Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1914: A Wild Weekend

Episode Date: October 10, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about and break down all four wild card series, beginning with big-picture thoughts on the weekend as a whole and the Mariners’ improbable Game 2 comeback win before going series-by-series and discussing Mariners-Blue Jays (8:52), Guardians-Rays (33:03), Phillies-Cardinals (48:39), and Mets-Padres (1:05:50), plus a Past Blast (1:39:25) from 1914. […]

Walk in the cold, cold wind Carry my laundry bin Take my rags for a spin Watch daytime TV You're just too good to touch I can't discuss it much I get too choked up Don't wanna make us team

Never in my wildest dreams Hello and welcome to episode 1914 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. We are recording on Sunday night after the final out of Mets Padres and the wildcard round as a whole. And I am excited to talk to you tonight because I'm pretty high on baseball right now. What a weekend. What a weekend. Say what you will about the expanded playoffs,

and we have said plenty, but man, that was a ton of fun. Just like upsets, incredible comebacks, short games, long games, pitchers, little slug fests, ear inspections. I didn't see every second of every game. I was with family and I had some stuff going on and I wish I could have seen more, but it was fun to watch what I could and follow or catch up on what I couldn't. I don't think I need to ask how it was for you, but I will anyway. How was your wild card weekend, Mariners fan, Meg Raleigh? I mean, miserable, thrilling, stressful, just like joyous. Yep. It really ran a spectrum from being just like over the moon at luis castillo and everything about him to being really devastated the mariners did not take my suggestion to have robbie ray come down with something yes to like deep concern for George Springer and Beau Bichette, and then really just very excited joy.

Yeah. Aren't you glad the Mariners did not listen to us when we said that Robbie Ray and the Blue Jays might be a bad matchup? Because by throwing him out there, they dug themselves a hole that it was really exciting to climb out of? That would be one way to engage with that couple of hours of my life.

Another way to engage with it would be to say that I was aged prematurely by it, that I am forever altered, but that I am thrilled that they were ultimately triumphant. I still kind of can't believe that they won that game i know we'll talk about it do you think that you're you're aged more than you are rejuvenated by the comeback oh gosh that's a question that i might need years of therapy to answer accurately i mean it was one of the wildest things i have ever seen on a baseball field like it was truly one of the wildest things I have ever seen on a baseball field.

It was truly one of the wildest things I have ever seen. That anyone's ever seen in the playoffs, at least. Yeah, because at various points throughout that game, I was just like, should I turn this off? Is it time for me to turn this off? First, I will say that I appreciated how many of the early innings i also was able to just be distracted by a seemingly endless guardians raise game yes at one point i was just like will the mariners be done playing before the guardians and rays seems possible given the pacing here but i was just very upset for long stretches because like, you know, good teams will beat you in the postseason.

Like there's no shame in getting walloped by the Blue Jays lineup. That's a fearsome lineup. Like they score runs. That's sort of their thing, right? The identity of that team is centered in, you know, the offensive acumen of their hitters. The identity of that team is centered in the offensive acumen of their hitters. But it's frustrating when you can't anticipate how a particular plan will go wrong. And then you watch it go wrong in exactly that way. But then the baseball gods were like, oh, I'm sorry.

Did you think you knew what was happening in this game? Because boy, do I have news for you. So there's that. I was just sitting there. I was like, why would you start Robbie Ray against a lineup that has exactly one lefty? And then, you know, he Robbie Rayed in the way that we thought he might. Kevin Galsman looked great. That splitter was incredible.

And then it all got twisted and turned on its axis. And then I didn't breathe for like another hour. Yeah. It was amazing yeah we had a good wild card preview show i think we nailed it pretty much not only did we nail that robbie may might struggle against toronto but we did we totally nailed the number of games teams had to win yeah i saw i saw so many people like on twitter at you know wondering when the third game would be like after one team team took the first two, when do we play again? Or wondering. We prepared our listeners for this being a best of three and what exactly that entailed. And it played out exactly the way we laid it out.

Yeah, I appreciated the grace that was given to that bit. I did not expect it to be embraced to the extent that it was, but I'm glad everybody had a nice time. Well, it doesn't have to be dead yet. We have many more rounds to go. What we want to do this time is just recap, review each of these series. And then maybe next time we will bring that same laser accuracy to previewing the Division series and explaining to you how best of five series work and other things about those matchups. But what struck me, I mean, you have during the course of a

regular season, 54 three-game series. I mean, obviously not every series is a three-game series. Sometimes you have two-game sets, sometimes you have four-game series, but you have 162 games and most of the series are three games. So you have like 50 plus three-game series. And that's what we had this weekend. And for the first six months of the season, you think nothing of dropping a best of three. You think nothing of losing a series. Right. Might be a bit of a bummer,

but you think nothing of it because you're going to lose a lot of them. The best teams are going to lose a lot of them. But this weekend, it meant absolutely everything. And we will read too much into it and we will overanalyze it in a way that would be

completely preposterous if we brought the same level of analysis to some may series between two teams that had next to no stakes but is essentially the same sport and the same series and the same everything except that it just doesn't mean as much arbitrarily. So it's all very silly, but it's all extremely fun. Yeah. Like, for instance, Ben, did you know starting pitchers, they're back? Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's what happens when you only have a best of three

and you only have to start your top couple of starters. That's another thing we nailed in our preview podcast was, hey, like every team seems to have like two pretty good starters for the most part, you know, like you feel pretty good going into these series with the top two or so of each of these teams. And yeah, it turns out when you don't have to use your fourth or fifth starters and maybe not even your third starter and you can just use your best bullpen arms too, yeah, pitching looks pretty good in that format. Yeah, but like, okay, so I was doing a little funny because it's fun to do a little funny.

But I will say that, like, boy, did we see some good pitching this weekend. Like, we saw some bad pitching too. But we mostly, because like we already talked about Robbie Ray, who inspired me to make a very strained Independence Day metaphor on Twitter, which I won't rehash here, but that I felt good about at the time, even as I felt terrible. It had the same ending as Independence Day, happy ending in the end. I didn't think I would get to hastily Photoshop a Mariner's hat onto Bill Pullman's hat. It's fun to talk about tweets. That's everybody's favorite activity. I did have's fun to talk about tweets that's everybody's favorite activity I did have to remind myself and then google to confirm that it was Bill Pullman and not Bill Paxton rest in

peace Bill Paxton yes yes common confusion yeah I imagine that they would get annoyed with that in life but anyway so you know we saw some bad pitching but we also saw we also saw some just really spectacularly good pitching and like i want to start we have we don't have an outline for the show i guess we could start with guardians rays because that series concluded first so what i was gonna start with mariners blue jays so as not to make people wait for for your mariners fan feelings i mean you already got some of them i got some of them i don't want to repress anything that that has to be let out after this emotional weekend of highs and lows.

I just, you know, okay, so I guess I'll do that for a second. I thought that it was foolish to wait until the sixth inning to score four runs. And then I thought that it was even sillier to wait until the eighth inning to score four more. But I thought their timing of the ninth inning for that one additional run and then not allowing any in the bottom of that frame was inspired strategy. That was pretty great. It made my heart heavy to see Paul Seawald melt down.

That was pretty rough going. I was thrilled for Adam Frazier, hero of this clinching game, really. You know, we have talked on this show about how often you will hear on a broadcast about a hitter's prior success or failure against a pitcher. And it's just like a minuscule, teeny tiny little sample.

And Adam Frazier had seen Kevin Gausman a fair amount, but like still, I think it was only like 33 play appearances or something like that. So I didn't put any store in that because I know better but I will say that by the time Adam Frazier had seemingly carried the Mariners entire offense on his back on a day when he went three for five

with an RBI, I thought to myself the science is real. on a day when he went three for five with an RBI, I thought to myself, the science is real. We have discovered new and important math and all hail Adam Frazier. So there was that. What else did I think in the course of this game? I remained grateful for Eugenio Suarez's presence because he sure was fun.

I felt very concerned about, as I said earlier, George Springer and Boba Shett. That was quite a scary collision. It was, yeah. It did put a damper on things for me because you want the team you want to win to win, but not like that. That's sure a crummy way for a very fun team season to, to come to the brink and then almost end. So I hope George Springer is okay.

I hope Boba Shett is okay. Cause I love how everyone was like, Boba Shett's fine. And I was like, is Boba Shett fine? I think we should spend a little more time ascertaining the veracity of that statement, but she seemed to be okay. That hit though, the, the JP Crawford three run double. Yeah. It was a little bit fluky, obviously the result, but

not as fluky. I saw some people saying like, oh, you could hit that exact ball a hundred times and they'd score those runs or it would fall in once or twice or something. That had an expected batting average of 550, I believe. That was a 70 mile per hour duck snort it was not well hit obviously but it was the kind of blooper that does land pretty often it's in sort of the the exit velocity donut hole where generally you want to hit the ball hard hard is good but also if you hit it less hard at a certain angle and trajectory then that can be good too because it can bloop right over the head of the infielders and in front of the outfielders. And that's basically what happened there. So that was fluky in the way that any blooper is fluky, I guess, but I didn't think

it was especially fluky. Now, the fact that there was a collision, of course, and that maybe enabled the bases to be cleared, perhaps that was something that would not happen that often if you replayed that a zillion times but the hit itself i i didn't think it was like as weird and wild though off the bat i don't know what you were thinking whether you were thinking it had a chance or or not no i thought that he i thought he had flown out i thought it was a fly out i was like oh unless uh i guess this is done now yeah and then i was like no right and then i was like yeah yes but all but about the run scoring yes not about you guys are okay right not about the collision yeah that was

just an amazing cutback that was so exciting i mean yeah it was wild like i again i'm struggling to i'm struggling to believe that it actually happened. And I want to take a moment to recognize in the midst of this that Teoscar Hernandez had one hell of a baseball game. And Danny Jansen had a couple knocks. And Vladdy did Vladdy's stuff. And it just was not enough in the face of the mighty Adam Frazier and J.P. Crawford and the big dumper. The big dumper, yes.

Plus, Carlos Santana hit a home run. I'm just recapping the scoring. Even Kelnick got a sack fly, so that sure was fun for him, I would imagine. But Teoscar Hernandez went two for four. He had a stolen base. He had four RBI. He had two home runs in this game he just was like doing all kinds of stuff you know it's the kind of performance that had

there not been just like a meltdown for the ages that we would be looking back on and going oh my god taiyasker like this is the this is the taiyasker hernandez arrival game right everyone's like wow but instead we had to feel really bad for george springer and jordan romano and they're this is the Teoscar Hernandez arrival game, right? Right. Where everyone's like, wow. But instead, we had to feel really bad for George Springer and Jordan Romano, and then really happy for the Mariners because that sure worked out for them, even though Paul Seawald's ERA on the day was a 54, which, Ben, I don't know if you know this, that's not good. No, it's not.

It's pretty bad. It's even worse than Ray's 12, which is not the best either. George Kirby recorded his first career save, so that's exciting for him. When I saw that, I kind of questioned that decision, really, to bring him in in that spot as a rookie with no experience in that sort of situation. I mean, yeah, you trust him to throw strikes because he's George Kirby. And that's kind of what he does for that. Yes. Still, if that had backfired, people probably would have second-guessed the decision

to use him there. But still, it worked out great. Everything worked out great that day. Yeah. Well, and it had its moments of being nerve-wracking because his fastball was finishing at the top of the zone in a way that did not. Yeah, it was a tight zone that day, or least that inning it was not eliciting much in the ways of swings and misses so i felt nervous about that and like munoz he could not get his slider

to finish where he wanted it to it didn't end up mattering is the thing about it the thing about it is it was fine yep i did enjoy i believe it was on friday that this happened you know I believe it was on Friday that this happened. You know, Andres Munoz comes in and he throws a slider at 93 and the broadcast was like, and that's his fastball. I was like, nope, that's definitely his slider. Look where it's finishing. And it sure was. And they corrected themselves not long after that.

They were like, oh no, that's the slider. I'm like, yeah, he does that. It's a weird thing about him, you know? And there is a new famous Mariners fan, christened Mariners Ben, who had a rally shoe on his head, as I understand it. And the rally shoe is now heading for the Mariners Hall of Fame.

So that was fun. I did check in with another Mariners fan, Ben, friend of the show, Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie, who was with us a couple weeks ago. And I kind of grilled him about what he was going to do if the Mariners made the playoffs. And he's on tour. So what would he do during Mariners games? How would he follow them?

So I asked him what was going on in that game because he told us there was maybe an urban legend. There's a story that Johnny Ramone used to have a TV monitor set up on stage so he could watch Yankees games during Ramone's concerts. Don't know if that's true, but I said this would have been a good day to have the Johnny Ramone TV set up on stage as a Mariners fan. He said he turned the game off when it was 8-1 and he was prepping for the show. And he turned it back on when it was eight to five. And then he had to go on stage in Charleston, South Carolina, when it was nine nine with Big Dumper on second. He had to go on stage, which was like, I thought, you know, pretty nice and non rock star of him. Like bands go on late all the time, you know, just like pole rank.

Hey, you can't start without me. Right. So I'm Ben Gibbard and I'm a all the time, you know, just like poll rank. Hey, you can't start without me, right? So I'm Ben Gibbard and I'm a Mariners fan. So you're going to wait for this rally to be over. But no, he went out there when it was totally up in the air and still uncertain. What a pro. Yeah. And three songs in, he says, some guy in the crowd yelled, the Mariners won. And that's how he found out.

That's great yeah i asked him like did finding out the result mid-set distract him or or energize him or neither because he's such a seasoned pro and he said it energized him he said they told their crew not to tell them the outcome until after the show but the anticipation was killing him, knowing what the game state was when he went on stage. So it actually kind of pumped him up and the rest of the band, I guess, that random guy in the third row yelled

that the Mariners won so that he knew that that was the case. Wow. But I do wonder whether that would get me off my game or not. Oh, yeah. Or whether it would be the best show I ever played because I was just buoyed by the Mariners' incredible compact. He did say that on stage, in the middle of their shows,

usually the rest of the band leaves and he just plays a solo acoustic, I Will Follow You Into the Dark. And this time he dedicated it to the Mariners, the longest, most dysfunctional relationship of my whole life. But functional on that day, at least by the time it ended. So that's great. And I also, just because all eyes were on that game, of course, I did just want to tip

my cap to Luis Castillo for game one, without which game two's victory would not have meant as much. Like, he was amazing. He was incredible. He was incredible. He was like, I did not know Luis Castillo threw that hard. And I don't think he does except that day. Like he was pumping like a hundred. I was looking at the baseball savant game feed.

And I believe if you round up at least he hit 114 times and his average velo was like half a tick higher than any previous start this season i think he only hit 101 previous start this season and this game he was like sitting 98.6 or something it was ridiculous like i guess that is what happens like you do see velo goes up in the playoffs because if everyone's not max effort already, they're super max effort in the playoffs. Like, you're not keeping anything in reserve. So I guess that's what it was. I guess he was pumped up and he had his good stuff. And that was just the A, Luis Castillo.

But he was pretty amazing. And I love it when you just you go get an ace and then he does exactly what he's supposed to do you know just like shoves in the postseason you know like the Mets went and got Max Scherzer and then oh sorry oh no wow

Jesus sorry I was out of the clear blue nowhere that was cruel I'm sorry anyway that part was I mean not your sorry that was out of the clear blue nowhere that was cruel i'm sorry wow anyway yeah no it was that part was i mean not your your out of the clear blue nowhere that was spiteful but um like it was it was very fun as the night progressed because the espn broadcast had the crawl like the

normal espn crawl across them for the whole thing. And they're like, the ESPN crawl is talking about how like, the Mariners won the trade. Like, it all worked out. And I was just like, yeah. What timeline am I in? I'm getting like positive Mariners news after an incredible playoff start. But yeah, he was spectacular. And not only did it mean that them winning yesterday was their second one,

which as we've established is how many you needed to win in order to escape the wild card round. But because he was able to go deep into that game as he did, like when the Robbie Ray of it all started to completely unravel, they did have more of their bullpen. Now, some of that didn't end up working to their benefit, but it ended up being fine so who cares yeah right and i i feel bad for the blue jays i'm like i'm sorry that this exciting mariners victory had to come at the expense of the blue jays agreed i don't really know a whole lot of people who are like rooting against the blue jays like the mariners are sort of the the cinderella team you know everyone's into them because they haven't been there in so long and they're just fun but the blue jays are really fun too and they've been to the playoffs a few times now and they have not advanced and i'd like to see them make a deeper run it's just it's such an entertaining team i think they'll be back but this is a really painful loss like we got an email from listener joe who asked if we thought that

this was the most painful home loss ever like in in the playoffs, just based on the fact that it was such an improbable comeback. And the previous comebacks that were the same order of magnitude, I guess, hadn't been in elimination games and also had been the home team winning as opposed to watching the visiting team win. So, yeah, it's excruciating. team winning as opposed to watching the visiting team win. So yeah, it's excruciating. You know, it's the wildcard round. So it's maybe not as painful as if you get further and the stakes are even higher and you're super invested. But still, all the excitement that you were just expressing as a Mariners fan, the opposite

feelings were felt by Blue Jays fans. And it stinks. Like, they're a really good team, you know? I mean, in the regular season, probably a better team, and they just happened to lose a couple games here, and things did not go their way. But they're great, and they had a nice season, and maybe it wasn't quite the last year was the trailer, and this is the main attraction that Vlad Guerrero said. But ultimately, they made it, and they started slow, but they were able to

deliver largely on the promise. I guess a lot of people thought they would win the division. I thought they would win the division. The Yankees were better than I expected them to be, but the Blue Jays, just a good team. And I do hope that they'll be back and that we'll get to see more of them. And I expect that that will be the case. Yeah. And that that you know they're you want teams to win the division precisely so that they get a little more time and so that teams fun upstarts like seattle aren't like knocking out teams like the blue jays in the first round like it's it is too bad that this is when seattle met toronto right because it would have been fun to have them i don't know it be sitting there

waiting for someone in the division round and then go from there but that's what happens with three game series now here's a thing that I was wondering like under the old format Friday would have been it right and Toronto season would have ended with them never scoring a postseason run and with this dominant you know performance from Luis Castillo, and that would have been that, and they would have been out. Is that better or worse than what happened on Saturday? Is it better to have gotten more run only to have that be the note that your season ends on?

I'm going to say no. I don't think so. I think you'd rather be one and done than have that happen to you and I guess like you know when you run into a buzzsaw like Seattle Mariners playoff pitcher Luis Castillo like what are you gonna do that's just a bad

that's just a bad day at the office when Saturday happens you have to be concerned about like hauntings or possessions something like that. It's like, oh, we should be reminded. It is indeed the spooky season. But I'm sad that we are done watching the Blue Jays play baseball for the year

because that is a very fun team and one that I would have liked to see make an extended run. I imagine they'll get other opportunities, but I wish that it could have happened this year, even if I'm pleased with the particulars of Seattle's advancement. Yeah, they haven't had a win, I guess, in the playoffs really with this current group yet because they lost the wildcard series in 2020 to Zip also to the Rays. So, yeah, I mean, they'll probably break through one of these years, but you can't count on anything, especially in the AL East. But I think we noted maybe when we talked last week that

the bullpen, maybe not the greatest strength for them. So I guess you could kind of chalk this up to that. But again, Romano easily could have gotten out of that. It was not his day and not the Blue Jays' day. Yeah, it was just not meant to be that day. It's still the wildest game of baseball I've just ever. I mean, like, okay. So, okay. So, Eugenio doubles, right? Stay with me.

He doubles, by the way, to Ryan Miltapia, who came in as a defensive replacement. And then Cal Raleigh singles, right? And Eugenio scores. And then it's 6-9, and you go, nice. But you're sad and very miserable because you think that the Mariners are going to lose. I mean, if you're me in this scenario.

If you're the Blue Jays, you're sad and miserable for different reasons. Then Mitch Hanegar singled and Cal Raleigh went to second. And then they brought in Romano to replace Anthony Bass, who had had a good season. Like Anthony Bass, former Mariner, a lot of potential turncoats in this, you know, the under-discussed aspect of this whole thing. And then, you know, then Adam Frazier singles and the bases are loaded.

You just have the one out and you're like, oh, no. But then, but then, and as an aside, like Tapia got the wind knocked out of him in a concerning way. This was like a very cursed inning is really what it comes down to for Blue Jays fans. But then you're a Blue Jays fan and you think, oh, it's going to be fine because Romano gets Carlos Santana to strikeout swinging and Dylan Moore to strikeout swinging. And then other stuff happens. And all of a sudden it's tied.

And the world is cattywampus. Jackie Bradley Jr. is in center. You know, that's just what you're it's just what you're dealing with Springer didn't look right after he got hit in the wrist though yeah on Friday so he looked compromised at the plate and in the field also when you notice a guy looks kind of not right you sure do notice that he just bangs into the wall all the time like george springer complete disregard for his own body just constantly whacking into the outfield wall i was like george be careful and then later you know we had an additional reason to want that for

him so yeah we got a question from a listener and i'm looking forward to not finding it this moment but it was basically like pick your random playoff hero of this year, which we neglected to do before the playoffs start. But you're a guy who just goes on a tear and you never would expect this person to do it, but he has a hot series or two and wins an MVP and has some huge hit. There's someone like that every year. I feel like your top few picks would just all have to be mariners at this point it's like it's gotta be just like big dumper is like the leader of the clubhouse there the big the big dumper ben we just heard big dumper on the broadcast so many times you know they just

kept talking about big yep just totally normalized now yeah and iper, yeah. And I was like, we've decided that, you know? Yeah, we have. But here's what I'll say, you know? Speaking of math that is now made totally real by virtue of me being a Mariners fan. Do you know what Cal Raleigh's postseason line has been? No. Would you like to? Sure.

He's hitting 500, 556, 1,000. He has a 342 WRC+. I think that's pretty good. As these things go. Cal, if I could give you a note, maybe cut down on the Ks a little bit. But otherwise, I think it's pretty good. Just keep doing what you're doing. This was the anniversary of ALDS Game 5 from 95.

They were both October 8th whatever that means nice fitting I guess this would probably be yeah yeah right just get it all out right now this I imagine this is probably the second most memorable moment of your Mariners fan lifetime or just like any Mariners fans lifetime potentially I think that that is true in terms of a collective achievement, which isn't a fair way to characterize. It's not fair for me to say that Felix's perfect game was an individual achievement because perfect games are always a result of the pitcher,

but also his friends. But yeah, I would say that absent stuff like that, you know, where it's like Felix throwing the perfect game or yeah felix throwing the perfect game you know it's it's definitely it's definitely up there i don't really have any i was trying to think about the 2001 postseason and i don't really have a lot of distinct memories from that you know i mean i like i remember it happening and i remember watching it but i don't have like a where were you and i think that's because sometimes our brains shield us from stuff that sucks you know that's like they're like it's fine you don't have to keep that one tight you're gonna remember like awful moments from middle school at 3 a.m but like the really deep trauma we're gonna shield you from right

boy yeah tim mesa not having the greatest past month or so because uh he was part of that and then he gave up a big erin judge home run so yeah time to turn the page for him yeah the decision to bring him in and and turn santana to his better side was for sure. Yes, that was curious. That was strange. That was a weird decision that they made, but it was one that they made. It sure was. And it sure did backfire on them real quick.

It wasn't great for them. It was great for me. It was great for you, yeah. Congrats to the Vainers. I feel like I haven't done justice to my own experience of this game. I just really can't. You sound pretty giddy,

as uptight as you sounded in anticipation of this series last time. Let me tell you, I was so uptight on the day. It was really bad. I was just like, this is the worst thing I've ever seen. This is devastating. They're not going to win tomorrow.

It's all over. Why isn't Logan Gilbert pitching today? They have a perfectly good George Kirby. And then it was fine. And then I was like, oh my God, I have to keep working today. I have to edit stuff. Because little behind the scenes, Jake filed his Guardians Raze Gamer. We're going to use this as a segue to that game I just decided.

I had edited it once through and then shenanigans started. Then I got distracted for an hour and a half. I was like, oh, I still have to do my job. Sorry, Jake. Jake, who is a Mariners fan, was like, it fine yeah that's okay it's okay i sent him in all caps like sorry i will get back to this now but was distracted and i think that jake uh understood and thankfully i think our readers were pretty forgiving of it too it was not jake's fault though in case anyone was like why did that gamer take so long totally a meg problem not a jake problem jake's the best congrats to the mariners congrats to the jays glad that the mariners get

to play home games yeah potentially with uh someone i'm speaking to in attendance is that uh yeah maybe it could be well i wish them continued success i, Blue Jays fans. Sorry it had to be you. I mean, the thing I'll say to the Blue Jays fans, if they've been annoyed with me, I fully expect that my sad little human heart is going to get crushed under the shoe of Justin Verlander. So like, you know. There's that too, yeah.

It might be short-lived, but even if it is, at least it was intense and joyous. Yeah. It was dramatic. So, yeah. Yeah. You had the authentic playoff experience. Oh, my God.

Which is miserable. Yeah. Just go back to the drought. Just make it 23, 24 years. Okay. You don't need to be dramatic. That's my job in this podcast today. Okay.

Guardians and Rays rays speaking of great pitching yeah another sweep here this went cleveland's way and i feel like we kind of nailed this in a sense too we we nailed that shane bieber is good and jose ramirez is good yeah pretty sure we said those things don't know where else you're going to get that kind of analysis and that immediately was borne out by the results in game one but just generally i think we were not high on the offenses of either of these teams and it's it's kind of a chicken and the egg thing right it's like was it the pitching or was it the hitting obviously it's always some combination of both but it's kind of like the unstoppable force met the very movable object in this case because you had the great pitching of Bieber and McKenzie. And then on the other side, McClanahan and Glasnow, and then just the amazing bullpens of both of those teams where you can play 15 innings and whoever is pitching at the end of it will still be throwing 100 somehow.

It's just like an inexhaustible supply of unhittable dominant bullpen guys. And that's after your dominant starters. So you put that together with October weather and everything like you would not have expected these to be high scoring games. have expected these to be high scoring games right but i think one reason why we said hey it's it's good to be able to bop one in october why you want to have a short sequence offense so you don't have to string together a bunch of hits is because that's really hard to do sometimes really hard to do and that was extremely hard to do in this series and therefore all the runs were scored on home runs not that cleveland hits a lot of those but they hit just enough and we got one really fast game that was over in two hours and 17 minutes just like in the blink of an eye lickety split and then the next game took more than twice as long

oh my god i really i really did think that it might be going on by the time that Mariners Blue Jays had concluded. I really did. I was like, I don't know. This is like Rob Manfred's nightmare. It was, yeah. And if you hate the zombie runner, then this was probably a good reminder

of why it's great not to have it. If you're someone who loves the zombie runner, then you're probably thinking, this is why we want the zombie runner. So we don't have a 15 inning game where no one's scoring. And I believe it was the deepest a playoff game had ever gone scoreless before the first runs were scored. So this is why I don't like the zombie runner though,

because when you have a great pitcher's duel like this and you're just matching zero after zero I would hate for that then to be spoiled and disrupted by a completely different brand of baseball that kicks in in the 10th inning when you just sort of say well nice job getting us this far but now it

will just be happy fun ball and distorted funhouse mirror type of sport where it's way easier to score. Once you get that deep and you have that great a pitcher's duel, I want someone to break it legitimately without being gifted a runner on second. So I was quite happy with this. I had actually kind of it had slipped my mind that transitioning to the playoffs meant no

more zombie runner. I think that would have been foremost on my mind, but I guess I had just resigned myself to it. And then I was reminded, oh, wait, the scourge has been lifted, at least for this month, perhaps permanently, but I'm not going to get my hopes up about that. But at least for now, I don't have to worry about this. And immediately we got an illustration of the difference.

So this may have been too much of a good thing for some people. I will say it helped that this was not a late game, right? Yes. it a bit more palatable and just exciting. And also the fact that it's an elimination game and it's the playoffs, so the stakes are super high. I get why it might be a bit much in a mostly meaningless game during the regular season, but if you can't get into this kind of marathon low scoring game in October in an elimination game potentially, then I don't know when you can. And maybe you can't, and maybe that's why people, some people, misguided souls like this hobby writer. But for me, this was great. I think that it's one of those things where, you know, it's like salt in a dish. You don't

want to have too much of it, right? If every game were like this, if, as you said, they were all like this and late at night, then I think it would be taxing. You know, we would be like enough with the baseball already. But because this pair of teams had played a hyper-efficient game the day before, because we had other games that were higher scoring, because literally the other game that was on at the same time had scored more runs in like two innings than this game had yet. Like because of those things being true, I thought it was fine. It's good to have some diversity of experience.

We don't want every game to be like this, but it's fine for us to have one or two in the course of a postseason. And it wasn't thrilling like it was. I will say for anyone who pays attention to our win probability graphs, we have fixed this, but there was an initial version of the win probability graphs we have fixed this but like there was an initial

version of the win probability graph for this game that was wrong because we also forgot about the zombie runner not existing in extras in the postseason it's been fixed now but if you saw one you know kind of floating around that looked particularly crazy that was because we had it we had a goof behind the scenes but applemanman fixed it, so don't be afraid about that. Yeah. The Mariners got down to, what, 1% win probability? Something like that in that game, I think. Yeah, it was...

Ben, how did they win that stupid baseball game? I can't believe that that happened. It's the wildest thing. I do want to take a moment in you know the midst of all the many pitching changes it is easy to forget the starters in this game and we will have opportunity to talk about tristan mckenzie again because the guardians advanced but what a performance from tyler glass now like really what a day that guy had you know especially considering that he was coming back from tommy john had had like what, two abbreviated starts before the postseason started.

It wasn't like he struck every guy out, but he was dominant. Like Cleveland couldn't do anything against him really until the end. So it will be a performance that potentially could be forgotten because the Rays were eliminated and because the rest of that game ended up being so crazy and because we saw literally every pitcher in the state of Ohio, maybe, like all of them, I think they all pitched in that game. But Glasnow's effort was really, really something.

And McKenzie's was great too. I love McKenzie. Oh, my God. It's so fun. He was my breakout pick for this year. So I feel like a personal stake, but he was my breakout pick because I just love Chris McKenzie. I've loved him like since the day I laid eyes on him

and was like, there are major league players who are shaped like this. This is wonderful. And also he is really good. And he kind of had that like, oh, this is nasty. Like he's a little inconsistent, but if you could just put a few things together, he'll just be nails. And now he is most of the time and he's just, he's great. He's so much fun to watch. And, you know, a lot of players, like they, they fill out

as they get older and they bulk up a bit and maybe he will too. I kind of hope he doesn't. I mean, he could do whatever he wants. He should do whatever he wants. Like it's been a, something of a knock on him, like in scouting reports, you know, like, oh, he doesn't. I mean, he could do whatever he wants. He should do whatever he wants. Like it's been a something of a knock on him, like in scouting reports, you know, like, oh, he doesn't have the prototypical power pitcher build. Like, will he be durable? Can he stay healthy? Can he give you length, et cetera? Like, I think it'd be great if he was sort of a string bean and he did do all those things. So I don't know whether it hurts him or helps him or whether he'd be better if he were bigger or not. Like he's obviously awesome as he is. And I love having like a diversity of body types in baseball.

So it's just sort of visually interesting to just see him out there. And also because his stuff is so good. And yeah, I just I love Tristan McKenzie. Yeah, he is wonderful. I am so glad that we get to keep watching him. yeah he's he is wonderful i am so glad that we get to keep watching him i remember his debut in 2020 just so clearly because well it was a garbage year yeah and it was not like a it was a stressful baseball season because we were constantly worried that it was gonna get shut down and that we'd all lose our jobs or that was what i was worried about and then he had this debut and it was like really great after all the injury stuff and

it was you know his his sophomore campaign was not as good as that 33 innings or whatever that he threw in 2020 but he he sure figured it out this year and good good grief is he good so it's just very exciting that we get to keep watching him. And like you said, this round gave us a lot of different kinds of guys who are really good at baseball. On the same day, we are watching Tristan McKenzie pitch and then we are watching Alejandro Kirk play in Toronto. It's just like it's a really cool.

Yeah, Tristan McKenzie, one day after Alec Manoa, I guess. What's the poundage difference there? Yeah, well, it's just like that there are so many... There are a lot of different ways to be an athlete, and you know, I just think it's one of the... It remains one of the coolest things about baseball,

that we have this diversity of kinds of people who can all find ways to be really good at the sport and like display different kinds of athleticism it's just really cool so oscar gonzalez hit the the big home run in game two jose ramirez yeah he did jose ramirez hit the the big one in game one and there was uh some controversy right over there was a replay review about rosario was uh on base right and there was some question about whether he had actually touched second base yes it looked to me like he clearly did yes like you could see on the replay was a little grainy once

they zoomed in on the view i saw but like you could see his foot slip like on the corner of the bag in a way that i don't see how that would have been possible if that was just in midair. So it looked pretty definitive to me. I know he kind of like turned around. He looked back as if like, hmm, should I go back? Did I touch that? But it sure looked to me like he did. So, I mean, that was the run that made the difference.

So that was somewhat controversial or a big moment. that made the difference. So that was somewhat controversial or a big moment, but it looked to me like they got the call right and also upheld it correctly on replay. Yeah, it looked like he did not initially touch the base because he thought he might have to retreat back, but that he definitely did upon review. There were a couple of replays in Saturday's game

where it was impossible for me to tell if the various guardians were on the bag or not because they had white spikes and it was very bright so true you know that part was a little harder to suss out but can i i i just want to take a moment to highlight one of my favorite headlines that I've ever seen at fan graphs and I think our writers like pick their own headlines more than a lot of places but we will like you know supply them sometimes and it is one of the things that I feel the least good about in my job like I don't think I'm like a good quippy headline writer Kyle Kishimoto who wrote the recap for this game had Shane and Jose out dual Shane jose as guardians top raise in

game one and it is one of my favorite headlines ever and i didn't have anything to do with it john edited that gamer and i don't think he had to change anything in it at all so i want to make sure that everyone knows that kyle came up with that because it was really good yeah yeah that's awesome yeah so that series like if you look at the offensive lines, even for the victorious team, it's some nightmare hellscape of baseball if they don't change any rules and everything keeps going the way it's been going. It's like the Guardians, I think the Rays had a 35% strikeout rate or something in this series, and Cleveland's wasn't all that much better. Yeah. Cleveland's wasn't all that much better. So, again, like, you could look at either of these teams, I guess you could say with the Rays, and you could have said it about the Guardians if they had lost. Like, you know, we always say this about these teams. Like, they operate in a very intelligent way.

Their front offices put competitive teams on the field year after year. They do more with less. more with less. Perhaps the fact that their ownership limits them to such an extent forces them to be ingenious in some way and helps them come up with competitive advantages and market inefficiencies and so forth. But also, it would be nice if they could just pony up for another hitter every now and then. Just like, of course, anything can happen and it's two games. And this is almost unfair to look at this small sample and say, oh, the Rays didn't hit in these two games. I mean, neither did the Guardians. But with either of these teams, because offense was not their strong suit and they had holes in the lineup, like it's just the foundation is so good.

They've developed such great players. I mean, the Rays with their ridiculous farm system in recent years and the Guardians with just such a young team winning that division title and so many homegrown some flaws or a wildcard team that is kind of there every year but generally not a powerhouse, not this year at least. If they just did everything else they did and also added to the payroll and were able to bring in some free agents here or there or make some big trade at the deadline like you never know that could make the difference in a series like this so again it's like you compliment how they put these teams together year after year it's really pretty impressive but also you kind of wish that they could combine that like maybe if they were more free spending like i don't know they just just wouldn't be as cutting edge in the front office stuff. And maybe they would get complacent and they wouldn't be able to beat other teams to like talent in the other ways that they beat them. That's possible too.

But if they could keep doing what they're doing and then also just like, you know, shore up a few holes over the winter at the deadline by taking on some money and some talent, then maybe they would be in a better spot come October. So it's hard to quibble with the track records because there have been teams that have spent a lot more that have not had the histories of success that certainly the Rays and also the Guardians have. But still, it's hard to get there and get there every year and then feel like if we just had this or we just had that and it would be bats for both of these teams yeah i mean like i do i i feel nervous for i feel nervous for them as they advance these guardians i feel quite nervous but i mean what do you do you gotta

go with the guys you get you know and hope that uh the boppers the various boppers on the yankees are not able to bop yeah and plenty of them did not bop for long stretches of the season so i'd feel pretty nervous as a yankees fan too but but we could get to that next time i guess all right so those are the al series then we had philly's cardinals the other sweep three sweeps here two game sweep i guess we specified at one point that when it's a two game sweep you have to Add Phillies Cardinals, the other sweep, three sweeps here, two-game sweep. I guess we specified at one point that when it's a two-game sweep, you have to specify that it's a two-game sweep. I think we said. Because you have to win two, Ben, two.

Yeah. Just want to emphasize that. So this, again, like I know that there were controversial managerial moves and everything, but ultimately it kind of came down to what we were saying last time which is that like the cardinals did not have the the top two starters that scared you so much and the phillies did like the cardinals maybe a better all-around team but in this format in this series when you can line up zach wheeler and Aaron Nola and then they can both pitch the way that they are expected to, which they did. It's hard. You're already finding yourself in a

hole there. I mean, yeah, we could point to specific lineup decisions and bullpen decisions and such, and maybe we can mention those. But when you come into a series, and it is a best of three as we have mentioned a few times and you're throwing two of the best starters in the national league at the other team now yeah like the the middle of the cardinals order just kind of didn't show up specifically paul goldschmidt yeah looked a little lost and yeah he did again it's two games and the guy had a great year and i know he like he tailed off a little down the stretch but you know either he or arnado probably going to be the nlmbp this year and you combined their lines for the series and it's not pretty and it's because it's

a two-game series and they were facing zach wheeler and aranola so i don't want to make too much of it but that's uh what happens when one team throws its aces and they pitch like aces. And then the other team, whether because those aces were pitching like aces or just because those batters were a bit discombobulated that day, they didn't perform. And then you have a two-game sweep. So it's kind of what it amounts to. We could go a little deeper in the analysis, I suppose, but that's the top level and probably the most important in my mind. It's funny because that first game, I love how you were underselling the madness of that first game or at least that particular inning of it. It's so overshadowed by the Mariners' comeback.

It's like, oh, there was a great Phillies comeback, too. Yeah, they wilded out first. We shouldn't forget that. But before the disaster inning that like doomed the Cardinals to lose game one, like you could construct an alternate narrative, right? Where it's like, yeah, you know, you can't do anything against these great starters and your big bats that you've relied on the whole year kind of go cold. But then you have Juan Yepez, right?

You have this hero to hit a two-run shot, and it's going to be great, and you're going to ride off into the sunset, and then you're going to actually forget how to play defense for parts of an inning. Yes, that was weird. You're going to issue some walks, and you're going to have your best reliever

just have one of the worst days at work he's ever had yep and the phillies are going to manage to capitalize on that in large part because in this particular instance fielding was not a thing that they had to do and so uh and it you know you had this like weird literal freaky friday where the Cardinals were a team that was built around defense, in particular their infield defense, right? Where those guys have just been nails all season long. And not all of what happened in that inning was defensive failing, but some of it was.

And that's the thing that we associate with the other team in red. Can I just also say, as a quick aside, you shouldn't be able to have two red teams wearing red stuff at the same time. It's visually very confusing, even when you know what's going on. It just doesn't look, you know, you both have powder blues, both of you. Yeah, like the home field advantage also includes like if you have the higher seed and you have the same same color as the other team then they have to change their color and philly no downside for you your throwbacks with the maroon

and the powder blue wonderful some of the better uniforms in baseball so i'm just saying that like you gotta and now you're going to atlanta and they also wear red yeah no it's very anyway so that inning was crazy that inning was was wild i was chatting for fan graphs and i was like oh i get to be done soon and eat the leftover vodka penne that's in my fridge and then i had to wait for like an hour you know it just went on and on because we were like we will be here until the end of the game and then i was like is it like me and girls where it's like no we will actually just keep it here till fourth but no we we stuck it out and that was a very wild inning of baseball uh it had to feel fantastic for phillies fans because they have had their postseason dreams crushed by the cardinals like

personally yes yes and some of the same ones, you know. Yeah, they've been around forever. So, yeah, that inning was weird. And Helsley, one of the few things maybe we did not get right in our preview, I think we said something about Helsley being unhittable. And usually he is. But in this case, he was maybe compromised. It seemed like he hurt his finger. He jammed his finger in, I think it was his last outing of the regular season or one of the last.

Yeah, in his last week. Yeah, he was fielding a ball and then he just jammed his finger and it looked like he was going to be okay. And I think he said he was okay when he went out, but that maybe it stiffened up between innings. It's not clear to me whether he actually informed anyone of that in the moment. clear to me whether he actually informed anyone of that in the moment. People, it seemed like, were getting on Cardinals manager Ali Marmol about not having a faster hook with Helsley. I'm not sure if he was totally clued into what the condition of Helsley's finger was at that moment or how he was feeling. I think Marmol also said maybe he regretted not making a move more quickly, but he's obviously been great for them all season long. So you have some desire to stick with that guy who got you there, but it just

didn't work out. And Pete Fairbanks had an issue too, where he had hand numbness or finger numbness and couldn't feel the ball. And he informed the powers that be about that and and was pulled from the game but you have to kind of depend on pitchers and players to say something is bothering them and with the competitive heat of october and everything that's at stake sometimes they're not going to be super forthcoming about those things so yeah i know there was speculation they're like there's a stall tactic and i was like i think that i think that there's not i think like there's a stall tactic and i was like i think that i think that there's not i think there's not a stall tactic i think that like ryan hillsley's hand is really bothering him but yeah it didn't it was and it was funny too because it's like he started by

striking out that anyway striking out hoskins and then you know you get a single and you get a walk and you get another walk and then alec bomb gets hit by a pitch and jumps up with a smile on his face in a way I have never seen a human being who like basically took 101 miles an hour to the shoulder but very close to his head he was just like yeah that's intimidating it's like who are we playing here are these people human right and and And at that point, you know, there's one out, they're still down a run and like, Palante's been good. And so you think,

okay, like Gene Segura has hit into double plays this year. Like he does that sometimes. He's still, you know, can kind of get down the line when he wants to,

but like he's been known to hit into a double player too. And then, and then all of a sudden they weren't down or running anymore and it just kept going at some point we need to talk about brandon marsh being sweaty but we don't have to we're not sure right now we're gonna have more opportunities because the phillies spoiler alert they. They did. I'm sure they'll have some sweat-inducing moments to come. But I saw also there was some criticism of the extent to which the Cardinals were kind of going all in on Pujols and Molina. Like, you know, they were letting Molina bat in leveraged spots, and they were starting Pujols in the second spot against a righty.

Now, granted, like, Pujols in the second half at least hit quite well against righties, and he's just been so good over that period that I don't completely blame them. Yeah, he's extremely slow, and he's always a double play candidate. He's the all-time double play leader. I actually noticed because someone emailed us the other day to say like i i just i hadn't seen pool holes in a while and i hadn't realized how slow he is i think he actually has the the fastest sprint speed this season of any season since 2016 i believe it was make it like actually fast it's still extremely slow like still slower than just about anyone except maybe melina i donina. But yeah, that I guess sort

of supports the idea that maybe taking some time off is helpful for him. Maybe he's just feeling better. Maybe that's part of why he has hit so well. Although I did read an article that he did actually seriously contemplate retiring mid-season. Like in June, he was thinking about it, which that was a scenario that we had on our minds and mentioned on the show when he signed with them. And then when he was kind of at a low point in the season, which makes it all the more extraordinary that he then did whatever he did and was just amazing down the stretch and one of the best hitters in baseball, given that he was about to walk away at that point. So that just adds to it. Anyway, I don't think they were the reason that the Cardinals lost the series. Like they actually had some pretty good moments in game two. Pujols had a couple hits. Molina had a hit at the very end to prolong things, which I was relieved to see. Like I didn't want to see him make the last out of that series.

So I was glad that he got the single and passed the baton. And then, you know, both he and Pujols got to be pulled for pinch runners and get a great hand at home. So even though they didn't have the great storybook run that I'm sure Cardinals fans were hoping those guys would have in their final season together, they did at least get last home games and they got to like go out in a nice way and get a nice appreciation. Yeah, it was it felt much better to have their end be what it was on Saturday than like have that game on Friday literally end with, you know, Molina making it out. Like that wasn't well, that didn't feel good because you're sitting there like you're really no one to bench it for this guy right now.

Like this is the best option that you have. I know. It's tough. It's like, you know, you tie so much of your season storyline to that duo or trio. And it's like, oh, this is the feel good story. And this is, you know, we're drawing fans to see these guys. And it's their last run. And so at that point, it's almost like you have to commit to the bit.

And it's like, well, then I guess we have to, you know, die by the Molina, live by the Molina, whatever. Like, in this case, I don't think that they necessarily lost because of that. And I'm oh wow this is it like you know this this is it it's been a whole season long farewell tour it's not like we didn't have warning but still once you get to that last inning and you realize like how long you've been watching those guys and how long they've been a big part of the story of baseball and it's like boy if the cardinals don't come back here that's it and i wonder what they're feeling in that moment too, whether it's actually like sinking in their minds as well and Cardinals fans too. Yeah. Well, I don't expect that I'll ever be able to retire because I'm a millennial,

but it has to be a very weird thing, especially given the seasonality of baseball, right? Because it's not unusual to be done playing baseball in early October. Both of those guys were on really good teams, and they had a lot of postseason run and success, so a little more unusual for them, sure, but it's not unusual to get to a point in October,

and you're like, yeah, I'm done for the year. I imagine that there is the reality of that curtain call, but I suspect that when it'll really hit them is gonna be like in february yeah when they're like oh i just stay here right yeah this is this is where i stay i just don't go yeah especially for pool holes when you were just raking for months right like i know i can still do this now yeah yeah It has to be a very strange kind of thing. So I don't know. It'll be interesting to see like what those guys want to do in their post playing life.

I mean, I imagine that if they decide that they want to have some kind of role in the game that there's one for them to have, but maybe they won't want to do that. I'm always surprised when like, not always surprised, but like I'm often surprised when players are like, yeah, I want to do that i'm always surprised when like not always surprised but like i'm often surprised when players are like yeah i want to be a coach i'm like you get to be done now right it's so hot and dusty out there like don't and you've done it for such a long time like don't you want to rest yeah well they love baseball a lot of them baseball yeah well and those guys in particular so you know it'll be interesting to see what their post-playing lives yield for them. All right.

Well, that's that series. Congrats to the Phillies. Condolences to the Cardinals. I guess this is a case where, look, I bear no ill will toward the Cardinals. I'm not rooting against the Cardinals. But whereas I was sort of lamenting that the Blue Jays had to lose in order for the Mariners to advance, I was not lamenting to the same extent with the Cardinals because they're always there. You know, they've had their shots and those guys, yeah, it was nice to see them make one

last run, but they've won their championships. You know, they have their rings. So give someone else a chance. And the Phillies, they've been waiting a long time too. So, and you know, Bryce Harper hit a home run that seems like a good sign Zach Eflin finished off these games so Zach Eflin October closer now apparently so things are uh evolving but but this is I think a good format for the Phillies and a good format for the Guardians like these teams that are maybe top heavy in the rotation to an extent

or just have like a couple just dominant ace types and then at least in the Guardians case a great bullpen like being able to play a best of three you know they won't be able to leverage that as much just because fewer off days in this October so you can't just use the same guys over and over and again, which I am in favor of generally. But this format suited those teams, I think more than say the Cardinals, right? Who were a good overall team and a better team probably than the Phillies for the long haul. But in a best of three, you don't necessarily feel as great about what you're going to get as you do with the two guys that the Phillies were rolling out there. So it just happened to work out that way. Well, and I'm glad that we have not been subscribers to this theory on the podcast, but there is a contingent of baseball fans that believes that if you don't play in a division series, you haven't actually played in the playoffs, which is silly because we call it a postseason. The games happen after the season does.

It's post-following. But it is nice that the two teams that are coming off these very, very long playoff droughts, they get to play division series now. So all of you out there who were preparing to give it to me on Twitter and say, like, the mariners didn't actually haha you know that's what i have to say to you haha it all worked out the home games is a pretty important thing it's an important thing it's really nice i mean like look at all the people who were just like chomping at the bit do you are you a chomping or a champing oh boy at the bit

person i'm a google it every time to remind myself yeah yeah it's it's champing right it's supposed to be champing i think it's supposed to be champing but anyway chomping reminds me of the the chain chomps from mario you know the the big guys who are attached to chains and they go chomp chomp chomp oh sure so it. Champing. Champing at the bit. What was I talking about? It counts. This time it counts. Yeah. Oh, there were a bunch of people like champing at the bit to watch the watch party at T-Mobile

because the Mariners like had people. I was going to say had people over. Because the Mariners had people, I was going to say had people over. They told some people to bring chips and other people to bring potato salad. No, they held a watch party at T-Mobile Park for the games this weekend, which was very cool and kind of tried to split the difference. But now people get to go watch games there for real. And that's, I think, a pretty special thing it's different when you get to have a playoff game at least one in your home park so and that takes us to the final

series of the weekend and the only one that went to three yeah and that's mets padres and padres one yeah so they did the mets yeah so the first thing I would say is that I wouldn't be remotely surprised if we find out in the next couple of days or weeks that Scherzer was really playing through something. Because he didn't look like Scherzer. Yeah. The Padres, they don't hit a lot of home runs. At least they didn't over the course of the season and they hit a whole bunch off of him

well you know who can really blame the Mets though because they were up against the best player in baseball Trent Grisham of course yes I have liked Trent Grisham a lot in previous seasons and boy he fell off this season but at least at the plate he did.

He's still a great defender, but yeah, he had a real... But he was great on both sides of the series. Like, wow, he made some great catches and also was hitting everything hard. Yeah, he did. I mean, like, should we engage in an exercise in contrast? Sure. Do you want an exercise in contrast? Gage, an exercise in contrast.

Sure. Do you want an exercise in contrast? Over the course of this season, this 2022 regular season, Trent Grisham hit 184-284-341. He had a 280 WOBA. He had an 83 WRC+. He still was worth two wins, mostly because of his superlative defense, but it was a real rough year for him at the plate. In his eight postseason plate appearances,

and this is not including his games tonight. I don't think our stats have updated. Oh, no, but we have live stats. I know about my website. Oh, but it only has his today. here we're gonna it doesn't matter his his postseason line not including tonight's action is 333 500 and he has a he has a slugging over a thousand for a 366 wrc plus his his line tonight, he went two for four. He scored a run.

He walked. He had a 434 WRC plus in Sunday's contest. So that's pretty good. You know, as these things go, that's good. Yep. That's what you want. Yep. So he was good.

It's also just, you know, it's playoffs, right? Yeah. Like Trent Krisham is the guy that would have been the random guy who didn't really hit most of the year. Always a random guy. There's always at least one random guy. Right. I guess the problem with Scherzer, and look, Scherzer, he signs this short-term, high average annual value contract because he's advanced in age and he is still inning per inning one of the best pitchers in baseball. And I would say he earned his contract. I mean,

he pitched like Max Scherzer, like he just didn't the last couple of times, which were pretty important times. I guess the pitfall of signing Max Scherzer or relying on Max Scherzer at this point is that he's getting up there and he's often a bit banged up and not always fully available. You know, sometimes he has to take a little aisle stint here or there, and then he gets back and you still don't know if he's compromised in some way. Right. And yeah, he just he didn't look great. Like he loses the game to Atlanta in that weekend where the Braves won the division. And then he loses this game.

It just didn't look good. And everyone kind of knew that was a possibility coming into this game. Like normally you'd feel great about going into a best of three with Max Scherzer and Jacob de Grom, but you just didn't know if you could count on those guys being 100% or that close to 100%. So I guess that's the issue with Max Scherzer at this stage of his career. He's still really, really great for most of the season, but it could be that by the time this part of the year rolls around, much like

what happened last year with the Dodgers, right? That there's just too much mileage that, you know, just too many aches and pains have piled up and he's not that guy. So going into next year, I don't know whether you just hope for better health and luck or whether you get to this part of the season which happens to be i guess the the time that you really sign maxers are for so that's kind of kind of a problem yes so you have this you have this rough go with scherzer and then saturday you're getting to grom and here's another case where you're not quite sure exactly what you're gonna get right because the first time through the order in his recent starts he's been mostly himself but he has been homer prone he's gotten crushed the third time through you don't know how healthy he is and he pitched you know

he pitched pretty well on saturday and then we had some interesting bullpen choices from Buck, Scholl, Walter, because there is nothing new under the sun. And initially, Ben, I don't know what your impression was. I was like, okay, so Buck has internalized a lesson that like, you know. Use my closer.

Don't forget about the closer. Yeah, like with your season on the line, it sure would be bad closer. Don't forget about the closer. Yeah. Like with your season on the line, it sure would be bad if your best reliever didn't pitch. And like he mostly picked a good spot for it. And Edwin Diaz did what Edwin Diaz does. And he didn't let any runs score. And then the Mets, they scored a bushel, a peck, a whole bunch of runs. They scored a whole bunch of runs. And then they were up 7-2, I think was the margin at that time.

And it took a long time. It took a long time, Ben. Like, Morihan did not pitch well for the Padres. The Mets scored a bunch of runs. It had been like 45 minutes, and margin again was like five runs and you would have to win on saturday but then you want to win on sunday too and now you have the lovely margin to start making decisions with sunday in mind because this is the trick of the wild card like present you is the only you you can really think about future you doesn't matter

because you just have to win that day in an elimination game like you can't plan for the future you can't think about future you all you have is present you but then when you're up five runs you can think about future you a little bit right like you can start to manage for the next day a little bit and instead edwin Diaz threw two-thirds of an inning after waiting for 45 minutes. And then when they didn't score again, then Adam Modavino came out. And now it's like, who are your best relievers, Buck?

You can save some of them for tomorrow when you have to play again, right? Yeah, well, they don't have that many that he probably trusts all that much so well sure but then you have a five run you have a five run margin so you can go to the less good guys and be like whoa we're gonna keep the guys i really trust and save them for tomorrow yeah i see what you're saying it was i guess part of it it's a problem created by the fact that de grom doesn't really go deep into games anymore as good as he you know, he's only reached 100 pitches once this season.

He has only pitched seven innings twice and hasn't gone beyond seven because he's often either like working his way back from an injury or you're just trying to prevent the next injury, right? And so you're kind of handling him carefully. And so he's not really built up to go super deep into games. And lately, as you noted, he hasn't been able to, he hasn't really held up and maybe he's just not conditioned for it. And so that creates an issue where, yeah, you have this guy who you might rather have on the mound than anyone else in baseball, at least for a a few innings but you're probably going to have to go into the bullpen at some point even if things work out like

this wasn't the best version of de grom but is like even when he's having like a so-so de grom day he throws just these pitches that just like make you do a double take like even if a closer were throwing them a one inning guy were throwing them, it would be ridiculous. Like there is a pitch like Juan Soto fell down swinging at a 101 from DeGrom. And then DeGrom like pumped like 102 in there two more times. I think it struck about. It's like ridiculous. It's like he just manhandled Juan Soto.

Yeah. By the way, also looked good in the series. So no concerns about Juan Soto. But, you the way, also looked good in the series, so no concerns about Juan Soto. But he threw a pitch, I think it was to Kim, maybe it was just like 100 just on the black, painted perfectly. I mean, just everything is 100 or higher almost, and it's just often so perfectly located that it's totally unfair. But unfair but he's just not gonna give you great length typically and then if you only have so many guys you can trust in the pen then you're gonna go to them early and often but yeah you're right you know maybe that was too much again like

i don't know that that ended up being decisive right i mean diaz ended up pitching and and giving up runs after coming into a situation in Game 3. By that point, the Mets were already down 4-0, I think. I think that's right, yeah. And they just never got anything going whatsoever offensively. No, that's fair. We can nitpick the pitching decisions, and it might be fair to, but I don't know that it would have actually changed anything. I don't know that it would have actually changed anything.

Yeah. I mean, like the bigger problem was that today the Padres managed to score a bunch and they ran into the buzzsaw that was Joe Musgrove and his mighty ears. Yep. Do we have to talk about the ear thing? I think we have to talk about it. I feel bad. Like we're going to give Joe Musgrove a complex. Your ears are normally sweaty, Joe.

They appear to have a normal amount of sweat yeah i have not done like a frame by frame you know side by side comparison of joe musgrove's ears in the typical start and this start they were pretty shiny i don't know if that was out of character shininess for him or not but he was so good that showalter came out and asked the umpires to check him. Yeah. And they did. Yeah. And they caressed his ears and other parts of him.

Man, it was so intimate. It really was, yeah. Like, they, you know, first of all, they really got in there with his ears. Like, they really felt around. Yep. And then, like, touched the side of his face as they were leaving and I just

wanted them to kiss like if they wanted to not only if they want to I don't people don't have to kiss they don't want to kiss you should only kiss if you want to kiss but I was like are they going to kiss it was quite tender it was very tender it was so tendy his stuff was great and the Mets couldn't touch him Are they going to kiss? It was quite tender. It was very tender. It was so tendy. Oh, wow.

Look, his stuff was great, and the Mets couldn't touch him. No, they sure couldn't. From what I saw, his spin rates were up somewhat. Maybe his velo was up a tad, too, in which case you would expect the spin rates to be up. It was like, I don't know, it looked like 100 to 200 RPM depending on the pitch type relative to his season averages. Like, you know, you could say it might be a bit fishy and that if you're Showalter, you might as well check, especially if you've got shiny ears happening. So, fine, go ahead and check. And maybe you don't even think there's something, but you just want to throw him off his game or get him angry or something or, like, get your team fired up thinking that this guy's cheating and we want to beat him or whatever and then like musgrove was you know gesturing at the mets dugout

a bunch of times and like flicking his his hand off his like mustache area in their general direction it's the best dumb sport there's ever been it really is is, yeah. I saw Andrew McCutcheon tweeted, I guarantee Musgrove has Red Hot on his ears. Pitchers use it as mechanism to stay locked in during games. It burns like crazy, and I don't know why some guys think it helps them, but in no way is it sticky. And Red Hot is like icy hot, but more so. So maybe that's something that pitchers do in mccutchen's knowledge i've seen that having pitchers have something rubbed on them and it's like icy hot or something which is like

you know kind of like a liniment kind of thing but maybe it focuses them it's a serial killer kind of thing is what it is it drives them into a rage yeah it's like a it's like a it's like a thing that like serial killers would do one would assume, but instead pitchers do it. Maybe it was that. Maybe he had something else and he was just hiding it somewhere other than his ears. I don't know, but maybe he was just great and he was great regardless. I think a couple of things about this. First of all, I will admit that I noticed his ears being kind of shiny, but he wasn't going to his ears very much.

He did dig into his belt, which a lot of guys still do. I think it's fine for Showalter to ask. It's within his rights as a manager. We all saw Karin Cech get a head massage. This is a thing that managers do, and as we've seen from the spin data this year, there's good reason on the macro level to think that

pitchers have figured out a way around the checks because spin is back up big basically to where it was before the sticky stuff enforcement came into play last june and so like it i get it i think it's fine i think it's fine in a playoff game when you're down and it's win or go home and you think the guy is just like shoving because he is to be like can you go check him for some stuff and then we got just like i can't wait to try to explain that to a non-baseball fan it's gonna be so delightful but you know i think it's fine for him to check and i think that it didn't appear that joe musgrove was like using anything at least on his ears again he was digging in his belt but like

when you look at his spin relative to how his velo was up which is understandable when you're making a playoff start to send your team to the division series that your velo would be up because you're amped like when you adjust for the uptick in velocity like it wasn't a super dramatic spike and he like he said it wasn't like he was up 400 RPMs on anything. There is variation start to start, and there are times when guys will kind of spike a little bit, and that isn't to say that guys generally, and I don't know about Musgrove in particular, aren't using foreign substances again, but I just don't think that the spin uptick that we saw is particularly indicative of that. I think it's fine for Showalter to have asked, but I think that Joe Musgrove just threw one of the better playoff starts I've seen in a while. And I will say, he got asked about it after. I know that Buzz Rooney asked him about it. He had to ask.

We saw the man get his ears touched by a relative stranger on national TV and then have his face gently caressed. I didn't kiss even one time, Ben. Between that and Buck massaging Jacob deGrom's posterior after he took him out of the game, this was a very sensual series. I want to come back to that. You hold that thought because- Put a pin on it. You put a pin on it you put a pin in that like bug put his hand inside jacob de bros house um i oh boy so anyway i thought it

was fine for him to for show walter to ask i thought oh what i was gonna say sorry i've recaptured my train i thought that like you know people like to bust buster's chops and sometimes buster gives them good cause but like he asked in a way that i thought wasn't confrontational i thought musgrove handled it well and then they moved on which is the right thing to do because this guy just threw like an incredible start to send his team to the division series to deal with the buzzsaw that is the dodgers anyway this game had everything except for that victory yeah it was just like such there's like the tap that guys do on the hinder that sportmen do and then there was showalter who like kind of cupped Jacob deGrom's butt.

And then he went back again and he kind of got up in there a little bit. And as I was watching, I was like, I need to rewind that because he really got up in there. It was intimate. And look, I'm not here to judge. I'm just remarking on it because it was a lot of touching. Yeah. I have not had the pleasure of a proctologist exam, I don't believe, but I probably will at some point. Well, yeah, I'm given to understand that that is a thing that you guys have to start doing at a certain point.

Yes, I have had a colonoscopy and people should do that. I'm somewhat on the young side to do that, but I did it. But that I was not awake for. So I imagine that was quite invasive as well, but I didn't feel a thing. So that was great. But this looked like what I imagine a digital rectal exam might feel like. Not quite. The pants were on, obviously, like not quite the the pants were on obviously yeah but yeah

it was over the pants just to clarify wasn't like ass out in the dugout yeah anyway anyway so musgrove was uh was. Regardless of, I don't think we need to impugn him. He was just, he was awesome. No, he was spectacular. He threw a hell of a start. He threw a hell of a start. Yeah. It was actually, I saw this stat.

This was the first postseason winner take all game where the team allowed one hit. This was the 127th winner take all game in postseason history. And the Padres were the first to allow just one hit and yeah that was mostly Musgrove obviously so kudos to him and to them for showing up that way in enemy territory and just completely shutting down the Mets to the point that like the fans just had nothing basically other than the intrigue of checking Musgrove for sticky stuff like that was the only time that they actually like had something to cheer about or boo about or whatever. So yeah, they just never really got into the game after a certain point.

And I should say that stat I just cited, that stat was from Sarah Langs. And you probably heard on the broadcast, many of you are on Twitter that Sarah announced last week that she had been diagnosed with ALS, which was extremely sad news, I think, for a lot of people in the baseball community. And she's been on the show, and I've been on MLB Network with her. And I don't know how many times I've cited Sarah Lang's stats on this podcast or linked to them on the show page. Usually, I mention them or try to mention them. And, you know, I hope that we will cite many more of those and obviously wish her the best because she's a pretty invaluable part of the baseball community and the fun fact community

specifically. Yeah. I thought that the way that the broadcast took time to acknowledge her contributions and work and her circumstances was really cool and we yeah we do sarah if you're listening we hope you're you're doing okay yep all right so that's basically a wrap for for the series i guess just last word on the mets you know the mets had a really good season they did i know it doesn't feel like it right now because they lost the division title at the last second there and then this went the way Yeah. for much of the season that they were just going to like put the, the Lowell Mets behind them. And honestly,

they probably deserve to after the season they had, but because of just like the last week, I think that they will still be looked on as the, the cursed Mets stepping on rakes and, you know, can't get out of their way and things go wrong for them at the last second. And I get that,

you know, I do think that they have made some major strides and, and I don't know what Steve Cohen's reaction to this loss will be and whether he'll just blow it out and double the payroll or what. But I guess that in the ultimate goal, obviously the goal is a championship, but also the goal is to like change the narrative about the Mets so that people don't just like say Mets as a punchline and everyone kind of knows what Metsing something up means.

like, say, Mets as a punchline, and everyone kind of knows what Metsing something up means. I guess because of the way that this ended, they unfortunately probably have not put that behind them, even though they were winning the division for much of the season, and they won 100-plus games, and they were one of the best teams in baseball, and it was one of the most successful regular seasons in Mets history. And it sort of sucks that it ended the way it did over the last week there to sort of preserve the image of the hapless Mets right when they were not that they were the the quite competent Mets for much of the season so that should not be forgotten yeah I mean like they won 101 games they tied the Braves for the division if we were you know if this was still a play a game 163

to do the tie break, like maybe they don't have to play this weekend, you know, like in some ways they were done in by that as much as anything else. They are in a weird, they're in a weird spot as a, as an organization, because on the one hand you're like, well, you know, they have Lindor and they have Scherzer and they have to ground for another year and they have another year of Starling Marte and they still have Canada. And, you know, they have those guys, but they also have a bunch of free agents coming up, including Edwin Diaz and Brandon Nimmo and Tyler Naquin. They're probably less sad about, but, you know, they have like a bunch of free agents and they have a bunch of guys who were really good who are in a position where they are you know probably gonna get some substantial raises in arbitration so like pete alonzo is a second year r player and so is jeff mcneil and nito is and so like they're they're in a weird spot because they should still be good next year but we have their luxury tax payroll estimate for 2023 and this is before we include the salaries for ARB eligible players at almost 200 million right and they are going to have to resign or deal with some of their departures in free agency. If it's not this year, it'll be next year because like DeGrom,

I guess they have a club option on DeGrom, right, for 2024. But like he can opt out after this year, I think, in his deal and is likely to. So it's like, what do you do with DeGrom? And then they are in a division with Atlanta, who has locked up every good player on their team except for i guess what like they still have to figure out what to do with dansby swanson do they bring him back but like all of their young position players who they really like are signed forever yep yep at a payroll that will be will be lower at least or right around where the Mets are.

So it's just, I don't know. It's a tricky situation. I don't know. That sounds very downer, doesn't it? I don't mean it to, but it does. Like they're a good team. And I think Steve Cohen will probably walk away from this being like, my ego is bruised and I'm going to spend $100 million to make sure that this doesn't happen again, or at least to try to,

but it's going to take some doing. It's not like the bulk of the roster can remain unchanged. They're either going to have to make some decisions about who they bring back in free agency or go out and find new free agents. Yeah. This was a matchup between franchises that do seem to have ownership groups that they're going for it you know so so that's nice to see i suppose and yeah you know we mentioned uh last week you darvish is is great and you darvish was great here just wanted to mention that and he had he had a terrific start yeah blake snell not so much he had been great down the stretch not so great in this game i just man i can't stand watching blake snell i can't stand it like i like nothing against blake snell personally but it's

just like oh it really is like he's he's like three two on everyone you know and he's just like trying to get chases and like often he does get chases but it's just oh it's so bad and it's just like you know he's like done in the fourth inning and it's just like uh i'm sorry blake but really just uh it's it's bad yeah he's not good it's bad yeah when he's not good it's bad yeah it's like extra bad yeah and i wanted to like i feel like francisco lindor is is not as much of a main character as he should be anymore it's weird like i feel like he was a main character for years when he was with cleveland and then he had a couple down years and now he's like this year was as good as any of his years basically i mean it depends on which war you look at and which

defensive stat but like offensively he was great he was like basically peak lindor like his he was like what seven wins or something according to fan graphs like he was an absolute star this year maybe it's because like he didn't start so well i he wasn't an all-star i think like he had a a better second half than first half i don't know what it was but like i thought when the mets got francisco lindor he was just going to own the city and be the biggest superstar in baseball. And I guess because he just had a couple pedestrian years and while all the Otanis and Sotos and Vlads and all the amazing new players coming up were having great years, I guess he got a little lost in the shuffle, but he's 28 years old you know and he's like still really fun and still really good so like

we should restore him to main character status if he has been demoted somehow just like yeah i don't know how that happened if my perceptions aren't skewed here i think you're right and i support restoring him i think it doesn't help that in this year when he was so good again that a literally giant guy yeah had a literally giant season across town you know it probably doesn't help that judge was doing what judge was doing in the year that lindor was i said that i think de grom will opt out i don't know if i do think that do you think that deGrom will opt out? I think there was a report that the odds are better that he wants to stay now. So I take it all back. Well, I think he'll still opt out unless they work out some sort of extension. The report was just that he's more willing to return

to the Mets at least, maybe after opting out. I guess coming off of the year he had, he was still super dominant, obviously obviously when he was pitching but he was you know he's kind of right you know you'd have to be a bit nervous about like signing a whole new deal with jacob de grom at this point so yeah but so going back to lindor yeah like i think that we should pay more attention to lindor because uh he's he's good and fun and you know just because he didn't hit 62 home runs doesn't mean that he is not worthy of New York's attention. Jay wrote a column about how he was having an MVP caliber season and a lot of people were very mad about it. And I thought that that reaction was strange and didn't understand it personally.

All right. Well, this weekend was really a great advertisement for baseball. I think it was baseball at its best, basically. It was, I guess, unfortunately, because baseball can't get out of its own way. Sometimes MLB, at least, there was a big controversy with international viewers being blacked out.

We got a lot of emails from listeners all over the world, people in France, people in Israel. People were not wrong to be mad. No, absolutely not. If people were not following this, We sure did. playoffs as people domestically are and that has been the case in previous post seasons people internationally could watch and then like a day or two before the playoffs they're just like nope and they just like yanked it out from under them and they just like changed the terms of service like multiple times and yeah and just like rewrote the the rules basically like people paid for this service with the understanding that they would not be blacked out for the playoffs, and then they were. And it's even more ridiculous because a lot of these places, they can't go to the game if they're overseas.

And also, it's hard to get it via other means, and they thought they had paid for that and gotten that already, and then they to like find some other broadcast sign up and so it's really odd because mlb seems to be trying to promote the game internationally and doing like international series everywhere and you know let's play games in london and let's have home run derbies and we'll send players and everything and then to do this and just anchor everyone your your loyal fans overseas it seems very strange. There are theoretically refunds available. If you write to MLB's customer service, I'll link to it. I mean. I know. Right. I don't think they informed people. I think it was just like you show up to watch and you can't and you're blacked out. And then there've been some articles written about how you can write

in to request a refund. I'll link to those on the show page for people who are in this boat. And now I guess they're all in the boat that we're in with blackouts, but it's maybe harder for them to access the games and obviously they're not gonna go to the games. And so it's just, it's really strange that they did it at all, that they did it in this way.

Even if you can get a refund, I'm sure you'd rather just get what you paid for which is postseason baseball which is what you were told that you were getting so i don't get it but it's bad yeah it's bad you want to grow the game and you want to give people who love it the opportunity to watch it and you know i think we would prefer the blackout situation in the u.s be, but it's particularly hard to access this stuff on like a local broadcast when you're abroad. So what are we doing, MLB? Like this is terrible. This is the time of year when people really want to get amped for this stuff and you're just leaving folks high and dry. That sucks. Yep. Other than that, though, this was a great weekend. Yeah, that part is not the best, but otherwise. A lot of great baseball otherwise so glad that we could

all enjoy it together and that we could talk about it today and you know i took a little risk before we started recording and i ate some brussels sprouts oh my god ben i'm fine you're fine now how long did it take last time not this long okay i think i'm good they were boiled not roasted this time so I thought a little softer, they might go down easier. I'm okay. Now I'm worried about you for another reason, because apparently you have aged several days.

I'm just going to boil all my food. I'm boiling my food. It's just Brussels sprouts for some reason, and I overindulged. I'm just easing myself back into it. That's the thing. I'll graduate, hopefully, to roast it. I wanted to get over the hang-up that I might have. I thought just easing myself back into it. That's the thing. I'll graduate hopefully to roast it. I wanted to get over the hang up that I might have. I thought I might have some sort of instinctive like, oh, this made me hurl last time, so I'm not going to like it. I've barely dipped

my toes back into the Brussels sprouts waters prior to this, and this was more of a dipping my foot in, but boiled. I just, you know, I'm easing back in basically. Yeah. It's like the time in high school when I ate salsa that had a lot of cilantro in it. And then I got a migraine and it was one of the worst ones I've ever had. And I had a similar experience to your Brussels sprout time. And then I like, didn't want to eat that for like, I was like cilantro, get away from me

and not in the, it tastes like soap to me way. Like, that's not my thing. But I was just like associating it with this terrible migraine. Did you put any seasoning on it? Nope, nothing, nothing. It's just, it's not taking any extra risks. It's just going to see if I could keep down the bare minimum of Brussels sprout digestibility. And things are going great.

of brussels sprout digestibility and things are going great so well i'm glad that you haven't bombed but i hope you get to have a more flavorful experience in the future you know like we'll get there yeah boiled food i don't know sometimes sometimes you got to do it sometimes you got to boil your food all right well that will do it we'll be back pretty soon to talk about division series yay all right i meant to mention by the way gotta be pretty deflating to be so dominated by someone that you suspect that they might be cheating and then have them inspected for cheating and not have them found to be cheating which doesn't mean that they weren't cheating but still you didn't catch them sticky-handed and then it just looks like oh man we just couldn't touch this guy. And so we resorted to checking him for cheating, but actually he was just so good that we couldn't touch him. Again,

don't begrudge Buck for trying, might as well, even if it's for gamesmanship reasons. But because it didn't really pay off, it makes you look like a little more desperate, probably. Not only could we not hit him, we could not catch him cheating. And thus, perhaps he was not cheating, and we just could not hit him. All right, let me leave you with the past blast. This is episode 1914. This is a past blast from 1914 and from Jacob Pomeranke, Sabre's Director of Editorial Content and Chair of the Black Sox Scandal Research Committee. Jacob's headline is, Full Court Press on the Federal League. Baseball's biggest story in the summer of 1914 was the threat of war. The federal leagues war against the American and national leagues. Oh, and there was that other big conflict over in Europe, too.

After declaring itself to be a third major league, federal league teams threw big money at star players like the Cubs Joe Tinker and Mordecai Three Finger Brown to entice them to leave their AL and NL teams. Dozens of players did, and Major League owners began taking drastic measures to stop them. Chicago White Sox owner Charles Comiskey was so determined to keep Hal Chase, his talented but ethically challenged first baseman, from signing with Buffalo of the Federal League that he took him to court. Here was the wild scene for Chase's first home game with Buffalo on June 25, 1914, as reported by the Associated Press. Quote,

Hal Chase played two innings of baseball at Federal Field yesterday afternoon. At the end of the second inning, Sheriff Fred Becker climbed down from the grandstand and went down on the playing field. He served Chase with a copy of restraining order, forbidding him from playing with any other ball team because of a contract with the Chicago White Sox of the American League. President Comiskey of the Sox was here with his lawyers. When the sheriff and two policemen went on the field, there was a great demonstration on the part of the fans. The officers were jeered and hissed, and shouts went up asking him to let Chase finish the game. So noisy was the demonstration that it was feared that fans might break on the field and start a

riot. The protest soon subsided, however, and after posing for the cameramen, Chase went to the clubhouse. Jacob concludes, a judge soon granted Chase the right to stay in Buffalo where he led the league with 17 home runs in 1915, but the Federal League folded after two seasons. Federal League owners filed their own lawsuit challenging baseball's monopoly,

and that case eventually led to a 1922 Supreme Court decision granting baseball its antitrust exemption. Meanwhile, Hal Chase got his revenge on Charles Comiskey a few years later when he helped serve as a go-between with his old White Sox teammates and gamblers who bribed them to throw the 1919 World Series. Well, Mr. Comiskey, that probably wasn't worth it. Thank you, Jacob. I can sense that we're getting into his wheelhouse here as we near 1919 and the Black Sox scandal. But I'm glad that we could give a shout out to the Federal League. And I have a few other shout outs to hand out here, too. Because you can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild.

And 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. Chad Thompson, Chase Wiseman, Dan Heitzer, David Batchelder, and Ted Trotman. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only. A bunch of people have been joining to partake in the playoff conversation lately. It's been great in there. We also do monthly bonus episodes of the podcast, and we offer access to a couple of playoff livestreams.

We will be doing those sometime soon. If you're a Patreon supporter, you will be informed. Unlike an international MLB TV subscriber. There are plenty of other perks, too. Add free Fangrafts memberships and discounts on merch. Check out patreon.com slash effectivelywild. You can also find our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast

platforms. Keep your questions and comments coming for me and Meg via email at podcastthefangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWpod, and you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing and production assistance. As mentioned, we will be back with another episode soon. Talk to you then. Now don't be sad Cause two out of three ain't bad Maybe we can talk all night

But that ain't getting us nowhere And then... Sorry, I got a cat that's being a rascal. not snowing and then sorry I got a cat that's being a rascal you're being a rascal stop it and then there was Showalter who like kind of cupped