016, I don't think is in the cards. I think somewhere around 2017 or 2018. So they are on the Astros World Series plan now. So this is interesting. I wonder if that is refreshing to phillies fans after years of

ruben amaro insisting that the old phillies are suddenly going to start hitting like young phillies again and they just need ryan howard to bounce back and they'll be fine or is it even more demoralizing because because now you're ruling out the next two years without really having started the rebuilding plan exactly? It's a difficult truth. It is for the best that they have wasted many opportunities to get stronger in the long term. This just makes it more egregious or more obvious that they have wasted those opportunities, that they have furthered away these chances. So I would say that it would be an unwelcome truth that's for the best. Yeah. And it's not really something that you hear team executives say that explicitly all that often, really, just ruling out the next couple

of years. And I wonder what that means for Amaro, because at least judging by his public comments he hasn't seemed to share that sentiment or he judging by his his actions at various trade deadlines or inaction at various trade trade deadlines it didn't seem to be how he felt about the team so I wonder I don't know I guess if he were on a wobbly chair he probably would have been tipped out of it already. So that'll be interesting to see. Sure. There are also two coaching vacancies right now. Would you rather have the vacant hitting coach of the Padres job or the vacant pitching coach of the Rockies job? Those are fairly thankless tasks.

The hitting coach for the Padres, I mean, for a couple of reasons. One is that... First of all, you've got great 95-plus mile-per-hour hitters on your team already. So that's the foundation to build on. Well, Petco doesn't, at least, I didn't look at what this year did, but after 2013, now my years are all mixed mixed up it's been a long time since the season ended yeah this is 2014 it is 2014 uh petco doesn't play as as as difficult as as tough anymore right uh they moved some of the fences in and the the results were uh promising for offense

and so you kind of get to come in and look heroic for doing nothing, and the job isn't quite so difficult either. But also there's something, I feel like there's something more destructive about making pitchers fail than there will be for making hitters fail. When you're making hitters fail, it's like say it's 80 of the offensive environment well they're going to put up 80 of the typical offensive stats but it's still basically

the same value because your opponents are too whereas i feel like if you have a 80 of the the pitching environment so 120 of the offensive environment or whatever if you have 80 of the pitching environment you're liable to get like 60% of the pitching performance because guys are getting hurt. They're getting demoralized. They don't know what to do with their repertoires. The whole thing is just dispiriting and destructive. That's not actually true, I don't think,

about the Rockies on a large scale. But I would certainly feel that way and I would be paranoid that even if it weren't necessarily true on a large scale, I would be paranoid that it was true on every single small scale. So it would not take me a moment's time. And plus, Denver is a fine city. San Diego is a great city. That's true. You can't go wrong. It is a top three destination, top four at least destination, if I were weighing major league jobs.

Yeah. And both picturesque ballparks at least. Maybe not friendly to your hitters or your pitchers respectively, but nice looking stadiums. And, yeah, you've got the bounce-back effect working for you either way. The Rockies had the worst ERA in baseball, and the Padres had the worst run scoring in baseball, and probably they won't repeat that feat.

So you've got that going for you. and probably they won't repeat that feat. So you've got that going for you. Okay, so we're going to do some emails today because there hasn't been baseball since we last spoke. So we have accumulated some questions. We will do our play index segment. The Padres were better at, they out hit, their home batting stats were better than their road batting stats this year

which I that was not true in 2013 no it's not typically been true it was very not true in 2012 so you know that doesn't prove anything but

my guess oh it's very not true in 2011. So, yeah, to me, that's a no-brainer. This guy's going to look so smart. Somebody's going to hit like 23 homers with like a 904 OPS, and the batting coach is going to get right in MVP votes. Cameron Maben, Come comeback player of the year. Good one. Calling it now. You missed your chance.

You've already called it. That's true. Okay. Well, all right. This question is travel themed, so I will stick with this question. It comes from Ken, who says, I'm curious if any research has been done with regards to the different amount of travel each team faces, particularly with northeastern teams versus more isolated western teams like Seattle.

How much of an advantage do teams on the East Coast really have in terms of less wear and tear and being a selling point for players? The latter may also be more of a factor in baseball, considering they can spend winters anywhere. more of a factor in baseball considering they can spend winters anywhere. Has anyone perhaps looked into guys who played in multiple cities in their careers and found lower production levels in seasons where they had to deal with extra mileage? So there have been some people who've looked into this, at least have looked into the travel distances, and they are significant, very significant. There have been some recent posts, but there was one study that Dave Allen did at Fangraphs a few years ago where he looked at this like over a seven-year period and he averaged the travel distances per year. per year and as you would expect the centrally located teams travel less the the least traveled team over the period that he looked at it and probably still today was the brewers followed by the reds and then the chicago teams and st louis and cleveland so basically most you know who the most traveled team is i do do, but you're probably

making a joke. I am. It's the Royals because they fly through Minneapolis. That's right. Every trip. They do it in between home series even, just after a three-game set at home. Fly to Minneapolis, fly back, play another three-game set at home.

It's brutal. Brutal schedule. You joke, but on my flight were John Kruk and Carl Ravitch also going to Minneapolis, and I assume that they were going to San Francisco to cover the rest of the series, and yet they were also routed through Minneapolis. Maybe ESPN has some sort of special travel attachment. Minneapolis is the travel hub for all ESPN employees. I don't know how to explain it, but that doesn't seem like that would be an efficient route either.

I have also flown for ESPN, and it has always been the most efficient route you could imagine. So I've never flown through Minneapolis. So I've never flown through Minneapolis. Well, I don't know. Maybe it's different when you're a full-time ESPN person. They give the contributors the most direct route. I'm giving you the Hunter Strickland stare down right now. Okay, so Ken.

So that is the answer there. And then the West Coast teams are the ones that travel the most. So the Mariners traveled the most, followed by the A's, followed by the Angels and the Giants and the Padres, the ones that you would expect. And it's a big difference. It's actually, on average, it was like double the travel miles for the Mariners relative to the Brewers, which is a lot. And there have been some studies about this. I've seen some, I think there were some done last year or earlier this year about teams that traveled for the NCAA tournament, the March Madness. I think that was done and there was some sort of effect found. I know there was an NBA paper done and there was also a baseball paper.

In 2008, there was an article in the Times about it. Someone, a researcher, did some research. Dr. W. Christopher Winter, the director of the Sleep Medicine Center at Martha Jefferson Hospital in Charlottesville, Virginia. And he got a grant from Major League Baseball to see how well teams played when they had jet lag. And he presented those results and he looked over a 10-year period and he counted the teams as sort of acclimated to the time zone where their home city is, and then he looked to see how many time zones difference there were for each team. And he found what seems to be a fairly substantial effect for teams that were three time zones away

from their home time zone, playing teams that were in their home time zone. So I guess a difference of three time zones from the natural time zone of the players of the respective teams. And he found that there was a difference, but it was not a huge sample. He said over that 10 year period, there were 5,046 games in which one team had to travel through one or more time zones the day before playing. Teams playing opponents who had to travel through three time zones had a 97-64 record, a healthy 6.02 winning percentage. And there was some other stuff. He looked separately at games like a loss to Seattle on Monday when the away team was more synchronized to the time zone, although there were not enough games in the 10-year period to draw a statistically significant conclusion.

Visiting teams that played an opponent that had traveled through three time zones had a 5.56 winning percentage, and that's sort of like having home field advantage or a little larger than having home field advantage. So maybe there's something to it. I don't know that I'm convinced by the numbers, but it's not shocking if there were something to it. I know that teams have studied. There was some news this year about some team, I think maybe the Red Sox had set up a sleep room to make sure that their players were sleeping a lot, which is something that Russell Carlton has written about in the past at BP. And teams have studied their players' circadian rhythms

to see whether some players are morning people or night people naturally. And maybe that affects decisions about who sits or starts in day games or something. I don't, I don't know how exactly that information is applied, but I know that teams have looked at it. So there might be something to it. And I have no idea whether that has ever affected a player's signing

decision. And I don't know of any studies of players who have played in multiple cities in their careers and comparing their production. But that is all that I know about teams traveling. It sounds like the travel itself, the distance that you travel itself, I don't know how to put this, but the cumulative miles don't seem like the issue. The being out of sync from certain trips is what sounds like is the issue. And so I don't know how much of the difference between what the Padres do and what, say, the Yankees do is about the time zones and the cross-country stuff.

I mean, I don't know how much isn't. It might be that that's the big deal and it might be a huge deal. But it also seems to me that the Padres lose a substantial amount or gain a substantial amount of travel just because their division itself is more spaced out. They have to go to Colorado and to Arizona and to San Francisco, which are all sort of like San Francisco is 450 miles away. The others are probably 1,000-ish.

And maybe the Yankees, for instance, are a little closer because those teams are a little bit blocked together on the eastern seaboard. And so you wouldn't think that going to Arizona or Colorado would be a factor in this, right? Because it's only, you know, it's a time zone. It's not a big deal. I don't know if the Mariners going to, because the same thing with the Mariners Houston and Texas, right? Those are 1400 miles or something like that. But I don't know if 1400 miles flips the switch that makes it annoying. If it does, that would be super annoying. If every trip within your division was like that, it would be annoying. But it sounds like maybe those aren't enough to matter. I don't know.

Good question. Someone will do it. Russell's probably done it. Hang on, let me check my email. He's not that quick. It takes him part of a day usually. I should also mention that if you want to play around more with this information, there is a pretty cool tool at Baseball Savant,

baseballsavant.com, called the Interactive Team Schedule Map, where you can look at the distance traveled by each team and the routes taken by each team in each year since 2009. So if you want to look into this a little more, that's a handy little app that is created for you. Okay, this question comes from Jeremy. Now, I know the old saying, bat your best hitter sixth and he'll keep you in the mix. Asterisk.

With one headline. But Ned Yost takes this too far Why does Alex Gordon Far and away the Royals best hitter By OPS plus bat sixth And why does no one talk about this I take issue with the second part Of the question

People have talked about it I mentioned somewhere this I was all prepped To rip When I was all prepped to rip, when I was writing one of my series previews, probably the first one, I was all prepped to rip into Ned Yost for his ridiculously poorly optimized lineup.

But then you look at it, and Gordon doesn't make sense, but the rest of it pretty much does. It's pretty close. If you believe Escobar and Aoki, Aoki, I just said it right, Aoki, if you believe Escobar and Aoki, I just said it right, Aoki, if you believe Escobar and Aoki are who they were this year, it's just a little bit out of order at the top.

But he does have the right guys at the bottom, and he does have basically the right guys, more or less. Escobar at the top is maybe questionable. I mean, I know he's hit very well there since that switch, but historically has not really been your prototypical leadoff hitter, even though Yost has often used him in that spot. Yeah. Historically, you can make a much better case than this year, and one should use historical instead of just this year.

So I'm probably being a little generous to ned yost but it's not a total disaster wreck of a lineup except for gordon which is the the weirdest thing and and there doesn't seem to be i mean he wants to keep he's got a nice little lefty righty thing going which is keen for him uh but there's no reason that it couldn't be Gordon second and Aoki sixth or, you know, with Posmer hitting a little bit. I guess Jost ain't changing now, as we talked about with Andy. He's ridden this thing for 19, 20 straight games. But, of course, a different manager would have moved Moustakas up to sixth, Aoki down to ninth, Gordon up to second, and then we'd all be happy.

Yeah. down in ninth, Gordon up to second, and we'd all be happy. Yeah. I'm sure he's been asked about it, but I don't know what he said, if so, and quick Googling does not reveal the answer. I don't know. It's a confusing one. I don't know what his optimal spot would be, but probably second or fourth or something. And so he's missing out on some plate appearances

and not being in the best position to drive in runs perhaps. But it's probably not costing the Royals a whole lot. The difference between Gordon in his optimal spot and Gordon batting ninth or something would probably be not much more than a few runs over a season. So Gordon batting sixth instead of fourth or some other spot that would make everyone happy is probably not a huge detriment, but it is perplexing. Would we be making a bigger deal out of this if they had lost in the wild card game

and we still thought that Ned Yost was a tragedy for that franchise? Perhaps, yeah, maybe, especially if Gordon had not been up at the right time to save the game or something. I'm looking at his career splits just to see if maybe that would have something to do with it because sometimes managers will get the idea that guys hit better in a certain spot or maybe even the players will get that idea. But Gordon's OPS, well, and maybe that's not the best way to look at this. His OPS as a sixth place hitter is 720, which is low for him. It's lower than his OPS as a leadoff guy, as a second guy, as a third guy, as a fifth guy, as a sixth guy.

You've already figured out, though, why that doesn't work. But yes, he's a sixth guy in a low offense era and was hitting in different places when there was more offense around the league. So that skews it somewhat. And when he was better, when he was 27 and he had his best season. Yeah, sure, that too. Maybe he had his best season because he wasn't hitting sixth. Maybe he wasn't hitting sixth because he had his best season.

I think that, which one do you think is more likely? Which one do you think is more likely? I don't know. I can't prove either, so I'm not taking a position. Fair enough. Okay, this question comes from Matt from Cambridge, Massachusetts. Hey, guys. I love the show and wait up every evening for it to be on the site.

That must be problematic when it doesn't go up in the evening. I wonder what happened the last couple of days. Do you think, Ben, that we should have some sort of like a second... A word system. Yeah, like a podcast Twitter account that only tweets if we're not recording at night. That's its entire existence. And then if you are, probably no more than about 30 people in the world

should follow that account. But those 30 people would probably be appreciative, right? And I mean, we have to answer the question the next morning anyway when people have tweeted us, so why not do it? Yeah, all right, sure. Somebody set that up, tell us what the password is. Okay, yeah. Or you could, maybe one of those websites that is just a question

and then a one-word answer is effectively wild going up tonight. Yes or no? So Matt in Cambridge says, Hypothetically baseball God, hypothetical baseball God, approaches Dayton Moore. He offers to trade Mike Trout to the Royals, along with his contract, for opening day in 2015 in exchange for the Angels receiving the Royals' current spot

in the World Series. This was sent before the World Series started, I believe. If you were more, would you accept? Trout in 2015 and beyond could make the Royals the best team, but as we regularly see, the regular season and playoffs both require a strong amount of luck. The best team clearly doesn't have close to roughly 50-50 shot to win the World Series the way the Royals do. While Trout would make the Royals a better team long term, would it be greater than an incredibly strong chance at a championship,

which is the ultimate goal of any team? Oh. I don't think it would. I don't either, but can I talk myself into it? I mean, you're... Let's pretend that the Royals don't have this baggage as a franchise. No, well, I actually think that the baggage doesn't hurt you. I mean, if people saw you do it, it would be...

Like, they couldn't do it just because people wouldn't accept it. The hot takes would be scalding. But let's just assume that you could do this in a way that, you know, everybody's memory would be wiped and they didn't know that you had made it here, they just thought you lost in the ALDS. So here's the thing. This email ends with, would it be greater than an incredibly strong chance at a championship which is the ultimate goal of any team? There is a difference between the phrase ultimate goal and only goal. And it is true that the ultimate goal is to win a World Series. There are many goals, though. And one of

those goals is to play really exciting baseball throughout six-month seasons, make lots of post-seasons, have your fans be interested, have them show up because you're a winning team, that you are an exciting team, that you are the sort of team people want to root for. And I think that clearly the Royals World Series likelihood over the next decade, including right now this year, goes down if they made this trade. However, the benefits to them as a franchise, I think, probably outweigh a World Series, or at least it's within the realm of possibilities that they outweigh a World Series. What does a World Series do to the Royals as a franchise if they lose, you know, 84 games next year? And which, you know which probably, to be honest,

probably Pocota will say that they will. My guess is Pocota will have them right around 80 wins. My guess is that they won't... They don't have... I don't know. It's not a bad core. It's not a guaranteed core. It's not the Nationals after 2012, for instance. So imagine a situation where this is their Rockies in 2007 season. And it's great, it's fun, everybody's charged, and then they lose the next five years.

Then how much will we look back and go, oh, this changed the franchise in any meaningful way? It won't. It would have added $60 million in revenue, and it would have ended, I mean, certainly getting to the postseason was significant. I would not have made the trade if I were the Royals and it was the last day of the season and say, you know, say some other team offered the equivalent of Trout for the postseason spot. I would not have done that. I think making the playoffs was exceptionally important to the franchise, to everybody who

follows them, to everybody who's probably under the age of 40 or 38 and has been rooting for the Royals for 30 years, irreplaceable. I think getting this far, though, I think the pain of losing or not even competing at this point would be perhaps just as bad because you've got this storybook season that is all set up for the Hollywood ending and then you're just walking away and taking Mike Trout.

Well, they have a 50-50 chance of losing this World Series as it is. I mean, it's not an existential crisis or an existential threat to them if they lose the World Series as it is. I mean, you don't always win the World Series. Most teams don't win the World Series. Many teams don't even win the World Series over 30 years. The fact that the Royals have not won a World Series in 29 years is not newsworthy.

It's not even remotely newsworthy. There's tons of teams that have not won a World Series in the last 29 years. Like, probably more than half the league, although I haven't checked, haven't won the World Series in more than 29 years. That's not a very long drought. Not making the playoffs was the long drought.

They made the playoffs. It's great. A World Series would be great, too. I just don't know that it shakes the franchise in a way that having trout for the next six years and having say four or five playoff runs in that time would it just creates a completely different they're the rays at that point and um i don't know maybe that's a bad example because 400 people went to see the rays this year but uh to me that might be a bigger deal in retrospect. I could imagine, particularly given the fact that they have less than a 50% chance of winning the World Series right now, and had less than a 50% chance of losing it anyway, so nothing was guaranteed.

I think that i could i think that right now it's stupid to say yes i think five years from now if we look back at the royals and i don't even know what's going to happen in the next five years i'm just saying that with the distance of time we might look back and go no yeah the answer was they should tough sell yeah if you could somehow divorce it from the public if the if if the public didn't know about the arrangement much easier yes if you could if you could do it clandestinely so that the royals would just uh bow out of the playoffs somehow in a non-suspicious manner and then mike trout suddenly appeared on the roster next year

and no one questioned it, then I think it would be a much easier sell. I don't think there's any way that you could conceivably talk any Royals fan into accepting it at this point. All right, play index? Sure. So it feels like we've seen a lot of great games in this postseason. We've talked about how we've seen a lot of great games in this postseason we've talked about how we've seen a lot of great games in this postseason so i just got to wondering what the best postseason game was and um i did this the way i often do i there is a school of thought that a

crazy win probability graph makes for a great game and it usually does i have a different school of thought which is that or i come from a different school of thought which is that persistent interest and persistent excitement beats wild swings and so while a seven run inning to erase a six run lead is pretty awesome no doubt about it great game i will take it i will uh take that every single day, no doubt about it. However, I kind of prefer a game that has, you know, it's close the entire time. There's two runners on in every inning. You're terrified with every pitch. You're optimistic with every pitch. I like a game that has a high leverage index. So leverage index, if anybody's not aware, is basically a way of measuring how likely and by how much the next play will swing the probability of a team winning. Basically, if – Ben, how do you explain average leverage index?

Ben, how do you explain average leverage index? How important each moment is or how important it feels, what the chances are that it will determine the outcome of the game, that the outcome of the game will be determined at any particular moment. Yeah, it's basically a way of measuring by how much the win probability is capable of changing in the next batter, more or less, in kind of plain English, a little bit. So was this a Tango invention? Yeah, I think so. All right.

So baseball reference tracks average leverage index. Well, it tracks the leverage index for every situation. for every situation. And then average leverage index is the leverage for the entire, for a player, his average leverage index is what the leverage was through his entire pitching stint. For a team, it's what it was for the entire game. And so if you do a game search by team, you can see what their pitching staff's average leverage index was for the entire game. And so if you limit it to postseason, all postseason games, and you run it for each team's pitching, and then you use VLOOKUP to add them together, the two pitching teams leveraged together, you have a summed average leverage

index for the entire game. And so I did this to see what the best postseason game ever was by this method. And so there's different ways that you could quibble about what the best is. For instance, best is for instance is an an extra inning game has more chances to accrue leverage so is it automatically going to be an extra inning game maybe it is or maybe to maybe not i don't know and maybe that's an unfair advantage but i will just tell you a few of the answers so the answer the number one and ben you might have to help me remember some of these games. Some of them you won't. It's possible that I'll say a game and it'll be a super famous game that everybody remembers and I'll be blanking on it. Tell me if that's okay. Number one is actually game two of the ALCS, the Yankees and the Angels in 2009.

It went 13 innings. It was a 4-3 finish. And so let's look that game up. My recall of individual playoff games is not strong. Or at least not if you just tell me the series and the game number. I might remember when I look at the actual game.

So let's see. This was A.J. Burnett versus Joe Saunders. I remember this game. This was, yeah, I remember this game. This was, yeah. This was the game that Brian Fuentes basically, basically his Angels career ended i mean nobody ever trusted him again he came into the 11th inning this is the my favorite thing in the world is when it goes

extra innings and a team scores on the top of the hat of the inning and then the other team scores exactly the same amount yeah uh so the angels scored in the 11th uh it was tied 2-2 angels scored in the 11th um and uh then brian fuentes left the ball up to alex rodriguez who went opposite field for a game-tying home run and they kept on going until the 13th when the uh angels had urban santana in the game and the yankees went single, sacrifice, intentional walk, and Melky Cabrera reached on a walk-off error, which, as you know, is my favorite thing, the walk-off error. Right.

That was A-Rod's clutch postseason. That was the year that he... He broke the narrative. Dominated the Twins in the Division Series, and then slumped in the world series again right um but yeah and rivera pitched two and a third scoreless in this game yep so uh it looks like uh one two three four five six of the first nine innings ended tied and then of course three extra innings ended tie uh tied so good game a lot of base runners that always helps uh good game uh wouldn't have guessed that it was the best postseason game of

all time uh-huh yeah no a rod yeah a rod hit pretty well world series that year too yeah and and i will i will acknowledge that it is not the best postseason game of all time because you do have to have the impact moment that sticks with you and that all of your memories of the game congeal around. So this might have been the best experience for five hours and ten minutes that you could have, but because it didn't have the eternal highlight moment, it fades with time. Of course, people have also extended the concept of leverage index to championship leverage index, which is another way to look at it.

So you can then see... I'm on it, Ben. Ah, you are? Okay. So, best... Well, let's see. That's an NLDS game. So the best World Series game ever, by this measure, is the 2000 World Series, the Yankees and the Mets,

and it was game one, which the Yankees won 4-3 in 12 innings. So that probably did feel like a really good game, too, because that was, I mean, to you, because you were in New York, and you guys think you're so special. So let's see. Oh, this is a great, here's always a good game, in my opinion, when the highest win probability change is an out. So the highest win probability change was Paul O'Neill grounding into a double play in the 10th inning.

Because at the time, it was obviously tied, bottom of the inning. Bases loaded. One out, and he ended the inning. They intentionally walked Posada to get to O'Neal, and he rounded into the double play against Glendon Rush. So let's see. Is there anybody? Armando Benitez blew the save. That doesn't help.

All right. That happened a lot. David Justice with a two-run double. Yeah. So tied at zero through the fifth. Yankees jump ahead 2-0. Mets immediately come back. No shutdown inning.

Go ahead, 3-2. Oh, right. Jose Vizcaíno drove in Tino Martinez for the winning run. I remember that. Chuck Knobloch, bottom of the ninth, tied it up. Oponita. So, good game, probably. But that was also extra innings the best nine inning game uh was the a's sorry the angels and the red socks in 2007 i remember this game we freaked out in the

office at this game this was the game where uh in the ninth inning the red socks put two guys on and the angels went to jared weaver and he came in to face david ortiz and the first pitch david ortiz hit a massive home run right uh walk off and uh pretty much it felt like for years it felt like the angels could never beat the red Sox. And that was pretty much the moment that I think everybody had in mind. It was just, it just felt like so inevitable that Ortiz was going to hit the home run. He did hit the home run, and you just thought, they're a better team. That's what it felt like. Best game seven.

I'll go to best game seven. I have two more. Best game seven, probably wasn't even a seven-game series, so I'm going to skip that because it was 1924. Best Game 7, you have to go down to number 29, which was the Jack Morris game. Yeah, that was going to be my initial guess if you had asked me to pick a game.

So that's the best, probably the highest. If you go by championship leverage index, that would be the highest. That would be the greatest game of all time as regards a World Series championship, unless you count this 1924 game. Game seven of 1924 was the one that the newsreel footage just came out of, the Walter Johnson game. Yeah. Oh, so that's a good one. Yeah. Huh. Interesting.

And the best game of this postseason, do you have a guess? Well, this method favors long games, right? And it favors... So is it just the 18 inning game? It is. It favors them, but not automatically. There's actually, if you're not getting base runners in extra innings, it starts actually lowering the leverage index.

Because really, even if it's the 15th inning, or the 9th, it's the same thing. Even if it's the 15th inning and you have two outs and nobody on, there's very, very, very little chance that the state of the game is going to change. And so what actually happens in a game like that is the leverage index starts to shrink. But yes, the Giants and the Nationals at 18 inning game is number 61 all time. And so that's number one for this year. But there have been a couple of others that have been high. The first game between the Angels and the Royals,

which was I think the Moustakas game. Was Hosmer the next one? I can't remember if it was the Hosmer or the Moustakas game. That was Moustakas. Okay, it was Moustakas. That's number 83 all-time. And the Dodgers-Cardinals game two, which I don't remember particularly. The Dodgers wonCardinals game 2, which I don't remember particularly.

The Dodgers won 3-2. I didn't watch that game. That was number 94 all time, which is still very high. So the 2014 games start punching in here. Number 115 was the Giants and Cardinals game 2, which was the Lance Lynn game. Well, the Lance Lynn game. It was the Trevor Ros and Cardinals game 2, which was the Lance Lynn game. Well, the Lance Lynn game. It was the Trevor Rosenthal game. It was a great game.

That was probably, I would say that's probably my game in the postseason so far. It's number 115. Game 2. Yeah, game 2 of the Cardinals-Dodgers series. That was a good one. That was the Carpenter home run and the Kemp home run. Yeah. That was a good one. Didn't see Carpenter home run and the Kemp home run.

Yeah. That was a good one. Didn't see it. We didn't talk about it. I don't know anything about it. Okay. All right. All right. I think that's it. That's what I got. Cool. Okay. So subscribe to the Play Index if you want to do your own research on the best playoff games

using the coupon code BP to get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. All right. We'll take one more. This is, of course, from another listener named Matt, a different Matt. This is Matt in Portland. He is responding to our discussion of Mike Matheny's Michael Wacca move and more so than the move

the justification of the move as not using your closer in a tie game on the road Matt says so my initial thinking was along the lines of you two on your podcast if I were the GM I think that would be it for Matheny the fact that holding your closer until you have

a lead is common practice shouldn't matter and should be changed. But thinking about this more, here's why it's not a fireable offense for the manager in practice. A well-run team has clear and consistent lines of communication between the GM and manager, and let's assume St. Louis has that. So the GM and the manager have clearly discussed this before. You have to think that there are strategy meetings where they talk about how to deploy personnel in specific situations. So any decisions like that should already have a plan and shouldn't be a surprise. The team already knows what they're going to do. It's not like the manager is like, well, dang, what the heck do we do now? If the GM and the manager disagreed about how to approach this, they would have worked it out by now. So by this theory, the GM is also on board with the strategy that was deployed,

which means that now we are at it's a fireable offense for the GM, not the manager. I don't know that I agree with the premise. Well, certainly there are differing levels of GM involvement in actual in-game moves and tactics. It's kind of a third rail, or at least in certain places, the manager's domain is in-game moves and lineups and deciding which pitchers to put in. And often if the GM wants to do something about that, he has to trade the guy or get rid of the guy that he doesn't want the GM to use. Now, that's not really the best way to run your team, probably. Ideally, you would have them both be on the same page and you would have a manager. You could say that the fault lies in the hiring of the manager, I suppose.

If you think that this is a very important thing, a very important component of the manager's job, then the GM should select a manager who is inclined to make the correct decision here. to make the correct decision here. And so therefore you could hold the GM responsible for not prioritizing tactics when hiring a manager. I guess you could put it that way. But let's be honest, Ben. All 30 GMs, 25 GMs in the game right now think you should be using your closer in a tie game on the road right yes and 29 ish managers don't do it right and so I mean I don't know if all these GMs have

had the conversation and they just you know agree that it's the manager's call, or if you don't have the conversation over every single thing. But look, I feel pretty confident saying that Andrew Freeman was pro-closer in the ninth, or is generally pro-closer in the ninth. And that Joe Maddon didn't do it anyway. So I don't know what gets in the way of that but no i mean it's that look it you pick your fights you you want you you have to give your manager at the very least the illusion of autonomy that he craves for self-respect and so that he'll continue to try hard for you uh on behalf of you you have to choose your fights and my guess is that gm's figure i'll throw a memo out there. Hopefully he'll read it. Hopefully it will get his brain going. But I doubt anybody's had the knockdown war over this issue. I think that

GMs probably accept it. And at the end of the day, it's their lineup. GM's probably accepted. And at the end of the day, it's their lineup. Yeah, and maybe it's something that will change. It's hard to say how many. I mean, I feel like you should be able to find someone who can combine the leadership skills of a Mike Matheny or some other manager who players like and who players play hard for. Someone who combines that with willingness to use your closer

and tie games on the road as a proxy for sort of a certain sort of tactical approach to the game. But that's probably a difficult thing to do. There aren't a lot of, I guess there's not a lot of overlap between people who played the game, which at this point at least is a prerequisite for being a major league manager, and people who would manage completely differently from the way their own managers manage their teams during their careers. I guess it's probably hard to find that person. I mean, Gabe Kapler is such a person, I suppose, based on his comments and his own reaction to that move. But I don't know how many Gabe Kaplers there are out there. And maybe that's a tall order. I would think that you'd want to be on the same page.

You'd want your manager to make the moves that you would make were you in the dugout as a GM. But it's easier said than done, I guess. I mean, when it costs you an elimination game, then it must be pretty tough to swallow. Or when it potentially costs you an elimination game, then it must be pretty tough to swallow or when it potentially costs you an elimination game. But yeah, I guess it's just sort of a pill that you have to swallow because that's the state of managing. Yeah. I don't even particularly, I don't even get that riled up about Matheny.

I think it's silly and kind of annoying, but I don't even get that riled up when Matheny. I think it's silly and kind of annoying, but I don't even get that riled up when Matheny does it in the regular season or when any manager does in the regular season. I assume that at least 15 of the managers out there also know that they should be doing it and that this is something that in the same way that we talked about with the GM and the manager, this is something that they do because you want to keep your closer happy and it's not worth the long-term strife. With Matheny, the issue is that he did it in the postseason. And I don't know that I expect Mouzelak to go over every scenario with Matheny

that's going to be different in the postseason and get a vow that he's not going to do it. Right. Yeah, I mean, these managerial interviews from what is reported tend to be very long and over the course of multiple days and include quizzes on tactics, or at least certain teams seem to administer such quizzes. And that would be one of the things that you would include, perhaps, if you were expecting to be a playoff team. You might want to know whether your manager a middleman with no decision-making powers, which who knows, perhaps one day some team will try that, but no one has tried it yet. So if you were to fire one general manager for this, you would pretty much have to fire all of them.

Yep. Okay. So that is it for this show and for this week. We hope that you will send us some emails for next week at podcast at baseball prospectus.com that you will join the Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild for all your baseball discussion needs over the weekend. We would love it if you rated and reviewed and subscribed to the podcast.

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