Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 739: Wild Cards in Review and All Your ALDS Analysis

Episode Date: October 8, 2015

Ben and Sam review the wild-card games and discuss the Rangers-Blue Jays and Astros-Royals Division Series.

What's the probability that you could decide? You could decide, you could decide Feel there may be limits, but you are alive You are alive, you could decide Oh, so if you know, you know, you know That name, you know, you know, you know Hello and welcome to episode 739 of Effectively Wild, You know, you know, you know This might be the first time I didn't say good morning. I just said hello. It felt very abrupt. Yeah, I felt like it felt like one of those times when sometimes we'll record something and then later on we'll record something else and you piece them together.

And it felt like the second half of that. Yeah. Well, if it is morning where you are, I hope you have a good one. division series is there anywhere in particular you'd like to start no okay so we didn't do a podcast yesterday partly because i was covering the game the previous night and then we were both previewing alds's and that didn't leave a lot of time but also probably we didn't do a podcast because there wasn't a whole lot to say about the Yankees-Astros wildcard game. And to a lesser extent, there wasn't that much to say about the NL wildcard game either. They were both dominant starting pitcher performances by dominant starting pitchers. And there was no managerial controversy, no moves that someone could have made to change the outcome.

They were not particularly close games. The Pirates at least threatened at times, which is probably more than the Yankees did against the Astros. But there just wasn't a whole lot of complexity to the games. They were good teams and good players doing good things. It's that accurate. Yeah, that's about right. Yeah. I mean, yeah, they fit the general narrative.

I mean, we all, it seems like with most games, with maybe the exception of Blue Jays games and where we talk about their insane right-handed power and maybe Royals games where we talk about their at times insane defense. And I'm trying to think of another exception. The Cardinals maybe when we talk about their or the Giants, their postseason voodoo. But otherwise, mostly when we go into a game, big truck just went past. Otherwise, mostly when we go into a game, we're totally obsessed with the starting pitchers

and we talk about whether the starting pitchers are good or bad. And to some degree, I think we fall into the trap that writers sometimes fall into with park adjustments, where you see every park is either an extreme hitter's park or an extreme pitcher's park. And we tend to, I think, look at pitchers as either unstoppable, unbreakable aces, or just flat out unreliable. And right now, Arrieta and Keichel are both seen as basically unstoppable. They might be the two Cy Youngs. They might not be, but they might be.

And we probably expected something like this from them unreasonably. And then they just went ahead and did exactly what we expected from them. I do think that Garrett Cole is an amazing pitcher. And he's one of the best pitchers in the game, but I also do kind of think that he got swept into this. I think people kind of got swept up by the matchup and elevated him to a level that he's not quite at. I mean, he's got amazing stuff, and he's a to a level that he's not quite at. I mean, he's got amazing stuff, and he's a great pitcher, and he's one of the, I don't know, 14 or 15 best pitchers in the game.

But this was not 1A against 1B. This was not Kershaw-Arieta. This was not Pedro against Randy Johnson or anything like that. Garrett Cole is a really good pitcher who has some bad starts. And most pitchers, even the best, even Kershaw and even Arrieta, generally would have some kind of bad starts, although less and less. In Arrieta's case, that's not really true.

But they were not equals going into this game. And they could have been. I mean, if you line up, I didn't get the time to do this. I was going to just for unfiltered or something. But if you line up all their starts this year and then just sort of randomly assign them to different dates and have them match up 32 times, you know, Cole would outpitch Arrieta a bunch,

even though he's a worse pitcher. But he is clearly, clearly a worse pitcher. And that was not quite necessarily the historic meeting of aces. I think that it was sort of made out to be. Yeah, it was kind of a corrective to the idea that the Pirates were totally doomed and there was no way they could win the game because the Cubs had won, you know, whatever, 13 starts in a row that Ariadne had made, or 17 out of 18 before yesterday. And so I wrote, you know, a tongue-in-cheek piece a couple weeks ago, just as soon as it became clear that this was going to be the matchup,

just talking about, you know, how Pirates fans should just be depressed in advance because of this, and how they should deal with that depression. And everyone kind of wrote that piece. And then there was like a response to that where everyone pointed out, it's just one baseball game and these are really good teams and Pirates have home field advantage and they have one of the best starting pitchers in baseball too. So the actual odds are, you know, maybe 60-40 or something, something if that even though it seems like arietta is unbeatable and that there's no chance so it was worth pointing out but i agree that there is a gap between them i was glad that the arietta start uh gave us a chance to uh both joshian and matt

trueblood brought up the chris medlin precedent And I always like it when people bring up Chris Medlin because I really hope we don't forget that season that he had. Like not, I mean, I guess it got brought up because it was used as a lesson to keep your expectations low. But also I really liked it that I want that season to stay in our memories because that was a ridiculous season. I don't think even then it got enough credit. I mean, he had a 157 ERA, which is a 256 ERA+.

He didn't qualify for the ERA title because he was coming back from an injury, but he threw 140 innings with a 256 ERA+, and he didn't get a single Cy Young vote which i think and i'm not saying a first place vote for a wild card team yeah i could see not giving him a first place vote but i don't know how he's not on a single ballot i mean he is basically like if you take well i guess arietta was really insanely good so it's not gonna really work. Any kind of comparison you try to make to Arrieta doesn't really work. Well, he did have, though. I mean, he had a lower ERA.

He had a higher ERA plus than basically anybody has had, except for Pedro, if you go by ERA plus. And what, anybody? Has anybody had an ERA lower than 157? Dwight Goodens, I think, might have been around there. But yeah, he was as good as a pitcher could be. And then he went into the wild card game and he just got hit like a normal great pitcher sometimes gets hit. But anyway, I had him on my fake Cy Young ballot.

That was a great season. I miss that season. I miss good Chris Medlin. I like Chris Medlin. Well, you'll get to see him soon, probably. So, yeah, so, Arrieta, like every fun

fact about Arrieta, there are so many that they kind of just wash over your brain and it's hard to appreciate them, but they are all incredible. Just, I mean, his ERA just gets lower and lower and lower when you wouldn't think it could continue to get lower. He just does not allow runs anymore.

If you knew nothing about Arrieta, if you just did a blind test and you put, if you showed, you know, an Arrieta starter or a few Arrieta pitches to someone who didn't know arietta was on this ridiculous run yeah do you think no you would be impressed oh impressed yeah you'd be impressed but impressed but i mean you'd say you you'd confidently say top dozen pitcher in baseball i'm not sure you'd i'm not sure that you would know enough to say top three like it wouldn't blow my mind if you then told me he's like i watch him and i see his numbers and i go yeah those add up but it's not um it's not super obvious on its face that he's that much better than the 10th best pitcher in baseball he doesn't

like i would say that the guys who have that randy johnson had that yeah because of the body particularly i mean you just you could just imagine that coming out of his hand and because Randy Johnson had that because of the body particularly. I mean, you could just imagine that coming out of his hand and because he was throwing so much harder than anybody else was throwing at the time. Darvish has that. Darvish and Strasburg both have that. And Pedro had that. And that's kind of, I mean, to me, Arrieta is a lot more like Roger Clemens

I mean, to me, Arrieta is a lot more like Roger Clemens, where it's just, I don't want to use the analogy that is coming to mind, because I probably will use it at some point in a playoff recap. But it's just this really, it's good, high quality the image, the visual is more like kind of like a train, which is just kind of powerfully going across this long expanse with seemingly no effort. Like it just boom, boom, boom, hitting you over and over and over again. But I mean, I if you put him and Harvey up against each other on pitches alone, like I think that the there's some similarity in the pitches, and particularly to a non-scout like us, there's some similarity to the pitches. And to me, Harvey's look a little prettier, and Arrieta's execution probably seems a little better. Yeah.

Well, it doesn't look like he's in another league, but he has been. I think Fernandez looks better. Jose Fernandez looks better on a pitch-by-pitch basis. Well, it doesn't look like he's in another league, but he has been. I think Fernandez looks better, Jose Fernandez looks better on a pitch-by-pitch basis. Yeah, that's probably true. I wouldn't think Kershaw was either, though. I mean, to me, Kershaw is a guy who looks like maybe a top six or top eight pitcher based on just watching his pitches and knowing nothing else about him or maybe a top 10 but you don't necessarily see the jump from six to clear obvious number one historical all-time ace yeah uh in his stuff either and the pirates hit some

balls hard they can i just say one more thing sure ari's body though, oh my gosh. He's got, like I just was staring at him the entire game. Like the body is incredible. Like he is the most, I think he's the most muscular pitcher of our lifetimes. That can't be true. I think that, I mean it's, you don't see pitchers who are built exactly. You see pitchers who are thick. You see pitchers who are built exactly. You see pitchers who are thick. You see pitchers who are strong. You see pitchers who are broad or tall or have sinuous muscles or whatever.

But he just looks like a dude who works out. He's really strong. I don't know. And he's got posture. He's really strong he's i don't know i was and he's got posture he's got a posture that you don't normally see from pitchers how were his calves i i don't know that you don't know you have no idea yeah i don't know anyway all right uh so yeah so he he gave up some hard hit balls there were the two double plays that were hit very hard. A bunch of line drives and balls at Bryant and a couple full counts in there. So he didn't look, I don't know, when you look at his final line, it looks better than I thought he looked.

Well, especially from innings five on. Five on, six on? Five and six, yeah. From innings five on, he had 60 pitches and 44 of them were strikes and probably seven of those were outside the box on the screen and so he was benefiting from that uh but the he was much more i think in command and much more efficient first five and then the from the sixth on any one of those innings could have gotten away from him yeah could have they didn't right he's good and the margin is i mean he's got a lot bigger margin for air because all his stuff is good um and he throws so much of it but yeah from the from the sixth on he was somewhat vulnerable. Anyway, that's how wildcard games go.

And does Keichel's, like, the magic that he has, does that seem like something you would want to bet on long term? Like, there's nothing fluky about it. He's great. Like, he just seems to consistently hit the spot that he's aiming for which is you know three inches off the edge of the strike zone and he does it with an incredible consistency and seems to do that better than anyone else and just gets extra strikes whether because of his command being amazing or that plus a good receiving catcher, and he gets ground balls, and he even strikes people out now, and it totally, you get the feeling he could just keep throwing those pitches in there forever,

and no one could ever hit them. But it just seems like the sort of thing that, like, man, he just has to slip a tiny, tiny little bit, and it won't work anymore. Yeah, I'm going to look at tom glavin right now but i mean it's kind of like uh if you had to choose between tom glavin and kevin brown in 1998 uh-huh uh to some degree and you know both both ended up with hall of fame level careers i don't know i don't know that there's there's a clear bias against the guy who throws soft or softer. It's not as obvious to us, and it seems somewhat more, I don't know.

I think that you and I, perhaps, having some kind of very, very weak athletic experience in our history. We know what it's like to be a finesse-type player, to be a person who has to have the feel on everything, you know? Like when I was a kid, I had to be in the right mindset to put the bat on the ball, and I had to hit it just right to get a hit, or I had to locate it just right to get a pitch pass. It seemed like the guys who were athletes didn't have to do that. They were always athletes every single day. There was never a day when they weren't athletes whereas there were days where I was out of

rhythm. Maybe we are remembering our own vulnerability and the seeming invulnerability of people who were big and strong. I would say that I would not bet on Keichel or Arrieta to be in the top three in Cy Young voting next year. I might pick them over other people. Like if I had to pick three, I might pick those three. But if the bet was simply will this player be in the top three in Cy Young voting? 50% one way or the other. I would vote no on both of them. And I don't know which one really has...

I don't know if there's any particular repeatability skill in one of their skill sets more than the others. All right. Is there anything else we should say about the wildcard games? The Yankees were kind of lost in a sort of a depressing way, but I think not in an unexpected way. They looked like a team that would lose that way for most of the second half. Did you see whether there was any explanation from A.J. Hinch for why he took Keichel out after six, other than, you know, what we would presume?

No. Like it wasn't that Keichel said, I'm gassed. It wasn't, you know, some sort of like clear short rest thing or anything like that. No, he didn't really address that after the game. I don't think anyone was, I don't know, no one was surprised enough about it to ask about it, I guess. Or it was, yeah, I don't know. He's sort of, he'd given up a couple, well, I don't even know if he gave up a couple hard hit balls, I guess. But maybe, yeah, it was just wanting to bring him back.

And the Yankees just looking like they weren't ever going to hit a baseball. But I guess you could have wondered about that yesterday too, right? About Madden leaving Arrieta in for the whole thing. Yeah. I don't know. I have no real enthusiasm for debating managerial moves in these games because they were just so... Yeah, I'm not debating.

I'm just wondering. It was an aggressive poll of his starter and i'm wondering whether that is a sign that that uh hint i mean because that was a break from uh what most managers would do it was notable and i'm wondering whether it it forecasts that hinge is going to be that we're going to see the first like extremely aggressive postseason manager hook uh that we're going to see the first extremely aggressive postseason manager hook that we've seen, which we always, when we do debate manager moves, we usually lean on the side of that, of the aggressive hook. And Hinch was not an extremely aggressive hooker throughout the season. He was like kind of what, like 60th, 70th percentile or something like that, but he was not Madden and he was not the Rays.

But maybe in the postseason with the different schedule and the different stakes and the deeper bullpen, maybe he will. I don't know. Yeah, could be. Okay, shall we move on? Yeah, your show. It's our show. All right, so ALDSs, you wrote about Royals and Astros.

I wrote about both. I guess we can start with Rangers and Blue Jays because that game starts first. The Blue Jays are just, you know, they're the team that there's no reason to pick against They're just really good at everything Just kind of in an almost unprecedented way that Matt Trueblood noted a couple months ago That it looked like they might be the first team, since 1950 at least, to lead the majors in true average and defensive efficiency and base running runs they ended up missing by like two base running runs uh compared to the rangers who they are playing but they are just amazing at everything they've hit like the 1927 yankees for the whole second

half they're the best team against right-handed pitchers, even though they're heavily right-handed, which is kind of amazing. They had the second highest percentage of right-on-right plate appearances this year after the Tigers, and yet they were still better against righties than any other team. And clearly better against lefties, and just miles better in the whole second half and they can run and they can play defense and they're good at everything and they can pitch now too because they have price and because they have stroman and i don't totally buy marco estrada he i mean he has a crazy babbitt it's like the lowest BABIP in the DH era for anyone who has pitched 180 innings and that's what is it what is it it's like 216 and that's you know yeah that's the lowest BABIP since going back to 1973 and league BABIP in the 70s and 80s was like 20 points

lower at times so it's kind of incredible that he has the lowest and mike petriello wrote about it using stat cast stuff and showing how he he's an extreme fly ball pitcher and he gets tons of vertical movement and soft contact and all these things and i can buy to some extent that maybe he has the profile of a low babbitt pitcher but this is insane so i i don't know if he's that great but he's you know whatever a mid-rotation guy and then r.a dickie who'll be starting game four has been great for half a season he's been metz r.a dickie not cy young metz r.a dickie but the two years before the cy young r.a dickie which was really good. So pretty much every one of their starters gives

you confidence. And the Rangers, other than Hamels, who is going to start game two, they've got Gallardo today. And by the time a lot of people listen to this, he will have pitched already. But Gallardo is about as shaky as I can imagine a starter being. Like he hasn't gone beyond six innings since August. Or he hasn't gone six innings since August. He hasn't gone beyond six innings since June or something. Not that you would necessarily want him to go six innings in the postseason. But the fact that he didn't during the regular season tells you that he was not very effective during that time. didn't during the regular season tells you that he was not very effective during that time and then Derek Holland has like the fourth highest home run rate allowed to right handers over the last

several years and he's going to be facing the best right-handed home run hitting team in Texas which seems really scary and then whether you go with Colby Lewis or Martin Perez, it's just a guy. So I don't know that there's any reason to not pick the Blue Jays in four or something, which is what I ended up doing. And the Rangers have been good. I mean, the full season stats for both of these teams

don't really reflect what they are today. They both made major deadline additions the rangers have hit a lot better and they've just been a lot better but they haven't been nearly as good at anything as the blue jays and really even the bullpen and the rangers have gotten much better there too but the blue jays are really good there also they've got aaron Sanchez in the pen now Who's been great And I think the main difference is that

The Rangers have really worked their relievers Very, very hard Guys like Sean Tolleson And Sam Dyson Are among the league leaders And he's pitched And then, you know, Kiela has been Having injury elbow issues

Because he was worked hard too. So anyway, it's not clear how much those guys have left or whether they can really ramp it up in October like other teams might be able to. So a couple of questions. First of all, I think we talked about this at one point, but I think you should never pick a team in four or in a seven game series in six i think it's uh yeah we we well we talked about whether a team is more likely like if the team is better is it more likely to win in four or five and there wasn't there wasn't it's because i was like a coin flip there's almost yeah right there's no difference i don't think yeah i think that i think that in case, I bet you that if you ran a series out, I bet the sweep. In a five-game series, I bet the sweep would be the plurality.

So you should just pick the sweep. Yeah, I thought about it, but it just seems... No, I'm not even saying because the Blue Jays are that much better. I bet if you took two teams and one was better than the other, or even if it wasn't better than the other, even if they were perfectly equal, I bet you that in a five-game series, sweep happens more than either a four or a five-game.

Just a guess. I don't know about this. We'll have to look. Zachary Levine maybe can revise the math that we had him do. I remember it being very counterintuitive, whatever it was last year. Yeah, picking four is the coward's way out That's like putting a 75 tool on a guy

Real, real You know Real, real decision makers Don't do it Secondly If the Rangers and the Blue Jays As currently composed Played 162 times

How many wins would the Blue Jays have in that season? I think they'd have like 88. I think they might have like 106. I don't know about that. But they are, yeah, I mean, they're way better. All right. Thirdly, are you disappointed disappointed maybe he's hurt but are you disappointed that they did not put munanori kawasaki on the roster a little bit i'm very disappointed i'm i especially

as a person who at the end of the postseason most years goes back and picks one gif for every game in a postseason roundup it's going to be much harder without the Kawasaki. I mean, how many Cliff Pennington gifts am I really going to find? And Cliff Pennington is every bit as bad. And Munonori is just this great, awesome, smiling. He is the bubble machine, like the Dodgers home run bubble machine. He is that, except for all the time, and you don't have to homer. You just have to be around him um finally my actual point is that this is the closest analogy to uh last year's

royals angels series uh where the royals were uh seen going in by pakoda and by many as clearly the worst postseason team, just based on the way that they had played as an offense and as a defense and pitching staff. And they went up against the Angels, who had 98 wins, the most in baseball, but a fairly non-elite starting rotation, which the Blue Jays definitely have. The Blue Jays, if you looked just at the starting rotations and put them up against any playoff team except the Rangers, they would be at a disadvantage, right? It'd be a mismatch.

It seems to me that Dickey and Estrada are borderline postseason starters but it won't matter because the Rangers are also have a borderline starting rotation for a postseason team and are much worse in every other facet of the game and the Rangers, the Blue Jays have David Price which the Angels had

nothing of the sort the other difference is that the Angels had lost their ace, Garrett Richards. But don't forget how good that team was last year. Every player in their lineup was an above-average hitter, and usually comfortably so. They had a lot of good defenders, and they had the best player in baseball on their team.

But, yeah, there's no reason to think that this will be the place to pick your upset, other than the fact that you would get the most upset points for picking it. I'm looking to see. We have, so like, actually, assuming these are updated, and I didn't check, so I'll have to check in a second to make sure they're updated. But last year there were games between the angels and the royals where pakoda had the angels as like a 70 favorite in in an individual game uh and the blue jays are like 62 59 61 59 i don't know the last one and again let me double check because it's possible that none of these have actually been run appropriately.

But if that's true, that's, you know, it's a mismatch, but not. It's not. It doesn't cease to be baseball. No. Yeah. The Blue Jays don't even strike out. That's the incredible thing about their offense to me is that they have the best power and the best patience. And you would think that they would strike out a lot because generally those things are correlated.

If you hit for a lot of power, you probably swing hard, and if you draw a lot of walks, you probably take deep counts, and therefore you strike out a lot. But no, the Blue Jays don't even strike out a lot. They have the fifth lowest strikeout rate in baseball. So they're really good. Edwin Encarnacion is a national treasure in that regard. fifth lowest strikeout rate in baseball. So they just, they're really good. Edwin, yeah, Edwin Encarnacion is a national treasure in that regard.

And I guess Bautista is too. Neither one of those guys strikes out very much for what they are. And yet they draw walks, like you say. I mean, there are lots of guys who, there have been guys who have power and strike out less than a power hitter does. But to have as many walks as strikeouts while also hitting 40 home runs, which those guys do, is ridiculous. I don't even know the mechanics. How do their plate appearances go? What is a typical plate appearance? Because it is hard to draw four balls without at least getting two strikes on you.

And if you have two strikes on you a lot, well, there's going to be strike threes. You just can't avoid it. Like there's a very predictable and simple way that plate appearances progress. And I don't know what the progression is that gets you 110 walks with 106 strikeouts unless you're just like completely shortening up your swing. And he had 40 home runs. And Batiste only had two intentional walks. So it's not like they're pitching him like extremely deferentially. Edwin Encarnacion only had five.

So if you look at those as some sort of proxy For how much they're going after you It's not even that they're being pitched around Because they can't be pitched around Every other player is really good Well, let's see Where did their zone rates rank? I bet they probably have one of the lowest zone rates Just because of the power and everything.

So let's see. Lowest zone rate in baseball, Eric Hosmer. So Encarnacion is 36th lowest zone rate and Bautista is 47th lowest zone rate, which is, you know, not elite. Yeah, not enough to explain this. By the way, I know you mentioned Stroman, but Stroman always escapes my mind when I'm thinking about things, for obvious reasons. Because he wasn't supposed to be here. Yeah, and so Stroman is, you know,

he's not as certain as David Price to be an awesome pitcher, but if he is an awesome pitcher the way he was down the stretch, then yeah, that rotation ceases to be at all postseason borderline. It's a little soft at the back, but I mean, those are two horses at the front. Yeah, and the bullpen's pretty deep. I mean, Sanchez has been great, and Osuna's been fine, typical closer numbers. And they've got Brett Cecil, and they have, like, even their middle innings guys

have all been good like uh Liam Hendricks and Mark Lowe and even Latroy Hawkins and Aaron Loop like you know none of those names is all that intimidating but they all have really good numbers and they're not guys you would be scared to see in the fifth or sixth inning so yeah i they're just like they're just like even darwin barney has slugged 600 for the blue jays i don't even just everyone ryan goins like walks all the time now somehow and like on their bench probably a lot of the time they have chris colabello who would be the best hitter on the Rangers, at least as far as his numbers this year. So it's a mismatch. And, you know, typical disclaimers about five-game series apply, as always.

But this is a really good team right now. And even if Kulowitzky doesn't hit, which I don't have a lot of confidence in, since he hasn't hit all year particularly well, and he says he's still in pain. Just the defense, since he got there and since they've made some other moves, has been really strong too, and that doesn't seem to have been affected all that much by his non-hitting.

So, yeah, anyway, Blue Jays are a powerhouse. Yeah, I want to just clarify that only the first two games that I cited odds for have we actually run. So whatever I said for the third and or fourth are fiction made up. Okay. All right, so that's that series. And then there's the Royals-Astros series. that series and then there's the royals astros series by the way the blue jays designated danny valencia for assignment when he was hitting 296 with a 506 sluggy they just didn't even didn't even need that i know because he's a lefty masher and everyone on their team is a lefty masher and

calabella is a lefty masher so they just you know put him on waivers whatever guy slugging 500 just one of the group and not it's not like it was this was known at the time like there was nothing there was even at the time everybody was like he might be the best player ever DFA yeah anyway

it's a scary team he basically he basically had Stevece's 2014 season yeah and and in the middle of it he was unemployed and not like so was steve pierce was too but steve pierce didn't play before he had his season half of his half of valencia season happened before he was dpa ste Steve Pierce, MVP vote getter. Steve Pierce, I think. No. How did Steve Pierce not get an MVP vote?

God. You know, I... Look. I mentioned Madeline. Now I'm mentioning Steve Pierce. I know... And maybe it's a little different with MVP. But I know that playing time is a significant part of being a good baseball player.

But I think guys who have great seasons in partial time get not enough love in postseason votes. I mean, a lot of times you're not playing for reasons that are outside your control and aren't even health related. And I feel like with MVP, fine. Maybe that one is easy. But for Cy Young, you give the guy extra credit for pitching more. But if you're the best pitcher and you only threw 140 pitches, 40 innings, and the question is who was the best pitcher, I don't feel like lack of innings excludes you.

It might not quite get you to the top, but it does not exclude you. And I think that's especially true with Rookie of the Year. If your team holds you down until June and you outplay everybody else, but your war is lower because some 25-year-old was up on opening day and got 250 extra at-bats, to me, not a factor. Go with the best guy. Go with whoever played best. As long as it's a big enough sample that you feel like it's an honest representation of his performance, do it.

Go for it. Voters listening, let's break the tyranny of playing time. All right. All right. I feel like the opposite is maybe the case, that playing time doesn't get enough credit. But anyway. Did you hear Cal Ripken say conveniently wild last night? No, I saw it in the Facebook group, but anyway did you hear did you hear cal ripken say conveniently wild last night no i saw it in the facebook group but i didn't hear it as it was like he was going out

of his way to avoid mentioning us yeah i've never sounded awkward i've never heard that formulation all right astros royals do you want to take this one yeah no okay all right uh so this one i think is close closer than you would think if you just went by the records yeah very close very close the run differentials are very close the astros have the better run differential even though they were like a 57 and 60 team over their last however many games or something like you know worse than any other playoff team they are better than that and i don't i wrote about them in may early may trying to explain their success and they're in a lot of ways the same formula that they were using then they are still using now they strike out a lot they hit a ton of fly

balls a lot of those fly balls go out because they hit them harder and farther than pretty much anyone else they are tied with the blue jays for most home runs if you count the two wild card game home runs they don't hit into double plays because of the the strikeouts and the fly balls and the surprisingly decent speed. So their offense works. It's the offense that if they do go a few games without scoring, everyone is going to say what people were saying about the Yankees in the wildcard game, the usual, they hit too many home runs or they score a higher percentage of their home runs than other teams

and that doesn't work in the playoffs. That sort of myth, which I firmly believe not to be true. But, and the Royals are obviously the complete opposite of that. They are the extreme contact team, although not solely that anymore, the way that they were last year. They still don't were last year they still don't walk anymore they still don't walk they have the lowest walk rate in the league but as opposed to last year when they had the fewest home runs and we all thought it was crazy that a team with the fewest walks and the fewest home runs was doing well in the playoffs this year they hit some home runs

they hit more over a lot of home runs well they hit like 50 some home runs. They hit more home runs. They hit a lot of home runs. Well. They hit like 50 more home runs. Well, everyone did, I think. I mean, there were more home runs hit this year. But they were still toward the bottom, I think. But they, you know, they were not at the bottom. They hit more home runs than the Cardinals did.

So they have some power now because they have kendris morales and hasmer and mustakis and kane all those guys increase their totals so they have some power now they are not just a a slap hitting running team league average slugging percentage yeah okay partly partly because the extra basics and stuff yeah right um so uh they are good in that respect the bullpens i guess is kind of an interesting thing everyone knows about the royals bullpen and they lost holland but they got madsen and that was pretty much an even exchange this year and they still have a pretty deep pen you know roughly as good as last year's maybe not quite as good oh i think i think better better really yeah i do i think better part now i think that the what do they call it d v d d what yeah um dvd dvd what's the V? HGH? What did they call that thing?

It was DVD. No, it was H-D-H. No? Well, the Holland Davis Herrera was HDH. What was DVD? DVD was Diamond Volquez Danks when the Rangers had the prospects. Yeah, okay. Why do we even remember that?

I don't know. Why do I think that there was a... Because HGH doesn't sound like anything, so we wouldn't have called them HGH, would we have? I think it was said. Alright. Loyal HGH. Well, it was. No other combination was as deadly as hdh hdh became popular uh lots

of references to hdh but hdh isn't a thing we got to be better with our with our cleverness all right anyway uh i think that those three guys last year uh were like it's a little different because I'm thinking of Holland as 2014 Holland and not September and October 2014 Holland. And knowing now what we know, Holland wasn't actually as good as we thought he was. And Herrera was having like one of those magic years where he just didn't give up any runs for,

and it wasn't clear that he was actually that dominant. But at a certain point you just said, okay, I guess he is. Davis was more dominant though last year, right? I mean, not ERA wise. Not really. ERA wise is exactly the same. Yeah, I mean, was he more dominant? He had that no extra base hits thing going.

And no home runs thing. His FIP was better last year. And yeah, his strikeout rate was better. And his walk rate was slightly worse. But yeah, the no, like, didn't he not give up an extra base hit? Or something? Well, he has given up a home run for ages. And he gave up a few this year.

Last year, he, oh yeah. He and Herrera hadn't given up a home run all year. Or maybe had Holland given up a few this year. Last year, he... He and Herrera hadn't given up a home run all year. Or maybe had Holland given up a home run? There was a crazy... It was him and Herrera. Man, it's...

Boy, memories. Half-formed memories. Aren't these great? These barely there memories. Davis had something like a fly ball. He had a BABIP of zero on fly balls or something like that or something for a really long time. Ah, whatever.

All right, so we're going to say that HGH was more dominant than their 7-8-9 guys this year. That's my point is that, yes, that was more dominant. Maybe that's most of what matters in the postseason. And we saw how many innings they were able to throw and all that. Still incredible, but not necessarily unprecedentedly incredible. There's probably three or four teams that have, when you really break it down, incredible seven, eight, nine options.

But the Royals' bullpen is much deeper this year, I think. I mean, they had, last year they were relying on, you know, Jason Fraser and Brandon Finnegan at times, and that was about as deep as they went. It's not bad. It's fine, but it was just fine. And I feel like Morales is better. I feel like Danny Duffy is a real, an actual real

weapon this year. Um, and, uh, cause I mean, Danny Duffy last year, he should have been the fourth dominant guy in that bullpen, but he disappeared. We never saw him because for whatever reason, he wasn't allowed to pitch very often. Uh was allowed to be seen on camera sulking a little bit, but that was his postseason role. And now I think this year he's available. He pitched in relief in September, which sort of hints that he will be there. He was...

Pitched really well. Well, that's what I'm saying. He pitched extremely well in September and in reasonably high leverage so that it does kind of indicate that they're going to use him and danny w is a guy who is a good starter should be a dominant reliever from the left side with uh who completely shuts down lefties and um so i'm just mostly saying I think that between those guys and maybe Medlin, and really Hochevar's not a bad pitcher.

They had worse pitchers in their bullpen by far than Hochevar last year. They could go a really good six deep as opposed to just three and then hold your breath. Okay. I think they are slightly worse at the things that got them there last year or that we all made a big fuss about. The defense and the bullpen, I think, are slightly worse but still elite. Still maybe the best in baseball or very close to it. So they are still really good at those things and they are better at things that they weren't good at last year. So on the whole, I think it's probably a better team.

But they are... Tim Collins, remember Tim Collins? Yeah, yeah, sure. He was bad. He was in their bullpen last year. He wasn't even like Jason Fraser good. He was just bad. And they carried him.

Yeah, so... And then the Astros bullpen is kind of a weird thing because if you look at war or dra or whatever they look like the best bullpen in baseball maybe and if you look at september they look like the worst so i don't know whether some of their guys are gassed or not as good as they were for much of the year or whether September was the mirage and they actually are still really good. But it doesn't seem like a liability. I don't know whether it's a Royals level strength, but it's somewhere in between. I don't know. It's not as intimidating a bullpen because neither the Astros starters or relievers throw hard.

They have the lowest velocity, I think, of any bullpen and maybe of any starting rotation, too. It's like Lance McCullers, the only guy who really throws very, very hard on their team. So it doesn't seem like as intimidating a bullpen, but for much of the year, most of the year, it was just as effective, if not more so. I think that they're not as good at the top as the Royals. There's no Davis. Right, there's no Davis, and that's the most likely spot where a postseason series is going to be won or lost. So in that sense, it's a liability. If you put their seven guys up against the Royals' seven guys and had them throw 23 innings or whatever, I wouldn't expect any difference to emerge.

I think they're comparable groups as groups. difference to emerge. I think they're comparable groups as groups. But yes, where they diverge is more likely to be the moment where a series turns. And they're perfectly competent at that spot too. They just don't have Davis. I'm curious, would you start Fires or McCullers knowing that the other one is a guy in your bullpen? Yeah, I guess I would start Fires and have McCullers as a Casimir tandem guy because Casimir is starting in game two, and that's pretty scary because he's been bad for the second straight year. He kind of tailed off, and he hasn't thrown as hard.

straight year he kind of tailed off and he hasn't thrown his heart and i i think like uh four of his six september starts he went four and a third or shorter so it's hard to have much confidence in him so i think i'd probably use mccullers as the tandem guy with casimir i think i would use so if you were going to do that i would would use Fires as the tandem guy with Kazmir and then hope you don't have to use him. And if Kazmir gets through that game or goes through six and you know that now you don't have to use Fires and you can hold him for game four, then McCullers is immediately in my bullpen. And maybe I'm crazy, but in my estimation, becomes the second best reliever in the series.

Yeah, McCullers is really good. He's really good. And, I mean, you could really see him having, like, being the difference maker if he were. Now, you might need him in the rotation, and rotation takes precedent, takes priority. But you could imagine him being, like, insane, like completely hot fire coming out of the bullpen.

And it'd be kind of nice. I don't know if it is. I don't have another guy who can tandem other than those, though. Right. If you do have to go to someone in the third, then it's either McCullers or Fires. There's not another guy in the bullpen who you can really go to without, you know, breaking him.

Would you have started casimir yeah yeah i mean man he is really shaky but i guess you have to start him but yeah mccullers uh is really good i don't know how much innings are a concern with him because he's thrown so many more than he ever has before i don't know whether they're worried about his arm or not even thinking about that now, but yeah, he is a weapon. And the rest of the rotation, obviously there's the pretty sizable wildcard penalty of not getting to use Kykel until game three and only getting to use him once, and that probably made the difference for me when I was picking a winner in this series. Like, if they had had Keiko lined up for game one or two,

I might have picked the Astros. But as it is, they don't. They only get to use him once. And McHugh is good. He's fine. He's been pretty good down the stretch. And then Kazmir is shaky and Fires is, you know, fine. But eh.

And the Royals have not exactly a lockdown rotation either ventura has been really great since mid-season since not exactly since he was almost demoted but since a few starts after he was almost demoted, he's been really good, like better than he was last year, as good as we always thought someone who throws as hard and has his stuff should be. He's finally striking out a ton of guys, like way more than a batter per inning. So he's been great.

He is, yeah, he is, after the near demotion, he is Garrett Cole. Yeah, pretty much. near demotion he is garrett cole yeah pretty much for by his strikeout rate by his peripherals by his era and also by his um sexy sexy pitch types right uh he is garrett cole and so that's if you felt good about having garrett cole at the front of your rotation And you believe that this is A permanent Giordano Ventura and not simply a 10 start stretch that could go Poof just as quickly as everybody else's 10 start stretch then the Royals

Are Should be confident now whether Cueto follows the same logic And therefore You're stuck with Cueto starting twice Is Question and the nice thing about being a fan And therefore you're stuck with Cueto starting twice Is the question And the nice thing about being a fan Is that you can just cherry pick

Yeah So it sounded based on Andy McCullough's Reporting that they were going To start Cueto in game one That that was the plan and then Cueto didn't feel Comfortable with it and he preferred Not to but he is He didn't prefer not to start game one he preferred not to, but he is—

He didn't prefer not to start game one. He would have had to pitch on short rest at some point in September to get there. He didn't want to do that. And then I think—I don't know if this factored in, but you could see it perhaps factoring in. It seems clear that they intend to use their number one starter On short rest if it's an elimination game And so then Cueto essentially Would have been in a position where he would have had to be That guy too

And Cueto has never started on short rest And didn't want to start on short rest Which would make him A lot less valuable if He were a guy that you really really Really wanted to start a couple Times in this series as you Would think he would have been He to start a couple times in this series as you would think he would have been or he will he will start a couple times in the series on full rest yeah on

full rest right so the anyway if it's a if they decide to go with ventura on short rest otherwise then you're right yeah he decided not to then yeah he would only start once and i don't even know whether that's i don't know whether you want him. It's hard to say. I mean, when they traded for him, he was one of the, what, five best pitchers in baseball, something like that. And he's just been shaky since an initial first few good starts. And there was the whole Sal Perez catching thing, which we talked to Andy about. And even since then, since that change in four starts, he's been decent, but he has like a 3.2 ERA or something. But in 25 innings, he struck out 15 and walked nine.

And those are just not really quite O numbers. So I'm not sure if he's, I don't know, fully healthy or fully comfortable or whatever it is, but he doesn't inspire the confidence that the Royals envisioned him inspiring when they traded for him. And then Volquez is, I don't know, he fits into the kind of category of other guys we've been talking about, the Fires Estrada Dickey class, I think, of just pretty good league average type guy. I just reread yesterday the wild card recap I wrote last year when he pitched against Bumgarner.

And man, did I bury him. Just unrelenting anti-Volquez writing from Sam Miller over here. And he's been better. He's, you know, he's been better. This is his best year. Yeah. Even on an analyst. Last year was still better, I think. By ERA.

But if you look at the other stuff, I think that you would conclude that, I mean, my whole point last year was that in 2014, I mean, my whole point last year was that in 2014, Volquez was essentially completely the same as he'd been the previous five years. And he just had a crazy BABIP, and that was it. And we're smarter than that. This year he's kind of improved a little bit. He's probably a genuinely league average pitcher this year,

but it's still a little shaky. But I buried him too much. A lot of success was country concentrated at the beginning of the year too so i don't know when he didn't yeah he i wrote i also wrote about how he had gone from being like the wildest pitcher in baseball to like the the best control in baseball for like seven starts and uh or four starts yeah and uh and since then he has had his normal walk rates yeah anyway and then game four you have to choose between medlin or young maybe or bring back ventura if they're losing possibly but if you choose between medlin and young then you have the extreme fly ball guy and the good ground ball guy in Houston, and maybe you don't want to start the extreme fly ball guy there.

But anyway, not against. Now, and remind me how the batted ball matchups work. Fly ball pitcher against fly ball hitters is bad. Fly ball hitters against ground ball pitchers is good. Right? For – From the hitter's perspective. Yes, the opposite is good.

It favors the hitter. So the Astros are also an extreme fly ball hitting team. So, yes, the park hurts Young. The matchup arguably helps him. Yes, that's true. And what else Because if you're a ground ball Remind me if this is not true

If you're a ground ball pitcher going up against fly ball hitters That you tend to meet in the middle with line drives If you're a fly ball hitter And you face fly ball pitchers You hit a bunch of pop ups I think that's true And then the managers We probably know Ned Yost now better than we know any manager,

and we know that he doesn't do anything. If you just had to replace a manager with some guy off the street, once the game starts, you would want to replace Yost probably because he just doesn't make any moves. You wouldn't notice that he was gone so much. He pinch runs, but he never pinch hits, and he never changes his lineup, and he just is the extreme of non-invasiveness as a manager, which is not necessarily a good thing or a bad thing.

It's just a thing. That's how he is, and the players seem to like it, so maybe that not necessarily a good thing or a bad thing. It's just a thing. That's how he is. And the players seem to like it. So maybe that makes it a good thing. And then Hinch is just sort of, I don't know, I guess he mostly fits the sabermetric team model of what a manager should look like in a game. But nothing too crazy or extreme so i know you love the

benches you love the royals bench guys you love pinch runners and um terence gore's numbers are incredible he is his stolen base success rate is amazing. Yes. 92%. 92% as a professional. That's insane. And he goes a lot, like 215 professional steals, and he never gets caught. Yeah. That's wow. And I counted for the preview, for the series preview, but it's not just that he goes a lot,

but he usually goes on the first or second pitch. He has, by my counting, has stood on first base with an opportunity to steal for 25 pitches as a major leaguer, including the postseason, 25 pitches, not 25 at-bats, but 25 pitches, and has taken second base 10 times. So he's pretty much like, he's just automatic.

And he doesn't even give you, he doesn't even spend a couple pitches looking at the pitcher or getting fooled by his move or getting stared back. He just goes, and he's always safe. Yeah. He's a delight. He's also the worst player in baseball. He hit better than I expected that he would have hit this year.

He was in AA. He was probably not the worst hitter in the league. No, you're right. He had actually a, I didn't realize he had a pretty good year in AA. Yeah. 367 on base percentage. Goes a long way. That's pretty good.

He must have the lowest swing rate In baseball Yeah he probably does He must be Ricky Henderson Because they're coming right at him He can't do damage 367 on base 311 slugging Isolated power of 27

So they're coming right at him And they know that a walk is a double And he still walked in 10 of his plate appearances yeah wow so he must just have an absolutely out of control uh take rate god bless him he's my he's other than jay garrietta with his uh muscles he is he's my favorite thing in baseball. We didn't even mention Jake Arrieta's stolen base. That was my favorite thing in baseball. That was great. Yeah, you liked that.

I love that stolen base. Yeah, you did. That was just such a middle finger. Yeah, it made you tweet. It did. Not much makes me tweet. But that made me tweet. That was really something. Is that hit by pitch was like, mean i guess i

understand why you do it but i thought there was about a two percent chance that either of his was intentional did you disagree with that no neither one of his was intentional there was zero chance that either one was right and maybe you just hit him anyway just to i don't know like show that you can hit him in some form oh well you hit him because you're hoping that he gets in a fight and gets ejected. I mean, I almost wondered whether Sean Rodriguez was the designated keep this going no matter what guy, right? Because he's the, I mean, he had an excuse. He just took it so seriously. But yeah, he's the idiot who was immediately at 10, throwing a punch, yelling forever.

idiot who was immediately at 10 throwing a punch yelling forever i mean he it was almost like i would be i wouldn't be surprised to find out in a memoir two years from now or whatever that that was his that was this was all planned and that was his role keep it going no matter what like he just no matter what keep going and he's all we've got such a method actor that he kept it going against the gatorade thing anyway after it was over well i think it is that's the main reason that i like i don't know there's uh i have a friend who's a screenwriter and we used to talk about how the big flaw with a lot of movies is they're trying to hide information from you the viewer they're trying to keep suspense going and so then they end up having the character say things that mislead you even though there's nobody else around to be misled yeah you know what i mean like they're they're still playing a role even though there's nobody else around to see the role and so you're the only viewer and so yes to that point at a certain

point i thought all right probably sean rod Sean Rodriguez is really angry right now. And this is not him playing a role because the Gatorade thing doesn't punch back and isn't throwing a shutout. But yelling, staying on the rail, yelling, continuing to yell, continuing to be amped maybe fits into that because maybe he's I i mean he's maybe he's trying to get another uh you know arietta to respond in some way or some cub to respond in some way so they can all run back out on the field um but i do think that if you accept a world where retaliatory pitches are thrown which i don't but if your premise is that that is part of the game, that it is equally as valuable to retaliate for mistakes as retaliate at intentional hit by pitches. I think that either way, you are creating a disincentive for the pitcher to throw up and in,

and if you can make the pitcher not want to throw up and in, even by accident, if he's more cautious about that, if he's unwilling to throw a certain pitcher or a certain location out of the fear that he might miss up and in and therefore be retaliated against, then the job has been accomplished. And it was a very harmless location.

Yes, it was. It doesn't make you as upset as one that hits you in the shoulder or something. Did you have your guy lip read what Watson said? No, I didn't. I assumed Watson was saying generally nice things. I sort of feel like if I had to guess, I would say that Watson was like, Watch out for Sean Rodriguez. Yeah, it was like we had to do that I would say that Watson was like, Watch out for Sean Rodriguez. Yeah.

It was like, you know, we had to do that. No hard feelings. Yeah. So back to Astros, Rose. So the Astros bench is like, He's bad. What? How long is this going?

Astros bench is like a whole, It's an hour and six minutes. A whole good team on itself. Yes. You could almost make a playoff team out of the Astros bench. Well, you couldn't because a lot of the guys were on the Astros. Yeah. When they were bad. could almost make a playoff team out of the astros bench well you couldn't because a lot of the guys were on the astros yeah you could make a bad team out of the astros bench you could every i think every guy on the astros bench could start for somebody yeah

now there is a team that would sign every one of those guys to at least if not necessarily start on day one to at least kind of be very close to starting at least one team how does hank conger have a two percent cuts i don't know i don't know i didn't know about it until yesterday and crazy it's ridiculous two percent and castro with the same pitchers castro's got a 36 because i didn't Is it the same pitch? Because I didn't look to see if, like, Conger has been a personal catcher for someone who doesn't check the runners or something. Nope. They split pitchers pretty much equally. Jeez.

Like, almost exactly equally in a lot. Like, for Keichel and for Fiers and for Kazmir, it's, like, almost a perfect split. McHugh has more with Castro, but still it's like 20 and 10. So it's not personal catcher. It's basically the same guys. And it's not like Castro's Sal Perez or name your strong-armed catcher behind the plate. He's just a guy.

Yeah. 42 for 43. It's amazing. It's a complete statistical miracle. And I wish I had noticed it before. Can't play index. I had to submit. Can't play index catcher caught stealing percentage, I don't think.

It'd be nice if you could. But yeah, that's me. Prior to this year, he was slightly below average, but barely. A few percentage points every year so i don't know whether he's had arm issues this year or what but man that is really something and if he's catching when terence gore is on base that's like the biggest mismatch imaginable uh okay i mean i

honestly like i they basically share playing time not quite quite 50-50, but close to 50-50. And not really on any particular pattern that I can tell. But I would bet Castor catches every game in the series for that reason. I mean, it's not so much that the Royals... The Royals steal bases and are generally fast enough, but they're aggressive. We saw what they did against John Lester and Derek Norris last year, and I just feel like they won't stop if Conger goes.

And I would bet that Conger doesn't. I think Conger would start next series if they get there, a couple of games. He's a good ball player. He's a really good ball player. He could catch for a bunch of teams, but I would be surprised if he starts a game in this series for that reason. Yeah, okay.

Anyway, I went with Royals in five. I went with Royals. Okay. But I basically, as I always do, I said, you know, there's no rational prediction here. Pakoda has them roughly 50-50, close enough to 50-50. And so I picked based on Esky magic. If they don't put Unel, not Unel,

Alcides Escobar in the leadoff spot, then I would change my prediction. Even though Escobar has no business being in the leadoff spot Then I would change my prediction Even though Escobar Has no business being in the leadoff spot I am completely basing My prediction based on the Irrational decision to pursue Esky magic

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