Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1131: This One Goes to Seven

Episode Date: November 1, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the historic nature of the 2017 World Series and discuss World Series Game 6, including Josh Reddick’s record in clutch situations, David Roberts’ Rich Hill hook, a Justin Verlander decision, and the Astros’ and Dodgers’ different approaches to pitcher usage, then analyze Game 7’s pitching predicaments and the […]

Hello and welcome to episode 1131 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangrass presented by our Patreon supporters. I'm Edmund Berg of The Ringer joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello. Hello. We are recording after game six, but before game seven, some of you may be hearing this after game seven. So I don't know how much we'll talk about game seven, probably a bit. There's at least one thing i want to ask you but we're gonna do some emails and we can always talk about game six of course i think we all sort of hoped and almost sensed that there was going to be a game seven at no point when the astros had a one nothing lead in this game on the george springer homer was I thinking, well, this is about to be over. And as it turns out, it was not. And I'm kind of happy that it was not. I have no rooting interest here.

But if you are a neutral party, so I mean, if you're basically anyone other than an Astros fan, or I guess someone who hates the Dodgers, a Giants fan, you would be rooting for a game seven just to stave off the offseason for one more day. And also because this has been a great series. And I think going to game seven gives the series a chance to be one of the all-time classics, one of the world series that you mentioned on the short list of greatest series ever. And I think that would take a good game seven. It can't just be a blowout or something. But if we get a game seven that's reasonably competitive, I think we can probably start talking about the series in that light

and probably the various statistical measures of how you might appraise a series greatness would reflect that. Well, I'm going to guess, I don't know for sure, but I'm going to guess that you already have the idea that I have because I only know of the baseball gauge through you. But have you considered or have you already sent an email to Dan Hirsch asking about total series championship probability added? Well, I didn't have to because it is already on the site and updated. The baseball gauge is great.

And there are a couple of ways you could look at this. You could look at this in terms of the total change in championship win probability. So that's a little different than just the individual game probability. You could also just add up the total changes in win probability added in each game. And either way you do it, 2017 World Series already ranks pretty highly. And if you just go by total changes in win expectancy in each

individual game and you add those up together, then the 2017 World Series after six games already ranks 20th in terms of total change. And that's not just for World Series. That's just, that's for any playoff series ever. So that's pretty impressive. And just eyeballing it, almost every series ahead of it has been a seven-game series, as you would expect. There are a couple exceptions there. And then if you go by total championship win probability added so that is taking into account each team's

chances not just of winning each individual game but also of winning the series then it is 22nd currently and obviously everything ahead of it is a world series in this case because we're talking about championship win probability added which is uh more at stake in the Championship Series, or rather the World Series. The Championship Series is a different thing. So 22nd after Game 6 and every series ahead of it is a series that went to seven games. So I have to think that if we get at all a competitive game in Game 7, this thing is going to vault up the leaderboard and is going to be on the short list, if not at the top. And the series at the top, you know, you're talking about legendary series, 1924, 1975, 1912, 2011, 1997. These are the great ones.

And this series is probably going to end up among them if this is at all a competitive finish and the the story checks out because one of the lowest world series by this rating is the 2007 uh red sox rockies which i remember is i think the rockies essentially forfeit before game one yeah you can also look at this in terms of the average change in win probability added so like basically just take the average play in every game of the series, how momentous or exciting was it? And already pretty exciting by that measure. I think the 2017 World Series looks like it's maybe 11th or so in terms of the championship win probability added per play so i mean yeah any way you slice it this is i guess you would say on pace to be one of the best world series ever has been to this point so i i hope it ends appropriately there's a category on the site and i'm not telling anybody anything they don't already know but you can sort you can sort this whole list it's a list that shows every playoff series i think basically ever and you can uh you can sort by the highest championship probability that the losing team had.

So for example, last year, when the Cubs beat the Indians, at one point, the Indians maxed out at a 91.5% chance of winning the World Series. That's very high. Bully to the Cubs for getting rid of that. But I clicked on the list so I could sort by the do highest so that the biggest advantages blown. So we've got the 1986 World Series where the Mets beat the Red Sox. People remember that series for a variety of reasons. And the Red Sox topped out at a 99.3% chance of winning the series. So winning the World Series. But second on the list is the ALCS that year that the Red Sox won,

where they beat the Angels, also 99.3%. So the Red Sox pulled off one of the most miraculous rallies in play. I guess at that point, it would have been the most miraculous rally in playoff history. And they followed that with the Mets pulling off the most miraculous rally in playoff history against that same team. So boy, that sucks. Yeah, I'm understanding the devastating Buckner play more and more as my life goes on. Right. Yeah. I mean, we don't know. It doesn't have a comeback percentage for this series yet because we don't know which team is the losing team. So you can't say what the losing team's highest win probability was during the series. But even, I mean, if regardless, really, like if you go by the Astros, right? I mean, the Astros were a few innings away from winning last night.

And so their probability would be pretty high if they don't end up winning the series. And it depends, of course, what happens tonight. If the Dodgers take an early lead or something and then end up losing it then their win probability added would be pretty high but it is interesting because like well when you look at the best series of all time I think it's not a surprise that usually the comeback percentage or the highest probability that the losing team the eventual losing team had during the series it tends to be pretty high, as you would expect, just because these are all close, exciting series. So like, for instance, the 1924 World

Series, which is at the top of this list in various ways, the New York Giants who lost the series had an 87.6% chance to win at one point. So generally, the numbers tend to be, it looks like in the 80s, even in the 90s, in these really good series. So hopefully that is what we will get with this one too. And that some fan base will be very sad because they will have had their victory snatched away. So we're only through the six games, of course, but I'm looking at the series. I love the baseball gauge. So thank you so much for bringing this to my attention underrated yeah tweet this out so so far through six uh as as we all understand neither team has really pulled away in the series so neither team has gotten super close to wrapping up the uh the championship of the dodgers championship odds maxed out at 78 it was in

the bottom of the seventh inning of game two, they were ahead of the Astros three to one. And Will Harris had just uncorked a wild pitch, I guess that moved Cody Bellinger to second base. I don't remember that inning specifically, but Dodgers up three to one Kenley Jansen looming. So 78% chance at that point that the Dodgers would win the World Series. Of course, they lost the game, they lost more games. The Astros championship probability maxed out at looks like what is 100 minus this 87.3%. 87.3% they achieved yesterday winning the World Series after Marwin Gonzalez doubled off Rich Hill as the second batter in the top of the fifth. He followed a Brian McCann single and Brian McCann cannot score from first base on a double.

I don't know if it's ever happened it certainly definitely did not happen last night turned into a very crucial inning which I guess we should probably discuss to uh somewhat because it was it was one of the two innings that completely turned the game yesterday and uh and Justin Verlander hit after Josh Reddick struck out. And that's something that A.J. Hinch was never not going to do. He was always going to let Verlander hit in that situation, but boy, it looks bad now. Yeah, I know. Right. And I feel bad about it, kind of, because both of us have written about Josh Reddick's historic career unclutchness. And I don't know about you, you wrote your article,

what, two or three years ago. I wrote mine this season, kind of updating what you had done and finding that it was still true that Josh Reddick, extremely unclutch, historically speaking. And of course, we're not making any kind of character judgment here. We're just saying that in terms of high leverage opportunities and low leverage opportunities, Josh Reddick has consistently and often in some seasons extremely been worse in high leverage opportunities. And so if you look at Fangraphs as a stat for that, it just compares a player's own production to his usual production, just what he does in high leverage situations and low leverage situations. And Reddick just consistently has a large differential there. And often you see players who go from clutch to unclutch from season to season. That's

why usually we say it's more descriptive than predictive. But in Reddick's case, it has been pretty predictive. And I don't know. I mean, you take a big enough sample of thousands and thousands of baseball players, maybe one of them is just going to look very unclutched by chance. But at this point, Reddick has a pretty long track record of doing this. And so it's funny, every time Reddick does something either good or bad, now I get tweets about it because of that article I wrote about his record of unclutchness. So if he gets a clutch hit, I get tweets from Astros fans saying, oh yeah, Reddick is unclutch or whatever. But then when he does something unclutch, which happens more often, I get tweets of people

linking to that article. So anyway, this was yet another example to add to the pile, I suppose. And yeah, really pivotal moment, which you posted about. I did. I was live chatting through game six. And as you also understand, when you are busy during a game, live talking or chatting, it can be a little distracting. It's fun, but it can be a little distracting. So when the game was over, I asked Dave Cameron, like, hey, I was distracted. You got any post ideas?

And he recommended what I hoped he was going to recommend because I thought the game kind of turned on the Redick at that. And really, it was the whole inning, of course. But the thing, it's not just about Josh Redick striking out against Rich Hill. Okay, whatever. Josh Redick, it's a lefty on lefty thing. Now, granted, Rich Hill this year, terrible against left-handed hitters for some reason. So that's a fun little little fact he was Hill not being good against lefties, but Redick also not being good against lefties and Redick also in an important situation and who knows how far you have to hit the ball to score Brian McCann from third base. I don't know if Redick's ever hit a ball that far in his life. But it's not just that Redick struck out. It's not just the Redick struck out

with Justin Verlander on deck. So that Redick struck out after reaching a three and oh count yeah which is an unbelievably hitter-friendly count for reasons i know i don't need to go into batters very seldom strike out after getting ahead to three and oh batters very frequently walk after getting ahead to three and oh they walk 60 percent of the time it's a bad count and hill went to three and oh he didn't miss badly but he missed three times in a row three you know and. And then Rich Hill, in my estimation, threw three perfect pitches. And Josh Reddick was screwed. He just couldn't. He took a borderline pitch on 3-0.

He took a borderline fastball. Might have caught the edge. Might not have. But against a lefty and a 3-0 count, that pitch is usually a strike. So Reddick made the right decision. Maybe should have walked. But strike one. More chances.

Next pitch, fastball, basically the same place. Fouls it it off left field jock peterson came close to making a catch if peterson made a catch if he fell into the stands mccann was going to score maybe mccann would score anyway with if peterson made a catch on the grass reddick almost a sack fly then pitch six maybe the maybe the best breaking ball rituals ever thrown i don't know i know i'm getting like sucked up into the context but there was nothing josh reddick was going to be able to do with that curveball and it's just it hurts uh it it hurts reddick he had the big hit against the red sox felt important been crap ever since he was it wasn't even that big of a hit against or that good of a hit against the red sox there's kind of a squibber the other way but whatever everyone needs a little bit of luck when they're trying to get

out of a funk and reddick had a little luck against the red sox and just no luck at all against rich hill yeah right i mean i don't want to dwell so much on the reddick track record that we don't celebrate what rich hill did because he had an incredible comeback in that plate appearance and made a pitch that yeah i don't know what reddick could have done with it. But, I mean, that was like just quintessential Rinch Hill in every respect in that start. I mean, that moment was great, but the way that he was dropping down and the crouching that he was doing during his plate appearance, it was like almost the Yu Darvish drawing the bases loaded walk kind of thing. He was trying to just psych Verlander out.

Didn't really work necessarily, but it looked entertaining. And then of course his, you know, self-imposed moment of silence when Yuli Gurriel came up and he stepped off to just let the fans boo and express their opinion because he was bothered by Gurriel's gesture and by his non-suspension, presumably. So just adding to the legend of Rich Hill. And of course, he was taken out early again. And I know, you know, I kind of admire Dave Roberts for sticking to the plan and the process that the Dodgers had in place, clearly, in this series, regardless of whether you think it was the right one or not. This is kind of what he did in game two,

and everything backfired and got weird, and the Dodgers ended up losing. But they didn't do anything different in this game, really. They stuck with the same plan. They took out Hill more or less at the same time and went to, you know, Brandon Morrow, who everyone was like, Brandon Morrow again? How could you use Brandon Morrow again? Brandon Morrow was fine. And that day off really seemed to refresh him and Maeda and Jensen. So Roberts just kind of stuck to that plan.

And this time it paid off and everything worked out well. What do you think of the pulling Rich Hill plan, which clearly has been the plan here? Because I know that a lot of people are questioning, well, why do you have to remove Rich Hill after four innings or fewer than five innings when he is a good pitcher? Why do they do this? And people were citing his stats the third time through the order this season, which is not compelling to me, really, because, A, we know that it's a small sample when you're talking about one pitcher and what he does in a single season the third time through the order.

That's very inconsistent, just like clutchness or unclutchness. It bounces around from season to season, and it's better, safer, usually, just to assume that a pitcher will have the typical penalty, unless there's something about his pitch mix that makes you think that he would be more or less susceptible to hitters figuring him out, like fewer pitches or more pitches. But between that and between the fact that he does get significantly worse, I think the second time through the order, so it's sort of like a selective sampling thing where he's maybe only left in at times when he has a very favorable matchup or something like that. So it's sort of skewed.

But he is a good pitcher. So why not try to use him for more than four innings? What do you think? Yeah. So it's not only this year that his numbers were good. I'll just say that Rich Hill overall since coming back in 2015, he's only thrown 275 innings. Hill overall since, you know, since coming back in 2015, he's only thrown 275 innings. But in any case, he's allowed a WOBA weighted on base average of 256. First time through the order, it's been 279. Second time, 266. Third time and whatever, fourth time combined, if he's ever been in the

fourth time, 196. He's been really exceptionally good later in games. Of course, there is that, like you said, there's the selective sampling of, well well you're only going to leave him in if he's looking good but in a sense that that would kind of be true of any starter and still we see the the pattern now like you i'm not compelled or convinced by these numbers because just like with platoon splits not to get all nerdy and in the weeds about this but individual platoon splits for a player really don't matter for quite a while and you should just generally assume kind of like with also clutch performance, you should just kind of assume that the player will look normal in those situations moving forward. But Rich Hill certainly has been very good later in games. And I think as well, he's just very good overall. So he's

starting from a high baseline. But look, I usually don't like to defer to authority. But very, from a high baseline but look i usually don't like to defer to authority but very very obviously the dodgers have designed they've planned for okay hill is not going to pitch a third time through the order not in the playoffs not now now i know he faced george springer and springer went deep but the dodgers have talked it all the way through and if there's any team aside from maybe the astros if there's any team who would have what I would consider to be very legitimate reasons for doing this, it would be the Dodgers. It looks crazy from here to be like, okay, Hill just can't face a 19th batter. And you have to use Brandon Moore for the 13th time in a six game series, but they did it and it worked. And I don't know exactly what I'm missing or what information we don't have. Because you could just looking at the numbers,

you could very easily justify leaving Hill in. Dodgers bullpen isn't like that. This isn't the Yankees bullpen, which by the way, also had some meltdowns this year. So it seems weird, but I just I have to trust the Dodgers on this one. And I don't know, maybe they feel like Hill is wearing down. He is. He's an older man relative to the average baseball player. It's been a long season. He's pitched a lot. I don't know exactly what their reasoning is, but very obviously they feel strongly about it and they feel stronger about it than they feel about almost anything else having to

do with in-game strategy. So that's kind of good enough for me. Yeah. Anything else you want to talk about from game six? Yeah, a little bit. I guess just that the opposite of the Dodgers would have been the Astros in that after Josh Reddick struck out, they allowed Justin Verlander to hit in the top of the fifth. Verlander batted. Astros were up one nothing. He had runners on

second and third, and there was only one out. Verlander hit against Rich Hill. And as you can imagine, Justin Verlander can't hit. He struck out. out on four pitches and as soon as I think we all knew AJ Hinch was not going to remove Justin Verlander it would have felt way too early to take a Verlander out it's easy to say in hindsight well Verlander lost should have used a pinch hitter okay make that decision during the game just make it see how the team responds right yeah and at the time I think you know anyone who is saying saying that or certainly most people watching the game were thinking this is Verlander's game. He might very well pitch a complete game. Like at that point, I think he was getting out, which, as it turned out, was not all that much longer. But I don't think anyone would have really predicted that at the time. Right. And so I wound up with Mitchell Lichtman in my ear talking about like, oh, how do you not even because I was live chatting.

He was talking about how do you not even mention pinch hitting for Verlander, which is like I forgot his exact words, but basically 100% the right decision there. And yeah, okay, look, okay, it's true. It's true. If you go to the numbers, doesn't really matter that Verlander was quote unquote dealing. It's not predictive. He's a good pitcher, but you have to trust your relievers, you can get five more outs. And look, in that situation, the importance of scoring another run is enormous. Whether you I don't know who they would have gone to off the bench probably what evan gaddis would have been available right because didn't he pinch it later and and there's other guys there's other people that you could have used people who don't hit like justin verlander now there's the the complicating factor of having brian mccann on

third base he's unlikely to score unless you hit just the right kind of ball in play so it gets complicated and uh the reason i didn't talk about pinch hitting for verlander in in my live chat was because there was a zero percent chance aj hinch was going to do it it was if if it could have been less than zero percent it would have been pinch was never never never never i there was no consideration never even crossed his mind to pinch it for verlander in that situation now if it were the Dodgers you wonder would Dave Roberts have yanked Clayton Kershaw or Hugh Darvish or whoever in that situation he obviously would have yanked Rich Hill but that's because he doesn't want Rich Hill to see the fifth inning it seems right but it's just a turning point as soon as Hill came back against Redick you felt like okay he can actually get out of this inning because you

assume Verlander is not going to be able to do anything and then you just need to get springer or bregman out and in any individual plate appearance then the pitcher always has the advantage so it was just such a such a big inning and there is a statistical defense to the idea of pulling justin verlander and using a pinch hitter there i have no idea i mean no manager i'm so glad i'm not a manager that's all i'm just so glad. Yeah. Yeah. And it's kind of weird that there is this difference between the teams, it seems, just in how they manage or how they kind of put their faith in the larger sample over the smaller sample, at least in certain cases. Like, I really wonder what would happen if Ken Giles were on the Dodgers. Like,

would Ken Giles, you know, be a pitcher who could appear in game seven for the Dodgers, which does not seem to be the case for the Astros. I don't know what would have to happen for Ken Giles to get into game seven, but it's not good. So I wonder whether that would be the case if he were on the Dodgers, because I don't know, the Dodgers because I don't know it just seems kind of anecdotally at least as if Roberts is maybe more willing to be a hardliner or stick to this sort of pre-drafted script based on maybe recent results and that sort of thing relative to Roberts and it's not as if like the Astros are any less analytically oriented than the Dodgers, certainly. So I don't know what accounts for that difference, if it's just a difference between Hinch and Roberts,

whether it's just a difference between what analytical value they place on recent results. But it does seem as if there is some kind of contrast there. Right. I mean, you figure, I'm speculating here, we can't know, some kind of contrast there right i mean you figure i'm speculating here we can't know but if brandon morrow were on the astros and if he had the the miserable six pitch appearance he had in game five do you think the astros do you think edga hinge would have used brandon morrow in that spot in game six yeah i don't really have much reason to believe yes i mean you look at the relievers he went to after after verlander and it was what it was Musgrove and then Gregerson and then it turns out Francisco Liriano is still alive yes I didn't know I agreed with with Sam's

tweet about in that situation it was hard to tell whether Liriano was the guy Hinch had the most faith in or the least faith in because it was kind of one of those in between situations I thought the eighth inning personally would have been a great chance to bring out Ken Giles just to see what he has but that's. But that's just me. That's just me sitting here and whatever. Liriano did his job. But if you go back to game five of the series, Gregerson pitched. He got one guy out.

Musgrove pitched. He threw a shutout inning. He got the win. And Liriano didn't pitch. So I don't know exactly what the Astros thought they were going to do with their bullpen. But A.J. Hinch did not go to Brad Peacock. He didn't go to Will Harris. He didn't go to Chris Devinsky. He didn't go to Colin McHugh. He didn't go to the guys who have struggled in the series. He just went to the guys

who have been the best very recently. And so yeah, it's you wouldn't think that there would be such a contrast given these two organizations being a sort of the vanguard of the analytical revolution or whatever you want to call it. But yeah, there's a pretty clear difference in managers. And given that in the World Series, in these situations, you assume that all these decisions are kind of mapped out through a pregame conversation between the front office and the manager. Maybe this is also reflecting something coming down from on high. Or I don't know, maybe AJ Hinch is just a very powerful man.

Yeah. And, you know, as we, I think, alluded to in an earlier episode, the aforementioned Mitchell Lichtman wrote an article on his site just looking for precedents for Giles, just relievers who had been awful over a short span of time or great over a short span of time. like this in the past with guys who've had a hot first half or a terrible first half or whatever. And just inevitably, it seems when you run these studies, they regress to the mean. Whether you look at the rest of their season or, in this case, in the Giles study, he looked at just their very next appearance, and there's just nothing to it, seemingly. These guys who've been terrible go back to being who they are, and the guys who've been great go back to being who they are and the guys who've been great go back to being who they are and that is inarguably the case you know assuming the data

is accurate over a big enough sample of pictures and so the challenge is always trying to figure out whether this one instance is different from the large sample of appearances like this. And there's just no way to know for sure. And it's a tricky thing because obviously you can talk yourself into, oh, this one's different for reason X and Y, and maybe you're wrong and maybe you're just deceiving yourself. Or you could ignore actual signal here and say, oh, it's all noise and this is what we know happens over the long run. So this is how I'm going to treat it when maybe in a specific instance, there's something there

that tells you, no, this is different from the usual Giles-like stretch of poor performance. This one actually means something. And of course, you can dive deeper and deeper into it and look at the pitcher's stuff and look at, well, why was he bad? Was he just giving up a bunch of bloopers or was he giving up hard contact or whatever? And maybe there's some way you could parse this that would actually show a difference there, but it would be difficult to do. And as we've mentioned, it doesn't seem as if Giles is throwing any less hard or that there's anything obviously wrong with him in a physical or mechanical sense. So it's really hard to say. And, you know, clearly the Astros have decided that this case is different from all those other cases or most of

those cases, or they haven't done that research, but I doubt that's the case because it's the Astros. Yeah. Unless this is some kind of weird in-series long con, it just feels like we're now going into game seven and the Dodgers and the astros have essentially eliminated the astros best relief pitcher he's not going to pitch it's almost certain he's not going to pitch which i mean that's the big break now whether or not you believe he is the astros best reliever at this point i mean it seems to me you still care a lot about the regular season numbers and even if you want to mix in the playoff numbers too go right ahead giles is still really good really good at missing bats not going to pitch That's a I know it's kind of an all hands on deck thing in game seven. And Dallas Keigel could make an appearance. Maybe even Justin Verlander, for God's sake, could make an

appearance. I have no idea. Clayton Kershaw said he's prepared to get 27 outs. So I don't know what these teams are planning for. Did he say 27 after 27 innings? I don't even remember. I think he said 27 innings. Yeah, okay, I did. well uh let's let's hope that doesn't come to pass but i don't know let's also hope that it does in which case our next podcast will be delayed by a while because we'll have to still be watching the game but ken giles almost certainly not going to pitch in game seven he is the astros best strikeout reliever best power arm that they're going to have back there and some colors are right? So he's unlikely to work too terribly deep in the game. But I don't know. It just seems it's one fewer card for Hinch to play. And I don't think that Dave Roberts would manage like that. Yeah. So speaking of the all

hands on deck situation, again, maybe game seven will have happened by the time people are hearing this, but we can still talk about the thinking going into it. So there is this kind of macho tendency every time you get to an elimination game. I mean, yes, on the enough of a sample to come to any solid conclusion about, okay, what is Clayton Kershaw on two days rest out of the bullpen doing something he wouldn't normally do? Like, obviously you'd expect Clayton Kershaw, if he became a full-time reliever, he'd be the best reliever ever, but he's on two days rest and he's not a full-time reliever so we don't know there's just you know in two ways there's an uncertainty here and so there's this kind of you know you want your ace out there in the game seven situation you win or lose with your best on the mound that kind of thing and it's just it's hard analytically to say that is good or that is bad because I don't know if we know what these guys are.

And so you have examples when this has obviously gone very well. I mean, even just last year when Clayton Kershaw came out in a relief appearance, dramatic elimination game and was great and seemed as if he'd put the can't win in the postseason thing behind him. and seemed as if he'd put the can't win in the postseason thing behind him. No, not as it turns out, but that was a really amazing moment. And there are lots of examples of that, and there are examples maybe when it didn't go so well. You could look at Max Scherzer's relief appearance, I guess, in the NLDS this year, although that was just a case where everything went wrong in weird ways. But even like the Matt

Harvey in the 2015 World Series sort of ethos where it's like, I can get one more, you know, and it's like, well, he's the ace and I was going to take him out, but he looked me in the eyes and he said he wanted the ball. So I gave it to him. And so you can get yourself into trouble here. So there are two conversations maybe, which is A, how much do you use Clayton Kershaw in this game? Because I think it's almost inevitable that he will be used. And then the other conversation is, when do you use Clayton Kershaw? And this is something that we can talk about now, I think, because we know he's not starting the game. He is just not.

Darvish is starting this game. But there's been a lot of discussion about should he start the game? If you know you're going to use Clayton Kershaw, as the Dodgers almost definitely do, do you just use him in the beginning because, A, it do something he's not used to. So I don't know, maybe that washes out. But this way you guarantee getting Kershaw into the game. First inning is important. It is, on average, the highest scoring inning because maybe pitchers aren't comfortable, but also because you have the top of the lineup coming up guaranteed. So just use him at a moment that you know will be pretty important and don't run the risk that Darvish is going to have a bad start again and you'll just never get to use Kershaw at an important moment. So we know what they're going to do, but where do you stand on what they should do?

Yeah, I don't think they should start him. For one thing, I think you kind of want to maximize your leverage of when you're going to use Clayton Kershaw, and I don't think the first inning is likely to be that. But also, just generally, if you start Kershaw and move Darvish to relief then you have two guys doing things that are weird they're not accustomed to because Kershaw doesn't usually start on one day's rest or two days rest whatever it is yeah and uh and then Darvish would be in the bullpen whereas if you have Kershaw relieving well he was he has relieved once or twice before he was warming up in game six Darvish can start and do what he's accustomed to of course if you go over the history we there's it's a mixed bag we saw in the ALDS remember there was there was talk this year

that maybe teams were using starters as relievers too much because there was like a developing history of them not being so good the Astros used Verlander out of the bullpen in game four of the ALDS and he immediately allowed a home run and then the Red Sox used Chris Sale on limited rest and granted he was he was very good until he stopped being very good and then the Astros came back and won the game I think the the examples that are always cited to me and that I also always recall Randy Johnson has a colorful playoff history of of doing this in 1995 he uh the ALDS against the Yankees he came out of the bullpen on one day's rest and threw three innings allowed a run nearly lost the game but had six strikeouts looked good looked like

randy johnson you fast forward to 2001 and in game six of the world series he started he threw seven innings in game seven threw an inning in the third of perfect baseball struck out or uh struck out a batter retired off off all four. But Randy Johnson took over for the Diamondbacks in the eighth inning. So he did. I don't know. Based on that Randy Johnson appearance, you think Verlander not a complete write off here and neither possibly is Rich Hill just because, you know, Randy Johnson came back. And and if you go ahead to 2005, this is something that I have no recollection of. I don't even remember that the Yankees played the Angels in the playoffs that year, but they did. And Randy Johnson pitched twice. He started game

three and he threw a bunch of pitches and then he pitched in game five and he threw almost as many pitches. He came out of the bullpen, he threw four and a third of innings of shutout baseball. So Randy Johnson, based on one of the most conspicuous physical anomalies in the history of the game, he's evidence that pitchers can do this, but based on other pitchers not being Randy Johnson, you don't really know. I figured Kershaw, I would probably only ask him for like an inning, even against the Nationals last year. What did he get? One guy out, two guys out? I don't remember. Yeah, it was a short outing. Yeah. Yeah, it was just Murphy, I think. Maybe there was a little more to it. And, you know it's just Murphy I think maybe there was a little more to it and you know I could uh I could very easily check which is uh what I just did he got two guys out Clayton Kershaw got two guys out

their names were Murphy and somebody else I didn't click on the box score and then he came back and started game two of the NLCS so I would think Kershaw I would be comfortable giving an inning two and I would I don't know if I would use him as like the bridge inning I think it's going to depend on how Darvish is doing because you don't know if you're going to need Kershaw in the second and you'd know if you're going to need him in the sixth so I don't know exactly how uh rigorously the Dodgers have this mapped out if you're the Astros if you're the Astros is Justin Verlander available to you well I don't know you don't want to allow yourself to be bullied into using someone just because he's your ace and he really wants the ball. And you know Verlander is going to want the ball if he has any chance of getting it. But I have no idea. I mean, is Verlander on zero rest out of the bullpen? I mean, might be good, I guess, like just the sheer adrenaline and intensity. But I don't know. There's just not enough history to say whether he is totally compromised by this

type of appearance or whether he'd be fine. So like, would I want my highest leverage single plate appearance going to Justin Verlander tonight? I probably not, I guess. I don't know. I mean, it's complicated by the fact that they just haven't had the greatest bullpen performance and they don't trust their best reliever right now. So in that sense, maybe. I mean, you know, you figure Keichel can be used at some point, has had more rest. And so you'd want to stick with him maybe as a guy out of the pen before Verlander, assuming the matchups are favorable.

But I just, I don't know whether it's like a weapon, whether it's like, well, we have this weapon at our disposal or whether it's not. I honestly do not know whether Justin Verlander

pitching a high leverage play appearance on zero rest is something that a team should want or not. I like it gives you confidence to see Justin Verlander with the ball, right? Because Justin Verlander is great. And you know, he like wants to win as much as anyone and he's super intense and everything. But I just i don't know i i don't know how you would even decide how to know so to me it's not like a clear victory for the astros if verlander turns out to be available or if you bring him in so i i just i i don't know basically yeah it sucks if you're rj hinch and you lose then you know that if you lose because you use i don't know will harris in a big spot then

people are going to rip you for not using just Verlander. There's comfort in being able to use Verlander because he's sort of like earned the critics approval, you know, if that makes sense. But of course, no manager should ever give a bleep about what the critics have to say, not even once, unless the critics are the people who sign his paycheck. Then those are the critics. Those are the only critics you have to answer to them and the players. So managers seem to operate with this continual fear of what people in our position are going to say, even though I think you know this, we don't matter. We hardly matter to our own families. It's worth remembering with Keichel available out of the bullpen, presumably, as you've written about pretty compellingly, Dallas Keichel, Dodgers, not a

great matchup. And we've seen him throw, he's faced 42 batters in this series and he's thrown 10 and a third innings against the Dodgers in this series he's allowed seven runs he's allowed a couple homers a bunch of hits Dallas Keuchel I wouldn't say he's bad against the Dodgers but it's not even like he's he's the Astros I would say best available starter weapon out of the bullpen but even this matchup isn't great for him and it makes you wonder like oh well charlie morton starts to look awfully appealing because you don't need him to start another game you can even know morton's on what a day short of rest like that's that might be the most important astros reliever in this game never mind the status that keitel and verlander have achieved morton is a weapon Yeah, I mean, it's going to be fascinating to see what they do.

I'm sure that Roberts would love to just go Darvish to Kershaw to Jansen. That would be his ideal plan. And if he's able to use just three pitchers, that would probably be good news for the Dodgers. So the old adage about no plan surviving contact with the enemy, who knows what will happen here. But the discussion is always interesting about what you do in this case. And usually what teams do is what they do in a regular game. They're not going to do the crazy thing. They're not going to start the guy on two days rest and pitch him for two innings and then bring in the guy who would be on regular rest. That's just, you know, once you get to the World Series, A, the scrutiny is intense. The pressure is intense. The second guessing and first guessing is intense.

And even aside from worrying about blowback to the decisions you make, it's just, you know, you worry about disrupting a guy's routine at a moment when if he is someone who is distracted by that then you're costing yourself the season so it discourages innovation or experimentation in that sense and i don't know whether that's a good thing or a bad thing yeah so if if we can just reflect i guess the most recent example we have is this last year's game seven two pretty analytical forward thinking organizations cubs indians and the way it went for the Indians was pretty standard. Kluber started, he wasn't very good. He was followed by Miller, then Allen, then Shaw, and then Trevor Bauer apparently pitched in the game. I didn't remember that. But he did. He pitched at the end, Indians lost. And the Cubs, they started with Kyle

Hendricks, who was yanked pretty early. I remember there being much criticism about that people thought that Hendricks should pitch longer. He was followed by John Lester before Chapman, Edwards, and Montgomery. Lester had started game five of the series and he was pretty good through six innings through 90 pitches, but then he came back on short rest and he threw three innings out of the bullpen. Over those three innings, he allowed two runs. That's not very good, but he still pitched. So we have evidence from last year that things didn't go completely insane. The Indians used their pitching staff more or less like normal, but the Cubs did go to the starting pitcher approach to sort of serve as the bridge. They let Lester throw 55 pitches, which is nearly as many pitches as they allowed Kyle

Hendricks to throw as the starter. So in conclusion, yeah, who knows? So hopefully this will have been interesting, even if you're listening to this after Game 7 and know how it turned out. We're talking about the process and the planning, and that's always relevant. And I guess we should answer a couple emails just so this can technically be an email show. has declined this week in particular. It's been a slow week for questions, almost as if people are watching the World Series, and there are only so many questions you can ask about the series that is now, as we speak, six games deep, and all these people have faced each other already,

and we more or less know what the managers are trying to do, and so there's just only so much you can actually ask and have it be interesting a day or two later. So I will note that I did a little study last year about the familiarity effect in postseason series when a starter faces a team for the second time in a series. penalty there whatsoever. Even though there's obviously an intra-game effect, there doesn't seem to be an inter-game effect when starters are on regular rest. And, you know, it just doesn't matter. Hitters are not any better against postseason starters the second time they see them in a start in a series, which, you know, in this case, I mean, the Astros didn't see much of Yu Darvish anyway in his first start, and he'll be

going up against Lance McCullers, and it'll be fun. So we'll talk about that and obviously how it turned out in our next episode. But a couple questions, I suppose. Do you have a stat segment that you want to get in here? Oh, it's going to be super quick. This is easy. I was just curious about pitchers pitching all the time because Brandon Morrow has pitched all the time. Yeah. So we can just do a quick little review of some playoff history. Brennan Morrow has pitched in all six games of the World Series. He is one of I guess would be 10 pitchers. 10 pitchers in baseball history have pitched in at least six games of the World Series. The last one being Alexio gondo in 2011 alexio gondo made six appearances for the rangers against the cardinals and i should say that he allowed an era of 10.12 over those six

appearances so that's not very good but there is one guy i would not be at all surprised you probably wouldn't be either to see morrow face at least one batter in game seven seems like it's pretty well set up for that if that were to happen Brandon Morrow would tie the all-time record set in 1973 by Daryl Daryl yes hold on a second Daryl I believe that's correct Daryl the only yeah Tyler Kepner wrote something about him this week yeah Daryl Knowles the only Daryl in Major League Baseball history. That's because it's not a name that exists. But Daryl Knowles appeared in all seven games of the 1973 World Series. He allowed one run, none of them earned. Fun fact about 1973 Daryl Knowles, this is obviously a different era. His ERA was just barely over three, but he had more walks than strikeouts. That's an interesting high leverage reliever for Oakland to use, but he was used even in relief of future Hall of Famer Raleigh Fingers in that series I did not know much about Daryl Knowles and his

seven appearances obviously that is a record that at this point cannot be broken until or unless the series go back to a best of nine but did find in Daryl Knowles saber bio something that has absolutely nothing to do with his World Series performance. And I'll just read here from near the top. Quote, a standout amateur player, Knowles played for Moberly in the Central Missouri Band Johnson League. Where on July 16th, 1959, he struck out 32 batters at a 13 inning, one nothing victory over Boonville,

giving up only four hits and two walks. Knowles apparently says the scouts tried to sign him after the game and they didn't even see him pitch. They wanted to sign him just based on the results of his game. So clearly scouting the stat line was taking place even in 1959. So it's not just a modern phenomenon. So Knowles, the only guy to make seven appearances in the World Series, no one in a league championship series has ever pitched in all seven games. There have been eight instances of a pitcher getting into six games in a best of seven LCS.

John Rocker did it two years in a row. I don't know if that's interesting or not, but now it's been said. And so the leader all time for total playoff pitching appearances is 1997 Paul Ossenmacher, who pitched in 14 games for the Indians. He threw nine into third innings, allowed four runs, whatever. He's the only guy. He's the only guy with 14 appearances. But Brandon Morrow is there tied with seven other pitchers,

having made 13 appearances so far in the playoffs. Morrow has a chance, therefore, to tie both Knowles and Ostenmacher. That is some hallowed company. But just last year, Rolvis Chapman made 13 appearances for the Cubs. In 2013, both Koji Uehara and Junichi Tozawa made 13 appearances. In 2011, Alexi Ogondo. There he is again. 13 appearances.

Michael Jackson in 1977. 13 appearances. Tim Worrell, 2002. 13 appearances. It jackson in 1977 13 appearances tim morel 2002 13 appearances it just goes on felix rodriguez used heavily by the the giants in 2002 i believe i saw a tweet to the effect of the last pitcher to to pitch in the first six games of the world series was felix rodriguez in 2002 he did not pitch in game seven and uh that seven game series one of the ones that showed up on the baseball gauge is the giants having achieved an extremely high championship probability before not winning the championship back when back when it was hard to be a giants fan yeah all right let's

take a couple questions here andrew says do we know if there is any difference in the probability of a team scoring in the half inning immediately after their opponent has scored. I suppose the null hypothesis would be that there is no difference than after a half inning in which the opponent did not score, but I could imagine reasons why this wouldn't be the case. This was inspired by watching game four, where it seemed like neither team was going to score until they both did in back-to-back half innings. I also wonder if this potential effect could be different in the playoffs compared to the regular season. I don't know about playoffs compared to regular season, but I do know that Russell Carlton wrote about this four Octobers ago, actually at my request, because we had been bombarded with shutdown inning on TBS broadcasts all month at that point. And he just kind of a mixed bag, no strong conclusion about the shutdown inning here. He found that it's actually a little more common than you would expect when adjusting for pitcher quality and hitter quality and all of that.

It's actually a little more likely than you would think that a team would not score after the opposing team did score in the previous half inning. And Russell speculated that that could be because maybe hitters get more aggressive. You know, they just fell behind. Maybe they start chasing more or something. He didn't actually confirm that, but that was the theory. And he found that it just doesn't matter all that much from a win expectancy standpoint. Like obviously a scoreless inning is good no matter when it is, but a shutdown inning doesn't seem to increase your probability of winning the game noticeably, you know, more than just a regular old scoreless inning does. Like a couple ways he ran the analysis, he found that there was like a few tenths of a point boost there, but other ways he found there was nothing so just doesn't seem really worth paying

attention to even though broadcasts will just flog this idea constantly that there is a big morale boost basically to the shutdown inning to shutting down the opponent after you put runs on the board i'm sure it does feel good, but it doesn't seem to produce much of an effect here. And he also found that, you know, a single season record of how a pitcher has done in quote-unquote shutdown innings just isn't very consistent or stable, that you need a fairly large sample before you can start to say that maybe a pitcher has some sort of skill at doing this, and that if you take a really strict definition of the shutdown inning, which is not just following an inning where the pitcher's team scored,

but also one where that pitcher's team tied or went ahead, then it can take like a whole career to get any sense of whether there's any skill to this, or maybe not even in a career-long sample. So basically, there just doesn't seem to be all that much significance to the concept, but it's, I guess, a talking point that some people find compelling. All right. And let's take one from Ryan. This is more of an off-season question than a post-season question,

but say that the Dodgers accidentally non-tender chris taylor and he becomes a free agent he has no track record to speak of before this season but he's a 27 year old shortstop slash center fielder coming off a five wins above replacement year what sort of contract does he end up signing well i did not run the numbers on this one fast enough to be able to answer okay so let's see we've got he's going to be he's gonna go into technically his age 27 season but really he'll be almost 28 so you're you'd be getting a guy sort of around what you'd think would be his career prime he's shortstop capable he's center field capable especially with the brim of his hat he strikes out a little bit but he has a pretty good eye

makes contact hits for power seems to be one of the successful swing change guys and there have been enough of those that i don't think teams are that skeptical anymore so gosh you'd be thinking what seven year contract figure he's not 10 let's so i assume we're talking about like he's a true free agent forget any team control years so it feels like seven seven 150 yeah that's pretty big. But the only question is, like, you know, do teams not trust what he did this year? But it doesn't seem super fluky just looking at the numbers. And, of course, he's had a good postseason too. And as you've mentioned, I think, on the show or maybe on Patreon live broadcasts, his track record actually isn't that terrible. Like if you look at

his minor league success or even what he did as a rookie in Seattle, obviously struggled quite a bit with the Mariners in the major leagues after that, but it was not much of a record at all. So it's not totally, totally out of nowhere. Like it's portrayed that way. And certainly he was, totally out of nowhere like it's portrayed that way and certainly he was you know traded away and no one expected him to become a star level player value wise but there were some signs there that he had talent before this it's it's not completely out of nowhere chris taylor this year in the playoffs i never forget it chris taylor this year in the playoffs has batted 66 times so if you were looking for him to kind of regress i don't know just figure chris taylor is going to come back to normal in the playoffs against super good pitching in theory he's hit three doubles triple three home runs so we slugged 519 he's

drawn 11 walks with nine strikeouts he's gotten better discipline wise in the playoffs than he was during the regular season chris and these numbers matter you know that just adds to the sample size of his season it would push him up close to 650 plate appearances of really really good hitting at a variety of positions and when you can play short and you can play center and you can hit you're a valuable player so yeah of course the track record is silly but it's all about projecting for the future and i don't see any reason to think that chris taylor is going to be bad and you know even at 7 150 you barely have to start as an average player to be worth it when you're 27 years old. Yeah. And right. That's the thing. I guess seven years sounds like a long time for a guy who's had one good year in the majors, but we don't usually see free agents

become available at that age. Usually you're talking about someone who's 29 or 30 or in that age range and a couple prime years there make a pretty big difference. So I don't think it's crazy. I mean, I think a lot of people would probably say that it's crazy if it actually happened. But yeah, I could see it. Well, I mean, let's see what. Last year, Ian Desmond, Ian Desmond.

It's funnier now. He signed for five years and $70 million. And Ian Desmond, you know, he became outfield and shortstop capable. Now he was going into his age 31 season and he was coming off like a pretty good year with the Rangers. Not a Chris Taylor caliber year. Desmond always had some play discipline concerns and he was just older. So even if you just look at Chris Taylor and think, okay, it's just ian desmond with maybe a little better contact desmond was like four years older going into free agency and he still signed for 5 and 70 and that was with a qualifying offer so yeah taylor taylor would beat

that all right and last question this is marcus says is there a stat like clutch but for defensive opportunities if not why not seems like as withting clutch, which of course we were talking about at the top of the show, that could be employed as a tiebreaker in MVP voting. but probably would not be very meaningful. We talk all the time about how defensive stats, at least the zone-based ones, that until StatCast, you know, finally has a kind of a fully fleshed out method for all fielders, that will be the best that we have and can take a few seasons for guys to get a really consistent sample, meaningful sample. And if you're dividing that sample into high leverage and low leverage you know it's going to take forever to come to any kind of conclusion about whether a guy gets clutch in that situation especially because like i mean it's not like you everyone has high

leverage plate appearances and low leverage plate appearances, but defensive opportunities are distributed a lot less evenly. And so, you know, you'd take a long time for some guys to work up a significant high leverage defensive sample. It would be really tough. I mean, maybe with stat cast stats, which will be more telling in small samples, you could look at that. You could, you know, compare reaction time or root efficiency or whatever speed, you know, something like that that might be more telling in a small sample. But ultimately, it's probably not going to tell you much. discussion resurfaces, I guess it does every year at this time, about when MVP voting should be and whether it should take place after the season. Of course, it does not. The ballots are submitted after the regular season, but before the playoffs in that little break. So, you know, voters who vote for the major awards, the BBWA awards, are not aware of playoff performance when they submit

those ballots. And to me, that makes total sense. I don't get the argument for why you should have MVP voting after the playoffs. I just think that we're already skewing the regular season MVP voting heavily toward players who are on good teams. And if you asked people to vote now for MVPs, I mean, would there be any people who voted for, like, Judge over Altuve? Probably not. I mean, would anyone not just give their votes to the guy who had the hot few weeks in the postseason? And not World Series MVPs. We have Championship Series MVPs. Those are maybe not as well-known and memorable, but they probably shouldn't be because we're talking about a week's worth of performance versus six months' worth of performance.

So it would totally skew the results towards guys who had good teammates and had the opportunity to be in the postseason, and I just don't think it's necessary or fair. You are good and smart. Okay. All right. So we will end there and we will talk about game seven later this week. By the way, when I was mentioning that research into the familiarity effect that I did last winter, there is no effect if you're on regular rest, but there is a fatigue effect if you're on

short rest. Starters are really worse and that kind of is relevant to the discussion that Jeff and I were having about is a pitcher who is great normally but is on extremely short rest actually good? We do know at least that when starters come back on three days rest in the postseason, they are significantly worse and often not better than the non-ace who is on regular rest, which, you know, that was one of the theories behind why Clayton Kershaw was pitching well, at least before game five in the series, is that he had not been stressed in the way that the Dodgers have usually stressed him

in the postseason. They have not used him out of the bullpen. They have not used him on short rest, of course. It doesn't matter so much tonight because there are no future games or starts this season that Clayton Kershaw has to worry about. Actually, after we finished recording, Jeff went and did some research about this, perhaps prompted by our discussion. He has a post up now at Fangraphs called The History of Starters Relieving on Short Rest. So he looked at the whole wildcard era in the postseason, 1995 on, and he found a sample of 47 appearances spanning a combined 66 innings. That's by short rest starters pitching in relief. Randy Johnson in 2001 was the only one on zero days rest. So he found that the weighted average runs allowed per nine of those starters during

the regular season was 3.87. And when they were pitching in relief on short rest in the playoffs, it was 3.95. So basically the same runs allowed per nine. They were not better than they would normally be as starters, even though they were pitching in the bullpen. On the other hand, they were facing playoff competition, so tougher hitters for the most part. So basically if you take a starter's regular season numbers as a starter, that seems to be more or less what he will do in short rest and relief in the postseason. More strikeouts, but also more walks. It's a pretty small sample, but basically it just tells us that it's not a disastrous idea. It's not as if these guys are allowing like twice as many runs as they normally would or something like that.

So in theory, at least, Clayton Kershaw would be Clayton Kershaw. And one last thing, we got a question fromaw would be Clayton Kershaw. the strikeouts? Did Aaron Judge's 16 strikeout ALDS make this record seem like child's play? And should we even care about this record, which he took from Ryan Howard's inglorious 2009 World Series? And yes, I believe I saw that note too. Cody Ballinger has 14 strikeouts in this series. The previous high was Ryan Howard in 2009 and Javi Baez last year with 13. Ballinger is also the first player in history to record multiple four-strikeout games in one World Series, and what both Jeff and I said to Steven via email is basically, yeah,

I think we all just have strikeout record fatigue at this point. We're getting new strikeout records every season and seemingly every postseason series, so it's just not that noteworthy when we get another. Plus, even though Bellinger's overall numbers for the series aren't that great, he's had big hits and he's driven in five runs. So the spotlight isn't on him so much in a negative

way. And we still can't believe he didn't walk off game two with that almost home run. Anyway, we will see. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Five listeners who have already pledged their support include jacob nathan kurt gutierrez robert techtman barrett ellsworth and rob manes 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 the podcast on itunes thanks to dylan higgins for editing assistance of course michael bauman and i will have a new episode of the Ringer MLB show up after game seven. Jeff and I will be talking about it too. There will be no shortage of podcasts about game seven and about the series as a whole. Keep your questions and

comments for me and Jeff coming. We need our mailbag replenished for next week. So you can send us questions via email at podcast at fangrass.com or via the Patreon messaging system. Thanks for listening. We will talk to you soon. No one in the whole universe will ever compare I am yours now and you are mine at two Together we'll love through all space and time So don't cry One day all seven will die