Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1451: A World Series Worth Waiting For

Episode Date: October 31, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Nationals’ well-earned World Series victory, the Nationals players they’re happiest for, the a strange, all-road-wins series, the brilliance of Zack Greinke, the decisions of A.J. Hinch (including a bad bunt, pulling Greinke, using Will Harris, and not using Gerrit Cole), Max Scherzer’s high-wire act, the futures of […]

And we'll all join hands, and we'll all march along, and we'll all mark time as we go. Yes, we'll all walk along, and we'll all sing a song, as we walk down salvation road. Yes, we'll all walk along, and we'll all sing a song, and we'll all mark time as we go. Hello and welcome to episode 1451 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 Limber of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm doing very well. I'm right in the post-Game7 high. Yeah. That was a fun one. This series, it really salvaged itself. It really delivered in the end. Yeah. You know, the ones in the beginning were okay and the ones at the end were good and yeah.

Yeah, well there was a Fangraphs post by Tony Wolfe after game 5 about why the series had been so boring which was something that I was thinking of writing also if the series had continued to be boring. Although that's not a very fun post to write if it's just, hey, why

was this boring? Who's going to be excited to read about something being boring? But in the end, we do not have to write that because it turned out to be pretty fun. And it stayed strange the whole way through. Road team winning every game, home field advantage does not exist anymore. And we got a couple of games at the end, too, with weird calls and interesting managerial moves and stars doing star stuff. And the pitcher's duel we'd been waiting for, at least for the first six innings. That was fun. Yeah. I will say that I feel sadness in my heart for Zach Granke.

Yeah. But we don't have to start with sadness because how exciting for the Nationals and their fans. I have talked before on this podcast about experiencing anxiety on behalf of starters who come in in relief in the postseason because they're not pitching in their usual role. And what if they embarrass themselves and they might undo all the good work they do in the regular season. And tonight I wanted so badly for Max Scherzer to be done pitching. I wanted a very good starter and relief with my whole heart, with all of it.

But, yeah, I mean, like, you know, star players did star player things. Old and endearing players. Yes. Old being a baseball relative term, of course, did cool, exciting stuff. Yeah. Yeah. It was great. Nationals are a really likable team.

And I mean, most teams are likable, or at least most of the players on most teams are likable. And I think a lot of the Astros players are likable. Their front office may not be quite so likable. Roberto Asuna may not be so likable. But most of the Astros players are likable, and I would have been happy for most of them. But, you know, they won one. Most of them won one. And the Nationals, they really earned it.

They really earned this victory I mean they were a good team so I don't want to go overboard on the whole like this came out of nowhere the underdogs the nobodies ended up beating the best team I mean I do think that the Astros were the best team and the Nationals beat them but the Nationals were a great team too it just so happened that they had injuries and they started off in that very slow and weird way. And so they were fighting back from behind the entire season. And that's a big part of the story of their season. But I think it obscures the fact that they were a very good team and the projections believed in them and the stats said they were good. And ultimately they that, and they showed that they were very good. And they outplayed, I think, teams that were probably better than them, at least over the bulk of the regular season, if you include those first bad games that they played sort of shorthanded. They beat the Dodgers. They beat the Astros. They came back to beat the Brewers in the wildcard game. I mean, they really did it. They beat, I think Joe Sheehan pointed it out, that they beat the best collection of regular season teams that any World Series team has ever beaten, any champion has beaten en route to the championship, just in terms of regular season wins and that's not even counting

the wild card game they just they beat really good teams to get there and they faced lots of elimination games and they were losing in elimination games and they just kept coming back and i don't know if it's magic or baby shark or clubhouse stuff or just the fact that they're really good players and they showed it yeah it is suboptimal to have like four and a half pitchers that you trust. But when three of those four and a half are Max Scherzer and Steven Strasberg and Patrick Corbin, that plays pretty well. And this is a baseball team that embraced baby shark as a song and made us listen to it like a lot like not a little bit a lot we listen to that song a lot

you and i neither of us have children i have nieces and i see them often they don't do baby shark because they they're they're not preschool age yet no No Baby Shark. And we listened to that song and you know what? I don't mind it. I don't mind Baby Shark. That's how charming this team was. That is the magnitude of their accomplishments. They picked the worst song.

Just like one of the very worst songs on the entire face of the planet. And we're like, yeah, Baby Shark. You know, I'm going to be thinking about that song in my dreams tonight. on the entire face of the planet. And we're like, yeah, baby. I'm going to be thinking about a song of my dreams tonight. That's just in there. I'm going to need the team from Inception to get it out of there. The Dodgers, the Cardinals, the Astros, that's 304 combined wins.

I forgot about the Cardinals there for a second. It didn't take so long to dispatch the Cardinals. They're not quite like those other two teams. But still, that's 304 combined regular season wins. That is the most ever. No other team has topped 300. The previous high was the 2004 Red Sox, who beat the Angels, Yankees, and Cardinals. That's 298 wins.

So they really did it. And yeah, I'm happy for individual players on that team. I'm happy for Ryan Zimmerman, who was there on the mound. And that was great. And Howie Kendrick with just another absolute dagger, just incredible come from behind game winner at this stage of his career when a lot of people had understandably written him off. I mean, just so much to like here. And Juan Soto, who has hopefully 20 more years to keep trying to win championships, but just the most likable possible baseball player that has ever walked the face of the earth. Daniel Hudson was released by the Angels. He is a pitcher with an arm that works, and he was released by the Los Angeles Angels on March 22nd of this year. He threw the final pitch of the World Series. Yeah.

Like, you know, after the game, you saw Anibal Sanchez and Max Scherzer embracing and crying and saying, Sanchez said, we won one. We finally won one. I defy you to not find that delightful. Yeah, that's great. It's amazing. And Scherzer had every career accomplishment except this, basically. And now he crosses this off the list.

I mean, it's great. It's just really great to see those guys win. It was very infectious and wonderful. Yeah, yeah. They were just, I mean, we talked about it the last time we recorded. We do not have a way to quantify the effect that teammates working well together, which we often call chemistry. We don't know how many runs that's worth in a game. We don't know how many runs that's

worth in a game. We don't know how many wins that's worth over the course of a season. It seems to matter some, mostly because we all have jobs and we know that we do better at those jobs and like them more when we don't hate the people we work with. And so we don't know. But it made for great viewing. It made it really fun to watch baseball at a moment when we really needed to be able to have some fun watching baseball. Yeah. It was not in a, you know, dereliction of duty kind of way, but it was nice to be reminded why we care so much and why all the stuff that isn't working well that we need to fix is worth fixing and working hard to get right because when it is right it can be this and that's incredible yep yeah sean do a little easy to root for player yeah yeah yeah just a great group of guys as they

said themselves but from afar it was just a lot of fun to watch them and follow them and they beat the odds i don't think the odds were quite as heavily stacked against them as some would have you believe because they were very good and the postseason is the postseason but still yeah they had quite a ride to get there and the last game was great too so we should talk obviously there's also what this means for dc and those fans and and there's hope for you and your mariners teams that have never won a world series can win world series it can happen for you too someday so i have to say as a neutral observer right i mean like we as baseball writing types, we mostly root for good games. We want the games to be compelling and all of this stuff, you know, guys who are

charming and really talented and seem to like each other, that's all very good. And it makes for good watching and we root for that kind of stuff, but we're mostly, we just want good games. And if a series goes seven all the better that's the stuff that we want i was a neutral observer and felt terrible for much of watching max scherzer just because i was so anxious on his behalf and i had the thought i watched the first couple of innings of this game with my mom and i turned to her and i said if this was the mariners and i were still the kind of fan i used to be i think i would just have passed out or had to have turned it off or started to maybe consume worry snacks in startling quantities so yes but also maybe it's better to not.

Maybe it's better to not. It's probably not better to not. Look how happy they were. They're so happy. So it's probably better. Yeah, it's probably better to lose a couple years on the back end of your life to the anxiety. Yeah. Yeah, and the whole, I mean, for so much of this decade, like the Nationals were one of the most successful teams of this decade in terms of total wins, certainly, but most of those were regular season wins and they just away at the end of the decade that whole narrative is just gone now it's as gone as Bryce Harper they don't have to drag it around as a franchise

anymore yeah they won a world series so that's that and I I have to say you know there are a lot of there are a lot of ways that teams construct rosters of good players there are a lot of ways that teams construct teams that have deep postseason runs that win World Series championships. But there is something very encouraging about a team that was willing to spend money on players who were good getting to raise the trophy. I think that at this moment moment in baseball that's also a good thing for us to be able to point to and see again there are a lot of ways to do it and you know the nationals like the learners will be seemingly paying max scherzer's grandchildren his contract so i don't

know financially how advisable that is but it is there is something that is kind of nice about seeing a team and it's not like the astros payroll is slight by any means but no you know it's nice to see a team that said hey we we uh we don't have enough pitching so we're gonna go spend money on patrick corbin because he's good at pitching and it would be nice to have him and then it turned out they were like wow we're really glad we did that yeah boy would we be in trouble yikes yeah um that was a good demonstration of yeah pay the top free agent get max scherzer i mean max scherzer is like one of the most successful free agent signings of all time so not necessarily repeatable but they they

did that and they got more than what they paid for and then yeah they went out and got patrick corbin and yeah they let brace harper leave, yeah, they went out and got Patrick Corbin. And yeah, they let Bryce Harper leave. And I guess they made a decision that this would be better for us. This is how we want to spend this amount of money. But there were those two guys that they spent on and they delivered in the biggest moment. Yeah, they appeared to be just perhaps cursed in a deep and ancient way about being able to assemble a bullpen that is not terrifying. Yeah. But it didn't matter.

Yeah. Not for lack of trying. No. Like they've turned over that bullpen. I know. Several times. It's not like they stuck with the same guys. It's that they keep getting different guys and they keep being bad.

But good enough. Good enough. Good enough with the postseason schedule and all those off days and a great starting rotation that became a bullpen for october it worked so they they planned well they took advantage of the schedule and the unique way that playoff baseball works and put that plan into practice and everyone was on board and it worked out just well enough yeah the bullpen and the dugout were like that mc escher like forever stairs yeah yeah just looping back on each other over and over again infinite

staircase is that what i'm trying to say houses stairs bunch, stairs, bunch of stairs, Penrose stairs? They're Penrose stairs. There you go. I know what you mean. So, this game, there's a lot to talk about in this game. Managerial moves to dissect and tactical decisions, but also some brilliance on the losing

side. And you brought up Zach Kroenke and it looked for six plus innings like Zach Greinke was going to be the story of this game and he still deserves to be a story of this game and Zach Greinke just watching him when he's on is just one of the most pleasurable baseball experiences there is and there's such a drastic difference between Greinke when he's not quite on and when he really is because we had seen him not be quite on earlier

in this postseason and he just doesn't look all that impressive when he doesn't have that pinpoint command because he's not really putting up impressive radar readings anymore and so you wonder this is Zach Granky? This is that guy? It just doesn't look that great

like when we were doing our second patreon live stream sam was coming up with a theory on the fly that maybe grinky is actually just really good at getting bad hitters out and isn't actually that good anymore at getting good hitters out and so he was doing some play and dixing and looking at splits to see if maybe grinky is better better against the bottom of the order the last couple of years since he sort of lost his fastball, literally. But he didn't really find compelling evidence that that was the case. I don't think that is the case. But you could kind of talk yourself into that because you're looking at this guy throwing 89. And when he's not putting it where he wants to to it looks hittable and it is hittable

but when he does put it where he wants to and he very often does it is just exquisite it's so much fun to watch and other than that change up that he left in the middle of the plate to Rendon in the seventh like he just didn't really leave anything in a hittable spot. He was mixing, he was in and out. Maybe he was getting some help with the strike zone from time to time. I think that's fair to say, but maybe he was earning that also the way that pitchers historically have by just going two inches off the outside corner because they're trying to do that. And he just was masterful. It was so much fun to watch. And I think he, you know, this is a theory I'm developing on the fly. So I might get to the end

of it and decide it's very silly. And then we can just move on and say, oh, Meg, aren't you tired? But I think that some of the best pitchers to watch in terms of your actual aesthetic experience of them as pitchers are guys who can do a lot of different things and complement their skills on the mound with other stuff so sometimes it's you know like gary cole has a zillion pitches he just has all of these many pitches he's got a zillion of them granky has the command but you also this was was like a peak Granky as athletic pitcher game. Yes. Yeah. And I think that's one of the things about him that is so enjoyable is that he continues

to, you know, despite the years and the velocity declining and all of that nonsense, like remains just one of the most adept fielding pitchers in baseball, and just seemed to get comebacker after comebacker and be perfectly positioned to field them and be early to stuff. And I just, you know, there was that, I don't recall what inning it was now, but there was that one moment where Fox had their, you know, pre-prepared, here's Zach Greinke being a great fielding pitcher, click package, and they played it and then he immediately got a ground out that he fielded cleanly and got the runner out so it

was just it was a very fun uh display of all the different ways that zach granky can be good in one game except for like a couple of pitches that ended up being quite a problem but yeah you know i think this is why starting pitching is more compelling a lot of the time than relief pitching because you see a variety of pitches if you see a bunch of pitches and the guy can field you're like wow look at this complete athlete yeah zach i think he's not falling down and throwing the ball off his leg the only way it could have been better is if it had been in an l park and he had yes and then we could have seen him demonstrate that aspect of his skills too. But yeah, it really does give you this great confidence.

Like I always have a moment of anxiety when a pitcher fields a comebacker and he turns to second base and you know he's going to try to go for the double play. And there's a perception that pitchers are like really terrible at throwing to the second base. And I don't know whether that's true or whether I'm just like scarred from remembering Mariano Rivera throwing that ball away in the 2001 World Series Game 7 or many other instances. But it always sort of sticks in your mind because it's like, man, you just threw 97 on the black and you can't throw, know just lob a ball over to second to start this double play but of course it's a completely different motion and it's not the thing that they repeat over and over and over again for their entire lives so i get why they throw it away and they're

rushing and they're not fielders they're primarily pitchers but grinky is a fielder like he really is just like having another fully qualified all-around baseball player on the field. And you can just see how big an advantage it is. And it was a fun fact about it being the most in a World Series game since Maddox or someone. That's an actual fun fact. Yes. I was bombarded in so many fun facts that I can't keep them straight, but it was something like that. So, yeah, that was just really fun. Yeah, that was just really fun. And I think like Grinke is, I don't know if it's as fun to watch later career Grinke as it was to watch peak Grinke where he just had everything. Like in a way, it's more fun to watch him work with these limitations and still succeed.

But there is less margin for error. And you're always kind of worried because if he does make a mistake then he's less likely to get away with it than he used to be so in a way i miss the where he literally hit every radar gun reading between 60 and 100 and it was just this absolute show of every possible talent that a pitcher could possess. It was just like hearing Jeff Buckley sing or something. It's like the four-octave range and Cricky's 40-mile-per-hour range. It was kind of like that, whereas now in this stage of his career,

it's equally pleasing or it's close to equally pleasing, but it's different. It's like if i guess i'm sticking with this singer musician analogy it'd be like a singer who maybe loses a little of that range and can't hit those high notes anymore but maybe gets that like weathered gruff quality that suits some singers so well depending on what their material is so like i don't know post peak sinatra or something where it's not quite as smooth as it was and you can kind of hear the gravel in his voice but now he can really sing those saloon songs and sound like it's actually 3 a.m and he's sitting in the bar and someone just broke up with him because he kind of just sounds like that now so that's

kind of grinky now he can't hit the high either. He's lost most of that 90 to 100 range, but I like both versions. And I don't know if he felt any different on the inside than he does in a typical start because his pregame press conference was just like, yeah, big game, pretty big game. The standard Granky, and we all love him for that. But that was a lot of fun and now I guess after celebrating how great he is we can probably transition to the conversation that everyone is having and will continue to have which is why didn't we get to see even more Granky in this game why was Granky pulled when he was pulled so yeah to remind everyone of the situation this was seventh

inning so he had given up the home run to Rendon who has just hit big home run after big home run or big hit of some kind in all of these high leverage situations and elimination games. So no shame in giving up a home run to Granke. But, you know, he had gotten the first out. He had gotten eaten to ground out. Then there was the Rendon Homer. Then Juan Soto walked. And then A.J. Hinch went to Will Harris. And we know what happened next.

Howie Kendrick hit the foul pole. And that was basically the ball game. Howie Kendrick. It. Howie Kendrick hit the foul pole and that was basically the ball game. Howie Kendrick. It was Howie Kendrick and he hit the foul pole. Think about the sentence that you just said. That was a critically important play in a World Series game, in a World Series game seven in 2019.

Yep. Yeah, incredible that that that happened but it did sorry i thought we just needed we needed to dwell on the sentence for a hot second you can't emphasize that enough yeah that is fair so grinky's pitch count in this game finished at 80 80. That's not a whole lot of pitches. No. However, he was, what, third time through the order at that point. He had walked one Soto. I don't know. He obviously wasn't far removed from looking totally in command of everything, but he'd given up the homer. He'd given up the walk to two incredible hitters.

But still, if this were not the 2019 postseason, I feel like this would be a move that many managers would make and we would all nod our heads and say third time through the order and one run lead and you want a fresh arm in there. That would be sort of a standard move that was made, I think. But we're in this weird time portal back to like 2014 or something where every pitcher throws 110 pitches and every postseason start. And so it's more glaring that that did not happen. But, you know, it's game seven. And there was another stat on the broadcast, I think, that this was the first game seven in a World Series, I suppose, where both pitchers went at least five innings since 2001. Game seven is all hands on deck. You're pulling guys. You're putting in your fresh arm whenever there's any sign that your starter is struggling. Obviously, given what happened next, a lot of people will not forgive AJ Hinch for this, but I don't know. What did you think at the time and now if you've changed your mind at all? I will admit that at the time, it didn't really move me much. I felt that the relatively low pitch count, at least compared to what other starters have

done, was probably being offset by him going through the order a third time. I was perhaps a little surprised. And what this mostly made me wonder is what exactly was going on with Garrett Cole. I guess I was a bit surprised that they went to Harris in that situation, mostly because Cole had been up and warming if I recall correctly and so I think I think I expected that they would shift to Garrett Cole and I would have felt nervous about that in the way that you do when someone who hasn't come in and relieved since college comes in and relief in one of the most important game states of his entire career. But I think I expected to see Cole in that situation. And so I don't know, and we haven't gotten quotes back

from many of the postgame stuff yet, so we don't really know what the situation was there. But it made me wonder, like, was something up with Cole, that he wasn't available? Did he feel something funny when he was warming? I was just a bit surprised with who they went to, not that they went to someone who wasn't Zach Granke. Yeah. So Will Harris is a really good pitcher.

He's a really good pitcher. Over the past five years, I just looked up this stat, like minimum 200 innings. There are only two relievers who have a lower ERA than Will Harris over that period. And I think it's Zach Britton and Roldis Chapman, maybe. Will Harris is really good. He is not extremely long worked. He's not going to give you that many innings. He's not going to go multi-inning outings.

But when he's in the game, he's very good. And he had been very good up until game six in this postseason. I don't think he had a very good up until game six in this postseason. I don't think he had allowed a run. And it's sort of a shame that he finally was kind of having his moments. Like, I think Sam talked on our first Patreon live stream maybe about how Will Harris just he never really seemed to be at the top of the bullpen hierarchy. Didn't really get saves except for, I think, one brief period. But now he was kind of the go-to guy in this postseason. And he had earned that, I think.

And then he gave up these two dingers and back-breaking dingers in these two games. And that's a shame. I guess you could say that he maybe worked hard. Maybe he was tired. I know that at some point Hinch said something about how Harris needed a day off as much as anyone. And he certainly has worked a lot. in some way, then yeah, maybe don't bring him in in that spot. But I don't know. He's been so good for so long that I don't have a huge problem with pulling Greinke. And if you are going to pull Greinke, I don't know. I guess I don't have that huge a problem with Harris. I think, I mean, the pitch was fine. It was a low and away cutter. And really I guess, Kendrick just kind of flicked it the other way and it wasn't a bomb or anything. It just happened to hit the foul pole. It hit the foul pole, Ben, in 2019.

It did. So I don't know. It wasn't a terrible pitch. No. He's a really good pitcher. I don't hate it. I mean, narratively speaking, I would have preferred to continue to see Granke. I would have been happy to see Granke try to pitch

his way out of that and get himself the win and stay in. That would have been fun. I was really enjoying that Granke start, but analytically speaking, didn't hate that move. And Harris, he's a really good pitcher. He's been great for you. And he made a good pitch. And Kendrick just put a good swing on it. And to be clear, it wasn't like I was sitting on my couch going, my God, how could you possibly go to Will Harris? Because you're right, he's been phenomenal. And I guess I have been somewhat conditioned, perhaps by the Nationals, to expect a sort of conservatism to manifest itself in some of these decisions where you really just don't want to allow any further decline in your win expectancy. And so I think that was maybe why I was conditioned in that moment to think that they would go to Cole, especially since he had been warming.

But yeah, it wasn't like at the time I was like, oh oh there's will harris as we noted on uh one of our uh live streams he has the look of a man who has seen things you know he has the look he has the sort of face where you're like he is steady in a storm he you know he has observed life and all of its uh conflicts and complications and he can take it he's got that facial hair so you also say he looked like a kubi doll he used to look like a kubi doll it is important to note that he no longer looks like a kubi doll but when will harris did not have facial hair he did look a little bit like kubi doll who had been cursed and brought to life i don't know that the facial hair changed that all that much now he looks yeah but now he's like the the kubi doll has been cursed and brought to life. I don't know that the facial hair changed that all that much.

Now he looks, yeah, but now he's like, the Kewpie doll has been cursed and brought to life and then gone on misadventures that are now part of a Halloween movie. And now it's like, oh, I've seen things I can't unsee. To me, it looks like a Kewpie doll that someone just glued some hairs in here and there. Like the magnetic beard. Yeah, right.

Like drawn beards. Yeah, it's like some iron magnetic filings that someone poured onto his face and they stuck there for some reason. It's not my favorite facial hair. Anyway. No, it's, yeah. I mean, look.

Not everyone can grow it. No. You grow what you can grow. Yeah. Your face dictates it. Yeah, that's apparently the thing. So, yeah, in the moment, I wasn't deeply offended. I was surprised, but I wasn't horrified.

I mean, of all the weird leaving a starter in too long or taking them out early decisions that were made in this game, the Scherzer stuff was significantly stranger just given you know what we knew of his injuries and the way that he was obviously laboring and how poor the command was at at times and you know the fact that he had given up runs right so i was surprised more by that decision perhaps that that surprise was such that it numbed my surprise to Granke being removed from the game, I should say. Yeah. I don't know.

Yeah. Given the way that Martinez has just trusted his few reliable pitchers and given just the grittiness and the guttiness and how Max Scherzer got himself onto the mound in this situation. I'm not shocked, I guess, that Martinez stuck with him until basically he was forced not to, which he wasn't really because the Astros just could not strike that big blow other than the Gurriel solo shot. But it just felt like they were really playing with fire leaving Scherzer in that long and I just I looked up at some point it was still one nothing and I it felt to me like it should be at least like four nothing or something because it was just like how does he keep getting out of this like some of it was just maybe you know de-juiced Paul like

Jordan Alvarez almost hit a three-run homer that just died at the warning track or stopped there and so there was that kind of thing and then there were hard-hit balls that were right at people and then there was that just inexplicable robinson torino's bunt which that was just the weirdest thing and I have not heard yet whether that was his own decision or whether Hinch ordered that for some reason. But that was just wild to me that they did that because it really seemed like they had Scherzer on the ropes, basically. Like it was the second inning and they get the Gurriel Homer leading off. Then Alvarez singles, Correa singles. They're hitting every ball like 105 miles per hour.

And then Robinson Cherinos pops out bunting. And I just, it's the second inning. And you're just crushing this guy right now. He doesn't look like he has it. He's got the whole neck thing going on. You're already winning. You've got a good offense. It just really did not make any sense to me that Chirinos would bunt there.

Yeah, that decision was confusing. Am I misremembering? Did Adam Eaton try to bunt in this game again? There was. I want to say it was an Estrubal cabrera bunt that was actually laid down. I don't remember if there was an attempted eaten bunt. But yes, there were bunts on both sides. Bad bunts on both sides.

Everybody bunt and stop bunting. No more bunting. Such a weird postseason. Bunts galore, intentional walks galore. Walks, yeah. Postseason starters left in so long. Just, I don't know. What year is it?

I don't know. Yeah, it was very strange. I thought that so early in Scherzer's start, you know, the velocity seemed fine. And the command was all over the place. And I thought, well, you know, he's probably figuring out, like, what he can do physically, right? So maybe this will, he'll be able to sort of dial this in. You would probably prefer if you're picking one of the things to work in the very beginning of this start, knowing what we know about his health,

I guess you'd prefer the velocity and then hope the command comes. But then once the velocity started to decline and precipitously, and the command was still what it was, we're all just sitting there thinking, is the bullpen phone broken? Is Martinez reacting in some way to the fact that they pulled Strasburg the night before before he could throw a complete game? And so, dang it, Scherzer will pitch until, I don't know,

his neck separates from his body. I don't mean to say that he would have endangered his health because I think that they were pretty, well, I don't know. I don't know if he would have. He might have. I don't think that he did. I don't think that he did. He might have been willing to.

Yeah, let's just say that he didn't do it. So that's what we know. We know that he didn't do it. We don't know, but we wonder if he might have. Yeah. And so it just seemed like a very, you know, it was like, you know, that moment, this is a great, this is a very relatable reference. It benefits from being both relatable and very current. So that's going to be what really drives this home.

going to be what really drives this home you remember in independence day when you know they're first they're starting to uh really appreciate the scale of the uh the aliens shield technology and just how ineffective their their uh fighter jets are against the the little mini ships and the president realizing that all of these guys are just getting blown to pieces in the air yells get him out of there. I felt a lot like, is it Bill Pullman or Bill Paxton? I never get this right either. Pullman. Pullman, right.

I felt like Bill Pullman in that moment. We're very loose on the podcast. So it was a lot like that. I felt like Bill Pullman yelling, just really hoping that Dave Martinez would hear mez would hear me get him out of there yeah didn't do it it didn't matter yeah but it worked out just fine worked out fine yeah so i guess i'm happy for scherzer that he had that moment and yeah nationals i think went 10-0 with uh strasburg or Scherzer starting this postseason.

So they did their jobs. And man, yeah, I mean, there are just so many moments where the Astros could have broken that open. And that was a theme of the series, particularly with the home team in every game, just being unable to get that hit that would put it away and give the fans something to cheer for. So time after time, they came up empty and Nats win. So it's just one of those things. But yes, they really were kind of walking a tightrope there. And so I think the biggest upset of this game is not that the Nationals won.

I think it's that neither Cole nor Strasburg got into this game because I was getting serious Strasburg vibes pitching in this game. And I think it would have been ill-advised, but I kind of thought it would happen because Martina said in his pregame press conference, like, I'm going to talk to him. I'm going to ask if he's available. And if he had said he was, then it's just like this, you know, it's Strasberg sitting down there. And, you know, it's the Chekhov's Strasberg that he's going to get used at some point. So I don't know whether he declared himself available or unavailable. But I think it was very smart to resist that temptation.

Cole is a different question, which we can talk about. But Strasburg just coming off no rest at all. No rest. At some point, you just have to trust the pitchers that you have. And I thought going in, like, if they can't get through this game with Scherzer, Corbin, Doolittle, and Hudson, and I guess you could even throw Anibal Sanchez in there, who has been pretty good the first time through the order. If they can't get through the game with those four or five guys, I don't see how they could possibly be in a position to be winning anyway. So that should be enough arms to get you through this game. And if it's

not, then you have bigger problems. So I just think, you know, as narratively satisfying as it might be to see the postseason hero Strasburg going out there and being a postseason hero again, that know, last resort sort of thing to do. And the window in which that would have made sense seems like it would have been very, very narrow because you would need to have both the urgency, but also the hope that you could salvage the game to make it remotely seem like a good idea to risk i mean forget like the potential like health consequences of something like that but just the ineffectiveness that you would likely see from a guy who threw 104 pitches the night before yeah and you know had a couple of uh you know didn't really have a lot of stress was fairly dominant in that but still like had moments where he had to you know some do some work so i i can't imagine that we would have seen him but for a very very specific set of circumstances and i'm quite pleased that it didn't come to that because the anxiety of

watching that again probably would have made me need to leave the room yeah so the other side of that, Cole, this is harder to explain. So Cole, this was his throw day. So he was on two days rest. But of course, he had never done this. He had never made a relief appearance. The broadcast showed the graphic. He did it once in college and never since then. So there's a big unknown there. Now, on the one hand, he is probably the best pitcher in the world right now, and you would expect him to be even better in the bullpen. And it's not like I would think that he would get flustered or something. It is still pitching, but it's a little different. And particularly if you're talking about bringing him in mid-inning and maybe there's a runner on i can sort of see why maybe they just wouldn't have wanted to bring him in mid-inning in the seventh yeah with soda one first i mean i don't know maybe that's just one of those things that you say that it's better to start with a clean inning like it's not like we've been able to do studies on this and show that starters pitching and relief in the postseason are so much better when they come in with a clean inning than

they are when they come in with runners on like i've never seen that study and if you did it it would be too small sample to be useful probably so maybe we're just overthinking and it just doesn't really matter i wouldn't want to bring in a guy like with the bases loaded in that situation because maybe he just doesn't feel comfortable facing that first batter in this strange situation. But if it's not bases loaded, maybe it's fine. I don't know. But there were times that you could do it. You could have brought him in to start the seventh with the two nothing lead. that would be one time to do it. And I don't know, like if you just said to yourself, I like Grinke, I like my regular relievers, like I just trust them more than the guy who is on two days rest and has never done this before. I would not hugely fault you for that, I guess. It's just, it's hard to know what you're going to get out of someone in that situation. It's Garrett Cole. It's probably going to be good, but you bring in Will Harris, you expect to get something good too, or Ryan Presley or whomever. So that's the thing, except that

Hinch had acted as if he wanted to use Cole and was willing to use Cole and Cole was available and Cole was warming. And we haven't seen the full explanation here because we're recording right after the game. But I do see a tweet here from Julia Morales, which says, AJ Hint said he wasn't going to pitch Garrett Cole unless they had a lead and were going to win. He was planning on having him closing the game out if they got to that point. And if that's the case, then I can't really get on board with that. Because either you think he's your best option to get outs or he isn't. So I don't know why it needs to be for the final out.

If you have a lead, that doesn't make much sense to me. That sounds like Mike Matheny logic. If you think he's your best option to be on the mound at the end of the game, then he should be one of your options to get to the end of the game. And the Astros used six pitchers and none of them was Garrett Cole. Yeah, I wonder, you know, the other manifestation of the sort of conservatism that I referenced earlier is being very nervous and perhaps overly nervous about guys who, you know, have proven themselves to be quite adept at getting outs, being put into circumstances they're slightly unfamiliar with

and not being able to navigate their way through them the way that they would like with a normal start. So that kind of manager quote, and I don't say this with any sort of inside information, feels so incongruous with the way that Hinch has previously talked about pitching. It makes me wonder if, you know, he, there was more to that decision than we maybe are getting from the quote. Cause it just seems very, I mean, this is a guy who like didn't issue a single intentional walk the entire, the entire year. He is sometimes, you know, and presumably there might have been a time or two

where it would have made sense to do that. There seems to be an orthodoxy to him at times that could almost be faulted. So that answer is very surprising to me. If that's the real reason, it doesn't seem to make much sense at all, especially as the game was starting to kind of, you know, the gap was widening and you really needed to maintain some sort of close margin to give your offense a chance to try to come back. Yeah, no, I don't get it. I mean, between that and that Robinson-Torino spunt, maybe there was some kind of body swap going on here. It just doesn't seem like A.J.

Hinch. Like he's the manager who I think coming into the postseason, I had the most confidence in just not self-sabotaging, basically. A manager's not really going to win a game for a team. You just want them not to actively lose a game or put the team in the worst position to win. And I thought, you know, A.J. Hinch is not going to shoot himself in the foot here. But that bunt and this Cole explanation, yeah, I don't know. I mean, maybe there's more to it. Maybe you find out that Chirinos did that on his own and there's some secret thing about Cole that we don't know here. I will say that just sort of scanning the tweets here it seems like maybe cole is not super pleased yeah yeah so i yeah so there's a a tweet from let's see i see one from jeff fletcher yeah jeff fletcher's with the oc register oc register right. That says, just saw a clip of Garrett Cole's post-game interview.

He was wearing a Boris Corp hat. Or cap, rather. Yeah, well, I want pics, but that's aggressive. And Hunter Atkins tweeted, Garrett Cole, an impending free agent, was resistant to talk after Game 7. Quote, I'm not an employee of the team he said to an astros spokesperson i guess as a representative of myself dot dot dot then he spoke so if he is actually like already immediately divorcing himself from the astros and wearing a porous corp cap i'm guessing he wanted to pitch in that game maybe Maybe that has something to do with that.

But then this, I mean, first of all, I hope there was a body swap because tomorrow is Halloween and this is the spooky season. But then the question becomes where did A.J. Hinge's spirit go? Because it doesn't appear to have gone into Dave Martinez because his managerial approach was consistent with what it has been in the past. Is that a good political way of saying that? I think it is. So where is A.J how do we get him back in his body yeah i don't know i don't know yeah that was weird and i also i'm always fooled by hits to left field in houston always so the ball that, who was it?

Did Correa hit the ball? Or was it Springer? Springer, maybe. Who hit the ball that looked like it was going to fall maybe for a two-run single. And then Juan Soto just barely, barely caught it. Barely caught it. Like an inch before it hit the grass. And I thought that was a single off the bat.

And I thought that like three other times in this game. because I always forget that the Crawford boxes are out there and so the left fielder is playing super shallow and so all these balls off the bat that look like singles are not actually singles in Houston weird ballpark yeah it's uh I can't this is the one downside of recording so quickly after. I believe that it was, I think it was Rendon. Was it Rendon who made a quip after the game about he was just hitting the ball where the ballpark allowed? It had to have been, right? Where did that home run he hit go? This game that we just watched. Rendon did.

Yeah, there are always the crawford boxes home runs that would not be home runs really in any other park i mean he seemed to get he seemed to get a good hold of it but yeah i think it was him who said uh after the game that he just you know he took what the the ballpark gave him sometimes it takes away yeah i I mean, for the Astros, that is pretty great for him. He didn't seem mad about it. He seemed pretty happy with the dimensions. Yeah. Yeah, he homered to left. I remember

this game just ended seared in there right next to the Independence Day references. Speaking of Chirinos, there was also that throw on the Eaton steal that then led up to runs after that. Yeah. That was not a good throw.

I think on the broadcast they said that the base was stolen off the pitcher, which often that is the case, and maybe that was the case here. But the throw itself, like when he got the ball and prepared to deliver it, I thought he was going to get the guy because he got a good pitch to throw on. And then it just sort of sailed and wasn't really where it should have been and wasn't close at all. So that wasn't great either. And then later in that inning, Soto came up with two outs and first base open and a runner on second and Hinch elected to pitch to him with Roberto Osuna. Whereas in game two, Hinch had finally issued that long-awaited intentional walk to Soto. Things didn't work out after that,

and they didn't work out this time either because Soto singled to drive in the fourth run. And maybe this was a place where the Astros' complete lack of lefties came back to bite them. They didn't really have an Adam Cleric to go after Soto with, but Soto's really excellent, so who knows if it would have made a difference. I just love his nod when a pitcher makes a good pitch on him,

and he'll just look out and nod appreciatively. Like, yeah, you got me, but I'll be ready for that next time. And he usually is. Great game. Lead changes, multiple lead changes. That's all we wanted in this series. And another home crowd got to be unhappy at the end but then just breaks so and i don't know if you noticed this ben and i know that uh not everyone who listens to the podcast is a patreon supporter and even among all our wonderful patreon supporters not all of them had opportunity to turn tune in for our uh our alcs game six live stream because I don't know, they were busy. But did you notice that the helper fan was back? Oh, no, I didn't.

Helper fan was back who may or may not look like Coach K. Opinions vary on this question. There is a fan who sits sort of to the left of home plate as you're looking, you know, at the batter who tries to distract the pitcher who is an Astros fan. So he tries to distract the Nationals pitchers in this case, and he brought a friend with him who I swear to God looked like Paul Reiser from Mad About You. So that's a thing that everyone should opine on

because it's very important that people agree with me on one of my comps, just one of them. Everyone other than Meg agreed that it looked like rob wriggle but she was very insistent that it looked like coach k i was it looked a little like coach k but much more like rob wriggle that's very generous of you uh you did not demonstrate that same generosity the evening of the live stream and i can't even be mad about it because uh no less a scouting luminary than eric longenhagen said no and no less a duke grad than emma bachelory said no and so and you know craig who's got a he's got a keen scouting eye also was like no it doesn't look like him so i know that i was wrong but i will persist in this belief anyhow well his helping

did not help enough because the astros lost so is there anything else that we can say about this series or this game i just saw on fangraph slack that david appleman posted a graphic that will be appearing on the front page of the washington Post that shows the probability that the Nationals would win the World Series over the course of the season, pulled from fan graphs, I assume. And there they were at May 24th, down at 1.5%. Wow. And they won it all. They won it all.

I think it's really great. I think that I have especially enjoyed, so I don't know if you saw that at Nationals Park, they did a game watch, a big game watch at Nationals Park. And it appears that they sold out Nationals Park to do this. I mean, the upper deck might not be open, but there are so many people there. They are joyful and jubilant there is a gentleman who seems

to have managed to work his way on top of the dugout and then removed his shirt this is getting worse but he is so excited that he took off his shirt and did a little slip and slide on the top of the dugout people are just uh exuberant and joyful and that's a nice thing and i'm sorry that it came at astro's fans expense because somebody has to lose but uh that part's just really cool when you when you haven't seen a thing for a really really long time all of the grandmas and grandpas they interviewed i haven't seen a world series win in dc in however long. I bet they all made it to see this one. So that's so cool. What a nice thing.

That's great. Yeah. So a home crowd got to see the team win. Yeah. The team wasn't there. It looks like it was raining. In the ballpark. Yeah.

These people were in ponchos outside. They could have been at home cozy and they elected to watch it there amongst their people so that they could share an experience. Baseball can be very beautiful. So that's what I have to say about that. Yeah. And by the way, we talked a lot about Max Scherzer. Don't want to give short shrift to Patrick Corbin. No.

He pitched three really great innings too. The Astros in both of these games, like once they fell behind, they just didn't mount much of a challenge. And that was largely because of Patrick Corbin in this game so in the sense that the money that could have gone to Bryce Harper went to Patrick Corbin and Patrick Corbin helped seal this victory Bryce Harper's

statement about bringing the title back to DC it's proven to be true well I hope that i hope that nationals fans i imagine that they're i mean they're probably in a mood to be very gracious to everyone because they just watched their favorite team win a world series and that's pretty fun but i hope that people will be gracious about the harper thing because uh yeah you know it's not his fault they didn't win a world Series while he was there.

Not at all. Not at all. He was a good baseball player. He was a good baseball player this year. Yeah. And it just so happened that the Nationals had Juan Soto, who is maybe an even better baseball player. And frankly, the Nationals would have been better if they had had Bryce Harper this year.

So it's not as the whole idea that they got rid of him and that helped them in some way. It obviously did not, except in the sense that maybe the money that they had earmarked for him went to Patrick Corbin and the marginal upgrade there was probably bigger than it would have been in the outfield. Especially when you only trust, as we've established, like four and a half pitchers. Yes, exactly. So looking forward, I wrote something already about how the Astros shape up for next year and beyond. And that is a question that we could ask about the Nationals too. I wonder, because the three most prominent potential free agents, and by the way way by the time most of you are listening to

this free agency has begun like yeah we're still in the exclusive negotiating with your teams period but it happened so suddenly like the morning after the world series suddenly everyone's a free agent and it's like wow can't we just wait and talk about the series for a while but a like free agency doesn't start until January anymore anyway. So I guess it doesn't matter when it officially starts. And B, most teams and most fans have been waiting for the season to end for a month now so that their teams can start doing stuff already. Some people have been waiting for it to end since like April. Yeah, right.

So one thing I wonder, because Rendon obviously is either the second or third best free agent, depending on whether Steven Strasberg is going to be a free agent. Rendon actually might be the best free agent of all. I don't know. But Garrett Cole is right up there with him. So Cole, it certainly sounds as if Cole is out the door already, but we'll see about that.

But I do wonder, just because there has been this historical tendency for World Series winning teams to keep the gang together and bring everyone back, and so I wonder whether the odds of Strasburg and Rendon both returning to DC, which seemed decent to begin with, especially in Strasburg's case. I wonder whether they are even higher now because they won and good feelings and great clubhouse.

And let's just keep everything the same and bring back these same 25 guys next year and try to do it all over again and obviously strasburg has already chosen once to forego free agency and sign an extension with the nationals and maybe he will use the leverage that he now has after this spectacular season to extract another couple of years on the end of his deal or something instead of actually testing the markets. But he certainly could if he wanted to. Rendon could. The Nationals have made inadequate offers to him in the past. And I'm assuming at this point that he will test the market and we'll see. But I wonder, that obviously dictates much of the direction of this team and what it will look like next year, what happens to those two guys. So certainly I would guess that Strasburg will be back and the odds seem decent for Rendon too. Yeah. I mean, when you think about it, if they both were to leave, it's a

not small number of wins to have to replace on the 25 man. I would imagine, I would not be surprised to see Strasburg opt out, but to then return, granted for probably quite a bit more money than Kershaw ended up doing, but to see sort of a similar deal worked out, right, where he opts out technically, but then ends up signing a new extension with the team to sort of stay in place. I imagine Rendon will test the market and probably find a number of suitors. So it'll be really interesting to see what the Nationals do in terms of upping their offer. I mean, the part of this that I'm the most kind of weirdly excited to watch is that Rendon, Cole and Strasburg are all repped by Boris. Yes. Yes. They're all Boris clients, which, you know, is indicative of the kinds of contracts they might expect. But unlike last year, where, you know, you had Harper and Machado, who are not both repped by Boris, the sequencing of their contracts seemed to matter to them for reasons that were mostly about the money, but were also somewhat about like the pride of it and setting new highs for total dollars and whatnot. Boris is in a position now where depending on what Strasberg wants to do, you know, he represents the three best free agents, potential free agents on the market.

And he can kind of choreograph this the way that he might want to. He's not the only player in that dance. That's not an expression. He's not the only dancer on the floor that's not an expression he's not the only dancer on the floor we're talking about scott boris here yeah it's not the only boat in the regatta yeah there you go so it's not entirely up to him but i would imagine that he has sort of an ideal plan in mind of how he wants to sequence these guys deals and probably knows what strasburg means to do and sort of what his ultimate goal is whether it's returning to the nationals or truly genuinely testing for agency so

I am going to be fascinated to see how that plays out and if the fact that he is in a position to choreograph it in a slightly more or you don't choreograph boats what do you do with boats you don't plan you don't i mean chart chart a course but that's but that's not we're gonna go with the take a sounding consult your that's a disaster i don't know he should just hire it doesn't matter anyway um i will be very interested to see how that choreography affects the timeline that we end up seeing those guys sign on, right? Because presumably, we will see some slowness in free agency. And I wouldn't be surprised if this market ends up emulating last year's where the guys at the top of the market signed very lucrative, and everyone else is left waiting for a long time. But the one agent having such a significant hold on not only the best talent available, but the total dollars that are going to end up being signed is going to be really interesting to watch. Yeah, right. And if J.D. Martinez opts out, he is also a Boris client. It is going to be the winter of Boris. I guess every winter going to be the winter of Boris.

I guess every winter is sort of the winter of Boris, but even more so than usual, he is going to hold court at the winter meetings and we're going to get so many Boris quotes and maybe we can bring Jeff back to critique the Boris quotes. It seems like something, well, that's probably not something a team employee should be doing publicly.

You know, just in case the Rays want to spend $300 million on Garrett Cole, which I'm sure they're planning that right now. So, yeah, I guess the only, like, top five-ish free agent he doesn't have is Yasmany Grandal, maybe is the only guy. maybe is the only guy so yeah and you know i think the astros it's funny seconds after the astros lost the world series with the nets still celebrating on the field i got an email from one of those online sports books that send out odds that i don't think you can actually wager on and i still don't understand what the point of those is but they have the astros as like overwhelming favorites to win the world series next season or not favorites but you know favorites compared to any other team and that pretty much tracks like even though they are likely going to lose coal or there's a good chance they're going to lose coal they've planned for that to an extent. They signed Verlander to an extension.

They traded for Granke. They have so much depth. They have Urquidy, and they have Peacock, and they have McCullers coming back, and they have Forrest Whitley, and they have all these other young guys who some of them got some action late in the season at the major league level.

There's just a lot of capable ladening arms in that mix obviously no one who is nearly as good as Gary Cole you can't replace Cole but you can do a good enough job of filling in for him I think that the Astros can still be the best team in baseball next year even without him it's interesting because like you look at the dodgers and you just can't even imagine a time when they will not be great because they just have such a great farm system and they have all these young guys who just graduated this year or are still technically prospects but made their major league debuts and they're great and they have the most money and it's like this team should just be good forever yeah and the astros aren't quite at that level i think because a they've gotten quite

expensive and again like not that jim crane can't afford this expense but they have remained under the competitive balance tax threshold thus far and it's going to be pretty impossible for them to do that this winter unless they were to, I don't know, trade Springer or something like that because they've got a bunch of guys who are in line for sizable arbitration raises. And right now their projected payroll, according to the excellent Jason Martinez of Fangraphs, is $219 million, which is number two in baseball behind Boston. And from the sound of it, Boston's number may be coming down sometime soon. So the luxury tax threshold, and I know there's nothing possibly that could be more boring

and more of a downer than going from World Series Game 7 to talking about the competitive balance tax. Downer than going from World Series Game 7 To talking about the competitive balance Tax but it's I think 208 next year and Right now they would be at 238 so they're already Well over and that's without Cole And without their other free agents Including Will Harris and Joe Smith

And both of their catchers but Basically they're so good They have so much talent that I think they could do nothing all winter and walk into spring training next year probably as the best team in baseball. And who's going to stop them? The A's are really the only team in that division that seem like they could even put pressure on the Astros next year and the Astros are like kind of an older team at this point like they had I think the second oldest batters and the fifth oldest pitchers or maybe I got that reversed so they are a mature team now other than like Jordan Alvarez they don't have pre-arbitration guys who are still around there but because they just have so much talent like as long as they are willing to spend, I think they can keep this going at least until the core really starts to get old. And that won't be for a few years yet.

Well, and as you said, they have some payroll decisions that they will likely need to make this year. And then they have additional situations that they're going to have to sort through in 2021 and 2022. You know, like Springer's a free agent in 2021. Correa's a free agent in 2022. So is McCullers. Yeah, like the only real core members of the Estras who are signed or under team control beyond 2022, I think, are Bregman and Altuveuve and alvarez i think that's just about it yeah alvarez is not free until 2026 right yeah and who even who even knows if there'll be baseball then yeah we're a world yeah so don't worry about 2026 but live for today slide on the dugout at Nationals Park. It's fine.

cracks in the foundation but like their their farm system and granted like they have shown a lot of player development prowess and they can extract latent talent from guys who maybe are not high ranking prospects right now but according to fangraphs they went from fourth best farm system at the start of the season to 24th at the end of the minor league season. And that is largely because they graduated Tucker and Alvarez, but also because of the cranky trade and maybe Whitley having sort of a tougher season. So that's a big drop. And meanwhile, the Dodgers, I think, are still third. So they just have it all. Yep.

We have the Dodgers at third behind only the Rays and the Padres. Yeah. Although the Marlins are right behind LA, so all sorts of folks are getting involved in this one. Arizona, the beneficiary of some of those prospects is coming in at five. some of those prospects is coming in at five. So I wonder whether the brain drain starts to have some effect eventually, because there was already kind of an exodus going on because other teams were poaching front office people and coaches from the Astros. And then some Astros front office people were just leaving because they didn't like it there, understandably.

And now after the Taubman debacle and all the increased scrutiny on the culture of the astros i think they might have kind of a tough time replacing those departing people with new blood because i i don't know would you want to work for this team in this front office right now if you had other good options like obviously very successful team but there are some serious downsides that come with that so recruiting may be a bit more difficult and just generally like the astros were the first team to do the the tank or the extreme rebuild or whatever you call it and they were kind of the early adopters of the whole player development revolution and did they have a third card up their sleeve? Do they have another way to be better than every other team? Or are other teams just going to catch up now because they've seen what the Astros have done and they've hired Astros people? So that gap may be difficult to preserve. But these are probably two, three year down the line concerns more so than than 2020 concerns yeah i think that they're

stretched out over a period of time where some of the player development stuff or you know edges that they may have gained just from a general baseball ops perspective may shift or reassert themselves and sadly some of their less savory and quite destructive cultural issues as an organization will probably start to fade from people's memories by the time things have really started to sort of hit the fan in terms of the major league roster and the decisions that they're going to have to make there and players sort of falling out of their prime so i will be it'll be interesting to see how swiftly sort of consequence comes for some of that stuff and how strongly it sticks yeah well i wrote about that i will link to it i guess one concern is that you are kind of really relying heavily on two 36 year old arms and yeah verlander will have his age 37 next year. And you couldn't really think of two more durable 36-year-old arms that you would want to trust.

But still, there's more downside risk there than there is with, say, coal, for instance. So anyway, I have two questions for you. One is something that we just got from a listener, Darren, who says, I believe this has been discussed before, but now that the Nationals have won their first World Series championship, which of the remaining six organizations to have never won a World Series title do you think is most likely the next in line to win it all? And those six are Brewers, Mariners,angers rays rockies which do i think is the next one yeah it's a tough it's a tough one it is tough you have certain teams that have like institutional advantages or disadvantages here but you also have teams that are good

right now. And so do you want to bet on the Rays, for instance, because they are probably the best of these teams currently and will probably be the best in 2020? And who knows, there's uncertainty with all these others. So maybe you just say just say hey this team has the best shot right now so maybe that's the the one that you choose so the rays would be a pretty good choice i guess like you probably wouldn't go at least i wouldn't go with the rockies i would not go with the mariners apologies i would not go with the rangers i don't think and that leaves you with the brewers the padres and the rays i think i would go in this order i think i agree with you that the rays are the best of these teams now and their farm system is just so ridiculously stacked yeah that they are

going to be able to avoid feeling the full brunt of their greatest weakness which is the payroll so i think i would go with the rays yeah i think i would then probably have the brewers and padres i can't decide what order but in some order very close to each other because on the one hand i think that Padres farm has a lot to say for itself and will be quite good and will help to supplement that roster. And they have demonstrated a willingness to spend money, although they're probably locked into their biggest contracts already. But the Brewers are a smart and savvy organization.

They have talent on their roster as well, and they have also shown at various moments a willingness to actually spend. They do not have the same sort of farm as these other teams. They don't even have the same sort of farm as, say, the Mariners do. In fact, of all of these teams, theirs is the worst farm system, although Colorado, at least by our farm system rankings milwaukee comes in at 29 colorado is right in front of them yes padres also have to deal with the dodgers though correct means that they will have a hard time winning the division in the near yes although as we have seen by this very world series. Sometimes the Dodgers don't play there.

Sometimes they stay home. Yeah. Or they lose there. I mean, that doesn't help the Padres. Yeah, I agree. I'd go with the Rays and then Padres, Brewers. Yeah, that's a tough one. Kind of a toss-up.

Yeah, I think I would probably go with the Padres just because that system is so deep that they will even though some of the the very best prospects they have have already graduated right and aren't aren't in the farm anymore they have such other talent that in addition to the guys who will actually be able to help on the major league roster you imagine there will be some consolidation that could allow them to trade for other players so yeah yeah all right so thanks for the question darren and now i have a question for you and this is a question that i'm currently wrestling with in something i'm writing

so you can put on your editor hat as well as your podcaster hat what was the team of the decade? Oh, gosh. This could probably be a whole episode, but I need an answer right now. So this is, it's obviously like a mostly meaningless and arbitrary question because what's special about 2010 to 2019, it's just a way that we organize years for no particular reason. But I am kind of interested. It's a fun exercise, not just for the answer, but for how you arrive at the answer and how you decide what the team of the decade was or how you define that. So I will just say, so there have been six teams that won a championship during this decade but there are some teams that won one and there's some teams that won two and there's also a team that won three as you may recall although that seems like a while ago so i i have a tough time answering this one it i i think and i've kind of just skimmed previous decades, and generally the answer to this question has been the Yankees.

It's basically been the Yankees arguably in every decade since Babe Ruth, except for, I would say, the 70s and the 80s. The Yankees even won the most regular season games during the 80s, but they did not win a title. So I think during the 80s, you probably give it to the Dodgers, and then the A's or the Reds, probably the A's you give to the 70s. But other than that, it's pretty much Yankees all the way down until you go back to like Cubs and Red Sox at the beginning of the 20th century, I think.

But this decade, I think, is like the hardest one, at least for me to decide what the team of the decade was because I can't come up with like a slam dunk answer. So let's think about the obvious candidates here. So one I'm going to dismiss right away, which might surprise people given how many of these World Series wins went to them, but I do not think it is the Giants. Interesting. Despite the success that they had in the postseason, I think that when you compare those teams to even some of the competition they faced in those World Series, they seem like a very successful postseason team to me. They do not seem like a team that had, beyond introducing us to the delightful phrase of even your bullshit, do not have the same,

they don't have the same sort of impact on the way that baseball conducts itself. That is true. Yes. With the exception of maybe the Buster Posey rule. Yeah. Probably one of the more weirdly enduring legacies of that team. Yes. But count the rings.

But count the rings. I mean, for many people, that would be it. That would be it. The argument ender. And that is very reasonable. It is a reasonable argument. Flags fly forever. That is what every team is trying to do.

They did it more than every other team. You know, we should think about two phrases more critically in baseball the first of which is crooked numbers because most of them are crooked that's fine i get the sentiment of it but eights are pretty symmetrical so i've always objected to the crooked number concept but that doesn't matter and the second is that flags don't always fly forever they get torn up in the wind sometimes they blow away forever yeah the braves lit one on fire about an accident that one time not one of their pennant flags granted but so so you know like uh those are silly phrases and we should we should strike them for the record and i will never win this argument but the other contender from a sort of world well one of the

other contenders from a World Series win perspective would be the Red Sox, where you have their weird 2013 World Series win, which was sort of this fluky chemistry that's coming in and playing way over their skis. But then you also have one of the winningest teams in baseball history winning the other. So that's an interesting conversation to put those sort of clubs in conversation with each other, even those squads in conversation with each other. Then you have the, wow, I can't believe they did it team, which would be the Cubs, right? Yeah, yeah. So that's its own kind of argument although

i continue to say that i sometimes while i know the fact uh that the cubs won the world series and i know it was in 2016 i sometimes forget just because of other events that it was in close proximity to and then you could make the you know team that had the biggest impact on and again this is of the world series winners sort of uh direction of the game both in terms of how baseball operations teams conduct their work in-house how teams think about winning and losing and the utility of each of those things, how organizations approach player development, and you put all those bits of influence and sort of macro alteration to the game's fabric in concert. And maybe you make the argument that the Astros are the team of the decade, even though they only have one World Series win and a long period of

being very, very bad at baseball on purpose. Yep. So that's an argument. Yep. You could make an argument that the Dodgers are the team of the decade, even though they're- Dodgers won the most games of the decade. Most games of the decade. They tied for the most playoff appearances of the decade and all of their playoff appearances were division titles and two pennants. That's kind of a hipster argument it's like hey you just

got to get there that's all you're supposed to do and then after that everything is randomness and so regular season that tells you who the best team is and i have some sympathy for that argument but i'm not quite enough of a contrarian i think to say the team that did not win a single world series it wouldn't it wouldn't be the one that i would pick probably but i can i can see why one might make that argument and because the dodgers have some of the same claims to that title that say the astros have in terms of their influence on the game even though their approach the the relative utility they seem to derive from winning in any given season seems to be radically different. And so maybe you think about those as sort of the two of them

as different sides of the same coin. I don't know. It's a hard question. You could probably just save the Yankees and everyone would be like, yeah, it's probably still true. The Yankees did have the most regular season wins of the decade. And they do have a world series win in well not are you counting i'm not counting i'm going 2010 tonight oh you're

not counting oh well then never mind different definitions of decade but i'm yeah yeah and some people will tell you it didn't start till 2011 but i'm not going down that route. Yeah, that seems like a lot. Okay, fair enough. So forget the Yankees entirely. I forgot the Yankees. Bunch of bums. What a franchise. Who even heard of them?

However, the Cardinals have a case because the Cardinals had the third most wins of the decade. They had the most postseason wins of the decade. They won a World Series. They made it to two pennants. So a lot going for them. And I'm not saying that they are or that they have the best case, but they have a case. They have a case. They have developed a number of players who were not thought particularly highly of into significant contributors you know one who's going to be a hall of famer and also tommy edmund who's you know just the latest small

scrappy position player where he got drafted and you're like great that guy's going to be really good because he was going through the cardinal system so i could see that i would find that argument to be a little less persuasive than some of the others i think that i don't on the one hand i don't want to name the astros the team of the decade because that sounds like an honorific and i don't know that we want to look at all of the things that they have done in baseball right and put positive value judgments on them because some of them are could make a case that they were a bad influence. Correct.

Tanking, they demonstrated tanking, and now it's spread to all these other sports. And obviously the culture stuff that we've talked about ad nauseum in the last couple of weeks, it doesn't have to be. I mean, it is an honorific, I guess. But if a big part of your argument is just, hey, which team is most synonymous with this decade? Which team do you identify this decade with most closely? If you're looking back, you're trying to tell the story of this decade. It's hard to tell it without the Astros because they really changed baseball a lot.

On the other hand, they were literally the worst team in baseball for the first half of the decade right and can you give it i mean they were close to the best team maybe arguably the best team for the second half of the decade but going from cold to hot like that is that representative of the decade as a whole except that like they were bad because they were doing the whole tanking thing and that was a big storyline this decade. So it's really tough. Full transparency here. So I wrote this whole article. I did pros and cons for each of what I considered the top contenders. I wrote this article before game six of the World Series because I was trying to pre-write some things and get ahead on some work. And so I wrote it as if the Astros were going to win the World Series because the odds were in favor of that.

And I thought, all right, I'll adjust if that changes. And I picked the Astros as the team of the decade. And I had reservations about that, but I had reservations about every team that I possibly could have picked. There was no answer that made me feel great. But the second title, that put them over the edge for me. And now I'm questioning everything because they only have the one lonely little title. Except how silly is that? Am I saying now that I'm deciding my team of the decade based on the last three innings of game seven of the World Series?

And because Howie Kendrick hit the foul pole, now they're not the team of the world series and because howie kendrick hit the foul pole now they're not the team of the decade well if you want if you wanted to say feel better about not picking them one thing that you could say is that while their influence is pervasive the sort of public perception of that influence is relatively concentrated in the latter half of that decade and so maybe you want to pick something that has had a more consistent, I'm going to talk myself into the Giants, and I hate that. But the Giants are like the opposite of the Astros in that they were the first half. I know, it's all in the front.

But just like a thing to remember about the Astros. Here's a thing to remember about the Astros, Ben. Do you remember when the Astros-C's a thing to remember about the Astros, Ben. Do you remember when the Astros Cardinals hacking thing broke? And that was in like 2014, right? 2014, 2015? Sounds right. Okay. So that happened. And I think that clued in baseball observers, particularly ones who were sort of aware of some of the player dev stuff, and maybe were thinking critically about that farm system, knew that there was promising stuff going on

there. But a lot of people thinking mostly about all of the years in which they lost game after game after game and after game, and we're just the worst team in baseball. Their reaction to that scandal was to laugh very hard about what the Cardinals could possibly want. And by the Cardinals, I mean specifically this guy Correa could possibly want with anything the Astros had. And we all laughed. I mean, you and I didn't, but like people laughed, they laughed at it. They thought it was laughable that that would be the target of something like this. So that isn't going to disprove that they're the team of the decade, but it does perhaps speak to how concentrated the influence has been,

at least in terms of the way that it is perceived by sort of your average baseball fan. And I think that even within the industry, the influence they've had on the way that teams conduct themselves and think about player dev, their approach, and I'm doing air quotes here to scouting,

you know, the degree to which they incorporate analytics into team decision making, even that has really dramatically escalated in terms of the spread of their next decade if we're willing to cut decades and not do, you know, like 2010 to 2020. Yeah. They are the team of a decade. Well, yeah. Which one? Who's to say? Yeah. It's just, oh, man, I can't come up with a good answer.

I just, I don't like the Red Sox as the answer, even though they have the two titles and they had not the best team i wouldn't say but the most successful single team perhaps but something about the fact that like that first world series kind of came out of nowhere like sandwiched between two last place finishes and three last place finishes in four years and there was almost no continuity between the 2013 and 2018 teams like xander bogarts was the only player on both of those world series rosters and meanwhile they had four different managers and four different leaders of baseball operations during that time which i guess shouldn't matter but maybe it does because it's like they were constantly dissatisfied with themselves in a way so can you have a team of the decade that's like they were constantly dissatisfied with themselves in a way.

So can you have a team of the decade that's like constantly trying to change itself? I don't know. And I like the Giants. I think the previous teams of the decade probably were just usually the teams that won the most. This team is unique among dynasties or mini-dynasties or whatever in that it just never felt like the most talented team. It just never did. And the whole even year thing just reminded you really of the fact that this team wasn't good enough to make the playoffs in back-to-back years most of the time. the playoffs in back-to-back years most of the time and so i don't know that they were i don't think they were ever the necessarily the best team in their league let alone all baseball in any of the years that they won and like they still won and so from a fan perspective if you had to pick a team to have been a fan of in this decade probably the giants i i would think because

three titles but they didn't really have like the lasting influence but maybe the lasting influence is not as important i just i don't know i'm going back and forth on this now i think that probably also depends about the way that you talk about the decade that you're locating them in maybe the astros are the team this decade deserves. Yeah, that's the thing. Like, you know, maybe they've made it a worse decade, but it was still sort of their decade in a lot of ways. I just... I think with this sort of thing, if I were your editor,

the way that I would put it to you is that it is the impulse to worry about bestowing an honorific on an organization that you feel not particularly great about is a totally understandable one and so it really just matters how you frame it and as long as you don't frame it as entirely an honorific while still acknowledging the great contributions of some of their players who have been excellent and great fun to watch and we don't need to you know hold jose al tuve responsible for his team tanking that's not his fault at all as you said it is hard to tell the story of the last decade of baseball without talking about

the astros good and bad right because it would you know render an incomplete understanding of the direction of the sport and especially maybe for people who don't like that direction having an honest accounting of it is probably pretty important so you can figure out the ways to uh to go about changing it yeah so that's what i'd say to you if i were your editor yeah i that's sort of what i went with and i would be okay going with that except that now it's one title instead of two titles it is but that's uh but the only the only two teams that can really boast much more than that are ones that we've already sort of dismissed as not being super relevant to that conversation in terms of their lasting impact. And I do think that an influence beyond October is important to that. Like it's an incomplete conversation if you don't consider the macro part of it, right?

I think so. Yeah, I just I'm picking the one over the three. I'm going to get some grief for that and I will understand why, but I don't know. I guess I'm sort of leaning that way. And by the way, Royals had a nice decade at times. Nationals had a very nice decade. They won a lot of games. They made it to the playoffs a bunch of times, and they ended the decade on the best possible note. But I think they fall short of this. For me, it's Giants or Astros, basically. And it's going to be a game-time decision for me

whether I decide that the most important thing is your influence. Because you can't tell the story of the decade without the Giants either. The story would just be, hey, they won three World Series. That's part of the story. That is a big part of the story. I think it's a worthy question. I'm also going to engage in

a bit of warning for you, Ben, which is that there is video floating around Twitter of Treyer showing his messed up finger and i would invite you to not watch it okay i'm gonna tell you you shouldn't do it don't do it it's terrible you know what's not the team of the decade trey turner's finger okay i think i have to cut it off oh no i don't think they will actually have to do that when i was little if i complained about like a small injury or splinter or something my dad would say well i

guess we have to amputate and then we'd laugh and then the splinter would still hurt but i would complain about it less so that's what trey turner's finger made me think of just give it a quarter zone chat that seems to do the trick for everything. I was so worried because what they said in the press conference once they got to Houston was, you know, he knows that if he feels numbness, he should stop because that might indicate that he would be brushing up against some sort of permanent damage. of permanent damage and then you realize so you've had a conversation where you've explored the range of potential outcomes and one of them is permanent nerve damage and then you realize this is a very crazy thing that we ask of these guys and i i don't know if it's particularly nice but max scherzer seems pretty happy tonight so i think it's probably fine yep all right well we've talked a lot did you have any thoughts about back carrying by the way I didn't get to talk to you about back carrying I don't care okay good I I attitude to have probably I uh I enjoyed being reminded that Don Kelly is the first base coach for the Astros oh yeah how

about that so how about that but uh i don't care i felt bad that bragman felt compelled to apologize i liked very much juan soto's response which was that looked cool so i did it too yeah that was the ideal response the only thing i'm still puzzling over is like what the bat carry signifies because as sam and i discussed and i don't know if you've heard this yet but Sam pointed out that basically it just it looked awkward like it didn't look like it didn't know it wasn't

that it at least to us made Bregman look like a bad person or anything it just like wasn't it wasn't a smooth celebration because he was just kind of carrying it like Bartolo Cologne has carried bats the first base it looks like something you do if you're not used to hitting home runs or like hitting at all

and you just forget that you're holding the bat and then the first base coach was not ready to receive it and then it was just lying there and it was very strange but like i don't know what it signifies really i guess i i guess the idea is that there's some disrespect here but i don't really know how you get from carrying the bat to disrespect it's like i remember when i was little kid and i first heard about the middle finger i was so confused about the middle finger and i thought it was so silly that like people would get angry if you just lift up a finger and show it to them. And not just any finger, but this one finger. And now I get it.

It's like this cultural thing. And we've just all agreed that it is a show of disrespect. And it's very silly that holding up a single finger is something that could drive someone into a rage. But like we get what it signifies. It's just it's this insult for whatever reason and i guess that is also the case for back carrying but i i don't know what the leap is there i think that sometimes you just feel bad and embarrassed about i don't know about what but you just feel bad and embarrassed and you remember what having felt bad and embarrassed felt like and so maybe you worry

that the other guy feels bad and embarrassed and so then you feel a little sheepish about it but i i don't know it wasn't if it was disrespectful to anyone it was to their respective first base coaches yeah right i guess it's just the idea that like the bat should stay in the batter's box, and if you do anything else with it, I don't know. I don't know. It's weird. I think we were reaching on that one, and I think that we shouldn't do anything to remotely dim either Alex Bregman or Juan Soto's light.

Weren't both those guys in the We Play Loud commercial? Yes, they were. They both narrated it, actually. You need to do a little bit of work to get there. Yeah, I wrote about that earlier this postseason because it's like you have MLB saying this is what we want players to do. And then now like the players themselves are apologizing for it, or at least one of them is. And like the managers are chastising them. and so you get these mixed messages. It's like MLB thinks that this resonates, and I think it does, but the players themselves and older school baseball people

are not necessarily on board. Well, now they'll have a very long offseason to think about it. Yeah, right. They can workshop their celebrations for 2020. All right, so 103 days to pitchers and catchers. I think I saw something like that. Oh, goodness. But only a few days until the next episode of Effectively Wild because this podcast never goes away. We refuse to leave your lives.

By the way, some personal news. I will be taking two episodes off next week. Two whole episodes off. You announced that like you were moving to another country permanently and changing your name. I am traveling to a different country. That is why I will be missing these episodes. If I were your editor, I would say, hey, you should take more vacation. That's what I'd say if I were your editor also.

Many people have told me that and I've taken them up on it for once. I'm going to England for a week And Jessie's already there for work And I'm meeting her and we're going to have a nice relaxing week Hopefully and I have taken lots of trips Where I have plugged my microphone and done Effectively Wild Wherever I go it is just a constant in my life

And for this week it will not be So I've missed two total episodes of effectively wild in its history episode 8 and 5 12 and uh now i will be missing that many in one week it will be strange for me not not for you meg and not for you the listener because you and sam will be here and i'm looking forward to actually getting to listen to Effectively Wild, which is a pleasure that I never get to experience except in editing when I know what we're going to say,

which is not nearly as fun. So that will be a great joy for me to do that. And it's kind of like, I'm going to compare myself to Cal Ripken here for a minute. Not that I'm saying that I'm a Hall of Famer, but just that there was that whole discussion about like, well, is Cal Ripken being selfish? Is he putting his Ironman streak ahead of the team?

Because, hey, maybe if he took a day off, he'd be better for it. And it would actually help the team in the long run. And I'm thinking maybe taking an episode or two off here might actually be good for me. Maybe it will recharge my batteries and I will be a better co-host when I return. But one way or another, I'll be back at the end of next week. And I'm sure that everyone will enjoy what you and Sam cook up in my absence. You're already a Hall of Famer to us, Ben.

Oh, thank you. Enjoy your vacation. Thank you. All right. Thanks to everyone who stuck with us all season long. It was a blast. And we had a fun end and a fun conversation about it. And look forward to spending the winter with you all.

So talk to you soon. Sounds good. All right. Pretty fun fact I saw after we finished recording. From the Washington Nationals Twitter account, no team in MLB history had ever trailed in four elimination games in a single postseason and come back to win them all. The 2019 World Series champion Washington Nationals did it five times. That's pretty good. Of course, it's easier to do if you get to play in a wildcard game. But hey, let's not take it away from them. They still faced that pressure and they overcame it. And now they

will next see the Dodgers in February at the complex at the ballpark of the Palm Beaches, which they share in spring training. Hopefully the Nationals will not put up World Series memorabilia too ostentatiously there to remind their roommates that they beat them. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and have pledged some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going and get themselves

access to some perks jason mcwalter warren margulies craig kennedy e may and james walker thanks to all of you you can join 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 please keep your questions and comments for me and meg and sam coming via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the patreon messaging system if you are a supporter thanks to dylan higgins for his editing assistance we hope you have a wonderful weekend i will talk to you all at the end of next week sam. I will talk to you all at the end of next week. Sam and Meg will talk to you all at the beginning of next week. So until then, thanks again for listening during the 2019 season. at the Halloween See you next year

at the Halloween Halloween Halloween Halloween Halloween Halloween Halloween Halloween

Halloween Halloween Bye.