Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1128: Two for Game 2

Episode Date: October 27, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the thrills, surprises, and unlikely heroes of World Series Game 2, the ongoing home-run barrage this October, and where the World Series stands, then discuss the Yankees’ decision not to bring back Joe Girardi and whether we’ve learned anything from this month’s managerial moves before returning one more […]

I opened the door I knew I wanted more Never seen something like this before Walk right out What would it sound? Walk right out, what was that? Walk right out, gotta go back Hello and welcome to episode 1128 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg, writer for The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs.

Hello. Yeah, okay. Yeah, we're in a weird position today of having to talk about Game 2, which is not an imposition. There was so much to talk about in Game 2, except the weird thing is that we've already talked about Game 2 for about four and a half hours. that we've already talked about game two for about four and a half hours, you and I, on a Patreon stream that we did exclusively for some of our Patreon supporters during the game on Wednesday night. So we talked throughout the entire thing from first pitch to last. So we have covered it very thoroughly,

and yet most of the people listening to this podcast have not heard any of that, cannot hear any of that. So we have to talk about it again in some form. And I guess now we have a little more perspective on it so we can talk about it in a different way than we did in the moment, which was mostly what is happening? How is this still going? Are we still talking? Is this game still happening? So we're going to talk about that for a little bit and I guess where the series stands. And then we have more managerial news. Joe Girardi fits into this trend seemingly of successful managers

getting dismissed regardless. And we have some emails to get to. So first game two thoughts, I guess, and you wrote about a couple aspects of that game today, which I'd be curious to hear you talk about. But the upshot is that this is one of the craziest games that any of us can remember seeing certainly at such a high profile moment. And the baseball gauge has a stat for this. This was of 655 World Series games played to date. This game had the 15th greatest total change in win expectancy, essentially. So one team goes ahead, its win expectancy increases. Another team retakes the lead or comes back, and that team's win expectancy increases. So the total win expectancy change ranked 15th of all 655 World Series games.

That is pretty good. And that's what it felt like at the time. And it felt even crazier, I think, because most of that stuff, most of the crazy wildness happened in a pretty compressed time frame, or at least innings wise. Like up until the eighth inning or so, we weren't thinking of this as a wacky, wild, all-time game. And then everything happened between basically the eighth and or so, we weren't thinking of this as a wacky, wild, all-time game. And then everything happened between basically the 8th and the 11th. I kind of already knew from having live blogged during baseball games that it's just a different

experience when you're actively doing something during the game that isn't just watching. So, you know, we were talking, you and me and some guests throughout the game and i think as a consequence of that i wasn't i wasn't thinking about what was happening bigger than just each moment that was going by so i had trouble thinking of of the big picture of it so i knew that it was a wild game but maybe it's it's my own fault for it not occurring to me while we were talking but it was only after the fact that i started thinking okay okay, am I going to write about this? How am I going to write about this? That it dawned on me like, oh, that was insane. That was an insane baseball game. It was really an insane three innings, I guess. And I still don't know how Cody Bellinger didn't hit a home run. This should

have been over. It was over in the ninth. Everyone knows it was over. I know. That was really crazy we didn't i did a draft of michael bauman of our favorite moments from this game and that didn't even make the list because there were so many but you're right that swing i mean every swing was a home run there for a while and some swings that didn't really look like home runs and like the altuve home run in particular i think was maybe the least home run looking. I don't know. There were some there that barely scraped over the fence

and maybe wouldn't have if it had been a normal temperature for a World Series game. So yeah, that's just off the bat. I mean, I don't know if it was the camera work or just the fact that it was deceptively off the end of the bat, but that really looked like a home run. But there was just so much to this game. And I had that same feeling. Maybe it was because we were talking continuously for so

long and trying to entertain people and looking at the chat window and taking listeners' questions and trying to figure out the technical difficulties and you were starving and hungry for chicken tenders. Let me say that even though I was set back by about an hour or an hour and a half, that only made the chicken tenders even better. Just smelling them as they warmed up in the oven for about seven and a half minutes, it was the light of my evening. It was a great baseball game, but nothing topped the chicken tenders. They were even better than they've ever been before. I'm happy to hear that. Yeah, that's the takeaway for most people from that night, is that your chicken tenders were delicious. And yeah, I didn't realize, I think, until it was over either.

And there were just so many incredible moments and comebacks. And some of them were the most improbable players involved. Charlie Culberson, for instance, hitting his first home run of the season, right? And then also the stars, all the stars were hitting home runs. And it was, you know, Jack Peterson hitting his first home run since July or whatever it was,

but it was also Altuve and it was Correa and Seager trading home runs and it was Springer hitting a home run. And you wrote about the Springer home run. What did you write about the Springer home run? I don't know how Cody Bellinger didn't hit a home run. Dallas Keuchel is in the New York Times saying, I 100% believe the ball

is Joe Juiced. And he said that presumably before yesterday's game. I don't think he was giving a quote about the Juiced ball after that game, although he could have because eight players hit home runs in the game. And Cody Bellinger wasn't one of them. He wasn't one of them. How did that not get out of the park? Sam was right. Sam was right when he said he hasn't thought a ball was a home run, and it hasn't been a home run in years. And I mean, that's like a statement of the home run spike, which I get. There's extra meaning behind it.

But yeah, no, everything was perfect. That was a walk-off. I think it was a walk-off home run. I don't know what happened to your stream. I think the game ended. I think the Dodgers are up 2-0 in the series. George Springer hit a home run. He hit a home run off Brandon McCarthy in the 11th inning. Probably the biggest home run in Astros history. It's important to win your first World Series game. Now, it took several home runs to get there,

but it wasn't much. It was just a quick little Instagraphs thing. But what was fun about the Springer bet against Brandonon mccarthy is that after mccarthy threw two fastballs that missed so he fell behind two and out of springer he threw two sliders i don't think either one of them was the well let me say this i know for a fact neither one of them was the slider that mccarthy wanted to throw to george springer because he would never want to throw sliders over the middle of the plate in the strike zone that's a bad area for a slider but he threw not one of them but he threw two of them in almost the exact same place if you look at game day there was basically the same slider the velocities were just a little bit off but

location was almost identical and baseball doesn't give you that many opportunities to have back-to-back like identical pitches yeah especially when you get to uh because neither one of them happened in a two strike count. You didn't have to worry about someone going into their like specific two strike approach. So it was a, it was just a fun little opportunity to look at, well, what happened? Why did Springer maybe foul off the first one?

And why did he hit the second one for a home run? Was there anything different between the two swings? And it's not, it's not super easy to analyze these things. And it's also, I don't know, maybe, maybe it's not super meaningful or insightful. But what was interesting is, you know, you you can picture a George Springer swing, and he it's a powerful swing. It's been a powerful swing ever since he was in the minor leagues is one of the most interesting prospects

ever. He takes a he takes a mighty hack gets his shoulders do like a full 180 rotation. And on the first slider, he had a foul ball and he looked like a classic springer swing just wrapped all the way around his body and then all of a sudden on the second swing he didn't really his his shoulders didn't rotate like that he kind of cut himself off he kind of cut down on a swing he he he looked like there's there's more mechanical stuff that goes into it but he just looked like a guy who was actually just trying to get the bat on the ball and hit it to center field which he did about 4 About 410 feet. George Springer cut down on a swing and hit a home run. That's the kind of era that we live in now, but I don't know. I thought

it was kind of neat. Yeah, and it's funny. At the time when we were watching the game and talking during the game, we didn't really give a second thought to Rich Hill being taken out of the game when he was. I mean, we noted it. Hey, there's a different pitcher to Rich Hill being taken out of the game when he was. I mean, we noted it. Hey, there's a different pitcher now. But we had talked in the first inning, maybe it was, about how long we thought Hill would go in this game. And we were initially thinking, well, maybe he could get through five. And then we actually said four.

And, I mean, that just seemed like the target. And I think there's a lot of kind of post hoc analysis here about how Roberts should have left him in longer. And I mean, his line was good. I don't know if he was actually as good as maybe the box score says he was. But regardless, I mean, this is what the Dodgers have done all season. They've had quick hooks with all their starters, especially Rich Hill. And their bullpen, of course, had been dominant in October. Maybe that was somewhat deceptive, but it had been very effective. And we know that they don't like to let guys in to face hitters multiple times in the game. And I mean, ultimately, they got to

Kenley Jansen with a lead. And almost every time, literally every time that the Dodgers had been winning after eight innings this year, they had won. And that's exactly the situation you want to be in. If you want to criticize Roberts had Josh Fields in so soon or Brandon McCarthy in so soon. So maybe you could say he should have stuck with an intermediate reliever longer than he did. But the initial decision to pull Hill after four, I really don't have a problem with. Yeah, it was kind of funny because I think that when you were done answering the prompt about how long you thought Rich Hill would last in the game the game early in the game I think that Hill was already out of the game so he he did his four innings and what 60 pitches but at the end of the day he got through the order two times the order order was turning over it's going to be Springer due up in the fifth this is why you have like all the good powerful ready is coming up yeah exactly this is why you have Maeda in the bullpen in the first

place is you want to you want to give Maeda about two innings and he'll knew full well that he was not going to be pushed there's an off day tomorrow which is today so you don't have to worry too much about overtaxing your bullpen it's just a second guessing that I don't understand given everything that happened after the fact I'm already predisposed to not really like managerial second guessing in the first place but you know sometimes there are things like Joe Girardi not challenging a ball that didn't hit Lonnie Chisholm. So that you can second guess. But in this case, just like you said, the Dodgers had Kevley Jansen on the mound, and they had a two run lead. Like that's, that's it. Sometimes, sometimes your best players just aren't there.

And if you, you have to remember, the Astros also then handed a two run lead to their outstanding closer and he blew the save it was just a weird night with baseball and i think that the last thing that i would have interest in talking about is like a managerial decision between the fourth and fifth innings exactly yeah there's so much to talk about with this game and so many individual heroics and just outright weirdness and randomness that this is the last game that we need to belabor managerial decisions i think there's just way way too much else to get into here so obviously this was a game full of very just gifable and memorable reaction faces and you know puig throwing his glove and seager

just holding his glove in a very phallic manner while he screamed after his home run or Correa's bat flip or Puig's opposite of a bat flip where he just gently lay the bat down and his constant licking of the bat a lot of airtime for tongues in this game I mean there was just a lot of personality and of course Culberson running around the bases with hitting any home run for that matter. But yeah, I mean, Dallas Keuchel was mad about it, right? He said, I don't know, that Culberson looked like he was over-celebrating, I guess. But I mean, it was such a crazy game by that point and such an unlikely homer. And Culberson's last couple of weeks have been crazy. And I think he said his family was there.

He was pointing at them or something so whatever I mean it it looked like he thought the score was different maybe but whatever it doesn't doesn't bother me if he celebrated a little more than the moment merited but I think that you know the better reaction was from Yasiel Puig who had a really nice quote about Carlos Correa's bat flip. And he's an opposing player. He's the very type of player who, you know, could have grounds to take offense at someone like Correa flipping a bat and celebrating. But instead, Puig said that this was great, that he was happy to see him happy and that he had every right to be excited. And Kenley Jensen said something similar, like, if you hit a home run

off me you deserve to celebrate you got me so good for you and so i i think that was one of the takeaways from this game is just how much fun emotion can be on a baseball field and it looked like everyone was really into it am i misremembering or is hunter strickland the last baseball player to actually get upset like like actually, like legitimately upset about like an emotional display in the playoffs. I know like Heichel said what he said about Culberson, but that's fine. That wasn't like an aggressive quote on his part. He just said Culberson looked like he won the World Series. Whatever. Yes, that's fine. It's true. It's accurate. But yeah, I don't know. I mean, it happens during the regular season all the time,

of course. But yeah, Strickland, a recent postseason example. But I mean, this was just a great showcase for some of the youngest and most exciting stars. Correa, Seeger, Bregman, not to mention Altuve homering, Puig homering. And yet there was also the unexpected and Marwin Gonzalez and Charlie Culbertson. And you wrote about Marwin Gonzalez too, right? And you called it the Rajai Davis moment. Yeah, and I had forgotten. I love going back to the Rajai Davis clip

and just kind of wanting to forget about everything that happened after it because as far as I wanted to be concerned, the season ended with that home run. It was kind of an annoying tie game after the fact. But I had forgotten that as Rajai Davis started running the bases bases he stuck his tongue All the way out and that was showcased

In glorious Fox slow motion As he looked at his own dugout so kind of a Yasiel Puig predecessor By a year a little under a year But yeah I've tried hard To recall the Davis home run Because it would be easy to lose given that the Indians Lost the game two innings later there was a lot

That happened and it would be easy to forget about what that home run meant but I just can't allow myself to forget that it was maybe the most improbable high leverage event I've ever seen on a baseball field to do that to Chapman and and the image that I have in my head is Davis choked like three quarters of the way up the bat when he hit the ball remain unclear quite how he did that but Marwin Gonzalez as well just choked way up way up up the bat when he hit the ball remain unclear quite how he did that but marwin gonzalez as well just choked way up way up on the bat and he's he was already choking up a little bit uh in the playoffs i don't know if he's been doing it all season but choked up to hit kenley jansen uh he hit an owen i did i didn't notice when we were doing our live podcast stream but it was an owen

two pitch that he hit uh i wasn't paying close enough attention. I kind of figured the game was already over because, you know, Kenley Jansen was pitching, but Jansen got ahead 0-2, threw a cutter, pretty much middle middle, and Gonzalez hit it out to center field, which he doesn't do a lot of. And I know there was some talk after the game and Jansen said himself that he screwed up. He wanted the pitch to be somewhere else. But one of the most amazing things about Kenley Jansen is his stuff is so good. He doesn't even when he makes a mistake, it's good. You know, like he for several years in a row, he's had one of baseball's highest rates of swinging strikes on pitches thrown just right down the middle this year when he got ahead 0-2 in the regular season,

which he did 98 times. He didn't allow a single home run. He struck out 60 of those batters. And I couldn't tell if this was as crazy when i found it as it seems like it is but kenley jansen this year had a higher swinging strike rate on pitches right down the middle than he had on all pitches in the strike zone i think that's crazy maybe that's not as crazy as it seems but it seems crazy yeah definitely seems unusual like it's almost as if people aren't expecting him to make a mistake and give them a hittable pitch, so they're so taken aback by it. I don't know. It is like just stuck in your office on the last few minutes before you leave on a Monday or something just because it's so routine. And typically it is. And usually the workday is over when Kenley Jensen is in the game, but not this time.

And there was just so much other ancillary weirdness surrounding the actual on-field stuff, whether it was Justin Verlander emerging from the clubhouse with his hairy, hairy arms on display just to yell at his teammates, exhort them to win the game, presumably. And there was a nearby building on fire, and there was someone in the stands jumping into the dugout and getting thrown out. And then, of course, there were the crazy deflections in this game. The hat brim and Laz Diaz, the umpire, getting nailed on a pickoff throw. So every time one of those things happened, it was like, oh, okay, we are really seeing something here.

I don't know what, but this is special. I'm really pleased. So I don't know if the run is going to score on the wild pickoff that hit Laz Diaz in the leg, but I'm really pleased that that was offset by the bill of Chris Taylor's hat because it would have left a weird taste in my mouth if it felt like one of the sides got super lucky. And I know that that doesn't really make sense

because teams get lucky in games all the time, but it seemed like the ball that hit Taylor's hat probably, well, Carson Sestouli actually wrote a post about this. I think he estimated that it cost the Astros most of one run. And then you figure that wild pickoff might have cost the Astros much of one run, depending on exactly where that ball was going to go. That was a very wild pickoff. So who knows if that could have been two bases and a run.

But in any case, I was happy to see the luck even out. And on a slightly separate, well, actually, no, forget the separate note, because I don't think that we mentioned at any point last night that there was a fire. There was like a fire next door, but I had the broadcast muted, just like you did. So did you know? Was it ever on the TV? It may have been on the TV, but I wasn't really listening to the TV. And so, no, I was not aware that there was a fire going on while we were watching the game. Yep. No further point.

There was a fire. Something was burning. Yep. Sure. Yeah, I keep almost having to remind myself that the series is just getting started almost. This was not the finale. It feels like this should have been the finale. When Game 7 was wild and crazy last year, that was it.

That ended the series and the season. And that felt appropriate. And now we're just, there are two games here and it's tied 1-1. And obviously this was a huge win for the Astros and being down 2-0 would have been a bad spot to be in. But they split, which is what they probably would have hoped for or expected coming into two games in la and now they go back and really it's any one series and hopefully somehow these next games can compete with clayton kershaw throwing a gem in the world series and

then whatever that was on wednesday night so i don't know how you follow up those two games, but it's a tall order. Well, okay. So at this point, I think that it would be fun for you and I to draft the best moments from your draft of the best moments from game two. So we can do this. So you might remember Cameron Mabin tweeted to the effect

if he won everyone in America a taco because Cameron Mabin stole a base. I don't know if anyone's noticed i haven't heard it mentioned but no one's really stolen any bases in these playoffs it just hasn't been part of it and this is kind of what you'd expect because everyone is hitting home runs and and only home runs so there's not really many stolen base opportunities in the first place but just to put this in perspective, so far in the playoffs, there have been 18 stolen bases. I can remember half of one of them. So they clearly have not been memorable steals.

Javier Baez is the only player in the playoffs with more than one stolen base. I also, again, have zero recollection of that. But I do have conveniently some numbers going back in the wild card era so starting in 1995 and the fewest stolen bases in any playoffs previous to this year over those i guess 22 years would be 24 so there were 24 steals in 2006 and in the 2006 playoffs there were fewer games than they have already been played in these playoffs so uh clearly these playoffs are well behind last year there were 41 steals the year before there were 46 not too surprising because the royals were in

those playoffs and last year i don't know did the indians steal a bunch feels like the indians might have stolen a bunch so this year has played two fewer games than playoffs last year that's two fewer games and there have been 23 fewer stolen bases. So and I prepared a very haphazard stat segment, but it's there. It touches on this theme and what we were talking about last night. I could get into it now, but I'll wait. I'll hold off on that. Yeah. So you mentioned the Dallas Keuchel quote. He said, I think the balls are juiced 100%. Major League Baseball wants to put on a show. So do you think that it was a good show if that's what they want? I mean, obviously that game was a good show,

but eight home runs is a record in a World Series game. And I've seen some suggestions to the effect of this is too much. It feels like too all or nothing. Home runs are cheap, and we've probably touched on this in past podcasts, but that was a very, very visible example of what baseball looks like in 2017 at the extremes. So did that take it too far for you, or did you like it? Because, I mean, the suspense, I think, of if you're one run down, it feels like anyone, including Charlie Culberson, can hit a home run off of anyone at any time. And granted, you don't necessarily have to hit the ball all that well to

get it out, particularly when it's warm. But I think there was some narrative benefit to that, too. Yeah, I'm at a point where I don't know if I'm just not adapted to it or what. I enjoyed the last night's game quite a bit aside from the responsibility of having to talk for four and a half hours through it yeah but I I mean the way that the game has been talked about it's one of I know there's recency bias and whatnot but it seems like one of the most exciting and memorable playoff baseball games in recent history people have compared it to last year's game seven or to game six from 2011, which is an all timer. So I don't know if this one's going to stand up to that because there's still more of the

series to be played. But I agree with you. I know that something is missing in that you've missed some of that strategy and stringing hits together and sort of building the drama. But the counter to that is that when home runs are everywhere, when Charlie Culberson is hitting home runs, although parentheses Cody Bellinger not still don't get it yeah it means that even though you don't have like the the mounting drama of of runners reaching base you have the just constant anxiety of the next swing could cause a ball to leave the yard and I know that's always been there because no one's ever been like incapable of hitting a home run but it just means that yeah the game can swing at any second and

that's i know it's different but you know there's there's a difference between something being different and something being worse and i think that humans are ill-equipped to examine which is happening when it's actually happening i think you need some time to pass and the home run spike is still really new right and what was it the dodgers had more runs scored than hits in this game and they didn't even have a non-home run hit until the 10th was it until Marwin Gonzalez or I think it was Kike right oh right until Kike yeah Marwin Gonzalez not on the Dodgers yeah so I think uh that that was weird weird box score weird line but this is what baseball looks like now. So I guess we can move on a bit by this point. Hopefully everyone listening has digested this

game and read many articles about it and relived it several times. So we will continue to do so as this World Series goes on. But a few thoughts just before we get to some emails about Joe Girardi's dismissal. His contract was up and the Yankees announced that he would not be coming back for 2018. According to Girardi, this was not his decision. The Yankees made this call. They acknowledged that they made this call. And now we have a trend, right? We have three examples of something similar. This is, well, A, it's the first time that a manager has been fired after taking a team to a championship series since, I believe, 2006 when Ken Maka was let go after the A's made it there. And this is the first time ever that three playoff teams have changed managers for any reason in the span of one winter. So this is definitely unusual. And so the question is always, is it meaningful? Does it mean something significant or is it a coincidence? And I think that, I mean...

Hold on, can I interrupt? Yeah, sure. So Ben, why do you think that this is? I saw that you wrote an article about this on The Ringer, and I would be very interested to hear your insight. Oh, thanks for teeing me up there. Yeah, I think obviously there's been a backlash to all of these firings, particularly Baker and Girardi. And I'm saying firings here, and they're not what Farrell was, I guess. But Baker's contract was up, and Girardi's contract was up. It's renewal, not renewal, not bringing

back, letting go. They're changing managers. And I think obviously because these teams all won 90 something games and got to the playoffs, the immediate reaction is this doesn't make sense. And none of these managers really had, I mean, maybe the Girardi-ALDES game two non-challenge on the hit-by-pitch is certainly a glaring and memorable mistake, but it didn't end up knocking the Yankees out of the playoffs. So you kind of got the sense that that was going to be forgotten to a certain extent. And sure, there were controversial, feral, and dusty decisions, but nothing, I think, that rose to the level of Grady Little or even Buck Showalter. And given all the success that these teams had, I think certainly with

Dusty and Girardi, there was a lot of consternation about this. And I mean, obviously, these guys, I would think, were not fired because their teams didn't do well enough. I mean, I think there has to be more to the story. Girardi just has never had a losing season with the Yankees, which is saying something because there have been three seasons when the Yankees were outscored during his tenure. And he had some pretty lousy rosters of old, aging, expensive people who weren't worth their salaries. And so he managed to bridge that gap, kind of that rebuilding time, lean years, I guess, relatively lean by Yankee standards, and got them to this new hopeful era of a new, young,

more cost-effective, charismatic core. And now he is being let go right as that core is blossoming. So seems unfair. He's won a World Series with the team. He's made six postseason appearances with the team. He's had the occasional flare up and his players don't seem to love him. He's not cuddly and warm and reporters don't necessarily love him, but he's done just fine. It's not Matt Williams. It's not Bobby Valentine. It's a big media market, lots of scrutiny. And for the most part, the Yankees have been pretty drama free. So on the surface, it doesn't make sense. And so I just have to think that like all managerial moves, it's difficult to evaluate from afar we vote for Manager of the Year awards because there's just so much of what a manager does that is unseen. And most of the conversations they have with players, we're not privy to. And their relationship with ownership and GMs in the front office, we barely see.

We get glimpses of. Maybe we hear about secondhand, but we don't really see it. We're not there. And that is so important, particularly in this era when the front office sort of reigns supreme. And I think it's generally acknowledged that good teams become good teams, not necessarily because the manager is good, although that certainly helps, but because of drafting and player development and transactions. And ultimately, I think the front office's priority is having a manager who works well with the front office and takes instructions and has civil conversations and

works well with them, communicates well with them. And so I have to assume that in each of these cases, there was some breakdown in that communication. And that doesn't mean it's necessarily the outgoing manager's fault. For all we know, the GM, the front office, the ownership was more responsible. But if that happens, if there is some kind of tension there, it's not the GM who's going to move on and the manager who stays, unless it's Mike Socia and the Angels, it is going to be the manager who moves. And so I don't know what to make of it other than to say purely on a wins and losses and postseason appearances basis, it's crazy that the Yankees

don't want Joe Girardi back. But the very fact that it's so crazy on the surface makes me think that there's just a lot under the surface that we have no idea about. And the thing that each of these announcements has in common is that none of the teams has said really a thing about why they made these decisions. Dave Dombrowski had a strange kind of awkward evasive press conference where he just straight up said, I'm not going to tell you what happened. I'm not going to share any facts. I'm not going to get into the details of why we made this decision. And then Mike Rizzo said something vague about how well we want to win a World Series. And, you know, I guess the implication there is that Dusty has not won a World consideration, but did not get into what the consideration was of or what the result of that consideration was. So I don't want to just kind of defer to authority here, but ultimately, we don't know why these guys were let go. And presumably, there were reasons other than they didn't win a World Series this year.

And presumably there were reasons other than they didn't win a World Series this year. So to me, I think there had to be more to it. And maybe ultimately, if that relationship has broken down in some way, you do need a new voice, even if it's not really fair to the outgoing manager. You made the good point that if you have a difference of opinion or a perception between the manager and the general manager, it's going to be the manager almost always who who moves on or at least has to i don't know kowtow to the executive because it just it's a lot more difficult to replace an entire front office than it is to replace a manager with a manager you just get a new coaching staff they're out there there you can find one at any neighborhood bar there's probably a man hanging out with four or five

other men who can fulfill their baseball responsibilities but we've spent or thinks they can yeah we're definitely who thinks they can and some of those people have gotten jobs as well but we have spent so much time over the past few years talking about conceding that we don't really know how to evaluate managers but maybe jeff passner wrote about this too just on thursday talking about how managers have just lost so much power over the past several decades because they used to be the focal point of entire organizations. It would be the manager who was making roster decisions and saying, I want this guy or actually going to get that guy. I don't know who actually would sign off on these things in like 1974, but the manager was the guy.

And we know that has eroded the power hierarchy within baseball organizations is extremely top heavy now, kind of like America. But one of the points I guess we maybe haven't spent enough time discussing is who would want to be a manager then? I mean, I know there's a seven figure contract in it for you and you get to be around a baseball team. So obviously there are a lot of perks, but I mean, if you give even half of a crap about your job, then you just live with this constant tumult of stress and anxiety and being separated from your family. And you're having to manage all these young jerks who just have like never failed. So they don't know how to be humble a lot of the time. And you just get blamed for everything 90% of the time for

reasons that people don't understand what they're even talking about. They just think they're just you're being second guessed or being second guessed by the media. And if you do something well, nobody knows because you'd think Dusty Baker, John Farrell, Joe Girardi did some things well, their teams made the playoffs, they won their divisions, or at least two of them won their divisions, the other one lost to one of the other ones. But those teams all very good, you would think those managers would be safe, but we don't know. And now they're out of their jobs. So what do you who would want this for themselves? Yeah, it's never been an easy job. And now there's less power that goes with it. Although more money. So again, there are perks. But yeah, I mean, I think it's just,

it's simplistic, I think, to say that, well, the manager of the team that won the most games or exceeded expectations by the most had to have been the best manager, which is essentially what we do with the Manager of the Year award every year. Who knows, right? I mean, probably they were a good manager, but were they actually the best manager? I don't know. And Joe Girardi, by the way, never won one with the Yankees, maybe because the Yankees are expected to do well. And so when they do well, like you're not going to win manager of the year award for having like an 85 win team that wasn't expected to be good and got outscored, but somehow won 85 games anyway, which is what Joe Girardi did. that team or that a losing team had a bad manager. I mean, it's just, you know, it's very much results-based analysis because that's all we have.

We can't necessarily see the process except for what goes on in the three hours or so of the game. And often that is not as important as the other stuff that's going on. So we're just working with very incomplete information, basically, is what I'm saying. And, you know, maybe, I mean, the risk, I guess, is that it could be a whole lot worse. Like, we don't know what was going on behind the scenes. For all we know, Joe Girardi wasn't returning Brian Cashman's texts or something. I don't know what the state of their relationship was, but it could be a lot worse, right? And maybe you can always be looking for greener pastures and saying, I'll find the perfect manager and we'll work in harmony together forever.

But that doesn't always happen. And sometimes the person is not as well suited to you and to the team as as he might appear in an interview and things you know with the scrutiny and the pressure and the second guessing and how quickly games move I think those relationships can probably sour more quickly than you imagine and you just never necessarily know how a manager is going to gel with a certain group of players and front office people so you do leave yourself open to risk. The Yankees knew that they could win postseason series and win a World Series with Joe Girardi. And now they'll be hiring someone who has not proven that he can do that in this market

with this team. And every now and then there's a Matt Williams or a Bobby Valentine situation, and that's the risk and the downside. So that's what you leave yourself open to by going away from the familiar person. But again, I mean, it's just it's so cyclical. I mean, we've seen kind of the out with the old in with the new with Brad Ausmus and Walt Weiss and Matt Williams and all these people. And then the new went out and the old came back in again whether it was Gardenhier now or Baker or Bud Black and now some of the olds are out again and the news are in so I mean it's just back and forth and stat head in old school and young and old and

disciplinarian and players manager and it has always been this way and it will always probably be this way. I'd like to address a point you brought up early, just several minutes ago. You said that you could never win a manager of the year award with just like a 500 team or a team that overachieves but isn't successful. I had a hunch, so I didn't remember for sure. But back in 2003, the Royals were surprisingly not terrible. And Tony Pena actually did win the manager of the year award that year with the Royals going 83 and 79. But another fun fact, this is one of those things that's lost to recent history that I had completely forgotten about. I don't know if you had, but Joe Girardi has won a manager of the year award. He won it in 2006. Help me piece this together. I've forgotten. I

forgot about that entirely. Joe Girardi won in 2006. He was the manager of the Florida. It was then the Florida Marlins won that award over Willie Randolph, Bruce Bochy, Grady Little, Charlie Manuel, Jerry Nairn, Phil Garner. Okay, here's here's the thing. Joe Girardi won the award. Great job, Joe Girardi. 18 of looks like 30 first place votes that year, maybe 32. The Marlins finished in fourth place. Willie Randolph, second place manager of the year, team finished first. Bruce Bochy, third place manager of the year, his team finished first. That I don't care about. Okay, so maybe I'm forgetting what the circumstances were. But in 2005, the Florida Marlins were managed by Jack McKeon, and they went 83 and 79. And in 2006,

Joe Girardi was the manager of the Marlins, and he won the manager of the year award, and they went 78 and 84 they finished in fourth place in 2005 they finished in third place it but what happened to let Joe Girardi win that award hmm they still had Miguel Cabrera it's all not like there was the fire sale but in 2005 let me just confer let me make sure that Jack McKeon didn't also win the award somehow in 2005. And the answer is no. No, not only did Jack McKeon not win the NL Manager of the Year award in 2005, when the Marlins were better than they were in 2006, he didn't even get a single vote. Bobby Cox won the award.

But then the seven other managers who even showed up on ballots are Tony La Russa, Phil Garner, Frank Robinson, Ned Yost, Charlie Manuel, Bruce Boshy, and Willie Randolph. Jack McKeon managed the Marlins to a record that was several games better than Joe Girardi in 2006, and he didn't even get a throwaway vote. What happened? I don't know. It's a weird award. I wish it weren't an award, sort of. Maybe it's an award that should be voted on by players or something instead of writers who are kind of just guessing about who deserves it and who doesn't. By the way, in my article, I embedded a Buster Only tweet about how teams want AJ Hinch now as a manager because he is stat savvy and media friendly and an easygoing guy. And then right

after I published that article, a report surfaced on TMZ that he was in a bar fight basically, or some kind of bar altercation after game one of the World Series, which, you know, maybe not the most reliable source, except that one of my colleagues at the ringer Called the police department in Pasadena And the lieutenant he spoke to Confirmed every detail that was in that report So maybe not the most easygoing guy I don't know But anyway That's kind of the risk

Is that maybe a manager looks like A great candidate or perfect replacement And then maybe it's not all That he's cracked up to be I don't know I don't know AJ Hinch Anyway it was just weird timing to have an easygoing guy tweet followed very quickly by a report about cops being called to a bar altercation. the 2006 Marlins. And so one thing that did happen is in the offseason before that, the Marlins traded Carlos Delgado and they traded in that package, Josh Beckett, Mike Lowell and Guillermo Mota. And they got Hanley Ramirez in that move and Anibal Sanchez. They also traded Paula Duca.

They traded Luis Castillo. Look, OK, I kind of get it. I understand they traded Juan Pierre. I see where you're going. I see where you're going, voters, from 2006. And those Marlins were projected to win 71 games. It's not very good. And they won 78. But they won 78 games. They won fewer. You can't let them. This offseason, we're going to have to fill a lot of podcasts, right? There's not going to be a whole lot of baseball. We're going to talk exclusively to people who voted for the 2006 National League Manager of the Year Award. We're going to have to pry some memories because this is nonsense. What a nonsense award for Joe Girardi to win. And he didn't win one with the—that's absurd. Maybe you just get a boost for having to work for Jeffrey Loria. It's just automatic extra votes. I don't know.

All right. Well, we've talked for quite a while already. Did you have a stat segment that you wanted to get to? Or do you want to save it? I mean, I don't want to save it because it belongs in the email episodes. We've answered zero emails. I don't know what we're going to talk about tomorrow. So anyway, quick stat segment.

This is actually going to be super quick. So it's going to be about home runs. I put no extra effort into this. But yesterday, as we talked about a little during our live shouldn't say broadcast our live talking for a while the astros and the dodgers combined to score 13 runs 10 of which scored on home runs that's a lot there were eight different players who hit home runs in the game that's tied for the most ever in a playoff game only one other game has had eight players hit home runs in the game that was a game between the Cubs and the Cardinals in 2015. Anyway, I just wanted to quickly update

where we stand with this year's playoff Guillen number. So we talked about this a little last night, Guillen number being the percentage of all runs scored that score on home runs. For example, the Dodgers and Astros combined to have 10 runs scored on home runs out of 13 total runs. So the Guillen number for last night's game would be about 77%. So this year, league total guillen number was 43 43 of all runs in major league baseball during

the regular season scored on home runs that was up from last year's high of 40 which was up from the previous year's high of 37 home runs everywhere everybody knows this so this year in the playoffs i've got data going back to 1995 and the overall average GIA number for the regular season, 36%. And in the playoffs, it's 39%. I don't think that's surprising that more runs would score on homers. It's because hits are harder to come by in the playoffs. We've talked about this.

Anyway, this year's playoff GIA number. Do you have a guess? And I will give you this information as background. 2014 playoff Gen number 33%. 2015, 42%. Last year, 42%. Where do you think this year's playoff Guillen number is? I will say, see, you wrote about this once already, this postseason.

At the time, it was around 50%, right, I think? So I think it seems like it's gone up since then. So I'm going to say 56%. Well, that's too high. It's 51. It's 51%. It's actually 51.3%. 141 runs have scored this year in the playoffs on home runs out of 275 total runs.

So this is I only have numbers going back to 1995 because I don't really care about playoff stats for the wildcard here. There just weren't that many playoff games, but Gia number through the roof. Officially, we are over the 50% mark doesn't mean we're going to end there. There's still between three and five more baseball games to go but over the 50% mark and we talked a little bit about this I think a month or three ago during a podcast about how high the Guillen number could go before I think people started getting turned off. And I don't know. We kind of drew a mental line, I think, around 50%. But I don't know.

If this playoff baseball were all baseball, would people watch it? Like, how entertaining would this be if this were all the time? Right. Yeah, it's really hard to say just because the stakes are always so high in the playoffs that you just don't notice things like that. So if every game were like this, yeah, I mean, we're already getting some people complaining or saying that this is not the kind of baseball they like. So I would imagine that those complaints would be a lot louder. And I really, I don't know. I really don't know where the point is

where people actually do something about it instead of just saying they prefer a different type of baseball, but actually just stop watching the sport, stop going to the games, stop buying the merchandise. I'm not sure when we get to that point. Maybe we already have for some people, but not enough to notice, I don't think. Yep.

So I guess we should just do like a few emails maybe we could maybe we should just save emails for tomorrow because we we don't have a baseball game to talk about on tomorrow's show that we have not already talked about so i've got plenty emails and i have one more thing to mention which is that Joe Torre admitted in a phone interview on Thursday that that passed ball in game five of the NLDS between the Cubs and the Nats was called incorrectly. We talked about this at the time, read the rules. We said why we thought that this was not a judgment call in the way that the umpire thought it was. We read the umpire thought it was we read the umpire's quote which said in my judgment several times and joe tory was on sirius xm and he

said the whole rule interpretation there's rules and then there's instructions to the umpires there's separate books and what jerry's feeling was that the interference didn't take precedence over the fact that the ball was already past Wieters when the contact took place. However, the rule states, and you probably have read the rule, that when contact is made, in other words, when the bat came around and hit the catcher's mask, it's a dead ball. It's a dead ball. And that's the one thing that should have taken precedence. So Torrey agreed with our interpretation and I think most observers' interpretation at

the time, once we had all had time to read the rulebook, and found that that was the incorrect call and that the ball should have been dead there. And that was, I don't know if it was a pivotal play, perhaps not, but an important play, certainly. And the game continued. Wieters threw the ball away. A run scored. The Nats lost. And Torrey said that Dusty Baker could have had the umpires do what he called

a rule check using the replay center so I guess if you think that an umpire has misinterpreted a rule you can ask for like a replay of that interpretation essentially so he did not do that and I don't know maybe in its own way that's like a slightly lesser version of the Joe Girardi not calling for a replay review. But who knows what would have been different, but that at least backs up the angst of Nationals fans who felt like that was an unfair call against them. This is officially the latest in October that the Washington Nationals have ever been delivered good news. Although I guess it's also terrible news. Yeah, I don't know which one it is so you know what here's the problem with joe tory mentioning that you could do a rules check

is that now so there was this he says that uh that baker could have called for rules check after a call wasn't made because the call was not made that it was a dead ball right so i don't know what you would have been able to do under those circumstances, but if Torrey says that you could do a rule check after a non-call is made, this just opens the door for any manager to say, check the rules on a balk. You didn't call a balk, but you should just see if somebody balked.

Or if there is a balk, do a rule check. Let me know if he actually balked. Just constant nonstop rule checks about balks. And maybe if you do this often enough, umpires will internalize what a bach actually is yeah i i mean i don't think it's possible i don't think any of us has ever mastered that by the way while we were talking aj hinch denied the report that it seemed to have been confirmed and he said there was no altercation it's a shame i get asked about

fabrications and nonsense so i don't know it's uh kind of a he said he said at this point between hinch and a police representative that my colleague spoke to but anyway who knows what to believe oh what are what are the exact words thatinch used? He said there was no altercation? Yes. So, I don't know. If there's an exchange of words, does that count as an altercation? Look, I didn't read the TMZ link, so I don't know what is reported to have happened, but it seemed like maybe it was just people yelling at

one another a little bit. Yeah, some people criticizing the Astros it said. I think the report said that that caused Hinch to snap and that he yelled at the fans or that the incident turned physical and police had to be called. So I really don't, I don't know what the truth was here, but anyway, not particularly important, I suppose. Mostly I'm just glad that AJ Hinch didn't say it was fake news. Yeah. All right. So yeah, we've done a full episode here. So let's save

emails, some playoff related, some not for tomorrow. And we'll just do an email show. And you've already done your stat segment. So you're off the hook unless you feel like coming up with another one. And that'll be that. And by the way, on the subject of Joe Girardi and the 2006 Marlins, there was the fact that the Marlins had the lowest payroll in baseball that year and were in wildcard contention. And then there was an incident earlier in the year or in August when Girardi was nearly fired after arguing with Jeffrey Luria during a game when Luria was heckling a home plate umpire and the umpire warned Girardi about it. And so Girardi then told Lauria to shut up basically so maybe it was solely because writers approved of Girardi telling Lauria to shut up so that's a different from the Lauria boost I was postulating earlier

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Thanks to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance. As mentioned, Michael Babin and I did a draft of all of our favorite moments from Game 2, so if you haven't gotten your fill of hearing about that game, go check it out. It's on the Winger MLB Show feed. Keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming via podcast at fangraphs.com

or via the Patreon messaging system. Jeff and I might be able to do another livestream for Patreon supporters during the World Series this weekend. We're trying to figure out our schedules. We're under the obligations to blog during or immediately after games, but we had a good time doing it, so

we will send that notification out to Patreon supporters if we're able to do it. And thanks for listening. We will be back soon. ...... ... ... ......... Much too late. Much too late.