Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1283: Hey, Look, a Playoff Episode

Episode Date: October 16, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the lack of non-playoff banter and discuss the first two games of each championship series, touching on Clayton Kershaw bias, Matt Barnes curveballs, the finer points of pitcher-batter matchup stats, Josh Hader as a starter vs. as a reliever, the upcoming games, and much more (including a Brandon […]

Hello and Come around Just cool it Turn it down Hello and welcome to episode 1283 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our patron supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello. Hello. The problem with the playoffs is that there isn't really anything to talk about other than the playoffs because news is pretty slow. Other than the blockbuster Kyle Bearclaw trade, just not a lot of transactions and announcements coming out at this point in the season. So really, we only have limited texts to work with. We have four championship series games, but but fortunately they've been pretty good games and pretty good series so far have they i guess they have i've kind of i've i've been watching the red

socks have played the last two the red sox and astros played the last two games so for me it's been a while since i watched the dodgers and brewers and i've therefore had to watch the red sox and astros for eight consecutive hours and so it has pushed the Dodgers and Brewers into the distant recesses of my mind. So sure, one thing you might say is that I could have prepared by refreshing my memory of what happened to the Dodgers and Brewers, but honestly, all I can think about is the Astros and Red Sox. That's all that's in the front of my mind. And one thing I can point out that I didn't notice as Game 2 was going on on Sunday.

So this is a game the Red Sox won 7-5. Craig Kimbrell tried to send everyone to a cardiologist again but Matt Barnes did you did you notice what Matt Barnes did when he came in in relief of David Price no what did he do so Matt Barnes is a high fastball low curveball kind of guy like a classic raise pitcher type except he doesn't play for the raceays. Anyway, Matt Barnes threw 15 pitches. He threw an inning and a third in relief of David Price. One strikeout, nothing else. And 14 of his pitches were curveballs. He kind of McCullers-ed it up a little bit. McCullers, yeah.

Yeah. Now, of course, to remind everyone, Lance McCullers threw 24 consecutive curveballs last year in the playoffs, which is very different. But nevertheless, I was looking over Matt Barnes' entire career, every game where he's thrown at least 10 pitches, and, well, this was easily his highest curveball rate in a game by, like, 24 percentage points. So he's never really done that before. He was throwing high curveballs, he was throwing low curveballs,

and it worked out for him. So in a game where it was kind of hard to find something to analytically discuss, at least there's something there. Matt Barnes did something very different. I don't know if it's related to his late season struggles or not, but still, it's fun. It's the kind of thing that doesn't happen by accident. Mm-hmm.

Okay. Well, there's something, a unique original observation about Matt Barnes that maybe you won't get anywhere else. That's why you come to us. So we have two series that are tied at 1-1, which is a relief, frankly, after division series that mostly were not very competitive, at least this way we will not have any sweeps. So the Dodgers-Brewers series is literally as close as it can get. We've two one run games so those teams are

tied with their run differentials thus far and the red sox series uh not quite the same but same result so it seems like we already talked about game one of the nlcs because we talked for four hours during that game to our some of our supporters, but that was, I think, 200 people who heard us on that game, and that is a very small fraction of the people listening to this, so we should not deprive them of any thoughts that we have about that game or that series, which I guess is just, it's going sort of strangely in that the Brewers' bullpen has kind of been the weak point, or at least parts of it have been. In the first game, Gio Gonzalez only went two innings, and then they brought in Hayter for three, and Hayter did what he was supposed to do. But then the rest of the bullpen kind of conspired to try to blow that lead and almost did.

And then in game two, the bullpen looked shaky again so that was just not exactly what we had all forecasted coming into the series right and i think when you look at the brewers bullpen it's good because it's really deep but like on obviously there's there's one standout in josh hater who is one of the greatest relievers in baseball and cory knable when he's when he's right is also very good and he seemed like he got right late in the season but outside of that the relievers are fine but like Corbin Burns is relatively unproven and Xavier Cedania was dropped by the White Sox and Junior Guerra is a starting pitcher who's a mop-up man and Jeremy Jeffress had a really valuable season but he's just been hittable in the playoffs I know it's a really small sample but he's not like a huge swing and miss pitcher anyway kind of more of a soft contact guy i know he got strikeouts with the brewers but

he's not dominant in any shape or form you don't bring in jeremy jefferson think well that's it for two innings we're not gonna get a chance and joe kim's story is kind of similar where he's he's a good reliever he's better than you know anyone that the brewers have in the starting rotation inning per inning but it's not it's not like you know the yankees bullpen everyone comes out and just strikes out everybody every every single pitcher in the yankees bullpen strikes out 75 percent of batters that they face look it up this is a statistical fact but in the brewers bullpen it's josh hater who's the one you can't hit and then gorky nabel is the other one you can't hit and outside of that sometimes they look really good and other times they they don't so it is a good bullpen i just think that maybe coming into the series it was going to get a little bit overrated because sort

of the the hater credit seeps into everyone else you think well this is a bullpen that has josh hater in it and therefore it's fantastic. It is a good bullpen, but it's not an overwhelming, overpowering bullpen. And the Dodgers have been able to expose it, unlike Wade Miley, who they have not exposed at all. I continue to not understand what we're even doing here in the playoffs. Yeah. So in that first game, I think there were different interpretations of how Clayton Kershaw performed. I think as we watched it, we were focusing on how he was just having everyone fail him and the universe conspire against him. And Yasmany Grandal have one of the worst defensive games you could imagine a catcher having and then getting benched because of it seemingly in the next game.

So he certainly had a lot of things go against him in that game. On the other hand, he wasn't particularly good himself. And I think the Dodgers said that. I saw Dave Roberts quotes to that effect about how he was just kind of hittable and didn't have a big velocity differential between his different types of pitches, which is important for him now that he doesn't throw all that hard and his command wasn't fantastic. And so it was a combination of both things. It was definitely stuff going wrong, but it was also Brandon Woodruff hitting a home run, which is also the weirdest thing and the most amazing thing.

And I will stick a little clip on the end of this episode that is us and Grant Brisby talking in real time on our Patreon broadcast as that was happening because we couldn't believe it. And it was amazing. But still, he was hittable. And that was a good example of that. Although I guess Brewers starting pitchers are like three for four maybe with a walk through this point in the series so that's not something we all predicted coming into the series yeah right Wade Miley went two for two Brandon Woodruff went one for two with a home run Miley hit the double so you look at this weekend in review and Clayton Kershaw was not very good and David Price was not very good and Chris Sale was not very good and Wade Miley threw five

and two-thirds of shutout baseball so again just don't get it just don't get what is happening in the playoffs but yeah Kershaw was not of course he was let down and if not for the defense he wouldn't have allowed maybe five runs over three innings but he wasn't getting swings and misses and you know when you finish with two strikeouts and two walks and three innings and a bunch of hits then you didn't have a good outing. So for people who are very defensive and territorial about protecting the Kershaw and David Price playoff narratives, I guess this was a big weekend for you, if that's like a demographic on this podcast. But otherwise, as we've talked about before,

I always root for the players to defeat those narratives. And I can't tell where Kershaw is because he's been so good in the playoffs for a few years now. I don't know if that still exists or if it's coming back. David Price is a different story, and I guess we'll talk about that a little later. But yeah, absolutely, Kershaw was not good. He was let down, but I think that you and I and some other people go into that from the perspective of we're kind of rooting for Clayton Kershaw because he deserves better. And so I think we're just kind of looking for reasons to give him more credit than the line score allows. biased and interpreting events in the wrong way and saying that Kershaw has been worse than he has, then we should be vigilant so as not to be biased ourselves because we want Kershaw to be good and we want Kershaw to shed that narrative. And we think parts of that narrative are unfair,

but we should still be honest about how he actually performs. And that game was a combination of his defense and him. He wasn't great either. But I think what's interesting about the Dodgers, obviously we knew coming into this series that they would be mixing and matching a whole lot, that they have this lineup that just rotates and they're constantly moving people around with the exception of Turner at third and Machado at short. people around with the exception of Turner at third and Machado at short basically everyone just kind of revolves around during the game and you've got pinch hitters and they've got strict platoons and they're trying to maximize every advantage and because of that in game two they really got bailed out by Turner's game-winning homer in the eighth because other than that they would have been maybe heading into extra innings with no one left really except a few starters and julio urias who was not really available because he hasn't pitched back-to-back days so they had emptied the bullpen they had emptied the bench and that could have gotten really dicey and and it didn't. They got bailed out by Turner, but it was dangerous.

And there's a risk to, I don't know if it's over-managing, but it's definitely managing aggressively and using your entire roster. And they only have, I think, 13 position players. So if they're going to do what they're doing in the series and really liberally replacing those guys, then they kind of have to be mindful of what could happen. And it nearly got into pretty dangerous territory. If I could go back real quick, one thing I'll point out that I only just learned. So when we were doing our Patreon simulcast, whatever we call it, our Patreon talk about boners for four hours podcast, I had mentioned in there that clayton kershaw threw 30 sliders and didn't get a single swing and miss in the game and can confirm now it's the first game of

the season where he did not get a single swing and miss on his slider in fact first game of the season where he didn't get at least two swings and misses on his slider so that is unusual so anyway can confirm clayton kershaw not great in that start but as for the as for the second game it was interesting to me in the eighth inning referring to the justin turner go ahead essentially game winning home run hit it in the eighth inning and uh the brewers went to cory can able to face max muncie after turner's home run of course can able struck out justin turner to end game one just beat him with high fastball after high fastball after high fastball. And it was interesting.

I guess it was maybe Ken Rosenthal wrote about how the Brewers didn't want to overexpose Dodgers hitters to their relievers. But it was interesting to see the day after the fact, Brewers went right back to the same pitcher. But they did not let him face the guy that he struck out the day before. Now, Corey Knievel is someone who throws high fastballs, and he throws them a lot. Throws them well. Turner can speak to that. And I guess they didn't want Turner to see that again. I don't know.

But Jeremy Jeffress is not a high fastball guy so much. And now, Justin Turner is a great all-around hitter. Doesn't strike out a whole bunch. He's just awesome. So you can't complain too much because Jeremy Jeffress is a fine reliever on his own but you look at the pitch that turner hit out he was a fastball kind of inside mid thigh and cory can able probably would have thrown a fastball a little higher than that i don't know how it would have worked out but still it was it was interesting in that i think maybe traditionally you would have seen a lot of managers specifically

go to the guy who did just strike out Justin Turner the day before. And no. So that's strategy, I guess. And it backfired. Yeah. Yeah. My colleague Michael Bauman wrote about just the very aggressive managing on both sides in this series. It seems strange that the Dodgers are giving all of these potential Max Muncy at-bats to David Freeze in pursuit of the platoon advantage when Muncy was their best hitter, one of the best hitters in baseball this year. I know it's hard to trust that because he hasn't been that before, but they're going for the platoon advantage there.

And I think you could make a case that even with the platoon disadvantage Muncy might be a better hitter than Fries is at this point in his career although Fries was a pretty good hitter this year too and obviously he has the the postseason history although I don't know if that's factoring into their decision making and probably shouldn't be but that is kind of curious that Max Muncy who was really the star of the Dodgers as big a reason as anyone that they're actually in this position, is on the bench a lot of the time. He's not actually getting in the game and getting at bats. He's not a great defender, so that's sort of a liability, but still, you would expect him to be getting more opportunities here.

Yeah, you look at how well Muncy did against righties and lefties this season. Of course, he's a left-handed hitter. And you look at that and you think, well, he's just great. He should play every day. And what I think is pretty clear is that the Dodgers have evaluated Muncy and determined, well, he's not actually that good against lefties and these numbers are misleading. He clearly has a lot of swing and miss in his game. He is someone who has a good idea of the that strikes him but he swings and misses a lot and he was doing that especially in the second half of of the year when his offense was good but not necessarily outstanding because it's the dodgers it makes me wonder if this could be one of two things it's either over managing and just playing the platoon because again david

freeze is a better defender at every position and you'll remember that david freeze was robbed of a heroic diving catch because of a catcher's interference call. Yes. Because you can't have a playoff game without catcher's interference. But also, I wonder, because it's the Dodgers, if they do have some sort of weird interior analytics where they've decided, well, regardless of what Max Muncy's numbers are against lefties,

he's not actually that good against them. So I don't know, but I can kind of buy it. Max Muncy's done most of his damage in lower leverage spots this year. I don't have splits on what he's done against good pitching. Obviously, he has already hit some playoff home runs. But, you know, when you watch him, it feels like he whiffs a lot. He doesn't seem like the dominant hitter that the numbers suggest that he literally has been for like 550 plate appearances or whatever. So I don't know.

It is interesting. But I am generally inclined to give the Dodgers the benefit of the doubt on stuff like this because they are so far beyond where I am with my shitty laptop. to where I am with my shitty laptop. Yeah, well, that plays into a question we got from a listener, Aaron, who said, with how quickly batted ball stats and or swing rates stabilize, are we getting to the point where batter-pitcher matchup stats that have some informational value are possible? And, you know, so he's saying, well, usually we look and we say that so-and-so is, you know, seven for 13 against this guy, so he must be good against him. Or he's 1 for 11 against him, so he must be bad against him.

And those sorts of stats are pretty useless over samples like that, in part because the sample is so small and because you're just looking at hits. I mean, you don't know if it's a blooper or a line drive. It could be anything. You don't know if it's really predictive of what they're against those players going forward. And there's just nothing there. There's just no signal. It's all noise. But Aaron is saying, well, we have more sensitive stats now. And that's true.

Like back when a lot of the influential studies on this subject were done in the book by Tom Tango and MGL and Andy Dolphin, which was what, like 2005 or something was that? That was a while ago. And back then there was no pitch FX. You had no pitch type stats. You didn't even really have plate discipline stats. It was all just the basic batter-pitcher matchup stuff, maybe with weighted on base average instead of batting average, but still not much better. And now there is much better data out there. And in the public sphere, there still really isn't anything, any real effort to mine that information and try to figure out if there's some meaning there. But teams are definitely doing that. are definitely doing that. We know that lots of teams are giving their managers and their people in the dugout rundowns of, okay, here's what the projected result is of a matchup between this

particular hitter and this particular pitcher. And we don't know exactly what it's based on. It's probably not based on those two players' matchups. It's based on families of players. And here's how this hitter does against pitchers like this pitcher, whether it's because of how hard he throws or what pitches he throws or where he throws or how his pitches move. And they're kind of putting all this stuff into some model and generating and output a forecast. Presumably, they have tested those things and found that they actually do predict how well those pitchers and hitters will do over and above just how good they are in general. So I'm sure there's something there. It's just that there's a lot of work that goes into that. And a lot of the smart people who would be doing that for a website are now working for teams and doing it for them. that for a website are now working for teams and doing it for them and and teams may have extra data that we don't have that they can factor into that too so that stuff's out there and whenever

there's some strange sit or start decision that happens in the playoffs and we with our very limited information look and say well his you know single season splits don't suggest that they should have made that move, or he's X for X against this pitcher, and that doesn't make sense. They are probably looking at much more sophisticated information, which doesn't mean that they might not be wrong, that they might be reading too much into that. It's still possible that if you're breaking down these samples into smaller and smaller bits, and you're saying like, well, this guy hits well against velocity or something. Maybe, you know, now you're reducing the sample even further,

but I'm guessing that they are going about that in a pretty rigorous way. Right. You do, you do wonder about teams over-derping the data, but we've already seen like the Dodgers have Julio Urias instead of Scott Alexander on the roster because they like how Urias' fastball plays in the series against the Brewers instead of Scott Alexander on the roster because they like how Urias' fastball plays in the series against the Brewers instead of Alexander's, which is interesting. We have heard that the Red Sox have played Eduardo Nunez sometimes over Rafael Devers because they think that Nunez is better at hitting high velocity, which is interesting, especially since the first highlight Devers had in his major league career was going deep off Aroldis Chapman.

But that's fine. That's anecdotal, I guess. But I guess he's struggled more against ival and what do you i guess if you wanted to getting you back to sort of the the listener question you get back to we have all this information can we do pitcher batter matchup stats better can they be more meaningful and i guess if you're looking at one matchup in particular then even if you have an established history between two guys, maybe this hitter struck out against this pitcher like seven times in 15 plate appearances, doesn't mean that that hitter isn't going to adjust to the pitcher.

You can always look at what has happened, but it doesn't really account for what is going to happen because hitters and pitchers are constantly learning from one another. And even when you have... An anecdote I remember hearing, I don't know if it's probably shouldn't specify teams i don't know but you had said that some teams are presenting their their managers with like projected results of plate appearances which is true some teams are doing that like let's say you have looking at this line score pedro baez versus versus Hernan Perez now maybe the Dodgers don't bother generating a Hernan Perez projection because I mean for god's sake there's Lorenzo

Kane, Christian Yelich, Ryan Braun right after him but anyway that's the first player pair I looked at in this play-by-play so we'll go with that so let's say I don't know if the Dodgers are doing this they probably are Pedro Baez, Hernan Perez so the Dodgers would, in theory, have a readout of a projection specific to that matchup. Now, that could be based on pitchers like Baez. It could be based on specific pitch types. I don't know exactly how the teams would do it, but it's worth understanding that this is, teams go into so much detail to do that, and so the manager can make an informed decision. Teams try to make it as simple as possible. Be like, based on this matchup, this guy might hit 300, but if you bring in this reliever, it could be 250.

But a problem with that, and without knowing all the details of how they do this, there could be a number of problems, is that even when you're grouping families of pitchers, so much of hitting is about picking up the ball, and you just can't account for, or at least I assume teams are not accounting for deliveries and like deception and how the ball is coming out of a guy's hand. So, you know, maybe Pedro Baez and Josh Fields, I don't know who Pedro Baez throws like whenever he's pitching. I try not to pay attention, but some similar reliever, the ball could look really, really different coming out of the hand, even if they throw really similar pitches. So I don't know how useful that would be.

So I do kind of come away feeling like what we know is you want the platoon advantage if you're on the pitching side. You want to have a right against a righty, a left against a lefty. Or even more simple than that, you want to have a good pitcher instead of a bad pitcher. That's like the first line. You want to make sure that to have a good pitcher instead of a bad pitcher. That's like the first line. You want to make sure that you have a good pitcher instead of a bad pitcher. And then after that, you want to play the platoon advantage. And then maybe after that, you want to do like the ground ball or fly ball kind of pitcher-platoon split that we've talked about. But after that, I believe that there is something to be mined.

But I am unconvinced that it has been mined with sufficient precision and accuracy to make that much of a difference. Because at that point, you were playing real small margins. Yeah. And the other problem traditionally with these stats is that they take into account players' entire careers. And obviously, players are not the same every year. They do things, they age, they get better, they get worse, they add pitches, whatever it is. And so you're just kind of lumping in all of this performance together as if both of these players have been static, unchanging beings. And that doesn't make much sense. And that's another way in which we can probably do better now. That's another way in which we can probably do better now, and I'm sure teams are doing better now,

in that you can get a faster sense of a player's true talent because we have now pitch-level metrics and batted-ball-level metrics. And if a hitter hits one ball extremely hard, harder than he's ever hit before, that can tell you something about maybe he's better now. Or if a pitcher throws harder or throws a new pitch, then instantly you know, okay about maybe he's better now. Or if a pitcher throws harder or throws a new pitch, then instantly you know, okay, maybe he's better now. And I think that A.J. Hinch cited something like that when he was explaining why Charlie Morton is scheduled to start against the Red Sox, even though the Red Sox have really great numbers collectively against Charlie Morton. And A.J. Hinch said, yeah, but that was before Charlie Morton was Charlie Morton. That was before he had the slider, before he pitched like he does now. He's a different guy. So there's almost no point in comparing. Now,

you know, there are probably some commonalities there, his motion, his delivery, his release point. Maybe those things are similar. I haven't looked in his case, but there's clearly a lot of difference there. And so it doesn't really make sense to use those stats. But if you can adjust them and try to project how good someone is at any given moment, then it's a little more feasible. So anyway, teams are working with more information than we are, which I would say hasn't been the case always. Certainly there were times where the public analysts were ahead of the teams. And then there was a period where I think there was parity or approximate parity. And now teams are ahead in part because they've hired those people, but also because they have the technology and the data and they got it before we did. And

there's still some of it that we don't have. So you kind of have to keep that in the back of your mind. Makes me think like if you take Max Muncy, to go with another current example, you can look at like Max Muncy and his career is one for six against Giovanni Gallardo, I guess would be one example. He's like two for eight with just weak singles against Jared Weaver. But this is a situation where, like like you said if you have a guy who just completely changed what he is in the current season which does happen with some frequency especially for pitchers then you just throw that old data out so you can understand why teams would

want to move on beyond just regular pitcher batter matchups but boy it gets complicated really quickly and if you take a step back you wonder we can drill down and we can come up with some sort of projection for this plate appearance. But how much trust can we really have in that projection? How big are the error bars? And you can understand why managers get so defensive and protective about their gut feelings. Because at a certain point, it's like, what are we really mathematically trying to deduce here i'm just going to go with the lefty against the lefty or the right against the righty etc right yeah all right so it's hard to to analyze two games to any great degree i was just looking at mlb.com

and they have these like here are three things that the dodgers could do to get an advantage and here are three things that the brewers could do to get an advantage and in the brewers article number two is get yelich going again poor yelich he didn't make an out in the second half of the season or in the nods and now he goes one for eight with two walks which is fine in the first couple games that happens all the time and the key is get Jelic going again which I mean I guess sure like he was you know Bonzian as we've said so getting him to be Bonzian again would would be good but it's not like he hasn't been going he's he's been. So that's the kind of like micro, micro analysis you get into when you're analyzing a single series. Yeah, but if we're going to talk about small samples,

we can at least talk about small samples that are kind of impressive, in which case can we spend a few minutes talking about Alex Bregman? Because here's something that Alex Bregman has done in the playoffs this year. He has batted 24 times. He has five hits. He has been hit by two pitches and he has drawn 10 walks. He has struck out one time. Also, by the way, he's hit a double in two home runs, 10 walks, one strikeout, two hit by pitches, two home runs, a double. And not that it really makes that much of a difference, but at the end of game two, when Bregman came in against Craig Kimbrell Bregman ended the game with a fly out to the warning track now I know the warning track in Boston is like 175 feet away so it doesn't really

count but like Alex Bregman came pretty close to at least a wall ball or if not a wall ball could have been better than a wall ball he nearly tied the game with a home run he got a good pitch to hit and he he just got a little bit under it but we're not really in position to say that alex bregman got unlucky because again he's reached base all the time that he's come up so far in the playoffs and so i don't it's hard to pull up historical playoff records in the ways that you want to this is something we talked about the other day it's really annoying that there's not an easier way to get old playoff data. But 10 walks and one strikeout, even on its own, never mind the double and the two singles and the two home runs and the two hit-by-pitches. This has been an extraordinary playoffs for Alex Bregman.

And he just seems like someone that you can't get out anymore. And he's faced Chris Sale and David Price. Although, granted, also a relievers for like a lot of that time. Right. Yeah. No, he's been incredibly impressive. I mean, is he the best Astro? It's hard to pick a best Astro at this point because they have last year's MVP.

They have Bregman, who's an MVP contender this year. They have Springer, who also doesn't make many outs in the postseason thus far in his career. They have Correa, who I don't know if he's fully healthy, probably not. But anyway, the stardom goes deep on that team. But he is about as intimidating as any hitter on that team right now and uh not a bad defender either but he already demonstrated that last year in the world series so yeah i mean it's a it's a really impressive team and so you mentioned sale and price neither one was good sale we found out after the game was dealing with evidently an undisclosed ailment that has now put him in the

hospital, at least temporarily after he disclosed it. So I assume he was pitching at less than full strength in that first game, which would explain his performance possibly. But you kind of figured that the Red Sox really need Sale to be good to go deep into this postseason because of the bullpen issues and you need him to give you innings. He is one of the very best pitchers in baseball when he is at full strength. playoff series plus maybe a relief appearance that is a huge advantage but they didn't get that from him in the first game and they lost and they didn't get that from price either in the second game but they won because garrett cole was not good either or the red sox batters were good and speaking of keys to the series i guess if get yellich going is the key to the series. I guess if get Jelic going is the key to the Brewers, then get Betts going is the key to the Red Sox. That one was a little more legitimate in that he had had a larger sample of slumping, but he kind of broke out in game two and looked like Mookie Betts again. And anyway,

they didn't get great starting performances, but they still split because the Astros for once didn't either in one of those games by the way I was curious so Alex Bregman 10 walks in the playoff so far he's only played five games but the all-time leader in walks in one playoff season it's Barry Bonds he drew 27 so you know Alex Bregman has a ways to go to catch Barry Bonds although 13 of those were intentional this is not a Barry Bonds podcast today This will be a Barry Bonds podcast in the offseason. So it was funny to me when David Price came out of the game. Now, for Price, he allowed four runs with four walks and four strikeouts and four and two-thirds innings.

He was not very good. He allowed a two-run double to George Springer that just kind of he jammed Springer through a good pitch. And Springer somehow fought it off and hit a soft line. Are there soft line drives? This is a semantic thing. Do you believe in soft line drives? I do. I think so. Okay. Well, if there is such a thing as a soft line drive, George Springer hit it and it was a double the other way down the first baseline to drive in the Astros first two runs. And then Marwin Gonzalez hit a two run home run off David Price for the third and fourth runs and Gonzalez hit the crap out of the

ball but it was another pretty good pitch like Price likes to throw inside fastballs sometimes and he threw a good one to Springer he threw a good one to Gonzalez they just got hit anyway more to the point David Price left with the score 5-4 in the top of the fifth and he departed to a standing ovation which was not what I expected one of So this was the first David Price start in the playoffs in which his team won the game. That is, I'm not making that up. That is a well-known fact. His team has won games in which he's appeared,

but that's when he's come out of the bullpen in the playoffs. So first team win. But of course, at the time, not only was it not a certain team win, because when David Price left, again, it was 5-4 Red Sox, but he left with 2-1 and 2 out. And Matt Barnes came in and started throwing curveballs all the time. But David Price left after a not great start, but to a standing ovation. So there's just no, assuming this was not a standing ovation for Alex Cora removing David Price from the game,

which would be not even passive-aggressive. That's just mean. It just really goes to show the impact of the score because thankfully for the Red Sox, Garrett Cole was worse, which no one expected. First time all season, Garrett Cole has allowed more than four runs in a game, and the Red Sox were able to do it in large part because jackie bradley hit a ball that rolled on padding for like a second and a half too long for marvin gonzalez to do anything

about yeah right so i don't think that game changes david price's playoff legacy any or it really shouldn't but it does as you said kind of kind of so dependent on run support and whether you're winning or losing. And you, the pitcher, are responsible for only half of that equation. So it does make people much more disposed to like you when your offense shows up. And that happened here. Did you pinpoint any particular problem with Garrett Cole? Did you think he was bad or was he just making good pitches that were getting hit? I mean, we have not seen Garrett Cole not be dominant very often this season. Right. No, it's not something that you see very often. And at the end of the day, against a very good lineup, which is the Red Sox lineup, he had two walks, five strikeouts. He had an overall okay start, but you look at it and, you know, he allowed two runs in the first inning. But a big part of that was because he committed an error on a ball where he should have made an out at first. It was another one of those cases where a pitcher gets a soft tapper and Cole received a grounder in front of the mound,

looked to second, threw to first, had plenty of time to get Xander Bogarts out, and he threw the ball away. Just one of those cases where you think the pitcher can never throw anywhere except home plate. But it is perplexing that they continue to have so much trouble doing that. Anyway, so he committed a throwing error, and then later in the same inning, Rafael Devers hit an RBI single with the bases loaded. But that was, I mean, it's contact, right? I single with the bases loaded, but that was, I mean, it's contact, right? You can never say that a pitcher did an excellent job when he allows contact because a pitcher like Garrett Cole is always trying to get a whiff. So this is, it's a case of, you know, put the ball in play and see what happens.

But Devers kind of hit an inside out, excuse me, ground ball single the other way. It's not the kind of contact, it's not like Rafael Devers got the better of Garrett Cole. He just hit the ball where the defender wasn't. So the first inning, it's not great because Cole allowed a fly ball double. He walked a guy. He allowed contact. But ultimately, he struck out Ian Kinsler, did that a few times in the game. Kinsler, I'm not sure if he even knew he was playing in a game.

I don't even know why he was there. He did not have a game he just i don't even know why he was there he did not have a game to remember but cole and that in the first inning was better than the than the results would show it is kind of funny if you look at the bottom of the second just looking at the line score for the play-by-play so it was cole against vasquez bats and ben attendee and uh the the baseball reference lines where reads fly ball center field deep fly ball center field deep fly ball left field deep so i don't i don't remember the inning being quite as close as it reads in the play-by-play but you know could have been uh could have been worse but it was the third inning where things got away

from cole a little bit of course and he allowed the uh the bases loaded double to jackie bradley now maybe that would have been a two run double instead of a three run double if the ball hadn't literally rolled on top of padding for like 50 feet because i don't think rafael devers is going to score from first otherwise so then you know that's just kind of really weird luck and then maybe it's a 4-4 game and and cole settled down after that so it wasn't a wasn't a dreadful start for him by any means. He got his 10 whiffs out of 90 pitches. He settled down.

But I think at the end of the day, what's important to remember, we've talked before about how the Astros and the Reds, this could be, I don't have the math to prove it, but this could be like the best league championship series ever just in terms of how good the teams are and the astros have a really good lineup and the red thocks have a really good lineup so even though i don't think cole is at his best i don't think price is at his best and chris sale is has some sort of stomach disease still like these lineups are good enough to make really good pitchers work and so you just

can't expect the same results the hitters are going to be worse than they normally are and the pitchers are going to be worse than they normally are because the the level of competition this year is just so very high yeah and i guess we can talk a little bit about the starting pitcher matchups that are coming up here because the brewers i think surprised some people when they went with gonz game one and Wade Miley in game two. And they got a start from Wade Miley that I think was much better than anything they could have expected. One of the very best starts of Wade Miley's not very distinguished career. And the upside of that is that they were able to split. And now they come back with Chassin who is probably their best starting pitcher and then

in game four I guess they haven't announced officially what they're going to do but the presumption is that they're going to do another bullpen game or use Woodruff as an opener and then follow with relievers from there and I mentioned this in our Patreon broadcast but when Dan Simborski at Fangraphs ran the numbers and the probabilities for both of these series before they started, the only game in the seven in which the Brewers were favored over the Dodgers was game four, which Dan was projecting to be the bullpen game, which gives you some idea of the power of the bullpen game strategy. of the bullpen game strategy. That's why it is used, because it can be effective when you're just saying, okay, we'll use Woodruff for a few innings, and then we'll use Hayter for a few innings, and then Jefferson, Knable, whoever, that will project to be better than your best starting pitcher if you are the Brewers.

And so, in theory, they have managed the split, and they have their most favorable matchups coming up in the next two games, which is good. And then as for the Red Sox, they, I guess, pulled a little bit of an audible and they are starting Nathan Ivaldi in game three because Porcello pitched out the bullpen again in game two. So any reactions to either of those moves? I guess as we talked about before, I don't remember what was on a podcast what was on our live game stream so apologies to anyone if i'm repeating myself but with the the big issue with ulus jacine is that he is extremely good against right-handed hitters because of his breaking ball but against lefties he's he's quite exploitable he's a big platoon split kind of pitcher one one of those sort of like two-seam slider classic righties. He's got a reliever profile, but he's a starting pitcher.

So even though he had a strong ERA during the year, the Dodgers have a lineup where they can put in a bunch of lefties and make Chassie work. So I can understand a little bit of hesitation and pushing him back in the series. Now this is going to be i know in a seven game series it highlighting three games and calling it like the key is kind of senseless because like that's 42 percent of the series right there but like more than the series goes two three

two right and so more than the first and the last block of two games this is going to be an important three games for the brewers because they're going to rely on their bullpen so heavily and because they might have a bullpen game in game four there's a real risk of exhaustion here because you know relievers are apparently very soft and absent of devoid of any stamina because relievers just can't take any sort of adversity they're just delicate little flowers so like you you could have josh hater for example craig cancel has worked really hard to not use him on back-to-back days well if the brewers are going to have a bullpen game in game four how do you plan on using hater i mean obviously you try to go for any game that you have a chance of winning in the moment because you never want to plan that much ahead in the playoffs you just

don't have the time but it's going to be difficult for craig. I mean, maybe Chaucy can go seven strong innings. I doubt it. It's going to be difficult for Craig Council to be responsible with his relievers and get the matchups that he wants. It's just this is like, I don't know, maybe it'll all show up in game five or maybe it won't because maybe the Dodgers will mishit some pitches or maybe the Brewers will just ride on adrenaline but you know the Dodgers have a deeper rotation so they can rely less on the relievers that they have and they have a bunch of short-term relievers and the Brewers are going to be stretched thin so if this gets to like game six and game seven the Brewers will have that day of rest for their relievers and then they can just kind of hope that adrenaline carries them through but this is when you can start to see a little bit of the i don't know add additivity that's definitely

another word addition additive additive problems of this kind of strategy so yeah that's the what the brewers are looking at but again if jacine comes out and does what wade miley inexplicably did then everything gets turned upside down. So we can't actually predict anything, but we sure can say a lot of words about it. Yeah, right. Yeah. I mean, you can see the advantage of having a good starting rotation. Like every team would prefer to have a bunch of really great starters so that they wouldn't have to do this bullpen game thing. The Brewers are doing this because they have to, because their strength is their bullpen game thing the brewers are doing this because they have to because their strength is their bullpen their weakness is the rotation and they've taken a clear-eyed look at that and

they realize it and they're doing what they can to maximize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses if they could have gone out and traded for jacob de grom or someone at the deadline or if they could have gotten a healthy jimmy nelson back they would have been thrilled to do that and that's how you become the astros right the astros have the brewers bullpen basically but they also have verlander and cole and keitel and morton and on and on and on so that's why they're the best team in baseball that's one of the reasons at least so it's not that teams have decided that they don't want good rotations or they don't care if they have good starters it's just that it's frankly easier it seems like at this point to find competent relievers because you just need guys who throw hard and have one

nasty pitch and they just come out an inning at a time and that works and so you can kind of economically make up for your weakness in the starting rotation because a good top of the line starter is going to cost you a lot in either prospect talent or money whereas good relievers well sometimes they cost you if you're the rockies they cost you but sometimes you just find them out of nowhere and suddenly they're amazing. Or you can turn a starter into a reliever. Now, if the Brewers could have, say, Josh Hader, who was a starting pitcher in the minors, and there's some speculation that maybe someday he'll start again. It's hard, obviously, to change a guy's role after he just had an amazing season the way he did. But do you think the Brewers would rather have this hater who can maybe go three innings in a game and pitch in, I don't know, five or something of the seven games in the series? Or would they rather have a hater who is probably

less good on an inning per inning basis, but could pitch maybe more total innings or at least impact one game more than he can in the bullpen and say start two games in the series or even three or pitch out of the pen in one and start two or something do you think it all kind of depends on the relative performance like are you way better than you are as a starter when you're in the bullpen but would they rather have an ace hater or a relief ace hater i don't know i think it's this hater i mean he threw 81 innings this season so that just think i know it's not the way it actually worked out but think of it as like one inning every two games that's essentially what he did and one of the fun things you can do with leverage

and this is like a i don't know a tang Tiger trick. You look at, so the average leverage index overall is, it's set to one. And when Josh Hader came in, the average leverage index of every plate appearance that he had this season was 1.61, which means every plate appearance was 161 times as important as the average plate appearance. So take those 81 and a third innings that hater through and you can actually multiply that by 1.61 to say that josh hater through you could effectively think of it as like 131 innings in terms of the significance of those innings that he threw and he threw 131 effective innings while striking out 16 batters per nine innings 16 and he had a like a mid twos

era and that only got worse late in the season because he allowed a couple home runs down the stretch so josh hater was so valuable and look because of chris sale i don't want to pretend like we can conclude anything about a guy's delivery and therefore durability but you look at how carefully the brewers have tried not to overuse josh hater and you figure well maybe he just couldn't really cut it as a long-term starter it's at least a worthwhile consideration i don't know if he can cut it as a long-term believer either because maybe he'll break down maybe he won't but ultimately you look at how valuable he was this season by any calculation and i think given the uncertainty of hater as a starter then you you take what you have and of course as we talk about the brewers bullpen i am absolutely

tickled by the fact that looking at the number so far of all the teams starting rotation so far in the playoffs the brewers have the lowest era they have allowed one run in 20.1 innings starting rotation five starts era of 0.44 i know that you all get tired of hearing us talk about how this is ridiculous and we can't predict anything but we keep saying the same things about the brewers over and over meanwhile their starters are just going out there and blanking their opponents every time they take the band yeah i guess that includes the bullpen game when a reliever sort of started but yeah point point taken i i've made this point elsewhere and probably on this podcast in previous years but it's just so ridiculous that we try to analyze these games in this level of detail

at this time of year like can you imagine if just like on a random June weekend, we like previewed a weekend series in the depth that we do. And we just like didn't explain why we were doing it. We just like started talking about a Dodgers-Brewers series on June 17th and talked about all the probables and didn't explain anything, but just did that. Everyone would be totally mystified by why we were doing that. And they should be because three individual regular season games don't mean all that much in the grand scheme of things usually. But that's what we do at this time of year. But there's no greater utility to doing that really than there would be in June. I mean, maybe you can predict certain things

about how teams behave better now than you can then, or at least we all devote more time to trying to. But this is the time of year when we do a whole podcast episode as we are now about two series and four games that have been played so far. And people are interested because we're all paying attention to these series but you come to analysts presumably to hear some special insight into the series and unless you're really jazzed about the the matt barnes curveball thing i don't know that

i hope you are because there's gonna be a post okay well you can consume that in multiple forms but otherwise you know i don't know that we're telling you anything that you couldn't figure out on your own because you can look at the rosters and you know who's on these teams and how these teams work so there's just only so much you can say so this is the time of yearically, when we spend so much time breaking down individual games in this level of detail. And really the predictive power is much lower than it is when we talk about things in the regular season, when we're generally looking at weeks or months or six months at a time. I know it's stupid, but here's there are two things about this, I guess. And one, I think people are inclined to want to believe in the significance of the playoffs.

And of course, I'm one of them. No one wants to think that this is all just a random nonsense. You want to think that there's some real signal in the playoffs. And at the end of the day, there generally is. I mean, you look at the four teams remaining in the playoffs now, and they're the four teams who probably should still be playing. Anyway, so a difference between this and like a random series in in june is of course there are you don't have the same long-term

considerations teams are able to put a lot more like advanced scouting prep into what their plan is like every everybody in the organization at the major league level is focused on the task at hand it is all about this series only this series this upcoming game so you have all these all these like person hours all these resources dedicated to trying to figure out the best way to beat your opponent and so then it becomes a matter of execution now every game is a matter of execution that's baseball it's a worthless thing to say but it's true you're only as good as your players perform but if you want to believe that the playoffs are very telling then you can say yeah everybody is focused on this right now nothing is more important the next pitch being

thrown or the next inning but on the other hand of course no matter how much control no matter how much thought and planning you put into a game you just can't protect against somebody hit a swinging bunt and it stayed fair versus went foul somebody dropped a foul tip and the next pitch was hit out of the park. George Springer fists a double down the first baseline, even though the pitch was good. And Steve Pierce is just a little too short or something for a space because Mitch Moreland injured his hamstring or something in the last series.

Like you can never eliminate that sort of randomness. You can never eliminate the randomness that goes into, well, we got this call off the plate instead of that being a ball this time it was a strike you can't do anything about that which is why the playoffs are going to turn on just stupid moments sometimes but it is at least each individual game is more meaningful and and personally what i enjoy about the playoffs and it can be hard to find these things sometimes but but with teams like the Dodgers or the Brewers, you can identify little things, little quirks, things that they're doing where you can tell this is a strategy. This isn't just something that's happening.

Look at Matt Barnes throwing 14 out of 15 pitches for curveballs. What are the odds of him doing that normally? I haven't run them, but I can tell you they're low. That's not something that he does by accident. So that's interesting. Even if it doesn't work out, you can at least see where the teams are thinking things. And then from that, I think you can glean some sort of internal thought processes, which is at least as interesting to me as the way that the games result. Yeah, right. And because we're all watching the same games, you can talk about these things without having to explain everything and presuppose because usually everyone's attention is fractured and splintered and they're all watching. So it's like we're all speaking the same language for once in the season. And that's nice. And these moments do matter. And you can at least retroactively evaluate them and try to figure out, think along with the managers, say this might have

been better than that, or this was weird and unpredictable, but we can still appreciate how weird and unpredictable it was. If it's aon woodruff bomb off clayton kershaw lefty lefty reliever versus kershaw i mean that's the it's about the most unpredictable event you could imagine but it was really cool and the fact that we realized how improbable it was just makes it even more fun and exciting so you can't ever predict that but you can appreciate it after the fact yeah and by the way somewhat related to this i did recently have an a little epiphany so looking at the first two games of the nlcs i guess the first two games of the dodgers brewers series went uh four hours

into two minutes and then the next one went gosh what is this three hours into 32 minutes and then in the alcs game one went four hours and three minutes take that game one of brewers dodgers and then the next game went three hours and 45 minutes these games are nine in a games that's entirely too long for nine in a game a nine in a game should be three hours or if we're going to be picky a nine in a game should be an hour and a half but whatever that's baby steps but the epiphany that i had if you look at any time any writer or any sort of journalist on on twitter complains about the pace of the game or the length of the game writers generally the people who are talking about that they have responsibilities they have to write about the game but they're not

emotionally invested whereas you don't have so many casual fans watching even like a playoff game right you've got mostly Red Sox and most Astros fans who are watching the ALCS or mostly Dodgers and mostly Brewers fans watching the NLCcs because baseball is a regional sport and it's not like a casual everyone tunes in kind of sport like football then if you always have fans fans are less likely to complain about the pacing especially in the playoffs because you're just so nervous the entire time whereas if you're a writer you are you're dispassionate you're more removed even if the game is interesting you're still like oh my god dispassionate. You're more removed. Even if the game is interesting, you're still like, oh, my God, this is really dragging. Now, like game one of the ALCS was a total slog.

I don't care if it was closed until the ninth inning. That was just bad baseball. But I've realized talking about pacing as a writer, it's easy to come off as one of the baseball grumps that we always complain about which i am i understand and i'm sensitive to but there is a disconnect because someone like uh yourself or myself will watch this and think oh wow this is a really slow game i wish it would go faster whereas if you're a fan of the team you're like i just need some time to breathe because this is extremely intense and uncomfortable because craig kimbrough isn't getting strikeouts like he usually does. So that is a modest epiphany that I have had over the course of the last, this conversation. Yeah. Craig Kimbrell, speaking of, yeah, it's kind of heart attack. It's like, I mean,

as long as they keep giving him three runs to work with, I guess it'll probably work out okay. But if he has to come into a one run game at some point soon you can't feel all that confident with how he's pitching right now i don't i don't know whether he is uh pitching to the scoreboard or something here and he's just using the buffer that the red sox are giving him but he has not looked sharp and it has been scary each of these last couple times he's pitched so that's uh i can tell you looking at kimbrough all the samples are of times he's pitched. So that's kind of a concern. Looking at Kimbrell, all the samples are small here. He's only made three playoff appearances this season. But like you think of Craig Kimbrell and his whole game plan is high fastball,

low breaking ball. And he hasn't been throwing high fastballs. He's been trying. Don't get me wrong. He's been trying to throw high fastballs to a lot of guys. And they've just ended up like at the belt or below, which is not where great camera wants his fastballs to go so his like average fastball height in the playoffs is

lower than during the regular season by like four or five inches which hold your fingers out as i'm saying this you're a listener with fingers probably at least on one of your hands estimate that distance and like put that in a strike zone box in front of you and think of what that means as a hitter you can't get on top of a pitch if it's like at your belly button unless you're evan gaddis or jose altube but if if you lower that ball all of a sudden it's easier to hit if you have hitters who are maybe laying off the breaking ball because kimbrough hasn't been controlling that very well during the playoffs and you can see how he could be a little more vulnerable what it means probably nothing but it's something that has happened for three games in a row.

He gave up the home run to Aaron Judge. He almost gave up the Grand Slam to Gary Sanchez, and he tried to give up the game-tying home run to Alex Sprague. Not good. Not comfortable viewing. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, I saw that Dave Roberts said that if game two had gone long enough we talked about how it could

have gone into extras and they had no players left basically roberts said that max muncie would have been his emergency catcher oh no he's never caught in the majors or the minors and uh and game four starter rich hill would have pitched in extras so we we could have gotten the Rich Hill, Max Muncy battery. And I am mad that we were deprived of that. I'm mad too. Although I'm also, well, no, we were simulcasting game one. Nevermind. Game two could have gone for as long as it wanted.

I don't want to simulcast that game, but I do want to see it happen. Yeah. And just last thing, I think we mentioned the probable pitchers in the Brewers side of things I think in the Red Sox side of things as mentioned also the game three starter will be Evaldi and then Porcello will be pushed back to game four

and even though nominally the two best Red Sox starters have already pitched in this series I think in this particular series and given sale being diminished at this point I think maybe their best two starters are still to come here I mean the Astros destroy left-handed pitching they are still fine against right-handed pitching because they're the Astros but

they're less amazing and so Evaldi has been really good he has like a one something ERA since the start of September. He's kind of been a different pitcher this year, as you wrote about back when he was traded or before he was traded. He throws really hard. He's right-handed. He's tough on right-handed hitters. So I think that Ivaldi-Keichel might actually be a matchup that favors Boston.

I mean, based on the starters alone, it's pretty close. This is not Cy Young Keuchel right now, and Evaldi is better than he's been before. And Morton, I don't know, there's, I guess, a little more of an error bar around Morton because he hasn't pitched a whole lot lately, and Porcello's looked pretty good. So anyway, I think Boston is still probably not quite as good a

team as the esters although it's very close but i think they are perhaps having their their best two starters for this particular series coming up here in the next couple games so let's let's use your analysis you ran last year keitel against the dodgers and keitel is a guy who works out of the zone the dodgers were a team that is disciplined so let's take mookie betts one of the most disciplined hitters in baseball let's say that mookie betts faces dallas keitel three times the game i'm going to ask you to predict three plate appearances how many times do you think mookie mookie betts reaches against dallas keitel two yes that was the number i was going to say the correct answer is probably one but i'm going two, and you're also going with two.

Yeah, yeah. All right. So I guess we will leave it there. We talked quite a while, despite talking about how we don't have that much to talk about. So we'll wait for some more baseball to be played, and then we will talk again. Yeah, and in other baseball news today, well, nothing. So perfect. I'll talk to you later. Okay.

All right. So since Jeff and I spoke, the Brewers have taken a 2-1 lead on the Dodgers thanks to a 4-0 win behind Julius Chassin and the bullpen as usual. We are going to have to talk about Orlando Garcia on an upcoming episode, unlike the offensive star.

As promised last week, the podcast is now available on Spotify, so you can find every episode there if you're so inclined. You can also support us on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Following five listeners have recently done so. Mike Moriarty, Ian Darius, Timothy O'Toole, Nathan Valentine, and John Norton. Thanks to all of you. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. And you can rate and review and subscribe to effectively wild on iTunes and elsewhere. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. Please keep your questions and comments coming for me and Jeff via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you're a supporter. And as I indicated I would, I'm now going to play a little clip, a little teaser from

our Friday Patreon-only broadcast. Again, this is the moment when Brandon Woodruff hit his home run, which Grant Brisby kind of called. Jokingly, you'll hear what I mean. And if you sign up on Patreon at the $10 level or above, you will get an invite to the next Patreon-only broadcast, which will be happening sometime soon. So enjoy, and we will talk to you a little later this week. Tell me anything you want

Any old lie we'll do Call me back to Back to you Back to you Back to you Back to you Back to you Back to you That's you It definitely never happens with me By the way, Brandon Woodruff is batting The Brewers are allowing Brandon Woodruff to lead So, fun?

I guess there's a limit to I don't know, I mean you can't Can you do two innings of a starter Every game in a seven game series And then go inning by inning with relievers too? That seems like a lot I guess they've decided that they can't Oh, and he's a lefty batting

So he's a righty pitcher, but he's a lefty batter against the lefty Kershaw. But, I mean, you have to sell out on the swing, right? Like if you're Woodruff, you have to just go for it right here. Come on. So, Grant, you weren't present for the very beginning. Just so you know, Ben and I are presumably several pitches behind you because we are streaming. And so we had to sync up. So we are.

So, you know, we are watching the third pitch. We just saw. This is amazing. Yeah, we just saw. Oh, he's over. He's riding. You're in the future. He's riding.

He's going. Oh, they're inside. Right. I could do that? Alright, I definitely won't do that. Oh, it is happening! There he goes! There's probably someone even farther behind. I will say that when you get to the... Holy shit!

Sorry, I changed... say that when you get to Holy shit! Woodruff puts on Woodruff puts on exactly one more excellent swing than you thought he would in this at bat. I won't spoil that much for you guys. Whoa. Whoa, no. Whoa, no. Did it actually happen?

Are we about to see this? Oh my god, there it is. Gentlemen. Brandon fucking Woodrum. Look at him. Look at this guy around the faces. Oh, that was a beefy big boy swing. I'm sorry for spoiling it.

Wow. That was one of the greatest post-team moments I've ever had. I shared it with people. Oh my god. 101 miles per hour, off the bat, out just straight away center. 81 listeners got to experience that with us.

I did not give that a chance to go out until I saw the outfielders that's like my favorite thing when you see the outfielders going yeah fuck like that is that is perfect oh wow