Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1760: Choose Your Own NLCS Adventure

Episode Date: October 15, 2021

Meg Rowley is joined by guest co-host Mike Petriello of MLB.com. They discuss Mike’s role in the booth as a part of ESPN’s Statcast broadcasts, how what is affectionately referred to as the Nerdcast got started, how Mike prepares for games, how he balances being analytics-heavy while still appealing to a broad audience, how the […]

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Hello and welcome to episode 1760 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs and I am joined today by special guest co-host Mike Petriello of MLB.com. Mike, how are you? I'm doing great, and thank you for calling me a special guest. That fills me with pride and joy. All of our guest co-hosts in Ben's absence are special guests because they are all doing me a special favor in helping me fill these episodes so our listeners still have something to listen to.

So thank you for joining me. Mike, is it possible that you have not been on Effectively Wild to talk about the Nerdcast before? You know, I think I was on the show once like five years ago when it was Ben and Jeff, maybe. But yeah, no, definitely not about the Nerdcast or not with you, for sure. Well, I am glad that we're able to rectify that oversight. It seems shocking that that would be true because I feel like Ben and I end up discussing your work in mostly favorable terms, although not exclusively for being completely candid,

fairly often. And so your presence has been felt unaffectedly wild even if you have not been here to either gloat or defend yourself. So I'm glad that we can get that sorted. We're gonna talk about some hot, hot news that will not be news at all by the time our listeners

get this it's the perfect way to engage with with a playoff content where we have to talk about it and then uh we can either look really smart or really stupid 24 hours later uh we'll get to the dodgers decision to start cory canable as an opener in the back half of this show but to start what i thought we would do is talk about the Nerdcast, the alternate broadcast that you do on ESPN with Jason Panetti and Eduardo Perez, because I will not make you speak ill of any other broadcasters, but it is very nice to have content that feels like it is geared to me personally. And I imagine that a lot of our listeners feel the same way. And so I'd like to talk about the Nerdcast.

And I guess the first question I have for you, Mike, is how did this come to be? How did this delightful addition to our baseball viewing experience come to pass? Well, first, thank you for the kind words, and I'm glad you've enjoyed it. And you know what's funny is I sort of had a thought that maybe that's what you would ask,

and I was thinking to myself, I don't know. Like, what happened from my point of view was, so in the middle of 2018, and we'd started working closely with this point with people at ESPN because they had interest in putting StatCast numbers on the air and wanted to know how to do that responsibly and all. And then a couple of weeks before the All-Star game in 2018, we heard from ESPN and they said, hey, we're going to do a StatCast version of the All-Star, of the Home Run Derby on ESPN2. Come do it. That's where it started for me. Where it got, you know, somebody had an idea in the first place.

Was it ESPN's idea? Was it a marketer's idea? Did they sell something they had to fulfill? I honestly have no idea. And I feel like I should figure that out at some point. But that's where it started. We did that home run derby. And home run derbies are so difficult to do because it's fake baseball. They're fun. We had Bill Nye on, but it's like broadcasting in a hurricane, kind of. And it was fun. And I went home and I didn't think anything of it. And I kind of thought that was that. And

then about two weeks before the end of that season, we found out they wanted us to do a stack cast version of the wild card game, National League. And if you remember how that season ended, there were five teams going down to the final week who were possibly going to be it. And then the Cardinals fell apart. And then there was a tiebreaker game between the Brewers and the Cubs and a tiebreaker game between the Dodgers and the Rockies, which, let me tell you, made preparation super fun and super cool. And we did that. And that first one was kind of like a test in some sense of, hey, is this a good idea? Like, will this work?

Should we do this? And we were fortunate because it's in Wrigley Field and the game was great and we wanted extra innings. And it was fun. And, you know, we've kind of been doing it somewhat semi-regularly since then. Because I think one of the things that makes, not just for the nerdcast, but for folks who are trying to clearly communicate sort of sabermetric concepts to a broad audience, it can be hard to know what level to set for yourself, right? Because you don't want to alienate people who might have some curiosity about advanced stats, but aren't super fluent in them.

But you also don't want to dumb it down too much for the people who are already conversants in that. And so I wonder, what were you conceiving of as sort of your average viewer for that first broadcast? Yeah, this is the part I lose sleep over sometimes because I will answer your question about the first one, but it's been a moving target over the years as quote unquote regular broadcasts become a little more advanced than you want to set yourself apart and have a reason for existing. And the first as, you know, quote unquote, regular broadcasts become a little more advanced than you want to set yourself apart and have a reason for existing. And the first one, it was a little hard for us to get too nerdy, really, just because, you know, we were in a hotel in Chicago wondering where we'd be the next day and which teams

were playing. And that's sort of when it's like how much depth you can get into. But we definitely had a conversation about it. I very much remember Phil Orleans, who I will butcher his title because I don't remember it, but he's basically the senior production guy of all ESPN live baseball podcasts. And we were talking about this and he's super in the weeds on the numbers and he gets it all and loves it all. And he's like, well, remember, it's still an entertainment program and you're not just focusing on the 1% of people who read baseball perspectives and

fan graphs religiously, which is like totally fair because we've never wanted to make it like an algebra class. But then what's funny is, and as you yourself have noted, I tend to pay too much attention to social media while I'm doing live television. It just stresses me out, Mike, because I need there to be a place where we can unplug and not be looking at the health site. And I thought maybe one day a broadcast would give me that refuge. And then you're on there referencing tweets and all kinds of stuff. Lots of broadcasts are like that. I know.

But what's funny is this just happened this year. We did a game right after the Homerun Derby. It was Red Sox-x yankees on july 18th or whatever and i thought it was a good show just in the sense of we we did a good baseball show but i didn't think it was a great stack hat show and not to make excuses it was you know a short week after the derby and i had been under the weather not with that and i just we did not you know have all the stack cast stuff we usually. And I saw these two tweets come in, like literally back to back from random people who I don't know. And one of them kind of did the typical like, what is this nerd garbage?

I don't like these numbers. Where's my RBIs? And then the very next tweet was, I thought this was the StatCast show. Where's all the numbers? Because I think there's a certain segment of people who think the StatCast show should look like the screen at like a horse track, like the OTB, you know, where you've got like the L box with stats. Like that's probably what betting shows will look like in the future. We haven't done that. And so that's like, that is the line I always try to walk between. How do we do enough

to make it cool and different, but not so much that it's weird. And I always feel like that's the worry I have is what is that sweet spot? So as you're preparing for these games, and I imagine that the process has refined itself some over time as you've gotten more comfortable with sort of finding that balance and also just being in the booth, what does your preparation look like for a typical StatCast game? I have a big Google Doc. It's just really true. And on that big Google Doc, I list out every player who is likely to be in the game. So I'll end up with like 50 names. Obviously, I'm not going to have something interesting on every single one of those guys. But you'll focus on the big names and certainly go deep on the starting pitchers. And for a regular season game, I'll start doing that like 10 days in advance. Obviously,

it's different for the postseason. And it's funny because my wife is like, well, you know, tons about baseball. Like, what do you need to look up? And I'm like, well, I can't just say Mike Trout is good. You know, I'd be able to come up with something interesting and, you know, show people information they haven't seen before. And, you know, it's not just me, obviously, like Jason has his own ideas andardo's coming at it from the former player's point of view and i think the best things we do sometimes where he'll be like i saw this and i'll be like cool i can back that up with numbers and really explain it like when it works like that it's perfect and then obviously you know our producers we've had andy jacobson and now ben ward are super receptive

to it but yeah a lot of it is me going through and just going to the normal sites, you know, savant, fangraphs, all of it, coming up with anything I find interesting. And then just inundating the graphics people with endless leaderboards and header requests. So like on our last show, it was the wildcard game, but it wasn't 100% clear who was going to be it until a couple days before. So certainly the day of, I was sending emails to Connor Joyce and Jordan Klein and the other people who were doing all the cool images. Like, I know it's like eight hours till the game, but here's 10 more things I'd like you to bring. So it is very much a team effort.

And to kind of go back to how this started, the one thing I have a great deal of respect for ESPN for is they could have treated this like the ugly duckling, but they made it possible for it to be successful by putting the right people there. Like Jason is a real full time play by play person who, in a lot of people's opinions, mine included, is one of the best in baseball. And Eduardo obviously has had decades in baseball with his own career and his father and all of it and they gave us like you know high quality producers like our producer andy uh we just lost him because he moved up to the regular main broadcast you know and so they put and then the graphics people have been great and all of it they put together like this high quality team forget me like they just made it important and put the right people in place because otherwise a show like this wouldn't have worked. And I have a great

deal of debt for that happening. You mentioned the team and I would wholeheartedly agree with your assessment of your fellow broadcasters. I'm curious, you know, set aside the nerd part of it. I imagine that the broadcasting part of it is intimidating enough, right? That is its own project and a thing that people have to learn how to do. What advice did you get from those guys early on in terms of not how to convey information, but how to say anything at all? I don't know that I did. I think for that first home run derby, I met Jason and Eduardo for the first time either the day of or the night before. I can't remember.

And to this day, I have no idea if they really even knew who I was. I knew Jason. It was his first year, I think, with the White Sox. And I knew him just because I knew he was the White Sox guy, but I didn't know him very well. And same with Eduardo. I just knew him from his baseball life. I don't really know if either one of them knew me or had any idea what this thing was supposed to be.

And what I'm fortunate enough to have is in 2016, we tried to do a version of this, a much different version of this at MLB.com. It was called MLB Plus. I remember that. Yeah. And it was different because it was only online and it was blacked out in the home markets and all this. And we didn't go to the ballparks like we do now when we're allowed to. It was all from our studio in Chelsea.

And in retrospect, probably too soon to do a StatCast show in the second year of StatCast. But that was really good experience for me just to learn how to prepare for a show and how to speak clearly and not drop F-bombs in the middle of a show, those kinds of things you don't want to do. It's hard to be on a set with Jason and Eduardo for three hours and not have fun. It's almost impossible to hang out with those guys and not have a blast. Well, and I think that that's one of the things that, and I know you've remarked on this in sort of watching other broadcasts and appreciating the ones that

really stand out as going smoothly and being engaging, that the appreciation for the game itself is really important to the viewer at home having a good time, right? And I imagine that when you've kind of crossed the Rubicon of saying like, our baseline stat here is going to be OPS plus or WRC plus right where we're looking at the game from that perspective that you don't have to do a lot of convincing that the game is is really good as it is now and that we don't have to hearken back to a prior era of it but I wonder as you're you know getting your feet under you for any given broadcast do you think consciously about sort of injecting fun and levity into it? Or is that just a natural byproduct of the folks you're working with and the approach that you're taking to the game? I do think a lot of it is who you're

with. As I said, with Jason and Eduardo, you can't not have fun. I feel like there are probably some other groups of people where you might be with and say, well, this is less fun because we're not really enjoying being with each other. But I also think very specifically to me, the fact that I'm doing this, like if I could have told myself at any point in my life, this would be true, I would have probably laughed at myself. So imagine being able to be in a ballpark and calling these games and not enjoying it. It's an insane thing for me to think. And I think having fun and having some enjoyment, it works in service of the stats too, because you don't want to just do a stat show. And some of the shows I like, they don't use stats at all. The other day, they had the show where it was Adam Amin and AJ Brzezinski and Adam Wainwright, and they were not using advanced stats really, but they were having a blast and they were having good conversation and some really good analysis. Do I care that they didn't show WRC plus? Like, no, those stats are great when they help you tell a story that you couldn't have told, you know, in years past, right? If you want to, or if you want to use them

to explain why a team is doing something like, Hey, why are they shifting? You know, why is the guy who's hitting two 40, uh shifting? Why is the guy who's hitting 240 hitting cleanup and the guy who's hitting 280 hitting eighth? It helps you explain the silly things that teams do. But if you're not enjoying it, if you're not having fun, then it doesn't matter how intelligent it is. You mentioned that 2016 was probably a little too early to do a StatCast show, even online, just because of how new StatCast was as a resource for people and how early you guys were in sort of your development of different metrics. What have you been able to sort of phase in? And is there anything that you

have phased out as the platform has become more robust in the metrics that you're able to share sort of more widely known by your audience. It's really funny how people still think route efficiency is a thing. That was never like a leaderboard. It was never available. It was on a couple of videos like five years ago. What I think we would have done differently, so I wasn't there on day one. I didn't come on full time. I wrote there a little bit in 2015 after I left the wonderfulfangraphs.com. Yeah. And I came on full time in early 2016 and Tom Tango a couple months after that. And I think Darren Willman, who did Baseball Savant before moving on to the Rangers, was a couple months

before me. But I think what happened was everyone was so excited about it that it was just like, this is great. We're going to throw everything out there and it's going to be super cool. And maybe underestimated how much work was going to have to be put into context and explaining. And at least in the first year, for sure, like data quality was an issue a little bit. So a lot of it has gone into, and this is in great deal, Tom's work, because he's obviously an expert at all this, Like, what's the right context for this? You know, what does the data show? What are we trying to make sure it's telling the right story or we're not trying to tell the wrong story with it? And I think what we've gotten pretty decent at over the years, not naming things.

We're terrible at naming things. Naming metrics is just the worst thing in the world. It's hard for everyone if it makes you feel better. I think this is part of why i always admire science fiction writers because they just have to come up with like nouns they gotta come up with nouns for stuff and it can sound so silly so fast and like acronyms then you gotta wonder is an acronym like say something else does it actually stand for nfl you know what i mean like yeah but no a lot of it's like okay well we have the stat we think it's cool we think the leaderboard makes we put it up on Baseball Savant in a way that's visually appealing and interesting?

Like, does it make a good leaderboard? Could you put this on television? And I think that's been a decent part of the success is, you know, color coding a lot of the leaderboards and making pretty pictures and nice graphics out of it. What do you view as sort of the next phase of the nerdcast? What is the next iteration of it look like? I have absolutely no idea. It's really like I think about that sometimes. I mean, part of it is just because at this point in baseball history, it's like an uncertain offseason is ahead of us, you know, for a couple of reasons. I know that so next year ESPN is starting a new contract with MLB and that's been pretty

wildly reported. So I'm not breaking any news there. And there are still the rights to do second screens should they want to. And I hope we get a chance to. They could also do other kinds of second screens. I don't know. Maybe they'll do a kid's show like the football one or like, what do I know? We also don't know who's doing the main show right now. So that could be an issue if like one of our guys does that. And again, I'm not speculating. I legitimately know nothing about anything, but who knows what happens, right? So it's going to be just interesting to see what does the baseball broadcasting landscape look like in six months? Did the season start on time? Who's available for what show? And then part of it is

if the main show, because I said they have our our producer now, or they did this last year, if not going forward, I'm not sure. It was really, really good. Knows all my tricks, you know? So it's like, if those shows are becoming, you know, more advanced in ways that I think they are, how far do we push it to try to stand apart? You know, because you go back to 2018, the first one that we did, there was a lot of stuff we did that main shows wouldn't do. And now it's like, oh, yeah, everybody's showing X velocity and pitch sequencing and the infield spray chart. Like that's almost normal now. Right. So how do you keep pushing it forward? And the answer is, I don't know. I hope we get the chance to do something cool. Yeah, I was gonna ask about that, the dynamic that exists there between between your broadcast and the sort of national main screen broadcast, because I think you're right that that broadcasters have gotten more comfortable, or at least their graphics, people have gotten more comfortable showing

advanced stats on the screen. And, you know, as that progresses, I imagine that the differentiation will be more challenging. But what do you think the right balance of that stuff is on a feature broadcast that might, you know, might have a big part of the nerdcast audience in it, right? We have to watch something when you guys aren't broadcasting, but also like, has my grandpa in it who still doesn't know what my job is? Well, I feel like we should get your grandpa on here to explain to him what you do. I think that would be great. Some of it is, it's how it's presented. Like I mentioned the infield spray chart thing,

right? Where it's like the five different pie slices and it shows where does the guy hit the ball. That's pretty accessible, I think. It's just like, hey, here's where the guy hits the ball. It sort of explains why the infielders are standing there. You can air that without even having to talk about it if you don't want to, because it just tells the story. Some of this stuff is accessible too, I think. You don't have to love or care exit velocity, but how hard did that guy hit the ball? Pretty accessible too, I think. You get a little weird and deep if you want to, if you want to get into expected stats and all that. We barely use that on our show, so I can't imagine that's going to show up on the main show. But I don't know. In some sense, I think we're almost like a testing area to say, hey, did this work? Was it cool? Well, great. Now we've got a proof of concept to send it out to a bunch

of other shows. I wonder then if you're staying away from, say, expected stats, is there anything else that is deemed even for the nerd broadcast too nerdy? Is there anything where you're like, I can't explain, like like i don't want to talk too much about predictive versus descriptive stats on this so right yeah there's that i haven't done a lot with like seam shifted wake yet we did like a brief thing when dustin may before he got hurt just like a little video to just explain what it was but i'm not going up there saying well this guy has a deviation of 15 minutes on the clock hand because some of it's too much.

There's always going to be a danger of getting into that because that stuff's going to get more and more advanced. But the goal is, first and foremost, to tell the story of the game and the players in a game in the most entertaining way you can. And if there's a particular guy where that kind of thing really helps tell his story, then great. But I never feel like you want to force it in just to entertaining way you can. And if there's a particular guy where that kind of thing really helps tell his story, then great. But I never feel like you want to force it in just to

say you did it. Right. Yeah. Well, when you figure out the right way to describe Seam Shifted Wake to an external audience, will you let me know? Because I still don't think I can do it. I don't have an elevator pitch on that that I can do quickly. Yeah, I've gotten it down to like 35 seconds and that's still too long. Still too long. I'm curious, are there any, and you don't have to speak ill of any of the teams that you have broadcasted about, but I wonder if there have been any points as you guys have assembled your schedule around this and started preparing where you see a particular team is sort of on the horizon and you think, yes, I'm going to be able to tell an especially

good story about that team. Early in the season, we got Dodgers-Padres, and this was before the Padres fell apart. And this was the series where I think it was on the Friday night, maybe, Mookie Betts ended the game with a diving catch against Tommy Pham in the outfield there. And we were so excited to do that game. And it lived up to it. That game ended up going five hours or whatever, which is not great, not ideal, but it was interesting and compelling baseball. And so that was great. This probably applies only to me and not to 90% of the baseball

audience. The only thing I don't like necessarily is when you get the same teams over and over. Sure. So it's like, do I know a lot about the Yankees and the Red Sox? Yes, I do. Would I enjoy doing an Orioles-Marlins game at a certain point? Like, yeah, great. Like new people, new stories. You mean to tell me that Orioles-Marlins isn't a big broadcasting priority for the mouse? Yeah. No, just not seeing too much of that, unfortunately. I guess this is sort of a related question, and I'm going to use this to transition into a bit of news that came across the transom just before we started recording. But I think that the general perception of managers in today's game is that there are guys who are particularly savvy, but the distribution of sort of willingness to engage in tactical tomfoolery, it's just like

everyone's talent is sort of clustered together now, right? We don't have a ton of guys who fall into the camp of really being old school managers. But I wonder, for your purposes, is it better to have a savvy tactician or is it actually nice to have a guy who falters every now and again so that you have something to talk about there? Well, yeah, I guess that's what are you looking for? Are you looking to win baseball games? Or are you looking to have something interesting on a broadcast? So I would much rather have a guy where you can question, why did you hit there? Or why did you bring in this pinch hitter or this pitcher or whatever? Because yeah, you want to have something fascinating to talk about. And that can be positive or negative. I'm happy to talk about, hey, that was

a really great decision. I liked that. Or why did you do this move that I hated and it worked out poorly? And because we're always a results-based industry, now I look good and I can talk about it. I'm here for content. Because let me tell you, three hours, if you're lucky, is a long time to talk, even when it's with people you like. Sure. And we were fortunate for this wildcard game. We were in Fenway. It was the first time in two years all three of us had been in the same place because we'd been doing these things remotely. And that just made talking so much easier.

Yeah. Okay. Well, now I'm going to put the hot, hot news on hold to ask you, what was remote broadcasting like for you? Weird. It was weird for me because Jason and Eduardo do this regularly enough that they've got setups in their homes. So Jason was in his place in Chicago and Eduardo's in Miami. I don't, right? I do not have a home set up here. So I'm in Brooklyn and I had to drive up to the main ESPN campus in Bristol, which is like a two and a half hour drive, which is not a big deal to do that, you know, every once in a while. But it was interesting because each time I did it up until recently, the setup was different, like just based on what was

open that day. So one time I was in the, you know, super swank studio that looks like an airport hangar all by myself. I'm like, this is great. And then one time I was in essentially a green room with like some stools and stuff and it was still great, but a different kind of great. And I did find one thing appealing about that, which was for me, just having like all this space to myself, I could set up as many screens and tablets and monitors as I want to, and have just like a ton of information. Whereas if you're in a booth and especially where we were in Fenway, it was postage size. You can't really do that, you know? So that made it a little harder, but just in the sense of like not talking over one another, which is always an issue when you're not in the same place or being able to like poke Jason in the ribs and say, Hey, I've got something interesting on that guy. Like that makes all the difference, you know, in addition to

spending human time with people you like. Right, right. If you could go back in time and tell yourself before that first wildcard game, one thing to do differently, what would your years, your many years of broadcasting experience yield for you there, Mike? For that one game? Oh, I don't want to say like we did it perfectly because I know that we didn't, but it went so well and I'm a big believer in like the butterfly effect. If you change one thing, maybe you screw up everything else in your life.

So I was happy with that. Let's just keep that one the way it was. Okay. I'm content with that. Well, I hope that the next iteration of Major League Baseball on ESPN involves more Nerdcasts, not fewer, because we are fans of the nerdcasts around here. While I have you, we're going to talk some news. We will talk about this Corey Kniebel decision in a second, but the Cardinals are going to be in search of a new manager. They have fired

Mike Schilt. That news came across today on a day with playoff baseball, which is unusual. Normally these things get held to a travel day. And the Cardinals' process cited philosophical differences. I think that there was a hope that they would be able to move in perhaps a more analytically progressive direction. I think that Schilt's sort of record on that is perhaps mixed. But I'm curious, we don't know how to talk about Schilt in particular, although if you have particular thoughts about the Cardinals

and what they should do here, I'd be curious to hear them. I'm more, I'm curious, what do you conceive of as the modern role of the manager? Well, apparently it's not winning 17 games in a row because that was deemed insufficient to keep his employment. But sufficient to move their playoff thoughts dramatically, lest any of us forget. Yes, I'm fascinated to see what comes out of this story. I feel like there's got to be something we don't know about. It could be as innocuous as, you know, the timing of it's weird to me in the sense, not that just that they made the playoffs, right? But

there is a playoff game tonight. You don't generally, you know, it's like what, four hours from now that that game starts. You don't generally get to make this kind of news on a day where there's playoff games. And I saw someone report that they had to go and ask for special permission to do it, which indicated that timing was of the essence. Now, whether that prefaces some bad news coming out later, I certainly hope not. I have no idea. But I also wonder if there was somebody on their staff who was about to get another job, you know, the Padres or somewhere, and they deeply didn't want to lose him.

Is that enough to fire the guy you have? I don't know. But that was the first thing that I thought. You know, as far as the manager goes, I feel like we just don't see enough of what they do. Like, you look at pitching moves, lineups, pinch hitters, whatever, that's the visible stuff. I can't imagine there's that much difference

between managers on that kind of stuff. Like, yes, I think Craig Council is a very good manager of his staff and somebody at the other end might not be, but I just feel like so much of it is keeping these guys from killing each other over six months, you know, keeping morale up in some cases, maybe, you know, having a hands-on impact with, Hey, I'm going to help you improve, you know, your hitting or your pitching or, you know, depending on what kind of skill these guys have. I do think we forget how many of these players are like 24 year olds going through a lot of the life stuff that we all went through when we were 24. And we just, we can never see that. So it's just so hard to judge or really know, especially when it's like, well, why didn't you bring in the lefty there? Well, the lefty wasn't available. I can't tell you why,

and I'm not going to tell you, but that impacts my decisions. Yeah. It is an area where I think particularly for people who like to have data to churn through to help them better understand both decisions and sort of approach. I find managers very frustrating as a concept because so much of what they do that is important is stuff that we will never see. And also when moments like this come up where a manager finds himself out of a job and we're contemplating replacements, it's an area where I feel like I really don't have a great sense of what the current roster of names should be, right? We hear all of the same names year over year, and that's frustrating for a number

of reasons, not the least of which is that a lot of those people tend to look similar, and so it does not foster the kind of diversity that we might aspire to. But also, I wonder if some of it is just that you don't, like, I don't know, who's like the best coach in Round Rock right now? I don't know. I don't know the answer to that question. Yeah. I don't know how any of us could, you know, like with the Cardinals, maybe, you know, maybe they'll promote Stubby Clap or somebody like, I don't know. How could I possibly know? The only thing I would say with managers is I tend to value some kind of managerial experience. It doesn't have to be at the major league level, right? But if you've run a minor league team a college team or just something, I don't generally like the very first time you're running

a team to be at the major league level. It does seem like it would be very challenging for the reasons you cited. It's like you have these young men who also are sort of being counterbalanced by experienced veterans who have a particular way of doing things. And it just seems like balancing personalities is difficult for the most experienced of managers. And to have someone completely fresh in that role does seem like it might lend itself to challenge. Although, you know, we have savants everywhere. So it's not like it can't work out, but it just seems like it would be harder to count on it. Well, we'll wait with bated breath like it would be harder to count on it.

Well, we'll wait with bated breath to see who is going to manage in St. Louis. We have St. Louis. We have New York. We have San Diego. I'm sure we will have other vacancies as the offseason progresses. So now we should talk about the Dodgers, who will be playing the Giants in just a couple of hours. When you're all listening to this, they will have played them. So congratulations to the team that won for advancing to the NLCS. I can't believe you hit that ball that way, guy. What a ball you hit. What a pitch you threw. Congratulations.

But the Dodgers made a little bit of news before we started recording. It actually delayed us starting because they decided to start uh start cory knable as an opener against the giants you all know how it went but we don't so mike what were your first thoughts when you saw this well i assume that we can record two versions of this and then based how the game goes you'll just pick one to edit in or edit without because choose your own adventure effectively wild exactly right so great slash terrible job dave slash gabe however that would best work out um i was surprised and i think it's interesting because if you think about the different starting pitchers the dodgers have i could not imagine them doing this in front of max scherzer or clayton kershaw or probably

walker bueller but you know maybe And I'm not sure what that means necessarily. I don't know if that means they don't view Arias with such respect. And obviously, he's not as accomplished as those guys, but he is like an all-star level starter. Or if they view him as a guy who's maybe got more experience coming out of the bullpen than guys like that do, because we've certainly seen him in the playoffs do it before. And I have to imagine this is something that he is amenable to. And you'd think well of course like how could it not be but then i think about you know davey garcia and j-hap and that whole debacle with the yankees a couple years ago where j-hap really did not want to do that so yeah i have to think he's into it

and then the question kind of becomes you know is this a good idea slash are you galaxy or braining a winner take all game? Like, should you just start the great guy you have? Because usually when you do an opener, you are, you know, protecting one of two things, really. You are trying to screw with the opposing lineup, which is what I think is happening here. Or you're trying to protect a starter who has a weakness in some way, which I don't

really think is true for Urias, who doesn't have huge platoon splits, doesn't have huge third time splits. So I guess a lot of this is you look at the Giants roster. And aside from like Crawford and Posey, they have a lot of moving pieces, and it's mind games to screw with it. So I'm fine with it. I think I saw that, you know, I didn't read the whole thing yet. But I know you were talking about Ben Clemens writing about it. I think Ben is into it. And I think analytically into it. Yes. And I think analytically it makes sense. And I think with Urius having experience coming out of the bullpen, it makes sense. None of that matters. If this goes poorly, they will wear this forever.

That's just the way these decisions go. Yeah. I think Ben's conclusion – well, I know that this was Ben's conclusion because I edited and read his piece. Well, I know that this was Ben's conclusion because I edited and read his piece, but it is one that I agree with was that, you know, from a strategy perspective, particularly with how Gabe Kepler and the Giants like to position their hitters and platoon and all of the matchup games that they play, this sort of heads some of his substitutions off at the pass and forces him into a potentially less advantageous lineup construction. And, you know, we should say like these are these are marginal. These are tiny marginal bits of a win that you're grabbing at, which makes them make a good deal of sense, you would think, you know, in a winner take all game where it's like, well, this is you're going to do it.

I guess it's now I I was surprised by the reaction that some folks had to to say that arias would be potentially sort of thrown off his game by this and i i think your point about how often he has come in out of the bullpen makes me worry about that a good deal less i mean he was i think fine and serviceable in his game to start he wasn't his usual sterling self but i don't imagine that this is the sort of thing that would cause a repeat of a game two performance, which again was just fine, but not spectacular. Because he's done this before, right? Yes. In the playoffs, he's had quite a bit of experience with it.

And when you look at the game on the ninth, which I guess was what, game two when he started? Yeah. They loaded up the top of the lineup with Darren Ruff, Chris Bryant, Slater, Posey, Flores. It was five righties at the top of the lineup. The Dodgers just put out their lineup. So I'm hoping to like drag out this sentence long enough that the Giants will do that too. So we can look at it in real time. But I don't imagine they're going to be starting five righties at the top of the lineup again. not. When Ben wrote about this for us, he projected Crawford, Bryant, potentially Ustremsky, Posey, Roth, Flores, Longoria, and then Donovan Solano at the bottom with Tommy Lastella sort of re-aggravated or re-aggravated? Did he have the Achilles injury earlier? I think so. I don't remember if it was Achilles or hammy earlier, but he is a little dinged up. And so in all likelihood is not going to be available to start, but would be available to pinch hit later.

So they still have that to play around with. But I suspect that they will try to put some lefties up top and see how that goes. But who knows? Maybe Kapler will surprise us all. It is funny. I think that in years past, we would have looked at this and been like those dastardly Dodgers with their analytics. But you can't exactly look at the way that the Giants have

gone about their season and say that they're not analytics. So I will be really curious to see what their counter move is to this because it's not like they won't have one. Well, you know, you're right. The whole Estella thing does throw a wrench into it, where it's like, can he play at all? Is he available only to hit? And if so, like, are you saving him for, I don't know, Kenley Jansen in the ninth or is it better to try to get that out of the way in the top? And like, you know, I guess not the top because they're the home team, but in the first inning that it just makes everything so fascinating. Like I love it because you get to ask all these questions now. You get to think through all of these different

things. And I'm sort of leaning, you know, here where it makes sense. And not that Arias needs help, I think, avoiding the top of the lineup when he gets there a third time. But maybe you get to see him finish off the game this way, if things go well. Maybe if Kniebel gets through five batters, that helps Arias stick around later. I don't think it's going to make a huge difference unless Kniebel gets blown up and then people will only talk about that and literally nothing else. Right, which is so interesting because, and I don't fault people for this necessarily. Like, we like a narrative and I like starters who start games and finish them. We see it so rarely. But it is interesting to think about why we react to

these things the way we do, because if they had gone sort of a more traditional path, right? Urias starts like he normally would, and Knabel comes out of the bullpen and let's say, and here we are, we are entertaining one potential adventure that this podcast could go on based on results that will happen a few hours from now or several hours in the past, depending on how you're engaging with the pod. And let's say like Knable comes in, in relief as he normally would, and he gives up four runs. Do we feel differently about those four runs because they came in the seventh inning than if they come in the first?

That's the way it was always done, damn it. Well, and I don't think that the sort of aesthetic consideration around this stuff is irrelevant, right? I know you don't think that either i'm not suggesting that you do but if your preference is that a guy start and then you know you see how long he can go and bring a reliever in when the command goes or his velo's down or whatever like that's a defensible preference but it is interesting to think about why we react to these things the way we do do we think it's bad strategy or do we just not like the way it looks which again that's fine but we should be clear about why we react to these things the way we do. Do we think it's bad strategy or do we just not like the way it looks? Which again, that's fine, but we should be clear about why

we're disliking the thing, I think. Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, I think you get into the same questions with the shift, right? Where people are like, I don't like watching that. And it's like, totally fine. Who am I to tell you that you should or shouldn't? I think for a situation like this, I get into semantics a little bit. Like if it's going to be Knable ahead of Arias and you get those two guys getting through the first seven innings, do I care which order they're in? You know, not terribly much. If starting a reliever means it's a bullpen game and you have a new pitcher every five batters, then yeah, that actually makes me want to watch the game a lot less, you know?

Yeah. And I know that's not the plan, obviously. You certainly don't hope that's not what's going to happen here. But I do think you kind of forget about, you know, splitting the hair like that, or it's like, oh, they're starting with a reliever. This is just going to be an endless thing of relievers. And that would make a difference for me. Right. It would be a very different experience of game five if we thought that we were going with Logan Webb and Julio Urias, and we were going with Logan Webb and a parade of Dodgers relievers that tastes a little different by the end of it.

Do you want to say any nice words about Logan Webb? Very much so. Yeah, because we didn't get a chance on this pod to dive into his start all that much just because of the sequencing of episodes. Aaron and I talked about it a little bit, I think. But what do you got on Logan Webb? What's your Logan Webb scouting report, Mike? Well, I like that he's,

let's go back to aesthetics for a second, right? I like that he's sort of going against the established pitching green of the last few years because we've definitely learned that nothing we do in baseball is one size fits all. I don't need Billy Hamilton trying to pound the ball in the air, right? It just, that's not going to work for him.

And there has been a couple of guys like Webb, I think slightly differently. Corbin Burns is another one of those guys. Jonathan Loaizaga with the Yankees where it's like, Hey, throwing four seamers high doesn't necessarily work for me because even though I can throw hard, I just, it's straight and it's going to get hit. And I know that's the thing you're supposed to do is work vertically. And my four seamers just not very good. So I'm going to go back to the sinker, which everybody's like, oh, the sinker is dead. And it is if you're trying to get ground balls. But when you have these guys

who can use the sinker and the slider, like mirroring each other horizontally, and I get it, we did not invent the sinker slider guy in 2021. That's been an archetype forever, but it had fallen out of favor. And so I really, I like that you have these guys finding success in a way that is not the prevailing pitching movement of the last couple of years, because it's fun to watch him. You know, it's fun to watch him in a way that's different than it's fun to watch, you know, Scherzer, Verlander, those kind of guys. I think that the Giants, Giants are one of the better give you a lot of looks teams if you're into that sort of thing on the pitching side, right? And I might just be

thinking of Logan Webb and Rodgers here, but they give you a lot of different sorts of dudes in a way that I find pleasing. Well, I mean, just start with Tyler Rodgers and Johnny Cueto, and that's like 20 different looks right there. Yeah. Do you think that you would have been confused enough about Roger's twin brother to ask, why aren't you in uniform and in the bullpen right now? Did you see this delightful bit of news from San Francisco? So here's the thing. I saw the story, and I like to think I follow baseball pretty closely. If either one of them had sat down next to me on the bus yesterday, I don't think I would

have said, oh, hey, you're one of the Rogerses. Rogers I? Rogerses? They're not that distinctive looking. I don't honestly think I would have known the difference. But I do love the idea of Kapler trying to get around the three banner minimum by having one Rogers and then bring in the other Rogers in the same uniform. I think that could be fun.

I'd be down with that. I have been an advocate for at least two years that for one game, Hunter Renfro and Mike Trout should swap places and really test whether or not we can tell because I think they are both thumb-like enough that it would take a couple innings before we're like, wait a minute, that's not right. Not that Mike Trout at his peak was not a fantastic defender, but if he started unleashing throws like Renfro did, I'd have questions. Well, it's interesting that you say that because I consider that scenario, Mike, because one has to really see it through when you're committed to a bit. And I think that it would depend a good deal on when your impression of both Renfro and Trout's defense

had sort of solidified because Renfro took this sort of leap forward. He'd always had a good arm, but he had been sort of, eh, and then had a couple of years where all of the metrics liked him very much. And now they're sort of more mixed on him again. But I think that if your impression of him had been formed sort of when he had taken a step forward, you'd be like, well, that's clearly not Mike Trout because that guy has an arm. But if it wasn't, step forward, you'd be like, well, that's clearly not Mike Trout because that guy has an arm. But if it wasn't, I wonder if you'd be allowed to persist in the delusion for a little bit longer.

Well, perhaps. But yeah, you're right. Are we talking about right now Mike Trout where he hasn't been seen in six months, which is sad and it makes me sad. And I just hope he comes back. I know we're not talking about Hunter Renfro anymore. I just want Mike Trout to play. Yeah, I will say that I miss Mike Trout, but I also will say that it is a testament to

how many very good, very dynamic players are in the majors right now that I have not missed him as much as I thought I would. No. There have been other guys to fill the void. I agree. It is sad to think that at some point we'll talk about Mike Trout the way we talked about Albert Pujols for a bunch of years. But listen, if you

can't get excited about Soto and Wander Franco and Vlad and Tatis and all these guys, what are we doing here? Why are you watching? I can tell you my six-year-old son is obsessed with baseball and he gets super excited when he sees those guys he knows. He knows Tatis and he knows Lindor and that is great. That is exactly what we need. Yeah. Who do you have winning this game five? No, let me phrase that a different

way. I'm going to give you your choose your own adventure options so that at the end of it, you sound smart no matter what. Are you ready? I thought you were going to ask me who did win game five. No, no. I'm not going to make you do that. What has to happen for Los Angeles to emerge victorious this evening? And then what needs to happen for San Francisco to advance? Okay. So for the Dodgers, obviously much easier said than actually accomplished. Don't chase that web slider out of the zone. He's not going to beat you in the zone. The sinker is obviously very good and he's a good pitcher, but he's not the kind of guy who's just going to dominate you in the strike zone. He needs you to pound that sinker into the ground or chase that slider.

And if you can do that, and it's not easy to do that, then I think the lineup will be in pretty good shape. And for the other side, I think you need to make them pay for the opener strategy. You know, if you can, I feel like, you know, I'm obviously an analytical guy and I'm not usually the one that goes into emotions and gut feel, but I also feel like there's a lot riding on Knievel starting this. And if you can hit him, that does feel like it takes a lot of air out of the tires. Like, oh God, why did we do this? Our dude won 20 games. We could have just started him.

But otherwise I can't give you a difference. These games have won an equal 109 games, if you count the playoffs, and they were 10-9 against each other in the regular season. And I believe, I can't remember which side was ahead. The run differential was 80-78 in the regular season. How could you be more tied than this? Yeah, if I recall, the Dodgers had San Francisco by two runs. tied than this yeah if i recall the dodgers had san francisco by two runs but yeah it's it's um it was a remarkably balanced uh series between them and a remarkably balanced season between

them and the only thing that i regret is that we we had to get this matchup out of the way in the in the division series not in the championship series it's just the way that the cookie crumbles unfortunately well hey mike i know that you have to go be a parent. We will allow you to retreat to your parental obligations. But before we do that, do you have anything that you would like to plug or promote on Effectively Wild? Well, yes, we are done with StatCast broadcast

for this season, but I will be writing at MLB.com and we do a podcast as well called Ballpark Dimensions. It's the one we just finished up that's not even published yet as we had royals outfielder michael a taylor on to talk about yeah he's super nice guy and obviously uh played for dusty baker and won a world series with the nationals and faced a lot of the guys that you'll see tonight uh so you can find that at all of your various podcast outlets and um constantly on twitter to Meg's great scorn and dismay

at Mike underscore Petriello. Well, you know, I just want people to have unplugged time because Twitter is terrifying and the rest of the world is nice. So that's that's all it is. It's just concern for a friend, really. Yeah. You know what? We can unplug after the World Series is over.

An unplug we shall. Well, you should definitely check out all of Mike's good work that he just mentioned at MLB.com and the podcast. And I promise that we will not wait five years between appearances next time. I greatly hope that's true. Thank you, Meg. Thanks for coming. That'll do it for today.

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