Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1439: Keeping Pace With the Playoffs

Episode Date: October 5, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley discuss and reflect on the first two games of the Nationals-Dodgers and Braves-Cardinals NL division series and the first games of the Astros-Rays and Yankees-Twins AL division series, focusing on playoff win probabilities, the Nationals’ aggressive/desperate usage of Max Scherzer, the greatness of Stephen Strasburg, a perplexing but ultimately not […]

It's a lot It's a lot It's a lot It's a lot It's a lot It's a lot It's a lot It's a lot Hello and welcome to episode 1439 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you?

I am doing all right, even though we're doing a rare Saturday morning conversation today. Got to bob and weave with postseason baseball. Yeah, those four game days don't leave a lot of rooms for podcasting or anything else. One of those days where you enjoy very much that there's so much baseball and also lie to yourself about how much of the day you spent sitting. It's just OK. Just gotta go with it. Yeah, it's tough to keep track of it all, especially when certain games overlap. But you kind of think in some part of your mind, you're a few weeks away from no baseball. And so you're trying to savor the almost too much baseball. You wish that you could kind of ration it out somehow, but you can't.

So there's just a ton of baseball and it makes it tough to time these podcasts because inevitably when the division series are still going on when they're still eight teams active whenever we record there will be something that happens after we record but before you hear it that's just kind of an unavoidable thing early in the playoffs so we'll try to catch up on things and inevitably fall behind yeah i mean although i will say that like if the yanes and Twins game from yesterday is any indication, maybe they'll just play one long game and let us do a little bit of catch-up. My goodness.

So long. So long. We'll talk about that. Yeah. So I don't know if there's an order you want to go in or anything you want to say before we just dive into games and series and getting up to speed on everything? Not especially. Well, I guess I will say, and I'm sure this will come up as we chat

through them. We often have nifty tools at Fangraphs and one of our nifty playoff specific tools this year is our Zips game by game odds. So if you go into our playoff odds, you'll see a nifty little seasonal tab and Dan and Sean and David have worked together to give the readers game by game win probabilities and then also series outcome projections. So obviously, we do not yet know who the ALCS and NLCS teams will be, but those will start filling in as we get these series wrapping up. So if you're curious who is favored in any of these games and how the odds are shifting as game results come in. It's a nifty little resource, so I would encourage people to check it out.

Yeah, and I think it's probably little known because I didn't even realize it for a while, but Fangraphs has win probabilities for every game, even during the regular season. You have to go to the scoreboard page, and when it lists all the matchups it will give you a win probability before the game starts which is kind of cool and i recently got a big data dump with all of the game odds going back like five years because i was curious about something and it is kind of cool to see that because you can see just how rare it is to have extremely lopsided matchups particularly in the postseason like yeah in regular season, occasionally you get 80-20 type games. Even those are not all that common,

but great team against terrible team, great teams at home, great team has an ace starter going, then you can see some really lopsided games. But during the playoffs, I think the most lopsided one on record in the last five years is like 70-30 or something like that. And it was like, you know, the best team against the worst team and a really good starter going at home. Like that's about as lopsided as it ever really gets, which kind of reminds you just how hard it is to predict anything because these are all good teams facing each other. Yeah, good teams facing each other with kind of funky pitching configurations yes that too

and so uh yeah it can be it can be a little up in the air i mean we we obviously are recording this the day that we will get game two of the alds so live odds from the past that will be strongly determined perhaps by the time this posts. But for instance, today the Yankees, even at home with Tanaka going against Randy Dobnak, have just 55.5% odds of winning. The Astros with Cole going unsurprisingly 66.1. My stars. Yeah, so we are talking after the first two games

of each of the NL Division Series and the first game of each of the AL NL division series and the first game of each of the AL division series, but before the second game of AL. So since there's more NL ground to cover, maybe we can start there. And since you were talking about funky pitching configurations, maybe we can start with Nats Dodgers because that's been a pretty fun one. It's even so far. that's been a pretty fun one. It's even so far. Dodgers won pretty handily on Thursday, and then the Nationals even things up on Friday. And the first game was pretty close most of the way. It was a good pitching matchup, of course. Patrick Corbin against Walker Buehler. Buehler was great, and Corbin was not quite as great, but it really kind of was broken open and it ended up

6-0 because of the not-so-vaunted Nationals bullpen that Sam and I talked about this week. It has proved to be as shaky as advertised. And so after Corbin left that game, you had Tanner Rainey come in and Fernando Rodney did his thing and walked the paces loaded. And then Hunter Strickland, of course, coughed up more runs. So not that Dave Martinez would have been very confident about his bullpen heading into this series, but we saw him use Strasburg in relief for a few innings in the wildcard game. And then game one of the division series sort of reinforced

that he can't really trust very many people, if anyone, in that bullpen. And so when game two rolled around, we saw Strasburg was fantastic and Kershaw was, he was okay. It was like one of those playoff Kershaw games where he wasn't bad, but he wasn't as good as his counterpart. And so to protect that lead, Martinez did something unexpected and very aggressive and perhaps reflective of his level of desperation when it comes to the bullpen, which is he brought in Max Scherzer for a flawless inning of relief, not in a clinching game, not in an elimination game, just on his throw day. And this is Scherzer, who of course started the wildcard game, had been in line to

start game three on Sunday. It's not clear whether he still will as we record this. And of course, he was on the IL a couple of times with shoulder and back injuries, and they've handled him somewhat carefully until now so no one really expected to see scherzer in this game and there he was i am a i am an anxious on behalf of strangers kind of person uh i get nervous for people i don't know because i i fear public embarrassment for myself and and thus for others which is why sometimes very cringy comedy is not for me because i just feel too uncomfortable and i never have a more resonant anxious on behalf of strangers experience than when very good starters come in and relief in

the postseason it makes me very nervous and so i was quite relieved that his, you know, inning work went well and was efficient. You know, he didn't labor. So, you know, assuming this was just his throw day, I can't imagine that this jeopardizes his start all that significantly. But it does seem like a problem that the Nationals seemingly only have three pitchers. Just three. That seems like a problem that the Nationals seemingly only have three pitchers. Just three.

That seems like a problem. I mean, this victory means that this series essentially is resetting now, right? They don't have to win three in a row, which is good. As Dan Zimborski pointed out in his recap of this game for Fangraphs, the Dodgers only only lost three consecutive games three different times in 2019 because you know they're a really good baseball team so stringing losses against them together is just tricky uh not impossible but tricky so it is a good thing for them for the nationals that they get to to go back and uh just sort of soldier on and have a clean slate effectively but it seems like it will be a

problem should they advance if they only have just the three it's just like they only have the three pitchers yeah that seems bad yeah it's tough to get through a month of baseball with just three number of pitchers yeah so do little and hudson are probably the the most reliable members of that pen. And even they have looked a little shaky, so it doesn't really inspire confidence. But in general, I like the concept of bringing in a starter on his throw day, which this was for Scherzer. And I encourage that. And I even think maybe teams should do it more often during the regular season. I realize that actual innings are more stressful than just throwing in the bullpen. And maybe that's particularly true in the playoffs. So there is that concern. But in general, you want to get as many innings from

your good pitchers as possible. And if it's a day where he's going to be throwing in some fashion anyway, then you might as well get that inning in a game. And I think it's fun. Yes, it's anxiety inducing, but I also like seeing those guys come in. Like when there's something at stake, like when Kershaw has made some relief appearances in the playoffs, that's like the ultimate nail biter, partly because you're like rooting for him to beat the narrative. And so that's really scary even though like he has had some very clutch relief appearances and it hasn't really done anything to the narrative but still you're kind of worried that it's going to reinforce that line

of thinking and in this case scherzer doesn't have that reputation although he hasn't been sturdling in the postseason but he's been all all right. So I think it was a good idea, but I just don't know how long you can push that and how many times you can keep doing it. In this case, I guess it doesn't really matter whether he starts game three or game four, because if he starts game four, then you have Sanchez going in game three, who would have gone in game four anyway, and you have Strasburg in game five. I guess maybe it potentially makes it impossible for you to have a Scherzer relief appearance in game five. So you're sort of like trading a game five relief appearance potentially for a game two relief appearance. And maybe the leverage wasn't as high as it would have been in an elimination game. I don't know, but ultimately not that big a deal. But yeah, I guess it's just how long can you push this because other teams have done this, as Sam was saying, other teams use starters and relief in the playoffs, but they have someone in the bullpen they can trust and maybe they have more starters to play with.

And so, yeah, I don't know how far you can push this, but I guess they're just worried about staying alive and lasting as long as they can and they'll figure out what to do next if they come to that point. Yeah, I think that of all the, you know, sort of managerial choices that we might be able to nitpick last night, this was hardly Dave Martinez's like head scratching his head scratcher. Like it makes sense to throw Scherzer on his throw day. And, you know, I think that I at one point wrote about the worst ways for a team to lose.

And I think that I included in that list, it was either that or some other, you know, 2000 word bit of business about gifs and screenshots and whatnot but i think that when you know when a starter comes in on his throat day and it goes badly that feels terrible in a special sort of way because not only has your day presently been ruined but you're cognizant of the fact that future days might be thrown out of whack by this guy now being unavailable or available in a more limited capacity because he's thrown just a bunch more pitches than he planned to. But this one worked out fine, and he looked dominant, and it's a good deal.

But, yeah, I do fret for them in terms of their long-term prospects just because at some point these guys are going to get tired. Now, Sean Doolittle or Daniel Hudson could run into a stretch of being more effective. I guess Daniel Hudson technically did sort of thread that needle, although in a quite stressful way. I would not feel confident if I were a Nationals fan. My stars.

And mentioning head scratching strategic moves. I guess we have to talk about it, right? Yeah. So it worked out in the end, but there was a very questionable intentional walk in that ninth inning. Justin Turner led off with a double and then Hudson got a couple outs, right? But he did not want to face Max Muncy or Martinez did not want him to face Max Muncy. Correct. So he put Muncy on as the potential tying run with two outs. And then that brought up Will Smith, who unintentionally walked.

Yes. And that loaded the bases and put the potential tying run on second in scoring position. And ultimately, the Nationals got out of it and Corey Seager struck out and no harm done. But that was kind of a, you really gonna do this i know that max muncie is scary but are you sure that you want to put on the potential tying run in this situation yeah it seemed the decision making was i think that we tend to it is easy to second guess managerial choices and you know when it's who who a guy who you're going to in the bullpen you know sometimes fans will be like why didn't you bring in this better guy and sometimes it's because the manager's

being a goof but often it's because like he knows a thing that we don't know he knows the thing we don't know and so he is using available information that we do not have access to to make decisions and sometimes those are still goofy decisions but they are often decisions that are informed by information we don't have access to and so we should all calm down this was like an obviously bad choice this seemed obviously bad and it's like hey we know we also know that max muncy is good but we still think this is a bad choice this was not an instance of information asymmetry on the part of the viewer this was us being like, hey, Dave, what you up to there, friend? Yeah, probably, right.

I wrote last year around this time about how there is a lot that teams know about certain batter-pitcher matchups that we don't know because they have special data at their disposal or they've just spent a lot more time doing analysis and they can group together certain types of batters with certain types of swings and pitchers with certain types of release angles and repertoires and speeds etc and so they can say that this guy is an especially good matchup for this guy and vice versa but this was probably not that case like unless the secret numbers said like Max Muncy is guaranteed to get a hit against Daniel Hudson here, which I don't think they could, because these are usually pretty small advantages either way. That was a head scratcher. And it worked out, so no one will really remember it probably, but it was one of those things that could have gone really wrong. And you don't see

so much of that anymore. I was actually at an event pretty recently with Aaron Schatz, the football outsiders guy, the very influential football analyst. And he was talking about the mistakes that football teams make and sounding somewhat aggrieved about, you know, not going for it when they should go for it and punting when they shouldn't punt and not going for the extra point and not passing enough and sort of these obvious strategic mistakes that they make. And as I understand it, your football team tends to make more than most. And I was saying to him, I said, like, you'll miss this when it's gone. Like, it's somewhat satisfying to know something that teams don't know or to, like, actually have some insight that teams aren't know or to like actually have some insight that teams aren't taking advantage of for whatever reason and we basically don't have much of that

anymore in baseball at least when it comes to like strategic decisions or even transactions it's like they know more than we do they've hired all our friends. We typically, not that they don't make mistakes, and there are certainly times where having more information can come back to bite you, but for the most part, there are a lot fewer cases than there were even when I started doing this, by that time, teams had already started hiring BP people. So going back before us, there were just so many cases where you could say, this is self-sabotage and they just don't know it. And back then it was sort of satisfying to be the ones ranting about that because no one was listening to people who were saying those things

and teams certainly weren't listening to them. And it was like a marginalized group, like the sabermetricians essentially. And so it was like an us versus them thing. And you felt entitled. You felt good about snarking about these things. And in football, to a certain extent, you can still do that. And so I was saying to Aaron, like, it's suiting enough. Like within a few years, I don't know, teams are belatedly getting on board with this stuff and you're seeing it happen less often. So pretty soon, like you won't even have these points to make.

You won't even be able to point out these obvious mistakes that teams are making. And then you'll have to figure out something else to say. And often the something else that we say now about baseball is sort of depressing and it's not as much fun as just saying like how did you bunt there you shouldn't have issued that intentional walk so it's nice that i guess baseball teams will still do this every now and then it's like unless they're the astros who in addition to having the most talented team just didn't intentionally walk a single batter this year which is like i I mean, there are rare cases where an intentional walk is okay. And obviously if you're in the NL and you've got

the pitcher spot to deal with, sometimes it makes some sense there, but there are teams, I mean, everyone's doing it a lot less than managers used to, but the Astros, because they are just like ruthless and relentless in exploiting every possible edge. Just didn't even do it one single time. So you just don't really have those opportunities to say this was dumb and just crow about it. And I guess there was at least one case, except we didn't really get to crow about it because it worked out. Yeah, I, when this happened, tweeted, please don't make us talk about this tomorrow. Because it's just, I think that you're right that the crowing, you know, it's fun to feel smart. It's fun to feel like, hey, I got this one figured out. But that discourse can get very quickly exhausting.

Yes. And so it is better to be able to avoid it and have it be an example of, you know, bad process, good result. And then we'll have, you know, we'll have another one to point to and we'll say hey here's another one but then we don't have to talk about it anymore but as cory seager battled through his eight pitch at bat i was just like oh my god we're gonna have to talk about this for and it's gonna become part of the nationals postseason narrative and it's gonna be this whole thing and we're going to have part of the Nationals postseason narrative and it's going to be this whole thing and we're going to have to dwell on it forever and ever. And so perhaps Corey Seager was also exhausted

by the possibility of the discourse when he swung through that final pitch. But yes, it is a funny thing when, like you mentioned, that my preferred football team tends to make very bad strategic decisions in these moments and it does. And in fact, i went to the seahawks game on thursday and then and watched them not try to go for it on fourth down when they ought to have and then they missed a field goal and so i was sitting there thinking about this as i was watching that game and feeling frustrated and it's one of those things where i imagine in the nfl we're going to have a couple of years where you know a couple of teams will take advantage of the low-hanging fruit.

They'll do their equivalent of not sacrifice bunting in moments they shouldn't, and they'll look really good and smart, and then it'll all kind of level out. And the moments that they make bad decisions will stick out like a sore thumb, sort of like this one did. But Seahawks won on thursday also so sometimes it just doesn't end up mattering bad process good result yeah well right as long as this doesn't happen every game because then you're talking about it every game it's like a few octobers ago when we were all clued into the third time through the order thing but teams hadn't really adjusted to that yet it just became this refrain after almost every single game where it was like, should have pulled that starter earlier.

And yeah, maybe they should have, but it got really, really boring to keep saying that over and over again. So yeah, at least you don't get bad sacrifice bunts and bad intentional walks in every game anymore. This is a case where, as others have pointed out, as I'm sure we've talked about before, baseball is in this sort of unenviable spot where often the more optimal decisions tend not to be the more entertaining decisions from a fan perspective, whereas in basketball, three-pointers are pretty fun, and in football, passing is pretty fun.

Maybe it gets to a point where it's no longer fun it's just too much of the same thing but at least initially those things are entertaining whereas in baseball maybe arguably strikeouts are not and three true outcomes are not quite as much and so this is one case i think where in baseball at least getting rid of the sacrifice bunts and the intentional walks like I don't miss those at all. Even diversity of tactics, which is maybe a good thing just to see more stuff happening. Those things were not entertaining when they happened. I don't really like to see the bat taken out of the good hitter's hands.

I don't really like to see someone just give up and out on purpose. I don't miss those at all. see someone just give up and out on purpose so i don't miss those at all i guess like certain things like like a hitting and running which doesn't really happen much anymore that's at least somewhat entertaining because it's kinetic and someone's going and someone's swinging but intentional walk sacrifice buns pitch outs yeah i don't really miss any of those things. Yeah, I think that the lack of biodiversity, if we want to call it that, in how the game is played is importantly different than, say, you know, not sacrifice bunting. Because it's a different aesthetic presentation of the game that I think is, like you said, kinetic and full of energy and exciting. You know, it's fun to see good like fast speed guys try to steal it's fun to have slap hitters be able to lay out a single you don't

want the entire game to be that but the fact that it is so rarely that anymore feels like we've we've lost a thing that was interesting an aspect that had value to it in our appreciation of it, even if it wasn't always the most optimal way to play the game. But nobody enjoys watching a sacrifice bunt. I mean, sometimes the fielding gets wonky and that part's fun, but on average, it's not a particularly compelling bit of game action. So yeah, I think this is a different thing. The Seahawks should pass the ball more, though. I'm going to keep saying that on our baseball podcast because it makes me cuckoo. There's something very funny about me, the managing editor of Fangraphs, being a fan of one of the most backward teams in football. But that is a topic for another day, so we won't dwell on it.

Although often, I guess the more analytically oriented fans and writers tend to come out of teams that don't really get on board with those things. Like in baseball, where you see so many Mariners fans and Royals fans turning into sabermetric type writers because they're so frustrated with their teams being late to those things. Yeah, the same is actually proving to be true in the football blogosphere. A lot of the public-facing, like really good public-facing football analytics types are Seahawks fans. Seattle has a weird, it's a weird legacy, man. It's a weird sports legacy. Yeah, it really is. And as you and Bauman discussed on the not-so-distant episode of Fangraphs Audio,

like when you're a baseball analytics person and you're talking to analytics people in other sports, you feel like you're a time traveler and you're coming from the future and you're like, let's, I'll sit you down and I'll explain what happens next. So here's where we are in baseball, which means that here's probably where your sport will be in five or 10 years or something and so when you're complaining about these very obvious mistakes and tactical mistakes it's like oh sweet summer child here's what comes next teams will ruthlessly stop doing these things and then they will do other things that are maybe bad in different ways and then you'll complain about being too optimized or not spending money because everyone got smart and doesn't like give out long-term deals to declining free agents

anymore and then there will be a whole host of new problems but it won't be quite the same problems but it does feel like almost inevitable it's like you know once everyone is blogging about these things and tweeting about these things constantly then you know that it's only a matter of time until teams take their advice. Maybe more time than they should, but like once it breaks in, once the eagles start doing it or whatever, it's like, all right, this is going to spread. And so you can kind of start the countdown clock. Patience, Yiro. Yeah. And then we will end up with i don't know i don't know what

the football version of the astros looks like but yeah well maybe we've had that already for the past almost 20 years or so yeah i suppose that's true but what other do we have any i guess we don't need to say any more about this uh this dodgers game yeah no the nationals won strasburg was great he was uh as dan pointed out in his recap he was throwing lots of curves lots of change-ups he was dominant the nationals postseason problems have not been steven strasburg problems at least pitching wise and i'd be on board with this being like the postseason of Strasburg if the Nationals do advance just to appreciate him because he still does have that thing where we always remember like his debut and what a big prospect he was. They even talked about it on the broadcast on Friday and that kind of colors everything that comes next. But he really has had a heck of a career and he's still excellent.

He really has had a heck of a career and he's still excellent. Bauman blew my mind last night when he pointed out that Kershaw is only like four months older than Strasburg or something like that. I think that's true because, let's see, Kershaw is 31 years old and 200 days and Strasburg is 31 years old and 77 days, is 31 years old and 77 days, which is kind of incredible because, yeah, by the time Strasburg got drafted, Kershaw was already a great pitcher and pitching in playoff games and stuff. So you don't really think of them as being the same age because Kershaw came out of high school and Strasburg came out of college. But anyway, I guess that comparison actually diminishes strasburg which is not what i intended to do he is also excellent and he deserves some time in the spotlight yeah it was it was quite fun to see him get to sort of do you know like he has been quite good in the postseason when he has pitched but i still think that the the postseason narrative that people associate with him is one of absence, right?

It's the decision for him to be shut down and to not appear. So which is, you know, which is a real shame because he is so good and has been quite effective in his in the innings he has thrown in the postseason. So I appreciated very much him getting to sort of continue to pad pad those stats so that we can move further away from a narrative of absence and appreciate him for the for the pitcher that he is because it's it's quite fun when it works and and it worked very very well yesterday so it did present he was he was so good and so efficient you know he was no hitting them through four, but it did seem as if that Nationals-Dodgers game might conclude before the Yankees-Twins game did.

I know. We were in danger of it for a moment. Yeah. So switching over to the other NL series, Braves-Cardinals, which is also knotted up at one. So the Thursday game, which the Cardinals just eked out a one-run victory, that was sort of a sloppy back-and-forth type game, some uncharacteristic Cardinals

fielding mistakes, and then the rebuilt Braves bullpen ran into trouble, and then it became about Ronald Acuna and his lack of hustle on one play where he thought a ball was gone, and so he trotted a potential double into a single, and then he hit an actual home run and received some blowback for his admiring that home run. So that became part of the post-game discussion there. The second game was a lot neater and tighter and it was a good one it was just sort of a an old school pitching duel at least for the first six plus innings or so and the Braves heroes in this game were two guys who spent a lot of the season in triple a which was pretty cool so this was kind of a redemption narrative for the Braves in this game because you had Fulton Evich, who was fantastic for seven innings. And then you had the big blow coming from Adam Duvall as a pinch hitter, hit a pinch hit to run Homer off of a perhaps tiring Jack Flaherty.

And Duvall started the season in AAA, spent like the whole first half of the season in AAA, which was probably pretty humbling for a then 30-year-old guy who's been in the big leagues for a few years. But this was a big moment for him. And then the redemption for Mark Melanson, who came in and closed the game after blowing the save in game one. So this was just kind of a very well-played game all around and a very encouraging and fun one especially for the Braves yeah I will admit that I was sort of in and out on this one because I ended up having to chat the the the Yankees game chat started during this game it started during this one and so I was

sort of in and out on it but it seemed like every time I checked back in, one or the other of the starters was notching a strikeout. And yeah, it was a very, I know that we bemoan strikeouts and home runs, and I think that's fine. It can get a little exhausting, but these kinds of games, I think, especially as reliever usage creeps up

and continues to creep up, are going to be ones that we look back on fondly because it's just a it's just a lot of fun to watch two dudes spinning out really well so yeah we're doing that that was good yeah and you could make the case i suppose that flaherty was left in too long i don't know he he threw 117 pitches i believe his season high was 118 so and that came in september but still and i think he actually faced the top of the order for the fourth time before he was finally removed and I guess you know there is some penalty associated

there obviously like the Cardinals never scored in this game so you know you can't really lament the lost opportunities too much here and because Flaherty was so great for the Cardinals in the second half, like one of the best second halves ever, and is just sort of the, you know, the stud on that staff right now, maybe you could make the case that he shouldn't have been left in that long. But I don't really want to make that case because it was a lot of fun just to see him and Fulton-Evich just go at it. And Flaherty was getting tons to see him and Fulton Evich just go at it. And Flaherty was getting tons of ground balls and Fulton Evich was getting lots of strikeouts and they were just kind of trading outs back and forth for several innings. And it was really fun. And

we've talked in the past about how it's sort of a bummer that the optimal thing in baseball is to go with more of a bullpen centric model, just so you're seeing hitters for the first thing in baseball is to go with more of a bullpen-centric model, just so you're seeing hitters for the first time in the game. But that costs us games like this, where it's just two guys going at it kind of head-to-head and maybe staying in the whole game. You very rarely get complete games, obviously, but this was a, you know, seven-inning back-and-forth fun thing. And I didn't particularly want it to be broken up by a reliever coming in. I kind of wanted it to be this mano a mano thing. So I don't know.

I mean, there are certain guys who are so good that you shouldn't remove them, even if they are facing the order for the third or fourth time, unless you have like a really dominant bullpen option. Even the starter with that penalty is going to be pretty good so i haven't seen too many people complaining about this and i didn't really feel disposed to complain about it myself no i think that this is this is one of those this is one of those games that continues to resonate no matter what direction the game is is going because you just want to see good starters go deep in the games

because, you know, they're really good. Who doesn't want to see more Jack Flaherty? Yeah, right. And I'm looking at the headlines on Braves.com right now, and one of them is Snitker, quote, I'm not going to give up on Acuna. Give up on him. One of the best players in baseball.

What does that mean? I guess it, I mean, it probably, I haven't read the story, but I'm sure it refers to his occasional tendency to not run hard on a ball that he should run hard on. And granted, he should. He should. That was costly. That was costly.

I think that we can acknowledge like that was costly like that was costly i think that we can we can acknowledge that that was a costly moment without being grumps we can say that it you know i get i get not legging that out uh even in in any moment in the regular season i get it we can say that that was costly but we don't have to overreact to it. It's Ronald Acuna. Everybody relax. Everything is fine. He's doing fine. Nobody's mad about Ronald Acuna.

Well, somebody's mad. I know, but we don't need to. We don't need to. We don't need to say, hey, look at these smarties being mad about Ronald Acuna. We can just say that they should relax because they should. He should run hard and everyone should relax. Both things are true at once. Yeah. There you there you go even in that game he hit a homer he did other good things like he's fine kind of made up for it like he's so good i mean not that

you have like different rules for different players like definitely talk to him and like say remind him hey don't you know do that this is pretty important game. And I know they benched him once when he did it during the regular season. It would be very silly to bench your best player in the playoffs. And they did not do that. But, you know, he's so good that it's like he's super young and he will probably stop making these sporadic mental mistakes at some point. But like even now, he more than makes up for them because he is just so great so you want to take a player's contributions within their proper context and so

to focus over long on this particular moment uh it would be i think a mistake when it comes to he's 21 like you know he does he's this good at his job when he's 21. I didn't even do this job when I was 21. I was doing other nonsense. Like, come on. It's fine. He's like Rachel McDaniel out there. Yeah.

Just so young. Yep. All these young people being so good at their jobs. It's intimidating. Yeah. And he did admire the homer that came after the overly admiring the ball that turned out not to be a homer. And I'm only interested in this in the sense that it provided quite a strong contrast to MLB's marketing campaign. Right.

Which is We Play Loud, which is great. Everyone loves that ad. As far as I've seen, it has a 100% approval rating, which is hard on Twitter and among baseball fans. But I haven't seen anyone dislike this. For anyone who hasn't, it's a short spot. It's very much in the vein of the Let the Kids Play ad from last postseason. very much in the vein of the Let the Kids Play ad from last postseason. It's contrasting today's game with yesterday's game and just kind of tackling head-on the idea that baseball used to be better

or whatever. It's the guys who play today aren't as good as the players from earlier eras or it's not as entertaining a game. And this just juxtaposes new players with old players in old footage and basically shows the new players owning the old players. And it's great. It's just kind of visually arresting to see the contrast of the old and the new, but it's also, I think, the right message that MLB should be taking. They have this historic youth movement right now, all of these great, charismatic, compelling, highly talented players. And people complain that MLB doesn't market at stars. Well, here MLB is marketing at stars, so it's great. So the thing is, though, that MLB in

these ads says, like, show your personality and celebrate things that you do but players are not necessarily always on board with this message and so you get the in this case it was carlos martinez complaining about acuna admiring his homer and as was reported carlos martinez had a very close friend of the family die just before this happened so who knows what frame of mind he was in. But this is like a very common reaction. If it hadn't been Carlos Martinez, in this case, it probably would have been someone else. We've certainly seen this script play out many times. So there is this very strong contrast between what MLB is kind of telling its players to do or celebrating and what players are saying themselves and like not always crotchety old veterans either like sometimes it is seemingly young guys getting angry about other

young guys doing these things so and it doesn't always break down along like racial lines either or you know where you come from and different types of baseball being played in different countries. It does not always fall neatly along those lines, although very often it does. But I don't know what you do when you have the league pushing this type of behavior and some fans celebrating it and some fans lamenting it. And some fans celebrating it and some fans lamenting it. And there's certainly a division there, but there's also a division on the field, which is obviously it's kind of a sticky situation where you have this ad that's being played like every other inning. And then you have players objecting to behavior that like what Acuna did. That case was basically, I mean, you could clip that and add it right into the We Play Loud video.

It looked exactly like clips of him that were in that video. So that's, I don't know how you handle that as a league. I think that they keep doing what they're doing. I mean, I think that people's, you know, feeling aggrieved is both related to culture and not related to culture, right? It is not difficult to imagine scenarios, even for people who, in the abstract, appreciate the expression of personality, feeling in the moment like they were shown up. Yeah, when you give up the homer and you're upset about that to begin with. Right, it feels different when it's you. And I don't say that to excuse people being overly fussy about this stuff because I think in general the expression of sort of enthusiasm and the bat flip, that's much more a positive expression of excitement than it is necessarily directed specifically at the person on the other end. But I think it is useful to remember that there is like a person possessed of human feelings on the other end of that home run ball and that they are going to be kind of grumpy about stuff. So I think that shifting the dialogue around that just takes time. And so as an institution,

I think it's really valuable for baseball to say, even if individual participants in the sport are still sorting through their feelings, for baseball as an institution to say, like, this is the direction that we want the sport to take. about that because then at least the institution of baseball is sort of on the hook for walking the walk and talking the talk and sort of trying to advance an environment of baseball where people can express themselves and embrace their individual identities so i think it's the sort of contrast that is obviously noteworthy but will probably sort itself out in time if the league and the fans continue to say, no, we really like watching Ronald Acuna bat flip when he hits a long home run because it's cool and it's fun and expressive. So I think it'll probably sort itself out. And like you said, I mean, in this particular circumstance,

I think that Carlos is probably a little thin in in his ability to kind of contextualize this stuff because he had other things going on so i don't know we can say that we will not move the game backward while also being sympathetic to people not always being at their best when their feelings are hurt right okay yeah i think that's right yeah so al we've only got two games in these two series to talk about although the yankees and twins made it feel like gosh too as we keep saying but let's start with astro's rays because that was a fun one and i think the rays are about as well configured as anyone to hang with the Astros for like the first four or five innings. But it's really hard to hang with the Astros for a whole game or for a whole series.

Like in this series, they had Tyler Glasnow going in game one. They have Blake Snell going in game two. Glasnow hasn't thrown more than 66 pitches since May or he hadn't going into this game Snell hasn't thrown more than 62 since July both of these guys have been on the shelf for a while and also the Rays just tend not to use guys very deep into games and Charlie Morton's the relative workhorse on this staff and he hasn't gone more than six and a third innings since mid-august which verlander and cole and granky or at least those first two do pretty routinely so you can hang with those guys like glasnow might be the season's best inning per inning pitcher but he doesn't throw or hasn't thrown nearly as many innings as the Astros aces. And you could say the same thing about Snell,

who, of course, is last year's Cy Young Award winner, but hasn't really gotten that work in this year. And so Glasnell hung with Verlander for the first four innings. And if anything, he looked more impressive than Verlander, which is hard to do. But because he's just so big and his stuff is just so hard and it moves so much, it just looks totally overpowering. And he doesn't seem quite as in control as Verlander, but occasionally he'll sail one somewhere, but it just looks so hard to

hit him. And then things sort of fell apart in the fifth. So he came back out for the fifth, I think having thrown 58 pitches to that point. And he ended up at 76. And between 58 and 76, things went wrong. And he gave up a Jose Altuve homer. And then there was a fielding mistake, a rare fielding miscue for the raise and a pop-up was dropped and that led to another couple runs and that was pretty much it but the astros are just they just never let up because they always have some great pitcher going like it's either

the cy young award winner or the runner-up cy young award winner starting these first two games and then the lineup is just top to bottom. There's no easy out there, and you just have to get through this gauntlet of Bregman and Altuve and Springer and Correa and Alvarez, and it just goes on and on, and eventually they're just going to get you. It's just really, really hard to be better than them for a game or for a series, although obviously this series is far from over. But coming into this after having seen the Rays' performance in the wildcard game, it was like, oh, the Rays are really tough. You can't score on the Rays either, and that's still true.

But they weren't facing the Astros in that game, and no one has an offense like the Astros. and no one has an offense like the Astros. Yeah, I think that, you know, series like this are so, they're funny because they do have, you know, I think I'd have to look, but an overwhelming percentage of, like, the fan graph staff took the Astros to win the World Series. They are dominant in so many different ways, and you just have this sense that they are going to continue to mow through competition as they go.

And so while it's not impossible that the Rays could sort this stuff out, because as you've noted, their pitching is quite good, it feels hard to do. And so when I watch games like this, I expected that the Astros would win. And so then you start looking for other stuff when you watch the Rays. And my main thought coming out of this game was, man, I just really can't wait to watch a full season of Tyler Glasgow. Yeah. Because good gravy.

Yeah. And you're right. There are moments where you kind of get lulled into the sense of like, how does anyone ever get a hit against this guy? And then the command will be a little shanky, and you see where it comes. But it's just he's like a giant statue of a man, and good Lord, is he fun to watch. It's just as I was watching this game, and my roommate happened to be home,

and she was just like, are you okay? She's like, it seems like you were reacting to this in a way that i don't always see you react to pitching yeah but yeah then they uh but then the rays got verlandered and that happens too so my stars yeah i uh i do not envy any team that has to go up against this asterisk team and of the of the uh sort of games we have seen in the early going i think this one was the one of the ones where you're like yeah this is going to be just a really hard team for some team to beat it doesn't matter who they are they just match up well against everyone because they do everything yeah they just do everything they really do yeah i Rays, if they have an edge, it's pitching, but it's like the edge between the best team in baseball and the second best team in baseball. It's like a minuscule, minuscule edge. And meanwhile, the Astros have this huge offensive edge. And yeah, there's just, there's no weak point there to poke at particularly.

point there to poke at particularly so the race scratched across a couple runs late in the game to feel better about themselves i guess and to you know maybe make the astros bull panelists confident or something but the game was never really in doubt after that fifth inning rally so no it is a very brutal way for people to learn the difference between the lows and the lows in the race system that is true yeah people were making puns about about brendan lau and i'm here to tell you that is not how he says his name we should all learn and you can goof on stuff and and lean into the mispronunciation but it's much harder to do that when there are literal lows and two of them two of them affiliated with uh with the race so everyone watched themselves it is the sort of thing where you think uh how how big a how big a difference can it really be and then you realize that like as a team the astros

hit like matt chapman and you're like oh it's that big a difference that's the difference yep and it does matter like Like in Joshian's newsletter, he wrote something just this week. He pointed out that in the past, I think he went back to three postseasons. There have been 16 series where teams were

separated by at least five games in the regular season standings, and the best teams went 13-3 in those series, which that's a small sample itself and maybe subject to some randomness, but it's not entirely random. If you wanted to pick the postseason winners, you would still just pick the best teams, and you'd be right more often than not. Obviously, there are some teams that maybe get a bigger boost from how they can configure or use their rosters for the playoffs than others.

But I think generally good teams are still at an advantage in the playoffs. And it's kind of hard to see that proven definitively in any single series. But if you look back over all the series, that will tend to be true. And the Astros could easily get upset, but it's just kind of hard to picture how it happens because then you've got Garrett Cole and then you've got Granke and then you can just go back to Verlander and Cole if you wanted to probably. And, oh man, I just, I don't know how you survive that really. It's a gauntlet doesn't feel sufficient. It feels like an insufficient descriptor to talk about the Astros pitching. It feels like an insufficient descriptor to talk about their lineup. It just feels insufficient. And so do most of the teams in the playoffs.

All right. Well, we have come to the final series, Yankees-Twins. And in game one, the Yankees extended their dominance over the Twins. The poor Twins extended their postseason losing streak. This was at least a competitive game, but it was also just an extremely long one. And as Ben Clemens noted in his recap, it's just like, it's weird how long these games last. Like it, you just know going into them that you're strapping in for four hours and maybe more. And it just like, it almost doesn't seem to really matter which team they're playing and

which year it is. It's just almost inevitable. And I guess it's because they tend to have good offensive teams. So they score a lot of runs and they tend to have good offensive teams so they score a lot of runs and they tend to have pretty selective teams that take a lot of pitches and then at least recently they've been built around these really good bullpens and so you see a lot of pitching changes and this year of course they're going against essentially a mirror image of themselves on offense like theins lineup is basically, I mean, it's within like four runs scored and one home run and one point of WRC plus

and like three points of batting average and a couple points of slugging in on base. Like these are essentially the same offensive teams just going at it and trying to out slug each other. And there were what, five dingers in this game. And not all of the runs were scored on dingers. There was some small ball involved here. But you just know these teams are going to be teeing off on each other.

And then they both have good bullpens. And so you're going to be seeing lots of pitching changes in the late innings. And so, yeah, settle in because it's going to take a while. Well, and I think the disconcerting thought that i had you know like the the yankees have been quite clear that and this has shifted somewhat given you know how severino has sort of looked since he's come back but the the idea was that the only real traditional starter that they were going to have was paxton and the paxton game went this long.

So you just sit there and you think to yourself, what's it going to look like when Tanaka goes? Because that's going to get moved around. We're going to have pitching changes for days. Yep. Yep. And Paxton gave up a couple of fingers himself, but they were solo shots because he does tend to keep people off base

at least. And Brios, I don't think, allowed any homers, right? But he did allow three runs and then the homers came later. So I guess the knock on Aaron Boone in the series against the Red Sox in last year's playoffs was that he was maybe not quite as aggressive as he should have been with the bullpen. And the Yankees built this bullpen of doom. And then he maybe stuck with his starters a little longer than he should have. And it seemed like he was pretty determined not to make that mistake again this year.

He made it pretty clear that they were going to be piggybacking guys and going to the bullpen a lot. And in this one, he went to Adam Adovino in the fifth inning and just for one out, one batter even, I think he'd walked the guy. So that was pretty aggressive and unusual to see Adovino brought in for one batter that early in the game. But again, it worked out because the Yankees have like six guys who are about as good in the bullpen as the Twins top three or so. So again, that is pretty tough to beat too. And they just went with six relievers, I think, and just pieced it together. And their bullpen allowed one run to the Twins bullpen's seven runs, I think, something like that. So that was the difference pretty much because the starters each allowed three runs. DJ LeMayhew was great. Yep. Mm-hmm.

He is excellent. Yeah. The MVP chance that's come up every time. Not going to happen. It's not going to happen. I don't think. But I think, you know what? People on twitter should

i have just been telling people how to feel lately which is not a great thing to do and i apologize but i'm going to encourage people to let go of people being excited about dj lemay who because they're yankees fans of course they're excited we're not you know they're there the a gentleman brought a stuffed parrot to the ballpark he traveled from his home to the ballpark and then presumably back with a stuffed parrot as a grown man fandom is not a rational exercise and we can invite people to enjoy the game in a more rigorous way and that's fine but post-season baseball at Yankee Stadium with a stuffed parrot in hand is not when you do it. And so people should just let them want him to be the MVP. It's fine. It's fine.

It's silly, but it's fine. It's harmless. Yeah, and you can just imagine that they're saying team MVP. Yeah, exactly. Just recast it in your mind. He's the most valuable player to them and to their team. And so they were just celebrating that regular season accomplishment. Yes.

Yes, maybe they are thinking actual MVP, but... The votes have been cast. Right, yes. Every time they say MVP, it's not as if a member of the BBWA with an MVP vote is like, well, actually, you know. if a member of the BBWA with an MVP vote is like, well, actually, you know, now that I've encountered a screaming throng of bleacher creatures, here I go, changing my vote.

The votes have been cast. The die is cast. And DJ LeMay, who has had a heck of a series so far and an incredible season, so just let him. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. Yeah, right. So this was the kind of game that you point to as like, oh, the playoffs are turning off

fans and young people and how will anyone stay awake? And granted, I may not have stayed awake for the entirety of that game. I may have dozed off briefly for a couple of days and then woken back up for the end and for the Nationals-Dodgers game. But yeah, because it goes so long and because there's just so many walks and strikeouts and so many pitching changes and then also Bob Costas and John Smoltz kind of complaining about it as it's going on, it's like not the best advertisement for baseball. Like that's the kind of playoff game where it's like, oh, it's not great when every playoff game looks like this. But you had other games that were a lot snappier and tighter and just kind of old school-ish. So not every game looks like that.

Maybe every Yankees game looks like that. So we're stuck with some of those as long as the Yankees are around but yeah I mean that's that's kind of the type of game but even that one like if you're a fan of those teams you're still going to be glued to those games and if you're not then at this point in baseball fandom you're maybe not watching anyway so I don't know that it's that damaging it'd be nice if they were fewer four plus hour games with that kind of pace i think but they're not all like that not all playoff games hashtag not all play yeah they uh uh you know several of the games yesterday moved they just moved they moved very nicely people were were humming along. So I don't think we need to fret overly long about it. I mean, that Braves-Cardinals game was two hours and 46 minutes long. That Astros-Rays game was longer, three hours and 24 minutes. But it didn't feel that long. It felt like it went faster than that to me.

long it felt it felt like it went faster than that to me and then you had i mean i guess now i'm starting now i'm gonna stop saying how long they are because it's continuing to creep but but uh the yankees one was the only one that went more than four four hours and 15 minutes my stars yeah night game on grass well yeah i mean come on baseball reference it wasn't necessarily night when it started I suppose it was evening all right well we've caught up and very quickly we will have more catching up to do so I'll behind I guess we should stop before we have

to start watching and writing and editing and podcasting anew we'll just try to keep up eventually there will be fewer games and we'll be sad about that because there will be days with no games at all yes although i guess on we are now assured of three on monday is that right yeah i think so right with potential for four oh my goodness i will say that these are the moments where i will feel myself saying, oh, four games is too many.

And then I'm reminded that at one point in my life, I was like having to sneak watch these at work. And now watching them is my work. And so I will not complain. It is a lovely thing. But I am very happy that I have time today to go to Target and go to the gym, clean my house. Yeah, I'm thinking like, oh, I've got three hours or so after we finish speaking and before I have to post this and then start watching baseball again.

What will I do with these precious few hours of the day when there's no baseball on? I don't know. Got to make the most of it. Yeah, we do. Oh, I mean, I guess we are really assured of four on Monday, aren't we? It's not just three. Yeah, I guess we are.

Wow. Wow. Wow. But then depending on how things go in the AL, Tuesday could be an off day. You never know. Yeah. Might end up being true. All right.

Well, we did it. We did it. Talk to you later. Bye. Bye. All right. That will do it for today and for this week. Thank you for listening and for bearing with our unusual schedule, which

will probably continue for the next week or so. One mea culpa on our previous episode, we did a stat blast about teams with the most war from foreign-born players versus U.S.-born players, and the listener email that inspired this question lumped in players from Puerto Rico with foreign-born players, which I had not realized initially. And then the data we got on all-time teams made that same distinction. And as one listener who wrote in pointed out, that distinction doesn't make sense. Puerto Rico is, of course, part of the United States. We should have just asked for redone data or not answered the question, handled it differently. Drawing some distinction between players born in one of the 50 states and players born in Puerto Rico is

pointless at best and harmful and offensive at worst. So we regret drawing some distinction between players born in one of the 50 states and players born in Puerto Rico is pointless at best and harmful and offensive at worst. So we regret drawing that distinction and won't draw it again. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up. Pledge some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going. Simon Bilski-Rollins, Sammy Lomba, Patty O'Connor, Ben E., and Francois Emond. Thanks to all of you. Sam and Meg and I will be picking a couple games in the next few weeks for our Patreon-only live streams. So if you're at the $10 level or above, you'll get info on how you can listen along with us. Those are always fun. In the meantime, you can join the

discussion in our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. And you can keep your questions and comments for me and Sam and Meg coming via email at podcastfangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. If you are already a supporter, you can buy my book, The MVP Machine, How Baseball's New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players. Your ratings and views are appreciated for that book, too. And we'll be back to talk to you again as soon as the postseason schedule allows. Outro Music