Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1126: Homers, Homers, Everywhere

Episode Date: October 21, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the home run’s postseason supremacy, Clayton Kershaw’s performance in NLCS Game 5 and the Dodgers’ World Series outlook, the Cubs’ upcoming offseason and long-term future, and the significance of the Tigers’ Ron Gardenhire hiring. Audio intro: Pernice Brothers, "Subject Drop" Audio outro: Lurleen Lumpkin, "Bagged Me a Homer"  iTunes Feed (Please […]

Don't talk to me that way, reckon silence out of reach, go to sleep, let the subject drop, let the subject drop. To be honest, I forgot the impetus is gone, it's gone like a lesson, mediocre song. Hello and welcome to episode 1126 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I am Jeff Sullivan. Yeah, I'm Jeff Sullivan, a Fangraph. That sounds right. Something seemed off. I'm joined by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, as I always am. Hello, hi. You sound much more confident about who I am than who you are, but I think you're right on both counts. Existential. So, on today's podcast, we have baseball to discuss, and there's baseball

that happened, and there's baseball that's going to happen. I guess before we talk about the baseball that just happened on Thursday, is there anything you'd like to bring up that has to do with baseball in general that is not directly related to either of the games? Sure. Well, I wonder if you'd care to comment on a tweet from a few days ago by Michael Young, the former Rangers hitter for longtime hitter. He tweeted, let's be honest. Three years ago, there was hysteria regarding lack of offense. This is the season of the trampoline baseball.

regarding lack of offense. This is the season of the trampoline baseball. Well, I understand that this is the era of the bouncy baseball. However, I think that baseball, if anything, has seen a decline in the number of snapped ankles and broken femurs. So I think that we don't need to invoke trampolines in this. Yeah. That was the tweet that he sent out in response to the the todd frazier home run oh uh-huh and you wrote about that yeah that was a todd frazier home run where

he kind of stuck his butt out and knocked the home run out to right field which a lot of people went to yankee stadium for being a joke and that ball would never get out in any other ballpark and now it is quite possible that frazier's home run would not have left any other ballpark however at the end of the day frazier, despite the way that he looked, did hit that ball 100.5 miles per hour. According to StatCast, Javier Baez just the other day hit a home run that I think was 96 miles per hour, even though he pulled it, and it quote-unquote looked better.

Frazier's home run was legitimate, even if it was not a home run in another ballpark. It would have been a two-run double over the head of Josh Reddick. So the point, I know it looks bad, and it's really easy to be convinced by a player's follow-through that a ball shouldn't do maybe what it did. But I think the real takeaway is not that the ball just kind of bounced off of Frazier's bat with a high or low coefficient of restitution. I forgot which one makes the ball go further, but high. Perfect. I think the real takeaway is not that the ball has a high coefficient of restitution, an unnaturally high coefficient of restitution that caused it to fly out to right field,

but that Todd Frazier just has an ugly swing. And there's an anecdote passed along during the game by maybe it was Tom Verducci, maybe it was Ken Rosenthal, one of them, they were both working, that Todd Frazier, he even dislikes his own mechanics so much that he doesn't like to watch himself on video. So Todd Frazier, not much for, I guess, self-diagnosis because he doesn't want to watch himself swing. He just doesn't look to watch himself on video so todd frazier not much for i guess self-diagnosis because he doesn't want to watch himself swing he just doesn't look so good yeah well this connects to a couple things that have been published at ingress recently even aside from your post on

todd frazier's home run but you did a larger post on home runs this postseason and how this has been the most home run dependent postseason that we've seen, which is not really a shock in that this season was the most home run dependent season we've seen. But it has been extreme. And you wrote about that. And then Travis Sotrick wrote about perhaps why the Yankees have been so good at home this year, which seems to be that they are really good at lifting, elevating the ball, driving it in the air. And Yankee Stadium is one of the best places to do that. And so they've been doing that an awful lot, which

helps explain why they have yet to lose at home this postseason. So they're an offense that is well constructed to take advantage of this time of year. And I think that the popular conception of what kind of lineup wins in the playoffs, if any, has really changed a bit. Because I wrote about this, I don't know, maybe five years or so ago, and it was Yankees specific because the Yankees broadcast at the time was talking about how the Yankees were ill-suited to the playoffs because they hit a lot of home runs and were very home run dependent. And so that was, I think, the first time that I looked into this and tried to see if there was any truth to that, found that the opposite was true, that teams that are very dependent on the home run actually see their

scoring decline less in October. And since then, I've written about it a couple of times and I've seen it more and more and heard it more and more. And now I don't really hear the idea so much that you have to play small ball or manufacture runs or not sit and wait for the home run in the playoffs to win. And if anything, I've heard it discussed as an advantage for the Yankees this postseason. And maybe that's just because, you know, there are just so many home runs in the game today that the idea of playing small ball just seems unrealistic. Yeah, you, I think the last time you wrote about this, it had to do with the Blue Jays. At least that's the last time I remember about this it had to do with the blue jays at least that's the last time i remember you writing about this uh talking about the blue

jays yeah last year yeah and how well i guess the same thing you just said teams that hit a lot of home runs tend to see their run scoring decline less in the playoffs and i admit i'm i get a little confused because when i've looked at this in the past i see that or i found that like contact hitters are better against power pitchers, but still. Right. I found that too. Yeah. It's like all else being equal, contact hitters have a slight advantage against power pitcher

or high velocity pitchers, but usually all things are not equal. It's not like you have one really great contact hitter and one really great power hitter and the only difference is is the contact usually if you have a low contact hitter he's going to be a better hitter often is the case once you get to the major league level just because that low contact will be associated with high patience or high power so i think overall you'd rather have the low contact lineup but if you have two evenly balanced lineups you'd rather have the high contact version, but if you have two evenly balanced lineups, you'd rather have the high contact version of that. So it's kind of confusing, but I think overall, when it gets to

the playoffs, like you'd rather have the Yankees type lineup than the Royals type lineup, for instance. And what's funny about this is that the Astros are the lineup that has contact and a power, and then they're terrible. All of a sudden sudden they can't they can't hit or score so maybe the astros are the best evidence that sometimes in the playoffs things just happen there's an expression for that that is a little too adult for this program and uh what happened to the astros is or at least what is happening to the astros just happened to the cubs uh as far as the home runs go now we have some updated numbers I can tell you that in this postseason, after Game 5 of the NLCS, there have been a total of 246 runs scored in the playoffs.

And after yesterday, exactly half of those runs have scored on homers. Yesterday, there were 12 runs, and Chris Bryant homered, I guess. I actually missed when that happened, because by that point, the game was already 9-0. But Chris Bryant, barely hit a home run. Good for him. That accounted for 100% of the Cubs' runs yesterday. And then, of course, on the Dodgers' side, they had 16 hits. Kike Hernandez had three of them, and they went a long way.

He drove in seven runs on home runs, a solo shot, a two-run shot, and a grand slam that effectively ended the game very early. So that was eight out of 12 runs yesterday that scored on the home run. So that brought baseball prospectus. I think it was Joe Sheehan like 12 years ago came up with the term Guillen number on baseball prospectus to describe a simple concept, just the ratio of runs that score on home runs with a denominator being overall runs. And so in the regular season this year, unsurprisingly with strikeouts up, but home runs up, the league achieved highest ever guillen number overall i think it was 43 percent

and it used to be in the 30s as recently as like three or four years ago and in the playoffs were up to 50 percent so 50 percent of all runs scoring on the home run and i guess the question there becomes is this happening because it's just better to be a power hitter in the playoffs? Or is this happening also in part because players are trying to be more powerful hitters in the playoffs and they're not focusing on singles? There have only been, I think, three stolen bases in the league championship series so far. It seems like base running is just not a part of what's happening right now. And there are reasons for that. If you're not reaching first base in the first place, it's hard to do any running if everyone's sitting home runs but where we are now we're up to 50 percent all run scoring on homers and it's even though there's a lot of noise in

that particular statistic for the playoffs still seems like this is definitely just going to be the trend i don't know why anyone would focus on small ball anymore when as you have brought up time and time again just so hard to string together hits and walks in the playoffs because the pitching is so good. Jose Quintana aside. Yeah. And Joe originally came up with that key and number name because the White Sox at the time were getting credit for small ball. And everyone was saying, oh, Ozzie Guillen is small ball, put the ball in play, manufacture runs. And that's why they're succeeding. And that was not at all because the White Sox were pretty reliant on the home run.

And so they hit lots of homers, and Joe was trying to show that that was what was behind their success. And, yeah, I don't think an explanation could be that this is just a particularly high Guillen number group of teams, right? Because it's not really. It's not like all of the teams that were most reliant on homers made the playoffs this year. I mean, the Yankees, I think, had the highest Guillen number of any playoff team, and they only ranked sixth in the majors this year. And you had like the Red Sox made the playoffs. They were second lowest, actually, in Guillen number. The Rockies were 26th and then Cleveland was like 21st. So Houston 16th, Nationals 15th, so Cubs 14th. So it's not like, you know, if anything, it seems like this year's crop of playoff teams was maybe below average collectively in number, certainly not notably above average. So it's not just that. And only one team in the regular season actually broke 50% this year, the Blue Jays. So it's not like you could take the highest number teams and put them all in the

playoffs and get a 50% number. You still wouldn't make it. So I think, yeah, it's probably, I mean, I guess it's, it's always higher in the playoffs because you have better pitching and you have better defenses and it's harder to string together runs. And so the runs that do score are more likely to have been homers. And maybe that's all that explains it. Maybe there are some good home run ballparks like Yankee Stadium in play this year that helps a bit. It's been a little warmer than usual perhaps for this time of year. So probably that combined with small sample, I suppose. Pertinent to that penultimate point, as Sam Miller has brought up and as other people have brought up

because the Dodgers made the World Series, the current forecast for game one of the World Series on October 24th in Los Angeles is 101 degrees. Oh gosh, i am so glad i don't live in a place without seasons and i cannot wrap my head around i mean i i remember watching like a fox saturday broadcast from dodger stadium like i don't know 18 20 years ago i was a kid but i remember they were doing a sideline report with whoever was a sideline sideline reporter back then and he was down on the field at dodger stadium and it was a day, but he had one of those like surface thermometers showing like, oh, sure, it's like 95 degrees in the air. But down here on the field, the heat is just radiating and it's like coming up from the ground. And it was like 120 degrees. So I don't know

exactly what it's going to be actually on the field at Dodger Stadium, but it's going to be warmer. Now, granted, the game is probably going to start at, what, 5.08 or something local time, so it'll be a little post-peak, but nevertheless, the ball's going to be flying. Although Clayton Kershaw's going to be pitching, so maybe the ball won't be flying, but then Clayton Kershaw's given up a lot of home runs, so maybe the ball will be flying. Who knows? It's going to be hot. That's the point. Hot game. Yeah, so Kershaw did not give up a lot of home runs in game five. He pitched well. Jose Quintana did not. And I guess the bullpen disparity was stark in this game as it was in the whole series. The Dodgers just went with the guys who've been good with them all October.

It was just Kershaw to Maeda, Morrow, and Jansen, and scoreless bullpen work. Kershaw went six, gave up one run. Did you happen to notice how many times he did the drop-down sneaky pitch in last night's start? Because you wrote about it yesterday and how he's brought that back. Yeah, so Kershaw did it four times yesterday. And this is, I don't know, I don't remember if we've talked about this on the podcast, but quick summary is that late last season, september i guess that's september 2016 clayton kershaw started to fold in he would he's a extremely over the top delivery as a pitcher

and he started to fold in a three quarters arm slot he said he was inspired by rich hill who drops down to throw fastballs and curveballs and kershaw he doesn't what do you say drop down usually you mean someone is going like full sidearm Kershaw's not doing that but that's because for most pitchers dropping down means dropping down from three quarters Kershaw just drops down to three quarters and last year he threw I think it was 25 25 or 30 pitches from sort of the the lower arm slot all of them were fast balls it wasn't great I'm still not convinced it's a great idea but it's just interesting because it's Clayton Kershaw And this season When the season opened, Kershaw wasn't doing it anymore

And then in May It reappeared and he went on this little streak Where over the course of seven games in a row He did it 35 times And for the first time that he started Using this alternate angle He folded in a breaking ball from that slot He struck out Eric Thames

Looking with a curveball from the other slot i wrote about it because in the summer i get desperate for anything to write about but on june 19th i think it was kershaw threw his his 35th low slot pitch of the season 35th also in seven consecutive starts and jay bruce hit it for a home run and just like that kershaw stopped doing it he stopped using that arm slot for a while. He did it one time in the middle of September. And then in the playoffs, he brought it back. Did it two times in his first start. Did it three times in his next start.

Used it to strike out Javier Baez looking, which that happened three times in the series, which is unbelievable. And then yesterday he did it four times. And when Kershaw uses that slot and when he throws a fastball, it's usually about a mile and a half or two miles per hour faster than his usual fastball, which seems like that's good. But if you watch a specific video of Kershaw using this angle, it must mess with his delivery because his follow through is ugly. Velocity is still there. And of course, as a natural consequence of using this other slot is that his fastball has more horizontal movement and it has less rise. slot is that his his fastball has more horizontal movement and it has less rise so it's uh it always gets classified as like a two seam fastball instead of his his usual straight up four seamer i still i'm still not sure it's good for him to mess around with not because i think he's going

to get hurt i just it hasn't been great yet it hasn't worked that much it it hasn't helped him get a whole bunch of strikeouts it hasn't helped him get swings and misses he usually does it in a two strike count but it doesn't seem him get swings and misses. He usually does it in a two-strike count, but it doesn't seem like his control or command is all the way there. And he does mix in the occasional breaking ball. He used it against David Peralta in the first round. If you remember, the Diamondbacks were actually in these playoffs not too long ago, and Kershaw got Peralta to pop out using a lower slot breaking ball.

But I don't know. The fact that he's used it now in all three of his playoff starts this season implies that he thinks this is good and helpful and he's Clayton Kershaw so I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt but I don't know just I haven't seen it in the numbers yet and I I wonder if he knows what to do with a effectively a two seam fastball because he's just not that kind of pitcher yeah maybe it bodes well for his future that he is willing to tinker and try new things like this, because at some point he will have to. He hasn't reached that point yet. He's doing just fine. But at some point when he loses stuff or injury issues get worse or just

the natural aging process, he might need to experiment a bit the way that Rich Hill, who inspired him to do this, did. So maybe it's a good sign that even more or less at the peak of his powers, he's willing to try something new. And maybe he's brought it back now because he feels like he's taking teams by surprise, like when he was using it quite often early in the season or in the middle of the season, and then went almost cold turkey in the middle of the season and then went almost cold turkey with the drop down for months and then brought it down really back in time for the playoffs and maybe he thinks that he's you know this is a time of year when advanced scouting is really ramped up and more people are devoted to it for more time and people are paying more

attention to player tendencies so he'll bring back this thing that probably is not in the advanced scouting reports because he hasn't been doing it for months and take people by surprise. But yeah, I don't know. The results are not overwhelming. I'm not altogether convinced that it's enough of a change. And maybe I'm wrong because I'm looking at Rich Hill's release point plot and his slots aren't that much separate from Kershaw's. But here's OK. So here's the thing with Kershaw when he does his sort of drop down slot, if you will, he is release point moves about like a foot toward toward first base and it drops down a few inches. But with Rich Hill, Hill's usual slot is a little more

three quarters. And then he drops down almost sidearm. and i wonder now kershaw used this other angle i think he he said he used to do it more in high school maybe it was his natural arm slot in high school i don't know but i just wonder maybe he's not maybe he's not showing enough of a change to the hitter so maybe it just doesn't really mean that much because his his fastball still is it's just moving like a two seam variety of his usual fastball. And his breaking ball doesn't look that much different. It just has less drop and more horizontal movement than his usual curveball. That's what you expect when you have this other slot. But Rich Hill goes a little more sidearm.

And sidearm pitchers are funky. And the ball does things that are completely different than they do when it comes out of the normal slot. So I'm not encouraging Kershaw to go all the way start him because I don't know if that would be helpful. It would be hard to pick up normal slot. So I'm not encouraging Kershaw to go all the way Sardim because I don't know if that would be helpful. It would be hard to pick up another slot. But I do wonder if maybe it's just not actually worth the trouble because it's just not that different. That all being said, the way that I look at this mostly is I'm going to guess there have been all these questions about whether or not Clayton Kershaw is fully healthy and we don't know what kind of condition he's in. And I would assume that from Kershaw's perspective, you probably wouldn't be messing around with this alternate delivery if you were concerned about your own health. And so I take it as sort of a proxy indicator that Kershaw feels just fine.

I know that he's given up home runs in the playoffs and whatever. He hasn't looked Kershaw-ian for the last little while, but that's just a little hunch that I have. I think that he feels good. And I think I know that if he feels good because he's willing to put his body through a motion that's a little different from what he usually does. Yeah, that's possible, and I think probably the most important thing is not whether he's dropping down or not, but just the fact that he has not had to start on short rest. He has not been pushed nearly as hard in these playoffs as he has in previous ones, and the Dodgers just haven't had to use him like that because they've been cruising so far,

and that's good because, you know, he has sometimes started well on short rest but then has maybe not been so good in a start after a short rest start. Anyway, he's just been pushed really hard and stretched because of a bad bullpen, because the rotation wasn't quite as good as the Dodgers rotation currently is, or because they were just on the verge of elimination. And because that hasn't been the case, he's now pitching deeper into the calendar year, at least, than he ever has before. But presumably, I mean, if he's healthy, if his back is healed, then perhaps the time off when he was on the DL and the fact that he has been used more lightly this October could help him in the World Series. And maybe that has something to do with the fact that he pitched pretty well last night, although almost everyone pitched well against the Cubs.

in this playoff. I did tweet this out. So the Cubs in the NLCS managed an on-base percentage of 193 over five games. 193. They slugged better than the Astros are currently slugging. But in terms of getting on base,

which is more important, there's nothing. And the last time there's been a worse team on-base percentage in a playoff best-of-seven series was 1905. There were a few,

there were two worse OBPs in best of five game series. And as you can imagine, both the teams that were worse got swept in three games, but nevertheless, best of seven series, 1905, been a long time. 1905,

you might recognize being a date that precedes the other Cubs world series championship. So pretty bad history there, but you bring up an interesting point because we have talked and you've written during the year about how the Dodgers manipulate the deal, et cetera, et cetera, giving their pitchers all this rest. Now, I don't think that they intended to have to rest Kershaw when they did because he was just injured and that injury was legitimate. But we are in the playoffs now and we've seen obviously the Cubs pitching staff has not been good, was not that good. I can use the past tense now and their bullpen was woefully ineffective during the playoffs and we've seen

the Astros bullpen has been ineffective and we've just seen good pitchers who haven't looked very good in the playoffs and part of that is noise part of that is the hitting is good but you wonder if maybe if we want to give the Dodgers real extra credit here you wonder if maybe they're they're disabled this manipulation and sort of coerced rests has just helped them specifically now, because this isn't just the seventh month of competitive baseball. They've been, the spring training starts in February, and so games start in March. So that's another month. So this would be the eighth month of playing baseball on a regular basis. And you know, it takes a lot out of you. It's really interesting if you only really get anecdotal evidence. But if you talk to some players or read some interviews to see how their bodies change over the course of a season, because there are just things that you can't really do. You eat differently, you exercise differently. And people's bodies just aren't the same by the end of September as they are in February or March when they check into spring training. And so now a lot of players who have postseason adrenaline, but also they're kind of running on fumes. And if the Dodgers are able to give their players sufficient rest, then this

seems like this would be a great time for them to be peaking. They would have just a little bit extra left in the tank. And I mean, it's hard to argue with the results. They've clobbered their opponents. They've won seven of eight in the playoffs. They just annihilated the Cubs, who are a good team. They're a very good baseball team, but they looked like they didn't even belong in the same field. Yeah, no, I mean, even if you, if it is the Yankees who end up matching up with the Dodgers, compare the workloads of their starters to Dodgers starters. And, you know, Luis Severino has pitched more innings than any Dodgers pitcher. Masahiro Tanaka has pitched more innings than any Dodgers pitcher. Masahiro Tanaka has pitched more innings than

any Dodgers pitcher. And even if you just go like the starters who will be used in this series, Sonny Gray and CeCe Sabathia have both pitched more innings than Rich Hill, for instance, or Kenta Maeda. And Alex Wood, I guess, is just above those two guys or below Gray, just above Savathia. So, yeah, I don't know what difference those, you know, 20 inning or so differences between starter workloads make, but maybe something. And, yeah, I mean, the Dodgers, no Dodgers starter had more than 27 starts this season. So that would presumably, in theory at least, be helping them out now. It's hard to quantify exactly how much, but it seems reasonable to think that that's the case. So I was looking at Brandon Morrow because Morrow sort of appeared with the Dodgers later

into the year. He wasn't expected to be the important critical bridge to Kelly Jansen that he's become, and he's been great. Brandon Morrow, very good during the regular season. He didn't allow a home run, but he did throw 20 innings this season in AAA. I don't know if you ever looked at this. Because Morrow, of course, he came from, he was with the Padres last year. And he wasn't good. And he was with, Morrow has traveled. This is the point.

So anyway, before he was called up to the Dodgers and became entrenched in the bullpen, he pitched with Oklahoma City, Dodgers affiliate in AAA. Guess his ERA over those 20 innings like 0.3 7.2 bernamoro bernamoro allowed 18 runs in triple a in 20 innings 18 runs in 20 innings since then with the dodgers he has allowed including the playoffs 11 runs over 52 innings so 52 innings. So 52 innings for Brandon Morrow as a major leaguer, regular season playoffs, 11 runs, AAA, 20 innings, 18 runs. I don't know what happened. I have absolutely no explanation.

Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah. Well, I'm looking forward to this. This is like the time of year when I wish that Vince Scully were more selfish and self-aggrandizing. Because how amazing would it be if Vin Scully would come back to call the World Series? Won't happen. He wouldn't even call the playoffs last year in his big retirement tour because he didn't want to make himself the focus of it. So I guess I wish that he were selfish right now.

But if he were selfish and ever wanted to draw attention to himself, he would not be the even scully that we loved for so long so you uh can't have one without the other did you see the tweet after after the game yesterday i saw a picture of him hold yeah holding a go dodgers flag or something that was enough it warmed the heart yeah it was nice shifting of course the astros and the yankees will play game six on friday night but i don't know that we have two options here we can either talk about the Astros and the Yankees some more or we can sort of talk about what the Cubs do now because you you might remember that when the Cubs won the World Series last year they were they didn't just win the World Series they were the best team in baseball and they were clearly the best team in baseball and they were so good people talked about

them as a potential dynasty and even though it's almost impossible to build the dynasty in the major leagues right now they had and have such still such a good young core they were so good coming into this season that on on a certain effectively wild podcast one of the co-hosts expressed disbelief that a projection system thought that the Dodgers would be eight games better than the Cubs. And well, the gap turned out to be bigger than that, especially when you fold in the playoffs. So I wonder, I do believe somewhat in the championship hangover theory. I do think that it takes a toll on your body, nevermind anything psychological, but I think it just takes a toll if you play

a month of extra baseball as the Cubs did last season. They were an excellent baseball team, one of the better baseball teams in history last year. That cannot be taken away from them. They won the World Series as they should have, but things feel different now. And of course, things will feel different following a season where you don't win the World Series and you aren't the best team in baseball, the Dodgers or the Indians, best team in baseball this year. But where are the Cubs? Where do you see the Cubs now? Because as you look at this team, not a whole lot has changed about it roster wise from last year. But now they're going they're probably going to lose Jake Arrieta. I can't imagine he's going to resign. Kyle Schwarber has not developed into the Jim Tomei like outfielder that I think the Cubs maybe have pitched him as Javier Baez is still he's not a well he's not a bad hitter but he looks a lot more like a bad hitter than a good hitter most of the time Addison Russell is not broken out John Lester all of a sudden started giving up a whole lot of runs Kyle

Hendricks was great this year but you never like to see a pitcher lose two or three miles per hour when he has no miles per hour to lose bullpen still kind of an unanswered question there's just there's a lot to wonder about with this Cubs team all of a sudden. And I know that this is what happens when you have any good team that as soon as it hits a rough patch, you start to see the flaws on the roster. They become more apparent. But where do the Cubs where do you think the Cubs go from here? Because they are still in a wonderful situation. But you remember even even a year ago, I think we were fielding questions about what team would you most like to have the next five years? And we were like, oh, it's almost certainly the Cubs and maybe it's the Dodgers. And now I don't think I would pick the Cubs anymore, but I don't know.

Do you think that's recency bias or is that legitimate? Yeah, I wouldn't pick the Cubs over the Dodgers anymore, I think. But I think the Cubs are still in a pretty enviable position. And I think they'll probably be back in the playoffs again next year I just don't really see any of the other NL Central teams starting the season with as strong a roster and maybe the the Brewers I don't know if they'll take a big step back but they might not immediately build on what they did this year and I I don't know, I'm sure the Cardinals will be fine, but I just, I don't really see that happening. So I think that they have to do some things, obviously. They

need some starting pitching, it seems pretty clear. They have to decide whether they want to try to bring back Arrieta or whether they want to go after Darvish or Rotani or anyone else who's available, or maybe both of those things. They probably need multiple starters because what they're bringing back, Quintana, who I guess is the safest bet in their rotation right now, and then there's Hendrix and Lester, but they have some work to do clearly beyond that. And there are free agents available, and they do have some money to spend. And they also have some position players to potentially trade.

So even though they've already done that to a certain extent, they've, you know, they like traded Starlin Castro because Starlin Castro didn't really fit on their team anymore. And now Starlin Castro could be in the World Series. But they have, you know, Ian Happ now who doesn't really have a regular clear space to play and they have Schwarber who they seem really really attached to but just seems more and more like an American League player at this point and then they have Javier Baez who is capable of playing shortstop it seems and is not playing it for them so maybe he'd have more value to another team and so i don't know they they could trade one of those surplus position players for pitching they could just sign pitching they've got to rebuild a bullpen but that's the kind of thing that you can

do in an off season the nationals did it at the deadline so i think they're in solid shape but they'll probably be busy maybe busier than a team that is this good and this well positioned typically would be i guess if they want to rebuild the bullpen they can just wait and try to find triple a pitchers with the arrays over seven and then those guys will become yeah unbelievable postseason anchors so i guess if you want to focus on like good news that did happen this year for the cubs one they won their division they this was a very good team they just fell short there were a lot of good teams who made the playoffs so no real shame and not winning the world series this season they did make the championship series they beat the nationals that's great

overall pretty good year for the cubs ended with uh with kind of a wet fart noise but anyway it was not a horrible year they did get jose quintintana, and Quintana, yesterday aside, pitched well for them. But on the position player side, you know, Bryant, great. Rizzo, great. But Contreras, I think, established himself as an everyday catcher, even though he seems to not be a very good receiver yet. Maybe he'll work on that. So Contreras established himself. Ian Happ, I think, was probably better as a rookie than a lot of people expected him to be.

He was an above-average hitter, played a few positions. Albert Amora was able to be an average hitter. He played a lot. He wasn't an everyday player, but he played regularly and he established himself as a legitimate major leaguer. So there were bad things that happened. But Arrieta probably no longer the Cubs concern. Lester is a concern. You've got you kind of have to wonder why Russell hasn't gotten better or what on earth you do now with Jason Hayward.

You don't know what Ben Zobris has left in the tank. But still, there's a lot to do here in my head. People ask pretty often for me or for other writers to try to pick favorites or where we think Shohei Otani is going to land. And you can't do it because I don't know Shohei Otani. I don't know anybody who knows Shohei Ohtani. And I bet even Shohei Ohtani himself doesn't know where he's going to go or where he's going to want to go. I have absolutely no idea what is going to guide him in a certain direction. But it sure feels like the Cubs are a probable option here or at least a possible option.

Now, granted, because all 30 major league teams probably, hopefully, all 30 major league teams are going to make the same kind of general bid for Otani. Even the favorite might have like a 10% chance of getting him because I don't know how one team separates itself from another. But still, the Cubs are in a great position and they can tell Otani, look, you could be the ace on this team. You could be the savior. Whether he should play in the American League, I don't know exactly what his preference is going to be. But it's kind of amazing how quickly things could change because maybe maybe you'd rather have a team signed darvish maybe he feels safer as a as an available starting pitcher i don't know he's had tommy john surgery but darvish is out there he changes the whole

complexion of a rotation and so probably does shohei otani so the cubs can have their biggest question i think answered on the market. But yeah, you wonder what sort of marketability someone like Baez or Happ would have. Happ has the strikeout problem and Baez has the other strikeout problem. So I don't know exactly how desirable they will be, but they would be easy to move. And this is going to be a more interesting winter for the Cubs than the last one was, because after the last one, the Cubs probably thought, well, we don't. You can't see me. I'm clapping my hands together as if I'm dusting them off.

They probably are like, well, we don't have to do a thing. Oh, now they do. Now they have to be active. So this is going to be interesting because it's going to be Cubs front office trying to reestablish the level of talent that made the team look like a dynasty in the first place. And some of these guys are young enough that there could still be maturation coming, whether it's Baez, who's 24. He was basically a league average hitter this year. I don't know that he's ever going to be a really good hitter because of his plate discipline problems, but maybe he gets a bit better. Addison Russell is still only 23. He'll

be 24 next year. And he kind of took a step back offensively this year. And I think you could still forecast growth from him. Maybe even, I don't know, as great as Chris Bryant has been, maybe he even has another gear. He's a little bit older. He'll be 26 next year. So there's no real reason to expect him to take a huge leap but i wouldn't be shocked if he had a better season than this year so i could see some some growth from some of their young guys and contraris of course kind of took that leap this year by the way where did their team babbitt allowed end up because we had forecasted that yeah what did what do we forecast like we both it was we forecasted like somewhere around halfway

between league average and where they were last year. 270-something is probably what we forecast. And the answer is Cubs this year wound up at 285. 285. I think, yeah, if I remember right, that was like exactly what Pakoda had for them. Well, isn't that nice, Pakoda? Looks like you nailed yeah so they were still what sixth lowest team bad people out which is good but yeah

the coming off of the best defensive performance ever potentially last year i wasn't sure what to expect and i guess i i ultimately settled on something a little bit better than what they ended up with but of course they played kyle schwarber in left field for a lot of this year and some guys were older like so brist anyway i was wondering if they had some kind of secret stat cast positioning yes that was leading to this last year and if they did either it stopped working or other teams caught up or most likely they just didn't yeah i can't tell if it makes it what the cubs did last year more or less extraordinary because just to repeat this number that we've talked about so much before two years ago blue

jays allowed the second lowest map up in baseball 282 and the cubs are first at 255 that's just so unbelievably extreme it's one of the most genuinely It's one of the most, genuinely, it's one of the most stunning baseball statistics that I've seen put up on a team level in my time being aware of baseball teams. That is just such an extraordinary performance. And so many things had to come together. And even though I know that from an analytical perspective, you say like, well, one season is still a small sample. I don't, I don't get the 1500 innings the Cubs through.

And that's what they did. And it was, it was their defense. It was a little bit of luck. And it was, I think also just the 1500 innings the Cubs through and that's what they did and it was it was their defense it was a little bit of luck and it was I think also just the pitchers were better I think you look this year guys like Lester Arrieta Hendricks they just had less stuff and so they couldn't quite avoid hard contact the way that they did last year so I don't know it would have been interesting to see if the Cubs just like broke Babbitt and did it again this year but yeah I don't want to take anything away from the 2016 cubs it's just more evidence of how freaking good that team was and it's a shame for them that they couldn't repeat it but

whatever now we get to see the dodgers and that's kind of fresh i had forgotten separately but also about the cubs i had forgotten that way davis is going to be a free agent so they will as you said they need to rebuild the bullpen but they really need to rebuild the bullpen they need to add a good amount and i'm going to guess that way davis will not be resigning man charlie culberson was so much better than any cup in this series that's just unfair the guy that the dodgers had to play because their best player basically cory seeger was not available was better than any cup so not only did seager being out not hurt the dodgers but if anything it probably helped them right because you wouldn't expect seager to have a 1235 ops as good as he is over five games and that's exactly what culperson did so everything's coming up dodgers charlotte

culperson over his major league career 443 plate appearances 48 wrc plus 48 that means 52 percent worse than average he has a career wins above replacement of negative 1.2 charlie culverson based on his major league performance record is terrible and he had he had two doubles and a triple in the lcs alone the cubs had one double and zero triples. The Cubs, as a team, in five games. Culberson didn't even start all five games for the Dodgers. He started, what, three? Right?

Because I think Taylor. Yeah, he got into five, but he didn't start them all. Yeah, right. Charlie Culberson. I mean, I don't even. It doesn't make sense, but it is, I guess, if anything is important, everything is important. And it is worth pointing out again, I guess, that this wasn't just the Dodgers dismembering the Cubs like limb by limb. But this was the Dodgers doing that to the Cubs without Corey Seager, who's like a top 10 player in baseball.

And he was replaced with trash, like statistical trash. And it didn't matter. If anything, it made the Dodgers better. That's crazy. Yeah, yeah. It's not fair. Oh, well. So we have one half of the World Series matchup set, and I don't know.

We can't really preview the World Series yet because we don't know the Dodgers opponent yet, and we will have a day with no baseball before and during our next podcast. So we'll have time to do a World Series preview then. Any other thoughts on Dodgers, Cubs, Astros, Yankees matchup heading into game six? Well, where would you put the—I don't know any gambling. Well, I know gambling terms. I just don't know how to use them. Well, I don't know any gambling.

Well, I know gambling terms. I just don't know how to use them. So where would you gamble things about the Dodgers and Cubs meeting in the NLCS again next season for the third year in a row? I'd say there's got to be, I mean, the odds of both of them winning their divisions are very good. I think the Dodgers are, I don't want to say they're a lock because there are some good teams in the NL West, but they are pretty close to it. So I don't know. I'd say there's got to be like a, what, 60% chance, 70% chance that they both make the playoffs. I mean, the Cubs, we would have said they were as close to a shoe-in as you could could get the spring and they almost didn't make it so yeah i mean there's got to be a 70 75 i don't know something like that percent chance that they both make it to the playoffs at least and win their divisions and then maybe i don't know

a 60 chance for each of them that they make it through the division series let's say something like that so yeah i'd give it like a i mean probably like a 25 30 chance is that it's probably too high maybe just because there's the chance that they would have to play each other in the lds oh that's true yeah that's right yeah well let's say a cubs dodgers matchup yeah it feels like it's just gonna be i don't mean to like cast the nationals aside but you know let's uh let's let's maybe let's quit it with like the recent team history let's maybe find a new identity guys because this one's kind of played out but yeah nationals probably going to be there i assume that they'll be better than the mets again going to be a big year for the nationals last year with bryce harper it's going to be an interesting season and also i think the

last year with daniel murphy contract, so who knows what the future of the Nationals will look like. So they'll have extra motivation to not be cripplingly awful in the playoffs next year. But outside of that, it feels like the Cubs and Dodgers just easy to take it to the bank.

Not a gambling term, but a financial term for whatever it's worth. This season at the end of spring training, the Cubs on Fangrest were given a 28% chance of appearing in the LCS. and so were the Dodgers. The Cubs, Indians, and Dodgers had the highest chances of making it to the LCS, and two of them did.

Yeah. All right. So we've got potentially two more games here in Houston. We've got Verlander starting game six. I don't know. What do you think are the odds of an Astros comeback following the Yankees comeback that already happened? Well, so like you said on the other podcast, when teams have gone home while behind 3-2 in a best-of-seven series, they've actually still won 13 of 27 times, which I don't want to make more of that than I guess I am now as I say this out loud.

But that stunned me then. It continues to stun me now. I don't care if that's a small sample. That's still a really good success. So I would say that I would probably, if this were 50-50, then you would say the Astros have a 25% chance of winning the series. I think it's, I would say it's maybe more like 35%. Maybe that's too high. I don't know.

But, you know, the odds don't really matter. People don't care about the odds. They hear them. They understand them. Then if you're a fan, they're immediately dismissed because all you care about is just winning. I think even when you're up 3-0 in a series, you don't really care about the odds because you just nothing matters until you get that fourth win.

So you're going to have Verlander going. But from the Yankees perspective, I guess it's it's still about the bullpen and they their bullpen is going to be extra rested. They didn't pitch yesterday. They know that they can go as hard as they want basically for these last two games. Severino is pitching and he's quite good. Now granted in his first start in the series, he didn't strike out a single hitter, which was weird. And he was removed with what seemed like a shoulder thing.

But the Yankees said he was fine. You don't really know. But the fact that he's starting today in the first place implies that the Yankees must have determined that he's healthy enough to go. I think this is game six is going to be a game where the Astros are like, we don't want to go to the bullpen at all. Please pitch everything again, Justin Verlander, while the Yankees will look at Severino and say, let's get 70 pitches in and then let's go to the other guys. So it'll be, again, a very different strategy. But from the Astros perspective there's no one you'd rather have on the mound for this game and so i yeah i certainly don't have a

prediction at this point because who could predict anything the astros in the span of no time at all went from the best offense to the worst offense and that doesn't make any sense so yeah no prediction but i don't care you know what i'll say the astros win the series yeah wow i'm back okay even though you just said the odds are against yeah, but I don't care. You know what? I'll say the Astros win the series. Yeah. Wow. I'm back. Okay.

Even though you just said the odds are against it. Yeah, they are. I don't care. Here I am. Okay. A quick word on the Tigers hiring Ron Garden hire. I don't have a whole lot to say about that. Maybe this is more of an off-season topic, but it does strike me as kind of curious that we've now gone maybe

back to an older model of managerial hiring. I don't know, probably that's too sweeping a statement. But when the Tigers hired Brad Ausmus, I think I wrote an article for Baseball Perspectives about the trend at the time, which was to hire recently retired young rookie managers, essentially guys who maybe were more malleable, maybe could connect with younger players better. It's become a younger players game, at least right now. And it's become a game where the front office wants to have more input than it historically has into the coaching staff and field staff and managers dealings. And so it seemed like that model, like the Matheny and Ausmus and Craig Council later and others, that this was kind of the new model of manager rather than sort of the guy who, you know, starts at that age maybe, but then kind of manages off and on for the next two or three decades and gets fired somewhere and gets picked up somewhere else. And so now Osmus has been let go and not renewed.

And Ron Gardner has been hired, who is, of course, a veteran manager. And he's 59, which is actually younger than I would have guessed that Ron Gardner was, but longtime twins manager. He was just the Diamondbacks bench coach. He is the typical guy who's been around the block and veteran manager type. And going from Ausmus to Gardenhire is maybe a rejection of that Ausmus model of manager. And I guess you could say mixed results with that model of manager, whether it's Ausmus and Matheny, who have certainly managed winning teams, but have not been known as good tactical managers. And that's one criticism you could perhaps levy against these young managers is that

they haven't had the seasoning. They haven't had time to improve their tactics and strategy. And so you would expect that to be worse potentially, although maybe you'd expect them to be less stuck in their ways and old school and to embrace new strategies. So in a way they could have have been better but weren't. But other guys, you know, Council, for instance, has been a good manager, I would say. And I don't know. Who else is there?

I guess you could lump maybe, well, I guess you could say Service. Yeah. Yeah. You could put Scott Service in there. You could put Walt Weiss, I guess, who also didn't last, and he was replaced by Bud Black, who is that old-school sort of manager, or at least older manager, and he was the one who hooped the Rockies back to the playoffs. So mixed results at best, I guess, for that type of manager that Osmus embodied, and now

we've got Ron Gardenhire. So maybe things are swinging back in the other direction. So let's, this is not what's important. So Gardenhire was a bench coach for the Diamondbacks this year, as you mentioned, and so he saw the Diamondbacks, he was there as the Diamondbacks got swept by the Dodgers. In 2010, the last time Ron Gardenhire

was the manager of the Twins, they got swept in the first round. 2009, the Twins got swept in the first round. 2006, Twins got swept in the first round. And 2004, the Twins won the first game and then they got swept in the rest of the first round. So Ron Gardenhier has lost 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 playoff games in a row as some sort of coaching figure. 12 as a manager and 3 as a assistant manager i guess so that's not good but the good news for ron godden hire is the tigers didn't hire him to lead them to the playoffs because that's not what they're going to do and i don't know it's always

hard to talk about any manager this is how it's always been i don't know what you're looking for as a manager of a bad baseball team a team you know is going to be bad you know it's going to be rebuilding and you know it's going to be going through one of the most difficult rebuilding processes that we've seen the tigers are not starting out from the same position as the brewers of the astros the cubs or the phillies or anything anyone else you want to talk about it's going to be probably going to be rough for the tigers and i don't know what you see in garden higher side for maybe he's just more authoritative than osmus now his last four years that he managed the twins they were terrible every season so maybe you're just like well he clearly has patience for this crap yeah so maybe

he just maybe they trust him to be able to steer the ship through some rough waters but i don't know what the destination is i don't know even for for garden hire himself i know that there are only 30 managerial jobs in the game there are a lot of open ones but i don't know maybe the tigers were the only chance he felt like he had maybe the the Red Sox didn't want to hire him. Who knows? But it's hard to see the upside aside from you get a job. But I guess it's overall a desirable job, even though Gardenhier is guaranteed to be giving a lot of postgame interviews where he talks about, well, you know, Buck Farmer left everything he had out on the mound. But, you know, when you give up seven runs in the first three innings, then, oh, you're just looking for quality at bats.

And this team never quits, you know. This team just doesn't give away. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Often, probably Gardenhard just wanted to get back into a managerial job and would have taken whatever was offered to him. But, yeah, usually or sometimes at least you see kind of young manager hired to manage young team. Maybe they connect better. Maybe he doesn't have

the prestige or the resume that can get him a job on a most competitive team. And then sometimes you will go to more of a Ron Garden hire type when you're on the other side of that rebuilding and you want to get the team back to the playoffs but this is kind of a reversal of that anyway i don't mean that the young manager trend is over or anything like it seems like alex cora will probably get a managerial job and he's 42 a fairly recently retired player and uh of course you know he's been a bench coach at least he's had coaching experience and that was the thing with some of those managers they were just going essentially from retirement to managing which was new or seemed to be new so you have a chat we have to end just wanted to mention marshawn lynch i forgot that that yeah

we've we've talked about a player getting ejected and then going and sitting in the stands in street clothes marshawn lynch did that he shoved an official in a game on thursday night and then going and sitting in the stands in street clothes. Marshawn Lynch did that. He shoved an official in a game on Thursday night and then showed up in the stands wearing a hoodie and just sat there, watched the rest of the game. Then he took Bart home and was wearing like a partial face mask, it looks like, and a cap and a hoodie, and people were taking pictures of him on Bart. And so, yeah uh that's the

scenario that we've discussed and it happened football not baseball but very fun well done marshall lynch and uh feedback also from our discussion yesterday of the al families and nl families in the mlb shop ad listener named andrew says while my family does have a specific team go nationals they did not go when that team is eliminated from the playoffs, we do switch our allegiance to the National League and root for the team that represents the league. We do not, however, go so far as to buy every team in the league's memorabilia and gear. So, yeah, I think that's the difference. I could see rooting for the NL or AL team that is the last standing, but not for every NL and AL team. So that's the difference.

All right, we got to go. And of course, just after we recorded an episode about the renaissance for older managers, Dusty Baker was fired. Somewhat surprising, but that's probably part of an episode in itself. So maybe we'll talk about that at length next time. Also, Jeff wanted me to mention that when he noted that Ron Gardenhire managed or coached teams had lost a bunch of postseason games consecutively, he overlooked this year's wildcard game, which of course the Diamondbacks won. So there was that one playoff victory in

there. Save your tweets and emails. You can support the podcast on Patreon at patreon.com slash effectively wild. Five listeners who've already pledged their support include nico zerbonia chris von brecht kevin dynan seth resnick and andy young 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 thanks to dylan higgins for editing assistance please keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming via email at podcast at fancrafts.com or via the Patreon messaging system.

Have a wonderful weekend. We will talk to you and discuss the World Series next week. I'll slide, I'll steal, I'll sacrifice my love and fly for you. I've been slumping all season

but now I've found a reason. I struck on the love that is true. I used to play the field. I used to be a homer. But the season's turning around for me now. I finally bagged me a homer. That's right.

I finally bagged me a homer. Lurleen, we're going to have to cut you off. We're getting some kind of grinding noise on the track.