Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1598: Call it Like You See It

Episode Date: October 3, 2020

With the wild card round wrapped up, Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley react to the end of the Marlins-Cubs and Padres-Cardinals series and reflect on the wild card round as a whole. Then they critique a few aspects of the postseason’s national baseball broadcasts (including Alex Rodriguez’s small-ball boosterism, the scourge of live, in-game player […]

But somewhere along the way The dots didn't all connect The promise became regret Somewhere along the way The dream and the circumstance Continue their torture dance Somewhere along the way Hello and welcome to episode 1598 of Effectively Wild,

a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I am joined on this Friday evening, fresh from the Padres game, by Ben Lindberger, the ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm doing all right. How are you? I'm doing well. Got to watch some fun baseball. So that was fun. Yeah, it's been about 12 hours since Sam and I spoke. And since then, there have been a couple games, and we saw one team that was sidelined by the coronavirus this season pitch a

shutout and one team that was sidelined by the coronavirus this season get shut out so we have a final a wrap on all of the wild card series now marlins beat the cubs on friday to nothing to advance and the padres beat the cardinals for nothing to advance. So that's that. I have to say, Ben, what a civilized amount of baseball we watched today. It really was, yeah. I mean, half of the teams cooperated by not scoring. So that helped. Yeah, but two games, you know, just two. I got to sit down, and I got to watch the Marlins and the Cubs.

I got to appreciate the pitching matchup there. I got to luxuriate in Sixto Sanchez and Yu Darvish and some smart and smartly sequenced substitutions and pinch runnings and hittings of various trips for the Marlins. And then I got to take a little break, Ben. I got to go to the grocery store and do my first, oh no, my fridge is empty of the postseason, remedy that situation.

And then I got home, I unloaded my groceries, and I was like, now I get to sit down and watch the entirety of this Padres-Cardinals game. And it was great. Yeah, both of those games were about three hours and 20 minutes. That was the other thing. Snappy by postseason standards no extra innings no nine inning games that were inexplicably five hours long anyway even though there were a lot of pitching changes at least in the Padres Cardinals

game because it was a bullpen game for the Padres and I guess we could talk briefly about those games that as you said great pitching matchup in Marlins-Cubs, Sixto Sanchez versus Yu Darvish. And they were both really good. I don't know if they were their absolute best or if Darvish was his absolute best, but that mostly lived up to the billing, I would say. It was really fun to watch those guys.

And Sanchez's stuff is just incredible. And it's the very rare pitcher who would make you say that in a game when he's going up against you, Darvish, who has some of the best, most watchable stuff in baseball. Those are just two pitchers who are really fun to watch because, obviously, Darvish throws a million pitches, and they both just have so many different arrows in their quiver and so much movement and so much speed so that was a lot of fun and the marlins pulled it off i really they were i guess the one underdog that won their wild card series really like i i know the reds were a popular pick over the braves but by seeding

and and by regular season results the braves were the favorite in that series. So although we said anything could happen, that it could get chaotic, it didn't really, which doesn't mean anything. It just happened to work out that way. It still is an inherently chaotic format, but most of the really good teams moved on, and the Marlins knocked off the Cubs, which is an upset. But the Cubs were certainly a very beatable team. So it wasn't like shocking that that happened.

Yeah, I guess the only other sort of equivalent seeding gap was the Astros, who no one was rooting for except for Astros fans. Yeah, they didn't come to my mind. But you're right. That was an upset, too. fans yeah yeah they didn't come to my mind but you're right that was an upset too it's easier to overlook because all of those players are so familiar from better astros teams that have gone deep into the postseason but between that and the the twins postseason track record it didn't feel like as much of an upset as the marlins moving on but the marlins don't lose playoff series and they haven't yet this is clearly an indication of how sort of

superstition and bias can work its way into the brain of someone who is uh inclined to rationality or at least aspires to it but i think if the twins had been the one seed i still would have assumed that they would lose and that's that's a wild thing to think that's yeah that's a very silly thing to think they they were first of all a couple of bad plays away from escaping those games and a better team, just a better team than I think the Astros were. And I still think that if they had been the one seed, I would have been like, well, sorry, get them again next year, except you won't.

It is very weird how we all think these things about these teams, like the Twins are the team that never wins in October. The Marlins are the team that always wins when they make it to October. I guess people are mostly joking that that latter one is kind of tongue-in-cheek. But if they actually make a run this year, maybe people will start to seriously believe that. But it's like we're talking about decades of results here with entirely different teams with entirely different rosters so it's all meaningless and yet it still attaches to

these franchises and we all think these things yeah i think that you know we do our best but even the most rational among us are wooed by narrative or superstition whatever you're deciding to call it that day yeah i would like to contrast ben the viewing experience and i i'd like to say ben i'd like to thank espn i'm sorry you had to be on the receiving end of this but that oakland game made you feel some feelings like that you felt the need to express which you know you you're a pretty steady yes steady sort a cool customer cool customer calm customer cool i don't know if i'm cool but i'm pretty calm and uh and we'll set aside the in the in-game interview aspect of it but the the

experience of watching that a's white socks game versus the the st louis san diego game and i think that mike petriello commented on this on the nerd cast of the San Diego game this evening. But, you know, we knew that the Padres were going to have to bullpen their way through their game tonight. And there were a couple of spots where things went not quite as expected. You know, Austin Adams only pitched to one hitter because Goldschmidt wasn't retired. But the whole time I was like, San Diego has a plan. I don't know if the plan will work, but they have a plan. They're clearly executing on the plan.

They have a progression of hitters that they are expecting to see. They have a sequenced bullpen situation that they are keen on, as opposed to the White Sox, where I was just like, I think that Rick Renteria is going to have to pitch in this baseball game. I think that we're going to see a position player on the mound in an elimination game. And I don't know if they would have been better off with that. Probably not. But it's hard to know.

We've talked about this before. It's often hard to know exactly how much value to ascribe to managerial moves. And they are always so dependent on execution on the field to look smart or seem silly in hindsight. But this was a game where I was struck by, well, you know, the manager and the front office, I'm sure, they really sat down and gamed their way through this in a way that I thought was smart and got the job done. So that was pretty nifty.

Yeah, I thought so too. I didn't have that same feeling of like, this is running off the rails. This is out of control. How are they going to finish this game? And as I said to Sam, I mean, I think the crochet injury sort of sabotaged the White Sox plan and the Padres didn't have that same issue. But it was impressive that they pulled that off on a third consecutive game day because you did have pitchers pitching like three days in a row which these days is not all that common yeah and pitchers are not conditioned to do that now teams treat them very carefully and i don't know whether that means well yeah because they don't do it during the regular season they're fresh and also it was like a two-month season so maybe they're fresh because of that or whether it's that they're just not built up to do that. And so it's even harder for them to do that now. But yeah, like, you know, Trevor Rosenthal comes in his third, against a playoff team, granted the Cardinals,ubs were not a great hitting team and you and I talked about that and marveled at their lack of offense last week so it was not so surprising to see that be their undoing but it's two games or three games so it's all kind of confirmation bias when

things happen that we sort of expected to happen we say yeah we knew that was going to happen that was our concern coming into the series but really you can't predict a whole lot of anything so it just happened to work out that way yeah i think the only thing that i wish had been different in san diego is i wish that jake grimeworth had pitched why didn't yeah me too i would like that that would have been can you imagine the very specific corner of the world that we occupy and the reaction that would have erupted? Yes, it's the Ringer Slack channel where that came up. That's pretty much it. You and a few of us in there.

Let him pitch. Let him pitch. I guess he's too valuable to pitch now. He's too good. good it's once you get too good like other than otani and maybe even otani will enter this zone at some point like you have to be a very specific level of good to pull off the two-way player thing because otherwise it's like well we can't risk you because you're too good at hitting or whatever or we can't risk your hitting because you're too good at pitching so it's almost like you can't be too good at either of those things or teams just won't try it so i guess cronenworth has crossed over into you know rookie of the year as a position player probably won't

put him on the mound but hopefully sometime i imagine that if we are to see jay cronenworth pitch at any point the rest of the postseason that something has gone terribly terribly wrong for san diego but i do like that by extending their postseason run, we have the potential for it, even if I hope the circumstances that necessitate it are perhaps a blowout in San Diego's favor, and then just put him up there, see what he can do. Yeah, and it was odd sort of to see some defensive lapses

on the part of the Cardinals that led to that loss, but that's just another example of one game anything can happen because usually they're so steady in that loss. But that's just another example of one game. Anything can happen because usually they're so steady in that department. And with the Cubs, I guess you have to wonder if that was the last run for this Cubs core that's been contending since 2015. Will they try to trade Bryant this offseason? Will they break up that core in some other ways? Or if they don't, is it good enough to be back next year?

Hard to say because we don't even know for sure how many playoff teams there will be next year so that kind of covers those games i suppose and maybe we can talk a little later in the episode about the division series and the matchups that we're looking forward to but wanted to just engage in a little media criticism with you, if you don't mind. I don't. I didn't get into that with Sam because we had so many games to catch up on. And also some of this criticism may be directed toward ESPN. I didn't want to put Sam in an awkward position.

But two things have sort of stood out to me. And you might have other things that you want to bring up. sort of stood out to me and you might have other things that you want to bring up it's always a shock to the system to go just full bore into national baseball broadcasts after not having that very often during the season because it's just a different caliber of content or at least a different style and approach to talking about baseball it can be a little jarring to just have nothing but that all of a sudden unless you're watching the nerd cast as you probably should be the thing that mystifies me maybe the most is alex rodriguez and what has happened to him like yeah man who has invaded

this man's mind is this someone in a skin suit that looks like alex rodriguez because he has totally changed over the last few years and look like i know a lot of people just dislike alex rodriguez for valid reasons but i've always sort of had a soft spot for him even aside from the the cheating and all of the other excellent reasons not to like Alex Rodriguez, I almost felt like sympathy for him, or I felt sorry for him in certain ways, which is kind of ridiculous because he doesn't need sympathy. He has plenty of money and good looks and success and everything you could want in the world, and still he cheated multiple times. But I always just felt like he really wanted to be liked, and he wasn't very good at getting people to like him, and so I felt sort of sorry for him in that respect,

and he seemed somehow more human to me than Jeter did. He did sort of say what he thought people wanted him to hear, it seemed like, but he didn't have the same incredibly bland public persona, or at least he wasn't as good at pulling it off as cheater was and he was a better player than cheater and he also moved over to third base to accommodate cheater and yet didn't get a fraction of the adulation even before the PDUs came out like the a-rod is unclutch narrative was unfair at times and I also felt like he really loves baseball and I still feel like that like he just really likes baseball I think he likes talking about baseball. And boy, he has gotten to talk a lot about baseball lately, including, like, multiple games in one day,

which might have something to do with the reaction that I've had to him. But you could critique A-Rod based on his sucking up to Rob Manfred as he was trying to buy the Mets and on that opening day broadcast telling Manfred as he was trying to buy the Mets and on that opening day broadcast telling Manfred that he'd done a tremendous job. Or you could critique how he kind of takes an anti-player stance on a lot of financial issues. He's constantly praising teams for locking players up or advocating that players sign extensions. And of course, he tried to maximize his own earnings as a player and signed two massive free agent deals. But that's not even the thing that bothers me most.

He has suddenly turned into like the biggest booster of small ball in the world. Which is so strange because I really enjoyed him as a studio analyst, as a pregame and postgame guy. I thought he was pretty polished and he had some insights, like he was pretty good at breaking down mechanics and that kind of thing. And he just seems more suited to that than to live broadcasts maybe or, you know, calling games. But the weirdest thing is that he has now just morphed into this person who is obsessed with sacrifice bunting, who is constantly talking about like home runs being empty calories and contact is everything. And I just don't know where this came from because I don't really remember this being a constant refrain from him in the past few years. If you look at his career, it just seems entirely inconsistent with the kind of player he was and the game that he had because the man hit almost 700 home runs, as you may recall.

He stopped sacrifice bunting in the 1990s. I mean, it wasn't like he was dropping down bunts left and right. So I just don't understand how he became this sort of old school, do the little things. Like if he wanted to have this be a branding exercise and to stand out from the pack, you'd think he'd want to be the guy who's like, no, hit the ball over the wall. That's what I did. Worked for me. It's pretty valuable. And he could actually stand out and kind of carve out an identity as the person who is not into small ball constantly. But it's almost like he is playing this character

or like pandering to the audience. I don't know whether he actually believes this, which I think is maybe the thing that bothers me most. It's almost like he's trying to sound like a national broadcaster who's expected to say these things. I just don't buy that A-Rod is suddenly anti-home run and sacrifice bunt anytime you get someone on. Yeah. How do I want to put this? I think that part of what made him so refreshing when he was first in the booth was he was this really interesting blend of clear preparation, right? You could tell that he just really took a lot of time and care before every

broadcast. And I don't mean to say that he's not doing that. I think that it's really hard when you have to do so many games in one day to, even when you have done that level of preparation, to sort of have that preparation sing through because you're tired and it's a lot of baseball and, you know, it's a lot of of it's just a lot of time to fill and i think that people struggle to do that they struggle to do that in the course of a three-hour broadcast and know what the right balance is between letting the game breathe and take a pause and inform the audience of something that they don't know so i want to recognize how difficult the task at hand is yeah and you know the task is hard on Sunday night baseball too, because it's often the Red Sox and the Yankees and those games last for 10 hours. But what made him so great was that preparation coupled with a player's perspective that seemed not only informed by his own career, but by the folks in the game he would talk to right and it seems like he despite the fact that he was

you know not a universally beloved figure when he was an active player you know it seemed as if he had established relationships with guys especially guys in the al east and that he had a good insight into what players of the day were thinking and then then he did a better job, I think, when he first started of parsing what of that was interesting and valuable and what of that kind of was hokum. And I think that that balance is out of whack now in a way that's made him kind of tiring and tiresome in the booth. And then, you know, like you said, there's just been this weird turn to small ball. And I think that the best broadcasters find a way to balance useful engagement,

critical engagement with the game with a delight in the game as it is. Because even if it is not perfectly constituted or exactly to your taste or precisely the aesthetic you want, there's still good stuff in baseball, right? Especially in the postseason, you're watching maybe a little less this year, but in general, you're watching the very best teams with the very best players.

And so I think that striking that balance is hard, and I've never had to call a three-and-a-half-hour game or or a five hour game or a postseason game. So, you know, I don't mean to sort of speak out of turn, but I think that you want to kind of meet the sport where it is. And if you do that in good faith, then when you look around and say, you know, it would be nice if we had a little more base running. It would be nice if more balls were put in play because it's a different look and that's interesting and visually dynamic i think that the audience is more inclined to sort of meet you where you are because you're meeting the game where it is and i think that

that's gotten muddled for whatever reason and i don't know if he believes it or if it's a character i don't like either of those as answers. I think they're both bad. Yeah, yeah, it is a hard job. And maybe it's that we've been subjected to so much of him that I've been noticing this. Maybe it's just overexposure. And I think people are just predisposed not to like national broadcasters because you feel like they're parachuting in to say things about your team that you know that you've heard already because they're talking to casual fans mainstream fans a national audience and you miss the local voices that you hear all year long and so people

always think they're biased or they're boring or whatever and you know instinctively dislike them and there are ones that people don't like that I do really like, like Joe Buck, for instance. I like Joe Buck quite a bit, and he is much maligned, of course. But A-Rod, first of all, like I'm sympathetic to the idea that, yeah, there are a lot of strikeouts, and maybe it's not the most exciting brand of baseball, and there are certainly ways to talk about that.

Sacrifice bunts are not something i miss at all like i do not find sacrifice bunts entertaining in any way like the play itself is just not entertaining i mean the player is like literally giving up his attempt to reach base like it's just conceding and out essentially that's just not an entertaining thing to me i don't think like it takes skill and craft certainly but i don't find it to be an entertaining thing bunting for hits sure but sacrifice bunting that is not at all something i miss in the game it's variety i guess but it's not a form of variety that i enjoy at all but it just seems to me like my request really for broadcasters is like just, you know, A, don't like actively disparage the product the entire time you're on the air. Like you can certainly critique it and point out flaws and things that you wish were better.

But don't be overly negative. I mean, you know, celebrate the thing that you're calling and that we're all watching and enjoying to a certain extent. And then B, just don't feed me misinformation. I'm not saying you need to be the nerdcast and to have a whole lot of advanced stats. It's just don't tell me things that are not true at all or have no support or no basis in fact. That's the empty calories kind of thing where it's just like you'll hear something and it's like, that's not true. Or I don't think that's true. Or at least, you know, support your assertion in some way, please. So that's all. I just, I don't care if

you teach me something really. I just don't want to hear misinformation and falsehoods, you know, for whatever the motivation is. And so I think it is a really hard job. And I almost had a chance to do it earlier this year. I was going to be on an MLB Network nerdcast, but it was for an Astros game that was postponed because of a hurricane. So that broadcast did not end up happening. And if it had, I might have an even greater appreciation for how difficult that is. And I don't think I would be great at it, but I also don't think I would start spouting nonsense. I mean, like I might have nothing to say. That is entirely possible. And so if I had nothing to say, I guess I might start feeling pressure to say something. And if you have, you know, three hours

and you run out of your a material and you have to come up with something that's when you start saying cliches or just like talking incessantly about so-and-so's character or whatever but i feel like i i wouldn't be something other than myself or start saying things i don't believe just because there's dead air or something i i might just say something boring i don't know what I would do. But that's the odd thing that I just feel like A-Rod's heart is not really in this. And maybe I'm wrong, and maybe it is. Either way, it's not great. As you said, if he actually believes these things, that's not great. And if he thinks he's obliged to say these things, that's not great. And I've

seen people compare it to Joe Morgan in that Joe Morgan was a player who did all the things that's not great and i've seen people compare it to joe morgan in that joe morgan was a player who you know did all the things that sabermetricians of the time and the money ball philosophy prized and yet he hated all of that stuff and so it was odd to hear him disparage certain things even though he was great as a player you know he had great on base percentages why is he so angry about on base percentage but i always kind of felt like his heart was in that stuff and he came from a different era and i think he did appreciate those things and and really care about small ball and the little things and everything but a rod played in a different era when a lot of that had already gone by the

wayside and the style of play was totally different and i'm just not buying it yeah and i like you said i don't think that everyone needs to engage with the sport the same way that we do i think it's nice that there are kind of multiple broadcasts available so that people who want to think about baseball from an analytics perspective and sort of understand the game through that lens can can do so although i do think we you know i don't want that fracturing to be so permanent especially in the postseason because i do think that there is something really special and unifying about us all watching the same thing which we so rarely do with baseball this is like like the only time of year, apart from a couple of national broadcasts,

where we're really clued in on the same games. And I think that that's important to our sort of collective understanding of the sport. But I think that you can engage with baseball in a way that, like you said, is still honest and isn't antagonistic. And that probably goes both ways, right? Like it isn't as if the sabermetric community is always charming and docile, right? Like we have our moments of getting zingas in too. So this probably goes both ways.

But I think that you want people to walk away from a game having understood what they just watched. to walk away from a game having understood what they just watched. And because the way that teams understand baseball is analytically inclined to not engage with that at all and to not try to help your audience understand it. And like I said, sort of meet the game where it is now is to not live up to that part of your kind of responsibility and job description as a broadcaster and so i think it it is important to try to find some way to to talk about it in a way that is reasonably accessible and it doesn't have to dominate the entire broadcast but uh empty calories like what are you talking about man yeah and sometimes he seemed to like say contradictory things like within a span of minutes. He would praise home runs and then go right back to talking about how manufactured runs matter more.

I'm picking on A-Rod. I could pick on any number of other broadcasters who say something similar. But with him, it just feels like a hard turn to this all of a sudden. And also, I just feel like he had a lot of potential as a tv voice so i feel like he can be better than this i guess that's why it bothers me a bit and also because i just really enjoyed watching him as a player like as a fan during the the time in my career when i was not covering the sport but was just enjoying it on that level he was i think the best player i ever got to see on a regular basis he was just incredible and you got to see him too and i guess that that maybe

bothers me a bit more just because i appreciated those things that he did and now he almost seems to be renouncing them or discounting them himself anyway another thing that bothers me a bit is the forced chuckles you get on national broadcasts. There's so many forced chuckles. It's like I acknowledge that you just made sort of a feint at saying something funny and it is my role now

to do the forced chuckle. It's just like a ha ha ha. It's like you don't find this amusing. It's not that funny. You just, you're, you know, being a good broadcast partner. I just basically wish there were more funny broadcasters. Maybe that's, it's also serious and the humor is somewhat forced. But I know it's not all that conducive to cracking great jokes.

And it's a lot to keep track of. Yeah, but it does, we do seem to get a couple of haha every broadcast like that how people laugh yeah how human beings laugh yes the other thing while i'm ranting about broadcasting you alluded to this and i wrote about it and i was surprised by the strength of my reaction to this because I'm usually pretty tempered in my reactions to things but this legitimately bothered me the the live in-game interview in playoff games and I haven't talked to you about this so I don't know how you feel about it but it really was off-putting to me particularly the ramon loreano segment in game three of the white socks a series

there had been other ones mark canna and justin turner had done it and i had noticed that during the regular season too bryce harper did it and tim anderson did it and fernando tatis jr did it and i'm kind of conflicted about this because I appreciate the goal. And I think there's something cool about the concept of it. They are bringing us close to the field. Like just the idea that we might be talking to a player while he's in a major league game. I mean, there's something exciting about that, I think. But in practice, I just really don't like it.

that I think but in practice I just really don't like it and I like the goal which is sort of to humanize the players and give them more of a platform and we know the whole thing about baseball's audience being old and all of baseball stars being anonymous on a national level and they never get named on the list of like the hundred most popular or favorite athletes. And so anything you can do to give them a mic and a spotlight, I applaud that, except this. This is just too much for me. And I had some misgivings about it in regular season games, but seeing it in playoff games and seeing it in playoff elimination games, I was like deeply uncomfortable watching Ramon Laureano talk to Dave Fleming and Jessica Mendoza during this game that it's a do or die game. He was catching balls and fielding balls and retrieving balls and backing up on balls. And meanwhile, he is also fielding these questions from the booth and he's like panting and winded and out of breath. And yet he is still obligated to talk to the broadcast. And I get that it's voluntary. It's by choice. I even corresponded with someone at the Players Association who said, yeah, you know, they can choose to do this. We just relay the request from MLB or ESPN or whoever it is, and it's up to them.

And Buster only tweeted that something like only 10 to 15 percent of players on ESPN's wish list actually go for this. So clearly a lot of players are not interested in doing this and they are not forced to. a lot of players are not interested in doing this and they are not forced to there is maybe some pressure because if you get asked to do this by espn or mlb then you know maybe you feel some obligation even if you're not actually obligated but just putting that aside like it's not that aspect of it that bothers me so much as just it really does kind of send the signal to me that this competition is not that important. I don't want to make too much of that. And I know that it's 2020 and everything is weird and wacky and maybe our standards should be lowered for disrupting the actual play. not shake the feeling as loriano was doing an interview on live national tv as he was trying

to do his job that this could potentially be distracting and that bothered me in a game that mattered that much yeah so i was watching the whip around show and so my engagement with this was primarily through twitter and also having the strange sort of visual experience of seeing Ramon Liriano seemingly talking to himself because the broadcast feed is just the ESPN broadcast feed, right? Like the folks doing squeeze play don't get to pick their broadcast angles, right? They're just piggybacking off the regular ESPN feed.

So he was talking to himself and i wondered i was like oh does he like guys do that right in the field that's not super unusual or anything but i didn't know if he did that and i was kind of curious about it and then i checked twitter and i saw that he was doing an interview and i thought well that's wild because he might have to field a baseball. Yeah. And then he swore. And I did enjoy that. Yes, I did too. If you recall, I took player swearing in our things we're looking for to draft. And so I felt vindicated.

But I also felt so nervous for him because it sounds like he prioritized the right thing, which meant that he gave uninteresting answers in a tense moment because he was trying so hard to do his job. And that's the right distribution of interest from Liriano. He did the right thing there. But I couldn't help it. I was like, what if it distracts him even one hundredth of a percent? And that's the difference between him making a hard play and

not and we know that this is a guy who can make spectacular plays yeah and you never know if that's the case like i mean he was talking as pitches were being delivered at times and even on the play where he charged on a single up the middle and then threw home i don't think he really had a chance on that play anyway the throw was a little offline but he was like talking as that pitch was going in no and you just never know like i understand that like it's got to be deeply ingrained and instinctive at that point like it's hard for me to imagine doing that because i'm thinking of how much of my mental attention that would take up and like I

can't even write while I'm watching something so the idea of like playing baseball while I'm talking and doing an interview it just seems like a lot but if you're Ramon Laureano like a lot of this is just so habitual for you that it probably is more manageable for him and of course major leaguers are incredibly focused and they're used to tuning out distractions and managing that kind of thing and being heckled and whatever else. But still, you can't tell me it doesn't take up some cognitive capacity to be interviewed and to know that millions of people are listening to you, which maybe he just put out of his mind because he just started swearing almost immediately. So maybe he just kind of of his mind because he just started swearing almost immediately. So maybe he just kind of wasn't taking it all that seriously, which is the right approach,

I think, if you're Ramon Laureano, because there are more important things. But it's just like, it's a playoff game. It's an elimination game. Like, this feels very intrusive. Yeah, I had the same reaction upon learning exactly what the circumstances were. And we've seen this in the field before. And I think that spring training is a great opportunity for that. I think that, and we didn't have this this year,

but I think the All-Star game is a great opportunity for that. We understand those moments to be less important. I think that if you want to do a smattering of it in the regular season, okay, not my favorite, but I get it. But you can't do that stuff in an elimination game. That's madness. it, but it just really bothered me. And other people have told me like, yeah, I had to mute it or I had to turn it off. So it was making me so uncomfortable. And Fleming acknowledged that weirdly when it came back from break and he was like, I know it makes some people uncomfortable. I think it's worth saying out loud that we ask the players nicely. The Players Union Major League Baseball has encouraged players even in play games, to be willing and volunteer. Ramon wanted to do it.

He told us we should do it more often when we were on the air. I know it makes some people cringe, especially when he's in the middle of all the action and we're talking to him. But it is an insight that is hard to get in any other way in any other sports broadcast. No, it is not. Yeah is not an insight. Yeah is what you say when someone is talking at you and you want them to stop. That's what you say. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He signed up for this, obviously, but I don't know if he underestimated how distracting it would be or what. He didn't seem fully into it. And I wasn't getting any great insights, nor would I expect great insights.

He's busy. And also, it's not like he's going to give away the scouting report or something on a national broadcast. I don't know what sort of insights you'd get. I think Kna was pretty good he's an interesting guy and also he had nothing to do on defense in his inning so he had time to talk but to me it just doesn't really seem all that revealing and i think it sort of derails the broadcast too just because like you're you feel like you have to talk to this guy and you you want to be courteous and like not just narrate the game and cut him out of the conversation and

so the camera was always on him and they were always making an effort to include him in things and keep tossing questions his way and meanwhile this was an eventful inning and things were going on and it was not great for the a's and If you have a player from a team who's volunteering his time, you're probably not going to say anything negative about his team while he's on the air, which constrains you a little bit. It just didn't feel like a natural call. It was like this is a talk show suddenly instead of a baseball broadcast. Maybe that makes sense in a blowout or something but like in a close playoff elimination game i do not need that no thank you yeah i agree i i'm here to vindicate your reaction to this ben i think that you are right and other people are wrong and while we're getting rid of this we can also jettison the in-game manager interviews who are those for yeah yeah i mean doesn't bother me in the same way but just doesn't really add anything right there at least those are very brief and generally like recorded

between innings but they're just usually like a couple of very generic questions that just don't tell me anything like they're not going to give away their strategy or whatever so it's like how good is this guy today oh boy nothing he does surprises me all right well thank you and that's basically it so i don't know why we do that really i did appreciate earlier this season it was during a cardinals game and i'm not going to recall now if it if it was shelter if it was one of the bench coaches but they cut to the dugout for an in-game interview. And whoever it was on the Cardinals staff spent a moment sort of passing his condolences along to the family of Lou Brock and then said, okay, I got to go do my job now.

Bye, guys. And I was just like, that was perfect. That was great. That was all I needed. It was a very nice thing to acknowledge Lou Brock's passing. And then we just got back to baseball and it was great. So if they're going to be like that, it should be a quick, hey, thanks so much. Bye-bye.

Yeah. And there are other options. Like if you want to talk to someone in the bullpen or in the dugout or like yesterday's starting pitcher or something, someone who's not in the game. I don't know that I need to hear from anyone really in the game, but if you are going to do it, there are less intrusive ways to do it. And this just does not work for me. And I get it that baseball is more suited to this than the other sports.

And that's sort of what Fleming was saying. Like you can't do this on any other sports broadcast. And that's sort of what Fleming was saying, like you can't do this on any other sports broadcast. And on the one hand, that's kind of like making the best of maybe something that people find boring about baseball, which is that there's and talk to the players who are just standing there but then it also just reminds me that they're just standing there for long periods of time and i feel like it kind of confirms what people believe about baseball which is that there's just a lot of inactivity and people standing around like talking to players who are actually on the field during games just does not refute the idea that baseball is boring by default and that you can actually talk to people who are playing it currently because they're doing so little at that moment so i don't know that it is really the the best reflection on the sport either

and i just don't think it really lends itself to a great conversation or great insights. And so I think there are a lot of ways to promote players and play up the personalities, but this is just one way that I really hope does not become permanent. And I fear that it will, because when I was talking to the person at the Players Association, they were saying that there has been a lot of interest in this from broadcasters, and they've sort of given their go-ahead to do this for 2020. But beyond that, it could be a collective bargaining issue, and maybe this becomes a bargaining chip that the players, I guess the players, at least some of them, like it. But the broadcast partners really like it, and so maybe it's something that the players can use as leverage. Like, we'll talk to you during the game, and it'll plac placate your broadcast partners and maybe they can get some concession for that. But the fans will suffer or at least I will suffer because I just can't deal with this anymore.

Yeah, I agree. I think we should put it to rest. Yeah. And there are like I love the as you mentioned, spring training has produced a lot of great moments. All-star games, great moments. And please, by all means, mic up players during games. Just don't talk to them. Yeah, just don't have it be the two-way interview.

Just like play me the recorded clip later or whatever. That's great. I like hearing that stuff, but I don't want to have to talk to them and have them talk to you while they're doing their very difficult and important job. It just, it felt to me like, all right, if Floriano's multitasking here, then are we even supposed to pay attention to this? Like, maybe I should be doing something else between pitches, which like, you know, sometimes I am. But it just really seems to encourage that sort of thing. It just really seems to encourage that sort of thing. It just made the baseball itself sort of a backdrop for this conversation in a way that bothered me more than I expected it to.

So I am glad that you don't think I'm being a baseball grump about this because I was quite concerned that that's what this was. We were just talking about people lamenting things about baseball and I'm lamenting this thing about baseball broadcasts. But what can I say? It just upset me. I don't think it makes you a baseball grump. I don't think that my broadcasting beef makes me a baseball grump, but I'm open to that feedback. Can I share my broadcasting beef?

Yes, please. Ben, we got to talk about the way we talk about Trevor Bauer. Okay. Ben, we got to talk about the way we talk about Trevor Bauer. Okay. So I acknowledge that there are aspects of his approach to baseball that are interesting. I don't think that they are as novel as they once were. So I don't quite understand the continued fascination in that respect, because it isn't as if he is the only pitcher who has a weighted ball routine.

I think that if you are gonna broadcast about trevor bauer and you're gonna talk about his controversies you need to do that in a more honest way not you ben because you you didn't do it at all ben but i think that trevor bauer makes the mistake that a lot of young men make, which is to think that being contrarian is the same as having a personality. And they are not the same. I think that he quite often uses his social media in an irresponsible way and does not appreciate the influence he has to send his fans after those who disagree with him and I know what it is to feel irritated on Twitter I probably don't have any real understanding of the volume that he probably encounters but you have to let stuff go you have to appreciate the way that your influence is going to wreck someone's day in a way that's very disproportionate to whatever small inconvenience or insult they've levied against you. And so with the combination of what he has done off the field, his on-the-field antics,

which speak to perhaps not the best impulse control would be the neutral way of saying that. And then this very strange campaign he has against the Astros in a season where he appears to himself be cheating in a way that begs the league to intervene. That is all a very sticky wicket. And you can't just say he's controversial and then move on from that because it does not inform the audience that does not really know much about Trevor Bauer as to the extent of his controversy.

It doesn't really give people the information they need to form their own opinions or judgments about that it doesn't do justice to the people who have had their days and weeks sort of derailed in public on social media as a result of his controversy and so i think that if we're going to talk about it we need to talk about it honestly and if we're not gonna do that then we should be less enamored with his his controversy with his quirk because like everybody throws a freaking weighted ball okay it's not that interesting anymore like this isn't the same thing that it was i think that the other baggage is sufficient to give us pause before we elevate this person to being one of the faces of baseball

and like you know i'm this is a this is a very sassy meg thing to say but it's like the men who are doing this broadcast booth it's like you clearly never dated like douchey finance guys in new york in your 20s because if you had you would be over this it's not that interesting it's a bummer it's a bummer ben yeah yeah i think if you if you bring him up if you bring up the controversies you you do have to go into detail obligation yeah and i have some experience with trying to figure out how to talk about sure right because i co-wrote a book in which he was heavily featured and this is something travis and i talked about a lot. And, you know, I didn't personally write the portions of the book about Trevor Bauer because Travis was interviewing him and spent the time with him. I, to this day, have never actually talked to Trevor Bauer. So I have no relationship with him or personal affection for him. But I obviously worked with Travis on how he would be portrayed. And, you know, I think in

writing a book about player development, I think he had to be a character. He had to be featured to some extent in that book. And that while, yes, many pitchers throw weighted balls now, I don't know that as many did when he broke in. Like, I think he was a trailblazer to a certain extent. And I have some appreciation for his approach to pitching, even if it has become more common. I think he's played a part in it becoming more common. But yeah, we wanted to just not say, well, he's a quirky guy or something. When we brought up those things,

we did detail what he did Right. him necessarily and I've seen reactions to the MVP machine where people said I came out of this liking and appreciating Trevor Bauer and other people have said I came out of this hating this guy's guts and I think that's good actually that makes me happy that people have had both of those reactions because we we did kind of just want to put the facts out there to a certain extent and let people draw their own conclusions about him. And, you know, I don't know if we handled that perfectly well or not. It was kind of a tricky thing to navigate. But I do think, yes, if you're going to focus on him and bring him up and talk about the positive aspects of certainly his pitching performance and all of that and especially if you're going to talk about his personality and him you know being good at

promoting himself or baseball or whatever there's certain truths to that but also there are a lot of negatives and yes i think you should definitely have a fair and balanced portrayal of Bauer if you can. And you really should. Right. I think that you can't be so ensorcelled by like his intellectual curiosity when it comes to pitch design and not acknowledge that like, and I don't know if this is still a belief he has or if it was ever a sincere belief because he you know it's hard to tell when he's trolling and when he's yeah he likes to be a trickster but you know i don't think that you can talk about someone's intellectual curiosity in one aspect without at least acknowledging how strange it is that that person has spent time like as a climate change denier right so and again all of that is very hard to fit into and you know and here's the next pitch from power right so i this is it's a tricky task and i am sympathetic

to the response to what i just said that might be true and predictable which is well meg if they don't talk about it at all people are going to be dissatisfied by that because you, you know, you want people to grapple with the bad that he's done. And so to just talk about the pitching is to exclude that part because they can't figure out how to thread the needle. And that's not good either. And that's, that's true, too. So I, I appreciate that this is a difficult task. And perhaps a broadcast booth is just not the right medium for it but i think that if you're going to sort of shelve that part of the the conversation about him it's like you should sound less charmed by you know like he was going after ronald lacuna today on twitter and i get the guys

jaw at each other that's the expression and what have you but there's an aspect to that personality that I that personality type that I just don't find personally appealing and that doesn't mean that he shouldn't be a major league pitcher or that my preferences for human beings should like weigh out

but I think that there is a part of that that is unpredictable and explosive and at times manifest in ways that are really harmful to people and often to people who are not, you know, one of the best players in the National League, but are just folks on Twitter. And so we should be careful about who we elevate because that further endows that person with authority and popularity and then we don't always like the way that they go out and use that and so i think we should just be we should be a little more careful about it and we should be honest about it because

he is a very talented pitcher how he's so talented this year i think is probably also a conversation that shouldn't get sidestepped quite so significantly in the booth right you can't sit there and talk about the guy's spin rates and then be like well i wonder how that happened yeah who's to say right even if you want to just keep it to the pitching purely there's still a couple aspects to that too at least least this season. And we've talked about that before, just how suspicious it is that his spin rates have spiked so suddenly. And by his own acknowledgement, that is not possible as far as we know and as far as he knows or so he has said without the use of some foreign substances, which he has tested and been very open about the effects of,

and suddenly those effects are happening on the field when he pitches. Isn't that odd? And so, yeah, if you're going to talk about, wow, he has great stuff, and look at this movement and look at those spin rates, then, yeah, you should probably also talk about the fact that those spin rates very suddenly and in an unprecedented way increased and that seems probably not to have been entirely natural not that he is the only pitcher who is using sticky stuff most pitchers are but he is perhaps using it more effectively or or differently

which uh i guess if if they're all cheating if most of them are cheating in that way and he is just doing it better than they are, then, you know, I guess you could credit him with being a better abuser of that particular rule. But also, yeah, maybe just mention that sure seems odd that that happened all of a sudden. Plus, it's pretty important because he is one of the most prominent free agents this offseason, probably the best free agent pitcher available. And while he's been very effective before, you have to wonder how much is his stat line this season a product of the elevated spin rates? And then will those spin rates continue? Are you signing this guy or will he stop using that or will he be forced to stop using that? And then will he suffer some decline because of that? Right.

I know that people's reactions to the way that the booth in the first game between the Twins and the Astros sort of talked about, it sure is strange that their batting average is so much lower. It sure is where they're having a harder time hitting breaking stuff this year. And I know that people kind of reacted to that differently. I'm hitting breaking stuff this year. And I know that people kind of reacted to that differently. I took that as the booth inviting the audience, which is aware of the Astros cheating scandal,

to say, well, it's because they cheated. And now they're not cheating. And so they're less good at baseball. And it's a tricky thing when you have a broadcast partner and you're having to sort of satisfy a lot of different audiences. And I think that we can ask people to be sort of principled, but not be naive to the demands and constraints that they have in the media. I'm like, let's, you know,

be realistic about some of the forces that are at play here. But it was very different when I'm talking about Bauer. I was like, well, no, he's like really, he really seems to want the league to call him out for cheating. He seems to be inviting that in a way that is very strange. I find it very strange while simultaneously just trying to stick it to the Astros at every conceivable moment. So he is a complicated and sort of multidimensional person as we all are.

But if you're going to be enamored with that complexity, you need to grapple with it sincerely is my request. Because some of it is, you know, I don't want to say it's silly baseball stuff, but like it's baseball stuff. And some of it is much more serious for a lot of people. And so I think that we need to be mindful of that reality when we're deciding to, you know, be so charmed. We should be thoughtful about who we're charmed by. Yeah. And his spin rate spike has been even more suspicious and much more anomalous than

the Astro's spin rates that Bauer has called out ever were. So I don't know whether he's doing this to make a point purely or because he just decided, I really want to win that Cy Young Award and this will help me do it or what. He told Travis for the book that he had not used sticky stuff to that point. And frankly, I believe him. I think based on what we've seen, this sudden increase suggests to me that he was not doing that and then started doing it last September and I don't know whether there's going to be some grand reveal where he wins the Cy Young award and says it's because I was using this sticky stuff so MLB really has to do something about this or whether he is just trolling them or whether

he's just decided that he's going to take advantage of the same thing that a lot of other pitchers have decided to take advantage of but it's definitely notable so if you're going to talk about his performance this season i think it has to come up in some way well you know the cy young will be announced and he'll go back and say like if you took the third letter of every sentence of the tweet i laid out exactly where i applied it and what it was it's like this is a really great reference from a wonderful piece of cinema that everyone will appreciate but it's like in the snowman you know it's like mr police you could have saved her i gave you all the clues it's just like that yeah

maybe with less murder hopefully so since we've been complaining about things, I'll just say one thing that I found heartening, which is that there's not been any discourse that I've been aware of about bat flips or any of that stuff, which I have found encouraging because when we had the whole Tatis controversy and the 3-0 swing and everything earlier this year, we had the whole Tatis controversy and the 3-0 swing and everything earlier this year, I thought the backlash to that backlash was so strong that to me that seemed like a watershed. It seemed to be saying that no, actually, public opinion has shifted. Even opinion within the game has shifted. Everyone is on Tatis' side now. And if you're going to be the wet blanket bully who's going to come out and say something about bat flips the mob will come for you

not for the bat flipper and I thought that was a significant moment and I sort of allowed myself to hope that you know what maybe this just won't be a problem again and we won't have to have this conversation over and over and over again and we've had Tatis bat flips and we've had Marcelo Zuna

taking a fake selfie of himself after hitting home run and we've had Tatis bat flips and we've had Marcelo Zuna taking a fake selfie of himself after hitting home run. And we've had all of that. And I don't know that anyone has vocally been bothered by it. I haven't seen like retaliation on the field or bad blood about that. I haven't seen terrible takes in the media about that. Maybe they're out there, but they've not come to my attention. And I think that's great that this stuff is happening. hakes in the media about that. Maybe they're out there, but they've not come to my attention. And I think that's great that this stuff is happening and we're not talking about it except to talk

about how we haven't had to talk about it. Yeah, I think that it is an encouraging sign that the discourse might be slowly lurching forward or has lurched forward in a way that is meaningful, which is really great. I would at some point like to have a way that is meaningful, which is really great. I would at some point like to have a conversation culturally about like, you know, where the lines on that are. I think that players do a pretty good job of making sure that when they're excited, it's not directed at anyone. I think that it's very normal and natural to like have a bad thing happen and be disappointed and angry and be like, ah, grumble, grumble. I wish that were different. What you choose to do with that

feeling and who you directed toward, I think is where, you know, where you need to like do some work and some growth and some maturing as a person. And I think that as long as folks are doing their part, whether it's making sure that it's not directed at anyone so that it truly is celebratory and not a like zats. You know, you don't want to zats anyone. Zats. And that, you know, guys who are disappointed can say, yeah, that sucked. I wish that hadn't happened. And then move on.

Then everybody's in good shape because you don't want to discourage people from having the feeling i've done enough Therapy as a child of divorce to know that that just makes you break your toys It comes out sideways and you get yelled at and you get in trouble. So you have to Process it and we want people to do that in a healthy way and we want people to have fun And enjoy themselves. And yeah, I there were a couple of moments around the selfie thing where the broadcast was speculating oh there's gonna be discourse and i was like shut up like no don't don't invite the discourse don't open the door to the discourse keep that door closed you don't have to encourage it just keep it closed it's okay like we're just moving on. It's fine. Yep.

So before we wrap up, I don't know if we'll speak again before the division series start on Monday for the AL and Tuesday for the NL. So are you particularly excited or intrigued by any of these matchups? We've got Rays Yankees. We've got A's Astros. We've got Dodgers Padres. And we've got Marlins Braves. I'm just really hoping that San Diego's starting pitching is back and productive.

Simply being able to pitch is not the same as pitching well. So I hope that, you know, Lamette and Clevenger are sort of in shape to give the Dodgers a run for their money. I mean, I had kind of expected that L expected that LA would blow out Milwaukee. Those games were closer, at least in terms of the score than I expected them to be. Although especially Kershaw's start, it was just, I know that I'm sure you and Sam talked about it, but Ben, it was exquisite. Ben, it made me just, it just made me happy. I didn't even get to watch all of it because, you know, there were other games that were tighter

and I had to focus on those for a second. But gosh, what a joy. I just hope that we can finally be rid of that narrative. Let's leave all the bad discourse. Yeah. Because that's what 2020 has been famous for is just jettisoning bad discourse. We're just like, no, we're not doing that anymore.

We've evolved. discourse we're just like no we're oh we're not doing that anymore we've evolved um uh still here we're still here um so so i hope that i hope that that series features a healthy starters on san diego's part so that we can really see it in all its glory because i think it's just gonna that one's gonna be a tremendous amount of. I'm happy that there have been teams that have sort of gotten some bad past behind them in terms of their inability to win a series, and so we get to move through that and establish new stories, which is always exciting. I think that the fact that so many of these series have shaped up

to be true division series is fun because you know gosh you just don't hate anyone like you hate your family um and so i love my family but i'm just saying like you just know them so well so you gotta like i think that i think the rays and the yankees might fight yeah like i think that they're gonna fight yes yeah that could happen and and astros and and a is no i think i think astros and literally anyone it does not matter if it is against oakland if they lose to oakland they will fight if they win they will fight oakland and the next team like they are just they're just gonna be fights yeah astros in dodger stadium, right? Oh my gosh. Also, and so I don't, I should say, fights are bad. Fights are an example of letting your feelings come out sideways and breaking your toys.

We shouldn't do that. That's what my therapist told me when I was six, when I was destroying her office. So I want to know what the rules are for the cardboard cutouts in neutral fields. Do the Dodgers have to get rid of their fans? Here's another question. Can the Dodgers put trash can cutouts behind home plate? They shouldn't do that. That's tacky.

But can they? I don't know. I would think that someone would probably clear those away, unfortunately. Probably. They would probably find that to be not sporting. They would probably say, that's not sporting they would probably say that's not sporting in the alds brought to you by potato chips and the lds brought to you by doosan have you ever watched uh like playoff baseball and been like i need a backhoe yeah i need some camping

equipment i need some tires these are just not products that I ever need. The camping equipment, I'm sometimes like, oh, I could use that because I like being outside, but that's the only time. I have one final thought on commercials. That's not true. I'll have many thoughts on commercials, but I have one for this. I think the guy who does the Bud Light commercials where he walks around the stadium beer hawker, I think that man deserves an award. I think that he has some of the best line readings I've seen. Yeah, great delivery. Amazing.

It's perfect. And I'm not here to litigate the macro versus micro brew battles. We'll have to bring Eno on to do that. That's not what I'm here for. I'm just saying this guy sounds like he is maybe he is a stadium beer hawker because it's perfect he sells it it seems like he has experience so either he's a great actor or it's true to life yeah they're great i hate almost every commercial that is on tv right now we have seen so many in the last couple of days. I've just seen so many. But that guy can stay.

The beer hawker can stay. And if someone walked through my neighborhood and was selling beer out of an ice cream truck, but with beer, I would buy it. I'd be like, yeah, I'm going to sit here on my stoop because I can't be near anyone. And I'm going to drink a beer on the stoop. I would totally do that. So let's bring that innovation to 2020. Sounds nice. Yeah. I just saw this JJ Cooper tweet, which I guess I might have known this if you had asked me, but I had not really thought about it, that Chris Paddock's

two and a third inning outing in game one was the longest Padres pitcher outing in that series in those three games. Yeah. I mean mean that is a bullpen series right there so as you said i hope that that will not be the case because like look the dodgers are better than everyone but i'd like it to be a fair fight at least i'd like it to be both teams functioning close to the the best of their abilities and i'd like to see Lumet and Clevenger get a shot at this and you know they played catch on Friday reportedly and we'll see what their status is but I don't know if the Padres could knock off the Dodgers but this is going to be a rivalry for years to come I think because the Padres are clearly going to be good for a while we've talked about how the Dodgers are

seemingly perpetually going to be good so these teams are going to be going head to head in the division and possibly the playoffs for years. And this is going to be really fun to see them play each other because I don't think this matchup has happened before. And so to see it happen in October, I'd really like the Padres to have the best chance to make it a competitive series possible. They won this one without Lumet and Clevenger, so they can do that, but the Dodgers are a much more formidable opponent than the Cardinals were. Yeah, I think that it was a well-executed game plan, and it did not feature any really major blow-ups, but I think that Emilio Pagan on three days,

throwing three days in a row against the Dodgers lineup is going to end badly for Emilio Pagan. I do not say that because he's a bad pitcher. I say that because the Dodgers lineup is quite good. I hope that their starters are healthy and have some length and we can see that series actually go far.

And then I guess I'm just jazzed for the Marlins because what a crazy freaking story that is. So yeah, I think that I wouldn't have minded a couple more sneaky teams sneaking in. I would have liked to see what Cincinnati can do. I just spent 20 minutes being critical of one of their starters, but like, that's a really fun, that's a really fun rotation. Pitching on that team is just great to watch. Wow. They really just couldn't score any runs. No, literally no, no runs. Zero. So

yeah, I think that we ended up with a pretty good slate and i as much as i would have liked for like i said a sneaky team to sneak in i think it is probably to the sports benefit that we didn't see a ton of upsets like it would have been bad for baseball if the dodgers had gotten bounced in a best of three it would not have been good for baseball if like you know something weird had happened with tampa it's not good for baseball that the Twins really can't win in October, but that's not a 2020 problem, and it's not a playoff format issue. So yeah, I think that we have some good baseball and a lot of it. No days off, Ben.

I know, right, and it's fascinating to see how these teams are handling that after conditioning themselves not to pitch that way, both during the regular season and planning not to pitch that way in the postseason. And then you take away those off days and that really does change things. That flashes us back to baseball from a generation ago. And I don't know how prepared these teams are for that, but we will see. As I said to Sam, it feels like we have watched a good portion of the postseason already, but really we have just gotten up to the point where the postseason typically starts. So there's a lot of baseball still ahead of us and we will discuss it. I'm trying really hard not to think about that part because through careful planning and just a bang-up job by the fan graph staff and the wonderful assistance of Dylan Higgins in editing, I escaped the wild card round not feeling, you know, terrifically overwhelmed at any point. And I, earlier tonight, was like, I did great.

And then I was like, like oh we have a whole month to go so we all just keep hydrating everyone you know keep um keep drinking water and wearing your masks and we'll we'll watch some baseball and then and then november comes yeah right and this is sort of a sad note to end the episode on but we saw the news just as we were recording that bob gibson has died at age 84 passed away from pancreatic cancer and boy what can you even say about gibson just a an absolute legend in every way. One of those players who has all of the credentials that a player could possibly have. I mean, two-time Cy Young Award winner and MVP and Hall of Famer and World Series hero,

two-time World Series MVP, and the incredibly low 112 ERA and just a great all-around athlete who was a really talented fielder and hitter by pitcher standards he kind of did it all but also went beyond the the performance on the field just with the persona that he had just a larger than life type of player who remained really present for that franchise up until you know know, very recent times. And so it's an acute loss that I'm sure that not only his loved ones,

but Cardinals fans are feeling, you know, after having been eliminated earlier today, having lost Lou Brock recently to have Bob Gibson go so soon. That's a pretty tough sequence of events. have Bob Gibson go so soon. That's a pretty tough sequence of events. Yeah, I think that when you inspire the sport to alter its physical parameters, that alone is sort of an indelible mark to leave. And it doesn't begin to do justice to his legacy, both as a pitcher and as a human being and as someone who, as you said, has continued to be a really important figure in that organization for fans and for players who have gone through there. I know that as we were recording, I was scrolling through Twitter

and Jack Flaherty had a relationship with him, and it's clear that he meant a lot to a lot of people, both folks who knew him really well and those who were not lucky enough to. So it's been a sad year for baseball legends leaving us. Yeah. You kept hearing about his ERA this season because people were sort of making runs at it because of the 60-game season. It's like, well, he did that in a full season and granted big strike zone and high mound and all of that. But it was not just Bob Gibson that prompted that change. But yes, there was an element of like, oh, he's too good. We need to change the rules because this is not fair.

He's not hittable. Yeah, I think that he's just he's probably someone who we talk about a lot but i don't know that we talk about nearly enough and i am especially with the news of his passing i'm so glad that his era record stood what yes yeah it should i hope it stands forever yeah probably will probably so i will link to rick hummel's obituary for gibson and I will also link to the Roger Angel piece, the classic Angel piece that we mentioned on our Angel episode about Gibson, which is one of the best pieces of writing, certainly about Gibson and maybe about baseball, period. We will be reading and hearing much about him over this weekend. Yeah. That'll do it for today and for this week. Thank you,

as always, for listening. And thanks to those of you who have supported the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks. Joe Morelli, Allison, John Daugherty, Jenna Gardner, and Andy Oklak. 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 Spotify and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments coming for me and Meg and Sam via email at podcastoffangraphs.com

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