Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 903: The Not-So-Surprising Standings

Episode Date: June 13, 2016

Ben and Sam do an all-banter episode about the standings through the first 40 percent of the season, Yordano Ventura’s suspension, and the unchanging closer role.

Your love is so predictable, I can't allow you to blow my brain. You always know it's trick-table, I can't predict you'll drive me wild and insane. Your love is so predictable, oh yes it is. Your love is so predictable, oh yes it is. Your love is so predictable, oh oh oh. Your love is so predictable. Your love is so predictable. Good morning and welcome to episode 903 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives,

brought to you by the Play Index, BaseballReference.com, and our Patreon supporters. I'm Sam Miller, along with Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight. Hey, Ben, how are you doing? I'm all right. Good. We're not, I don't have anything in particular I want to talk about today, so I'm just going to go through a bunch of stuff. So you can jump in with a bunch of stuff if you've got it. Okay. Well, I just wanted to mention one thing. I was just glancing at the standings page, and we're now about 40% of the way through the season. of the way through the season. It's pretty substantial. And how many teams would you say would qualify as surprises or would have made you, if you had looked at today's standings

on opening day, how many teams would have made you say, huh? Even a huh. That's funny. I was going to have a topic. I thought about having the topic be trying to figure out who the least surprising team is. Because we, I, it feels like we talk about, sometimes we talk about the same things over and over throughout the course of the season. Because it's the teams that surprise you or the players that surprise you. And we end up not talking about, you know, like that year we didn't talk about the Reds. And so I was wondering who the least surprising team is, you know, all the way up and down, and I decided I didn't want to make that a topic. But I will say in the NL, there's virtually no surprise.

And when I wrote about the baseball prospectus staff predictions – oh, no. Actually, I think it was when I did the million simulations. I talked about how there's virtually no room for disagreement in the National League. In fact, I think I mentioned it in both, but there's almost no room for disagreement. Like with the AL or with the NL Central, for instance, I believe there were only three ballots submitted for the NL Central for the entire staff. There were, there was Cubs. Well, I guess there were five. Like I think every team had,

maybe one person had the Cubs, but just assume every team had the Cubs in first. And then there was like a, you know, close to a 50-50 split on the Cardinals and Pirates next. And then close to a 50-50 split on the Brewers and Reds next. And that's it. That's the entire disagreement. And with the NL East, it was essentially the same thing. Up to like in the first 40 ballots that I counted,

every one had the Marlins in third. And then it was just a matter of swapping Nationals Mets or Phillies Braves. And then I wrote in this million simulations thing that there was almost no room to disagree about the NL West at all, that it was the most predictable division and that I expected, you know, 90% of our ballots were going to go Dodgers, Giants, Diamondbacks, Padres, Rockies. And in fact, there was some disagreement over the order, but basically it's true. Okay. So anyway, the point is that it's exactly right. Like all of this has totally happened.

Basically, yeah. Nationals, the only difference is that the Giants and the Dodgers are swapped, and more of our writers picked the Giants than I was expecting. Yeah, that was not an uncommon belief at the beginning of the season. I probably would have said Dodgers, but... Yeah, and then the Rockies are in third instead of fifth. Otherwise, or instead of fourth Otherwise, the NL is basically 100% on

So to that question, none of those are surprising I would say the Dodgers are surprising Yeah, yeah, a little bit Not shocker surprising, they're over 500 But yeah, a little bit Yeah, they're on pace to win 84 games Which if you thought that they were Even if you thought they were a 94 win team

84 wins, especially over the course An 84 win pace over the course of less than half a season Counts as noise I think that you could They might be a 94 win team still in True Town Yeah, especially after the injuries they had in spring training. If you would ask someone on opening day, then they might have been even more pessimistic about the Dodgers because a lot of people were pessimistic about the Dodgers. They lost all those pitchers and they hadn't signed Granke.

And so I might have been slightly surprised by this, but I think a lot of people wouldn't have been. All right. So then AL West, the order is not an uncommon order. Rangers, Mariners, Astros, Angels, A's. I specifically chose the Rangers to be my hot take pick of the year. I had them being bad, like very bad. And so I have to say that I'm surprised by that. But they were also the second most popular World Series pick among our staff.

And, you know, they won the division last year. So I was just being stupid and really a jerk. They've won in a very weird way given what players they haven't had and what players haven't been good. They also have a crazy run differential record. It's a crazy run differential record. Yeah, so it's weird that if you had told everyone exactly who was going to be playing and how many runs they would have scored and allowed and that kind of thing, then it would be surprising that they were in first. But, of course, a division winner from the previous year leading the division, not shocking. No, and then the Astros being in third is not shocking. However, the Astros being five games under 500, 10 games out of first, that's surprising. The Astros should be, I would say

the Astros should be, uh, at least 500 for it not to qualify as somewhat as surprised. I do. I think there was a little bit more of a, of a, of an irrational consensus. I had them as my pick in that division. Uh, but it seemed, and I think I even, I think I was on a radio show and somebody asked me who was going to win the World Series or who was going to be in the World Series. And I forced to make an answer. I think I even picked the Astros. So I'm surprised by that. But, you know, they were not a, they shouldn't have been, they weren't and they shouldn't have been projected to be, you know, a 95 win team or anything like that. So it's not, if they were at 500, it'd be fine.

They're five games under. That's surprising. All right. It is surprising. And I will say, by the way, that we did our re-evaluating the Astros episode on April 26th when they were 6-15. And we both kind of concluded that we thought they were still pretty good. There was no reason why they shouldn't be pretty good going forward and they've been 24 and 20 since then which is what an 88 win pace something like that which is probably what we

would have said roughly on opening day so since then they've been basically the astros it might be too late for them but but they have so i have uh okay So then in the, in the central, the order currently is Indians, Tigers, Royals, White Sox twins. My prediction preseason was Indians, Tigers, Royals,

White Sox twins. So that's exactly the same. None of this surprises me. It surprises me maybe a little that the twins are this bad, but that's about. Oh, it doesn't surprise. I mean,

well, okay. This bad 306 winning percentage. Yeah. But last place, not last place would have been so totally unsurprising. And then the East, I mean, I'll give you a bunch of teams in the East, but the thing about the East was that everybody acknowledged that we had no idea. The staff predictions were all over the place. Pakoda and Zips and all the other predictions themselves were in high disagreement about some of the teams. And the entire division is separated disagreement about some of the teams. So – And the entire division is separated by six and a half teams. Exactly.

Yes, exactly. So, you know, the Orioles – The Orioles are surprising. Surprising and that's about it. Yeah. That's what I was going to say. It's two teams basically in the entire sport I would say are surprising. Maybe two and a half.

Didn't Rob Arthur write a piece last year about how predictions are dead or like or last year was the year that predictions well it was definitely last year i mean everyone's predictions were not only wrong last year but almost backwards i think grant brisby wrote a post about how reversing his predictions would have been more accurate than the actual prediction yeah so yeah i mean that was that was crazy this last year at this time the yankees were in first place and the rays were in second i don't i don't think anyone really saw that coming the red sox were in last again a lot of people thought the red sox would be good the royals were doing their usual thing which which was surprising to some people, not to others. But, you know, the Twins were good, which was weird.

And the Indians were not good. And everyone thought the Indians would be good. And the Astros, of course, were the big surprise team. And the Rangers were in second place, which was itself surprising, I think, because a lot of people had expected the Rangers to be a lost cause again. And then the Mets were ahead of the Nationals. And it was just almost top to bottom. Just every division had some surprising leader. And now we have one, one surprising first place team, I would say.

And one other team that really qualifies as surprising. And that's it. And I'm kind of happy that predictability has been restored because last season was the sort of season that makes you question whether you know anything at all about baseball and whether we should all even bother to try to say anything before the season. And now at least things are more or less in line with what we thought. thought yeah i uh it's funny though because the predictability of this season speaks to the sort of larger meta unpredictability because we had a we had what's like like last year was so off that then you start looking for explanations yeah for it and this year is so on that it reminds you that you can't try to explain baseball that yeah even when it's doing what you think it should, it's just outlandish. And so are we – we're not trying to give a reason for this, are we?

Nope. I don't have a theory about why this reflects some larger trend or something. It's just – We shouldn't, right. I mean, we know that we, we, I think we should probably just assume that, that as with anything else, the, the median prediction or, you know, like the, the closest thing to a true talent prediction, uh, is going to get you maybe, you know, 50 or 60% of the way there. And then the rest of the other 40% can go in either direction.

And so knowing that you can have some years where you're a hundred percent on and some years where you're only 20% on and neither one reflects anything other than that. You have a somewhat unstable, you know, gravity in predictions and that your error bars can go in either direction. Yeah. So there we go.

And it's just a coincidence that these two seasons happen to be right next to each other. Yes. And it's helpful that they were right next to each other because otherwise we would try to draw a trend line. Like if this had happened four years ago, if the crazy year had happened four years ago and then the predictable year had happened one year ago, then you'd be able to show a trend line. Like somehow – because all the other three years would almost by definition be somewhere in the middle. And you'd be like, oh, look at this line.

And so it's nice to have these two that are just right next to each other. Yeah, we'd be saying that projection systems are getting better or something. Exactly. Exactly. And this just throws it out. There's nothing – nothing changed in the last nine months. You don't get – we don't get credit. Exactly. And this just throws it out. There's nothing, nothing changed in the last, in the last nine months. You don't get, we don't get credit. Yeah. So that's good. All right. Anything else? Nope. Okay. So Yordano Ventura suspension quickly. We don't usually talk about how long suspensions are, but I'm just curious if you have any thoughts about Robin Ventura,

Robin Ventura, Yordano Vent are getting nine games for throwing at Manny Machado. Well, you'd kind of like it to be even longer, but it wouldn't be because there isn't really precedent for longer suspensions. So it's kind of the max. I mean, it's, it's unfortunate because he does have this history of provoking confrontations and dangerous behavior on the field. And we talked about how Salvador Perez made no real attempt to defend him in this sprawl, which was maybe suggestive that even players don't think he's comporting himself right. And so you'd like to see more than essentially one missed start, a much stronger message, but it's hard to do that because there isn't really a precedent for that. And if you give one guy a suspension that's way out of line with

all your previous suspensions, then probably it would be appealed and it'd be knocked down anyway. All right. So let me give you a couple of hypotheticals. Ventura throws the same exact pitches, and Manny Machado just drops his bat and jogs down to first. Doesn't even make eye contact with Ventura. What is his penalty now? That's a good question. So he wasn't ejected when he threw the pitch, right? Right. So it wasn't one of those automatic things.

So if there hadn't been any kind of brawl Maybe he doesn't get removed from the game And maybe there's no suspension And what if Machado Starts to move toward the pitcher But Sal Perez jumps up and gets in between him They yell at each other Machado does that thing where he points

The high point, the point over Sal's shoulder Bench is clear But it's the standard baseball scrum. Nobody leaves their feet. Nobody throws a punch. And I don't know. We'll have to speculate, but whether warnings would be issued or whether Ventura might have been removed. But one or the other.

Well, I wonder whether there's any scenario in which Ventura gets more because he is the only guilty party. But one or the other. got more of a more of a slap on the wrist suspension but i mean the fine was insubstantial he got what four games or four games yeah yeah so uh which was i don't know if that's in line or not with previous rushing the pitcher and throwing actual punches suspensions but i wonder whether if he had not done anything and if bentora had been the only hot-headed party in this confrontation, whether the focus would have been more on him and he would have gotten more. But I'm not sure, because I'm not sure that he gets suspended if there's no actual fight, or if he gets ejected. I mean, if he doesn't get ejected, then his suspension, if he gets one, probably wouldn't be as serious.

I mean, if he doesn't get ejected, then his suspension, if he gets one, probably wouldn't be as serious. So I don't think there is a scenario really in which he gets a longer suspension other than maybe if he had seriously hurt Machado. So in your scenario where he points. Yeah, you can do probabilities too. I mean, if you think that there's a chance he gets zero and a chance he gets four or whatever, you could just say two is the mean. Yeah, that is what I would say. I would say two. All right. I got two more.

Let's say Machado charges the mound, takes a swing, but doesn't connect. Does it change the suspension at all? Maybe it bumps his down to three games or something. But I don't think it changes Ventura. Okay. And then last one, Machado doesn't do anything, jogs down to first. And then later in the game, Darren O'Day hits Eric Hosmer in the ribs. Hosmer charges, punches O'Day, brawls.

Everything is exactly the same except now Hosmer takes the swing, O'Day's on the mound, and Ventura is just in the background. Does he get suspended? I'd say, well, I don't know because with a pitcher, you pretty much have to do either five or nothing. So I'd say no. So, all right. And the equivalent, I mean, that's the Matt Bush scenario.

Matt Bush did not get suspended even though Matt Bush's seemingly obvious beanball is what set off the brawl that got lots of other people suspended. Matt Bush did not get penalized. And Ventura didn't either. And so the reason that I bring this up is because besides the sort of semi, perhaps, arguably semi-illogicality of it, Ventura does the same act and yet in four different responses by other people gets different punishments, which doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. But the other thing is just that this seems like it creates a weird incentive because if you're the batter and a guy hits you, baseball wants you to jog down to first. But the problem is if you're the batter, you know that that pitcher is not going to be penalized in any way. He gets to throw at you with impunity because nothing's going to happen to him.

Yeah. And so you're in a weird situation where you almost have to brawl. You have to respond in the, the more you respond, which baseball doesn't want you to do, but the more you respond, the more that you're going to, um, have this pitcher get punished, which is what you want to do. You want the pitcher to get punished you also want to punch the pitcher But you're kind of on the line right like most of these guys They could go either way and depending on their mood depending on how you know how the guy looks at them depending on how Confident they are depending on their temperament They'll either you know go charge and punch him or they'll jog down to first or something in between So that's part of the math too

but if you know that the guy is just throwing a pitch at you and is looking at you with this look in his eyes like, what are you going to do? And you know that if you do nothing, then nobody else is going to do nothing either. Then you've got this incentive to charge. And I feel like baseball is, I don't know how to fix that. And I'm going to give a counter argument to what I'm

going to say next. But I feel like baseball has kind of put itself in a position where it is totally wrong on this, and it is incentivizing the wrong behavior. Yeah, it's almost like flopping in other sports, which no one wants you to do. But you have to, to draw attention to the act that was committed, or make it look worse than it was or or you know at least make people notice it you have to you have to make a big deal about it you have to put the spotlight on the thing that just happened to you and yeah in baseball the only way to do that really is to get aggressive i guess you could collapse in the batter's box and uh pretend that you suffered a more serious injury except then you might have to come

out of the game and you wouldn't want that. So yeah, there isn't really much else you can do other than get really aggressive and make both benches clear and possibly incite a fight. Yeah, yeah. If instead of Manny Machado, Paul Janusz had jumped out of the dugout and charged after Ventura, would, you know what I mean? Well, what if it hadn't been Machado getting hit? Because, I mean, Machado is one of the brightest young stars of the game.

And so when you hit him, maybe there's just everyone is appalled more that you would endanger Manny Machado than if you would endanger Paul Janusz. So what if Janusz is the one in the batter's box? Does that change anything if he reacts the same way? I think Sal Perez stops Janusz. I don't think a lesser player gets to the mound. Okay. Unless he goes in a full sprint. I mean, he'd have to sprint.

Like, I think Machado, I think Perez may have deferred to Machado in that situation because it was Machado. But, yeah, I think so. I think if all the other circumstances are the same, if Giannis landed a punch, then it's going to turn into the same event, I think. But I'm wondering if, I don't know why, but I'm wondering, I don't know. If baseball is incentivizing the charge and the brawl, but teams don't want to lose their Machados for four games. I wonder if we'll ever get to a world where there's an enforcer on the bench. I assume that Janusz's suspension would be even higher because you can't do that. But maybe you can.

All right. that but maybe you can all right the thing i was going to say other also is that we talk we've talked a lot in various situations like this about whether it makes sense to punish the results instead of the intent or the action so um you know if you should basically treat an intentional pitch inside the same regardless of whether you know, it kills the man or just scares him. If the pitch and the intent are the same, why isn't the punishment the same? And I think I've been thinking a lot about that. And I think that it actually, the reason that it makes sense to punish the outcome is that you want the perpetrator, the agitator, the aggressor, whatever, you want them to have a stake in it not getting too serious.

And so by saying, well, you know, we're not even going to worry about the intent. We're just going to worry about what actually happens. There is now an incentive for that person to make sure that it doesn't happen, that something bad doesn't happen by accident, by carelessness, or by intent. And so even if it only subtly affects their behavior, if they have some incentive to keep people from getting hurt, then you create this sort of like weird psychological market force that promotes good behavior, I think. Does that, I don't know, it made sense in my head. Although, well, when we've talked about it in the past, we've talked about how you might not be able to control it as well as you think you can. Oh, no, certainly.

So if your intent is to throw inside, then you might hit the guy anyway. And so you want to disincentivize that also. Yeah. I'm saying, though, that, well, so take, for instance, you know, the matter of a man in a bar fight, right? Two people in a bar fight. If you're going to be, laws aren't necessarily always that nimble or nuanced. And if once you throw a punch, you're going to be charged with aggravated assault regardless, because somebody looks at you and says, well, your intent was to, you know, to commit violence against this person. So regardless of whether he, you know, takes a bad tumble and cracks his head on the concrete over there or simply gets a bruise, but, you know, a black eye, if we're going to treat it the same because the act was the same, then you don't have much of an incentive to

keep that guy from hitting his head on the concrete right and you might like it it's really hard to explain what i'm trying to say but you want to create an incentive for these guys to not have accidents happen and so you put a little bit more of Their skin in the game as far as the results And so that would Theoretically disincentivize Not just the intentional pitch But the guy who carelessly pitches up and in Because you just

Like we're going to punish you If you hurt, I mean that's the idea Of the hit by pitch Sending a guy to first Is that the rules don't care whether it was intentional or not. If you hit a guy with a baseball, it's going to be at a cost to you. And probably the cost is not enough because it doesn't do anything to disincentivize these certain situations where you want to hit a person. But it does, you know, keep guys from,

I would imagine there would be a lot more pitching inside if every time you hit a guy, it was just a ball. Yeah. Oh, sure. I don't know. Let me work on it also. I mean, it, because this is a situation where you are trying to figure out what the player was thinking and what his intent was, then in a sort of Bayesian sense, if he actually hits the guy and hurts him, then the odds are probably higher that he was trying to do that, right? Because no one wants to hit the batter in a place that would hurt him. And so it's more plausible if you throw inside, it's more plausible that you just missed your spot, you made a mistake.

And if you hit a guy, you know, in the head area or something, that's not something that happens often by accident. And it's not something that a major league pitcher just does by accident all that often. So it lends credence to the idea that it was an intentional act, I think. And so because it's difficult to try to figure out what anyone was thinking or wanting to do, it does give you a better case that there was intent there. Yeah, I almost guarantee that I'm going to bring this up again at some point in the future. And hopefully I'll have a better way of expressing it and explaining it. And maybe hopefully before then someone will send me like some passage from Kant that explains what I'm trying to say. Cause I don't know. I think there's something rational

in it. Although I don't like it to me, this is a, you penalize the results instead of the intent because it is rational and emotionally, but, but emotionally unsatisfying to me. All right. Next thing, Ben. Yeah. Did you see, you did see, you left a comment. It was such a because it is rational and emotionally, but emotionally unsatisfying to me. All right. Next thing, Ben. Yeah. Did you see, you did see, you left a comment. It was such a delight when I opened the page on a Sunday morning and I see that Ben Lindbergh has commented on my article twice.

In fact, I wrote a piece for Baseball Perspectives about the closer experiments that we had talked about earlier this year. It seemed like there was maybe some, there were three or four different sort of changes in the way that teams seem to be using their closers. And so as we were 40% of the way into the season, I thought I would go and see how they were doing and see how the state of the closer is in 2016.

And I found just nothing but misery because pretty much every team is doing it exactly how every team has done it before. The experiments fizzled, the things that seem like they might be really cool turned out to be cool in boring ways. Like for instance, to give you an example, I was really excited by the Yankees having three closers. There've been lots of teams that have had three good relievers, but we've never seen a team really invest in having closers in the seventh, eighth, and ninth. And, you know, technically Batances is like practically free, but, you know, Batances is a closer. He's one of the, you know, five or six best closers in baseball if he wanted,

you know, if a team wanted him. And so the Yankees could conceivably have cashed that out, but they didn't. So anyway, they basically went out of their way to have actual closers in each of those innings. And this seemed really fun and interesting because it was a recognition that the ninth inning is not more valuable than the seventh, that the seventh is just as valuable as the ninth or roughly as valuable as the ninth, and maybe even the sixth and maybe even the fifth. And instead, what we have is basically a team that has just got three relievers that they're using in the seventh, eighth, and ninth, and nothing notable is happening. They're not using them in any creative way. They're not alternating who's closing based on handedness. They're not using batons for multiple innings,

as we thought they might be. And as I put it, they've got Andrew Miller, who might be the single best reliever in baseball and who against lefties also might probably is the toughest pitcher in baseball. And he is being used exactly the same way that the Diamondbacks are using Tyler Clippard. He comes in in the eighth, no matter who's coming up, he gets his three outs and then he leaves. And so so that was one of the changes in bullpen usage that turned out to not be that interesting. The Braves were going to use their closer in the eighth if it made sense, if the best hitters were coming up in the eighth. And then they would use their setup man in the ninth. And that Russell Carlton wrote a piece about that after opening night because the Braves did it. It was like, cool, they did it.

As I put it in the headline, it was an assault on the traditional closer role. That was the only time they've did it. It was like, cool, they did it. As I put it in the headline, it was an assault on the traditional closer role. That was the only time they've done it. They had this plan. They never did it again. And then just to give you a little bit of a rundown of some of the others, the Reds said they were going to a closer by committee. The guy who got the next save has gotten every save since, even though he hasn't been very good. The Twins said they were going to go to a closer by committee in the spring. They ended up going with a closer, Kevin Jepsen, who got every save until he was too bad. And then they finally replaced him. And now they say they're going with a closer by committee. My guess is they're not, but they say they are. The Astros say they were

going to a closer by committee. And Will Harris was the new entrant into the committee. It was going to be Harris, Gregerson, and Giles. Will Harris has gotten every save since. The A's had two closers, Madsen and Doolittle. They were going to go basically matchups, use lefty-righty, depending on who. They did for the first half dozen or so appearances. Yeah, we talked about that too. And even though both pitchers were doing good it just stopped they did now madsen is a closer basically with one exception um and uh i think there was one other

but uh there were i found a few other things that were somewhat satisfying but basically this uh trend that we thought we saw a couple weeks into the season just washed out and there seemed to be a irresistible pull toward the normal when it comes to the ninth inning. Yeah, if you were going to have Houston Street deliver a State of the Union address for the closer role, he would say the State of the Union is strong and there'd be a big applause line. Yeah, it's sort of disappointing. It really seemed like there was some erosion in the role earlier this year. And in every case that has been beaten back.

Yeah. Just seems really, really hard to resist that temptation to anoint someone or just have that relationship where one guy is the guy. And when you have a need for a closer, that's the one guy. And even if you've said you're going to have a closer by committee, and even if you do it for a little while, eventually one person just gives you that warm, fuzzy closer feeling in the pit of your stomach and you go to him from then on. So I don't know how to break that cycle. I wonder, it seemed like closer by committee used to be a bad word that you couldn't even, you couldn't say it. You couldn't try it, but you couldn't say it either. And now it sort of seems anecdotally, just from this exercise, it seems like there are a lot of teams that say they're going closer by committee, even though they're not,

you know, and I don't know if they really mean it when they're doing it or if closer by committee has become a way to ease the pressure on the bullpen or on the new guy. More than anything, it's a way to ease the pressure on the new guy because he's not a proven closer and you don't want to have him feeling like he has the burden of the role on his shoulders. But then as soon as, I mean, it seems like inevitably it's always the first guy who gets the save is the closer from that point on. So I think that managers don't mean it. I think this is just a hypothesis right now, but I think this is a, um, this is a spin that they use for, um, you know, psychology maintenance. And, uh, the, in fact, uh, when I see closer by

committee and I sort of get excited that they might actually be doing it, it's almost always just, uh, to, to kind of ease the way that you're bringing this new guy into the role. Because it's usually used, closer by committee usually means we don't have a proven closer on our staff that we're going to right now. Like we don't have a guy who already has saves. And the implication is that a bunch of guys will, but they never do. Yeah.

And if he struggles his first time out or he blows a save or something, then you can try another guy and it's not really a demotion. Right, exactly. It's just what you said it was going to be. Yeah, but you're right. There is something about, I mean, they just cannot not go to the guy that they want in the night. They just can't. Like, that's just too stressful to envision. success story i guess the one success story is that a couple of about a week ago ryan madsen

came into the game in the eighth even though he is the a's closer and has been the a's closer for nay on two months now so he came into the eighth to get the tough right handers and then do a little got the save in the nine that is only one only one act it is not this has not been a uh habit for the a's but maybe the fact that it, it's not a habit makes it even more striking. That when the time came, they broke the traditional usage and went ahead and used Madsen to get J.D. Martinez, Miguel Cabrera, and Victor Martinez. Or was it Justin Upton? I think I put, I think I put Victor Martinez in the article.

I think it might have been Justin Upton. Dang it. So that was good. The fact that it's still there, the fact that there been Justin Upton. Dang it. So that was good. The fact that it's still there, the fact that there's just this little flame that still burns in Oakland is good. And then the Giants, who have a closer, who Santiago Casilla is their closer.

It's not really ambiguous. If Sergio Romo were healthy, it might be more ambiguous because Casilla has blown a lot of saves but uh as it is he's still their closer they haven't removed him from the closer role and um twice in the last couple weeks they have pulled him mid save they've pulled him while a save was still on the line which doesn't really happen you see a lot of times where the closer will come in uh and blow the save and then as soon as it's tied they pull him because they don't want him to throw too many pitches or because he clearly doesn't have it that night. But you hardly ever see them pull a guy when a save is still active in an active saver situation. And the Giants have done that twice with Santiago Garcia, once because he wasn't pitching well.

And already that's very bold to pull a closer just because he's not pitching well. It's like unheard of. But then another time because david ortiz was coming up and they decided let's get the lefty in we would do it if it were the seventh or the eighth so they pulled him uh he had he had faced two batters up to that point in a safe situation one run game ninth inning one reached on an air then he struck the next guy out they pulled him brought in ortiz and uh a lot of people saw the gif of or the highlight video of cassia getting pulled from the first one of these and cassia was super mad he walked off the mound before bocce got there which is you know bad news you don't do that and bocce like sort of yelled at him or called him

back or something and cassia sort of like turned around and like pouted back at Bochy. And then Bochy's like, whatever, just go. And it was a mini controversy. The second time he didn't do it, he just handed him the ball. Like, yep, sure, manager coming to get a pitcher. So that's probably right now the, as small and as non-headline grabbing as it is, that is probably the strongest current assault on the traditional closer usage the idea that your closer might not close that he does not have to get the last out in order to be your best reliever well which is how i started the whole piece was yeah looking

at anyway go ahead not super exciting no it's not it's depressing yeah it's really like i don't know there was a i think there there came a point in both of our lives where after you know 10 years of reading about how dumb and intransigent the sport was we finally both came to the point maybe by talking to each other or maybe before that we finally came to the point where we thought, well, actually, maybe there's a reason they do it this way. We should think about that. And we sort of came to appreciate that the fact that they do it this way is itself a pretty substantial data point. And there are reasons that we maybe were glossing over about why it makes sense to have your pitcher in a predictable role. It helps him, you know, it helps everybody be comfortable. Maybe it eases the pressure on some

other guys. And also just the warming up factor, warming guys up is really hard. It's a logistical nightmare knowing when to warm the guys up. So I think we both are not super agitated about this. But there's another point, though, where once you accept that, that it makes sense, then you sort of start to think, OK, but even if it makes sense, it doesn't make this much sense. And I feel like it's too rigid. It's too rigid. I appreciate that the basic framework of bullpen usage might make a lot of sense. But the complete rigidity I don't think does. Right. It shouldn't be the same solution for every team with every mix of pitchers.

Yeah. Yeah. There should be some amount of variation. There you go. Exactly. All right. That's all. I'm going to end there.

Okay, then. That's all, I'm gonna end there Okay then, that's it for today You can support the podcast on Patreon By going to patreon.com And pledging to donate Some small amount per month Today's five Patreon supporters are Ryan Dolinsky, Melissa Danielson Nick Barbie, Matthew Curtis

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