Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 564: The Weekend in World Series

Episode Date: October 27, 2014

Ben and Sam talk about the tragic death of Oscar Taveras, then discuss the baseball they watched over the weekend.

Seems like falling down, or a wave, lost in sea, or the one that's left behind, or the wave of you and me. And maybe I know that, maybe it's better, but I can't forget the time. Good morning and welcome to episode 564 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, brought to you by The Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg of Grantland.com. Hi, Ben. Hello. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg of grantland.com. Hi, Ben.

Hello. We should, well, we should acknowledge that something terrible happened and that it changes everything that we'll think about baseball for a little bit and that we probably, I don't know. I don't know if there's anything else that we can add to it. So I don't know. What should we do, Ben? us recently. Baseball is the soothing bomb that we use to console ourselves from our own sad stories and the knowledge of our own impending demise and the other minor tragedies or major tragedies of our lives. And we turn to baseball to try to forget about those things. And so it hurts even more in a way when it's baseball that brings that pain to us. And baseball is often's the World Series and Madison Bumgarner is pitching really well and Lorenzo Cain is making catches and all these things that would normally delight us. But how can you really take much pleasure in that knowing that had things gone a little differently, Tavares would be playing. We would be watching him play and watching other players play reminds us of his

not playing. So it really felt like you were at the game. I was watching the game and I felt like I wasn't really seeing it or wasn't really retaining what was happening suddenly the the stakes were gone boy i hadn't even thought about the fact that he could have been playing in this world series but for right you know but for babbitt or but for you know all the fluctuations that um we talk about all the time and that are so meaningless to the game, that's really especially depressing. I know. I mean, I was thinking about that when I was traveling last week because I'm a neurotic traveler and I travel often, but I never managed to banish the thoughts that there's always

the potential for disaster. And so, you know, your plane hits some turbulence and you think, if the Royals and the Giants were not playing right now, I wouldn't even be in this plane right now. There are so many things whenever an accident occurs, it could have so easily been avoided if thousands, millions of things had not happened exactly the way that they did. And so, yeah, that's something you think about with Tavares. And I feel like we get so attached to young players early, maybe earlier than a previous generation of fans would have. I don't remember the first time I heard or read or saw something about Tavares.

I think probably 2011 was maybe the time when the plugged in fan was definitely aware of Oscar Tavares. And you obsess over his stats and you read the scouting reports and you imagine how good he could be. And we love to do that with prospects because we, there's no limit. We don't know. We haven't seen them struggle. We can imagine that they will be as good as anyone has been before. And you talk about,

you know, with Tavares, will he get over this minor nagging injury or, you know, questions about his makeup or, you know, questions about his makeup or, you know, will Matheny give him a chance and all of these questions about prospects, will he hit big league breaking balls and all of these now seemingly inconsequential questions. And you never expect not to get an answer to those questions.

And it's sad having seen him succeed on the postseason stage so recently. I mean, whenever anyone dies, you get that feeling of, oh, he was just here. He seemed okay just the last time I saw him, which is always the reaction when there's an accident. But even more poignant in this case, having seen him hit that pinch hit home run in game two so recently it it hurts okay well and then you have to find a way to just talk about baseball again which is weird and it was weird on the broadcast which i guess you didn't see but there's no good way to do it. You break the news to the audience, and then you have to just go back to calling play-by-play.

And meanwhile, everyone is preoccupied thinking about this other thing that happened. But you have to just kind of keep talking. Yeah, you know, there's this Mitch Hedberg joke where he says, it's hard to dance if you just lost your wallet. You know that one? Uh-huh. you, I, it's so, it's so serious and so heavy, um, that, uh, I wasn't even sure whether that was an acceptable thing to think or whether that was the exact right thing to think. So, uh, yeah, so this is all, uh, uncomfortable no matter what we say, because of course it's much bigger than our stupid reactions and our, the ways that we all process it individually. So anyway, yeah, it was hard to be happy.

But I don't know. Well, what can we say? Yeah. So other things happened in baseball this weekend that were not about the World Series. And I think that we'll probably talk about those tomorrow when there won't be a World Series game. So if you're really interested in hearing our thoughts on Joe Maddon,

probably, for instance, you can wait 24 hours. In the meantime, three games were played in the World Series, and the Giants won two of them, and now they have a three-games-to-two lead going back to Kansas City. And so, let's see. What struck you about the baseball uh it's hard to remember now but i i guess saturday's game was it was just a succession of singles many many singles strung together into a comeback it was the first time that that we had seen the Royals come back and then lose a lead this postseason.

It was the first time since the wildcard game that the Royals had trailed in a game that they had led. Right. Which is a little bit too wordy for a fun fact. But in my opinion, very, very interesting. Yeah, it was interesting. And there had been some criticism of how much Calvin Herrera was used in previous games, in games two and three, I suppose, when maybe he didn't have to be used as much as he was. And so you got to this situation in game four

where maybe he wasn't available or he was available for an inning, but you didn't want to push him further than that. And so the Royals had to kind of, for the first time, cobble together some important innings with some pitchers other than those big three bullpen guys, and Duffy and Frazier, and that didn't go so well for them. And so maybe you're finally seeing the Royals bullpen being strained

beyond the breaking point or beyond the point where you can keep using them and using them and using them. So that was different. That was something we had not seen in a Royals game this postseason. Yeah, I was at game three, and my mom was at game three. So I went and I sat next to her, and I was telling her what was going to happen, because, of course, I know those things. And there wasn't a lot to be happy about if you were my mom and you were rooting for the Giants.

And so I was trying to kind of say, well, you know, on the bright side, it's really three-game set, you know that at some point the relievers are going to get tired if they get worked hard. And just by scoring those two runs, the Giants managed to get Herrera in there to throw 30-some pitches, and you just sort of knew that that was going to probably matter a little bit, maybe, or it would if the games stayed close. And it does sort of feel like that has happened,

that we talk a lot about how postseason allows managers to ride their guys hard without having to worry about them getting too tired because there's always a day off coming. But, you know, it is. It's three of these series in a row. And in the seven-game series, there's three games in a row. And you really do see the limitations that these guys have even in October. So not only, I think, is maybe some fatigue starting to arguably appear.

But Ned looks flustered again. Ned looks kind of like a little bit lost. So he had the... Didn't help that Carrera hit also. Well, I was going to say, yeah, that was the first time he looked a bit lost. And there's been three games that we haven't talked about, so I'm going to probably be jumbling all sorts of scenarios and trying to remember which day was he supposed to bring in Finnegan

and which day was he supposed to do this and all that. But, yeah, letting Herrera bat was super odd. And we've seen that maybe a surprising number of times. I play indexed the times that an AL pitcher has, an AL relief pitcher has hit in a postseason game, always in the World Series, obviously. And there have been, I don't know, it was something like 14 instances in the wildcard era. And some of those were long men, like, you know, you know yeah ramira mendoza did it a few

times for the yankees but it has happened uh not even that long ago right last october brandon workman batted for the red sox which at the time sort of caused a stir and this was a similar situation. And we've talked about how Yost is reluctant to go to pinch hitters, that he pinch hit less often than any other manager this year. And there have been a few times where it was curious not to see a pinch hitter, maybe even in tonight's game. I know on the broadcast, Tom Verducci was talking about pinch hitting for Dyson in that inning when there was a double when Ishikawa misplayed that ball into a double. And you had Dyson and Shields coming up. And that seemed like, at the time, it was a 2-0 game. And you're going gonna have a hard time getting runs off of bum garner as it turned out they did not get any runs off of bum garner and

and so that's one area where the ned yost october aggressiveness that we have been lauding for the last few weeks has not really turned up yeah uh i was surprised that well i wasn't surprised that he didn't but it seemed to me um you know justified to pinch hit for dyson or maybe justified not to pinch it for him but it felt fairly unjustified to let shields hit that's what seemed particularly egregious to me um so the double switch on sunday night was another one of those moves where you stare at it for the longest time trying to figure out why. And it finally occurred to me some innings later, uh, that down to nothing, uh, Yost realized that he had to use Herrera and Davis for three innings because

what happens if they tie the game and he can't go to Holland in the ninth of a tie game, which seemed like beyond the can't go to Holland in the tie game on the road, uh, thing, there's just the extreme unlikelihood that that's going to be what this series comes down to is getting exactly two runs

between now and then and then having to go to Holland. So it felt very odd to me that he tried to stretch Herrera in the first place. It seemed like that was going to be a pretty good time to

go with the, maybe with the Butler-Willingham back-to-back or something like that. But he didn't. He double-switched, and that felt weird. And then, you know, it ended up costing him, well, I guess it ended up costing him. Herrera gave him, you know, a bunch of runs that I guess mattered some, but maybe didn't matter all that much.

Yeah, it seems like something that separates some managers from others, philosophically speaking, is that some of them really prize outs or, you know, getting outs, extending your pitchers and just wiping the other teams out off the board. And some seem to prioritize scoring, making the most of your opportunities. And that can manifest itself in bunting or not bunting. Certain managers will say that they want to get that run. And others will say that they want to play for the beginning. They don't want to give up the out, and that will also manifest itself in pitching changes.

And you'll have some managers who say that they want to extend their starter another inning. They want to cross those three outs off the board. They maybe don't trust their bullpen as much, or they don't want to depend on their bullpen as much. Or they maybe don't trust their bullpen as much or they don't want to depend on their bullpen as much. Whereas other managers will press the advantage when they have a rally going. They will pinch hit. And this is something that you hear Mike Matheny say that he wants to extend the starter and get those outs. And maybe you hear Bochy or Buck Showalter say that they want to seize that opportunity to score some runs and figure out how to get the outs later,

and hopefully those outs won't be as important. So that is something that we've seen maybe differing philosophies here. So were you mad that Bumgarner was allowed to go a third time through the order? No. And also bat with a runner in i think in scoring position or runner on uh before he did it he is maybe he has elevated himself out of that discussion at this point i don't know he is he's been so good that you can put whatever penalty on him that you think that he will incur a number of times through the order

and he'll still probably be one of your better options. Yeah, I don't know if that's actually true or not. And I don't care. And that's what makes me sympathetic to people who, for instance, thought that it was an absolute no-brainer that Matt Williams should have left Jordan Zimmerman in. There's no reason to even consider taking him out. And then I look at it and think, oh, no, there's a good reason to consider it. But I don't feel

that way with the Bumgarner situation. And partly it's that I don't think the Giants' bullpen is nails the way that, for instance, it's really easy to yell at Ned Yost to get to his bullpen because that's what Ned Yost wants too, and we're just debating whether to do it now or in three and a half minutes. We want the same thing here, and it's just about the speed of progress, whereas with the Giants and their bullpen, it's much more kind of the opposite. I probably have more faith in it than Bochy does at this point, but not by like a ton. You know, the two most effective relievers probably, well, Petit's not available in Sunday's

game, and the two most effective relievers are probably Affeldt and Kassia. And, you know, those guys are both fine, but nobody's going to be surprised when one of them has a 3.880 ra next year right and and we did see petite have his moment at least which is something that people had been clamoring for while while seeing other relievers perhaps inferior relievers in important spots, and Hunter Strickland giving up home runs, and Gene Machie called in to get the Giants out of jams. The question was, where is Petit?

And so Petit did come in on Saturday, and he pitched three scoreless innings, and he is now up to 12 scoreless innings in only three games in this postseason. But he has continued to be fantastic in whatever role. Really, in the long relief role, he hasn't really gotten a shot at the eighth inning guy role. But he has been fantastic. He's been a great weapon in the multi-inning relief role. And according to Bochy, is now in contention for a rotation spot in 2015. So who knows whether Petit will turn out to be anything, whether he'll turn out to be the guy that the prospect rankings one day long ago suggested he might be. That ship has maybe sailed. But as a bullpen guy, he is as trustworthy as anyone in that pen, maybe in either pen at this point, certainly in the multi-inning role. So it was nice to see him get that chance and be congratulated as one of the

heroes of that game. Yeah. So have the Gi, so do you think the Giants have just gotten lucky that Petit has been as crucial as he has? Because he has actually had, by win probability added, the Giants have had 68 individual pitching performances this year, this postseason, whether it's one batter or an entire start. So of those 68, Petit has the number one, the number 13, and the number 15 win probability added games. He has, in those three starts, higher win probability added than Santiago Casilla, who has been, you know, he hasn't allowed a run. So it's not like Casilla's win probability is down because I guess he allowed a, he hasn't allowed a run, so it's not like Kassia's win probability is down, because I guess he allowed a, no, he allowed a hit.

He was allowed two hits. So he hasn't allowed a run. And so, in fact, Kassia has been, with one kind of slight footnoted exception, where he didn't give up a run but had to be pulled in the middle of an inning, with that one little exception. Kasia has been his best self, as good as he could possibly be, and less valuable

than Petit has been the way that he's used. Petit, I assume probably has lower win probability added. Actually, going into this game, before before Sunday night's game,

he had a higher win probability added than Madison Bumgarner in the postseason. And so, and I assume that he will be down below him now, but not by much. So, did the Giants do this perfectly? Does this justify it? Or did they get incredibly lucky that on perfect rest schedules, basically, they have always needed him in situations where not only were multiple innings needed, but the game was still competitive, which is pretty rare. Usually your long man comes in because your starter gets bombed and you give him a quick hook, but you're down three, nothing. And then, you know, you never come back or whatever, but they've had to use him in two games that were fairly close. He actually is three and oh, I didn't realize that he has won all three games he has appeared in. Uh, so just luck or perfect planning. Well, he's, he's a, a player that other teams don't really have. I mean, maybe...

Every team, yeah. No, other teams do. They all do. Well, the Nationals did, the Cardinals did, and the Royals did. And the Royals did. Well, maybe. It's hard to say what Danny Duffy is exactly. It's hard to say, but when they've needed him to be that, that's what he's been.

The Royals have just played constantly close games, and their starters have generally gotten through five and then handed it over to the short guys. But when they have needed multiple innings, they have gone to Duffy. Yeah, and he hasn't been quite as effective as Petit has been. But I mean, he's been great. You could argue that he should have been an even bigger piece of the bullpen, that he's been underutilized if he's pitched in only three games. But if he pitched the day before one of those three games,

then he wouldn't have been able to pitch in one of those three games. Yeah, right. Yeah, so it's worked out well. And maybe there's an aspect of luck and also an element of planning. I mean, it's hard to say how much they've lucked out just getting him and just having him be what he is. I mean, when you watch a righty who's throwing 89, that is not the guy that you expect to have a strikeout rate in the tens per nine innings and not walking anyone. And none of it seems to be luck. innings and not walking anyone. And none of it seems to be luck. If anything, his peripherals are more impressive than his ERA has been over the last year or over the last two years, even his partial season in 2013. So he's been quite a find after he bounced around to a few organizations and maybe was written off as a guy.

I mean, he was, you know, kind of the classic scouting report, just don't match the stats guy. Oh, yeah, no, I have his book comments in front of me. So I'm going to read a couple excerpts because you're right. He was a total stat head. He was a prospect, right? He was ranked on top 100 list. Yeah, he was. he that was also he came

i'm not sure he would have been if it had been three or four years earlier right like he was ranked by by the time he was getting ranked uh bp was putting out the rankings you know it was like 2007 ish and so bp's uh assessments were not irrelevant. So I think that helped him. But yeah, he was. He was like a guy in the 30s or 40s briefly, his prospect. So 2007,

scouts and stat heads disagree on his long-term potential. He will serve as one more battlefield in the ongoing struggle between the Calcular and the Clipboard. Petit fires up the stats versus scouts debate. Stat heads look with enthusiasm upon his youth and collection of excellent ERAs and strikeout rates. Scouts warn he's a change-up pitcher with a funky delivery,

mediocre breaking stuff, and no fastball. Huge star in the minors, putting up silly numbers, hasn't translated to the big leagues. Succeeds on a deceptive delivery and pinpoint control. Problem is he only throws in the upper 80s. So, yeah, that's pretty much every comment for like seven years. So there is no battlefield really anymore. The battlefield that that comment referenced kind of disappeared.

There was a ceasefire. But if you are still looking at it in those terms, or even if you're not, he is maybe an exception. Two years with no comment. Huh. Yeah, because that always happens when you write for the annual and you're drawing up your list of player comments. You come up with a list of 65, 70 names of players

in whatever organization you're doing comments for, and you'll come across some guy in high A or double A with just ridiculous stats that pop off the page. And then, you know, in the past, you would email Kevin Goldstein or Jason Parks and ask, who is this guy? Or maybe you just look up his BP article archive. his BP article archive. And almost inevitably, if this was not a name that you knew, it would be a case of a guy who, you know,

scouts would say would be exposed by upper level competition. Just didn't have the stuff was getting by with a bunch of slop that fooled lower minors hitters. And usually that, that is an accurate assessment. There are lots of guys like that. Who's the first guy that you think of as like a use my own petite contemporary?

Is there another guy? Because I have him forever linked in my mind with one other guy. I wonder if you do too. I don't think so. Who? Anthony Reyes. Oh, yeah, that's a good one. Yeah, I'm looking at Anthony Reyes's now,

and it's all the same comments, basically. So Petit is hope for those guys, or if you want to believe that there's something to the next guy with great stats and no stuff, then Petit can be your example, though. Probably he's more the exception than the rule, but he is quite a weapon to have at this point. Yeah, I like this.

Even with those peripherals, hit rates were somewhat elevated. That's a stat, guys. Hit rates is a stat. You should have been all of that. By the way, I want to thank Bobby for sending me a screen grab from a Geico commercial that proves that this actually goes deeper. The scandal goes deeper, Ben. One of the motorcycles in the commercial has two headlights. Even more inappropriate.

Wow. huh so we have a more inappropriate wow so we have a a song about a truck with one headlight that is being used to sell insurance for a motorcycle with two headlights amazing that a commercial could go through focus testing and no one would bring up this this point there's also a commercial playing on giants radio uh that refers to eating peanuts and Cracker Jacks. Plural. Cracker Jacks. You'd have thought somebody along the way would have pointed that out. Or maybe they did.

Maybe they thought that would sound awkward. Maybe it's such a common mistake that it is now the more common way to refer to them. I've heard it often. So what else happened in this game slash series james shields let me ask you this we always mock ever since the days when i don't know one of the gossip guys tweeted out that some pitcher had made an extra 20 million dollars based on some postseason start right that we were watching i was seeing many tweets in that genre when Pablo Sandoval got some of his hits.

Okay, so, well, that's good. I'm glad. It's interesting that you mentioned that. Okay, so first off, James Shields. Does this affect how much he gets paid? Does this affect what team signs him? I'd have a hard time believing that there are any teams really. And he wasn't.

I mean, this was probably his best postseason start, right? He wasn't. Yeah, I'm talking more the postseason in general. Although he did not. He didn't look great. He did have some good pitches, but he didn't look great. I wanted him pulled in the fourth for goodness sake uh-huh yeah i mean i can imagine that a guy you know if bum garner were a free agent right now i would imagine that he would get more than he would have that there would be some postseason

success premium but i don't even know whether it would be about clutch and proving you can perform on this stage or whether it would just be about how good he has been at pitching, which is the thing that he would be paid for, presumably. So I don't think that any team would really downgrade Shields, like unless you think that his greatest attribute, which is just always being there and always pitching at a somewhat above average rate, but just always racking up 200, 220 innings. If you think that this postseason is a reflection of fatigue, that he has been worn down in a way that he will perhaps not bounce back just from an offseason of rest, then I could see this costing him. I don't think it would cost him in the sense that anyone is thinking that he is unclutch

or that his previous reputation for clutchness has now been debunked. I could only imagine if you think that this is a new diminished Shields that is more the norm for what he will be in the future so then no so mostly mostly no i don't think it might affect his likelihood of going back to kansas city if as we've discussed the the tendency to stand pat after you win the world series if they don't win the World Series, or even if they do, but he wasn't a big part of their success in the postseason, maybe that makes it a little less likely that they will go outside of their budget,

spend more than they would have planned to to retain him just because he's a franchise hero. That might be less likely, but I don't know that it would affect his overall market. You would have to imagine that some team would have offered him more than the Royals would anyway. So I don't know that this affects his earnings a whole lot. Do you think that if his nickname weren't Big Game James Shields, that Dayton Moore would have traded for him?

Probably. I think so too. Some people will think that I was being ungenerous with that question, but I think the answer is that he would have. So I'm being very generous. So Dan Brooks asked me this he was doing some sort of survey or something um he wanted to know if pablo sandoval went hitless in the world series or he went something absurd like say 15 for 25 with five home runs uh what is the swing in his contract

i i think it's very very small i mean there there might be some tendency to overrate based on just the last look that you got at a guy if If the last look going into the offseason. And I don't know whether there has been... Do you recall any studies done on this? Like free agents coming off a postseason appearance? No, Dan and I talked a lot about it because Dan seemed to think that this would be a good article to write and I seem to think that if he's so sure of that, then why doesn't he write it? I didn't, I, it seemed to me

virtually impossible because, uh, because I'm, I would only allow that it would make any, uh, difference on the extremes. Like the guy was extremely, extremely good in the post season. So you're already talking about something that very few guys do. And then even fewer of them are free agents three weeks later. And then you have to figure out what they were going to get before that happened. I mean, as I put it to Dan, Josh Hamilton made $50 million more than we would have predicted. And so what model can you build to see what is greater or less than predicted that will not capture Josh Hamilton, who got that money for no real reason? That's just really hard to say. Unless we had Jim Bowden

with us, giving us all the signing figures that these guys should have gotten, it's just really hard to say. Unless we had Jim Bowden with us giving us all the signing figures that these guys should have gotten, it's just hard to know what they should have made or what we should have expected. So, I mean, especially if we're only talking about, you know, 10% seems like a big difference, but it's like, you know, $6 million for a multi-year deal. So, I don't know. It just feels too small to capture. Yeah, I agree. But yeah, I mean, I could imagine there being, if you had some uncertainty about a guy, if you were scared about how he'd age or something, you were kind of on the fence about whether to give him some money or pursue him strenuously.

I mean, I could imagine it happening in some case, in a case, maybe in more than one case, where just getting a last look at a guy succeeding in the biggest, most intense spotlight and the time when it matters most and going into the winter just looking his best self. I could imagine that potentially swaying someone somewhere at some time. But I would imagine that just, I mean, the amount of work that goes into deciding whether to make one of these deals. I can see it swaying an owner, perhaps. If it's one of those deals where

Scott Boris goes directly to the owner and vaults over the baseball operations department and appeals directly to the person with the checkbook and says, this guy is a winner and you guys need to add winners to your organization and we just saw him pass the ultimate test, I could imagine that swaying someone who maybe doesn't know that postseason success isn't all that predictive or consistent from year to year. I'd have a hard time imagining it swaying a general manager who is getting input from scouts and statistical people who are running models of how he'll age and all this research goes into whether someone is a wise investment or not i i doubt it would make any impact on that level last question ben okay how is lorenzo kane still running so fast yeah it it was interesting when you saw him

what was it during game four when he he pulled up kind of lame and was limping a bit. Multiple times. And then to me, he looked, you know, he looked in pain today. He was grimacing and sort of walking funny to me. Yeah. Maybe it's just an adrenaline thing because it was right after he looked most pained in game four he had a chance to beat out an infield hit and he did and he seemed to be going at something close to top speed it's it's hard to say if he was slower than than he usually is but he seemed to get down the

line just fine and then as soon as he was safe he kind of kind of limped down the line a little bit so i i guess it's uh if you want to talk about toughness or grittiness or something maybe this is something you cite that if you're in the world series and you've gotten this far and you've got six months to rest then as long as it's not a serious structural problem that you can't grit through because your body doesn't work right anymore then maybe it is just the kind of thing where you you get your burst of adrenaline and you can forget about the pain for the few seconds that you need to run at top speed and catch a ball or beat out a base hit and maybe there's a risk that you hurt yourself more that you aggravate the injury but at this point it almost doesn't matter.

You've got plenty of time to heal. Maybe he actually didn't have any relievers who could throw those two innings. If he had pinch hit for shields, he needed somebody to pitch the fifth and the sixth. I sort of think of it as, oh, well, he doesn't trust any other relievers to pitch those two innings, and he probably should, and he probably shouldn't trust Shields anyway. But it could be that Finnegan threw 32 pitches yesterday. Well, Duffy only threw 12, but what did Duffy throw?

Duffy only threw 12, so Duffy should have been fine. So no, that's unacceptable. Yeah. Duffy didn? Duffy only threw 12, so Duffy should have been fine. So no, that's unacceptable. Yeah. Did Duffy? Duffy didn't pitch game three. No, Duffy didn't pitch game three. So that's unacceptable. I take it back.

Yeah, I mean, they got him out of game four so quickly that it was... And Fraser only threw eight yesterday. I mean, maybe they removed him so quickly because they thought that his mechanics were out of whack again or something because he was a little bit wild initially. And then they removed him so quickly that it seemed like maybe they weren't confident that he was at his best. But yes, or I don't know, maybe as a starting pitcher, maybe he's not conditioned to pitch in back-to-back games, even if he hasn't thrown all that many pitches. I don't know. Maybe that changes it somewhat. Yeah, I don't accept. Probably not. All right. By the way, we did get sort of an answer to the Adam Wainwright mystery, right? It kind of went under the radar because the Cardinals were eliminated, but the question of whether there actually was anything wrong with

Adam Wainwright, that was a source of some confusion even after the season ended with the Cardinals initially saying he was fine and wouldn't need surgery, but then he did have surgery and it wasn't serious surgery. He just had a piece of cartilage trimmed from his elbow. He just had a piece of cartilage trimmed from his elbow. Doesn't seem to be the worst case. The ligament won't need a replacement or anything. But that second opinion that they got revealed that there was something wrong with him. So maybe that was the most likely outcome, that he wasn't 100%, but he also wasn't pitching with a catastrophic injury.

There was just something going on that his arm was suboptimal. And maybe that has something to do with why he wasn't always the Adam Wainwright that we knew from the regular season. Okay, so that is it for today. We will be back tomorrow. We welcome your questions to podcasts at baseballperspectives.com. And we hope that you will support our sponsor, the Play Index at baseballreference.com. If you go to the site, you subscribe to the Play Index, use the coupon code BP to get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription.