Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1125: Effectively Arrieta

Episode Date: October 20, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Jake Arrieta’s effective wildness (and free agency), the Astros’ offensive struggles, and Yu Darvish’s bases-loaded walk, then answer listener emails about sequencing wins in the playoffs, a Dodgers fun fact, postseason managerial specialists, why hitters telegraph taking all the way, whether hitters can read fielders to tell which […]

Hello and welcome to episode 1125 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs, who just celebrated a birthday. Happy birthday. Thank you. So we have some new playoffs to talk about. We have emails to answer, as always, at this point in the week. So it's hard to talk about everything that has happened because there are a lot of playoff games. And I'm maybe sort of surprised that neither of these series is over yet, given the way that they both started. But we wanted to talk about just a couple specific things more than a complete roundup i guess we'll get into the astros offensive struggles and what they signify if anything and you wanted

to talk about jake arietta's season and series saving start for the cubs on wednesday night yeah a little bit in some the cubs avoided elimination on wednesday night they beat the dodgers three to two years a game with five home runs and nothing else. Although I guess Joe Maddon did get ejected. The Cubs have not scored on anything else in this entire series. All of their runs have come on home runs. Excellent. I think that will make for a very quick fan graphs post because I am on a short schedule today.

So the Cubs beat the Dodgers 3-2 on Wednesday. And Wade Davis had another difficult save. 48 pitches save 48 pitches 48 pitches for way davis he's going to be unavailable for a while anyway arietta pitched yep he started he went six and two-thirds innings he allowed one run struck out nine way to go jake arietta he threw 111 pitches of which only 63 were strikes and i was watching i was watching the game closely i always watch pictures more than i watch anything else because pitching is i find more fun to watch and as i was watching the game i thought you know Jake Arrieta doesn't look like he's throwing a good game uh he's he's

not allowed to run so I don't think he's being very good his stuff was there and there's no question that Jake Arrieta's stuff has always moved he has a live fastball and he's got a good pretty sharp curveball and his he's got a slider that's kind of still there even though it's not that great anymore but I was watching him and when was removed, I just kind of had this sense that that felt like it wasn't a very good game. But the results are certainly promising. But, I mean, there was in a bat that went, I think, six or seven pitches against Chris Taylor, where Arrieta got Taylor to swing through a full-count sinker

that, like, rode in on his body. And the broadcast made it look like a really good sinker, and it was. Clearly, it got a good hitter to swing a miss at a ball out of the zone but in that same at bat arietta just like hung this terrible two-in-one slider right over the middle of the plate that taylor swung through for some reason instead of clobbering the ball out of the park so long story short jake arietta i don't think had a very good game for it but the results were there stuff is there can't seem to locate for beans and at this point he hasn't

really had command for like a year and a half he's been ridden pretty hard and he's coming up on free agency recently i've heard two free agent contract projections for arietta you want to hear these yes okay please share them with me because i have no idea what i would say if asked so one of them this is just from dave cameron this is in his live chat the other day on fangraphs and and so in a live chat format contract stuff usually isn't thought through all the way but dave is on top of the stuff usually and uh he is he's the person i would go to with any sort of contract talk in the public sphere anyway dave said four years and 100 million dollars with an early opt-out clause for j Arrieta. Four years, $100 million with an opt-out. The other projection from a private source, three years and $39 million with Arrieta being crippled

by sort of the qualifying offer, even though I know that's changed now for this market and just being general Arrieta-y of recent vintage. So two extremely different contracts separated by 61 million dollars one of them would pay arietta like an ace and the other one would pay arietta like uh i don't know a young bartolo cologne so and when i say young bartolo cologne i don't mean i don't mean like bartolo cologne when he was younger i mean like a younger version of what bartolo cologne has been recently anyway so i have no idea what arietta is looking at because you know it it only takes one gm or more realistically one owner to go hog wild over arietta and his reputation and he's a boris guy right is he yeah yeah that sounds about right so you know boris is going to go

straight to the owner be like this guy is a gamer probably going to point to games like game four on wednesday night where he'll say arietta against elimination held the dodgers to one run and 6.2 winnings without highlighting the fact that but actually he wasn't very good so right jk arietta will get paid something he'll get a job in free agency but i have absolutely no idea what he's going to get i i suspect neither do you because he just seems like he's like a kind of a landmine. And you throw in the fact that he's lost two miles per hour this season for like no apparent reason, but it's gone. He's just not nearly as dominant anymore.

But his stuff still moves plenty. Just doesn't really seem to know where it's going. So he's, I don't know, kind of I get this weird Jason Schmidt kind of vibe from him. But I don't know. That was like a decade, decade and a half ago. So who knows if that means anything? Maybe it's kind of Esteban Loaiza-y, but I would not want to be the team that ends up with Arrieta, but his stuff still moves.

So kudos to him. Yeah, it is really perplexing. I was thinking something similar about that start actually on the Ringer podcast. I called him effectively wild, which even that might be a compliment. I don't know whether it's an indictment of the Dodgers that they didn't hit him harder or what, but I agree. I mean, he was walking everyone, and he's always been something of a pitcher who is really, really good, but maybe doesn't immediately look as good as his stats say he is, or when you watch him pitch, I mean, he does have good stuff, but it doesn't quite blow you away all the time. I think we talked about even Clayton Kershaw being one of those guys. It's not like a Chris Sale sort of situation where there's just like an unhittable delivery and unhittable slider slider and you can see why it's

happening and with arietta when he was in the midst of his amazing amazing run in 2015 i mean you could see why he was good i couldn't quite see how he was doing that and now yeah i i don't know i think joshian tweeted during the game that like you can have Shohei Otani I think Arrieta is the most fascinating free agent case this winter and I see what he means I still think Otani is but but among players who have been playing here for years and thus are not unfamiliar to us and are not two-way players and so on I think think Arrieta is really fascinating because the range of estimates you just gave them, that's going to be really, really wide. And I'm sure teams value him very, very differently. And I wonder whether this will come down to Boris going directly to

ownership and bypassing the baseball operations people and convincing someone to pay him too much because i don't know if i were a team i think i would lean toward the lower end of that range that you just mentioned than the higher end because he just he wasn't that good this year and he wasn't even all that durable or workhorsey or anything so i just don't know i doubt he has another cy young type run in him although he could still be a very valuable pitcher but i don't know what to make of him at this point so it is going to be fascinating to see what happens there and whether he goes for a shorter contract and tries to maximize the dollars per year or whether he tries to get as many years as he possibly can and how many years a team would be willing to go with someone like this so yeah it's it's going to be a fun one and

the game as a whole was was pretty fun also just i mean in the another blown call this one the umpire admitted that he blew it of course it didn't end up mattering that much because curtis granderson will strike out even if you do give him an extra strike these days. And Joe Maddon ejected for the second time in this series, seemingly for the first manager ever to be ejected twice in a postseason series. And the Cubs stayed alive for another day. I didn't see much of the game because I was at the Yankees-Astros game and then writing about that. And, of course, the Yankees comeback hasstros game and then writing about that. And of course, the Yankees comeback has been fun to watch too. And I guess we can talk about the Astros offensive outage because that's

sort of the story of this series, unless you want to say that the Yankees pitching is the story of the series, which is equally valid. But I noted in my piece that this is the lowest or matches the lowest output in runs that the Astros have had at any point in this season over any five-game stretch. They did the same thing in mid-September against the A's and the Angels at that point. They scored nine runs in a five-game stretch. They have now done that in the ALCS. It is much more noticeable and costly when you do that in the playoffs than when you do that in mid-September when you've already locked up the division. But I think the obvious takeaway, I mean, I looked at what the Astros did on offense after that September stretch, and they did just fine. to expect there to be one now other than the fact that Yankees pitching is good, Yankees defense is good. But as some people have shown, I think Dave Cameron did a post, someone at MLB.com did a post about the fact that it's more of a results outage than a process outage. And the stat cast stats are still pretty strong and the Esters are still hitting some balls hard.

The stat cast stats are still pretty strong and the Esters are still hitting some balls hard. It's not surprising that that would be the case because this is the best hitting game that any of us has ever seen, probably. And so when they have five low scoring games, it's pretty likely that some luck is going against them in some way. And as Dave noted, they've also very rarely had the platoon advantage in this series because of their right-handed hitters and the Yankees' right-handed pitchers. So that's basically what it comes down to. I don't think it means a whole lot. We don't have to talk about character or clutchness or anything like that. But when this happens, for five games of a seven-game series, that can be enough to knock you out of the playoffs, which may happen. Although I think their chances of coming back at home with verlander in

game six are not terrible yeah when you look at the uh the wobba and expected wobba this is going to get nerdy but from baseball savant you just look at it for the the league championship series and houston has been terrible and we'll deal with this a little bit later in the stat segment even though we're talking about it now so maybe now it would be pertinent but Houston has been the worst offense and in either LCS they've been worse than the Yankees by about 100 points of Woba but in terms of their expected Woba based on walk strikeouts balls and play all that stuff they are only about 15 points worse they have been by that measure significantly better than the miserable miserable Cubs the Astros have only like twice as many strikeouts as walk so they're still walking a little bit and they're certainly making contact

just contact hasn't been there but i you see whenever this is going on in the playoffs you see some stuff on the twitter that you try to avoid but that still finds its way into your awareness regardless you know the the this team is choking kind of stuff and the astros are wilting under the pressure and i mean it's easy enough to dismiss that right because they're coming off one of the greatest ever offensive performances in the ALDS and they of course won the first two games of this year it's not because of their hitting but because they just played well but I don't know what the argument would be then if the Astros are wilting under the pressure because they suddenly ran off the cliff and then looked down and realized or I don't know they became aware of the stakes of their situation or something but

it's it's nonsense they're just not hitting and it happens and we always try to ascribe reasons for why a team isn't hitting but sometimes teams just don't hit dodgers didn't hit yesterday and jake arietta wasn't that good so it just happens and it's the same conversation we have every year when something bizarre takes place but this is the playoff so everyone is hyper focused on whatever arietta wasn't that good so it just happens and it's the same conversation we have every year when something bizarre takes place but this is the playoffs so everyone is hyper focused on whatever is happening there's not a whole lot to focus on because now we're two days removed from you darvish drawing a four pitch bases loaded walk so now people have moved on from that even though that is the most unbelievable thing that has or will happen in the playoffs so yeah that was

amazing maybe we'll spend a few minutes talking about that so the the deal is the astros aren't hitting that sucks sucks for them timing almost literally couldn't be worse doesn't mean they're bad doesn't mean they're wilting just means oh crap they better rediscover either how to hit or justin verlander better discover or at least continue to pitch better than their team is bad at hitting. Yeah. And A.J. Hintz said something, I think, in his postgame presser. He said something about how part of the Astros' offensive issues have been the Yankees executing, there's that word again, their pitches. But he also noted the anxiety around the at-bats. So he seemed to allow at least for the possibility that the pressure had gotten to his team a little bit and i don't know if if i were a manager whether i would say something like that

when the stats say what we are saying they say because if the esters are still hitting the ball hard and are just hitting it right at people i don't know if that's something that could be anxiety related like it's i looked at i think their chase rate in this series, and it's not really any different from their chase rate in the ALDS or in the regular season. So it's not like they've completely lost their sense of the strike zone and they're swinging more or less in control and they're still hitting balls hard. So it doesn't seem as if they are just falling apart or feeling the pressure in a way that shows up in the stats. But I don't know. Maybe there's more to it. Maybe there's advanced scouting going on here on the Yankees side that is leading to this. But I don't expect it to last. And I think the Yankees have done a good job.

last. And I think the Yankees have done a good job. I mean, in some senses, they've been lucky, like the Charlie Morton start where he really didn't pitch very poorly, but just everything was a hit. And then the Astros kind of got lucky with the Lance McCullers start in that he was great and had his first good start since literally mid-June in the playoffs. So some things have gone their way and they just haven't capitalized it. And the Yankees have had very good timing and Judge and Sanchez are back and the Astros' bullpen continues to struggle and that's that. Anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if this goes seven. I wouldn't be surprised if there is a second comeback in this series, although Yankees hold some sort of edge at this point or charlie he pitched

his ass off like charlie morton had the opposite of the jake ariana start for game four i i i know that like morton has a history of having worse results than he looks and whatever pirates fans were eager to remind me of that on twitter but this isn't charlie morton from this pirate says because this charlie morton is throwing 96 miles per hour like with a four seamer and not a sinker he's a different pitcher now than he used to be but he was just really good he was blowing 95 96 with his curveball and his stuff was located really well and the contact was bad but the yankees still had like i think five bad hits against morton and then of course todd frazier hit that home run where even though that contact was really good the pitch was like perfect it was 95 yeah barely like in the low away corner of the zone,

which is the best place to put a pitch ever. So I don't really blame Morton for that, but still he allowed seven runs in three and two thirds innings. Like Charlie Morton deserved results like Arrieta got. Arrieta maybe didn't deserve results like Morton got,

but he deserved to allow more than one run. But it's the playoffs and things aren't deserved. And as far as the Astros offense is concerned, I think the function of the numbers that we see is in order to comfort players if you have an offense that might be struggling then you can point to the numbers and say look you're actually not doing that poorly just keep doing what you're doing and one of the functions of having a manager in there is that the manager can tell well maybe there is something that's a little psychological here maybe they are pressing or maybe they're going to be

more likely to start to press there's every reason to believe that that would be true and i think it might have been buster only maybe it was someone else who said that i think it was brian mccann who said he just like started a talk among astros position players after the game yesterday or after the game i guess game five that was yesterday because he got the sense that some guys were starting to press starting to get a little down on themselves and there's no reason why you wouldn't think that human psychology would matter and i don't want to end up in the position of trying to defend the perspective that there are no psychologies and emotions involved because that would be silly this is the playoffs everything is important players are aware of that even though it's just baseball to them and again we're going

right back to the you darvish walk but if anything i, I think that Carl Edwards walk of Darvish on four pitches is a pretty good indicator that sometimes players feel the moment and it's a lot more fun to think that that matters. And it would be, I think, ignorant to believe that it doesn't. All right. Well, yeah, I guess we can briefly describe that Darvish plate appearance and people should just go read Jeff's post because it's fun and they're gifts. But I liked your takeaway, which is that we often think of walking as sort

of a passive activity, even though we use the words draw a walk or take a walk, which implies some action on the hitter's part. We often think of it as something that just happens to the hitter and pitcher misses the strike zone, hitter just stands there, and that's that. But as you, I think, very convincingly showed, Darvish played a very active role here and he just completely psyched Edwards out already he knows this is the playoffs he's in an important situation and and he he knows his manager is like a tentative relationship with trust with carl edwards so like edwards already knows he's in the spotlight every appearance is important right and control command not his strong suit under the best of circumstances absolutely it's kind of it's not quite on the level of dell and batances with the yankees but it's kind of there where you have this like clearly really hard to reliever. And the manager just doesn't know if he's going to throw strikes whenever he brings him into a game. Cubs badly need Edwards to be good.

He's a very valuable reliever most of the time. Anyway, comes in, he's working through the inning. It's bases loaded, two outs. Darvish is batting for some reason. I don't even know why, but the Cubs are winning three to one in that situation two outs top of the sixth bases loaded and edwards is there and and darvish is standing really close to the plate it's pretty obvious that he has no intention of wanting to hit because he's showing bunt on the first pitch with the bases loaded two outs like there's no why would he why would he punt that doesn't make any sense so he's clearly just trying to psych edwards out a little bit or at least show him something that he's not used to seeing. And Darvish just kind of did this all plate appearance long.

He's up there showing bunt really early, inching closer and closer and closer to the plate. But on the third pitch, he doesn't show bunt, but he drops his hands literally into the strike zone, holding the bat up. Right. Just like how a munchkin would stand in the box, except wanting to get hit. just like how a munchkin would stand in the box, except wanting to get hit. So Darvish is up there doing like Little League techniques, trying to psych out the pitcher, which you'd think that would be something that you'd leave in Little League. But because no one does that in the major leagues, it's got to be distracting as a pitcher. I mean, you're looking at your target while you're in your delivery and you see something that's just bizarre up there enough. I saw more than one pitcher on Twitter, veteran pitchers who were saying like,

maybe people don't understand how hard it can be to throw strikes to people who you know aren't going to swing because all of a sudden it makes you realize like, oh, I have to do something very simple. But now there's no excuse if I don't do something very simple. And the pressure just kind of mounts. And I bet it didn't help that after the first pitch, Wilson Contreras came out for one of his mound meetings. And then after the second first pitch Wilson Contreras came out for one of his mound meetings and then after the second pitch Wilson Contreras came out for one of his mound meetings and then as that second mound meeting ended Chris Bozzio came trudging out to have another mound meeting so technically that was three mound meetings in the span of two pitches for Carl Edwards with his catcher and his coach and his entire infield coming in saying just throw

strikes he's not going to swing, which probably makes things worse. And so he's out there trying to throw a strike with ball three, and then that doesn't work. And then there's ball four, Garvish walks. You could hear on the broadcast, it's not captured in the GIF, of course, but you could hear him go, yeah, as he draws his walk. And then he threw his bat, like furiously threw his bat away. One of the theories I saw in the fan guys' comment section

is maybe he was so lathered up with pine tar that he had to forcefully throw his wrists so that he could get the bat to come off anyway darvish i would say aggressive with his passivity he made a very aggressive show of how he had no intention of being a real hitter as the pitch was on the way all four times darvish backed off clearly, he didn't want to swing. He was not going to swing unless there were two strikes. And even there, maybe he wouldn't have swung because earlier in the game,

he took three straight strikes to strike out from Kyle Hendricks. And maybe the most baseball thing about this is that the next batter was Chris Taylor, who's been great, and Carl Edwards Jr. struck him out on three pitches to end the inning. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that was a lot of fun. One of the highlights of this month for me. So I guess we should get to some emails so that we will have time to do that. And we'll do more of a recap of the championship series or preview of World Series in coming episodes. But let's start with, well,

let's start with a Yankees-Astros related question, I suppose. This one is from Christopher, a Patreon supporter. This was sent before game five. He said, Watching the Yankees come back to even up the ALCS with Houston, I became curious about the timing of wins in a playoff series. The series is tied 2-2, with Houston winning the first two games and the Yankees winning the next two. Does this distribution of wins have any impact on the odds of either team winning the series, outside of Houston still retaining home field advantage? It seems to me that winning early might give Houston an advantage as they only need to collect two wins over five games, while the Yankees need to cluster four wins over five games. So perhaps it no longer matters. Plus there's always the ambiguous momentum factor if it exists. What do you guys think? Does the timing of wins in a short series have any effect on the odds of winning the series overall?

Or is each game essentially an independent event influenced only by things like spot in the rotation and bullpen availability? Is there any evidence on either side? So I think, of course, this is the time of year when everyone starts talking about momentum constantly. And I tweeted something to that effect. Yeah, I searched on Google Trends for like MLB plus momentum. And you can see it's a regular pattern, a spike every October. People start searching for momentum and baseball. And that's actually even more notable because searches overall for baseball decrease at this point because they're at their peak in the middle of the summer when every team is playing and other sports are off.

So overall searches for baseball-related topics are down, but searches for baseball in tandem with momentum are way up. And maybe there's something to that. Maybe it's because momentum actually matters more in the playoffs than it does during the regular season. Or maybe it's because we all collectively go crazy and start attributing wins and losses to momentum in ways that we never would at other times of the year. So I don't buy too much into the momentum belief or myth or whatever it is. I think there have been some studies to that effect that have shown there isn't much to it as far as we can tell based on

results. I'm sure there's something to the feeling of momentum. I felt myself at times like the momentum, you can feel it shifting if you're in the ballpark and the crowd is going crazy and one team is coming back of course it feels that way i just learned not to trust that feeling so i don't know that we got another email from a listener named joseph who sent us what he calls mathematical proof that the baseball playoffs truly are random i just want to read this he says according to ben on the ringer podcast and this was a stat i found somewhere else, a team starting down 0-2 in the division series has gone on to win 10 out of 77 times. Of course, the Yankees might be about to do that, but Joseph says that seemed oddly high, so I did some basic math.

10 out of 77 comes out to 13% of the time, which translated into baseball terms comes out to what you'd expect for won and lost after the 0-2 start, just a series end result. But it's interesting to note just how purely random the end result is. It's interesting to note just how purely random the end result is. And that is kind of interesting because it suggests that going down 0-2 doesn't demoralize a team. And that even if you're down 0-2, you still sort of have the same chance to win each individual game or the number of games you need to win to win the series as you would if you didn't start down 0-2. And I kind of tend to think that's the case. down 0-2. And I kind of tend to think that's the case. Now, I would say that it does make some difference, the sequence in which you win or lose these games, not because of the momentum, but just because of the conditions you're playing under. So for instance, the Astros won those first two games when they were at home and when they had Keichel and Verlander, their best two starters,

going. And so you know that heading into game 5, as they were when this email was sent, they have Keichel and Verlander going again, and they have two out of three home games remaining. And so maybe you start off 2-0 because conditions in the first two games are more favorable to your team, and then they would also tend to be more favorable to your team later in the series. And there's some evidence, I guess, of that. I was just reading in an MLB.com article, teams trailing 3-2 in best of seven series have advanced in 18 of 55 instances since 1985 when the LCS expanded to seven games, most recent being the Cubs' historic comeback in last year's World Series. Home field advantage, however, significantly tilts those odds as teams trailing 3-2 and playing games 6 and 7 at home have advanced nearly half the time, 13 of 27. So obviously that stuff matters.

And so in that sense, the sequence of wins and losses should matter, even if it's not momentum related. 13 of 27, down 3-2 going home. That's pretty good i mean that's a small sample but it's crazy yeah good for them that implies something like 65 percent odds yeah i'm sure it's just it's probably mostly random but i guess we'll find out let's see if the astros make it 14 out of 28 all right question from andrew he is citing a fun fact here and he wants to know if it's bad

Or if it's terrible So he says this was from a while back Chris Taylor became the first Dodgers center fielder To put his team ahead with a homer In the sixth inning or later Of a postseason game since Duke Snyder In the 1952 World Series Fun fact or terrible

That's well no That's not bad enough i don't care enough to say that it's terrible it's just bad it's just yeah it's just boring and bad but yesterday yesterday in the broadcast i'm gonna i'm gonna maybe get this wrong but i i think it said that chris taylor was the first ever first in a while let's just say first in a long time player to hit home runs in a series as both the shortstop and as a center fielder. Is that a fun fact? I don't know. Probably not, I guess. I mean, there are aspects of it that are fun. I don't know. I think obviously the more qualifiers, the worse it is, the more

you're just kind of twisting yourself into a knot to try to find a way in which a player stands out. So with the first Chris Taylor fun factor, alleged fun fact that Andrew is writing in about, you've got center fielder on the Dodgers, put his team ahead with a homer, sixth inning or later, postseason game. When it is a franchise like the Dodgers, whose history goes way back, I mean, it's nice to link Duke Snyder in 1952 and Chris Taylor in 2017. It's not aggressively awful, but it definitely doesn't make me say wow, which is the rule of thumb for whether a fun fact is actually fun that we've used in the past. Yeah. And as second one i think you'd it's not i don't even

care about the home run thing i think it's just interesting that to maybe try to point out how many players in playoff baseball history have ever in the same series started at both shortstop and centerfield that would be interesting because taylor started at centerfield twice and he started shortstop twice of course charlie culbertson was starting the series at shortstop because there's no cory seager right now but taylor probably very very limited company series at shortstop because there's no Corey Seager right now. But Taylor, probably very, very limited company because both shortstop and center field are premium positions and you don't see a whole lot of overlap between them. Of course, there are utility players, not unlike Chris Taylor, who can play both,

but you wouldn't usually see that in a playoff team. Yeah. All right. Landon says, with Yasiel Puig's leg kick takes the other day, I was thinking about hitters routinely use body language to convey that they were taking all the way. Why did they do this? I always interpret it as some kind of macho message to the effect of I was not fooled by your 88 mile per hour fastball down the middle. I was just taking all the way because it's 3-0. But aren't players giving away some marginal information advantage they have on the pitcher in this circumstance?

Wouldn't they be better off keeping a poker face or poker body and leaving the pitcher to wonder whether there was something about that pitch that led them to take? Is there some advantage to effectively announcing to the pitcher that you were going to take that pitch no matter what? And I was noticing this too, because Yasiel Puig taking all the way is uniquely, I mean, no one takes all the way like Yasiel Puig, very, very ostentatiously takes counterpoint you darvish yeah okay yeah so i agree with the idea that if you are taking all the way maybe maybe don't telegraph it immediately i mean it's a it's a clear look everyone can tell when you're taking all the way it's unmistakable because things just look so weird i don't know how much it actually

matters i can't imagine it matters enough of course game three explanation would be if it actually mattered then players wouldn't do it at all because of course your behavior on one pitch doesn't have anything to do with your behavior on the next i think that you know you see people like sometimes puig or more more famously adrian beltre gets sort of the happy feet when he's taking a pitch and i think that's just sort of conditioning that's probably some old coach said if you see a pitch that you want to swing at and it's like down and away, but you want to make yourself hold back. What I want you to do is like bounce on your feet back and forth. Just like do something like a little trigger mechanism that says, OK, when you see that

pitch, do this weird little quirk instead of swinging. So there would be sort of something that's conditioned into you to make sure that you do something aside from the bad thing that you would do. So I think that probably explains the weird little quirks players have when they take a pitch. But that's not the same as taking all the way that's taking in response to when a pitch has been delivered. And the batter is trying to resist temptation, the whole taking all the way thing, I can see how you wouldn't want to give it away. But I don't know if you have a player who is taking all the way, but he still stands in and looks serious. So let's say it's three and oh,

or just the first pitch of an event. And he takes it, let's say it's a fastball over the plate, and the batter takes it, but he doesn't act weird. I don't think that the pitcher is going to think any differently. Because usually in a taking all the way situation those are situations where you would expect to take anyway yeah players very frequently don't swing at three you know or on the first pitch so i i doubt it would matter much although i can see that if you want to be really particular about it don't give any information away yeah there could be a psychological warfare aspect to it i think probably if there's a case where a pitcher is struggling to throw strikes and the hitter is just kind of, you know, scorning, just dismissing the idea that

the pitcher could even throw a strike. We were just talking about it with the Darvish example and how some pitchers said it's hard to, what Jerry Blevins said, it's hard to throw a strike when you know that the hitter is not swinging. So this is a case of that. It's like, I don't even need to prepare to hit because you're so unlikely to actually find the strike zone here. Yeah. So I like the contempt aspect to it. There were a few pictures I saw on Twitter

who said that it's hard to throw strikes when you know the batter's not swinging. And Blevins was the first one I saw. His was the most popular, most widely circulated tweet to that effect. And I was delighted when I did the research and I found out that maybe he only said that because this season Jerry Blevins walked Pedro Baez on four pitches with the bases loaded. So Blevins understands. Yeah. Well, maybe we can talk about that now because we got another question about that. I don't know whether you were planning to do this as a stat segment or what, but Andrew asked, how many times in MLB history has a pitcher walked on four pitches

with the bases loaded? And you actually had some stats about this in your post that you've already looked up. So as anyone who has listened to this podcast for a while knows, baseball history begins in 1988 because that's when there are pitch-by-pitch records on baseball reference

and previous to that that they don't exist so this season in the regular season there were eight pitcher walks with the bases loaded and four of those happened with four pitches so now we can say that there have been five five of those walks on four pitches this season i didn't look all the way back to 1988 because if there's been four or five in a year then i would just guess that there has been probably about 30 times that many since 1988, give or take a few. So we're looking at probably about 100. I could look it up right now, but I'm not going to run a live query. But the interesting thing about what happened to Darvish is, of course, it happened in the playoffs when all of the pitching is good.

And in the regular season, all of the pitching is not so good. So the circumstances are different and there's just more pressure on the hitter and the pitcher you would think that pitcher walks in the playoffs would be more uncommon and they are of course but darvish was the first pitcher to walk with the bases loaded period in the playoffs since larry christiansen did it in 1977 larry christiansen did it on the seventh pitch of that at bat it was a full. There have obviously been no pitcher walks with the bases loaded since. That spans, I think it was 96, 97 plate appearances that pitchers have had with the bases loaded since then. They have pretty much uniformly made outs. So Darvish is the first playoff four-pitch bases loaded pitcher walk.

I got confused there saying all those words, but it doesn't happen. It doesn't happen much. But my favorite thing that I didn't know as I was doing the research, so Darvish drew the seventh ever playoff pitcher bases loaded walk. So there have been seven of them and none since 1977. But what I didn't know, and maybe you saw this on Twitter, maybe you didn't. In 1971, Jim Palmer did it twice in the same game. Yeah, that is, that's impressive.

That's all I got okay all right do you want to do your actual pre-planned stat segment now let's do it i was playing around on baseball reference on the play index looking at performances in series playoff series so not all playoffs combined but in series for example elected all ever division series championship series and world series so all of these are at least best of five going up to best of like nine or whatever used to be the case in baseball history and the best ever offensive performance in a series just by ops ops will be the the go-to stat here best ever the angels in 2002 in the division series they won that series in four games and they had a

1.030 ops they batted 37. That's a very good offensive performance by the Angels in that series. But the reason I bring this up is I have records here of 608 series in baseball history as found by the play index and the Astros in the ALDS this year had an OPS of 974, which is the third best, third best out of all of them. Astros. So great. What momentum that they have to carry over into the ALCS, where their OPS is 447, which is worse by more than 500 points. That currently ranks them

11th worst by OPS out of all playoff series. They are 6th worst by batting average, and they are currently 10th worst by slugging percentage the astros in the series are slugging 213 and remember that their one home run was hit by carlos correa to the opposite field a child kind of leaned forward it was going to be a home run but it was the worst home run that exists in baseball so not very good except for i guess anything off the pesky pole what's fun also about these

championship series is that while the astros rank historically terrible right now of course series isn't over they rank historically terrible by a batting average and slugging percentage not to be forgotten the cubs in the nlcs they're batting 163 which is terrible but better than the astros but the thing about the cubs is that they've drawn four walks and struck out 43 times. That is awful. They have an OBP of 202 in this series. That would be the fifth worst OBP in a series of all time. The actual worst offensive performance in a series belongs to the 1998 Rangers who lost in the ALDS. They lost in three games. I'm going to guess they lost to the Yankees. I haven't confirmed that, but it sounds like it's true the yankees beat everyone that year and in that series the rangers scored one run they had 13 hits they had an ops of 351 that's very bad now something that something

i didn't know and i did tweet about this on thursday morning i think people remember the 1960 world series because that's the bill mazaroski world series so that's when the pirates beat the yankees in game seven that's a very famous moment mazaros. So that's when the Pirates beat the Yankees in Game 7. That's a very famous moment. Mazeroski, of course, not a very good hitter, but what a moment for Mazeroski to be a hero. Something I never knew about that World Series, and maybe this is very familiar for other people,

but it's probably sufficiently unfamiliar for this to pass. I was sorting fewest runs ever scored by a playoff team in a series is of course one. And oh, this is unfortunate. It's a tie. As I mentioned, the 1998 Rangers scored one run in their ALDS loss. The next year, the 1999 Texas Rangers scored one run in their ALDS loss. So I didn't know that they tied themselves. That's bad. But the most runs ever scored by a playoff team in a series is 55. Second most is 51. So that's pretty good lead. 55 runs scored in a series, most ever in a playoff series.

That was by the 1960 New York Yankees who lost. They lost the World Series in which they scored the most runs of any team that's ever played in a series. And so while that series is remembered for Mazeroski's walk-off World Series winner in the bottom of the ninth in Game 7, here is what happened. The Yankees lost to the Pirates, and the Pirates four wins. They won by two runs. They won by one run. They won by three runs, and they won by one run. The Yankees, they won three games, and they won by 13 runs, 10 runs, and 12 runs. So in this series, the Yankees scored 55 runs with a 9-11 OPS. The Pirates had a 6-56 OPS. They scored 27

runs. The Yankees doubled the Pirates' run scoring output and done some. And for all of their trouble, they lost the World Series on probably the most famous conclusion of any World Series that's ever been played. I don't know, maybe Joe Carter, but who cares? Anyway, that's unfortunate. Of the eight highest scoring playoff series in baseball history, these are run totals of 44 and above. The eight highest run outputs in playoff series, four of those seems lost. That's crazy. Yeah. The 1960 Yankees lost the World Series.

They scored 55 runs. The 2004 Yankees lost the ALCS when they scored 45 runs. The 1997 Indians lost the Worldcs when they scored 45 runs the 1997 indians lost the world series when they scored 44 runs and the 2002 giants lost the world series when they scored 44 runs so obviously there is and there's supposed to be a strong correlation between winning and scoring like for example the fewest runs ever scored by a team that won a series still scrolling still scrolling it's nine oh then well the 1918 red socks won the world series a six game world series in which they scored nine runs okay i uh feel like

i didn't know that but there you go they won that world series by adding 186 crazy things happened in 1918 but that is the 64th fewest you have to go you have to do a lot of scrolling if you sort runs scored in ascending order you have to do a lot of scrolling before you find a series winner but if you sort in descending order you have to do no scrolling at all to find series losses which is just not not what i would have expected so some things to learn the astros zero correlation between alds and alcs performance we already knew that they had a historically good offensive performance followed by a historically bad offensive performance. Neither one more meaningful than the other,

but the real takeaway, pity the poor 1960 New York Yankees who clobbered their opponent and lost for the trouble. Yes, pity the poor Yankees. I'm sure everyone is pitying them right now. All right, question that just came in from Elliot. With the managerial blunders that have occurred in this postseason and previous Madden, Baker, Showalter, Girardi, etc., would a team benefit from hiring a postseason-only management staff? They could bring on a dream team of great postseason managers like Bochy or La Russa to make those high-stress, high-leverage managerial decisions. I know a player has to be on the roster as of August 31st to be on the postseason roster, but does a manager or coach? Yes, the players would revolt. Yes,

the fans would revolt, but rings? Yeah, I don't actually know whether you could just hire a manager on October 1st or a coach and say, this is our coach now. I guess you could. I don't know if there's any restriction like there is with players on the active roster. So, I mean, I guess the problem is that no manager has ever gone without criticism in the postseason, and the managers that Elliot just listed are widely regarded as good managers. And, you know, Bruce Bochy has had criticism for his postseason management too, even though he's been extremely successful in the postseason. So I don't know if there is a manager who has shown himself to be immune to criticism. I mean, it makes sense in that postseason managing right now is very different from regular season managing. And I

don't think the two have ever diverged this widely, but I don't know that there is such thing as a postseason specialist manager the way there is with like a Terrence Gore type pitch runner so even aside from you know the obvious concerns about how the clubhouse would revolt and everyone would hate it I don't know if there's really any any benefit here I don't know whether we could identify a particularly skilled playoff manager I guess maybe you could have some kind of like post-season consultant or something who is there in the dugout and reminds the manager that this is not the regular season anymore and got to be aggressive with those hooks but i think they're

probably getting that message from the front office regularly enough that they don't necessarily need the reminder anymore yeah right so much of the strategy before a playoff game is that like the front office and the the coaching staff will usually have some sort of pregame meeting where they just go over all the X's and O's in baseball terms. And they just kind of make sure that they're all on the same page. And of course, you still have to leave some room during a game for sort of gut decisions or decisions influenced by the stuff that you see, because that is not non-information. It does matter, but things are scripted pitch counts are scripted reliever strategy is scripted sometimes you do deviate from the script but teams are already trying to get as much influence in there as as they can and so i think with something

like gerardi not challenging the the hit by pitch foul ball i don't really have a good explanation for that and as it turns out neither did Girardi with Madden not using Wade Davis the other day I think he had a reason that was justifiable kind of and the other decisions I don't know even if you had someone else down there who was hired specifically to make these decisions first of all who's to say they wouldn't be influenced by what they're seeing before them and second of all how are they going to overrule the manager but again he already said this is aside from the clubhouse and dugout concerns so i would think that to the extent that it's realistically possible teams are already trying to get these decisions made in advance before they ever need to be

made during a game but that still leaves a little wiggle room for human judgment and human judgment has a imperfect track record all right aaron says there's a commercial for the mlb shop that has been playing the last few weeks, which has a premise of kids, especially girls doing their part, quote unquote, to help their teams by being fans who support their team's gear. But in the middle of the commercial, they cut to two families, one who supports the American League and one who supports the National League. Each family is donning gear from all their teams in their respective leagues. Aaron wants to know, is this a thing? I don't know anyone who supports a league and buys gear for all the teams in that league. It seems like MLB maybe has some market research

on this, but I don't know of anyone who roots like this. It seems like another example of them needing to contact you guys for how things really work in the baseball realm. And I do generally like this commercial because MLB is making a real effort here to reach out to a historically underserved portion of the population. And most of the actors in this ad are young women, young girls. And it's nice to see MLB trying to cultivate

that age group and women as fans. But this particular part of it, and I will play a quick clip of it here, does also strike me as strange. I'm always repping my team. I know I'm doing my part. My crew's all about the AL. Word. We're all about the NL. Am I obsessed? Nah, I'm just a baseball fan. You think you're a bigger fan than me? Prove it. Prove it. Prove it.

Yeah. So we've got this first family saying, my crew's all about the AL. You've got the dad wearing a Yankees shirt and a Tigers cap. The son is wearing an A's shirt and a Blue Jays cap. The daughter, I guess, is wearing an Indian shirt and a Rays cap. And the wife, it looks like, is wearing a Rangers jersey. Then they have a Royals cap and an Angels cap on the table. They have a framed poster of Target field on the wall behind them on the door there

are other things hanging there's a yankees like nameplate there's a white socks logo looks like they've got a framed picture of uh i don't know an indian's picture possibly yeah it looks like cory kluber yeah and then i think they have a red socks like throw blanket or possibly a pillow on the couch, and they have an Orioles pillow on the couch. I don't know if I've left anything out there. I don't see any Astros memorabilia in this room. Yeah, no. Big snub of the Astros.

Maybe they still think the Astros are an adult team at heart or something. They couldn't bring themselves to switch. So, yeah. And then it shows the the next family who has oh man just everything right metz jersey with a padres cap marlins shirt with a diamondbacks cap i mean the whole thing they've got chris bryant framed on the wall and a cubs pennant and a dodgers sign and a nationals flag and it goes goes on and on. So this kind of family, I guess, would be MLB's dream family in that they're buying a ton of merchandise for every team,

but I don't think that this family actually exists. Maybe there used to be more of an ALNL affiliation just in that the leagues used to be truly different and they didn't play each other and the differences in play styles were more different than they are now when basically the only difference between the leagues is the dh so i think there's more of an allegiance to al style or nl style baseball and that used to mean different things more so than it does today but this is i think a a marketing executive's dream family more so than it does today but this is i think a a marketing executives dream

family more so than an actual one you figure maybe after interleague play and all the all-star games the national league family just falls into delinquency and destitution but i guess maybe there are victories in the world series that allow them to have sort of bragging rights i don't know if these houses are supposed to be like on the same block if they're like rival families or or neighbors yeah i yeah i can't i don't know what there are elements of this isn't even this isn't even about baseball right like that you can forgive frog tape for maybe not quite understanding how a baseball game works because that bless their heart that commercial tried to get into a little bit of actual in-game detail this isn't about baseball this is about fandom and i don't care look even if you're not a sports fan you have some passing understanding of how

rooting works because you're an adult person in the year 2017 everyone is familiar with the concept of sports and how people like sports teams over other ones why would it occur to why why would i'm stumbling why would it occur to anyone that there would be such a thing as rooting for a league rooting for a damn league why would that ever be an idea that someone would come up with people aren't going to be hurt if you have a commercial and you don't represent every freaking franchise that exists in the league which is not even clear that was done because where are the astros who could win the american league pennant that i didn't see them anywhere in the commercial so if anything this makes it worse because when you do this, it's going to create,

of course, not everyone's going to do it, but on the internet, people like us are going to look at this commercial and try to find the teams that were left out. And that's going to make it worse because if you represent like eight teams, then whatever, that's fine. You represented eight teams. Great. That's 20 some percent of the product and that's wonderful but if you 26.7 percent of the product i guess but if you represent like 29 of the teams then then that actually feels like an insult then that feels like a message is being sent so i don't know if the astros were represented like maybe they're wearing special astros underpants that you just couldn't see on the camera but like this is this is worse and it's just it's there's no there's no concept like this that exists in the world that I've ever been aware of. Maybe that's my own bubble that I exist in, just missing all of middle America and its league-based rooting interests.

I haven't spent enough time in Hays, Kansas. I only enjoyed the fried chicken during a drive-through road stop there. So maybe Hays, Kansas is like a hotbed of rooting for the American League or the National League or both. And it's some sort of like rivalry. But who whose idea was this? And how did it how did it fly? Because it doesn't no one. It's not you wouldn't you wouldn't do this.

I guess in their defense, maybe it's just a tongue in cheek attempt to be funny. It's like we're selling merchandise Here are these fictitious families that buy all our merchandise I don't know That's the best defense I can have Because usually like if it's Frog Tape You figure well they're like a painting tape company They don't know the ins and outs of baseball

Maybe they should have consulted someone who did But you can understand how it happens This is Major League Baseball So they don't really have that excuse But I'm going to say that they realize perhaps how ridiculous it is, and it is an attempt at comedy. I don't know. Maybe there's Astros in there if we were able to zoom in and enhance this image. There is another photo in the background I can't quite make out. It seems like there's a bit of memorabilia here and there that's too Blurry and small so maybe Maybe there's something Astros related

In there if not sorry Astros Framed picture of like Luke Gregerson In the background just because why not Alright question from Michael during Cubs Dodgers game Two Wilson Contreras went to the mound As he does about a million times a game To discuss a pitch with John Lackey

Javier Baez came into the discussion and the announcer noted that Baez likely wanted to know the pitch so that he would know where to best position himself based on how the batter would hit that pitch. I've heard Jim Edmonds talk about how he used to ask for a copy of the pitching game plan so he would know where to stand in the outfield, so I'm guessing this is a somewhat common practice. If this is true, though, how come you never hear about a batter taking a peek at the defense moving their positioning to get a clue as to what pitch is coming? Surely if they're moving in the field, depending on the pitch, they would take to the plate the knowledge that the opposing team may be doing the same thing. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's true. I can't think of specific instances, but I think I've heard of that cited. And even if I

haven't, I think it's something that happens. It's just usually pretty subtle. And maybe it's like a lean one way or another. And maybe it happens late enough that the hitter doesn't really have time to pick up on it. Because if a fielder is like breaking one way as the pitcher is getting ready to deliver the pitch, at that point, you're staring at the pitcher, you're staring at the ball, you don't really have time to look at what all the fielders are doing to take that information in and process it and have time to react to it yeah right i think that you you can get some clues as a hitter from just looking at the defensive alignment in the first place you know that if you have some aggressive shift on you're more likely to be pitched inside or be thrown something that maybe you are more likely to pull but there are two things in here one of course pitch location is it's not quite random but it's it's in the large part random so even if you think you know exactly where a pitch is going to be if it's anyone like jk arieta you have no idea where the pitch is actually going to be so you don't get yeah that much information like you know if if the catcher told the batter here's the target then the batter would think like well 55 of the

time that's where the ball is going to be but that still leaves a lot out and and the other part of it with something like the uh the bias conference for example where he's looking for maybe what the next pitch is going to be and then he cheats in one direction that's something where bias will take his usual position and then he will start to move to one of his sides as the as the pitch is about to be delivered and so that happens so late that as a hitter you can't really look at that and respond in turn so it happens too late as a hitter, you can't really look at that and respond in turn. So it happens too late as a hitter. You don't want to be distracted. Maybe you still will be distracted, but I think that it's, every Cubs player had a negative win probability added, except for Albert Almora. Has something like this ever happened in the playoffs? Has an entire team ever posted a negative WPA for every player, playoffs or otherwise? I emailed this question to Fangraph's dark overlord, actually very friendly and helpful overlord, David Appelman,

who told me that the Fangraphs playoff database only goes back to 2002, so we don't have a comprehensive list of WPA for those games. But he says that typically this happens a couple times a year, in the regular season at least. It has happened 110 times since 1974 that every player on one team had a negative win probability added in a game. And the most recent time that this happened was this April, April 17th, in a game between the Marlins and the Mariners. If you had to guess two teams that would be involved in a negative WPA game, you might choose the Marlins and the Mariners. In this case, it was the Marlins who lost 6-1 in this game, and every single player on their team had a negative win probability added. So fun fact.

Thank you, David Appelman. It was April 17th, you said? Yes. Let's see. Let's see what happened. The Marlins had five hits. Christian Jelic, two for four. The run, the RBI, a home run.

Just didn't matter. Poor Christian Jelic. Just, yeah, barely negative. Yeah. He must have had some costly outs later in the game or something. Yeah didn't matter. Poor Christian Jelic. Just, yeah, barely negative. Yeah. He must have had some costly outs later in the game or something. Yeah. All right. Let's take one from Corey says, I was just thinking about the Cubs W flag, RIP Nats. And I was thinking about the lesser known team specific baseball traditions that are out there. I'm an Orioles fan and I know

we scream O in the national anthem, haters be damned, and less prominently, the Baltimore Sun advertisement that crowns the scoreboard in Camden Yards with the words, the sun, is used to indicate whether something has scored a hit or an error by causing the H or the E in the sign to blink. Oh, and I'm pretty sure they designed Oriole Park at Camden Yards such that section 34, famed for being the home of superfan Wild Bill Hagee, would be directly directly behind home plate although i might be making that up are there some mini traditions that other teams have that would have escaped national notoriety and i responded to cory i've noted that if there are and they have escaped national notoriety they may have escaped my knowledge too so i'm sure these exist and that I just don't know about them. But I will say, just having been to a couple of games at Yankee Stadium in the last couple of days, the roll call that the bleacher creatures do in Yankee Stadium, maybe that's one of the better known baseball local traditions. But if you haven't seen it, if you're not aware of it, or even if you are,

I think it's one of the cooler traditions out there. And I know no one wants to think positively of the Yankees in any way. And certainly there are a segment of their fans that are kind of, you know, corporate and just there to take clients out to the game and all that. But the Bleacher Creatures, as rowdy and drunk and terrible as sometimes they are, I think the roll call is really one of the most endearing traditions in sports, where as the game begins, the Bleacher creatures chant the names of each player in the field for the Yankees. And those players have to acknowledge the fans before their name will stop being chanted. And some of them just point and, you know, signal with a hand and don't even turn around.

Others kind of make a production of it, like Greg Bird does like a wings flapping kind of motion. And Todd Frazier like, you know, bends down and like points with both of his arms out there. And each of them has a sort of distinctive way of signaling. And I think that's a great tradition. I think usually you don't really see that wall, both the physical, literal wall and the figurative wall between fans and players breached in that way. And this is one tradition that really breaks that down and kind of connects fans with the multi-multi-millionaire players who don't lead lives very much like them, but they are sharing this real estate in the stadium. And at least for that half inning, they have to acknowledge the fans' presence and importance. And I think that's a really cool thing. And I don't know if any other teams do it. So

that would be my pick. Yeah, that one's great. And I think the only thing that's kind of similar is the tradition they have in Tampa Bay, when fans in the upper deck are going to have extended conversations with the players on the field. Yeah, right. All right. I guess we can wrap up. I wanted to mention this fun fact unrelated to the playoffs, but this is from another Joseph who writes in, I'm a big fan of pure,

i.e. non-fielding pinch hitters with two plate appearances and pure pinch runners with one plate appearance. So someone comes in to pinch hit, ends up getting more than that one pinch hit plate appearance and someone comes in to pinch run, but ends up hitting. It's a strange thing to like, but I like that he likes it. It's not as strange as liking a lead.

No, that's true. And so Joseph mentioned that pinch hitters with multiple plate appearances, that's more common than you might think. it's certainly more common than pinch runners with a play deference and the last time this happened was wilmer defoe september was the latest to be a pinch hitter and get two play appearances he says for pinch runners it's far less common there are fewer pinch runners it has happened twice this year ross stripling in april and gordon beckham in september but before, you have to go back to 2009, the last time that he mentions that. And I like the PS. Teams usually, but not always, win these games. Again, they did bat around if this guy got two plate appearances. The two plate appearance pinch hitter has only lost nine times since 2000, with Randall Gritchuk in September of 2015 being the

most recent. Now, this is fun. The only one plate appearance pinch runner ever to lose the game was Trip Cromer on September 7th, 1993. That was a Cincinnati Reds game. It was a game between, let's see, the Reds and the Cardinals. Trip Cromer, how did he lose this game? First game of a double header. Yeah, so top of the eighth, the Cardinals are batting, trailing 9-6 or 6-9. All right, so first there's a pinch hit, and the guy starts off with a single.

Then there's a pinch hit walk. Then Trip Cromer pinch runs for Rod Brewer, the pinch hitter. Cromer comes around to score a couple batters later. And then, yeah, the Cardinals just keep batting, keep batting. Trip Kroemer eventually gets up to the plate in the same inning. And he grounds out, not even the last out of the inning, only the second out of the inning. And that's the end of the scoring for that inning. But the Cardinals, by that that point Are now winning 13-9

Because of this comeback But then the Reds managed to Narrow that to 13-12 And there is in the bottom Of the ninth a walk-off Triple, a walk-off three-run Triple by the Reds Reggie Sanders

And the Reds win the game And Tripp Cromer loses the game so that's how that happened so that is apparently according to Joseph the only time in baseball history that that has happened fun fact I would say I am looking up so you had mentioned that Tripp Kramer pinch ran for a pinch hit Rod Brewer who I'd never heard of yeah pinch hit and walked and I am looking up there have been 10 players in Major League history named Brewer, and I can confirm now none of them ever played for the Brewers. Okay.

Fun fact also, I guess. All right. Well, I think we can end there. I've got a couple more, but they aren't explicitly playoff related, so we'll get to them in a future show. There was one email from a listener named Matt who was just pleading with us to explain how Joe Madden decides which relievers to use and whether he is just using hunches and handedness or just randomly assigning relievers. And your response via email just said

basically hunches and Wade Davis, which seems essentially to be the case at this point. I don't think he really wants to use any reliever if he can help it, but occasionally he has to. And Wade Davis can only throw apparently 48 pitches or whatever. This is blowing my mind. But as we're, as we are recording this podcast right now, of course, this is the playoffs. And so you figure that everyone is just kind of in a hurry to get to their bullpen because bullpens are great. And for example, like the Dodgers bullpen is still only allowed four runs all playoffs long. The Cubs bullpen has allowed 22 runs in 30.2 innings. And even worse, they have 27 strikeouts and 26 walks.

I can't believe how bad this bullpen has been. That is so bad. Okay, okay. Cubs bullpen, 27 strikeouts. Dodgers bullpen, 27 strikeouts. Cubs bullpen, 26 walks. Dodgers bullpen, two, two walks. using the best reliever in any given situation like if they're just giving up almost like a run inning that's on the players more so than the manager it doesn't matter which reliever he's choosing they are all yeah i think it's important to understand that when it comes to be the playoffs

i don't want to give too much of the benefit of the doubt to the managers because there is still a thing is recency bias but it is important to remember that every player is tired by now they've been playing baseball for seemingly ever and i would guess my own hunch is that relievers might be a little more prone to fatigue and maybe just not being what they were during the season i think we're seeing this with the asterisks too whose bullpen was largely fine during the regular season but no one out there is trusted even ken giles has had some bad games i think if you're the cubs their bullpen didn't seem like it was a huge problem during the season.

But I don't know. Maybe Carl Edwards, for example, is just worn down. Maybe he just doesn't have a lot of gas left in the tank. And so you can look at the regular season numbers all you want. And certainly, like if you're the Yankees, those regular season numbers are still holding up. Indians got good relief work. Dodgers have too.

But Cubs bullpen really shouldn't be terrible. But here we are. Yep. Yeah. You could say the same thing about the Astros bullpen, which is good for most of the season, but not so much now. All right. So we can stop there and we will pick this up next time. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Five listeners who have already pledged their support include Ross Wasserman, Steve Caker, Graham Stewart, Zachary Bartleyley and dustin toon thanks to all of you you can join our facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild and you can rate and review and subscribe to effectively wild on itunes reviews and ratings are always appreciated thanks

to dylan higgins for editing assistance if you're looking for something else to listen to, we've got a new episode of the Ringer MLB show up with Michael Bauman. We went a little deeper into some of the details of the championship series that Jeff and I glossed over today. So check that out on the Ringer MLB show feed. Keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming via email at podcast.fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. And we will be back to talk to you very soon. You beautiful thing. Continue on.