Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1289: Postseason Finale

Episode Date: October 29, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan recap the last three games of the World Series, including a wild and interminable Game 3, Game 4’s divisive managerial decisions, Game 5’s matchup of diverging starter narratives, how this World Series and postseason stacked up historically, the futures of the Red Sox and Dodgers, how great the Red Sox […]

Losing is not a happy thing when the stakes are high Not when you lose your lover on a simple goodbye It's over, it's over, it's over I can't look back, won't look back My heart says it's done I can't look back, won't look back. My heart says it's done. Hello and welcome to episode 1289 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs.

Jeff, that's a wrap. Season over. I know it's sad that baseball is done because it is more fun to have things happening. We now get to talk about how many hundreds of millions of dollars Bryce Harper is going to make and Manny Machado might have cost himself by being kind of a jerk sometimes. But the surge of just like relief and elation that comes the morning after the last game is like nothing else that I experience in a professional setting during the year. It's just nice to be able to like plan sleep again. It's like just games all the time and especially this weekend was so draining. I mean this series, granted, this series should have gone seven, the Red Sox Astros series. Every series the Red Sox had should have gone seven because the Red Sox, Yankees, Astros, and Dodgers are the four best teams in baseball. And it feels like we were missing something by not having those series go the distance.

But on the other hand, the way that the Red Sox-Yankees series ended was heart-stopping. The Red Sox and Astros, well, I don't really know what to say about that one. That was just kind of a bummer of a series. But then the Red Sox and Dodgers,gers they played five games but they really played six and the they played four games in three days effectively over the weekend lots to remember even after kind of a boring and quiet game five so maybe we got enough but i don't know maybe later on i'll i'll feel a little bad that the Red Sox were too dominant. Yeah, very relatable celebrating the end of baseball and the absence of baseball for the next five months. I'm sure our listeners are all identifying very strongly.

No, I know what you mean because this is a grueling month if you cover baseball. And in that sense, it's nice to have a little bit of a breather. But then the breather goes on so long that you have nothing to talk about and you're still obligated to talk about something. Then that becomes its own problem at a certain point, but I enjoy the off-season episodes because we can get kind of weird. Not that we don't get weird during the regular episodes, but we can just venture off the beaten path a bit. Today, we're going to just do World Series recap. And as you said, there have been three games since we last spoke, although lengthwise it was four. And we have a resolution.

So, yeah, I don't think it was a classic World Series or a classic playoffs. We've been a little bit spoiled lately. We've had some real seven-game all-time series in just the last few years. I mean, 2011, 2014, 2016, 2017, I think I looked at various metrics on Dan Hirsch's site, the Baseball Gauge, just to bring some stats into my subjective feelings about these playoffs and this World Series. And it all kind of matched up with what I thought, whether you go by the average championship leverage index or the total change in championship win probability added, all these fancy ways to try to quantify the excitement that we felt or didn't feel. And even looking at like, you know, Steve Pearce was the MVP of the series and he led both teams in championship win probability added. So probably good choice for the MVP, Steve Pearce.

But of the 114 World Series that have been played so far, Steve Pierce had the 82nd highest, I think, total for a best player in a World Series. So it wasn't like there was even a player who just kind of went off and just had an incredible week. Like Pierce was really good, but his goodness was concentrated in the last couple games. So it wasn't like a dominant legendary World Series performance unless you're a Red Sox fan. And we've talked about how there's some Red Sox fatigue and some Boston sports fatigue after 11 titles now since 2002. So the matchup wasn't particularly compelling just based on the team. So anyway, now that we've denigrated the series enough, I mean, there was some excitement over the weekend. I don't know

whether, I mean, Game 3 is a classic in that we will always remember Game 3, and it still feels like we're watching Game 3 on some level. And so probably if there's one thing we'll remember about the 2018 World Series, it's that it was game three. It was the seven hour and 20 minute game. I don't know if it was a great game because it was almost like just an endurance test. It was like if you made it through, then you felt like you were part of this club that actually lasted all that time. And we'll never forget that. But on the other hand, it's not a game you would ever want to rewatch. I don't think this is going to be on ESPN Classic or something.

You can't even fit that on a DVD. How well, and this is a serious question, how well do you remember the details of last year's Game 5 of the World Series? I guess not that well right now because off the top of last year's game five of the world series i guess not that well right now because off the top of my head so many of the games in that series were wild that i would have to remember the sequence of events like up until game seven which was an anticlimax it looked like that might be the best world series of all time going by some of those stats i cited and then game seven was a letdown but before, it was amazing.

So it's all kind of jumbled up in my mind. But I remember just how incredible that was at the time. But yeah. Yeah, I wonder, I don't know how much, how many of the details I'll remember from this year's game three. Although in fairness, there are far fewer details to remember from this year's game three,

but for the duration of it, I don't know. I can't believe they finished three or four minutes short of the longest game ever played in one sitting i just like yeah review the home run or something just find a reason but anyway yeah it does feel i feel a little bad what we should have done in hindsight is we should have just done podcasts after game three and then after game four and then after game five because it feels so weird now to talk about those games after the fact knowing the outcome and just because you know as soon as after game three and after game four then if there's writing to be done you write about the game you write about how wild and crazy the games were and how it they're unprecedented whatever great

comebacks great drama really long games less drama game three but really long but then as soon as the final out is recorded, anything you think about, anything you write about is just like, here is the series and playoffs and season in review. And it's less about the individual games that were played. And I feel bad that we didn't get a chance to just talk for an hour about the two most dramatic games and most interesting games of the World Series. Those games were crazy.

Just how sloppy Game 3 was and then how every single thing Dave Roberts did in Game 4 was, I don't know, went wrong. I don't know if it was wrong, but everything was spoiled. There's so many little details that not only do I recall them now

a little less just because it's been a day or two, but I don't know. I feel bad that we didn't have dedicated episodes of those games. They were really, this was another anti-climax in game five, but man, at least the series gave us something.

Yeah. Well, I'm glad that we did our discussion about second guessing on Friday and we talked everyone out of second guessing managers so that none of that happened over the weekend. Everyone just accepted every move that was made. Yeah. I think that was good timing on my part. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. Where do you start with game three? I mean, it just went on and on and on and

on. And there were heroic performances, whether it was Nathan Ivaldi or, you know, there were GOAT performances, Kinsler. I think Kinsler, basically, it wasn't just like fans criticizing what Kinsler did in that game. It was also Alex Cora basically benching him after that, right? Because he had started, I think, like every game against a lefty starter going back, I don't know, since he was acquired or quite a while. And then all of a sudden, after game three, he did not start against lefty starters. So I think maybe that was just i don't know if that was the end of ian kinsler like he's had a near hall of fame career so i i kind of hope he doesn't go out like that but that was that was bad whether it was the

the play at second that prolonged the game and ultimately let the Dodgers get back into it or his weird trip around the bases and getting thrown out at home by a Bellinger throw that was pretty far offline even if it was powerful that was not a great showing by him I guess Ian the closest I can come up with is that Ian Kinzer was essentially for the Red Sox where Brian Dozier was for the Dodgers now Dozier is not as close to the end of his career, but I mean Ian Kinzler was just, I don't know what his exact postseason batting line was, but he had seven hits, I can tell you that much,

and he batted 34 times, so you do the math. That's a little better than 200, but no triples, no home runs. He had one walk and 14 strikeouts in the playoffs. This is someone who's been like a premium contact hitter. It just looked like Ian Kinsler was toast. He played like toast. I don't know. Everyone's tired.

But then to have game three prolonged because Ian Kinsler stumbled and threw a ball wild, Ian Kinsler is like maybe the best defensive second baseman of his era. Now, he's someone who had to learn to become that, but it was just a ridiculous kind of baseball game where like the go-ahead run in the 13th scored on a bad throw to first, and then the tying run scored on a bad throw to first, and then there were five more innings after that, which is just an absurdity. why Dave Roberts was put under the microscope after game four, because literally every single button that he pressed just exploded in his face. But you have to remember that in game three,

Dave Roberts kept going to the bullpen, and outside of Kelly Jansen blowing a save, which we'll talk about that a little later, everything was fine. It's not really his fault. Scott Alexander, there was a throwing error, and that misplay happened at first base. No one to blame for that that but everybody else was fine even ryan madsen got an out without

things ending horribly yeah but it was it was strange to have game three end and it felt like the biggest story was just how heroic nathan jovaldi was regarded even though they lost just like the the red sox controlled the conversation in this series for all five games even after the game that they lost yeah that's another way in which this series at least quantified as not very impressive was that the Dodgers never had a better chance to win the series than they did in I think it was the top of the third inning of game one when Machado singled and tied it when Turner scored. And I think according to the baseball gauge, they had a 50.2% chance to win the series at that point. That was as high as they ever got. And I think there were only seven

of the 114 World Series before this that had not featured the losing team at least making more of an effort than that, getting a little closer to challenging the eventual winning team. So that's another thing. Just like once the Red Sox took the lead, it just felt like they weren't going to relinquish it until, I guess, Game 4, where for a while there it felt very much like the Dodgers were about to even things up, and then who knows where things would go from there. But, I mean, Game 3, just because it went on so long, really had something to do with Game 4. I mean, Game 4 was set up by Game 3, by the bullpens being depleted.

That's why we got into this spot where both managers were wrestling with leaving their starters in just to get some length and so that's what often happens in these the three portion of the 2-3-2 in the seven game series because that's when you start running out of gas and you've used relievers and you have to actually care about those things which you don't if it's just off day after off day it's interesting one of the things we so after game four ended and there was all the second guessing of dave roberts nice job ben a lot of people it was it was revealed that both pedro baez and julio rias were not available after having worked in game three now julio rias it makes some sense he's coming surgery, etc. You don't want to work him on back-to-back days.

But the fact that Pedro Baez didn't come in and Ryan Madsen did, etc., I think a lot of people were confused why that happened. And then Robert said that Baez wasn't available. But I think something that maybe this has been written about and I just haven't read it yet. There's a lot to read. But it's interesting that Baez was deemed unavailable

and that the Dodgers had some players who were deemed unavailable from time to time, whereas it seemed like everybody on the Red Sox was available all of the time. Like David Price warmed up or Nathan Eovaldi just warmed up like every single game. It felt like, and I don't know, it's easy to see that or interpret that

as some sort of testament to the Red Sox managing and their spirit. Maybe they had more heart than the Dodgers did and of course I am disinclined to believe that but it is something that I would like to know more about because it did feel like the Red Sox collectively were just more inclined to lay it all on the line and just go just push like step on the gas all the time just constantly go for the jugglers people kept saying over and over in a very grisly way to talk about playoff baseball yeah but and it was also weird to get to the point where people were talking about the red thugs might bring in nathan diovaldi out of the bullpen they're going for the juggler it's like

what are we even talking about anymore but anyway it is interesting and it's i don't know maybe there's something there and maybe there's not and maybe i'm just buying buying in too much to the media narrative that's already been established but everybody on the red socks seem to want to be pitching all of the time yeah i know david price said that he told cora he was available for every single game which i mean you know i sure he meant it, but there's a certain amount of eyewash there, I guess, if you're just saying, put me in coach when you know he's not going to put you in because you're not going to use David Price in every single game. But yeah, it seemed like they were all willing to, and there were starters. I mean, the Dodgers had starters in

their pen from the beginning of the playoffs or from late in the season when Wood went there and Maeda went there. So it's not necessarily unique to them, but the Red Sox were still using Purcello and Ivaldi and Sale as starters and Price and also using them in the bullpen at the same time, which is not like something the Red Sox pioneered. I don't think there's a long history of starters being used out of the pen. This was more liberal usage of it than we typically see, but again, that's something that the Astros kind of did last year, and they did anything horrendous in game four. I actually thought that Alex Cora made the worst move of the game in leaving Eduardo Rodriguez in as long as he did. And ultimately, no one cares or really remembers that because the Red Sox came back and won. But if they hadn't, I feel like that would have been criticized a lot. but if they hadn't i feel like that would have been criticized a lot and i think even cora admitted that that he was kind of let off the hook by the red sox subsequent scoring i mean i think to leave rodriguez in to start that inning to face turner then to face puig there was this

whole broadcast debate about whether facing puig was by the book or by the numbers or wasn't, because it's confusing because Puig has a reverse split. And not just this year, but his whole career, he has a reverse split. And I think it's also in the expected stats for the years that we have the expected stats. It's not just the superficial stuff. It's not just some weird babbitt thing. On the other hand, it's a six-year career, and a couple of those years were not full years. Three of those years were not full years. So I still don't know whether that's something you should trust. Presumably, you would expect that Puig has a smaller split than the typical hitter, but I don't know if you actually believe confusing thing whether you blame him for that or not, because you would just think like on the broadcast, they were citing the single season splits and

that doesn't mean much, but it is a career length thing for him. I mean, you know, it almost doesn't matter because that ball was just a cookie or a meatball or whatever kind of snack food you want to call it. It was right there. And I guess it was, what, was it the third time through the order at that point? I don't know. So, yeah. So I think, yeah, Cora really got bailed out there. That to me was the clearest example of someone making a pitching move that shouldn't have been made or in this case the absence of a move yeah right and i looking i've been watching baseball for a long time and if uh i don't know how i'm sure it's several more times over the course of our diminishing lives so there will be conversations about momentum and i don't know if there's a clear example in this series of

the irrelevance of momentum than the fact that the dodgers won game three and then the osseo puig hit that home run and everybody lost their mind and then the red sox scored nine runs in three innings and they won the game and then they won the series they just took over and there are i guess two points i wanted to make one of them i already just partially made in that when puig hit his home run my gut feeling was and there it, the Dodgers will win the World Series. I thought that was just going to be the decisive turning point. I don't know why my brain still believes in turning points.

There are no turning points, or at least when there are, they can be followed by several more turning points. But the other thing that I'm really relieved about, as much as I would have liked the series to go longer and as much as that could have been facilitated by the dodgers winning game four right before yasir puig hit his home run of course cody bellinger came up with the bases loaded and won out and he hit a ball the first base and the throw went home and then the throw went back to first and the got away and cody bellinger was safe and a run score and then puig hit his home run for nothing dodgers cody bellinger

was out of the running lane going to first base wasn't called could have been i was going through the rule book i couldn't see any reason why it couldn't have been called runner's lane interference or whatever the rule is called because cody bellinger was to the left of the three-foot running lane as the throw was going to first now maybe in the umpire's judgment he didn't interfere with the throw because the throw was on the other side of his body etc i don't really know and the call wasn't made it's non-reviewable i am just relieved that we don't have to dwell on that and that we didn't have to dwell on that for more than a couple of innings because the red sox just stormed back because that would have been real annoying and

that's a play where belger has been called out this season for interference for being out of that line now when I when I looked at the precedent he was a little more inside the line than he was on on Saturday night but nevertheless Bellinger was out of line out of the lane throw it to first and and it all led to the big home run so I'm just really really glad that that is behind us and after this moment I don't have to talk about it again. Yeah. And so the big decision that Roberts has been criticized by everyone, including Donald Trump, of all people, is not leaving Hill in when Hill was quote unquote cruising. And we've talked about this recently. I've linked to the research. There's just no indication that anyone has found that cruising means much, that it's predictive at all. And so, I mean, I love Hill and Hill is so much fun to watch. angles and the changing of speeds and the way I just like watching his curveball.

Like he kind of he gets his whole body into like placing it where he wants it to go. It's just, you know, and he's such an expressive guy and just a fun personality. And he, I think, wisely second guessed Donald Trump's second guessing. But I think I didn't have a problem with having him removed at that point for various reasons. I mean, A, it's just, you know, third time through the order effect. We know that's not really affected much, if at all, by how the pitcher has been doing. someone who typically goes deep into games he was already at the typical pitch count where he gets removed from starts and then there was the whole weird saga of what he told Dave Roberts and what Dave Roberts interpreted that Hill told him I mean it was kind of like a comic situation if the stakes weren't so high for the team you kind of wish like they would just say what they mean and just be like, I'm tired. Or are you tired? I am feeling fatigued. So Hill told Roberts to

keep an eye on him. And Roberts interpreted that as Hill saying he was feeling tired. he was feeling tired. Hill never actually said he was feeling tired. And then I guess when Roberts came out to meet with Hill, he wasn't intending to take the ball from him necessarily, but Hill had his back turned and he didn't want to show up Roberts. So he just handed the ball over because he thought Roberts was out there to take the ball from him. So it's this whole like weird etiquette kind of thing where no one wanted to say or do anything to like offend anyone else. And so they ended up making a move that evidently neither of them wanted the other one to make. So it's kind of this strange little story, but I don't know that it was the wrong move. And I don't blame Roberts for interpreting Rich Hill's comment in that way like watch me closely or carefully or whatever watch me in

this inning I mean he's watching you in every inning it's the World Series and he's the manager and you're the starting pitcher so if my starter said that to me I would assume that he means like he's running out of gas and you you know, keep an eye on me because things might go south and have someone ready. That seems like the logical inference there. But, you know, I guess Roberts could have and should have clarified if that wasn't actually what Hill meant. Anyway, all that aside, it seems fine to take Rich Hill out in that spot. I agree with that. And I agree that going to Scott Alexander was the right move then because Urias wasn't able to come in.

And Scott Alexander this year, I know that he had some problems with wildness and whatnot, but against lefties, he had a 172 batting average and a 212 slugging. He had 30 strikeouts and on walks. He's a good left-handed pitcher against left-handed hitters, and Brock Holt, for as much as he's improved, is not a great left-handed hitter. That seemed like that was the good matchup.

Even if you disagree with taking out Rich Hill, you can at least figure, well, when you're up 4-0 and you have 8 outs left, chances are Scott Alexander is not going to be worse than Rich Hill in that situation against Brock Holt, and he walked him on 4 pitches, which is bad. Now, what confuses me a little bit, and now I'm too far removed from the moment to be able to remember if there are more details, but... Yeah, why he took him out after that.

Yeah, because Christian Vasquez was up next, and he was going to be followed by, well, Mitch Moreland pinch hit for Matt Barnes. After that, and Moreland, of course, hit the home run. But I don't know why you take out Scott Alexander against Christian Vasquez, who is objectively bad. And so then you go to Ryan Madsen, and then the Red Sox go to the bench and bring in Jackie Bradley. Jackie Bradley is a lot better hitter than Christian Vasquez.

And that was the second time that it seemed like maybe Roberts just didn't anticipate the pinch hitting move that Cora was going to make. I mean, going back to the Devers and Baez and Eduardo Nunez game, not that you would expect Eduardo Nunez to hit a three run homer. But that was another case where it just seemed like he was managing for the matchup that was you know right in front of him instead of anticipating what Cora would do yeah and even there even if you leave again we're just getting into second guessing here but I feel like the the worst it seems like the worst thing that happened uh to Dave Roberts the worst thing that Dave Roberts did in game four was to take out Scott Alexander when he did. Now, maybe they saw something in the way that he walked Brock Holt on four pitches that

was like, oh, he's going to walk everybody on four pitches until we take him out. Now, that's very unlikely. Alexander was not missing by very much against Holt. Whatever. I get it. But even Alexander against Christian Vasquez, you don't have the platoon advantage there. If you just leave him in, then I don't know if the Red Sox still pinch hit. Leave Vasquez in. I don't know if the red sox still pinch hit leave vasquez in i

don't know what they could have done but alexander likely would not have given up a home run to christian vasquez it's hard to give up anything to christian vasquez and then when the pitcher spot comes up even if the red sox pinch hit say jackie bradley or mitch moreland well you have a lefty on the mound instead of ryan madsen who would now i understand after the dodgers got ryan madsen at the end of august he pitched fairly well at least in terms of getting a lot of strikeouts. He seemed to be over the back injury that tanked his numbers with the Nationals. So I don't really know what the Dodgers' internal metrics have had to say about Ryan Madsen. I can tell you that they're probably more negative now than they were a few weeks ago because Ryan Madsen did not have a week to remember.

But I guess he was important to them in the NLCS. have a week to remember but i guess he was important to them in the nlcs and again as we say all the time even if you make the wrong move bring in the wrong pitcher bringing in ryan madsen does not mean well now the red sox have three runs it's not a three run decision it's like a partial run decision no matter what and then of course we're not even talking about any of this if kelly jansen doesn't allow another home run kelly jansen has allowed 15 home runs this season with just so many runs but the gate the runs kelly jansen allowed in games three and four solo homers that blew the saves in both cases those are the only runs he allowed in the playoffs he's still the best reliever on the team craig kimbrell was terrible yeah all month and he didn't blow a single save. It's just, what an unreal. He had bigger leads to protect.

I mean, it's just, yeah, people were mad at Roberts for bringing in Madsen again, and I get it because, what, he had allowed seven out of seven inherited runners to score in the previous two appearances or something? Easy pattern to pick up on. Yeah, but, right, that was how Roberts managed to get to this point. That was what happened in the NLCS, and Madsen was fine then. And, I mean, you can't make decisions based on two games. You can make decisions maybe based on how the pitcher is pitching in those games,

potentially, if there's something really worrisome there. But I didn't see people saying, well, he shouldn't have brought Madsen in because you know Madsen was not throwing as hard or he didn't have his good stuff or he lost his command or something they were just saying well he let all the runners score last time so why would you bring in the guy who lets all the runners score but he doesn't always he did those two times so I don't know it's just it's so hard to get out of that mindset of like what we saw yesterday has all the bearing in the world on what we'll see today and we just know that's not the case and there's so many examples of that even within a game or within a series it's like

everyone was saying well how could you take Rich Hill out? He was pitching so well. All you had to do was look at the other side of that game at Eduardo Rodriguez, who was pitching so well until suddenly he wasn't, and he gave up a bunch of runs. And, I mean, that's kind of the perfect counter to guy who is pitching well will continue to pitch well. It's not like, you know, object in motion will remain in motion. I mean, I guess it's like that, except there is an equal and opposite force. It's the hitters and the hitters are good and they get better when they see the guy a few times.

So that's kind of my problem with it. I don't know. I think Roberts probably got a little over managy at points there maybe and shouldn't have taken out Alexander so quickly. But as you're saying, no matter what move you make, I mean, you could go to the absolute worst person in the bullpen at that point and you still would expect it to work out better than it did. Like at a certain point, the relievers just need to get some outs and no one was getting outs at all in that game. Like you could have said that he should have brought Maeda in he didn't use Maeda a whole lot in these playoffs but Maeda didn't look good either when he came in and he gave up runs and you know if every reliever gives up runs including Kenley Jensen like if you get the ball to Jensen with a lead in a save situation

I know it's a two-inning save situation, but still he's done that in the past, and I don't know, what can you do? He's one of the best relievers in recent history. All you can really ask is that you get the ball from your starter to your setup man and your closer with a lead, and if everyone just keeps blowing it,

it's kind of on the players more than the manager. Not a whole lot you can do when Kenley Jansen is giving up home runs and Joe Kelly is a shutdown reliever. Like, I don't know how you're supposed to interpret that and come to terms with that. Now, when you go to the ninth inning, it was a little strange when Dylan Flora came in, which I get Kenley Jansen would have been tired and Flora faced Nunez and Holt, but then the Red Sox pinch at Rafael Devers. Jansen would have been tired and Fleur would have faced Nunez and Holt, but then the Red Sox pinched at Rafael Devers,

and it was surprising that Dave Roberts didn't have a lefty to go to in that situation because he brought in Alex Wood three batters later to face Andrew Benintendi, and he faced—he lasted one batter before Campo Maeda came in. So it was a little surprising that Alex Wood wasn't warmed up in time to get in for that lefty. Granted, he was followed by Swihart and Bettson, etc. And, you know, Alex Wood probably takes a little longer to get warm in the moment than a regular reliever would. But that would be one case where maybe Dave Roberts wasn't managing enough to not have a lefty available. And that it bit him by championship win probability. Added that Rafael Devers' single in the ninth inning turned out to be the biggest play of the series. Now, on the other hand, again, you can look at

that sequence. Brock Holt hit a double, and then Rafael Devers singled him in. Both of those hits were off Dylan Floro. I'm sorry, Dylan Floro. You had a pretty good turnaround this season, but you melted down at the wrong time. But it wasn't even that much of a meltdown because the Brock Holt double was just a grounder that he slapped down the line the other way, which no one would ever expect. And then Devers' single, it was a pretty well-hit single, but it was a ground ball that would have been hit right into the shift if there weren't a runner on second base. So even the biggest hits of the game were not even necessarily impressive hits or just cases of the Red Sox being great and the Dodgers not having the gumption or the will or whatever

you want to say. It was just, well, these are grand balls that found their way through. And that kind of did it, which I guess didn't kind of do it because the Dodgers tried to score more runs against Craig Kimbrell in the bottom of the inning. But there's a whole—I don't know how Craig Kimbrell is going to be remembered after this October and he's going into free agency because he was part of the winning team. I would imagine that these memories are going to fade pretty quickly, but boy, Craig Kimbrell really tried to kill a lot of Red Sox fans this month. There's really no other way around it. Maybe it's

not a coincidence that Chris Sale was on the mound to finish game five. Yeah, I mean, the Red Sox, they just sailed through these playoffs with basically nothing or worse than nothing from their best outfiel Pierce and Brock Holt and Joe Kelly and just all these guys who coming into the playoffs, we weren't even really thinking about that much. Maybe we should have thought about them more. But I mean, if you had said the Red Sox are going to go 11-3 in the playoffs and just steamroll over the other best teams in baseball, you would have figured, well, they're going to have to get a lot out of Mookie Betts. They're going to have to get a lot out of Chris Sale. And they

just didn't. They just got contributions from all of these strange places on the roster that you wouldn't have thought. I think their bullpen for the playoffs had a 187 batting average allowed and a 2.71 ERA, both of which were the best of any team in baseball, unless you count the one game that the Cubs had. So, I mean, we were talking about the Red Sox, like the bullpen was their vulnerability. And I know that we said, well, you know, it's not that bad and it's probably comparable to some of the other teams in the playoffs, but you wouldn't have expected it to just be dominant like this. And I don't know how unusual this is, but I was looking at the correlations between championship win probability added for all, what, 240 players I think there were in this postseason. I looked at the correlation between that, how much win probability they added

to their teams in the postseason, and their regular season win probability added, and also their war, and there was no correlation, zero correlation. It was like 0.02 with their WPA and negative 0.06 or something with their war Like you look at the leaderboard for championship win probability added in this postseason, and it just looks like it's completely random. Like you just kind of took all the names and just threw them up and they landed wherever. It's like Betts and Jelic, like the probably two MVPs of their respective leagues are down at the bottom,

and so is Manny Machado and Yasmany Grandal Jeremy Jeffress like all these guys who were fantastic and then you look at the top of the leaderboard and it's like Steve Pierce and I mean Steve Pierce had a pretty good regular season but it's just not the order you would expect and I'm gonna go look and see whether it's always that random or whether this was especially random but it's October so we know it's pretty random right that would be fun and now looking at last year again this is at the baseball gauge the top five in championship probability added were George Springer, Jose Altuve, Charlie Morton, Justin Turner, and Alex Bregman so at least there's some normalcy there there's not a Steve Pierce up there although Logan Forsyth was seventh so you know weird

things happen Michael Taylor down at 13th, regardless. But, yeah, one of the things that also struck me, it's easy to remember just the World Series because that is what happened most recently, and that's when everybody gets to focus on the same two teams. But this postseason, the Red Sox bullpen threw 63 innings and allowed 21 runs. As you already said, aside from the Cubs, the Red Sox had the lowest playoff bullpen in the array in baseball. That was supposed to be their big weakness. Okay, 21 runs

in 63 innings for the Red Sox bullpen. The Dodgers bullpen allowed 20 runs in 64.2 innings. Dodgers bullpen, just going by runs allowed, the Dodgers bullpen was better than the Red Sox bullpen, which was the best bullpen. The Dodgers bullpen was better than, very slightly, it was better than the Brewers bullpen. The Brewers were supposed to be all bullpen. That's all. The Brewers have an outfield and a bullpen, and that's their team. They have 12 players, and that's everything. And the Dodgers bullpen was as good as anyone else's bullpen in the playoffs, but that's not how it's going to be remembered. It's going to be remembered for what happened in Game 4 of the World world series which is not very fair at all because

again you can just remember what happened in game three when the daughter's bullpen was really really good so it's just strange you go into the playoffs and you think the yankees have a stuffed bullpen they they allowed a run every other inning the astros had a good looking bullpen the brewers had a good looking bullpen now the bre Brewers had a good-looking bullpen. Now, the Brewers' bullpen was good, Jeremy Jeffress aside, but Red Sox and Dodgers, two best bullpens in the playoffs? What are you supposed to do with that? And I don't know. I mean, the Red Sox got to use David Price in relief, and Rick Purcello in relief, and Chris Sale in relief, and of course, Nathan Uovalde in relief. The Dodgers were using Alex Wood and Kitama Eda. When the Red Sox traded for traded for uvalde during the year and he was having a good season

yeah i remember at the time thinking oh this is interesting because they basically traded for a fifth starter but they're already going to win the division like why get a fifth starter and it just i guess my mind wasn't open to the fact that oh right in the playoffs starters are relievers too yeah so i don't know that didn't occur to me enough and it's going to be easier to remember next time. Sometimes good teams can trade for a fifth starter because a fifth starter can become your best reliever. Look at my example for the Dodgers the past couple of years.

But yeah, the Dodgers are going to be remembered, I think, as worse in the playoffs than they actually were. Although, in fairness, if you look at how the Dodgers hit in the playoffs, it was much, much worse. You probably have looked at these numbers, but what's funny to me is that by like OPS differential or whatever, the best team in the playoffs were the Houston Astros. Yeah, right. I mean, that's the other thing. Like we can talk about Dave Roberts's pitching moves all we want, but the Dodgers had a 550 OPS in the series. And it's not like the Red Sox set the world on fire with their hitting,

but the Dodgers batted 180, 249, 302, and the Red Sox obviously made whatever damage they did do, not trying to reference their hashtag but it's hard not to they made it count because they had like what a 13 47 ops or something with two apps and runners in scoring position which is ridiculous but i don't know even if you want to criticize roberts for not making the optimal move which maybe it's fair from time to time, but you just, you needed the Dodgers to hit at some point and they just weren't hitting, which is a credit to the Red Sox, obviously, as well. And the Dodgers are a really good hitting team that just didn't happen to hit all that well

in this series or in this postseason. So I don't know what to do with that. It's funny. I wonder, you mentioned that like maybe Alex Wood wasn't ready, wasn't warmed up. I'm curious about how much that affects a pitcher. Like what if you just brought him in anyway? What if you just said, you know, you'll get your warmup pitches when you come out to the mound and you'll be fine. I mean, there's probably like an injury risk there to not warming up. But in terms of effectiveness, I wonder what it actually is. Like, I'd like to see some guinea pigs who just volunteered to come out cold and just pitch to hitters without actually warming up. Because one of the quantitative directors I talked to for my second guessing piece, he said that there's a real cost to warming up pitchers and then not using them, which makes me think, I mean, we all say that, but I would assume that they have actually made some effort to quantify that and figure out what the stress is and what it does the next day if you warmed up and didn't get to come into the game or something. So I would guess that like,

I mean, we have no data on that. We don't know how many times pitchers warmed up but didn't come in. We don't have a clue. I would think that teams know that. They probably know like what's the average time it takes for each guy to warm up and, you know, how much does it affect people if they come in when they're not warmed up? I'd love to know all of that, but I don't. Yeah, that's team-protected information. We have absolutely nothing. So there are two things. First of all, people always tell you to warm up and stretch before you go to the weight room of the gym. I'll tell you what, I don't stretch at all when I go lift, and I'm fine. Nothing's ever gone wrong. On the other hand, Ryan Madsen said, what was it, Game 1?

Game 2? I think it was Game 1. When Ryan Madden came in and had his first bad experience of the world series that he wasn't quite ready to come into the game yet when he did come in because i think because it was so cold and blustery he just didn't feel like he was warm yet and he immediately uncorked a wild pitch and walked a batter or two and and there was that so at least based on some anecdotal evidence ryan madsen wasn't all the way there but i mean you're right You do get to go in. You get your eight, I don't know if it's still eight warm-up pitches

or if it's a matter of time now. I forgot what the, if there was a rule change, it's been discussed. But you do still get to warm up. And, you know, Alex Wood at, think of it in video game terms. If Alex Wood is at, like, 70% warm versus Dylan Flora against Rafael Devers at 100% warm. Maybe you still go with the lefty, but I don't know. At the end of the day, you're right.

The Dodgers in the playoffs had an OBP of 299, and their slugging was 344. You're not going to win a World Series by doing that. And you can look at the team, and of course, Manny Machado wasn't very good for the Dodgers, especially in the World Series. But I think it's easier looking at how the Dodgers finished. Like, Justin Turner was fine in the playoffs, considering the competition he was going up against. But, like, for the second playoffs in a row, Cody Bellinger was terrible.

And Jock Peterson was not really that good. Yosemite Grandal was a nightmare at the plate. There are these individual players, and I think Bellinger in particular, but also Peterson. You look at the way Joe Kelly pitched him in Game 5. You just look at these guys, and maybe I'm making too much, but you think it seems like they really do have big holes in their swing for above-average hitters.

It seems like something good, hard fastballs can exploit. I don't know what to make of that, but with Bellinger, the evidence is pretty compelling and like peterson having trouble catching up with high heat like joe kelly just threw him seven straight inside fastballs and peterson didn't have a prayer it was like for a seven pitch at bat it was non-competitive so i don't know i don't know what to make of it it's really easy to overreact the dodgers are going to have a chance now to move on from yasmani grandal if they choose to they don't have to keep jock peterson around if they don't want to peterson wound up in the

playoffs with one walk and 13 strikeouts but you know we're down to about 10 or 11 minutes left that you get to do on this podcast before you have to move on to talk about all the same stuff in another podcast so i guess we should talk about some sort of overarching like uh the season's over david price redeemed himself and Clayton Kershaw finished as a loser again. I don't know. Do you have anything to say about either one of those guys? Well, I'm happy for Price. I mean, he was impressive. It's funny just how completely three starts and a relief appearance. I mean, he's, you know, made over 320 appearances in his major league career, and it's like three or four of them now have just completely changed the perception of him. And,

you know, I always hoped that he had this in him and thought he did because he has at times. He has come up big at various moments and just hasn't been consistent at it. And so I am glad that he did. I think it's nice. And I think it's sad that Kershaw didn't. I mean, at this point, you know, I don't think you can defend Kershaw just by using the old, I think, legitimate excuses that we used to about short rest and bullpen support and all that, because those don't really apply anymore now it's just he's not the same pitcher anymore and I don't know whether he will be again whether he will figure out how to succeed I mean he did well down the stretch and so it's not like he can't do well when he is throwing at the speed so I don't know whether it just didn't work against good teams

or whether he just didn't have the stuff, didn't have the speed differential, didn't have the movement, whatever it was. I mean, you know, to give up four runs against maybe the best offense in baseball in seven innings is not disastrous. It's not embarrassing. Like he gave up home runs to JD Martinez and Mookie Betts, who are two of the very best hitters in baseball. And, you know, I mean, it's not like, it's not one of his worst showings, but I think in contrast to

Price, who was very much redeeming himself, it seemed like Kershaw almost had or was at the point of getting past this, and then two lousy World Series starts, and we're right back there. And it's not unfair because at this point, he has almost a two-run gap between his postseason ERA and his regular season ERA, and that is not all bequeathed runners who scored. Right. Kershaw is the new Price, who was the new Kershaw. It just goes either way. We had talked earlier this month about how much it would take for David Price to reverse the narrative. And I think we had concluded then, like, it would actually take quite a lot. And I don't know. Maybe he did it.

Of course, if he comes back and pitches and has a bad start next October in in his first game people will bring it up again but i don't know when you pitch when you start and start well in the decisive game of the world series that probably does it that's one of those icons and of course there's how he pitched in and the lcs as well two starts before that yeah yeah i haven't read the entire article yet but jeff passon has written about how it's another pitch tipping comment. I'm going to bring it up. But they say that early in the ALCS and against the ALDS, David Price was tipping his change up. And that's the thing that he figured out in a side session. So who knows?

I really don't know. But, I mean, that's what they're saying. So anyway, David Price came out. Now, David Price presumably knocked an oct out of his contract. But here we are talking about Clayton Kershaw. Now, David Price presumably not going to opt out of his contract, but here we are talking about Clayton Kershaw. He's got, what, two years and 65 or something million dollars left on his contract. He has the option to opt out.

He has three days to decide, which is not a lot of time. You could say, sure, you should be thinking about this all season long, but no player wants to think about that contract stuff during the year. Kershaw, clearly a diminished version of himself, but still very good. Again, he finished with a 2-7-3 ERA with a strikeout per inning, not many walks. Playoffs, he allowed too many home runs. His September wasn't sparkling, but I don't know. It seems like maybe what's inevitable here is maybe the Dodgers tack on like a third year or whatever to what's existing. But this is going to be an interesting test. And I don't know what the right or wrong answer is here but it's going to be an

interesting test of the Dodgers front office the Andrew Friedman Farhan Zaidi front office to determine exactly how razy do we want to be with like one of the biggest budgets in baseball because it's easy to look at Kershaw and think this is a depreciating asset if you want to be super cold about it Kershaw is clearly not what he was and given pitcher trajectories it's very unlikely he gets back to what he was on the other hand he was quite good this season he looked like a number one despite the injuries but you know if you are if you're the Dodgers executives you can think I don't really want to, I don't feel comfortable giving this guy $35 million a year for like the next several years. But a lot of people would say Clayton Kershaw is the Dodgers and he's such an icon. How could you ever

allow him to get away? And I say, it's going to be a test. I don't know what the right answer is because I don't know how to value those, I don't know, soft factors, if you will. But it seems like it's not the Friedman move. But at the same time, it is genuinely impossible to picture Clayton Kershaw pitching somewhere else. And I don't think that I want to picture Clayton Kershaw pitching somewhere else. So maybe if you were Friedman, you just suck it up and say, well, hopefully we are always getting cheaper reinforcements from the farm system, because maybe we're going to end up overpaying this legend. Yeah, and bigger, bigger picture about these two teams or the Red Sox, we were talking about it at the ringer, some of the writers and editors, like what's the takeaway

from this World Series or from the Red Sox win? Like lately we've had, you know, well, the Astros win. It's tanking. It's the Cubs win, it's tanking, there's a new way to win, this is how you do it. If the Brewers had won, we would have said, oh, it's bullpenning and it's not tanking and that's how you win. And there's just, for the Red Sox and Dodgers, I mean, they won kind of the way that they've been winning for a while and that lots of teams have been winning since the beginning of baseball, more or less, right? I mean, they spent a lot of money and they developed some prospects and they hung on to their prospects and they had some bad contracts that they were able to eat because they

spend money and they found some guys in reclamation projects. It's just like they kind of just did everything. They got talent internationally. They got talent through the draft. There isn't really a – they didn't find a shortcut, I don't think. They just kind of win the way that big market powerhouse teams win and presumably will keep winning. Does either of these teams strike you as a risk to falter soon? Is one of them more than the other less

likely to be back here next year or two years from now? I mean, here's so the thing that is always going to be in the Red Sox way is that they share a division with the Yankees and the Dodgers don't have that. There are decent teams in the NOS, of course, and you could argue that the Dodgers are worse than the Red Sox this season, but the Red Sox will at least be pushed by the Yankees, who are not going away, to say nothing of the Rays. And then the Dodgers are presumably going to be favorites with whatever roster they emerge from the offseason with next year. Remember, they get Corey Seager back, and Corey Seager is great. So the Red Sox are going to have to figure some things out. Craig Kimball is going to be a free agent. Isn't Joe Kelly going to be a free agent? There are various

free agents on the Red Sox. World Series MVP Steve Pierce is going to be a free agent. Isn't Joe Kelly going to be a free agent? There are various free agents on the Red Sox. World Series MVP Steve Pierce is going to be a free agent. So I don't know what they're going to do. But I mean, as long as you have Betts, Bradley, Benintendi, Sale, Price, etc., the Red Sox are going to be okay. I don't know what they're going to do about Chris Sale and his durability, making sure he can hold up through October. But I don't know. On the other hand, he did look pretty good striking out the side to end the world series this season don't think either team is going to disappear next year i have been wrong about those things and i guess if you want to really take maybe the strongest opinion you can take about like what what's the takeaway message from the champion is oh the red sox paid the money to get jd martinez and while teams were

avoiding free agents or whatever then the red sox just put their money where their mouth was and they they spent the money and they were rewarded for it which is great fine whatever i don't think it's super controversial to spend on one of the five best hitters in baseball and give him a modified contract because of some sort of foot problem but dave dombrowski deserved to win one of these things for how aggressive he's been all the time like you the red sox have made some aggressive moves and training for chris sale and signing jd martinez and and acquiring craig kimbrough like dave dombrowski has a way that he works and it sacrifices a lot of the whole idea behind dave dombrowski's behavior is the future

but we're trying to win right now and if we win right now it'll justify everything and this is the first time he's won in a long time since he was with the what marlins right yep i didn't look this up yeah that's right yeah so it's been two decades for dave dombrowski but now he could probably put his like the tiger's ghosts might not be haunting him anymore he's got got his World Series, and, you know, the sale trade looks great. Built a good bullpen somehow, even though we didn't think he did. A month ago, we thought the conversation about both these teams, the Red Sox and the Dodgers, is they didn't do enough to address their bullpen.

Yep. Here we are. What do you do? It's true for one of them, I guess. But, yeah. And, like, the Red Sox, I don't know how to place this in context with their previous recent titles because it's like four in 15 years. I guess you can call them like the team of the century so far, the team of the millennium if you want to.

And it's just these are such different teams. Like we're talking about three different managers, three different general managers, no real overlapping players for all of these World Series. I mean, even Dustin Pedroia, he wasn't around for the 0-4 one and he didn't play in this series. So it's kind of like the titles aren't concentrated enough to call them a dynasty exactly, but there are enough of them in a short span of time that it's also not novel when they win one. So everyone's like, oh, the Red Sox again, which is not something you could have envisioned anyone saying 15 years ago. But now it's just old hat all of a sudden. But it is, I guess, causing a reappraisal of the 2018 team, which I, prior to the playoffs, had not thought of really as like an all-time great team because the underlying numbers just didn't really suggest that they were or that

there was a big gap between them and the Yankees or the Astros or the Dodgers or there were cases you could make that all those other teams were better than they were and you know 14 playoff games probably shouldn't change your opinion that much even though it's against other really really good teams whom they mostly dominated so in terms of results i mean you know 108 regular season wins plus 11 in the playoffs just rolled right over some really excellent teams you can't really find any fault at all with the actual results so at this point with the season over maybe there's just no point in you know trying to poke holes and say well their base runs record or you know it's just like at this point why even go in that direction and you know

all this like incredible hitting with two outs and runners in scoring position. I don't know if that's a skill. Doesn't seem like it's a repeatable thing. Hasn't been for most teams in the past. But they did it. They did it during the year. And they did it during the playoffs. And it made them good. So it's kind of like how we were evaluating the Dodgers versus the Red Sox coming into this series and trying to decide which one was really the favorite or was one really a lot better.

And it looked like the Red Sox were a lot better. But again, it's five games. Yeah, I don't know. I didn't check the final numbers, but I'm pretty sure the Red Sox scored during the playoffs 45 runs with two outs, and they allowed a total of 51 runs. So it's pretty good. I think you look at this team, and if you look at the underlying numbers, the run differential, the base runs, the Red Sox came into the playoffs as not clearly the best team in baseball, but not only did they win the most games,

but I give them a lot of credit for the fact that they eliminated the other three best teams in baseball in order, and they did it all while losing only three times. So that's enough for me to just give in and say, yep, the Red Sox were the best. They were the best this year. They showed it. They were great all season, and then they were great in the playoffs. That's good enough for me.

Don't have a huge overarching takeaway, except that the Red Sox were very good. And in conclusion to this podcast, because I know you have to go, the Mets hired an agent to be their general manager. Yeah, well, we'll have to talk about that later in the week and maybe some stray other thoughts on Red Sox and Dodgers and World Series. But yeah, it was eventful. It could have been more eventful,

but there was a lot to talk about. And it's always kind of depressing for me i say this every year but going to mlb trade rumors or whatever like the day after the world series ends and seeing this extremely insignificant news like leading the site i mean yeah everyone's wondering about machado and harper and of course we will talk about their free agencies, but there's all this like little so small stuff where we go from like every play deciding the championship to these moves that will make barely any impact at all. And we're suddenly supposed to be just as interested in the stuff that won't have any effect on anyone for several months and close to a year. one for several months and close to a year. So it's a tough transition, but it was tougher like the last couple of years when we were coming off the highs of those World Series. And this one, I feel like I'm in off-season mode a little bit more. I just had a waking nightmare. What if we

had been doing one of our Patreon-supported podcasts during Game 3? Yeah. My wife asked me what would we have done if we had been streaming that, and I said, I mean, we take our responsibility seriously. We probably just would have been out there for seven hours. I don't know. Maybe you would have left in protest or something, but I probably would have just been sitting there silently fulfilling my obligation. I think I just gave myself anxiety for something that didn't happen. Anyway, we'll talk to you all later Alright that will do it for today

And for this season Of course we're not going anywhere over the winter But this did mark the conclusion of our Seventh season doing this podcast We started it in the summer of 2012 So not seven full seasons But parts of seven seasons, which is pretty incredible. I never expected that it would still be going after this long. It has not always

been easy to keep it going through job changes and co-host changes and life changes, but your support and continued participation make it possible and rewarding, and we hope that we can continue to count on them in the future. So thank you for spending this season with us, and we hope that you will spend your off-season with us. I really wish I could just go stare out the window and wait until spring, but I have imminent book deadlines, but I will try to stick to the podcast schedule nonetheless. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild, and the following five listeners have already done so. Andrew Belisi, Dominic Theofan, Nick Graham, Doug Graham, and Michael Workman.

Thanks to all of you. You can also rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes. If you enjoyed listening to us this season, please let us and other potential listeners know on there. You can also get through the winter by joining our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. It's always active in there and feels a little bit like baseball season. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. And please keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming via email at podcastfancrafts.com

or via the Patreon messaging system. We will be back to talk to you soon. with me All I share All you bear Still you stay with me Still you stay

with me Gentle words go with me gentle words go unheard still you stay with me

still you stay with me