Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1759: In Hindsight, This Was Inevitable

Episode Date: October 14, 2021

Meg Rowley and guest co-host Bradford William Davis of Insider discuss his new job as an investigative features writer and what the shift from being a daily columnist has meant for how he engages with players, sources, and baseball, and the stories he’s able to tell. Then they turn their attention to the playoffs and […]

Hello and welcome to episode 1759 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs Baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I am joined today by Bradford William Davis, a return guest, but now with a new gig. Bradford, how are you? Hey, Meg. Thank you for having me. I'm okay. I'm a little tired because I've been working a lot and then also i had the uh great misfortune of well i know great before i sound so privileged the great fortune of having a flu shot um right i don't want i don't want to um anti-vax you know this is a reputable podcast but no um but but i am tired yeah i think i think i think i might be in the flu shot. I don't know. I definitely woke up about 12 minutes ago. Yeah, the flu shot thing can knock you around.

I got mine a couple weeks ago. The drag was definitely not as intense as it was post my second COVID vaccine shot. But you do feel it for at least a day where you're dragging a little bit. Right, right, exactly. So hopefully I'm still a coherent and useful member of this podcast today. And again, science works, vaccines, whatever. Please get your shots and protect your community. But also I'm tired, and that's my truth.

Yeah, we hope everyone gets their shots, and we hope everyone is granted at least a day to recover from them when they get them. Amen. So the last time that you were on Effectively Wild, you were working for the Daily News and you were in the weeds on baseball pretty much every day. And now you have a new job at Insider, which listeners might be familiar with as Business Insider, but it is now on a broader mission.

And so we're going to talk playoff baseball in the back half of this episode. But I think it's always interesting for people to kind of understand how the specific job you do in sports writing changes the way that you engage with sports writing. Because, you know, a features writer is really different from a beat writer. And all of those folks are really different from the kinds of do different kinds of work than the kind of work we do at Fangraphs. And so I thought we could start there. And maybe you could just lay out for our listeners, like, what is how do you how do you describe

your current job when you're telling friends and family what you do? Right. So I usually describe myself as an investigative features writer. So that means, generally speaking, longer pieces with a lot of research and digging, define the thing that someone probably doesn't want you to know about. And some people do want you to know about, which is why they often come out. But many people, usually people who have some sort of power or authority in the area or field that's being reported on don't want you to. So that's investigative reporting and writing.

But usually stuff that has some sort of public import or the very least interest, that is kind of what I get to work on now at Insider. For people who, for like true Bradford heads at the Daily News, you may not be terribly surprised that I'm doing that kind of stuff, given that a lot of what I did back at the Daily News, even as I was a columnist there, a sports columnist, were, you know, were very investigative pieces where, you know, that took a lot of time chipping away and chipping away and chipping away to find something that, you know, that I believe to be important. Other people believe to be – other people believe to be important as well. But the, you know, but the pace is different, of course. I'm not, you know, I'm not a columnist. So it's not my job to serve takes, you know. Right.

That's for Twitter now. I do – I still do get to express my values clearly, you know, in both just the subjects I choose to cover but also even how I write about them. But it's – of course, the position I'm taking when I choose to write a story is a little different for Insider anyway. So yeah, so that's me. And then the other thing is that the desk is not a sports-specific desk either. There are some investigative sports writers, like what comes to mind is Molly Henley Clancy, I want to say, right, of The Washington Post. She's done all this incredible stuff on, I believe, NWSL, you know, writing for WAPO. And so there are a few of those types of people out there, Not many because of the nature of the industry kind of crashing and burning.

The Daily News actually used to have an investigative reporting desk and they disbanded a few years ago. Disbanded is not the right word. They were disbanded by the institutions of the news, by ownership and management. But yeah,

that doesn't happen too but yeah like it's you know that doesn't happen too often unfortunately um because it's clearly needed if you've been following any sports news of weight but with all that said my uh assignments aren't limited to sports or baseball they because of my background they do encourage me to continue pursuing sports things. So I'm still at games a lot. Once I, because again, there's not a whole lot of institutional knowledge of I guess sports media

like a local paper. Once I kind of heard, oh, I can go to games again. And go on a field, which is far more valuable than just being on Zoom calls due to the pandemic. But, you know, but vaccinated, you know,

rioters are allowed to be on field during like pregame warmups and you get some opportunities, you know, not as frequent as before, but, you know, before back when you're in locker rooms, but you get some opportunities to still like pull people aside and talk to them. And, you know, I just, I'm there about a week,

once or twice a week once once or twice a week um during a regular season and i went to the i went to the red sox yankees wildcard game as well since i was close enough but like yeah um but just just you know just kind of showing face which is like half the job anyway just like showing you're a real person that right that's it and not just parachuting in but um but yeah and uh but yeah getting to just you know talk to people and chip away at things and And so the baseball story that I had done so far for Insider was a result of being able to talk to people in person. having transitioned into the role that you did, because some of the players who you covered while you were at the Daily News, it's like not the first time you've talked to Aaron Judge, I imagine. But was the dynamic different at all, having been still present, but less present than you

would be if you were there sort of as a regular columnist on a baseball beat? Yeah. One of the cool things is that I've been been able as i've been kind of reintroducing myself right yeah to these players and coaches and everything one of the things i've been able to tell them is hey listen you know i'm not here to write about like why you blew the platoon advantage against baltimore right or something like that and like you know questions that are of course important within the sense of this game that we all respect and love, hence doing a podcast on it. But are certainly things that

you can imagine them not always enjoying having to talk about, right? Right. But basically just that I have bigger fish to fry. And so, just in that reintroduction, just letting them know, listen, I am someone who cares a lot about certain things know, certain things, certain issues within the game. And I hope to be able to be able to talk to you about that.

You know, I'm even willing to, you know, to do things, you know, fully off the record in the offseason. You know, like, I don't want to bother you while you're like fighting for, you know, your lives in the playoffs or on the pennant race or whatever. Right. But, you know, but we can, you know, but I don't need a quote right now you know i mean you know we we can we could chop it up in december you know um yeah when things are when things are chiller for you like that's been like that's been a pretty nice advantage honestly you know of like not of uh which is you know i'm not having to um not having the same kind of incentive to just kind of deliver headlines every single day you know right value of writing good, thorough pieces that help people think and understand things better, which is not to say that you can't do that quickly either, to be quick, right? It's been an advantage I've been able to use rhetorically when talking to the two athletes and people in the field.

Yeah. So far, it's actually led to strengthening sourcing in a way that wasn't happening as quickly, of course, in the brief time that I was in locker rooms in 2019. Because that's another thing. I just started doing this credential sports writing stuff in December of 2019. So I'm still pretty green. Yeah, your stretch of like normal sports reporting was so brief before we had locked down and then everything shifted for everyone. Yeah. I imagine being able to go up to a guy and be like, I'm not going to ask you about the slider

that you hung is like really nice. I'm sure he's like, Oh, thank God I get to talk about literally anything else than that. And I imagine that, you know, every job has stuff that we like and stuff that we don't. And every job has structural incentives that are not always the best that we have to sort of navigate and push back against. And I would imagine that when you're able to take sort of a step back to do deep investigative work, that some of the gnarlier structural incentives that to be clear there are plenty of reporters who navigate deftly and do good work around but that some of the the structural incentives that can lead to work that i think people maybe are less

proud of are absent in a way that that must be nice right yeah yeah just to be able to critically think about the press police you get is like right huge like there's such an incentive on just kind of like on even even among people who are trying to do the right thing like on stenography like i'll even give you a concrete example of that like last year during the pandemic which is still going on so that could be this year could be any probably probably forever forever. But let's say early in the American phase of this pandemic, right? Major League Baseball had announced this in total $30 million contribution to workers who are now out of shift work, like ballpark concessionaires,

hot dog dudes, and beer guys, and those, right? Like folks who just immediately just kind of lost all their money, right? Or lost their ability to make money due to the pandemic. They announced $1 million per team, you know, $30 million total, right? Kind of thing in this press release. And so I just kind of like wrote it straight. You know, I got my email inbox about that. I come to find out a little later that $1 million doesn't really stretch that far. Yeah.

When you actually have any awareness of the logistics of operating a stadium and how many people are on payroll. Like, you know, it works out to like literally like sometimes like hundreds of dollars per person in a grant that's supposed to last them, you know, indefinitely. Right. And for most of these people, 12 months, you know, are close to it, right? Right. The vast majority of all part workers, right? But that's the kind of thing that you don't – that, like, unless you have some special knowledge on, you don't want to immediately process, right?

But you have to have something up because you have to have – you got to fill the paper, you know? Right. But you have to have something up because you got to fill the paper, you know? Right. And there's not – because of the industry's sort of calling of redundancies and editors and all sorts of things that can help you take a breath and to think about things. It just means you kind of post things. Yeah. And so that's – but I happen to believe that Major League Baseball knows this pretty well.

So when they, so when they were able to put a big fat, big number or seemingly big number, you know, $1 million is, you know, sounds like a lot of money, 30 million in total. And, you know, had that just fill headlines and get aggregated, you know, everywhere and everywhere, you know, all around the country, essentially. Like that is, you know, that's a win for them because it makes it look like, like everyone, like they're sacrificing tremendously for the sake of, you know, your working class beer vendor. But, you know, but that wasn't the case. You know, these people were being grifted and exploited by these teams that could have easily, you know, paid them to live, you know, paid them well to live in comfort rather than literally means testing them for their grant. Asking them like, hey, what's your cell phone bill? Have you had COVID? Do you have any medical expenses?

testing them for their grant, asking them like, hey, what's your cell phone bill? Have you had COVID? Do you have any medical expenses? And then determining an allocation that still would never pay for any of those things or come close to it. But that's the kind of advantage that I get now of just being able to sit and think and think and think and chip away. So I'm really grateful. Yeah. Well, I mean, you did great investigative work around baseball and the pandemic last year. I know Ben and I talked to you about it as you were reporting it. So it's very cool that you now have even more sort of space and bandwidth to do that kind of work because I think it's really important.

And like you said, there's just as the media ecosystem contracts, right, as we have fewer and fewer folks working both from a reporting perspective and then helping, as you said, to maybe encourage people to take a breath and not tweet something, but actually do some reported work around it. I think that work becomes all the more valuable because it's not as if everyone magically started acting ethically just because there are fewer people to spot when they don't. So it's good to have folks who can do that and who aren't, you know, whose bread and butter isn't access tied, which again, there are plenty of people

who navigate that definitely and do good work, but it is a powerful structural incentive that often leads people to exclude or sit on stuff that they really should be digging through and then exposing. So baseball media, sports media, it's always a positive story. Well, it is if you're writing about management. It's always a positive story. Yeah. And that's kind of the problem. Yeah, that is kind of the

problem. Well, I would ask you what baseball story story you're working on now but i have a feeling you can't tell me yeah unfortunately like i you know uh that one of the one of the uh work has is i can't always speak as freely about that kind of thing what i can tell you though is that you know is this the first story i did um that was baseball related for insider was when i think about will appeal to a lot of effecting wild folks but it was about um it was written about a year after uh devin williams the uh you know former rookie of the year had uh kind of low-key launched an avalanche of racial justice demonstrations across pro sports you know and it was actually a response to jacob blake's being shot in the back like six seven times something like that by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, not far from Milwaukee where Devin plays.

And so anyway, he wrote Williams like a day or two after that happened. He wrote BLM in big letters on the back of the mound so that everyone could see it, you know, and the TV caught it and all that. And it was a very inspiring and triumphant moment. However, in the next frame the uh the letters were erased and you know i kind of you know when i heard when i found out about that i was deeply curious as to why that is um and uh and so i did a story for insider about that where i got to talk to williams we got to talk to you know a bunch of players and uh and people who you know understand i guess baseball decorum as to like you know could a ground scooper have done it?

No. Would a player do it? Only if they suck as a person. And then, of course, a player who does objectively suck as a person, that being Trevor Bauer, was pitching in the bottom half of the frame. So no one accused him outright of that. But the circumstantial evidence does invite questions about him and so i you know yeah it was a fun story to write but also i hope that i hope continue to put at the forefront i guess the uh courage of what williams did the kind of hostility that even he you know yeah received from something someone yeah um and the kinds of well i mean i

guess i really i think that's it i guess but like But like, but the, you know, but those are, I was, I was doing that thing where I was looking for like three things to say about it. And I didn't get to. Yeah. So those are two things. Yeah. The, the, the, the courage he took to write BLM and also the kinds of hostility that he might, you know, that a black player might encounter for expressing themselves and expressing,

you know, their values, you know, that are important to them. It should be important to all of us, obviously. And yeah, so I was really happy to be able to do that. I'm glad Insider gave me like the rope to trust me on that kind of like obscure detail. And so yeah, so definitely encourage you to check that out on on insider so yeah we'll link to it in the show notes i appreciated that piece for a lot of reasons and i think that what it i hope drives home for people is that there's this perception one could have the perception that because there have been sort of very public we might say performative demonstrations on

baseball as an institution's part to try to toe the line and express a support for racial justice and against police brutality that there isn't conflict and tension around those questions when individual players engage in spontaneous personal protest in moments like that. And we would, I think, be wrong to accept that easy conclusion. So I think that this was a good reminder of that because it's just, you know, our attention span for these things is so short, unfortunately, as you illustrated in that piece. And we need to kind of keep our eye on the ball and appreciate the dynamics at play in a player pool that is not universally aligned on anything, let alone this, but is still trying to express, as you said, their values

and sort of make a point that's an important one. So I thought it was a very good piece. I liked it a lot. Do you want to talk some playoffs? Yeah, let's do it. Let's talk some playoffs. So we are recording this on Wednesday morning, a day without baseball, which I have to admit, as the editor of Baseball State, is a little bit of a curse,

but also a bit of a blessing because it allows us to catch our breath and kind of record a podcast knowing it won't be immediately dated when it goes live. So that's nice. As we sit here, we will not have baseball today, as I said, and we will only have one game tomorrow. The Dodgers and the Giants will play their game five for the right to advance to the NLCS. And the reason that we will only have one game is that the Astros soundly defeated the White Sox yesterday, 10 to one to advance to the ALCS. Atlanta won a nail biter against the Brewers, so they will advance for the second straight year on the back of a Freddie Freeman go-ahead home run. So the AL field is set.

We will have Houston and Boston, just like everyone wanted. These scrappy underdogs. Yeah, who we just haven't seen. When was the last time we saw the Astros make it to the ALCS? Who could say? And Atlanta will return, as I said, for the second straight year, and then we'll see who their opponent is after the results tomorrow. I guess let's start with this Astros White Sox series. And I have to say, I don't know what your expectations were of this, but I thought

this would be a lot closer. I had the White Sox advancing when we had to do our staff predictions. I think that I'm about to maybe go 0 for 4 in terms of my CS team predictions. I'm doing really badly, Bradford. So you had socks over Astros? I did. I did. And in hindsight, maybe I did not give sufficient respect to just how mighty that Astros lineup is and how spectacular their offense has been over the course of the season. But I guess I thought, well, I thought two things. One, I thought that the White Sox would score just a bunch more runs than they did because

they have a pretty fearsome lineup of their own. And I had a lot of confidence in the White Sox bullpen being deployed better and being able to sort of hold tight while they put more runs on the board. And they were deployed strangely, and the White Sox didn't score as many runs. So I just really got this one wrong, top to bottom. But what were your expectations going into this series? Did Houston Emerging meet what you expected yeah i had the strows for a couple reasons one is that and this time i have three reasons

not a couple so here i am again in reverse um uh mixing my words but um one is that the Astros played in a much tougher division than the White Sox. Yeah. So their, you know, 93 wins was more important to me than the White Sox 93 wins, you know? Yeah. I had a little more weight to it, given that they had the, you know, words that have not been spoken about in 20 years, but fight off the Mariners. Yeah. You know, I mean, they were always like five games ahead, it felt like.

But, you know, but that five, those five games could be lost very quickly. They didn't keep winning, you know i mean they they were always like five games they had to felt like but you know but you know but that five those five games could be lost very quickly they didn't keep sure you know and so they had to beat the white they had to be the mariners they had to beat the a's who were you know have been a strong team for a while you know they had real teams to pick on cleveland like explicitly tanked after okay after a few months once they realized that they weren't going to be contenders. The other teams were mediocre or bad. Obviously, the Tigers had an encouraging year, given

how bad they've been in the late, but they weren't a playoff team in any respect. Same with the Royals. And the Twins were just abysmal. That is a... I think many people probably picked the Twins to win the division. I think it was probably a toss-up between Twins and White Sox for those watchers,

but the Twins just did not bring it this year. And then they also traded away many of their core players like Cruz and Jose Barrios and all that. So I'm like, okay, yeah, the Astros had, to me, a better team, more quality 90-bit wins. Second is the White Sox were just uninspiring to me for much of the year. You know, they basically played like 500 ball for like months at a time, you know, like, and that, you know, and again, given the division, like, does not like, it was not, was not all that great to me, you know? It just seemed like another kind of, not to say that, that, no, I actually am saying the

AL Central is bad, right? I'm really drilling that in, but, you know But it doesn't mean that they're a bad team. But I think that given the talent, I think a better team would have just kind of cruised. Not just cruised, but like dominated. And they didn't dominate. They just kind of like hung around and stayed 20, 25 games over 500 for a while. And that was like as every other team was rebuilding aggressively rebuilding and they were like traction making additions like the krimble trade which you know

obviously blew up spectacularly as he often has the last like five years of his career so it's a metaphor and then um the third thing is that the astros have just been there like the white socks yes i know the white socks played in the playoffs last year but like last year's playoffs were not the same come on like like there's no people right you know it's not they ain't real they ain't real like what the astros have been through you know the astros have uh the astros every time they're on the road they have to deal with like people like saying probably the wildest and nastiest things to them because of because of the sign stealing scandal that yeah um they even brought themselves in baseball not disciplining them accordingly enough to give people sort of a sense of resolution.

Right. You know, clearly all the players hated them for some time. You know, not all of them, but many of them. And, you know, and they have, like, you know, for all intents and purposes, answered every question except questions, direct questions about sign scaling. Right.

About them. They won't tell us about that. But everything else, like, they're really built for this. And so knowing that they had that kind of experience, while the White Sox still have a fairly, you know, a bunch of pretty young players, you know, who have not been in that kind of, like, pressure cooker, right? That made me think, like, yeah, the Astros should win this series,

you know, and advance to the next round. pressure cooker right right that made me think like yeah the astros should win this series you know um and advance the next round in fact i you know the only thing i think the white socks had theoretically was like better better top of the line starting pitching but the astros had good pitching too man that's the thing yeah they're like the pictures are good and you know there are no there are no like ace or cyan candidates but they're all like you know number two threes and that is enough you know if you're if you can get the crap they're all like, you know, number two threes. And that is enough, you know, if you're if you can get the crap out of the ball, like they like they can. So yeah, I think that the the perception of their rotation post, you know, post Verlander,

post Garrett Cole post sort of a much not that cranky was bad, but you know, a much more effective version of cranky is that the script flipped from them being totally dominant to not good. And I think that they aren't not good. They're just less proven. And that's different, right? And we probably should have made that distinction for ourselves more clearly over the course of the year than we did.

I'm curious what you make of the way that the Astros players who were on that team was signed stealing because it is interesting like most of this roster has actually turned over by now and so a lot of the guys who are getting booed on the road every day are probably like but I didn't I wasn't that wasn't I wasn't on that team but you know guys like Correa are still obviously having to respond to stuff, as is Jose Altuve. I'm curious what you make of the way that they talk about their own scandal, because obviously there were there were some further allegations that they might be up to no good as a part of this White Sox series. And Correa responded to them after. And I just I wonder what you make of their approach to that. I wonder if there is a good approach, I is one question that we could ask you know is there a way that they could talk

about this stuff that would actually satisfy anyone and then I'm curious what you think of the way that they've chosen to talk about it yeah uh I think that they have I think I think the Astros man when someone if you're in like college or grad school listening to this and you're like in the humanities, you're not like trying to be a GM or something. You should like do like some sort of like sociology, like, you know, deep study on how they have embraced or healed them. Yeah. You know, both, both the, the fans, both the fans and the players have embraced, healedim in a way that is pretty fascinating to me. They fully coalesce around this no one believes in us kind of thing. And they play with that intensity and fire every day.

I think that's abundantly clear. I mean, you really saw it in 2020, you know, when, you know, they had a pretty mediocre, you know, regular season and then, you know, they balled out to almost make independent, right? that they are, that is a partially confidence in themselves but partially, I think, insecurity that they'll never be liked again. And trying to deal with that. Like, Carlos Correa was beloved.

Jose Otuve especially, you know? Little cute Otuve, you know? 4'7", you know, 82 pounds. Still, you know, stealing 60 bags and hitting 30 home runs and all you know like you know everyone you know everyone will help jose el tuve you know i'm always smiling and alex bregman so desperately wanted to be liked you know like he like he did that uh piece with uh jun li the jun li wrote uh for bleacher report before he was at espn but like a profile on him

basically saying i want to be the uberon j of baseball. That's what he said, like, straight up. Like, and, you know, he will never be that for a host of reasons. You know, like, it was, they, you know, there were some players, you know, that really, I think, enjoyed, you know, being sort of the beloved underdogs, you know, rather than, you know, the hated villains of that. And so I think they're still wrestling with that, you know, than you know the hated villains of that and so there's i think they're still wrestling with that you know on the field you know where they get you know and and uh that's where you see korea respond the way he does you know he did you know um uh to ryan to para right and whether it's true or not like i again i i am not close enough to that team or any of the

operations to say but the loss that benefited out like i think it still eats at them but they just they just they're just succeeding at converting it into winning rather than you know self-disruption yeah at least on the field i would really be curious to know like how the how the perception of that team from other players has shifted if it has shifted at all in the last year like i think that fans understandably because they were sort of tasked explicitly by manfred to like hold this baseball team to account and then we had a pandemic and no one could go to games and so i understand why fans this year are like we got to give it to these guys like that is we were we were drafted into this job now we have to do it

but other players saw them albeit in an abbreviated, last year. And I wonder where in the process of sort of, and not that anyone is obligated to forgive them or anything like that, but I wonder where in the process of sort of coming to terms with those guys and being able to have interactions with them that are not just negative from the jump other players are. I don't have a great sense of that. It's like whenever you see guys mic'd up on the field against the Astros, they seem like they're getting along great and everything's fine. But you're also conscious of the fact that they're mic'd up and they're engaged in some level of performance. So it's, I don't know, it is a fascinating dynamic. I wish someone could go in and do a deep study, like you said, because it's just endlessly interesting to me how we engage with forgiveness around this stuff and how people's self-perception gets altered by other people not liking them and how they choose to respond to that publicly.

It's like, I don't know. Right. And I think that's probably true to those mic'd up exchanges, to be clear. I think that players understand they're not evil. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, they did something really, really angering and hurtful. Yeah.

But I think they understand maybe more than the fans do they're not evil. Perhaps in part because they're also science-telling. Well, right. This is the thing. It's like I'm sure that they have a – they might still view what Houston did as crossing a line, right? But I think that they have – how do I want to put this? They know where the other stops on the spectrum are with greater certainty than fans do, right? No, I mean, look, just earlier this year, it got lost in the ether because this was about the Colorado Rockies.

because this was about the Colorado Rockies. But Eric Kratz, who just retired, said that the Colorado Rockies were illegally sign-stealing in the playoffs in 2018. He said that almost verbatim. And he also says, quote, on this interview, he knew of two other teams that season that did, quote, very, very similar things. Right. You know what I'm saying?

So there is this understanding that it's going around a little bit as well. teams that season that did quote very very similar things right you know i'm saying like like there so there is this understanding that is that it's going around a little bit as well but there's another thing i wanted to point out too as far as you know that that kind of big question of like are the astros being embraced more right or it's time it's time healing this wound but i want to point to something that actually aaron judge told uh matthew robertson at the daily news and matthew robertson by the way is super dope rider a former fangrass rider former fangrass and uh a uh you know part of the mariners gang very well represented very well represented on on baseball internet anyway yeah

yeah but matthew's he's the homie and uh but he didn't he didn't interview with the judge towards the end of the season where judge mentioned some of the people that's in the names that he's heard discussed as potentially going to the Yankees. Right. He says, and he said, quote, you hear a lot about Story, comma, Correa, you know, and then Seager, Trey Turner, all these guys, you know. Yeah. And I think it was, I'm honestly surprised there wasn't more pickup on this because, first of all, I mean, he just named a bunch of shortstops who are not Gleyber Torres.

Right. You know, the former franchise player and two-time All-Star, you know, in very recent history for the Yankees, who is like clearly no longer a shortstop in the organization. And here's Aaron Judge saying, yeah, we're, you know, I'm hearing that we're thinking about all these superstars. Right. And bringing them to replace our former superstar. So, like, you know, that was one thing. But also the fact that he mentioned Carlos Correa as a potential fit for the team. Now, I don't know if he weighed in much more than that,

but like, but that, you know, but that says something given that Aaron Judge spoke, you know, as candidly as Aaron Judge will ever speak about the frustration of seeing, you know, of the Astros winning and of Jose Altuve winning the MVP over him in 2017, given all the cheating happening around him. All that like was, that happened, that wasn't that long ago when he was saying that, you

know? But the fact that he's interested in this potential free agent, you know, who had, of course, an incredible year, as someone who could be on his team, you know? I didn't say it with, like, you know, swears and, you know, invective. Right. Like, that, you know, I don't know, that might speak a little bit to how someone very close to, I guess, the worst of the Astros defenses is processing this stuff. Yeah, that's a good point.

I had not seen that quote from him. We can't claim credit for Matthew Roberson. He was excellent when he arrived and was great when he left, but we were happy to have him ever so briefly at Fangraphs. That's the Astros. They will face off against the Red Sox. What is your sense of this Red Sox team? I don't know if I underrated them or properly rated them. I talked about this with John Taylor yesterday when he came on Effectively Wild. He is a Red Sox fan, so his sense is generally positive, perhaps unsurprisingly. Although he quite generously offered that the Red Sox don't need to win another World Series this year.

They have enough. So that was magnanimous of him. What a saint, John Taylor. But I thought them to be a pretty middling team at times, although they definitely had components of their roster and players on their roster who were, who are really excellent. And then they, they gave the raise the business and now they're going to advance to the CS or have advanced to the CS. What is your sense of this Red Sox team? Man, the herd immunity, all-stars, call them. Everyone get your shot. I was there for when Chris Sale was running away from the Moderna ad.

So I felt like I was living in history, you know? You looked around and you're like, history, it's happening all around me. Yeah, I know. From the Moderna ad in Fenway. But yeah, the Sox, they're like, I thought, you know, earlier before the season started, I didn't think that they were going to be good, but I could see how they could be good. You know what I mean? Like that that's important distinction to make right like i'm not like saying oh yeah socks are making the playoffs right but like but a good way to be like good is

you know one way to be good is by like adding lots of like you know high-end talent right like you know like say uh you know a mookie betts type you know right right just to pick a name yeah and then but then another way is by like eliminating the holes in your team you know like like like uh plugging away you know those sorts of leaks and uh the red sox in 2020 were very leaky right um which is why they were abysmal but like signing a guy like kike hernandez you know like a solid player who is very versatile and like can do a whole lot of things for you at a confident level. Yeah.

Like that really, you know, that stuff really helps, you know, Hunter Redford obviously like, you know, has been an awesome fit for them. Yeah. It's like, you know, it's very racy, you know, and I'm not like happy about it because I kind of hate philosophically anything you stand for, but like there's a totally understandable and neutral sort of sense of like, it's good to find good players. Right. Even if they're not superstars to make sure that like you get some reliable production, you know.

You raise your floor, you know. You don't have to raise your ceiling all the time, but raising your floor can really help. And so when you have that, plus as you mentioned, they still had a core of interesting players, you know. Right. Xander Bogarts is a great hitter, you know. Yeah. Like can't be a shortstop no more, but he's a great hitter. Like, Rafael Devers, you know?

Super talented, you know? Yeah. And we saw that again this year. JDM, great hitter, you know? Yeah. One of the greatest hitters of this generation. And I thought, like, you know, if Chris Sale is back and, like, healthy, you know? And it's good reason to believe that, like, you know, that you come back okay after Tommy John surgery because they've been doing it forever, you know?

Like, that he could be a shot in the arm, you know? Oops. Yeah. Sorry. Pun not intended, everybody. It's good to be able to laugh about these things, you know? Because otherwise we'd just cry. Otherwise we would just cry.

But, yeah, Chris – yeah, but, you know, Chris Sale is, like, you know, I think people almost kind of forgot like how like crazy dominant he was. Yeah. Even in his kind of bad 2019 that he was like striking out like 12.9 or some stupid rate. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know. But like he's so and, you know, he was very good. Right. Like when he came back, you know, kind of almost choked away the season at the end of last start of the year and playoffs actually as well.

But like, but he did actually do what they needed and gave them that boost. That was a pun intended. That they needed to get over the hump as they were dealing with regression elsewhere in the team. And so I wasn't terribly surprised that there were a good team. It just wasn't my immediate prediction. Yeah, I think that's fair. I just didn't think it would coalesce the way that it needed to.

I maybe thought the rest of the East was just too good. Of all the teams in the East that I thought might just be undone by the strength of the competition they face in the division, I think they ranked higher on that list for me than New York or Toronto or certainly Tampa Bay did. So I was a little surprised by them, but now we get to watch them in the ALCS. And gosh, who do you think emerges from that side of the bracket ultimately? I think it's Houston.

Yeah. Like I feel pretty confident that it's Houston because I think they're just better in like literally every aspect of the game. Yeah. Than this Boston team, you know, which is, yeah, even though they're, again, they've improved, you know, they certainly improved from last year, right? Sure. And 2019 for that matter.

The Astros are built similarly but better, if that makes sense, you know? Like, and that the pitching's not like blow you away amazing, but they're still very good, you know? Right. And the pitching is not like blow you away amazing, but they're still very good, you know? Right. And they have the high-end star talent to match what Boston does and Altuve and Correa, Kyle Tucker. Alex Bregman dealt with injuries, but I think Alex Bregman is a great player. You know what I mean?

I think he still has the MVP finalist kind of talent that he showed his first few years in Houston. And so, yeah, they're they're just as they have a super deep lineup they exceed them in star power they still have depth and they have beyond let's say assuming assuming you think that sale is like still like an ace caliber arm like or or can be counted on for ace caliber performance which honestly maybe not right but like you know even still one through four like houston's got it you know and so um so yes i i expect them to take care of business and uh and they also have a whole field advantage and you know the other two i think i think they'll be i think they'll win this in like five yeah i think that i think that that's a i think that's a prediction i agree with i think that they are they are probably world bound. In terms of who will meet them on the NL side, we still have a bit of a question. Obviously, we need to see who's going to emerge from the Dodgers-Giants series, but we should take a second to talk about Milwaukee

and Atlanta, another series I predicted incorrectly. I'm just doing great. This is why I don't bet on sports. I mean, this is one of the reasons I don't bet on sports. This is why I don't bet on sports. I mean, this is one of the reasons I don't bet on sports. And so I have to say that as a way for Atlanta to advance, there's something very poetic and narrative building about it coming off a Freddie Freeman home run they won yesterday. What were your impressions of that Brewers Brave series? Man, Christian Yelich has fallen so far.

It's such a bummer. Yeah. He was such a fun hitter for two years. And now he's a platoon guy, basically. And someone resurfaced the old Belly versus Yelly. Yeah. Referring to Cody Bellinger versus Christian Yellich who finished 1-2 in MVP race, I want to say. Yeah.

In 2019. Yeah, I think it was 2019. Yes, for sure. Yeah, that was when Belly won. That was this year, yeah. And Yelly won in 2018. That's right. That's right.

So, yeah. So, like the two young superstars for next decade, right? Like we're front and center in the same way we had, right? And they both kind of suck now. Yeah. And that's unfortunate. But yeah, so like they really need that kind of like lineup anchor, you know, that just kind of makes the rest of what they do well, you know, kind of stick. Yeah.

And I mean, you know, I think the Brewers are really good. And I think they could be back with just kind of like smart additions to their team, you know. And also they're clearly good at making smart additions, you know, to their team. Right. Like, you know, like the Willie Thomas trade was outstanding. They beat the Rays in a trade, which is like, all right, it's just enough already to say, to show props to that front office. Yeah. But, you know, but they they do need they need more on

offense you know um to be the favorites to win win it all anyway and uh and maybe next time around they're just you know they just pitch the hell out of things and then it doesn't matter yeah but it's hard you know it's hard to win every game two to one it's hard to win every game four to three even so they uh that was my take on them and the Braves the Braves were actually my pick to win it all this year oh really yeah preseason I thought it was gonna be Braves Mets it's gonna be close in that division but I thought the Braves would overcome them by a few games other things happened um to both those teams but to me I thought their case was that like they had three MVP candidates Marcel Lozuna

who's obviously not there and should not be there as he's being investigated for his allegations domestic violence yeah there is Ronaldo Plunio Jr. who's like not there and should not be there as he's being investigated for his allegations of domestic violence. Yeah. There is Ronaldo Acuna Jr., who's like, frankly, my favorite player to watch in baseball. Yeah, he's fantastic. Yeah. And then, you know, him blowing out his knee midseason. Yeah.

And then Freddie Freeman, who actually won the MVP last year. Like, you know, I figured, okay, Acuna's going to win this one this year. But Freddie and Marcelo Zanussi to figure it out on offense, you know, in a way that he hadn't before, like would just kind of like anchor that team but none of that stuff happened and they had a whole bunch of underperformers elsewhere as well but you know i did believe in the core of that team still you know and you know freddie freeman is still you know clearly a great hitter and everything a great player i thought and i thought the i thought the other thing was that they had a lot of they had a lot of young, talented young starting pitching.

And they added Charlie Morton, who I think was just like a tremendous get. Yeah. I thought that immediately when they signed him. And so by acquiring Morton, that was sort of like the kind of thing that pushed them over the edge because they got so close to beating the Dodgers last year. You know, they got so, so close. I'm like, okay, if they can play the Dodgers that well, then I think that they're not far. And I also thought that they had a decent enough farm system

where they could plug in leaks where they needed. To me, I thought the leak was going to be Austin Riley. Clearly not, right? Right, yeah. He turned out to have a fantastic year. Right. I figured they could get a Kyle Seager type. When the Mariners inevitably fall out, right?

Right. They would trade within their farm def, you know, to go get a decent player they needed wherever there was a potential hole somewhere, you know? But they're in the mix for the World Series in ways I did not expect. And that's, so I'm not that smart. But yeah, I do think they underperformed a lot. And even among players who have not been rightfully removed or hurt from the team. Like there's more there, there's more there, there, there's more talent, you know, than

they'd shown in their 80 whatever trash team. And you're seeing that in how they clearly played a cut above the Brewers. Yeah, I think the ability to actually score runs like this is such a, well, yeah, Meg, like, thank you. But like the ability to counter good pitching when the other team can't you know it's just like that was the difference in this series they were able to scratch across runs when they needed to against starters who at times have been unhittable let alone um easy to score on right so yeah they were quite impressive i i do feel for

braves fans who seem just absolutely terrified anytime Will Smith is involved in the outcome of their game. Oh my gosh, it's so great. They are. And I don't fault them for feeling nervous. He makes me nervous to watch, and I'm not invested in the way that actual fans are. So I imagine that we will hear a lot about the potential for a Will Smith meltdown against whichever team emerges from Dodgers-Giants.

But yeah, they've managed to rebuild that outfield entirely, either because of injury or because of Acuna being absent, as you said, for reasons that are good. So, I mean, the reasons are bad, but his absence is appropriate. So I think that that is an impressive sort of move on the fly like adam duvall just being an important part of brave's lore at this point seems seems decided so jock peterson yeah our bad b word yeah it's it's the one redeeming thing about brave's fandom is seeing all the pearls then they start doing a chop and then i'm like oh that's another thing i think i got a little carried away and just kind of how fun the actual team was in the field and i'm like oh wait but you have to actually watch the braves fans now like i didn't get you know you didn't get to see any fans last year so

like oh it's kind of fun to watch and like oh wait no this is awful braves home games are the worst yeah that it is awful in the moment and then you feel like it is preemptively awful for when, well, I suppose I should say if. I don't know why I give them the benefit of the doubt that this will be a conclusion they come to on their own. But if and when they decide we have to move on from this iconography, it is offensive and embarrassing and alienates people. I just don't have a lot of confidence that they are going to force like a

come to jesus moment for their fans because the tolerance for this is just like they they're in ballpark restaurant has chop in the name like yeah it's not like the institution is pushing back against the individual in a productive way yeah they have to go like post holocaust germany as far as i told full cultural reset to get them to stop doing that stuff yeah like like i'm not even like joking about that when i when i say like like that's the level of like reprogramming you know discipline which is something that our country doesn't clearly does not have the appetite for when dealing with like issues of racism you know yeah so like i'll bring you to i was i went to a cleveland game in 2018 as just a fan

i was just in town for work and there were like thousands of people in like save wahoo shirts because they were already like you know publicly discussing phasing out you know the logo you were they were using the the big c a lot more at that point and then clear plan was to move on eventually right and there were thousands of people in Save Wahoo shirts. Yeah. Kurt Bauer was selling Wahoo shirts from his website. And he was on the Cleveland at the time. Yeah.

So we see thousands of white folks. And yes, they were invariably all white in these shirts. of how intractable the unwillingness to really listen or care to what you know to to why people don't appreciate the gestures the logos the images was among you know among fans of something and so yeah if if the Braves became I don't know the Panthers or whatever right it wouldn't matter unless unless security unless security just starts throwing people out. All 36,000 of the choppers, you know? Well, and this is the thing. It's like, in Cleveland

there was, I don't even know the right way to categorize this behavior relative to what Braves fans do, but the team did start to get serious about saying, like, hey, you can't wear red face to the ballpark. Like, if you come with a headdress on and your face painted, you're not going to be allowed to enter the ballpark. And I imagine that like the number of people who were doing that,

it was too many, but it was, that was a manageable problem from like a logistical perspective for Cleveland to say like, no, you just can't come in because we see you wearing red face and you can't do that here. And the enforcement is a much, much harder task in Atlanta because of how pervasive it is. And because you can't say walking into the ballpark, oh, like that, that guy's a chopper. Right. And so they're going to have to do much harder work. And I just don't have a lot of confidence in their either desire or ability to do that and so it's it's a real problem like i i don't know how they're squaring their kind of current moment with their decision in 2019 to like not do the not distribute the foam tomahawks or do any of the music cues because ryan helsley was like this is like offensive to me as an indigenous person who's about to pitch in this game i don't know how

they square their current moment with that because they've already acknowledged that this is a problem and they're still not doing anything about it but yeah freddie freeman i don't know man yeah go braves go boys yeah Yeah, like it's rough stuff. There's a very fun team on the field and the atmosphere they play in is just cringeworthy every time. So I don't know, man. I don't know what we do about that. I mean, I know what we do about it,

but I don't know that we collectively ever will. So that's a nice bummer of a note to end on when we're previewing that part of the NLCS. And then we transition to the Dodgers and the Giants, whose fate is still to be decided. I really like that this series has gone to five. I think that- Oh, me too, man. Yeah, we would have felt cheated if somebody had been swept out or if we hadn't seen Los

Angeles win last night. It's really a shame that we can't see these teams meet in the CS just because I think this is such an enjoyable matchup. But who do you have emerging victorious tomorrow? Man, I'm just going to go with feels and guts and say the Giants. Oh, I like it. Because I just think they're going to be – all year they've been one game better. Just one game.

So it feels like for all year. So I think they keep that going. Yeah. They keep that streak alive and they end up one game better. Because, you know,

the Dodgers had that wildcard game. Right. So they're both tied for like seasonal wins. Yeah. Plus playoffs at 109, I think.

And so, yeah, that's what I think happens. They get, you know, they get that one win, you know, and Dodgers go home and that's just kind of it. And you know and uh doctors go home and that's

just kind of it and uh and a lot you see lots of tweets about steroids and science dealing online yeah and uh it's gonna be glorious yeah i think the online discourse around around the giants is is certainly it carries a patina of suspicion shall we say it'll be interesting to see kind of what the the how the discourse is shaped around that because i think you're right that if we get astro's giants we're just going to talk about cheating a lot which is probably one of my least favorite things about houston's decision to cheat because it casts understandable doubt on outlier performance elsewhere and has made us all pretty cynical and for me the lack of discipline too just because because it makes it it makes it palatable to try and do it again at least for me as an outsider right it's just like

okay if you're not gonna like lose the world series when cheating help you get there then uh why not you know those draft picks they stink but you know you'll get them back but that but the title that title is forever you know what i mean and so to me like they needed you know they need to be more severe discipline for these guys and there wasn't so that's good yeah i imagine the mileage varies on that in terms of how powerful a disincentive the institutional punishment and then the fan reaction has been sort of the reputational damage like i don't know i have i don't know about what's going on with San Francisco. Like I have no concept of whether or not they're actually doing that stuff. I don't have any inside information, whether there's any foul play there.

I do find it hard to imagine seeing how Houston's players have been received on the field and the way that they are talked about and sort of the caveats that are automatically attached to their performance now and feeling like I would want to replicate something like that. But I also don't know how it feels to have the pull of a World Series championship as a professional athlete. So it's hard for me to know which of those things counterbalance. And like I said, I think the mileage probably varies. If you're a Buster Posey and you're not just worried about winning a World Series this year, but sort of your Hall of Fame case and your legacy, that might hit you differently than someone who's coming up and is desperate to win and be able to add a ring to the resume. I don't know.

But I think that the lack of certainty is part of the problem here, right? we can look at and say, yes, that's going to inspire people to really toe the line is probably an indication that the degree of punishment was insufficient to the crime. Yeah, man. That I think really captures much of what I feel about this is that like, yeah, there's always going to be that lingering question of like, did the punishment fit the crime? Or did discipline fit the crime? Is it something that will steer people know, steer people sufficiently away from it, you know? Right. Especially again, like we talked about earlier, other teams apparently have done stuff.

Yeah. Have you heard about a probe into the Colorado Rockies? Even though a player who played against them in the playoffs said like on the record, they did stuff? Right. Like, no, we haven't, right? Because no one cares about the Rockies, you know?

Right. But that's not enough of a reason to ignore it, right? Right. But Eric Kratz could be Mike Byers, right? Because no one cares about the Rockies, you know? Right. But that's not enough of a reason to ignore it, right? Right. But Eric Kratz could be Mike Byers, right? Right. And Major League Baseball could be dealing with it,

but they're not. So I should ask them actually one day just to have them on the record. Yeah. If no one's done that before. Yeah. No one beat me to that,

you know? Sorry. Yeah. Yeah, so anyway, no, that's my thought. Bradford just did what my sister and I used to do with cupcakes as children he he licked it he claimed it as his own so you're not allowed now he has laid claim to it legally yeah this is legal yeah you'll you'll hear from his people if you step over the line well I think that this Giants team is really good

I think that ultimately I have the Dodgers being a little bit better just well i think that this giants team is really good i think that ultimately i have the dodgers being a little bit better just because i think that as they have shown at times like that offense is just so potentially explosive even without max muncy even with cody bellinger in just like a nightmare of a year it's it's interesting to see that's a sad statement though even with cody Bellinger. God. Right, right. Even with Cody Bellinger dragging them down, it's still pretty good. But anyway, I know it's such a point, but- One of my favorite things about this time of year is that we all start watching the same baseball

after being cordoned off in our little camps throughout most of the regular season. And you'll be unsurprised to learn, follow like a disproportionate number of Mariners fans on Twitter. And watching Mariners fans who are now watching the playoffs fully grapple with just how bad Cody Bellinger's year has been, they're like, we know he's been bad. So they assumed that he would have like a WRC plus of like 100, right? That a bad year was like league average.

And then they look and they're like, oh, no. And the full weight of it hits them. And I'm like, yeah, now we're all watching that guy try to flail it, you know, back foot breaking balls. Here we go. Well, Bradford, I so appreciate you coming on and chatting with us. Do you have any final thoughts about the playoffs

before we depart? They've been a lot of fun with you know with all with our our detours and diversions on the gross bigotry of one you know that one team's fan base team has cultivated out of their fan base to the cheating allegations and rumors and you know and all that to uh i don't know the the various tangents we've been on that aren't directly related to the game. The game is being played at a high and fun level, you know? Which was a little faster paced, right?

But that doesn't mean that what's out there isn't really cool, you know? And these have been close intense games. Almost universally except for the White Sox series, actually. So as long as no one makes any, compares Black Cuban players to slaves, I think that we should continue to be in for more fun um yeah these next coming rounds but yeah no it's been

it's been a pleasure to to kind of get back into this stuff and watch it super intensely because obviously i don't have to the same degree sure on my current job and uh but yeah i'm having a lot of fun well i'm glad to hear that i'm gonna point people to all the places where they can find your work in a second but do you have anything specific that you'd like to plug? and your weekly diet for two podcasts. But yeah, me and Craig Goldstein do that every week. I've had some scheduling difficulties of late, so I haven't been on recently,

but I should be on pretty soon to just continue to do that. Unfortunately, again, I have nothing else besides check out what I'm doing in Insider. My name is Bradford William Davis. You Google that, you'll find me. And just keep enjoying these games while you have them because you're going to miss them when they're gone for the next six to 24 months due to the ongoing labor negotiations that, you know, and strife that may be happening pretty soon. So yeah.

Yeah. I think that enjoying them is a good call. You can also find Bradford on Twitter at BWDBWDBWD. Just my initials repeated three times. Three times. Yeah. So you can find Bradford there. As he said, you can listen to him on Five and Dive.

Thank you so much for joining me, Bradford. Thank you for having me. That'll do it for today. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged a small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going. Keep us ad free and get access to a few special perks.

Brian Hamilton, Genevieve Luthi, Jeff Johnson, Alex Arquilla, and Michael Nerviani. Speaking of perks, as I mentioned last time, if you're a supporter at the $10 a month and up level, one of your supporter benefits is access to two Patreon-exclusive postseason livecasts featuring me, possibly Ben, and several of our baseball friends. The first of those streams will take place this Sunday, Octoberober 17th during game two of the nlcs you'll find details in your patreon inbox soon and if you'd like to join us and aren't currently a supporter or are a supporter but not for 10 dollars a month or more don't worry there's still time to sign up or up your level you can join our facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild and you can rate review and subscribe to the podcast on itunes and other podcast platforms keep your questions and comments for us coming via email

at podcast at fangrass.com or via the patreon messaging system if you're a supporter thanks to dylan higgins for his editing assistance i'll be back later this week with new guest co-hosts and new episodes until then enjoy your playoff day off you wouldn't like me if you saw what was inside me you wouldn't like me at all I've been bad before I'll be bad

I've never quite like that