Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 746: The Championship Series Check-In

Episode Date: October 19, 2015

Ben, Harry Pavlidis, and Jeffrey Paternostro review the weekend’s ALCS and NLCS action and preview the pitching in ALCS Game 3.

Yeah, hold our head high as the underdogs We are not fair weather, but far weather fans Like brothers in arms in the streets and the stands It's magic in the ivy in the old scoreboard The same one I stared at as a kid keeping score In a world full of greed I could never want more And someday we'll go all the way Yeah, someday we'll go all the way

Good morning and welcome to episode 746 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives presented by The Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I am Ben Lindberg of Grantland. Filling in for Sam Miller, I have two guests again. They are former guests of the podcast, Harry Pablidis, the Director of Technology at Baseball Perspectives, and Jeffrey Paternostro, who last time we talked to him in episode 719 was a mere Mets writer at Amazing Avenue. He still is, but he is also now a fully-fledged baseball prospectus writer. So come on this podcast and big things happen for you. Hey, guys. Hey, how's it going? So Harry is a Cubs fan. Jeffrey is a Mets fan. So I thought I'd bring you guys on and you could just yell at

each other for a while. Maybe Jeff can gloat. Harry can say something mean in response. Have you guys seen the, those shirts and hats that MLB is selling with who wants it more? Yeah. The ones, the generic, like the hat with the print on the back, that's okay. Yeah. We want it more. Okay. But the one that says Chicago, the generic, like the hat with the print on the back, that's okay. We want it more, okay. But the ones that say Chicago, New York, those are pretty bad. You're going to see those in Goodwill bins pretty soon. I didn't think anyone would buy the Take October shirts, but apparently those are all over the place.

At least judging by the crowd shots tonight. I thought it was because they're hoodies and it's cold. Yeah, that's fair. I have a Kane County Cougars hoodie because of poor weather forecast reading. I have a B-Mets one as well. Yeah. If you brand it, people will buy. Which one of you guys wants it more? I think we all want it less

than Daniel Murphy. I think that's true. You're the Mets scouting guy. Yeah, okay. Scout some Daniel Murphy. I think that's true. So you're the Mets scouting guy? Yeah, okay. Scout some Daniel Murphy for me. So they're going to tell you that he worked with Kevin Long this season on pull power stuff, you know, pulling fastballs, trying to yank it down the line at Citi Field, which actually, for all the talk about Citi Field being like an extreme pitcher's park, if you're an extreme lefty pull hitter, say chase utley that's a pretty inviting uh left field line there the messengers haven't had any hitters since city field opened they can actually hit for power for

the most part to that part of the park or any part of the park so you started they're going to tell you so it sounds like there's a conspiracy coming no i don't think there's a conspiracy coming necessarily i mean murphy has this is what they'll tell you stretches like this um't think there's a conspiracy coming necessarily. I mean, Murphy has stretches like this. There's a lot of work been done on sort of are all hitters streaky? Are some hitters streakier than others? I think if there is a case for streakiness, Daniel Murphy is a good example of that. Now, normally it's not a power thing. It's just he's hitting line drives to left center field kind of thing.

But, you know, it's like anything else. It's just he's hitting line drives to left center field kind of thing. Like anything else, it's a week-long sample. Over at Amazing Avenue, we did, during the season, we do weekly meters for all the pitchers and position players, just like how they did over the last week and giving them up arrows and down arrows. We also have a flaming

Dickie face inside a fireball that I think we started using it around Dickey's 2012 season. But if it was just a normal week of baseball, he would just get the flaming Dickey fireball, and we'd all move on with our lives. But it's the playoffs, so... So he gets multiple Dickey flaming fireballs. Yeah, and another $40 million on his contract this year, probably. So he was different this year, but also exactly the same right like he yeah he struck out half as much as he did the year

before he hit for more power but he walked less i guess and didn't do as well when he put the ball in play so the result was exactly the same but it was different yeah there's a little more power there and he's had seasons sort of like this before where he's cut his strikeout rate dramatically and it's gone back to like 12-ish percent in subsequent seasons, so who knows. So we are not witnessing the Daniel Murphy breakout at age 30. We might be.

I'll say this, the last Mets player that had a big power surge like August, if you go back to august i think and again a lot of that might be functionally they were facing the rockies phillies and marlins a lot but if you go back and look at i think he was slugging something like 533 yeah since august first and some of the last mets player that did something like that after a swing tweak and i think they're probably he probably was working with Kevin Long on pole power stuff. Because why not? And then left the team, as Murphy might as a free agent, was Justin Turner.

And that seemed to stick. So fool me once, shame on me. I don't know. So beware of red-haired, hot September hitting. Bad defensive second baseman, I guess. On it. So I tweeted after the home run early on just a joke, a Daniel Murphy scouting report, which was just an empty notepad file that said walk him on the first line,

and there was an empty second line. Then they actually followed my scouting report. What did you guys make of the intentional walk stupid i was like i very rarely find in-game moves by managers to be like highly questionable but that wouldn't seem to be questionable on all levels for me one arietta doesn't want to do it and didn't like doing it and just for someone who clearly wasn't fully comfortable on the mound making even less It was probably not a good idea. He sucks at handling base runners, and you have a good hitting team. I mean, it wasn't the pitcher coming up.

It was Cespedes. And they did get a kind of a ball that could have been turned into a ground ball, but it was just put in the right place. Don't play. It was turned from the place where it wasn't. But it just seemed crazy to me to just, in in that situation to put an extra base runner on it just seems so completely unnecessary and you did get you know grandy took advantage of nobody really paying attention to him and the double clutch by monteros had a lot of trouble throwing the ball to take third so it seemed like just

very little benefit and it's like you can pitch around murphy you can do something but just telling arietta you can't get this guy out. You're going to, we're going to put him on is, I don't know. I thought it was super strange. Yeah. And so you are an Arrieta scholar. You've studied Arrieta going back to even before he became unbeatable. How did he look to you tonight? And in his last start, did you notice any diminishment? Or was it just the usual stuff that happens to pitchers? Location was the issue, and I think he was overthrowing. When he's throwing the ball up and pulling balls,

it was kind of a sign that he's rushing through his delivery. And when he stays in that kind of nice, reasonable, balanced position, and his hips just start launching towards the plate in a very natural, smooth slide, he wasn't really doing that. He was just kind of suddenly just whipping around. I kind of talk, I mean, I'm not a scout. I'm not a mechanics guy. But I will talk a lot about guys either kind of going towards the plate with their hip

or going around their hip to get to the plate and a lot of you know that's like the difference between driving and you know getting your arm going too fast and getting in front of your you know your weight transfer you know i think of things a lot like this all whether it's hitting golfing or pitching it's a very similar thing and he was just too fast too pumped up too much adrenaline and he didn't handle that and he even was talking about that before the game and changed his pre-game routine a bit to try and tone down we could see everybody was like oh boy he's overthrowing uh and as he settled down i mean that the first the pitch that murphy had for the home run wasn't that bad of a pitch you know and and and you know as as jeffrey noted there's you know a nice place to tuck that ball and he did did. And he looped it over that defense there.

You won't find that in Wrigley. Wrigley's got the wells, and it's crazy deep down the lines, actually. It's really hard to hit a ball down the line. So that was not terrible on pitch. And then he went on a run there. That seemed to suck all the adrenaline out of him. And suddenly he was just kind of like, ooh. And that was actually better for him pitching.

And he seemed to suddenly, you know, next inning or so, next two innings, he's had better angle on his pitches. You could see his sinker was really starting to go across, but you know, I noticed some things when I charted at the game, he threw more four seam fastballs today than he has.

And that may have been because he didn't feel his command was good, or maybe he was trying to do something different in different situations, but he's been almost not throwing that pitch. So seeing him throw even a half dozen, I noticed that was kind of strange, but the big thing was he's just missing and missing and he started putting the pitches in better places later but he used up way too many bullets early in the game to do it so he settled down he looked better i think it's a matter of the guy learning how his body feels and he's very self-aware almost health hyper awareaware. And so maybe in these types of situations, he's the type of person who needs a few times of experience

to understand how his body reacts under that incredible stress that is different than anything you've ever seen. So you wouldn't necessarily speculate that it was fatigue-related? If anything, it was excess energy-related? I would say so, yes, because when he calmed down and was more in rhythm, his stuff looked the same. Well, Sam and I were talking the other day about how as incredible as he's been if we were just to see him throw a few pitches without knowing how great he's been we would think he was a very

good pitcher but we wouldn't necessarily say that he jumps off the screen as the best pitcher in baseball or one of the top two or three. And you are the only person who has, in a sense, seen every pitch thrown in the last several years. We had you on episode 281, and you talked about how you tag every pitch in PitchFX, so you've seen at least a blob that represents every pitch thrown in the PitchFX era. Bob, that represents every pitch thrown in the PitchFX era. So does Arrieta look to you like a guy who would win a billion games in a row just looking at his pitch plots and his stuff? No one does. Yeah.

No one does. But you do look at his stuff in this combination of pitches. And when you realize that his primary fastball, he's not a three-quarters arm slot guy. If you look at his stuff on a day where he's not throwing his foreseam, and you just assume that his fastball, well, it's got to be a foreseam, you think you're looking at a guy with three-quarter delivery, but he's pretty much kind of more over the top with a bit of a crossfire. So knowing that, knowing what his

actual arm path is, plus the angle he's coming to from way off to the side, way off third base, you have this combination of a very hard moving sinker that ball just has a lot of a lot of movement on it and you then you have the slider cutter slutter thing which he can change speeds on so much and he's got what pretty much amounts to a hammer curve and he has a change up with depth and some fade so you look at the stuff like oh goodness this guy has a whole bunch of good pitches and one of them he can really manipulate the speed on it. That being the slaughter. And then,

then when you go look at him pitch and you look at his physique and you look at just the ease at which he throws the ball. Sam looks at his physique as often as possible. Well, he's just look at his shoulders. They're, they're glorious. Um,

you know, I guess he got like grief for wearing tank tops when he was in baltimore like starting i'm like if i had shoulders like that i'd be wearing tank tops to work also and i you know and you were if i was working like in an office i'd be like showing my cubicle at my desk in the it department in 1997 and the tank top how you doing but i mean he's just he's had he has the build he has this hyper competitive mentality so yes he has the build. He has this hyper-competitive mentality. So, yes, he has really good-looking pitches. He has really good-looking stuff. But it's knowing the angle that he's actually delivering.

So when you go past just the movement and the speed and understand the angles he's creating and understand his physical attributes and his mental attributes, it's not a shock that he flipped the switch and became a dominating pitcher. I mean, it's like it happens. It happens where guys, it may like, it happens. It happens where guys, it may not last forever. It may be something here, but guys who are good and have all these things, when they finally get their delivery on a repeatable manner, be able to self-correct during

games, really big things like that, like stop explosive innings from happening, you get pitchers who are really good. Yeah. So Jeffrey, we had you on episode 719. We talked about Jacob deGrom's origin story. Which of the Mets' many excellent starters right now gives you the most confidence, or is it impossible to pick one? of the NLDS. You might not be convinced by that statement. But I think the fact that he was able to win without his best stuff, and there was some luck in there. I know when we talked on that episode, he had just gotten shelled by the Phillies after apparently he had food poisoning, bad burger, the night before when they got into the hotel room. But he didn't have much. And he's went through a pretty good Dodgers lineup multiple times times managed to put it together a little bit as the game went on and gave him six innings and i think that's and at the top end you saw he didn't game one so you've seen him be able to do both in the playoffs he's the oldest of the three um he's probably

pitched the deepest into seasons of the three throughout his career, which isn't saying much. None of them have thrown 200 innings in a professional season yet. I guess Harvey just went over, and I think DeGrom's gone over in the playoffs now too. So I'm pretty happy that guy's starting game three in the situation the Mets are in right now, and with the starting pitching advantage they are in right now and with the uh the starting pitching advantage they're going to have in that game but yeah it's you know then Noah Syndergaard goes out and does what he does tonight Harvey does what he did in game one and I think it's if you were to comp them to a team I think there's a little bit of and they haven't pitched quite as

well and the they weren't as established while they're doing this. But the 2005 White Sox is starting to come to mind a little bit as a team that's just getting a, I don't want to say random, but a sustained great run of starting pitching. Well, they didn't have the highs that this team does probably, but they had health, right? Like none of their starters missed a start all season. It was crazy. Wasn't it just a solid rotation? Yeah, essentially the six starters that are on the playoff roster I think made probably over 150 of the starts for the team this year, certainly.

Yeah. So, Harry, what's the DEFCON Cubs fan level right now? It's been at DEFCON, what, five is the worst level, right? Right. Yeah. So Cubs fandom has been at DEFCON 5 since approximately, let me say, about September 4th, 1969. Yeah. And it's been on a steady state.

I mean, my experience in baseball started, you know, I mean, I grew up rooting mostly for the Mets and the 86 World Series was awesome. Wait, DEFCON 5, least severe. DEFCON 1. Well, whatever, it's bad. DEFCON 1, it's bad. Nuclear war is imminent. So, you know, in the late 80s, early 90s, I really didn't care at all

for the Mets. And at that time in life, you know, I moved to Chicago. So I use this phrase today, actually, and I was like, I'm glad I remembered it. But I had about a seven-year fallow period where I didn't have a baseball team. That was my favorite team between roughly 1988 and 1995. So after the strike, I lived down the street from Wrigley Field at that point. And it just became a matter by the end of 1995, because baseball was back. I was a Cubs fan very solidly by 1998, but I didn't understand the complete insanity and we're going to die of the Cubs fans.

I mean, because I grew up in 1969. You mentioned baseball in 1969, the National League in New Jersey and Long Island, and it's generally a positive response. People's best summer of their lives. You mentioned it here and it ruined high school. It ruined everything for me. It was the worst, you know, it was an nightmare. And so I didn't quite get it until game six of 2003 when I was like, oh, now I know why you people are all so screwed up.

And that's when I really started to then be like, you know what, I am a Cubs fan because I think I just, I realized, you know, next thing I know, it a season to go over and the rest is kind of a very sad history of pain. And it's like basically everybody expects it to go horribly wrong because it always has. But it's not a resignation then? It's not coming to terms with that and accepting that? No, no, no. If anything, there's a really, really horrific, which I think is worse, actually, a sense of entitlement to a victory, a sense of entitlement to a World Series. And I think that attitude is just disturbing. Just, you know, it's like, you're not entitled. Well, the Cubs aren't going to win before I die. You've got to do it before I die. It's like, no, it's baseball. And we love it. And it's my career. But it's not and we we love it and it's my career but it's not due it's not life or death but the the the focus on here on actually winning a world series and that is so huge this season was a tremendous tremendous success they're possibly you could argue they're ahead of plan things have

gotten better faster than they thought they would be yeah people are probably going to look back and go if they don't miraculously recover from this two-game deficit, as well, it was a failure because they didn't win the World Series. And believe me, that is going to probably be the prevailing opinion. And it's, you know, right, wrong, or different, that's just the way it is here. But what's going to happen is they're going to spin this into some type of disaster.

They're going to find a way, Arietta fell apart, Arietta can't, there's going to be the narrative weaving. Because the reality is it's a good baseball team playing another good baseball team in a high variance game under a lot of pressure. And hey, look what happens. Yeah, it's very much like the Astros story. It's at least a year ahead of where we expected them to be. And everyone thought they'd be good, but not this soon. And they got to the playoffs, which is kind of amazing and more than anyone expected. And it seems like you should be happy. Got past the Pirates, got past the Cardinals.

They have to go into New York and face a team that knew, and people don't talk about this at all, but the Mets knew they were a dangerous team this year because they're like, look at the starting pitching they have. Most or any organization would kill for what they have. And even after Wheeler went down, you still have all this talent. So this is an extremely good pitching staff that is like the exact kind of pitching staff,

minus how long have they gone, have they thrown 200 innings, have they pitched this deep into a year before, and all those things. This is the type of thing you want in a playoff series, is you just throw dominating pitchers. And as Jeffrey alluded to earlier, the starting pitching deficit is going to be very big now yeah they mean the lesser

to arietta and then you know it's okay there's these other guys they kind of put it together and it can work some of them have good days i mean hendrix is a crafty pitcher but he has no margin for error arietta could come out today without his command and still get by on stuff which he pretty much did he still kept deep into game, kept the team in the game and all those old-fashioned things. Hendricks, if he doesn't have it, he's gone second inning. You take him. Because if he's not hitting his spots and getting his counts going his way, just good

night. So let me ask you this. Starting a team today from scratch, which would you rather have? Starting a team today from scratch, which would you rather have? Cubs lineup or Cubs young position players or Mets rotation slash Mets young starters? Honestly, that's a great question, but I think you have to go with the position players because of the risk of starting pitching. And if you look at the way the Cubs, because basically that's the Cubs philosophy, was get young hitters.

And they've assembled the best group of that. But then you could say the other philosophy is go the other way. But there's so much risk with pitching injury. Pitching is so much harder to project. You need to broad base. It's as tempting as it is, as much as I love the Mets pitching staff, you look at all the guys who are probably going to be thumping for several years in lineups.

Take the Cubs. Do you care to disagree, Jeffrey? No, I agree. I'll go further as to say... You guys are supposed to fight. Come on, fight. Sorry, Dan. The Mets starting pitching is great.

I'm happy to be able to watch that. Four out of Bartolo, too. Basically, every day is great for different reasons. There's nothing wrong with Bartolo. He's perfect in every way. Zach Wheeler exists also. Yeah, so throwing Wheeler too. That's four out of those five young arms have already had a Tommy John surgery,

and Noah Syndergaard's had arm issues for the past two seasons. So you're losing. You basically have to – I think we're almost at the point in time with these guys. You have to basically say they're going to miss a year, maybe more depending on when it happens. This is crazy. It's true, though. And with a position player,

it's a catastrophic, unusual injury that you lose a year. For a pitcher, it's like, well, you know, about a third of them. It's a little different. Really think about that. Some of you may be in a car accident. You guys are there. You're totally getting in car accidents because you're driving around blindfolded and drunk.

That's pitching. All right. So if we can broaden the scope, we have two series, both 2-0. If you guys had to pick one of the teams that is currently losing 2-0 as more likely to come back in the series, which would you go with, Blue Jays or Cubs? Either one of you can start. Blue Jays go with? Blue Jays or Cubs? Either one of you can start. Blue Jays. I think Blue Jays.

I think solely because I think the pitching matchup favors the Mets so strongly in game three. That's what it comes down to. And even game four is a mystery as well. That extends to two games. So even though the Cubs are coming home for three games, the pitching is a huge question mark. You see how basically two teams with really good offenses coming home for three games, the pitching is a huge question mark. You have basically two teams with really good offenses

coming home, and as Jeffrey said, the pitching is not set up advantageously for one. And I think there is something to not that it really played out that way in the divisional series, that the Blue Jays could go home in the Sky Dome and pull off a little run against the pitchers

the Royals are going to be throwing out there. Like Chris Young starting one of those games, I think. Yeah, Chris Young and Roger Center is a little scary. Yeah, basically you're taking the Royals pitching setup with the Cubs' home field advantage. If you flip it around, that's a really good setup. Hey, you're going home, you've got good pitching, you're not facing tough pitching,

you have a good chance to get out ahead, you've got last licks in the ninth inning, you've got all the advantage of the crowd the umpire's subliminal messaging that you're passing him through the crowd and through the video boards you know that's getting the extra call but yeah the cubs are cubs are really have an uphill battle today was the game that was there was a little argument on tbs pregame is this a must-win game like yeah this is kind of a must-win game because it doesn't set up well it doesn't mean it's impossible it doesn't mean you throw up any white flags because you have no idea what the heck's gonna happen Hendricks could throw a one hitter for you know he might go seven

innings to shut the shut nuts down but that's not nearly as likely as somebody like Jacob de Bergogne coming in and doing it so it's like there's probabilities but the over and the overwhelming advantage I think pitchingwise is no comparison. What did you guys make of the Royals' comeback in Game 2? Was it just randomness combined with Royals' singles-hitting skill? Was it David Price falling apart? Was it there being too slow a hook by John Gibbons? Some combination of the above?

I think there always has to be one ace level pitcher that columnists can write a, he can't get it done in the playoffs narrative about, and that they can't do it about Kershaw. The universe is self-corrected. Makes sense. Yeah. Well, for the first six innings, it looked like they wouldn't be able to do it about Price. How did the Royals do it twice in four playoff games? Is that right?

Yeah. Four game two. Yeah. That's, it's insane. insane um yeah no there's definitely some luck there were some fluky plays but yeah they strung together a lot of singles it wasn't like they're hitting everything over the fence they weren't bleeders either though no they weren't other than the pop-up other than the pop-up yeah they were all like legitimate hits that price gave up afterwards yeah they weren't cheapies but they weren't completely you know they weren't't completely world-beating either. It's baseball, man.

Especially in the playoffs, these things get magnified. It's like, oh, mistake. Everything, the pressure, the pressure, the response. Instead of shrugging it off, the pitcher suddenly feels like, oh my gosh, I have to make up for this. And it just changes everything. It's just a different environment. But it's also devil magic

right as good as price is you can i mean normally we talk about third time through the order and all that but price third time through the order is still debatably the best option for many teams i mean with the blue jays not having brett cecil you could say that, you know, if you're, if it's too early for Sanchez and Osuna, and maybe you could have strung those guys together for three innings, but to at least give him the chance to start that inning seems legitimate. Doesn't seem like something you can kill in hindsight, really. I'm interested with Jeffress to say, because he's kind of seen Collins leave pitchers out seemingly a long time. It out yeah yes um actually for the last four how many five years that he's been there he does have a tendency to leave guys in like 10 pitches too long two batters too long when the you

know the command starts to go and the velocity starts to drop he did that a lot with Harvey Wheeler to DeGrom to a certain extent. I think you gotta, with Price, I think it's different when it's an established veteran pitcher, you know, an established ace. You expect him to be able to go out there and get you the seventh inning, based on what he'd done for the first six.

I guess the one time you could really get on Collins, and that might just be a post-hoc thing because it didn't work, was in game two with Syndergaard. probably he gave him the seventh and it went bad quickly you know you know quick walks that kind of stuff and maybe the hook could have been a little bit quicker there but of course if they turn that double play it doesn't really matter you all know what happened there um but you know in the playoffs their strategy has very much been, up until tonight, I think there may be two and a third innings pitched by pitchers

that weren't in the starting rotation this year or J.R. Sommelier in the playoffs. And that's very much been their approach. And it kind of has to be, I think. Addison Reed looked fine. Tyler Clippard looked fine. But ideally, you want to shorten these games as much as possible. And they've been able to do that. And I think that's, we think of sort of the, when we think of sort of the playoffs, I think now in sort of game management, we think of the Royals model, where it's, you know, you

want to shorten games as much as possible by getting your bullpen in there. But most teams don't have four lights out relievers. They can just roll out there for the sixth through ninth. So I think the Mets have looked at it as we still think this starter who's still throwing 95-plus in the 7th inning, even into the 8th inning, is a better option than a good but not spectacular setup guy. Which is sort of, I think, an anathema to sort of recent baseball orthodoxy. And what do you make of the Bartol Cologne reliever experiment? It's a joy. Yeah.

I've taken to calling him Fireman Bart or something for Closer Bart tonight. Because Familia really looks like he needs a day at this point. He's pitched in, I think, six of their seven games. He's pitched a lot. He's pitched multi-innings in a bunch of them. And you can kind of like the, it's cold and everybody's velocity

was a little bit down tonight from where I've seen them in the past. Yeah, he doesn't have the top level. He doesn't have like the 98, 99 with the sinker. And he's not really throwing a split that much, which I think is probably more of a function of the cold weather than even the velocity issue. I mean, it's not really an issue

because the stuff's still really good. But, you know, he's not missing as many bats. I know his strike's not really an issue because the stuff's still really good. But, you know, he's not missing as many bats. I know his strikeout rate isn't there. It's a very short sample. And one for two covering first. One for two covering first. He ran so hard to the base.

Oh my gosh, I know. He was like, I'm going to get there. He's like a really good athlete for his size in general. It was just funny that he just make up for it make up for it i do wonder how long you can keep doing this though i mean it's worked so far and they can maybe they should keep pressing this button right well someone on the one of the broadcasts said like you know this is going to be the next act of his career like reliever bart who lasts until he's 50.

I don't know if I see that happening. The thing is, he can probably get another two-year contract this offseason, right? He's pitched well enough. He's been healthy. He can pitch. I think it's interesting. It's Nice coming out of bullpen throwing 93, 94.

That's pretty cool. He dropped down to the L laredo thing too that he would do on occasion that was all i think he threw one pitch from his higher slot today and the rest were all dropped a little bit hold on everything was yeah knees are lower which is interesting he's they don't have any other left-handed options really they moved sean gil martin into the playoff roster for this series and dumped Eric Goodell, so it's another lefty, but he's not really a traditional left-on-left guy. He was a minor league starter, and his best secondary is his changeup.

No, he was a good choice for Rizzo. Yeah, it worked. Yeah, it was a really tough angle. Mets fans were terrified. It was the perfect thing because, you know, that angle he was coming from and the outside was like the strike zone has been generous all postseason. So it was well done. He just threw everything – ended up just burying everything basically.

But he had room to go outside, inside if he wanted to like back and try. But he didn't. It was just bang, bang, bang, bang, bang because he was throwing so hard. So he had different ways to get after Rizzo, and he just took one and pounded him away. It didn't even look hard. I know Rizzo got through a few, but it was the same pitch over and over, and even when he took it, I don't think he saw it too well. So I want to ask about the ALCS Game 3 pitching matchup for later today,

and it's Johnny Cueto versus Marcus Stroman and both of these guys are really interesting pitchers probably from a pitch fx perspective as well as a watching them perspective and I mean Stroman has just surplus of excellent pitches that he's been experimenting with and he's got multiple breaking balls and they don don't look like... And they're kind of atypical. Yeah, so explain... Arietta kind of looks like standard kit. Yeah, so explain the strange arsenal of Stroman. He's a guy who's kind of got rid of a four-seamer because he figured out a good, really nasty two-seam grip and command.

So he can move his fastball a lot. So he's got that. Then he's got his cutter, which he throws hard and has good movement. Then his slider, which is almost like a short curve. And then his curve, which is almost like a slurvy slider. And then he throws a changeup. So

his slider and curve can kind of look in the data. They can look a little similar. I think you can see the sweeping action. The curve seems to have a little bit of depth to it, more loop to it of some kind. You can tell. So his stuff is awesome. So he's not tall.

He can't create the angles and whatnot that these big guys can get. But he creates so much spin and so much movement on the ball. And he's throwing at good velocity. He's just awesome. He's just awesome. I love this guy. Yeah. I mean, he's great. He awesome so i love this guy yeah i mean he's great it's he's great to listen to he's great to watch he's everything so he's from long island come on he's perfect he's perfect so since he's come back this year he's been like a very heavy

ground ball guy maybe fewer strikeouts than the previous stroman model but he maybe has the potential to be both of those things in the future as he figures out what he wants to do with all of these pitches uh-huh absolutely well that's scary yeah no he's he's downright pregnant and as for cueto we we talked about him a bit on friday's show and how he bounced back in his most recent start. But, I mean, and he also, according to your pitch classifications, really switched things up with his four-seamer and his sinkers last time. He's insane, like really hard to tag. Right. He throws the ball different ways.

He's pitching. So he's one of those guys where it's never distinct especially with his uh glove side pitches his slider cutter and curve are really they're all on a continuum and they share many locations so it's really hard sometimes and yeah he's he seems to change up what he wants to do with the synchronous fastball sometimes and he might be one of those guys which he comes out says which one feels better today so you know we may always especially with him we may always go back and revisit his pitches with a guy like arietta it's like that's what it is it's unambiguous with a guy you know stroman you can figure it out the first time coedo sometimes you can sit back

and go what was that are we sure and go back and review because he's he's weird yeah he's really crafty funky type of pitcher it's a very good it's is a pitcher. A, you know, he's not a, he's got good stuff. It's good, good stuff. But he's, he's not like Stroman. He's going to come out there and absolutely dowsy with these ridiculous, crazy pitches. But he's going to change speeds. He's going to move the ball. He changes his delivery.

Just, you know, so he's, he's challenging. So did you have a diagnosis of why it wasn't working and why it suddenly did? Well, it wasn't he saying it was because he couldn't get a good low target yeah he did say that and then after the changes right after the target changed he sort of superficially had better results but still kind of wasn't having the peripherals that he normally does but so maybe they all had nothing to do with each other could be i yeah i don't know i mean and again because he's a type of pitcher who varies his approach quite a bit yeah well he should not vary it from what it was in his last start he should stick with that he should stick with that and jeff passan's piece on that game

just sort of made it sound like he went out that day and decided he was going to just be better. He was just going to throw a lot harder than he had in the past. Like he was down kind of disturbingly low for a start or two there. And then it really bounced most of the way back in his most recent start. And according to Jeff's story, it was just kind of he just told himself all right I've had enough of not throwing fast I'm going to throw fast now then it worked so everyone should try to do that

yeah I'll be right out tomorrow trying to throw fast all right Jeff I appreciate you being so gracious in victory and Harry so gracious in defeat thank you for joining us sorry we couldn't like first take this for you. I know.

All the ingredients were there. I tried to set it up, but you guys just didn't deliver. Sorry. Too reasonable. Sorry, everyone. You can find Jeff on Twitter at Jeff Paternostro. You can find Harry on Twitter at Harry Pav. You can find their work at Baseball Perspectives

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