Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1913: Citation Needed

Episode Date: October 7, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the beginning of the playoffs and playoff podcasting, share a few words (17:43) from the diligent author of the retiring Stephen Vogt’s exhaustive Wikipedia page, preview the four wild card series (30:54) and hype up the playoff field, meet major leaguers (1:07:25) Nate Eaton and Brian O’Keefe, and […]

No more smiles for the last damn time Why not wait for the wild card Burning a hole in your hand Digging a hole in the ground. In a vast graveyard. Hello and welcome to episode 1913 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Relia, Fangraphs, and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, I almost muddled my way through, but we're here now. How are you? Sounded seamless and flawless to me.

I shouldn't admit my mistakes is maybe the takeaway. Yeah, usually when you do, I didn't even detect the stumber or stumble or anything. The stumber. That was a mix between a stumble and a stammer is a stumber. Well, anyway, here we are. We're recording a podcast. I have secured groceries for the coming week. We're officially in that time of year where it's like I have exactly one hour.

I have to go do something that doesn't involve my job because otherwise, who knows when I'll get another opportunity. The postseason, it's almost upon us. Yeah, you're like a postseason prepper. You're stocking up, just piling up cans in the closet. Yeah, because otherwise, like, how will I have soup? Right. Well, I have overindulged on playoff previews. I read a whole bunch of them, and I feel like I spoiled myself.

I know what's going to happen now. It's like when I watch a trailer that is too revealing of the movie, and I feel like, oh, I should not have watched that. I should have waited for the theater. Well, now I read the Baseball Perspectives previews. I read the Fangraphs previews. I read some Joe Sheehan preview content. I read some Joe Posnanski preview content.

And now I just know how it's all going to end. And why even bother? I just, I couldn't wait. I was so excited for the playoffs to start. I just, I thought I'll just read a couple previews. It'll just be a taste. It won't actually ruin anything. And now I just feel like I know exactly who's going to win and exactly how it's going to happen. So don't make the same mistake that I did. Wait until the playoffs start, because otherwise, before first pitch, you'll just know how it's gonna go i have only read our previews and i will admit to you ben i haven't even read all of them that's what happens when you have an editorial like team you don't have to edit all the stuff yourself because john edited some of them i don't know why i'm yelling but like i was so busy editing our previews and other uh sundry content that went up today, so many things at Fangraphs.com that I haven't read other people's previews. I'm sure they're all excellent. Are there any points of disagreement amongst the various prognosticators that you read today? agreement is that no one actually thinks they know anything, which is wise. And I was kidding about being spoiled because I have no idea what will happen. No one does. None of us does. So

I am looking forward to it. I am familiar with some strengths and weaknesses and some players who had surprisingly good or bad seasons I had not paid that close attention to. But no, there's no way to spoil the postseason with previews the way that one can with a movie. And it's tough because it's a three-game series. Right. So if it were a one-game wildcard series, if you can call that a series, you probably can't, then no one would probably even bother to do previews. I guess we've had wildcard previews before because we have-

Yeah, what are you talking about? probably even bother to do previews. I guess we've had wildcard previews before because we have Zips projections and we have Pakoda projections and we have people pretending that they can predict something about a single game. I guess the lesson is that there will be preview content no matter what the format because people want to read it. See, here's the thing, Ben. People, they want to read the preview content. Websites, they want to run some content. It is the perfect, Ben. People, they want to read the preview content. Websites, they want to run some content. It is the perfect, it is like two great tastes that taste great together.

You give the people what they want, they give you a click or perhaps a purchase a membership. Everybody walks away happy. There's no shame in it. I think the people, when it was one game, properly caveated that like it's one game, like it happened in one game, weird stuff happens in the one game properly caveated that like it's one game well i can have it one game where where stuff happens in the one game and now we're like it's three games where stuff happens in the three games but here are some of the things that could happen based on guys uh having done stuff in more than three games you know seems seems fine yeah it is very difficult to evaluate teams

in the playoffs and actually identify some sort of X's and O's, strengths and weaknesses that are not incredibly obvious or that actually pertain to that specific matchup. And there are only so many ways you can go with that. There are a few strategies, you can try to drill down and look at, say, pitch type performance. So this team is good against fastballs. This team is bad against fastballs. Although I don't know how predictive that actually is. I seem to recall Sam writing about that and maybe not being persuaded that it was so predictive. This team hits good velocity well. Well, I don't know. Maybe now the sample size would be bigger because there's so much good velocity, but you can do that. or there's a lot of platoon content.

This team hits well against righties. This team hits well against lefties. Here's some important matchups that this reliever might have against this righty-leaning lineup, let's say. I may be thinking specifically about the Mariners and the Blue Jays and their righty-leaning lineup. But, of course, as Joshian sometimes says, variance swamps everything. So all you can do is just point to it. You know, often it ends up,

you're just kind of like listing the good players. Right, yeah. Like this team's got this guy, he's pretty good. And this team, they've got that guy. Now he's pretty good too. So there's only so much insight you can offer. But I thought that the FedGraphs previews that I read did their best with an impossible task. It's like an umpire behind home plate. You know that they

can't call all the pitches correctly. They're just not good enough. The human eye cannot actually see the pitches across the plate at the exact moment that they do with enough clarity to catch everything perfectly. And of course, the human prognosticator cannot prognosticate correctly about a three game series. But you can at least make people familiar with the players and some of the storylines. And that can be fun. And it's a way that you can waste half an hour at work if you're at the office. Yeah, I think that like, you know, it's it's sort of like the Taylorlor tomlinson joke about father's day cards it's like this is a game these are some baseball players here is a series you know like you're just like this is these are the guys who are gonna be there and some of them will do well and others of

them will do poorly some untold number across all of them will uh you know like how do we want to say be boring but we don't want to predict that because we're hoping everyone's really jazzed and excited. So there you go. Yeah. What I've gleaned from reading a lot of these previews is that you have a best of three series here. All you have to do is win two games.

And almost every team has two good starters, at least, where you feel pretty good about the top couple of guys. And there are some teams where depth is their strength. Of course, you can point to, say, the Mariners again and say, oh, they have four pretty good starting pitchers and they can't use them all, at least not as starters in this series. So that's leaving a little advantage on the table potentially. But there are a lot of teams where you look at the top two or top three and you say, well, I don't want to face them. You could be on your ass out of the playoffs before

you know what happened to you. And you just played for six months to get there. And then you ran into Shane Bieber and Tristan McKenzie or Alec Manoa and Kevin Gossman or on and on. Every team, almost every team has a couple of guys, whether it's Aaron Nola and Zach Wheeler. It's like, oh, this could be over really quickly. Because all they have to do is win those two games. Again, groundbreaking analysis that I'm providing here. You got to win two out of three.

What? Yeah. See, it's a three-game series. The team that wins two will advance. What? Yeah, so you've got to win two before- But not just one? You have to win two? They don't have to be consecutive.

Oh, so you don't have to win- You could win the first one and then lose the second. You might play three even though you only have to win two. Exactly. Yeah, you might have to- It's so complicated. Yeah, it's complicated. No, it is.

This is the level of analysis you can expect out of Technically Wild this month. How long can we do the bit before people turn off the pod? It's tough. It's a tough month because it's a fun month. It's an exciting month. But it's also the month when, not that we're offering analysis of a high level on every episode that is, you know, prescient and predicting the future. Sometimes we're just talking about nonsense. A lot of the time.

My teeth, you know, for 20 minutes have bothered at least one person. It wasn't that long, was it? I don't even. It doesn't seem that long in my mind. Ben, I don't go back and listen to the podcast. Are you kidding? I only have so many hours in the day. Yeah, most of them are spent recording the podcast.

Right, exactly. If I were to listen back to all of our pods after having recorded them, I am doubling my podcast time. And arguably, I spend exactly as much, if not too much time on the pod already. I will say though, that I really like this playoff field. And I made this point the other day.

And I mentioned some of the high points of the players I was feeling very optimistic and positive too, where he said that this playoff field is maybe the greatest in an MLB postseason ever. And what I was getting at is that you just got so many teams in there that you can find good stories and fun players. And that's the upside of this new playoff format. David is higher on this playoff format than I am. But I think we agree that because there's all this variety, it's like, oh yeah, I could root for them. If they advanced, that would be fun. It's just more of a sampler, a bigger platter of appetizers here, where I say, oh, this is a nice little amuse-bouche, and now I want to see the rest of

this team continue to play in the playoffs. And unfortunately, we will have to bid farewell to some of them quite quickly. But as he noted, you have the powerhouses. So you have the New York teams, right? If you're a New Yorker and you care about that kind of thing, most of the rest of the country probably does not. But you have some potential for a Subway series and there's the rivalry there. And both of those teams are pretty good. And you have the teams that everyone loves to hate. You have the Yankees. You have the Dodgers. And even though the Dodgers are a super team, as we have discussed, and they won 111 games and they had the highest run differential since the 1930s, they still feel vulnerable, as we have noted,

because of some injuries and shorthandedness. And it just, it feels like they could be beaten, which you could say about every team in every postseason, but more so than you would think with a 111 win team. So no one feels invincible, even by baseball standards. And yet you have some really good teams. You have some good storylines. You have the Dodgers-Astros rivalry, such as it is. You have Atlanta potentially repeating and really just pouring it on and overtaking the Mets. And then you also have Aaron Judge, a notable player of this regular season. He's still in the playoffs. And who knows what he will do and how many home runs he will hit and add to the story of the season. And then you have the Cardinals. And look, a lot of non-Cardinals fans, they're

sick of seeing the Cardinals in the playoffs every October. You got to hand it to them. You got to tip your cap. But a lot of people would prefer to tip the Cardinals out of the playoffs entirely, except that this year, how can you root against the Cardinals? I mean, very easily, I'm sure. But Albert Pujols, Yair Molina, Adam Wainwright potentially too. These guys going out together, one last ride. Pujols, not just a sentimental story, but actually good and important to this playoff team. Yeah. Just a lot of good storylines.

And as I noted, of course, you have the Mariners and you have the Phillies, teams that have not been in it for a long time. And you have teams that have not won it ever with the Rays and the Mariners and the Padres and the Guardians for an extremely long time. So just a lot that I'm kind of looking forward to. And that's not analysis of who's going to win this series and what's the strength and what's the weakness. But I think it does just speak to, hey, we're in for a pretty fun ride here. Rookies too. A lot of really good rookies this year, just more rookies than ever. More players debuted this year than in any previous season by a lot. And also, as I will be writing shortly, there have been just a ton of prospects promoted this season, like an unprecedented number in the prospect ranking era. And so I guess it stands to reason that if you have a whole bushel of big leaguers come up and a lot of them are highly touted, that you would also have a really strong crop of good

productive rookies too. And a lot of them, most of them are in the playoffs. And so you can look forward to hopefully seeing Spencer Strider at some point, and Michael Harris, and Julio, and Stephen Kwan, and Brendan Donovan, and the list goes on. Like, lots of new fresh faces who are pretty important contributors. So I am quite excited for this. Not so much for trying to figure out something useful and insightful to say about specific series or games once we get down to the game level yeah that always feels to me like okay this is what we just we do we switch over into this mindset in october yeah but it would feel so foreign to do that during the regular season even though there's only so much more you can glean from a single playoff game than a single

regular season game so it's gonna be weird it going to be wild and busy and hectic. And we will just try to keep pace because especially in the early rounds, there's no convenient time to record a podcast that is not immediately out of date. Yeah, I think our approach, well, for the wild card, our approach is going to be that we are going to record on on sunday at some time you know sometime on sunday depending on what unfolds tomorrow and saturday because ben did you know you have to win two games oh right oh yeah i think i read this in one of the right reviews two but they don't have to be in a row and so right it's possible that there will be games on sunday if teams don't

win two in a row but still have to win two games as they have to do you know they have to win got it but not in a row so we will record sometime on sunday depending on stuff like if if everybody wins two in a row who's gonna win two then we'll just do a little recap and maybe look ahead to the division series. Nice and easy. Right. But if not, then we will record and some number of series will be undetermined. And we will just do our level best. We'll give it the old college try.

We'll give it a try. We'll give it some kind college try. We'll give it a try. We'll give it some kind of try. Right. Yeah. I mean, it's tough also because you wonder what the shelf life is of a podcast that is either previewing a series that will be over by the time that people realize that the podcast is published or you're talking retrospectively about a game or a series and everyone's moved on to the next one. As opposed to our typical podcasts, which just infinite shelf life. I mean, just evergreen, like, you know, bronze it and just put it on the shelf in the museum or stick it in amber, pull it out in centuries.

It will be just as relevant and trenchant as it ever was. But the sole exception to that is in October when we actually tried to keep pace with the playoffs and it's impossible. So yeah, I just, you know, talk about some storylines, some interesting things that happened that may not be what do you think will happen in this game that will be over by the time you download and listen to the podcast. We'll do our best. This is not our first rodeo. We have been through the playoffs before. This is not our first rodeo. No.

We have been through the playoffs before. Yeah. And, you know, this is so nice, Ben, because last year, for very good reason, you were, you know, only a partial participant in postseason coverage. That's right. I got out of the playoff pageant almost entirely. And I, you know, remain so happy for you guys that you got to spend time with your beautiful baby. And also, I will admit selfishlyly this is much easier for me and i think you know delightful for our listeners that they get to hear your keen insights like for instance that you have to win two out of three games in a three game series so i think that it is to everyone's benefit that you guys decided not

to reproduce again uh at least right now. You know, I'm not going to have any kind of opinion about your future choices, but this one was conveniently timed. So good job. Yes, yes. Congratulations on the lack of procreative sex. Thank you. So I do have something non-playoff related to share here.

non-playoff related to share here. I landed an exclusive direct message interview with the author of Steven Vogt's Wikipedia page. Yeah. Getting the big guests here. You're not going to get these scoops anywhere else.

One day it's Scott Boris. One day it's Ben Gibbard. One day it is the author of Steven Vogt's Wikipedia page. And I thought this would be timely because Stephen Vogt just retired. He just played his last game. He homered in his last game. Yes. Nice way to go out. And Patrick Dubuque wrote a little baseball eulogy for him at Baseball Prospectus. People like Stephen Vogt. They just they like the guy. Yeah. I'll read a little bit here from Patrick,

who said, Vogt was an average baseball player and an average guy, which was why the Oakland faithful treasured him. Whatever barriers between the fans and the players seemed to waver near him. When he roamed right field as a rookie, the fans created a chant for him. We believe in Stephen Vogt. The simplicity of it made it work. Sports are so false. We create so much hype, so much drama, wrap everything in a thousand layers to make ourselves smart or dumb and excited. With Vogt, it was never necessary. Just salt of the earth, Stephen Vogt. And I know A's fans were happy to have a recognizable player back on that team. And this came to our attention some years back. I know that we mentioned it on an episode, gosh, I think it was in 2016, potentially. There was a stat blast about the longest Wikipedia player pages for baseball players. And we had run some analysis or a listener had at the time and had determined just the longest word counts and also the number of bytes on the page, like just the number of data. And unsurprisingly, Babe Ruth's Wikipedia page, I think, had the most bytes and the most words. But Stephen Vogt was up there, you know, higher than you would expect Stephen Vogt to be.

And not only that, but we couldn't count the citations, the references at the bottom of the page. So you have to scroll and scroll and scroll. It is the most thorough, comprehensive Wikipedia page you may have ever seen, certainly for a baseball player, but maybe for anything. I'm still scrolling. It goes down and down and down. There are currently 340 references on the Stephen Vogt Wikipedia page. 340? 340.

Yeah. You made that up. No. It must be every piece published in Stephen Vogt's life about Stephen Vogt. It is basically an account of what he was doing every second of his life, of his day. And it is just the most thorough accounting of someone's existence that you can imagine. And Stephen Vogt, why Stephen Vogt? We wondered, or at least I wondered at the time. So I have gotten in touch with the author who was tweeting about this, and I was copied on the tweets at some point. And his name is Colin McAvoy. And I just messaged him in honor of Stephen Vogt's retirement. And I said, you wrote the famous Stephen Vogt Wikipedia page. What? He said he didn't know about famous, but yes.

And he also wrote the Stephen Matz Wikipedia page, which is similarly long and exhaustive. And that was on the list somewhere toward the top of the leaderboard too. And so I conducted a little Twitter Q&A here with Colin just about what moved him to make the Wikipedia pages for Stephen Vogt and Stephen Matz. Yeah. Is it just Stevens? Is there something else that they have in common here? And what moved him to make them so incredibly comprehensive? And I'll just share a few things that he shared with me.

So he says he hasn't edited in a few years, sadly. It's a hobby, but his Wikipedia activity ebbs and flows. He had kids, made it tougher, but he'd love to get back into it and will eventually. Those are actually the only two baseball players he's done, Vogt and Matz. He did a hockey player named Jesper or Jesper Fast, and also an article about a season of the Hershey Bears AHL team, a hockey team. And if you look at it, you can see Colin has a signature style. They're just like whatever he is going to make a Wikipedia page about, there are going to be many, many citations and references. And he says that the 2012 to 2013 Hershey Bears season is probably more detailed

than most season articles about actual NHL teams. He's not just limited to sports, though. Most of his editing, not sports, lots of pop cultures and movies and TV and music and Star Wars. So we talked about Star Wars a little bit, but he has an archive here. His Wikipedia username, it looks like, is Hunter Kahn, and most of the stuff that he has worked on is listed. And there are a lot of green circles and yellow stars to indicate that these were peer-reviewed and deemed to be high quality and awarded designations, good article and featured article. So I asked, why vote and Matt's? And he said, it's funny because I'm a Mets fan and there are plenty of players I like more than those guys, but sometimes I just get it in my head to write about a somewhat random topic and it's off to the races. Vote,

I just always liked. Good player, but as I read about him, I saw he's also a good dude for his team behind the scenes, always helping his teammates out. Funny guy. And of course, a fan favorite in Oakland. He just seemed like an interesting guy to research and write about. Mats, I wrote about because I went to a Mets game in 2019 where he threw a Maddox. And he really impressed me. And it just ended up leading to me reading about him and writing the article. He used to be a reporter. He co-wrote a couple of true crime books with his wife.

So he enjoys researching and reporting and writing and he understands sourcing and attribution. And he tends to get obsessive about his hobbies, something I would know nothing about, can't identify at all. And he says that makes Wikipedia a good fit for him. So I asked 340 references, how long does that take? So he did not create the page. He just dramatically expanded it. And he says it took him about a month maybe just to build out the full Stephen Vogt Wikipedia experience. And he can't track all the edits because he did most of the writing outside of Wikipedia and then added it all in. But there is an archived before and after photo of the state of the page before and after he layered in all these references. When he found it, it was 30 references and about 1,100 words. And when he left it, it was 332 references and about 8,000 words. So he finished writing it in December 2019. So I guess we talked about it maybe a few years ago, not several years ago.

And it was nominated for a good article in May 2020. And then he made some minor edits there. Actually, he says they made him remove some stuff because they said there was too much detail, TMI, about Steven Vogt. Really? And he has not really continued to keep it up to date since then. He feels derelict in his duties, but he really did a thorough job. And I asked him if he still, a few years after this, feels like an authority on Steven Vogt, at least on Stephen Vogt's life up through 2019. And he says, well, I've got to be fairly high on the list at least, which is probably true.

I don't know if anybody has written a biography of Stephen Vogt, but this is basically it. And he said part of him hoped that Vogt or Matz would contact him and tell him that they read it. But that hasn't happened. He says he has had that happen before with other people he has edited Wikipedia articles about, say, actors, for instance. Some of them sent him autographs to say thank you for the thorough curation of their pages. And I would say, Stephen Vote, if this message reaches you, I think Colin would not say no to a token of your appreciation. I think maybe a signed baseball or something could be in order here. And glad that I could connect here with Colin. Like, they're just, you know, more references than I think probably any baseball player you could find, any extremely notable baseball player. And this has been kind of a question in my mind. I guess I could have reached out to Colin or contacted him through Wikipedia potentially earlier, but it was always kind of in the back of my brain. I wonder why, Stephen Vogt. I wonder what person would apply this level of diligence to Stephen Vogt's

Wikipedia page. And now I know, Colin Mccavoy wow it's um it's just you know i've often thought about like how little interest i would have in a person i don't know chronicling my life but also i'm not a famous person and i'm not a professional athlete so like you know it would feel stranger to me because i just do this podcast and like write words on the internet sometimes so like you know i'm occupying a different strata of knownness than steven vote and so i would imagine that if you are in a strata of knownness as steven vote is like it would be nice to have someone do it well because otherwise you get all this nonsense on the internet

to the extent that there's anything on the internet about you at all. So I think it's a nice thing to really do a job well. It's good to commit to an honest chronicling of a person and to be receptive to the feedback that it's like, I don't need people to know this much about me, so can you take that part out? It strikes me as the right balance on this sort of thing everyone i know in baseball who has interacted with steven vote for any length of time at all thinks that he's just like one of the truly good baseball guys and that he is almost certainly destined

to manage for potentially a long time that going to require some sourcing and citation needed on that one. Well, I can't give away my sources, Ben. Well, there will have to be many more references added if he starts a second career as a major league manager. Well, it appears in his Wikipedia that there is mention of him wanting to manage. Oh, of course. How now? Hoisted on your own petard, aren't you?

Colin has anticipated that second phase of his career. That doesn't surprise me. Yeah, right. He's a player where you look at his war and you just sort of shrug because he's been a big leaguer for quite some time but has not amassed high wars. And yet he has left an impact on the people he played with and played in front of, just people like Stephen Vogt. And Colin McAvoy was moved to adorn his Wikipedia page with hundreds and hundreds of references.

He actually did this for Rose Tico, also the Star Wars character from the sequel trilogy, gave her the full Colin McAvoy treatment. She didn't have a Wikipedia page, which seems like a big oversight. And he felt that this was a wrong that should be righted. And I agree. And so now Rose Tico has a longer page than Luke Skywalker and Han Solo combined. So just making up for J.J. Abrams not giving her any lines in The Rise of Skywalker. Now she has a longer Wikipedia page than some of the core characters.

So, you know, your mileage may vary and your appetite for Rose Tico Wikipedia content or Stephen Vogt or Stephen Matt's Wikipedia content may vary. But it's one of the wonders of the world in the niche part of the internet world that we are in, the Stephen Vogt Wikipedia page. And so farewell, Stephen Vogt. I wish you a happy, quote unquote, retirement, except that you probably will not be retiring. You'll be retiring as a player but then transitioning into the next phase of your baseball career which i am confident will be chronicled by colin or someone else at your wikipedia page well i'm just happy that someone is treating rose tico

with some care and affection yeah it's a lot of other nonsense out there associated with Port Rose. She got short shrift by JJ. We're not going to unpack the short shrift that JJ issued to many a Star Wars character, but she got short shrift and there's been a lot of nastiness. So I'm glad that her Wikipedia is so loving and extensive because goodness knows that- That was part of Colin's motivation for tackling that task, yeah. I need some counterbalancing to other nonsense. That's what I have to say.

Love you, Rose. Alright, so you want to offer any general impressions or thoughts or feelings about these matchups? I guess we could start with your mariners, maybe, because I'm sure you have some feelings of some sort on that subject. So just to recap, you got your Mariners versus your Blue Jays.

You got your Rays versus your Guardians. You got your Phillies versus your Cardinals. And you got your Padres versus your Mets. Fine teams all, fine matchups all. But as we have covered, one of the teams in each of those series will win two of the first three. The upshot is that the team that does not win two will then be eliminated and will not be able to play baseball games anymore. Yeah. Well, look, here's my main thought about this playoff field.

I feel pretty uncertain. I've not always been right in the past, but I have felt more certain in the past. Does that make sense? So there's that piece of it. But also, did you know that the Seattle Mariners are playing playoff baseball tomorrow, Ben? That's wild.

I am not ready. We tackled this to some degree when we talked to Jordan, so I don't need to belabor the point, but I expect to be pretty thoroughly miserable for the next, hopefully. Well, it's like, do I hope that it's three days because that implies a competitive series? Do I hope that it's only two days implying that the Seattle Mariners

have swept the Toronto Blue Jays? That seems unlikely to me. I think that Blue Jays team is pretty good. Even though I think that some of their pitching in the past has been not good, I think that a lot of their pitching has been good. I'm very afraid of that lineup for Seattle, even though they also have good pitching. I worry about Cleveland being able to score runs, but I think

that Cleveland's pitching is really superlative, and so I worry about the Rays being able to score runs. I don't want to give away all my predictions. We're going to run a predictions post tomorrow at Fangraphs. I have to do that when we're done recording. Remind me. Got to do that. Also, I have to settle my rookie of the year vote. I have changed my mind 20 different times today, Ben. Yeah, you're running out of time.

I'm running out of time. I have to do it before first pitch of the first game tomorrow, or I'm going to have some explaining to do, and then I will probably not get a vote ever again. So there's that. But anyway, what are my general thoughts? I, like you, am not a huge fan of this format. I was not in favor of expansion for reasons that we've already talked about, so I won't talk about it again. But I will say this, Ben. I'm going to say the following, which is that I'm really excited

to watch all of these particular teams play postseason baseball. Yeah. You know, I'm thinking that this is a very fun and exciting field. There are some teams that are not in this field where if they were, I'd be like, cool, welcome, happy to see you, White Sox. Like, what happened to you? I mean, we know all the things but like whoa or angels you know i'd be like wow angels good to see you excited to see mike trout excited to see showy otani get a playoff start but guess what we're not gonna we're not gonna get that we are instead going to get a number of

teams that are very fun and exciting. I'm trying to decide if there's one. Or like the Brewers would be happy to see the Brewers back. Or, you know, we don't have to talk about the teams that aren't going. What are you doing, Meg? None of those teams are in the stupid playoffs. So talk about the ones that are. I'm going to ask you a question so that I stop rambling.

What matchup in the wild card round are you most excited? Like not specific, like pitchers against one another, although you could talk about that too, I guess, but which, which team, which series are you the most excited to sit down and really,

you know, like squish the couch down and be like, I'm watching this. I think it probably is Mariners Blue Jays. Oh no, Ben, it's going to be the end of the world. The only downside is that I would prefer for both of those teams

to play a little longer, and that is not a possibility. No. But they are skilled in very different ways, I guess you could say, and so it's kind of a fun matchup in that sense in that, yeah, the Blue Jays lineup will just grind you down. It's pretty good from top to bottom. Yes. Even though Vlad has not quite been the Vlad of last year and of late has not even been the Vlad of earlier this year.

But there's still just a ton of firepower in that lineup. And there are not a lot of holes whereas with the mariners there are some holes there are at least some spots that are not strengths let's say so there's that but the mariners i would be much more afraid of their bullpen than i would be of the Blue Jays in front of Romano. But also I would be somewhat afraid of Manoa and Gossman. That's kind of a scary top two. Whereas I guess I would be less intimidated by any two of the Mariners starters. I would feel better about any three of them perhaps. And certainly any four of them.

But they can't play four in this particular series and really like I guess you've got to start Robbie Ray because he's Robbie Ray and he is well known and he was your big addition and everything and he's you know he's been better he's been fine

but that lineup is extremely righty heavy the Blue Jays lineup and that just seems like not But that lineup is extremely righty heavy, the Blue Jays lineup. And that just seems like not an ideal matchup. So I don't know that you could actually avoid this really just given all that goes into who gets starting assignments in the postseason. But I might have a somewhat quicker hook than one would normally for a pitcher of that stature and salary and so forth. Just because this particular matchup, it does not seem conducive to Robbie Ray's success. Right. So, like, if it were me, it would not.

He would just be like, I got a cough and I can't because I have a cough. Or, like, we could, because you don't want to put him on the injured list because then he's not available for the division series that they might play. So, you know, but like you want to, he could have a migraine, you know, like that's believable because if you have, I can't imagine a worse place to be

than a playoff sporting event. If you had a migraine, I would simply prefer to become a ghost, you know, personally. So like they should be like, oh, he unfortunately has a migraine. And simply prefer to become a ghost you know personally so like they should be like oh he unfortunately has a migraine and so what do we do except instead have logan gilbert start and then george grady right you know if it were me like but i don't get to have a say because i don't have anything to do with it you know know? I'm just a person podcasting, really. On the other hand, though, you might have some good matchups in the bullpen

if you do have a fairly aggressive hook, as you probably should in this series. I mean, you have some pretty nasty guys who would be good fits for those late-inning right-on-right matchups. I mean, you have your Seawalds and your Diego Castillos and your Eric Swansons and your Penn Murphys. And, of course, your Andres Munoz. And these guys, kind of scary probably for Blue Jays fans in the late innings in a close game. There might be some vulnerability there.

Not that I think the Blue Jays have had a huge platoon split themselves as far as I recall. Like, they're just a good lineup. There's just a bunch of good hitters. They can hit righties. But if you have some tough righties coming in who themselves will have some platoon advantage, they're still, you know, it's not going to nullify their offensive advantage, but it might mitigate it somewhat. So that's sort of the the saving grace yeah yeah i

mean it's just like a very fearsome lineup now what i would maybe point out if i wanted to be fatalistic about stuff is that like the seattle bullpen has not been as effective lately you know as it had been for a while like it was like wow and now it's like it's fine so but it's also like it's just recent i don't know what to do with my hands while i'm talking about this i don't know how to analyze the mariners in the postseason having a breakdown i just know that like my logical brain knows that there are places in this series where like seattle matches up to their own benefit like really well and there are places where it's less good but like the feelings part of my brain is like they're gonna get swept and then i'm gonna be sad so that's clouding

the logical part i wonder you know if i'm the marin, I feel very nervous about really everyone in this lineup hitting. Well, that's not totally true. Julio is great in Ty Francis' moments, and Mitch has been not good lately, but whatever. And then Eugenio Suarez has looked pretty okay since coming back from the injured list, and of course they have Big Dumper. So why am I doubting anything?

But there are vulnerabilities to be exploited here because you're going to get Adam Frazier and Jared Kelnick is going to have to take- Yeah, Winker's out, right? Right. Winker is out probably for the rest of the postseason. Sam Haggerty, poor Sam Haggerty. I was just reminded that Tom Murphy was at one point on this baseball team, which was a really long time ago.

So I don't know that I've said anything particularly insightful here other than I feel nervous, and it's manifesting as tingling behind my eyes, which I hope doesn't mean that I'm about to get a migraine. Well, we can move on to the next series because you're going to be suffering enough strain as it is this weekend, I imagine. It's going to be so miserable. I have had this thought at various points over the last couple of years when we have

had really tense games. Do you remember, Ben, that postseason where the Dodgers and the Red Sox played a game that lasted approximately two years? Yeah. It was like a 97 inning long game. I think that it almost killed Rob Manford. I think he would prefer to have been a ghost throughout some of that. That was what radicalized him. That was his super villain origin story that led to the zombie runner. He became the Joker. Anyway, so I remember thinking during that game, I've remembered thinking about this during tense moments throughout the last couple of years of postseason play, like, wow, am I glad that this isn't a team I care about personally doing this. And now I've let my dumb human feelings return and I am about to be miserable. Do you know how you're going to do it? Are you going to try to just immerse yourself in a second screen experience? Are you going to be like on Mariner's Twitter kind of commiserating with everyone and trying to spread the anxiety

around? Or are you going to be like in a little isolation pod? I don't know. That's a good question. I mean, for at least one of, let's see, what am I going to do? What a good question i mean for at least one of let's see what am i gonna do what a good question what am i gonna do like we've only had 20 years to think about it it's my plan man like you know what am i gonna do with myself i think that i will start fix yourself a stiff drink perhaps maybe that would help no i don't i don't think that will help because i have to i also i have to work you know there's that yeah there is that so i have to like be able to edit people what am i gonna do well i i have two tvs in the living room so it'll be a two-screen experience regardless because you know there's so much baseball i've got to watch all of it. Again, because it is my job. So I think that what I will probably do is not be on Twitter

unless it's really happy. And then I might check in and see how people are doing. If it's really sad, I don't know that I need to compound it with the anxiety machine in my pocket. So there's that piece of it. But yeah, plus it's the middle of the day. That game starts in the middle of the day for me. So that's also a bad, I don't know that I want to be making cocktails

because I got to work and also it's the middle of the day. Right. So anyway, I'm very excited for the Mets and the Padres. I might be numb by the time that game starts because of the Mariners game presumably being, if not concluded in the waning hours of it, unless we get a nightmare game that lasts forever. But anyway, I'm going to just watch the baseball and maybe eat some of my own hair.

We'll just have to see how it goes. The last time that i watched playoff baseball that concerned the seattle mariners i was in high school like i was wearing well i was wearing flare jeans and those are back now i'm given to understand so maybe everything is just the same but i was like you know barely a person i was still technically uh i was a minor you know i wasn't a child anymore, but I was like a young person. I thought I was going to be a lawyer, you know, all sorts of things are different now, Ben. Yeah. Yeah. Everything comes back into style after 20 years, right? Including the

Mariners making the playoffs back in style now. So it's the fashion once again. And I am also excited for that Ets Padres series. And again, Mets, really good. Should not be overlooked because they ended up just slightly finishing behind the Braves who were maybe better. This is still one of the best teams in baseball and one of the best Mets teams we've seen. There are some concerns about that top two. I mean, that's what I'm talking about. Every team, almost every team is a scary top two. You go into that series and you're facing Scherzer and then potentially they hold DeGrom back for a game three or they hope that they don't have to pitch him in game three and

he could just start the division series if you win game one. But potentially you have Scherzer and de grom back to back not that chris bassett is any slouch but you know those guys they're getting on in years they are not the most durable and they will miss some time here and there and de grom has been what is for him a disconcerting stretch it has not been a great few starts to finish the season, and everyone's just kind of constantly in a state of alarm and anxiety about Jacob deGrom because he's the best when he is on the mound, but you're just constantly fearful that he won't be. But as far as we know, he will, and hopefully that will just be a little blip, and then you get playoff deGrom and Scherzer,

be a little blip and then you get playoff to Graham and Scherzer and there's no better top two than those guys if they are reasonably healthy and energetic, which is not a given at this stage. But you look at the Padres and it's like, well, look at what Yu Darvish has done this year. He's had one of his best seasons and look at what Blake Snell has done for months now. Right. And I have not been that big a fan of Blake Snell as a pitcher, partly because I have just found him frustrating to watch at times because he just like he nibbles a lot and he goes for chases. It's not efficient. No, it's not efficient. And, you know, he doesn't go deep into games and we don't have to rehash the whole Blake

Snell being pulled in the postseason thing. We may encounter that again soon, but he has been really great and has thrown hard and has just looked like his best self a lot lately. And then you got Joe Musgrove, who's really good too. So again, like many teams cannot muster an impressive four or five pitcher rotation, but two or three, yeah, most of them, if they made it this far, they can handle that. So I think you got to give the edge to the Mets here because of the top two starters and just because the lineup as a whole is strong. It's fearsome. It is. It is. It's not quite as intimidating as, let's say, the Bougies lineup, but it is similarly lacking holes. And it's maybe more

pesky than powerful, but not exactly pesky in the way that the Guardians are pesky. They're like the rich man's guardians or something, like sort of the same in that they make contact, not as much as the Guardians do, but they get hit by a lot of baseballs and they can also hit for some power. It's maybe a bit of a more well-rounded, well-balanced lineup with fewer holes in the bottom of it, but a fair amount of contact too. Obviously, they miss starring Marte. There was an update a couple hours ago about starring Marte and the reporters asked Billy Epler, was he able to grip things today? And Billy Epler said he can grip things.

So congrats to Starling Marte on being able to grip things. He has not been ruled out for this series, although clearly he's still seemingly compromised by that injury. If it's a victory that he can grip things. But he is a big addition to that team. So not having him lately, that's been a blow, but it's still just a pretty deep lineup. And I would definitely give them my vote of confidence over the Padres who just, you know, been a bit spotty, have not quite gotten what they wanted and expected out of some of their big additions. And I guess we should do a final 2022 regular season Joey Manessis versus Juan Soto update because now the numbers are set in

stone forever. All he had to do was outlast Juan Soto's numbers with the Padres for a couple months and he actually did do that. And he ended up hitting quite a bit better with the Nationals after Juan Soto was traded than Juan Soto did with the Padres. So 156 WRC plus for Joey Manessis, 13 homers in 240 plate appearances. In contrast to Juan Soto as a Padre, 228 plate appearances, a mere six homers. So Joey Manessis more than doubled the home run output of Juan Soto. And Juan Soto had a respectable 130 WRC plus with the Padres, but just not with the power or even the batting average that you expect. But it would not surprise anyone if he were a dominant force in these playoffs or if Manny Machado was. And there's just a lot of talent on that team, but maybe a few more holes, a few more vulnerabilities.

And I would have to give the edge to the Mets in this series for all that that is worth, which is not a whole lot again. And Ben, can you help me understand? How many games do they have to win in that series? People are going to be like, stop, don't do this bit again. I'll go over this one more time. We're going to get emails about this bit. I can already tell. You got to win two. So if the Mets were to, say, win Max Scherzer's start, they could then press the advantage and they could go for the kill and they

could deploy Jacob deGrom because, you see, if they won the Jacob deGrom game, it would be over oh yeah that would be it okay we just advance to the next round or they could see if they could win with Chris Bassett and maybe hold Jacob de Grom for the first game of the next series right and then potentially get two de Grom starts right in that series right against the Dodgers wow just so everyone's clear on the fundamentals you know just I don't want to take anything for granted. We might have some new listeners and people who are new for baseball who are wondering, so how many games do you have to win again? And we got you covered here.

You're welcome. But then we should warn those listeners and we will go over these fundamentals again next series. Oh, yeah. If you advance, everything changes. Yeah, you have to win more games that's the confusing thing yeah because you you feel like okay i've got it down two out of three they told me repeatedly that this is the way it works and then people are going to get mad at us because then if you get to the division series you get to the championship series it's a whole new ball gamegame. So it's many more ballgames that you have to win. So it's for this weekend, just so everyone is clear. And we will update you after that on how many games you have to win in subsequent rounds.

Okay. Well, it's good. That's good that we're here to give people an update. Yes. Now, the Reyes and Guardian series is kind of interesting to me because those teams are mirror images of each other almost in some ways. They're probably the most evenly matched maybe of the teams or at least the most similar in some respects. And some of that is the meta narrative about these teams and the player development and the low payroll and the way that they tend to operate, but also some hallmarks of the team itself. The Guardians, it would not surprise me at all if they went on a little frisky run over the next few weeks. That would not shock

me. I think that the Rays, it's tough because I just I don't know that I like their offense either particularly. And Joe Sheehan made this point that the Guardians just don't give up a lot of hits. They have a good defense and the Rays just kind of, you know, the playoffs, at least Joe's theory and my theory generally is you want short sequence offenses. You want to just be able to have a bloop and a blast or at least a blast. And this year's team, not so much. They don't score that many of their runs on homers. Now, neither do the Guardians, of course. I was hip to the fact that Yandy Diaz has had himself quite a season, sort of an unusual season, but offensively.

As he has wanted to do. Yeah. But things kind of came together for him. Again, like you look at Yandy Diaz and you did not expect that to be a man who has nine home runs. But despite the nine home runs, he does have a 146 WRC plus this season, which was higher than I would have guessed if you had asked me a few hours ago how high was Yandy Diaz's WRC Plus. And he has walked a good deal more often than he has struck out. Again, not the power output that one would expect of a gentleman of his build. That's why he's ground beef. Exactly.

Right. We have nicknamed him and i cannot say that it is cut on but we're keeping it alive here but we named him that because he hits a lot of ground balls and he still does hit a fair amount although i guess fewer than he has in in some past seasons so that's encouraging and maybe that's part of why he has hit better, if not necessarily for a whole lot more power. But they have him and they have Franco and they have some other pretty decent players, but it's not a some really good players toward the top of that lineup or in the top two thirds. And then you get to the bottom and it's like, well, see, this is where it would have been nice to maybe make a trade or make a signing because this team was obviously good enough to get here, but there still are some holes that you would think could have been shored up and they'd look a lot more intimidating. But it's a good defense and it's a good bullpen. And you've got Bieber and you've got McKenzie and that's enough to win the requisite, there's been some research that shows that high contact teams tend to fare a little better than you would expect just because maybe they do a bit better against good velocity that you tend not have to rely on stringing together singles and playing small ball, which the Guardians do. And maybe it is smart for them to do it. Maybe that is the way

that they maximize their production with the players that they have on hand, or maybe it wasn't a conscious choice, like, hey, let's do this because it's the best way that we can play. It's just those are the kind of players that they have. I guess it's probably a little bit of both. But they are pesky. But during the playoffs, it's nice to just bop one once in a while. And they don't bop one all that often. Yeah. It's not that it's the only way to score in the postseason.

But it does seem to be. I mean, this is going to sound silly. But you know what I mean. Like a consistently impactful way. It's important to be able to hit a long ball when you need a long ball because contact is hard to come by. So, you know, they're not necessarily optimized for postseason play, but it's not like they have no one in their lineup who can hit a home run.

It's just that it's not their primary means of scoring. And it, you know, doesn't – I don't know that Jose Ramirez has been particularly incredible of late. And he's one of those guys where you're like, hey, you might hit a home run. Am I wrong about that? I should look. No, I don't think so. I mean, he's still been his usual kind of down-ballot MVP type player.

On the season, yeah. On the season, yes. But I think that in the last month it has been maybe a little bit of a swing. See, I'm going to look, and then if I'm wrong, we're going to cut it all out. That's what we're going to do. We're going to be like, Meg was wrong,

but no one needs to know. She didn't learn the lesson earlier, but she learned it now. Yeah, 98 WRC+. I know stuff about baseball. Yeah, he's probably fine. I think he's fine. Like, it's a month.

Who cares? But also, I don't know. Like, it's a thing to say about a guy who's going to be in the postseason. So here I am saying it. Yeah, remember that one year when he did actually forget how to hit for a while? That was a weird one. Yeah, that was weird. Got a lot of podcast content out of that.

Yeah. We owe Jose Ramirez so much. Mm-hmm. And on the NL side, so we talked about the Mets and Padres. Now, the Cardinals and Phillies, kind of a fun matchup. Yeah. Between, gosh, these are sort of dissimilar teams. Of course, you have the Phillies, who have made some strides in shoring up their defense, but not a whole lot.

I mean, yeah, they've got Bryson Stott out there and they've got Brandon Marsh out there. And that helps a little relative to where they were early in the season. But even looking at the team as it's currently constituted, it has not been great. It's not good at fielding balls and turning them into outs. Now they do, unlike the Cardinals really, have pitchers who can supply those outs themselves and can maybe miss some bats. So again, you got to feel pretty good about going into this with Nola at least, and with Wheeler, and beyond that, maybe things get a bit dicey and you know everyone just sort of automatically reflexively jokes about the Phillies bullpen this is not nearly as bad as have been which is a low bar to be clearing but I think it is exciting that the Phillies

made it in this just extremely inefficient way that they made it that we knew that they would have to make it where it was like they're gonna just give back a lot of runs so they just have to score more runs than they give back yes and they may be positioned to have their boppers and their mashers together and bryce harper another guy who has not performed up to his usual standards and since he returned from the injury he has not hit all that well. So I don't know if he is still suffering after effects from that. It's just a weird team.

It's just like House Warbur is a leadoff hitter just hitting 46 homers. Yeah. It just doesn't make sense. But it happens, and it was just good enough for them to make it here. So I'm kind of looking forward to watching this series. And, you know, as Harper has struggled, JT Real Muto has been fantastic and has made up for his slow start. So it's kind of a fun, entertaining team, even if it shoots itself in the foot sometimes. And then you have the Cardinals, who kind of specialize in not shooting themselves in the foot sometimes. And then you have the Cardinals who kind of specialize in not shooting themselves in the foot and as usual, have the good defense and kind of a pitch to contact

rotation in front of it. Now, there may be one of the teams that you would look at and not be so scared of their top one or top two. I mean, the fact that Jose Quintana is this again is like a pretty good pitcher again, not something I necessarily saw coming after his past few years, but they're now trusting him at the top of a playoff rotation, you know, and Jordan Montgomery has come back to earth a little bit since the great run he was on after the trade, but still solid, pretty reliable. And of course, you had Adam Wainwright, who has not ended the season in a manner that would inspire confidence, but he is still Adam Wainwright. Yeah.

So I don't know exactly how they will line things up there, but then they have some bullpen monsters too. And they have Ryan Helsley and other guys who scare you sort of. But it is typically kind of a pitch to contact type of team. They want balls in play so that they can turn them into outs. And that is the opposite of the Phillies approach. So it's kind of a fun head to head in that sense. Yeah. I mean, famously a team composed entirely of DHs playing out of position. I mean, not entirely, I mean, but mostly. They're mostly a team of DHs. It's mostly a bunch of DHs out there, as opposed to the Cardinals, as you said, who are like whatever the fancy

flavor of vacuum cleaner is now. Right. Yeah. And you would tend to prefer the team that misses bats in general, but in the playoffs, and the Cardinals are not that. So I think that gives you some fear, maybe a little bit of anxiety. There's no one in that rotation that you feel like you can take to the bank really, I think, at this point. So there's just going to be some anxiety. But that is a pretty good offense too and a better offense than maybe we think of the Cardinals having in recent years. It's obviously the top two of Arenado and Goldschmidt. And one of those guys is probably going to win an MVP award. So they're great, but it's not just those guys. It's not just Arenado and Goldschmidt. There are some pretty good contributors arrayed around them now.

Some pretty good contributors arrayed around them now. Yeah. So I guess I would pick the Cardinals in this series. Again, all of these things, no certainty, no confidence whatsoever. But it seems to me that they are perhaps the slightly better team and better equipped. Again, which you could probably divine just by looking at their regular season record, which frankly is almost as good as any other thing that you could do right but you know one has to podcast so yeah right the people demand yeah we say things into microphones yeah like for their pleasure right between us going over how many games you have to win at in what is at this point excruciating detail and my descent into madness like this is the content that the people demand it'd be great content if the mariners had a really deep run

and you were just frazzled in a constant state of frazzlement for the next month great content yeah it's sort of like you know it's a lot like yesterday where I was like, I feel bad for Otani, but this is tremendous content when Vogue hit his home run. Like I had that thought. And I think that this would qualify in the same way where it's like, no one has ever been so miserable being so happy. Yeah, I meant to mention also that the Padres' bullpen does not inspire much confidence either. That's kind of a scary bunch from hater on down. Yeah, and he's been better lately. But when you say lately, you mean like the last 11 innings. And it doesn't make you feel like you really got it locked in, which is a weird thing to say about Josh Hader, but a true thing at this point. So yeah.

And his ERA does not really reflect his peripherals. His peripherals are better and not much change from what they were with Milwaukee. But also, even with Milwaukee, they were not what we were accustomed to see out of Josh Hader or out of your shut down dominant bullpen dude. So it really does age your peace of mind, I think, as a playoff watcher. If you have a rooting interest, like a good bullpen. Yeah. Really, you know, like a good bullpen can blow a game.

But man, like the level of anxiety. I think we've talked about this before, just about like the difference a good bullpen can make to your peace of mind as a fan. And just how frustrating like the number of ways that one can be bad. Maybe one of the most frustrating ways is to have just a terrible bullpen. In a sense, it's encouraging because you think maybe it's more fixable than other aspects of the team. And maybe it will just round into shape somehow, as bullpens do from time to time. But when it's bad, it's so frustrating because you feel like

you can't come back and every lead is at risk and can just slip out of your grasp. And if you do make it to the playoffs with a spotty bullpen, there's really never a moment that you feel secure and confident so my heart goes out to all the the fans of playoff teams that have undependable bullpens because you're not going to get any peace for however long your team is in it yeah like and even even if you have like a good bullpen you want a bullpen that like doesn't walk any guys. You want like a, I'm going to strike you out and not walk you and let's go home bullpen. Because there are good bullpens that still make you nervous, right? So it's not enough to have a good bullpen.

You want like, I mean, really you want Edwin Diaz. That would be nice. I think is what you want. Everyone wants one of those. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, and it's funny because, you know, you might feel, I don't want to speak for Mets fans and it's not like the rest of their bullpen has been bad per se, but like,

you know, you want to feel more confident getting to Edwin Diaz. It's really funny to think about the Mets and the Padres bullpens sort of in contrast to one another, because I think as Jay Jaffe noted in his preview, like once you get to Edwin Diaz and you're like, okay, his preview like once you get to edwin diaz you're like okay we get to we get to go home now like i'm not gonna get up to use the bathroom because that feels jinxy but like i i'm pretty confident i'm gonna get to use it soon and so it's fine to wait right but like you might feel a little nervous getting to them whereas like with the padres bullpen like getting to the ninth inning, they often do that quite well. And then you get there and you're like, oh, I don't know.

I'm a little nervous. So it's going to be, maybe we should just do one of our Patreon ones where I just make sounds into a mic for three hours and see how people like it. You know,

does it strike them as fun or mostly irritating? I bet mostly irritating. We have to pick our Patreon stream days. Don't we, Ben? Yes, we do. Yeah. It would be interesting

to have you do that during a mariners game but i feel like you've waited so long your attention should not be divided unless it would help you for it to be divided take your mind off the anxiety somehow well i'll say the following which is that we're obviously not doing one during the wildcard round because you know it's too much work. Like I have to do too much work during that time. And the division series, I don't know. We can sort that out. But maybe if they make it to the championship series, we should do one.

You know, maybe. Like we could do one then. Maybe we could do one then. Game. Yeah. You got to think about it. All right. I wanted to mention before

we go i just uh we have a meet a major leaguer here i've been meaning to deploy this for a while meet a major leaguer i am very eager to meet this nascent major leaguer. It's the thrilling debut of somebody new. Let's meet this mysterious major leaguer. There was, as I noted, a record number of new major leaguers this year. 303 major leaguers made their debuts in the big leagues this year. That is a lot more than the previous most, which I think was 260 something. So this may be the tops, the max, but boy, there are a lot of new big leaguers. And the one that

I just wanted to shout out, I still feel like I haven't fully met him. There are more things that I could certainly learn about him. But I went to the new baseball savant arm strength leaderboard that was published recently. So MLB parcels out new stat cast data and reports to the public in various forms from time to time. And they just released arm strength, which was available for catchers and obviously for pitchers, but not for fielders at other positions. So we would occasionally see the odd O'Neill Cruz throw or some notable throw, but we couldn't look up averages, let's say. And now you can. And so when I go to that leaderboard, the very top name, the strongest arm, the highest average throw velocity is one Nate Eaton.

Nate Eaton. Nate Eaton, yes. Nate Eaton of the Kansas City Royals, 113 track throws, a max of 103.3 miles per hour, and an average of 98.1. And that is the top. And under Nate Eaton, you have some better known names. Ronald Acuna Jr., for instance, is the second name on that list. And this is a fun leaderboard to play around with. And I would encourage everyone to check out Mike Petriello's piece, which was paired with it, sort of an

explainer about how to use this data responsibly. It's interesting because you can see the averages at each position. So for example, unsurprisingly, the highest arm strengths, the fastest throws belong to right fielders on average. And the least hard throws belong to first baseman on average. But one of the interesting things is kind of a chicken and an egg situation. It's like, OK, second baseman, they have the second lowest average throw velocity. But is that because they are making a short throw from second and therefore they do not need to throw it as hard? Or is it because they are incapable of throwing it that hard and thus that's why they're second baseman? So it's tough to untangle those entirely.

But you can compare what players who have played multiple positions do and you can see that there is a tendency for players who you know presumably have the same arm strength wherever they are stationed they will throw harder from certain positions and part of it is that they might need to make the harder throw and part of it is that they're just in a better position to throw if you're an outfielder and you can get your whole body behind it, as opposed to if you're a second baseman and you're angled and maybe your momentum is not taking you that way. And then you have the whole issue of how often do first basemen actually even make competitive throws and you have to figure out what the cutoff is there. So it's interesting. I'm glad to have this data, but it introduced me to Nate Eaton, who I had not thought of for a while. And when I did a little digging to figure out Nate Eaton, who is that again? I remembered that this is one of the Kansas City Royals who was called up during the COVID apocalypse of the Kansas City Royals. So when they had to call up a substantial portion of a baseball team

to play in Toronto because they had so many unvaxxed players, Nate Eaton was one of the players they called up. And in fact, Nate Eaton hit a home run in his major league debut, which the Royals won three to one over the Blue Jays despite being shorthanded. They were so excited. Yeah, and Nate Eaton has not homered since. So he homered in that game, and he has amassed 122 plate appearances in the regular season this year in 44 games. I believe he was sent down and came back up again. But he has managed a 103 OPS plus. So he's been about a league average hitter,

even though the one home run was not sustained. But he's done decently well. He's held his own. He has stolen 11 bases in 12 attempts. He is a speedy man, not just his arm strength, but also his legs. A lot of parts of Nate Eaton are pretty fast and work pretty well. He is 25 years old. He turns 26 in December. He was drafted by the Royals in the 21st round of the 2018 draft out of Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia. And he was called up to replace whichever COVID person was not available. I think he was at AAA at the time, and he had an 886 OPS in AAA. He's not a top prospect or anything, but the arm strength was known to people who know prospects. to people who know prospects.

So looking at the Kansas City Royals top 47 prospects from this past May, Nate Eaton ranked 35th. And here's what the little blurb about Nate Eaton said. Eaton has below average offensive ability, but he can play a variety of positions, and he has one of the best throwing arms in professional baseball. Wow. Yeah. Well spotted, well scouted, Van Graaff's staff. A rocket launcher that might merit a look on the mound if and when Eaton and the industry

declare him to have plateaued as a position player. So that's interesting. Yeah. No one is saying that about Ronald Acuna, but if you're Nate Eaton and you have maybe the best throwing arm of any position player in baseball, now, you know, if he could keep being an average college, I believe. So he does have a history of that. Just reading from a Baseball America story, Royals see a lot to like from Nate Eaton. This was from May of 2019. Some clubs were scouting Eaton as a pitcher. In 2017, the Summer College Coastal Plain League, he logged four saves with a 1.26 ERA while striking out 16 and allowing just six hits

in 14 and a third innings. He made 17 relief appearances last year for VMI. So he does have a little bit of a pitching background. He was actually drafted as a catcher, even though he did not catch in college. He played catcher in high school, which was interesting. in college. He played catcher in high school, which was interesting. So the Royals' J.J. Piccolo, now GM, said we drafted him as a catcher, but he is not caught for us because we like his speed and defensive versatility enough that we don't think we'd benefit by catching him, especially because he hadn't even been a catcher in college. Yeah. Yeah. But he's fast. He plays a bunch of

positions and he does throw extremely hard. He stole a school record 36 bases as a redshirt sophomore. So something to watch. Yeah. Hopefully he'll keep hitting, and that'd be nice. And he was worth a tidy one win above replacement, according to baseball reference, in his 44 games, which was nice. But if anything should happen to that offensive line, I sound like I'm threatening it, but I'm not. But if he can't keep that up, he has a second act potentially available

to him and the arm strength leaderboard backs that up. So just wanted to share that because I saw some other people remarking in various places when MLB released this new leaderboard, there was kind of a collective Nate Eaton. Yeah, who's that? Yeah, that echoed from the hills. So now you know who Nate Eaton is. Wow. Well, everyone should just read our prospect list and then they know stuff, huh?

Exactly. Well, I'm glad to know Nate Eaton. I had him made a major leaguer, butuer but i gotta go so can we not do it sure is he uh he's a mariner he's a mariner maybe we'll meet him is he on the playoff roster i don't think so i was gonna do brian o'keefe anyway i'm just doing a medium major leaguer in like 20 seconds brian o'keefe was a rule five guy and when kirk casale and his wife welcomed a baby and kirk casale couldn't be there for a game he came up and he got a hit and he got to celebrate he got a hit in saturdays uh last saturday's win against the a's and he got to celebrate with the mariners when they clinched

and he's a catcher and it was beautiful story but no i don't think he's gonna make the the postseason roster it would be surprising i think some something would have to befall one of their other catchers for it to happen but he is he had been in pro ball for nine years across two different organizations and all in the minor leagues and then he got called up and he had two day two-ish days in the big leagues i was gonna do more research but then I had to get grocery shopping done so that I could have soup. Yeah, got a stockpile for the playoffs. Understandable.

But people were very excited about it for him. And it's one of those things where it's like, when you clinch your first playoff berth in 20-some-odd years on a Friday, then on Saturday, you can just be excited for this guy who is like a Rule 5 pick and is getting to have his,

his first taste of the bigs because you're not worried about like a decisive, potentially playoff clinching, um, plate appearance coming down to this guy, which would make it very pressure packed and perhaps too much. No, you just get to be happy for him because, uh,

you know, it's exciting, not as exciting as making the playoffs for the first time in a long time, but exciting nonetheless. Yeah. I meant to mention, by the way, when we talked about the Rays, just Tyler Glasnow is like the number two starter

on this team suddenly. And, you know, who knows what starter means for a Tampa Bay Ray ever. But I love when someone comes back just at the tail end of the regular season or just like returns in the playoffs after a long absence and you never know what you're going to get. Glass knows looked pretty good so far, but coming off serious injury and surgery and long layoff, but they're kind of counting on him now.

And he looked more or less like himself in his short outings. But I love that. You have the Yankees, right, who could get Matt Carpenter and Drew Benatendi back and Clay Holmes. And they have a bunch of kind of injured guys. And Spencer Strider, who has not been out that long. But Marte, just a lot of guys who, Tyler O'Neill and Jordan Hicks, a lot of banged up players there always are at this stage of the season. But when someone comes back who has not been there all season long and suddenly you're like counting on them to pitch pretty important playoff innings it's like i didn't even know he was going to be part of this season it's like when when anthony rendon returned to the angels at the end of the season it's like

i thought we said that was it for you this year and look at you you're back and i know that was like partly because he had a suspension to serve, but also he was like playing games. So he was healthy enough to do that. So that's nice go of manager Mike Matheny as well as pitching coach Cal Eldred, whom I think was ticketed for perhaps departure for quite some time, at least by many Royals fans who were ticketing him for departure for quite a while. So not surprising. But it does sound like there may be a lot of turnover manager-wise this offseason, which is interesting because there already was a fair amount of turnover by recent standards during the season. But Ken Rosenthal just wrote an article about eight teams with decisions to make. Now, one of them was the Angels, and they have decided to bring back Phil Nevin.

And we talked about the Dusty Baker situation the other day. to bring back Phil Nevin. And we talked about the Dusty Baker situation the other day, but there are a bunch of teams that either they haven't hired a permanent manager yet, or they might be in the market for a new one or to make a change of some sort. So stay tuned for that. There will be some managerial hiring processes going on. Do you think Phil Nevin knew he was coming back? Because he had the facial expression of a man who did not think that he was gonna have a job in a couple of weeks for a lot of the end of the angel season he just and maybe you know i have a very expressive face this is one of the reasons that i don't play poker because i could not bluff successfully it's just all right there on my face. So maybe he's like me.

Maybe he just doesn't have a good resting face. But if not, I wonder if he was like, oh, do I still have a job? That's fantastic. I thought I was going to be out of here because he looked like he thought that. Yeah, the Angels did worse under him than they did under Joe Maddon.

I mean, they were 27 and 29 under Maddon this year. They were 46 and 60 under Nevin. Maybe it's just a case of like, you know, they're exploring selling that team and maybe they just like don't want to make a whole bunch of changes and go through a long process. Like, would they even be able to hire someone now? Right. It's like Otani's last season under contract. And maybe they just feel like, let's resolve this. Let's let's get Artie Moreno out of here, perhaps. And we'll have new ownership. And then we'll worry about this if we're even still around at that point, the people who would be hiring the manager. So maybe it's just sort of a stopgap situation. And hey, he's there. Did we make mention of the arbitration avoiding deal that the Angels and Otani reached?

Did we make mention of that? No, but they did do that. $30 million man next year, eh? That's a lot. That's a lot. It's a record, right? I would imagine so. I think the next highest number was probably set by Betts, I would imagine.

Yes, I think that's right. Coming off his MVP year, and I think that he was set to make less than $30 million. Yep. Well, good for Shohei. Yeah. He's cashing in. All right. Don't put it in crypto, Ohtani.

No, please do not. Just get away from that. I got a DM from Colin McAvoy while we were speaking, our author of the Stephen Vogt Wikipedia page, who said, because our conversation was directly before I went to bed last night, I had a dream that you mentioned the Stephen Vogt Wikipedia page, who said, because our conversation was directly before I went to bed last night, I had a dream that you mentioned the Stephen Vogt article on your podcast.

Well, that has come true. But then you also polled your listenership for any MLB player they chose, and whoever it was, I had to expand their Wikipedia article. I don't remember the rest of the dream, so I don't know which player got picked. Well, we won't assign him homework,

but if he wants some, we're happy to help direct his talents. Yes. How many references on Williams Astadillo's Wikipedia page? A measly 25. We can do better than that. Come on. How long is Mike Trout's Wikipedia page? Oh, I'm sure it's quite a bit longer than... Oh, hey, look at that. I'm on Williams's page, at least. So that's nice. Someone added me to there. You know, I think there's a lot of room to expand Mike Trout's Wikipedia page. So that would be a very effectively wild choice, but perhaps too obvious. All right.

Well, we will end there. Enjoy the wild card games. And we will reconvene on Sunday, hopefully, and we will talk about all or some of them, depending on how they end and how many we can get in. Oh, boy. All right. Let me leave you with the past blast. This is episode 1913. And so the past blast comes from episode 1913 and from Jacob Pomeranke, Sabre's director of editorial content and chair of the Black Sox Scandal Research Committee. Not too far away from the Black Sox scandal. But here we are in 1913 and Jacob is writing about taking one for the team. On July 12th, 1913, Boardwalk Brown of the Philadelphia A's set a modern baseball record by walking 15 batters and still recording a win against the Detroit Tigers.

The A's ran up a 10-1 lead and the Tigers stranded the bases loaded in five different innings until manager Connie Mack finally lost patience with the 24-year-old right-hander. Here's what the Philadelphia Inquirer had to say about his performance. Quote, Quirer had to say about his performance. As long as Brown was good in the tight places, Mack was content to let him throw his arm out by passing good, bad, and indifferent batters. As the eighth inning progressed, a mathematical scorer estimated that he had pitched about 200 balls or more than enough for two full games. Jacob writes, Brown was relieved by Eddie Plank in the eighth inning, and the A's won the game 16-9. Brown won 17 games in 1913, but Connie Mack didn't trust him to pitch in the World Series against the Giants. He was traded to the Yankees the next year and was out of baseball by the age of 27.

No other pitcher has come close to Boardwalk Brown's record since. Only one pitcher in the last 30 years has even stayed in long enough to reach 10 walks while also recording a win, and that was a knuckleballer, Tim Wakefield of the Pirates, who threw 172 pitches and walked 10 Braves batters in a game in April 1993. Boardwalk Brown. I imagine that the audience was bored by walks.

His real name was Carroll Brown, and he pitched 731 Major League innings over five years and was sub-replacement level, at least according to baseball reference. His Sabre bio is still unclaimed, so you could be the biographer of Boardwalk Brown if you're interested. Okay, I wanted to specify that the Stephen Vogt episode, the first one, wasn't actually all that long ago. I blame the pandemic for distorting my sense of time, making me think it was longer ago than it was, but it was actually episode 1633. That was December 2020. That's when we talked about votes page for the first time, I believe, and ran the numbers on the longest player Wikipedia pages. You can find Colin McAvoy, by the way, on Twitter at YesIt'sColin if you want to request that he lend his signature Wikipedia work to your favorite player. And he has a couple of books with his wife, Lynn Olnoff, on Amazon.

Fatal Jealousy, The True Story of a Doomed Romance, A Singular Obsession, and A Quadruple Murder. And Love Me or Else, The True Story of a Devoted Pastor, A Fatal Jealousy, and The Murder That Rocked a Small Town. Just a little light reading for you. Also, a couple people responded to our discussion of attendance figures. We noted last time that the Rangers and the Reds were the only teams to actually lose fans on a per-game basis this year. And as some people pointed out, this had crossed my mind, I forgot to mention it, but we were wondering why the Rangers,

the Reds, it's obvious they did everything they could to drive their fans away, but the Rangers did make some investments in that team, so why did they have their attendance decline as well? There was probably a bit of a new ballpark bounce last year, so not only was Globe Life Field open from the start of the season, but also it was a lot of fans' first chance to see it, because that park had opened in 2020 when there were no fans, and then there were a few fans in the playoff bubble. The Rangers were possibly deprived of a little bit of the new park bounce, but there probably was some last year. So that would explain why there was a lower per game

attendance this season, along with the fact that the team wasn't good, but I'm sure that was part of it. Also got a lot of suggestions about how to stream baseball, how to watch playoff baseball. There was one website that people seemed to find helpful that tells you what you need to get to cover various channels so you can look up what your streaming needs are and what would be the best way to fill them. It's suppose.tv slash tv. Suppose.tv slash tv. So you can check that out if you're in the same boat that i was with not knowing how to watch the playoffs because you cut the cord i'll link to that site on the show page as well as a helpful recent post on the baseball subreddit which is titled your guide to

streaming playoff baseball and has a lot of good info although it seems like a lot of international subscribers to mlb tv are in a tizzy because they just discovered or MLB decided that playoff baseball will not be available for international subscribers through MLB TV like it has in the past. And it seems like that has taken people by surprise that it was not a pleasant surprise. Not great if that was just changed in the last minute, but it looks like a lot of international watchers are in the same boat that those of us are domestically. But there's some info on the subreddit post about that as well. And lastly, I noted last week that I had gone to Citi Field to talk to Marlins ace and probable NLSI Young winner Sandy Alcantara. The article that came of that is available now. It's on theringer.com and I will link to it on the show page. I also wrote about

Aaron Judge and Shohei Otani. 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 some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going. Help us stay ad free and get themselves access to some perks. Ted Trotman, Adam Bliss, Matthew Richards, Brad Bell, and Andrew Avery. Thanks to all of you. You know, a bunch of people have been signing up lately. This is a great month to sign up.

As I mentioned, Patreon perks include access to a couple of playoff live streams where we just yammer and maybe get some guests and friends on to yammer while our Patreon supporters listen along and watch their broadcast guests and friends on to Yammer while our Patreon supporters listen along and watch their broadcasts and also chat. We will have info sent out about that soon. And as I always say, check out the Effectively Wild Patreon Discord group. Just about to hit 800 members,

and it's a great place to talk about postseason baseball. You also get access to monthly bonus episodes and discounts on merch and fan graphs, ad-free memberships and more. There are 11 bonus episodes there just for the listening. So if you sign up, you get almost a year's worth of those. You can just keep listening to us. You can never not listen to us.

You can also contact us via email at podcast at Fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. You can join our Facebook group at Facebook can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at and you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing and production assistance. We hope you have a wonderful weekend. Enjoy the wild card round, and we will be back to discuss it early next week. In the morning sun When the world was young