Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1608: A Wild World Series Weekend

Episode Date: October 27, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller break down the exciting fourth and fifth games of the World Series, touching on Brett Phillips’ momentous hit and the Dodgers’ momentous misplays at the end of Game 4, the managerial decisions that led to that wild ending, Manuel Margot’s baserunning and Clayton Kershaw’s pitching in Game 5, and other […]

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Hello and welcome to episode 1608 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast with Van Graffs presented by our Patreon supporters. I'm Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Sam Miller of ESPN. Hello, Sam. Hello. We are recording on Monday afternoon, so we've seen a couple World Series games over the weekend. They were quite exciting. I guess we saw three since our last episode. One of them was not so exciting. One was all-time great. One was very good. And now we have the Dodgers one win away from winning a World Series So I guess we should start maybe with Saturday's game Unless you have any other banter you want to bring up

No, go ahead Alright, so we were actually doing a Patreon livestream during Game 4 And it started out innocently enough And I didn't have a sense that we were watching an all-time great, memorable World Series game, but it obviously was one by the end. And it's tough when we're doing these streams because it's you and me and Meg and sometimes some guests, and we're following the chat, and we're talking during ads, and my mind is not really as laser-focused on the game as it would be if I were watching by myself because we're not doing play by play. So we're just kind of chatting. Sometimes we're not even talking about the game.

And then it kind of crept up on us. I think that we were watching a really great game, especially because it became a really great game in the last play. And as you said at the time, usually we've been talking for four hours by the time those things are over and we can't wait to say goodnight, goodbye, everyone. And this time we just hung around for a while because it took a while to even figure out what we just saw, just to see the replays and dissect who was at fault and who did something good. It was really one of the most exciting plays. Someone emailed us to say that we should draft our favorite moments from that game,

exciting play someone emailed us to say that we should draft our favorite moments from that game but they would probably all be from that last play and you could probably do a draft almost of just that play yeah yeah did i i mean there's eventually everybody tries to rank everything did did you see anybody trying to i mean i i know we all said wow that was one of the greatest games ever one of the wildest finishes ever etc. Have you seen anybody actually try to put a number on it? Well, Dan Simborski did a post for Fangraphs where he quantified the most volatile games in postseason history. He just took the total change in win probability and divided it by the number of plays. And he found that it was the most volatile game in postseason history wow yeah so that was

yeah fun way to look at it and a lot of that of course was contained in that final play which was one of the most pivotal postseason plays and and therefore any play of all time just because the Rays came from behind to win it friend Friend of the show Dan Hirsch noted that it was the 20th most momentous hit by championship win probability added. And of course, most of the ones ahead of it were in game seven or game eight even. The only ones that weren't were Bobby Thompson's shot heard around the world, Joe Carter's walk-off, and Cookie Lappichetto's double in Game 4 of the 1947 World Series when he broke up the no-hitter with a walk-off double. Just those legendary moments and Brett Phillips.

And there were so many elements to that play. I would like to see, you know how you did that article one time about breaking down a single play? Yeah, are you talking about the changes in win probability within the play itself? Yeah, or you did how does war work, and you divided different amounts of credit for each person in the play, that one. I would like to see that just because I think one of the nice things about this play is that there was a hero. There was Brett Phillips, this unlikely hero,

wasn't expected to be in the game, arguably shouldn't have been in the game. You could argue that Kevin Cash actually made a mistake pinch hitting for G-Man Choi when he did, not really having a first baseman and with Choi's lineup spot coming up again in the game conceivably. And then you end up with Brett Phillips and the Rays certainly didn't want Brett Phillips to be the person hitting there, but he was. And he got the single and the single would have made him a hero on its own, even if it had just tied the game. And I think someone emailed us to say,

technically it was not a game winning hit because the run scored on an error. The winning run for the Rays scored on an error. But there were so many different stages to that play. There was that hit, and then there were the four different mistakes at minimum by the Dodgers. And I think the nice thing was you invoked Mickey Owen as we were winding down that stream and and saying that

you know you wondered whether it would be a game like that where we would maybe remember it as the insert name of player who screwed up game you know the buckner game the owen game those famous sorts of games i don't think this is one of those games because you can't blame it on any one player it was like three or four different players on the Dodgers who contributed to that play going against them. And so there isn't really a scapegoat or one person who has to wear this. It was a true team effort in the loss. Yeah, what was Chris Taylor doing, though?

Like, there was no play at home, right? I don't think so like there was no play at home right and there was i think so there was no chance no a two out single that's kind of not hard hit not directly to him with one of the 15 fastest people in baseball trying to score there's there's absolutely no way there's a play at home right i saw some people suggest that maybe if a rosarena had not fallen. No, no, no, no, no. Okay, you mean the first round that scores? Yeah, on Kiermaier, yeah. Yeah, no, I don't think so.

And so if you're going to pick an unforgivable moment, I think it would be charging as though there was a play. Like he came up throwing. I mean, he came up throwing just he didn't have the ball. Like he was winding up to throw as he realized he didn't have the ball. So that's probably the one moment. It's actually in a way kind of difficult to even figure out the Muncie-Will Smith conundrum. Like, I mean, I think that you have to be in their heads to know which one of them feels like they failed the other i think it was probably

the throw he was it's a hard throw you know like he's really close to the catcher in that situation first baseman don't relay like the first baseman are cutoff men they're not relay men and so they they stand there so that they can stop the throw and then, if necessary, throw to a different base. But they're there to keep other runners from basically, you know, advancing by being a cutoff man, not a relay. If you're relaying, then usually you're throwing from a lot further away. from that angle at that closeness is already kind of challenging. And then, I mean, it just, I would guess, I mean, I watched that, I don't know, 15 times and tried to put myself in their muscles. And it felt to me like the throw, like the throw was jerked a little bit. If you sort of, I think if you watch Muncy with the sort of the follow through of his throw, it looks slightly unnatural. Like maybe he's like a little hesitant or I don't know,

a little, little, little snaggy perhaps with the throw. And, and I think that it only, it only has to maybe be off by a little bit to the backhand side for it to be you know a sort of a deceptively hard throw to catch so i think i tend to think that muncie probably would like to have the throwback more than yeah then i would think smith would have but it's hard to know you're right you're right that the blame is sort of distributed and the fact that you have, I mean, if there is a sort of like easily identifiable goat in the play, it would be a Rosarena. He's the one who tripped running around the, you know, the bag. And of course, he's not on the losing team. He's the winner.

He's the one who's patting the plate. And he's like the iconic picture of hugging this home plate so in in some sense the fact that the chaos engulfed both teams probably spares us a little bit of the sense that there was one one goat or one mistake yeah there's no snot grasses muff here there's no snot grass i guess there was a muff but the thing about the throw i i think i agree with you that the muncie throw was worse than the smith non-catch and also like smith didn't know that a rosarina had fallen down so he was assuming it would be a bang bang play at the plate right so he was trying to glove the ball and then apply the swipe tag in a single movement which he probably would have had to do if a rosarina not fallen, which he couldn't count on Rosarena somersaulting

between third and home. So he was trying to apply the tag as quickly as he could, as he thought that he needed to. And so that's sort of why he screwed up. So you can't really say the same about Taylor, I guess, in center field, that he had to rush the throw because, as you said, he probably didn't. There was probably no way to stop the tying run from scoring. But even Taylor, I mean, Taylor wasn't supposed to be playing center field. He was playing center field because Bellinger's back was hurt, and that's why he was out there. And he's usually a left fielder or a second baseman. He has some center field experience, and i don't think he's

incompetent out there or anything but it's not even his regular position so all sorts of strange things were happening on that play you know i'm gonna get a little mystical here but like i sort of think that there's a decent chance i maybe believe that in fact it was likely that if a rosarena hadn't stumbled he would have been out because the odds are that, I mean, I think that a throw from Muncie, an accurate throw from Muncie that Will Smith caught and then turned and tagged a runner in normal circumstances,

I think a Rosarena would have been out. Now I might be off on that, but I think if he had just run straight, straight ahead and everything else had gone normal from the time Chris Taylor picked the ball up again, I think he might have been out. And so you could make the case, like there's a case to be made that a Rosarena stumbling and falling actually was what saved the play for the Rays because now Muncy turns and he looks and he sees this completely unexpected scene. Like he probably should have run at a Rosarena, in fact. Probably? I don't know.

But he turns and he's expecting to see one thing and instead he sees a unicorn. And then Will Smith, who like you say, is expecting contact. He doesn't know exactly what's going on, but I think he must know that something's slightly askew because there was probably like the third base coach was yelling at a Rosarena to get back. And he probably, maybe he even heard some of the tumble and he doesn't know what's happening at this point. He doesn't, he probably knows that something happened to a Rosarena. I mean, he can tell that a Rosarena is not at the plate yet, which he basically should be closer. And I think he could sense. I think he could sort of sense that something weird was happening that he was not privy

to. And that's probably a little bit of a scary thing when you're the catcher in that situation. So between what Muncy saw and what Will Smith felt, I believe that's probably part of why the throw from Muncy to Smith was not able to be executed. And that's what perhaps saved Rosarena, who in normal circumstances might have just run hard, been tagged out, and that would have been the whole thing. For the rest of his life, Rosarino can think of how fortunate it was that he stumbled and tripped. And so if that's true, then maybe Chris Taylor can also think that in a larger sense, he was where he was supposed to be. And that ultimately, this all happened for a reason. And that in fact, this will be somehow redeemed for him in his life. And I think that Muncy can think that.

I mean, they can all think that. Muncy hit a 9 million foot home run the next day and put the Dodgers ahead. And maybe in his mind, maybe he needed to make that throw in order to hit that home run. Until one of these teams loses the series, then I'm not willing to say that anybody is not the winner. Yeah. the series then i'm not willing to say that anybody is not the winner yeah and if the dodgers win the series then that game i don't want to say it will be forgotten but it won't sting so much well yeah and in fact it the fact that it will be remembered will make the whole series remembered more it will be like considered a greater world you know just a greater world series generally a

more historically remembered one and if they're the winners that's great they like everybody remembers the world series they won whereas otherwise they could just i mean you know it probably won't because of the pandemic anyway but uh some world series are just like a 37 world series where most people don't remember anything about him or who won. And we haven't mentioned Kenley Jansen, who played a part in this inning too. Even that is kind of confusing because he gave up that hit and he gave up multiple hits. He gave up the Kiermaier single that just barely fell in, really. And the kind of confusing thing is that he gave up those hits. He's charged with at least that first run,

but he didn't give up hard hit balls. Those were both soft little liners, if you can call them that. But also, it seemed like he got away with some pitches where we were watching at the time and kind of cringing at some of the pitches that he threw and some of the pitches that he threw to like a Rosarena before he walked him. It just seemed like he wasn't really getting the cutter working the way he wanted to his velocity was down again he was maybe getting some pitches like just off the inside corner but he was it just it wasn't cutting and biting as much as we're used to seeing kind of the the Kenley cutter. So it seemed like while he wasn't hit hard, he kind of got unlucky in that sense, but also got lucky in the sense that he could have been hit hard with the pitches that he was throwing, which were just not at all confidence inspiring, and maybe not a coincidence that he did not come in in the save opportunity the next day. It was Trinan pitching for a third consecutive game and of

course kenley also came in for some criticism for not backing up that play i tend to think that even if he had backed up it wouldn't have really made a difference oh no it would have been it made a difference for chris guccioni because yes if kenley had been in position to back up and the ball had gone off of chris gucuccione's leg to prevent Kenley from backing it up this would be the Chris Guccione story right now we would be we would be all because he wasn't watching the ball he was watching I think I think I'm remembering this right he was watching he was looking at the runner and so the ball comes in and he's not looking at it and so when it comes off Will, it hits his leg and then he looks down.

He's like, what? And so if Kenley had been in place in position to back that up, then Guccione would have deflected away from him. And I think that then we would have had a totally different goat, maybe, perhaps. Maybe, yeah. I don't think Jensen would have been in position to field it and make the tag or something. Like, I don't think they would have gotten the out, but maybe it would have changed things in the way that you're saying. Yeah, I don't know if a Rosarena, he had stopped. So if the throw gets past Will Smith and goes straight to Kenley, a Rosarena is in the middle.

He's in no man's land. I don't think he necessarily goes forward, especially because his third base coach was apparently had been telling him to go back so it's i mean we'll never know who knows who knows at all but if the ball goes past will smith to kenley jansen backing up then does a rosarena then retreat try to retreat who knows yeah, that's the great thing about this play. I guess there's so many parts to it. We watched it 15 times. We've been talking about it for 15 minutes and you can still keep analyzing it because there are so many what ifs on this single play that you can imagine things going totally differently or what would have happened

if this had happened. And even though we have every possible angle and we have stat cast, and I'm sure there have been and will be breakdowns of every aspect of it, it's still something that we can talk about and speculate about endlessly, which is great. This is just one of those plays I'm happy that we have all of the video and all of the data,

because otherwise it would just be one of those things that maybe you hear like oh this guy he fell on the way but if you couldn't see it and examine it with your own eyes it just it wouldn't be as interesting you'd be relying on second hand third hand fourth hand testimony and it just wouldn't be as fun this is uh it's an all-time great exciting conclusion to a game and because it happened in a world Series game, it's all the more memorable. And it was a good game up to that point, too. This was just the capper.

But up to that point in the series, there hadn't really been anything weird. And there hadn't been any lead changes until Game 4. And then suddenly there were a few lead changes. And we haven't even talked yet about the decisions that led to this outcome so the fact that the Rays come back to win that it ends up being a one-run game then places even more of a spotlight on Dave Roberts and the moves that led to that point and we were kind of focusing on some of that and talking about that as the game was going on. The decision to put in Baez against Brandon Lau, the decision to leave in Baez the next inning to give up another game-tying home run. It's pretty rare, probably, certainly in this era,

that you would see a reliever give up multiple leads in a World Series game. And so I guess I've seen defenses of Roberts. I've seen condemnations of Roberts. I think because we're also used to seeing Patriot Pius do this just because the Dodgers are always in the playoffs, which is one of the things that I like about watching this team. There's so much history with this team and with these players. We've been watching this team in the playoffs since 2013 and it's so much fun it's like watching a sitcom or something where you know all the characters and you remember their arcs from earlier seasons and there are all these callbacks to everything and yeah sometimes it gets tiresome you know when we're talking about kershaw and

roberts over and over and over again but while while it's nice to, you know, the Rays come along and we're introduced to Mike Brasso or, you know, Brett Phillips has a big moment. It's kind of nice, I think, with the Dodgers, the fact that we've been seeing these guys year in and year out and we're rooting for redemption for some of them, you know, guys like Seager, Bellinger, who struggled early in their careers in the postseason, now they've made good. They've had these big moments or you root for Kershaw. And they're always there, but because they haven't won, we aren't sick of them, I don't think. You know, like they haven't broken through. It's not like they're dominating.

They dominate in the regular season, but they haven't won in the postseason. So we're not tired of them yet. We're not like, all right, we've seen enough of the Dodgers because they haven't had their big moment yet. So I think I appreciate that. So when Baez gives up a big hit that it's like, oh, you remember all of the previous big Baez hits. And so you can certainly critique Roberts. It was odd on the surface, I think, to bring in a righty to face a lefty, but it's a little more complicated than that because there was one out and he was going to have to face at least one more righty. I think Adamas was due up next and then there was the possibility of a pinch hitter if he had brought in a lefty, then maybe that lefty, if he hadn't gotten Lau, then he would have had to face two righties and Baez has career reverse splits so there are all these different ways to analyze that decision and I think also at this point

Roberts is kind of like out of great options or they're all sort of interchangeable which even opens him up to more criticism because there's no like go-to guy in that pen it's not like oh high leverage spot you bring in this guy that no one will question it. So whatever he does, it's almost like all these guys are sort of in that same range where they're not bad, but they don't give you a great feeling of confidence.

And so whatever he does, you wonder if it would have gone better if he'd done something else. I find that the confidence level in relievers, particularly non-closing relievers, but i guess in all relievers to be funny because it's sometimes i have a hard time figuring out exactly what people are reacting to and like baez everybody everybody hates bias like he's he i mean that's what his role has been in this sitcom is like he's the player that you don't think about until October. And then October comes around and you either look at his numbers and go, wow, he had another good year because you're surprised you thought that he was bad because you remember him from October.

Or if you're not paying attention at all, you just go, I don't understand why the Dodgers keep going to this guy year after year after year. The general sense, I think, among the October baseball watcher is that Pedro Baez is just not who you want on the mound. And he's also really slow and annoying to watch. Yes, he is also that. And yet, Pedro Baez is both very, very good. He's been very good for a number of years and extremely consistent like his era pluses over the last five years 132 140 135 134 135 that's pretty creepy how consistent and if you were to compare him to like for instance if you just compare him to say josh

hater over the past three years josh hater has an ERA that's, I think, 0.3 runs better than him. And Hader, everybody would feel really confident bringing in Josh Hader for two and a third innings against the middle of the order. And with Baez, it's like he's warming up. Anyway, I was thinking about this because over the course of the last seven years of baseball, if you just compare Pedro Baez to Blake Trinan, probably objectively speaking, Baez has been better for all but like 14 months of that stretch. And the 14 months are not the most recent 14 months. And yet I think everybody kind of has a lot of confidence in Blake Trinan

and not much confidence in Pedro Baez. And I agree. I also have more confidence in Blake Trinan than in Pedro Baez. But I don't know why. I'm not exactly sure what I'm reacting to. And I'm not sure what other people are reacting to. And I wonder if there's any logic to these things. If we have a sixth sense about when relievers are actually good and when they're not. Or if we don't have any logic to this at all because yeah i guess that's my whole point yeah it's got to be a tough job managing maybe that's my point well this year

his era was in the range that it always is but his peripherals were worse mostly but it was also 17 innings so you look at like his his fip and it was high and his ex-FIP was high and his strikeouts were a career low and his BABIP was 167, which is why his ERA is so low. But do you just accept that he is what his peripherals are now? Or do you say, well, it was 17 innings, so who knows about anything and you trust the larger track record? I don't know. But I think that was sort of a marginal decision either way there. I know Ben Clemens ran through it at Fangraphs on Monday, and he concluded that it was probably not the best possible move to bring in Baez and that maybe Victor Gonzalez would have been a better choice at that point. But he decided that it

wasn't that big a difference, at least in terms of expected outcomes. But I think what you could critique more maybe is leaving Baez out there for the seventh after, apparently, according to him, Roberts told him he was done. Then the Dodgers took the lead, and he left Baez out there to get another inning. And then he gave up the home run again, the Kiermaier homer that time. And he got out of the jam, got the double play, but gave up the lead again. And that, I think, maybe that just comes down to, well, if you tell someone he's done, then it's like anyone who's been in some sort of stressful situation or, you know, your body prepares to do a certain job. And then when that job is done, you relax, you have the post-adrenaline high, and then to have to get back up again, that can be tough, I think, when you're, you know, running a race or something, you know where the finish line is,

and you can ration your energy to get to that point. But then if they say keep running, then you're exhausted after that. So whether that played a part in that homer, I don't know. debacle with Roberts where, you know, he either wasn't on the same page with the pitcher or kind of changed his mind in a way that doesn't seem ideal. So I think that was going to lead to a lot of criticism anyway, just because people are sort of used to Pedro Baez giving up big hits and Dave Roberts making bullpen mistakes. So it's almost like you've seen that episode so many times before that you're just going to assume that this follows the same arc as those previous instances. But yeah, I don't think that was probably ideal, but also it could have worked pretty easily and then we wouldn't even be talking about it and we wouldn't be talking about that game ending play

either. Over the past three years, Pedro Baez has a better era than diego castillo he has a better fit than diego castillo and this year he also had a better fit than diego castillo he allowed two more runs in the regular season so his era is worse than diego castillo's this year although it's still very good and yet like the world series broadcast is talking about how sometimes you need to bring your best reliever in to get the save in the seventh when Diego Castillo appears. And when Baez appears, it's like, what's Dave Roberts doing? Yeah, yeah. A lot of it is like the inherited runners in the postseason, right? He's allowed most of his inherited runners in the postseason to score. But it's only like it was like 10 out of 17 or something like that.

It's not that many. It's just it's inherently going to be a fairly small sample, even though the Dodgers are there every year. But because we've seen it and because Dodgers fans have suffered at his hands all of those times, they are scared to see him come in. So yeah, if you replaced Pedro Baez with some different person with the same stats it probably would not have the same baggage so you have to decide like do you think that Pedro Baez is actually truly worse at allowing runners to

score that he inherits in the postseason than he is during the Mechiver season? Or is that just a thing that has happened before? So I don't know. But that was a really wonderful game. And I'm kind of glad that it worked out the way that we did so that we can have the memory of that ending. So the game on Sunday was a little less eventful. It almost had to be. But this was the second Kershaw start of the series and a less stellar Kershaw start but good enough he got through it five and two thirds right it looked

like he would lose it that he might just fall apart at points but that did not happen and one reason why that did not happen was because of a play that he helped make on manuel margot's attempted steal of home the first attempted steal of home in a world series game since 2002 would have been the first straight steal in a world series game since 1955 and jackie robinson if he had pulled it off but he did not And watching at the time and even watching replays, I'm still sort of surprised that he wasn't safe. I mean, he wasn't, he was out, he should have been out. But when I see like the moment that Kershaw realizes that it's happening, it doesn't seem possible to me that he can get the ball to home plate in time for Margot to be tagged out. And yet somehow that

happened. Yeah, I mean, when you watch it, it looks like a really smart play. Yeah, it does. We talked about on the Patreon thing, we talked about why people love sacrifice bunts so much, why people who love sacrifice bunts love them so much. And the theory that I offered was that throughout the course of your life,

usually when you see people try to, especially non-pitchers, try to lay down a sacrifice, but they're, they're successful. It's a high success pursuit. And the fact that you're successfully not actually doing anything to advance your team's chances of winning, it's almost beside the point. Like it looks like, wow, that, that if you want to do something successfully, positive, that's a good high percentage play. And so people really like it. Whereas going up there and trying to hit a home run, it's fairly low percentage play because you usually won't hit a home run, but the reward is obviously worth it. And so we like hitters who hit home runs, but other people really like to see that high percentage sacrifice play. And I think that Margot, my sense is that he's sort of come in for like, well, that play is seen as quite controversial.

And maybe that that was, you know, a bad play, that it was unnecessarily risky, that that's not the moment to try to do something that's never done. to try to do something that's never done. But really, if you think about it, he only needed to be successful maybe one every four, one every five times to justify it, given where the Rays were in that inning. And I mean, watching it, it seems like a miracle that the Dodgers successfully threw him out, tagged him out. It looked like he timed it well that it was a play that in a with a slightly worse tag a slightly worse throw certainly a more i mean it would take what a

50th of a second more for kershaw to not figure out what's going on yeah for that to to go sideways and and and very easy to balk i mean i think that this is just to get Kershaw out of the way. I mean, I think this will be remembered as one of his most defining postseason moments, maybe as memorable as any of his sort of failures. And I mean, he handled it extremely well. It was an incredible play by Kershaw. Now, I will say though, and maybe the rules of the game would provide the answer. Maybe someone who knows the rules actually better maybe the rules of the game would provide the answer. Maybe someone who knows the rules actually better than I do can explain why this is the case. But why did Kevin Kiermaier back out of the batter's box? If he stands there, the pitch hits him. It's not a

pitch, it's a throw, but the throw hits him. And I know that the batter has the right to the batter's box when the catcher's throwing the ball to try to throw out a base runner. So you'd think he would have the right to the batter's box when the pitcher's throwing the ball to throw out a base runner. And so it just seems to me that there was another avenue there for the Rays to have maybe gotten that run home. But I'm sure that he went, wait, what's going on? And then he sort of fled in terror.

I mean, it doesn't seem like anybody knew this was happening, except for Margot. Anyway, I liked the play from Margot's perspective. I liked the play from the Ray's chances of winning perspective. And I thought that Kershaw and Austin Barnes really both did a fantastic job. The throw home was not a very good throw home. So if you were going to say anything, it's that it wasn't a very good throw home. And Kiermaier may have, in some some sense bailed him out by vacating.

I mean, even if the throw isn't going to hit Kiermaier or even if Kiermaier is not going to allow it to hit him, I feel like it gives Kershaw a harder target if he's standing there in the batter's box. Yeah, I saw that Jason Stark tweeted that Kevin Cash asked a question about that play. If he's standing there in the batter's box. other people thought that it might have been some sort of interference or if kiermeier had squared to bunt or something and then pulled back and and not made contact then does that count as hindering the fielder is there interference or obstruction or something so yeah that's uh i don't know exactly what the ruling would be there it is a weird there is either a very specific rule for just this situation or else it is a gap in the rules that has existed for a million years. Because you could imagine that like once Kershaw steps off the mound, off the rubber, he's no longer throwing a pitch.

And so technically Kiermaier doesn't have any right to hit it once he steps off, I don't think. And so is he expected to know if you're the hitter and the pitcher suddenly steps off with his back foot? Are you expected to see that, process it, and know what to do? That's a lot to ask the batter to tell him that he's not allowed to swing. And if he gets a free swing, then, I mean, it would be very dangerous, but then you could almost imagine that well i mean he wouldn't swing but he would it would be a free swing for him yeah yeah there's rule 6.01 a3

says if a batter hinders a fielder in making a play at home the runner is out but he wouldn't really be interfering with the fielder necessarily but then there's another rule 5.09 b7 that says any runner is out when he attempts to score on a play in which the batter interferes with the play at home base before two are out with two out the interference puts the batter out and no score counts but yeah kershaw was not on the mound so anyway I'm I'm pretty sure that I'm pretty sure though that he does not have to vacate his batter's box and and it seems like even no matter what it feels like you would want to be there while the pitcher is making the pitch you wouldn't want to vacate until the the throw has at least come in yeah anyway Margot got a really great

jump because Kershaw has that long setup, and he's a lefty, and he couldn't really see what was happening. And apparently Muncie was the one who shouted out to him that Margot was going and that this was something they had talked about beforehand, that Kershaw had asked him at some point to let him know if this were to happen. And so Muncie spotted it and yelled out to him and somehow he had the presence of mind to get it home. And as he said, it was not a perfect throw. It was kind of high and he had to sort of reach for it to apply the tag, but just barely got it in there. But it was so close that really I think it did justify the attempts. You know, whenever you try something that is that unusual and it doesn't work,

people are going to question it. But the fact that it came so close to working that almost everything had to go right for it not to work, I think shows you that, you know, given what you would expect Kiermaier to do against Kershaw in that plate appearance, I think it was worth the risk. Yeah, with two strikes, yeah. Yeah, and I was wondering, sort of silly, but at first it looked to me, the first replay I saw, it seemed like the tag had been applied on Margot's helmet

as it was coming off of his head, which was not the case. I think it ultimately was applied there, but there was a great still image that caught the catcher's glove touching marco's hand just before it slid in there but i was kind of wondering like at what point the helmet is no longer person yeah like if you if you tag the helmet and it's off your head but like what counts as off your head i mean is it if it's no longer clearly when someone tags your helmet when it's on your head they they're not actually touching your body. They're touching your helmet. And we accept that the helmet is an extension of your body. And right. So if the

helmet is touching you, but it's not, if you're not wearing it, like then when, right. I wondered that too. It seemed like when we first saw that play, play right it looked like that's where the tag had gotten him and then we found out that it's not but it i thought this is a debacle what how are they possibly going to figure this out right and even earlier on that sequence it was that same trip around the bases right that margot almost got called out on a replay review at third because it was going to be one of those where maybe he came off the bag for a second or like his body was not fully touching the bag because he was sliding so fast and his hands touched it. But then he moved beyond it as the glove was still being applied. And I was very worried that that was going to be called out on the replay review.

And no one likes that call. Everyone hates it. And I think Joe Buck on the broadcast was saying at the time, he's judged to be in possession of that base as long as his body is above it or the airspace above the bag counts as being on the bag just because you don't want a really, really important out to happen because someone in the process of sliding happened to just detach by a millimeter while the fielder was still holding his glove there. So I was kind of relieved. I don't know whether they thought that he was fully in possession and touching the bag at all times or whether they just decided that we don't want to do this here because it did look like he was not touching the bag at a certain point. So I don't know if that just doesn't clear the bar for overturning

or whether they just wanted to avoid that whole embarrassment of removing that runner on a play that no one thinks should be called that way but that was a relief and because he was not called out we got this really exciting play at home so that was fun yeah i thought that it wasn't nearly clear enough it seemed like his right hand might have actually still been on the side of the bag for a lot of that process when his body lifted up. And so it seemed like that was going to be a too close call anyway. But I'm not sure I saw anybody get called off on the airspace play this year. And I wonder if Chelsea is actually just like no rule change, but they're just quietly nullifying that on their own. Yeah, maybe.

It seems like a dangerous thing, though. If you are going to do that, just legislate it out of existence because then it makes it even worse if some umpire at some point decides I'm going to apply this literally. Then there's no precedent for it recently. literally yeah then uh you know there's no precedent for it recently yeah i by the way watching that i i i know that the uh the airspace rule is the uh the preferred rule of of all people but some people have pointed out that like well it might be difficult to figure out exactly when you're above the bag and could that introduce new complications and while while i was watching the margot play i thought maybe it could be just as simple as if once both hands touch a base, then you have like, that's it. You have possession of the bag and you can like run through if you want, if both hands have touched, but both hands have to touch like some sort of rule where both hands like ends the pursuit.

Right. That's probably dumb. So Kershaw gets pulled after five and two thirds, 85 pitches. And it's funny. I saw some people suggest like when Roberts took Kershaw out at that point, he was like putting the focus on his managing. Like he was, you know, putting a target on himself for lifting Kershaw at that point. that point. But I think the opposite is just as true, if not more true, because at this point, the big criticism of Roberts when Kershaw's pitching is that he leaves him in too long. So at this point, it almost seems to me like he could pull him almost at any point early in the

game and get less criticism than if he leaves him in too long. That's the real danger if Roberts is worried about his reputation now. It's leaving Kershaw in too long, not pulling in too long. Like, that's the real danger if Roberts is worried about his reputation. Now it's leaving Kershaw in too long, not pulling him too soon. So I didn't think it was too soon. Maybe at this point, I've just seen them be burned so many times by Kershaw staying in for one batter too many

or three batters too many or however many. And so when he comes and gets him before disaster strikes I always feel like that's probably Preferable to the horror story That we've seen so many times before So he brings in May And this time finally May was great

And he always Looks like he has good stuff But this time he was actually throwing some Strikes and getting some whiffs And he looked good so Everything worked out for Roberts from that point forward. May was good for an inning and two thirds. Then Gonzalez comes in and gets him out of a really sticky situation. And then Treinen has a pretty routine save in the ninth.

So I saw a lot of headlines like, know roberts pushes the right buttons or pulls the right strings or you know he he got everything right in this game and really it's just that well his pitchers pitched well you know the guys that he put in actually delivered i think he handled it well too but there are a lot of times when he handles it more or less the same way and it just doesn't work because the pitchers don't deliver. But this time they did. Yeah, yeah. All of his pitching moves were controversial. Pretty much.

All of them would have been added to the list if they hadn't worked out. Yeah. There was, like, serious talk about, like, you know, do you fire Roberts after game four? fire Roberts after game four, and there might still be, depending on how game six goes or how game seven goes, if there is a game seven, pretty rare for a pennant-winning manager to be let go, but there's just so much story associated with Roberts and his handling of the bullpen that no one would really bat an eye if that happened although really if you if you're going to get to the world series three times out of four and you get to game six now it's a pretty high bar to let someone go because yes you you might be able to hire someone who is

better at managing a bullpen but is he going to be as good at everything that gets you to that point that's the the thing with Roberts. If you change anything, you're risking potentially not having the success that the Dodgers have had under Roberts, which has been an extreme level of success, except for the fact that they haven't won a World Series. So you have to decide, is this guy so bad at in-game tactics that you think you can't win a World Series with him because he will inevitably screw up a bullpen move in Game 6 of the World Series? Or are you going to just ride with that guy because he keeps getting you back there and you keep having one of the best regular season teams of all time? So it's tough. Like you could bring in a good tactician who loses the clubhouse or something or the players don't like him. And clearly that is not really an issue with Roberts.

I thought this was a great Kershaw start for curse breaking narrative because we already knew that Kershaw could dominate in the postseason. He's done it a bunch. He's looked as good in some postseason appearances as anybody. The sort of ongoing story with Kershaw is not that, well, he comes out and he's just awful. He just looks terrible. He can't do anything right. He gets the yips.

It's none of that. It's like, you know, he dominates, and then the next start he comes out and he's doing fine through four, and then everything falls apart. Or he's doing fine through six, and then everything falls apart. Or he's doing fine through seven, and then everything falls apart or he's doing fine through six and then everything falls apart or he's doing fine through seven and then everything falls apart. And it's that sense that, that he is actually like not even quite, not even bad. It's not that

he can't pitch in post-season. It's that things go wrong when he's around. It's like, he's like, he's like, he's like the Angela Lansbury of,bury of postseason baseball where things start to get a little wild and then there's a corpse. And this time things did start to get a little wild and not wild, but like, you know, things started to get bad and then he just kept pitching and then they were fine. pitching and then they were fine and there was no there were lots of times where it would have seemed like a continuation of the kershaw story where a couple of people got on and you thought oh suddenly it's going to be a five run inning and then it just never was a five run inning he just he got the outs he needed to he had the lead that he needed he managed to sort of skate on the margin that they gave him and he didn't look like bad luck or he didn't look like shaky or he didn't look like destined to fail it just like he had b plus stuff and he pitched well enough to win and that's i feel like in some

sense that's the game that has been uh that i mean it's often said said this is sort of a cliche but it's often said about good pitchers that they know how to win even when they don't have their a stuff and and that kind of game where kershaw maybe doesn't have his very dominant stuff or when things don't work out perfectly that's been the game that he hasn't won in his postseason career and that he probably almost always wins in his regular season career like that's how you go 18 and 3 is you win those games and he won that game and i feel like that in a sense like as much as a one-hit shutout would have done in a way this actually made me feel like oh that's right kershaw is normal he's not a supernaturally cursed presence in the field and you know team should be happy when he's starting which which then i'm

gonna just say though that like the other side of things though is that just when you think that kershaw's beaten the narrative or just when you think that kershaw's throwing a good game that's when it gets pulled out from under you and so we should note that kershaw's probably gonna pitch again in this series or there's a pretty good chance that he will. He certainly will be in the bullpen if there's a game seven. And I'm wondering, do you actually think that, like, is it? I think he could pitch in game six. It almost makes more sense that he might pitch game six, perhaps.

Maybe not. Maybe that's unrealistic. Maybe one day's rest isn't enough for him to throw an inning of relief but he pitched on one day's rest in the division series in 2016 in his you know probably previous high high moment as a postseason pitcher yeah and walker bueller's got game seven so you're a lot less likely to need him than game six when you have gonsolin who's been basically used as a opener in the postseason and rias would also be on short rest he'll only have had two days off for game six so you could make the case that it'd be better to save him for game seven uh than to use him in game six and if you need to get through that game i i wonder if they look at kershawn say we're gonna

need we're gonna need another inning out of you in this series. And surprise, it's actually in game six, not game seven. Yeah. Well, Robert said that Buehler and Urias and Kershaw, I think, are unavailable in game six. But who knows? He's said that before. And sometimes Kershaw just insists on pitching. It's definitely true that you would expect him to be needed more or someone to be needed more in game six with Gonsolin going than in game seven. But I would think not. I would certainly hope not. I think at his current age and effectiveness and with his back issues, I would hope that that wouldn't happen. And I kind of hope it doesn't happen even in game seven. Like at this point, Kershaw has made five starts this postseason. He has a sub three ERA. He struck out 37 in 30 and two thirds innings against five walks. Like he's pitched really well.

He had the brilliant start against the Brewers. He had the excellent start in game one of this series, and he had the shaky start in the NLCS. But all told, he's been really great, as good as you could expect this version of Clayton Kershaw to be. And I hope that they just leave it there. I mean, I would hope that he's not needed. Like, if the Dodgers are going to win this thing, he's not needed like if the Dodgers are going to win this thing I can't really think of a scenario where let's say they get to game seven if they're winning game seven if it's a close game is there any scenario where you would want Kershaw to pitch because you figure Buehler's got to be good for them to win probably Arias would be the first lefty out of the pen and the first starter out of the pen if you need one.

So I don't know that I can imagine a scenario where I would say, yes, Kershaw should be the person pitching here over those two guys, over Victor Gonzalez, over, you know, Kolarik, if you need a lefty. Really? Wait, you can't imagine a scenario? I can imagine one where Daveave roberts does it but a scenario where you would pick kershaw over victor gonzalez i don't think so i mean i like gonzalez but you can't imagine a scenario where you would do that i mean it's i can two days rest or whatever no it is so i mean i'm not asking you to say it's the most likely scenario, but you can't imagine it?

No. Okay, it's not two days rest. It's his throw day. You need to rephrase it. It's his throw day. I mean, he is definitely in the bullpen for that game, and he probably has two innings in him if they're clean. I mean, I'm just naming other pitchers here,

but Madison Bumgarner was on two days rest when he threw the last five innings of game seven. And Madison Bumgarner had thrown a complete game in game five. Kershaw threw 78 pitches or something because that's what the Dodgers do and has literally not thrown 100 pitches all year long. And it was a 60 game season. So I'm pretty sure that Kershaw is in pretty good physical shape. I mean, other than the balky back, which rears up every so often, rears up, back rears up. So I think I almost can't imagine. I can't imagine. I can imagine anything, Ben. I would suspect that Kershaw is, I mean, I would think that if it were my plan, he would be probably the second or third most likely pitcher to appear in that game behind Buehler and maybe Urias. Maybe Urias. Why would Urias? I mean, one extra day does everything for you. Urias is not Clayton Kershaw as a pitcher. Kershaw has

obviously got, you know, 200 some plus innings in postseason. He's closed out the, you know, he's come in in relief on short rest in the postseason and done it effectively and also ineffectively. He is, you know, he's Clayton Kershaw. He's your franchise ace and he's both the better pitcher. And I don't think that the one day of difference would be enough for me to bump Arias up. Now it might be enough if I needed three innings, then maybe it would. I mean, you'd have to know how each pitcher's stamina is and how they've bounced back from their start. So if, for instance, Buehler got knocked out in the second and Urias came in to throw four,

I would say that's more likely probably than Kershaw coming in to throw four. But if we're talking about one inning, then yeah, I think that if I'm drawing 27 outs up, then I start with 15 for Buehler and three from Kershaw and go from there. and three from kershaw and go from there maybe six from kershaw and go from there yeah i think i would go bueller urias before kershaw and maybe victor gonzalez before kershaw too maybe part of it is like what we're talking about with the history of all these dodgers and if you just showed me the the stat line of Clayton Kershaw and said hey this is your your ace over this period and he's uh on his throw day I'd say sure let him throw maybe I've just like seen Kershaw fail too many times in the playoffs and

and I don't want that to be the story that would be even more heartbreaking if he gets to game seven having pitched so well throughout this postseason and this series. If they just don't pitch him anymore, he has two wins, if you care about wins in this World Series. If the Dodgers win, Kershaw will go down as someone who really contributed to this series, even a possible MVP, maybe. I don't know if he'd deserve it, but might get it. And if they lose, he won't be blamed because he held up his end. They won his start. And so part of it is almost just me being afraid for him and for all of us having to

endure what would happen if he came in and lost game seven or something. But also, I just think i would not want him right now on a performance basis ahead of those other guys yeah it's also possible i mean it's very easy to imagine plenty of scenarios not the most likely but plenty of scenarios where walker bueller goes two and a third i mean it's a game seven you have a very quick hook if he has a bad inning if he's wild if he gives up four runs he's probably out of there and then you've got a lot of outs to go but do you by the way i know that the obviously obviously the most important thing to the manager and to the front office to the team is to win the game and all that

but does the question if you're breaking a 33 year franchise drought does the question of who you want in the picture at the end you know getting the final out does it come to into play at all for you like like let me just say that like let's say the dodgers win the game by 11 yeah do you do you send kershaw out for the ninth yes yes i would yes if you had a lead, I would say let him do it. What if it's so six, would you send him out if it were a six run lead? Yeah. Assuming that it's the Dodgers and they don't have lights out closer that they could use instead. All right. Now, what if you're like me and you agree that Kershaw is your, say your, your third option in that game. Like you are very committed to getting Kershaw in this game unless Buehler goes eight. So you have a, say a two run lead in the seventh and there's nobody out. And Pedro Baez has started the inning

by walking the first two batters. So tying on seventh inning nobody out and you've got nine outs to go so you know you're going to go probably kershaw and some combination of of maybe two other pitchers does any party you think hold kershaw for the ninth for the photo for the video and then because you know that you're going to need three from dustin may anyway so bring may in there or bring gonzalez in there does that obviously no like you don't make the decision based on that i like i know that you don't make the decision but does that even enter your mind do you even have to think like does this matter to me or does that does it just not even show up in your thought process i think probably if i were the manager, it would not really show up. I think for a neutral person or even for a fan, maybe, I don't know, probably for the fans, like they just

want a World Series at this point. I don't think they care who's on the mound at the end. Narratively, it would be satisfying, sure, if Kershaw were there to just drive a stake into his narrative and the Dodgers drought and all of it at once, that would be a really fitting ending. But unless it were just like total toss-up tiebreaker 50-50 thing, you know, at that point, if there's no difference between your options, then sure, I guess have the guy who's going to show up in the World Series videos and be on the front page, have it be Kershaw instead of someone else. But otherwise, just make sure you get that win. A lot of this conversation in the last 12 minutes has been about how a Game 7 might go. Seems like they're kind of like in... It's only three games to do, but they are kind of crushing the Rays.

Yeah, in some ways. They have out hit them by a considerable amount. Yes, yes, they have. In fact, I'm looking right now. Let me see. I'm looking right now. I'm curious. How much is it?

Oh, I could tell you. Yeah, no, I could tell you. Let's see. I have a big spreadsheet. Well, the Dodgers have an 860 OPS and the Rays have a 707 OPS. So that's the difference between, well, the Dodgers and a 707 OPS. Yeah, that's a big difference. And we just covered what it took for the Rays to win in game four. I mean, they had to do a lot of good and deserving stuff to get to the point where they

could win on a wacky wild play where the Dodgers messed up in multiple ways, but that did have to happen. But I guess I'm just talking about game seven with more certainty than I should probably just because this is a rematch of game two in the starting pitchers. And this is the one that you would favor the race, right? I mean, Snell against Gonsolin. We just haven't really seen Gonsolin be his regular season self. And this time he is starting and he is on regular rest, I think. And so it's different from a lot of his previous postseason appearances. season appearances so maybe the dodgers got may straightened out with his mechanical changes and looking good out of the bullpen in game five and maybe they'll get consul and straightened out in game six and then this series will be over but it would not be surprising if uh snell out pitches him again and the rays win that one and force a game seven so yeah well for the sake of wanting to see more baseball i mean i'm not gonna say who I'm rooting for, but I'd like to see Game 7. like the peak championship win probability for various teams in certain seasons. So every team, if you pick a season, you'd go by the stat championship win probability,

and they all have a high number. Their odds of winning the World Series were highest. And with some teams, it's 3% because they never had a chance, really. And then with some teams, you win the World Series, it's 1. It's 100. you won good job with the Dodgers if you look from 2013 to 2019 I added up their peak championship probability from each of those seasons and it's like 2.5 championships is like what they should have won in that time and the Red Sox are at 2.4 for those same years and they won two championships

but the dodgers didn't it's just because the red sox won the world series twice but they also missed the playoffs entirely a few times or they didn't go deep into the playoffs the dodgers make the playoffs every year and they have made it deep into the playoffs some of those years and so if you add it up the expectation is they really should have won a championship at some point and now it's like 3.4 or something because they got to this point in this series i think at some point in game four their odds of winning the the series were like let's see i have it here i mean did you say you're you've added their peak likelihood? The peak over the course of an entire year? Yes.

So like at a certain point. I don't know. I don't know if that works. I'm not sure I like that. It's fuzzy math, but I'm just saying if you're a Dodgers fan, like at some point in that year, you were thinking we have this chance of winning, and then you don't i mean

obviously you go into the year and maybe the dodgers if they're i mean wait hang on hang on hang on hang on hang on yeah by this method there'd be like probably like two or three champions a year well there's only one team that has a 100%. No, but if you compare every team's peak at any point over the course of a seven-month process and add all the peaks up, that would probably be like three championships. There would be more than one team that rounds up to. More than one championship. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. It's different from looking at it just as like, what are your odds going into the year or even going into the postseason when the Dodgers are the favorite and it's still like 20% chance or something and the field is the rest. So it's a weird way to look at it. I understand. But the Dodgers, like in game four, they had an 84% chance to win the World Series in that game at the point when they were likeliest to win. And then they lost that game, but they still- This is like saying if I flip 100 coins and I add up how many of them were heads at some point, I should be expected to have 100 heads. I guess that's true. But if you're the Dodgers and you're there every year, I mean, this sort of exaggerates, I guess, by looking at when they were most likely to win. But the point is that at some point in all of those years, almost, there were three of the past four years they were more likely than not to win the World Series, right? Because they were very likely to win at one point in the 2017 World Series. They were like 50.1% to win the 2018 World Series at, I don't know, the beginning or some point in there. And they've been very likely to win the 2020 World Series during this series too.

So all I'm saying is their fans have had many shots at this. They have had many shots at this and they have felt like they were about to be there many times. And now they are really close. Not closer than they've been necessarily, but about as close as they were before. And maybe this will be the time, but maybe it won't because the Rays are good too. All right. We will see what happens, and we'll be back to talk about it all. Okay, that will do it for today.

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Walked right out What was that? Walk right out Gotta go back