Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1915: Divided We Ball

Episode Date: October 11, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about what would happen if a dominant starting pitcher were caught using sticky stuff in a playoff game, then set up the biggest storylines and scheduling considerations of the division series round, consider which matchup is most likely to result in an upset, and preview each AL and NL […]

Cornered by the conic force Inconvenient their voices make you cast away But you've already lost Everybody's asking Nothing's everlasting. I'm coming. Everybody's asking where you've been. Hello and welcome to episode 1915 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Doing well. How are you?

I don't know why I felt like I needed to emphasize the Ben, but I did. And here we are. I'm doing well. We have a day off of, well, games anyway. And here we are, getting ready to talk about some Division series. What Division series they are. Indeed, yes. Days off are perfect for previewing. Yeah.

Preview time. Thank goodness. We can actually do something without it feeling immediately obsolete as long as everyone listens immediately after we post the episode. So we did our wildcard recap last time, and now we will do our division series preview. And then at some point later in the week, there will be a third episode about something or other. So there was one question we got from a listener in response to our conversation and to the Eargate controversy in Mets Padres game three on Sunday. Daniel said, you're probably getting a ton of emails about this question. Many probably also prefaced that you're probably getting a ton of emails about this question. But without getting into the ear discourse, what would happen if a starting pitcher who's been absolutely dealing in a playoff game is found to have been using sticky stuff late in the game with a big lead?

Does the umpire have the power to call a forfeit to stop the game and have it replayed the next day? Presumably the other team could play the game under protest, but could that come to anything? under protest but could that come to anything i'm guessing the answer is no but that seems incredibly unsatisfying and potentially damaging to the sport if this happened in say game seven of the world series to take the most dramatic example and that's right i think right there's no recourse i mean you can eject the pitcher you can suspense and find the pitcher but you can't do a do-over right you can't say okay let, let's start this thing over. So that would be quite a scandal. If Joe Musgrove had been found to have been using something, I guess it would have been satisfying to some degree for Mets fans to see him kicked out of the game. then they could have consoled themselves over the long winter with the thought that at least we were on the level and he was cheating. But that would be a big issue for the sport, I suppose, if it were confirmed that a pitcher were cheating in a big game like that. But there's really no way to do anything about it, right?

I mean, it's just the whole debate about the Astros and the cheating scandal and people saying that Rob Manfred should vacate the title or give it to someone else. And that just doesn't really happen in this sport in this league. Right. And you don't even have the recourse of protesting anymore. As J.J. Cooper of Baseball America pointed out, there aren't protests in baseball any longer. They've been they've been done away with. Ben can't protest games at all anymore.

So you can still silently protest. It's just you can't officially protest. You can't officially protest. Yeah. Although, did officially protesting ever really satisfy anyone? Very rarely. Did it ever really do much of anything at all? So I guess, I mean, he would have been ejected from that game, right?

Yeah, you get him out of the game. It's something. And if they had still held on to win the padres i imagine he would have been ineligible for further postseason play just based on how the sticky stuff stuff is meant to go right maybe probably probably i would think yeah i would think because you can level a suspension against practitioners of sicky stuff. But yeah, I think one of the things that is really tricky is that we don't have a ton of great in-the-moment mechanisms for punishing wrongdoing apart from ejection.

And so this is part of why it's important for the rules to be enforced in such a way and designed in such a way that they serve as a true deterrent to bad acts. Because once it's done. Like your range of options. Are limited. Absent suspension fine. Or you know vacation of wins. And titles and such.

And like vacating. Not like going on vacation. The wins can't go on vacation. They're inanimate. So yeah. Yes. And again. I think some people thought it was kind of a ticky-tack move to challenge to have him inspected.

I don't think so, really. I mean, the fact that it was fruitless, that nothing was found, in retrospect, it makes you look even more impotent in a sense because it's like, wow, we thought he was cheating because we were so bad against him that it turned out that he wasn't. Or at least if he was, we couldn't prove it and we just couldn't hit him anyway. And then he stayed in the game and just kept dominating. So it didn't help them, but you might as well try, I guess, when a guy is totally shutting you down like that. Maybe there's nothing to lose other than what you were going to lose anyway. And again, I don't think there was any smoking gun here, really, or shiny ears.

There were definitely shiny ears, but I don't know if the shiny ears were a smoking gun. And really, the spin rate jumps, like his velocity was up a bit too. And once you factor in that, you know, velocity and spin rate are correlated. So you would expect one to increase if the other increases. And as we noted with Luis Castillo, velocity tends to spike in the postseason a lot of the time. Pitchers are amped up and they're leaving it all in the field and once you factor in the fact that he was thrown a little bit harder than usual the spin rate jumps were not really that anomalous so I don't think it's that fishy and actually he was just interviewed recently and he's talked about how he feels that the 2017 title

that the Astros won he was a member of that team, is tainted. And he said, I still don't feel great about wearing that ring around or telling people that I was a World Series champion on that team. I want one that feels earned and that was a true championship. So that's the goal. So if that's sincere, and who knows, but if it is, then you would think that that would be a reason for him not to cheat if he really does feel deeply about that title not having been fully legitimately earned and he wants one he can be

proud of that's totally on the up and up then you would think that would be a reason not to cheat again I guess if you're a cheater if you're labeling someone a cheater then what they say about wanting to win an untainted title probably doesn't sway you that much but anyway if he had been caught if someone else is caught well you're kind of out of luck he's out of the game but that's about it yeah you know i think that we unfortunately know that the

sport is one that has a both past and present legacy of cheating and so it's always going to make people's eyebrows go and you know it's the sound your eyebrow makes when it goes up just the one eyebrow now both of them the both eyebrows up is like oh wow that was amazing one eyebrow was like i'm paying attention to you so you know i understand fans especially fans of teams that are presently losing having suspicion around this stuff we've had caused for suspicion lately and i think that despite not really learning that lesson in the steroid era we're trying to learn the lesson of like not being caught flat-footed right and being on the look for stuff so that we bought it before you know you win a world series at least in some small part based on you know, you win a World Series, at least in some small part, based on, you know, banging a trash can.

So I understand fans having that instinct. And, you know, not to knock the ESPN broadcast. Like, I think that that broadcast was fine in general. But, like, I think that there's a general lack of understanding when it comes to how spin and velocity interact with one another and, like, what the real benefits of spin are and what is, you know, what is sort of the normal range of variance in a starter's spin on his pitches start to start, right? Like we just, I don't think that there's a really terrific

understanding of that stuff. And so when you see what strikes you as a particularly shiny ear, you know, and you, you are possessed of matte ears, right? Like totally matte finish on those ears. And then you have the broadcast telling you that Musgrove's spin is up on all of his pitches. And you have the context of there having been recent shenanigans in the sport, recent shenanigans that involved the team that Joe Musgrove was on, right? Maybe you sit there and go, well, what's he, you know, what's going going? And so I get it. But I think that we have to then interact with information after the fact that makes us have a fuller understanding of that moment. And that isn't to say that there aren't pitchers out there now, and perhaps Joe Musgrove, I don't know, who are doctoring the

ball with stuff. But the shiny ear and the spin rates are not, I think, sufficient to discern that and to say that definitively, particularly when he had like an ear cavity search. Right. Yeah, David Cohn was on that broadcast. And in theory, he was the one that you would want to be in that situation, because he is well equipped to talk about these topics. And I think he's quite a capable and competent and compelling broadcaster. And you can tell on the air he's like looking at baseball sabat, you know, like he has all these things at his fingertips. And so he was pointing out that the spin rates were higher. In what I heard, and I may not have heard everything he said, and I probably wasn't paying all sounded the same cautionary note. He noted that the spin rates were up. I don't know if he sort of dismissed how much they were up and whether the magnitude was significant. But generally, I'm happy that he gets shine, no pun intended, no pun intended on these broadcasts because he's very good. And he obviously brings the X player perspective, but he's also just a pitching nerd and he's into the data and everything.

So I do enjoy his work. Glad he's on just a pitching nerd and he's into the data and everything so i do enjoy his work glad he's uh on a national stage now so we want to talk about these divisions series which starts all four of them on tuesday and the start times are staggered though there will be a little bit of overlap so can i pick can i pick a tiny bone sure about the start times a tiny bone? Sure. About the Star Times, a tiny bone. And then I'm going to let it go because I don't, it doesn't, it's a tiny bone. What's with, I'm going to sound like Jerry Seinfeld, like what's with all the Star Times in the middle of the day for the Mariners and the Astros? I'm just saying, I know that everyone wants to watch the Yankees and I get everybody wants

to watch the Yankees and I get everybody wants to watch the Dodgers and I imagine that when game threes roll around perhaps things get reshuffled a little bit and you get a game that's later for the Mariners and even if it isn't it's a Saturday you know so okay but like

both of their games the Mariners and the Astros both of the games in that series are in the middle of the day in both of the media markets that root for those teams. And would it be so bad? I mean, it would be super irritating to me, but we don't have to base broadcast decisions based on my schedule because my schedule is weird. Would it kill him to have simultaneous games going so that people could watch stuff a little bit later in their market. Would it kill them, Ben? Well.

Or you could just make the Yankees, I don't know, happen in the middle of the day. Somebody has to play in the middle of the day, I guess. I guess. Yeah, it would make sense if you have a matchup between two teams that are not in the Eastern time zone, one of which is on Pacific time, that maybe those could go later in the day. All else being equal, ideally to please everyone except the broadcast partners and their ad revenue because they want the Yankees playing in primetime. So there's just no way around that.

At least you have Padres Dodgers who are aligned with their time zone. So that's the late game. It goes Phillies BraBraves starts early, and then Mariners-Astros is in mid-afternoon Eastern, early afternoon Pacific, and then you have Guardians and Yankees, and then you have Padres and Dodgers. So Phillies and Braves will overlap with Mariners-Astros unless the first game is extremely quick. And after that, you will probably get a little bit of overlap between guardians yankees and padres dodgers so there will be some in general i do like not having as many

games on at the same time just so theoretically i could watch them all without doing a multi-screen sort of setup i mean i like that too but like i'm just saying that since we don't yet have national holidays for the baseball playoffs it just it makes it difficult and I I get that those teams that are in prime time are the teams that people want to watch and I think that's fine but maybe there should be like a you know an exemption for teams that have had playoff droughts longer than like nine years because it it does it does the phillies dirty too and their fans have been waiting a long time so maybe just you know it's fine because i'm sure the weekend none of this matters as much but like maybe you get a wait yeah a long time and then you

get to watch your guys instead should be seattle's turn yeah i agree it should be seattle's turn okay i've picked my tiny bone i feel satisfied that it is picked clean is that the origin of that sure i i feel like i have you know picked it clean cracked it open marrow's gone let's move on all right so first things first the format this is the analysis you're only going to get and effectively wild we can't predict everything that will transpire in these series. Although, again, I have read some previews, so I'm well-armed. I hopefully haven't spoiled myself. But I have spoiled myself when it comes to the format. And this is a best of five.

Again, the wins do not have to be consecutive. You don't have to win by two or anything. You win any combination of three games. Any three. Any three, and you advance to the championship series. And I hate to break this to you, but the format for the championship series is different from the format for the wildcard round or the division series. They really don't make this easy on us, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. I don't know if I'm going to be able to keep it all straight, but I'm going to try it,

Ben. Well, we will constantly remind people. That's all we can do. So I know it's kind of confusing because the wildcard round was best of three, and we told you that you have to win two games, whereas in the division series round, you can potentially play two more games. Two more. Five instead of three, and yet you only have to win one more.

Yeah. Yeah, which I know. Go and yet you only have to win one more. Yeah. Yeah, which I know, go figure. It's kind of a brain teaser. Also, wins in the wildcard round don't count toward the three that we're talking about here. So if you're one of the teams that won a wildcard series and you won those two games, those are just wiped away. It's a clean slate.

Oh. It's reset. They don't carry over. No, it's not cumulative. Yeah. I guess that makes sense, though, because then you're putting the teams that got it by at a real disadvantage if you already get to bring two wins with you. Yeah, that would be unfair, but

I felt that I needed to clarify because I understand that these things can be confusing. So again, they will play as few as three or as many as five games. First to three wins gets to advance. So this is kind of a matchup between the wins and the win-nots, I guess, in these series. It's obviously like the four best teams probably,

the teams that got the buys and didn't have to play in the wild card. But also, just historically speaking, probably the teams that got the buys and didn't have to play in the wild card but also just historically speaking it's a matchup between four teams that have won world series recently and won pennants and had a lot of deep playoff runs against the four wild card teams which have not none of these teams i guess since cleveland won the pennant right in 2016, none of these teams, I mean, most of these teams haven't been here in ages or half of them haven't. And the others just haven't really advanced very deep. So this really is just like familiarity versus the fresh faces. So you have your behemoths, you have your Yankees and your Dodgers and your defending champion Braves and the Astros who have been there every year, of course.

And then you have your upstarts. You haven't seen you guys in a while. You have your Mariners. You have your Phillies. You have your Guardians and you have your Padres. And the Padres and the Mariners never won a World Series. Guardians haven't won a World Series in ages and ages and ages. The Mariners have never made a world series guardians haven't won a world series in ages and ages and ages the mariners have never made a world series so really if you're someone who roots for the underdogs and roots for

upsets then i guess your allegiances are pretty clear here assuming you don't have your own personal team represented here you want the rebels versus the empire you want the Rebels versus the Empire. You want the wildcard teams versus the teams that got the buy, basically. So a lot of interesting storylines and root-for-able teams in this round. Root-for-able. There are teams that are root-for-able. I mean, I think that that is all quite true. I just hope that they are... I hope we get some real series, you you know i hope that we have a lot of

series that go to four or five yeah because there are some obvious you know all of these teams are good teams some are obviously better than others but like all of these teams are are good teams and have things to recommend them and also there are some what feel like real mismatches to be had in yes in these and i worry about quick deaths you know i worry that we might be in for some quick right some quick action here because it could be over in as few as three games again just as we noted so i want to point out that i am not the only one sustaining this bit some of the emails we got suggested that i am the one that is sustaining this bit and i'd like to point out that this is a real abba and castello kind of situation here so yeah i've become the instigator if anything so you were ready to let this die and let it rest

not me nope so there are some scheduling quirks to be aware of here and there's a difference from one league to the next in terms of off days which is nice i guess in the sense that we won't have to have four games on on every day because that's staggered too but also it does kind of change things from a competitive perspective so the al has off days between games one and two and then also between games two and three yeah which helps you set up your starters right i mean you don't have to worry about whether your games one and two starters can pitch games four and five because they would both be on full rest at that point whereas the nl doesn't have that extra off day so their game one and two starters would then have to be on short rest

if they went in games four and five but also games three to five no off days right so you're gonna have potentially exhausted bullpens by the time you get to a game five if you do get to a game five which which i like again i i like when the postseason schedule mirrors the regular season schedule a little more closely so that you don't have so many off days that you can just completely concentrate your innings in the hands of, say, three starters and three relievers. You do actually have to use your staff to some extent, the guys who got you there, but it does differ across series. And another thing that differs is that the teams that are already at a disadvantage because they're not as good or were not as successful in the regular season, they are at least in some cases at an additional disadvantage because they only had to play two games in that series. And so they had that day of rest on Sunday.

But still, you have teams that are a little bit compromised, maybe, because they can't line up their rotations from the start. Right. And in some cases, it's not that huge a deal. Right. Like the Mariners, for instance, they didn't have to use Logan Gilbert in the wildcard round. So they can just use Logan Gilbert in game one and then things will line up okay for them from that point. So it's not terrible, but there are some cases at least where you can't line up your rotation the way that the overdogs, is that a term? I don't know. The favorites in this series,

they've had all the time in the world to stack things up the way that they wanted to overdog sounds dystopian that sounds like a like a mutant animal of some kind something that has been modified in a lab to you know cause to wreak havoc although maybe that's a good way to describe the dodgers and the astros and the yankees and the braves yeah i think that it is going to affect some teams more dramatically than others, as you noted. Like, on the one hand, you're going to continue to see teams like, say, Cleveland, which has an incredibly deep bullpen,

probably be able to weather that stuff fairly well. But, you know, once you get past, well, let's see. They'll be able to line up Bieber pretty quick right and then they'll have uh one Tristan McKenzie and then I guess they're gonna have to get excited about Savali yeah Quantrill Quantrill oh I like Cal Quantrill you know I do like Cal Quantrill to step down from the top two but yeah yeah I guess that right now they're they're lined up to have quantrill throw the opener and then not be an opener but throw game one and then bieber mckenzie and savalli will be what they opt for i guess man you punch a mound one time zach plesak and then you're

just not in a division series rotation. The other consideration that sometimes people make a big deal about is teams on too much rest. Right. So you want some rest, but you want the Goldilocks zone of rest. We're perpetually trying to occupy the Goldilocks zone. Yeah. So the teams that had the buy, they've been sitting around for a while. And in some cases, maybe that helps. Yeah.

You get extra treatment and you get extra rest and everyone's a bit banged up at this time of year. So it could be good. There is just the supposition that it could also be bad because in baseball, other than I suppose the all-star break, teams are pretty much playing constantly. And so it's a deviation from your routine to have four or five days off. So some people speculate that that could throw those teams off their game. Others say, no, it will help them. No one really knows. small sample when it comes to playoff analysis but he did find that teams playing on at least four days rest against opponents with less rest are 18 and 8 in their first game back over the sample that he looked at so he concluded that teams coming off a bye should be just fine i generally agree that is my intuition that if you're the Yankees or the Dodgers or the Braves, you don't fall apart just because you had less than a week off. You don't forget how to play baseball. I think on the whole tired and have guys get hurt and just rack up the odometers and the mileage and also not have certain players available when the series starts so i would say if anything it's an advantage but if you call it a draw i think that's

fair too so those teams look they don't need any extra help, but they get some anyway. They're already better and some of the other factors favor them too. Well, and that's directionally how we want these things to go. We want there to be strong incentive to try to win as many games as you possibly can to get this respite and be able to line up your rotation the way that you want to and give guys who might be dealing with nagging injuries a couple more days to get sorted like i wish that we had we found that it has like an incredibly dramatic effect right to get that extra rest like it's an extra however much in championship win probability added because i want it to be such that teams are like i gotta avoid the fate that the Mets suffered right we want our dudes to be able to have a couple of extra days we want them

to be able to rest like the Dodgers have if that's the way that we are aligned directionally we're doing stuff the right way I think yep all right so of these series where it seems like there's a fairly clear favorite at least based on betting odds and projections in each one yes is there one that you look at and think this is the the best odds of an upset happening in this series what a good way of formulating that i've been thinking about that kind of all day as i've edited series previews i'm gonna say a thing that I am going to feel like I might immediately regret. Are you ready for me to immediately regret something? Is it the Dodgers versus the Padres?

Ooh, okay. Make the case. Spicy take. I don't know how much conviction I have in this spicy take of mine. Well, I guess that the way that I would make my spicy case is i don't have any conviction in this idea what if juan soto just like goes absolutely bonkers and manny machado just goes absolutely bonkers and then joe musgrove and his shiny shiny ears go bonkers, and then they upset them. And Darvish does Darvish stuff, and we, oh, I guess we have to deal with Mike Clevenger.

The real problem that gets in the way of my spicy take is that, at least as we have it lined up right now, Joe Musgrove wouldn't throw until game four. Right, yes. And that's, you know, it's not the best. Although, Ben, what happens if they get through and they're facing an elimination? Do they bring him back on short rest? It would be pretty short rest, though.

Yeah, it would. It would be very short rest. So I don't have conviction in my spicy take. In fact, if you look at the i'm taking it all back ben if you look at our zips postseason game by game odds which have now been updated to reflect the division series i think that the dodgers in fact have the greatest advantage well that's okay you can differ from the odds. I don't think I actually do, though.

It's okay not to have conviction. I don't have conviction in any of the underdogs winning. That's why they're underdogs, right? The path here is that actually the Dodgers starters are quite tired. Actually, Clayton Kershaw has a bad game. Actually, Darvish twirls a gem, which isn't something that requires a lot of flexing to believe. Actually, the heart of that Padres order just really takes it to them.

I still think they're going to lose, though, so I don't think I have good conviction in that. We're just going to go through each of these one by one now. Our listeners are like, Meg, have you ever considered outlining your thoughts before you come on the podcast? And to that I say, yeah, but not today. I mean, even in this series, I think both Pakoda and Zips say it's 60-40 in favor of the Dodgers. So 60-40, it wouldn't be surprising really at all if the 40 pays off in this series.

It would be semi-surprising again they're the underdogs but really it's not that remote a chance so I don't think you have to think that hard to come up with a scenario where it works because as we've talked about like yeah the Dodgers are a total juggernaut but they're a little less intimidating than you would expect a 111 win team to be just because of some absences right and you know like Tyler Anderson has been great this year I think he's the most valuable pitcher on the Dodgers by fangraphs war which surprised me but yeah also like you know he's Tyler Anderson like before he got to the Dodgers we wouldn't have thought that much of facing Tyler Anderson in the playoffs of course you know some people get to the Dodgers and then they're different guys but

still you have Tyler Anderson you have Heaney in the mix maybe in the bullpen you have Tony Gonsolin who's back but he missed a lot of time and it's not clear that he's totally 100% Dustin May same deal right like yeah not completely healthy and then Blake Trinan again like he hasn't pitched in a while and he may pitch but it sounds like even if he does pitch he probably won't be able to go on back-to-back days and maybe he won't be as dominant as he used to be and then there are the other absences the guys that they haven't had for a long time of like Daniel Hudson or Walker Bueller, obviously. It's a different team with those guys.

And then you have Craig Kimbrell, who has been deposed as closer, but is still around, seemingly. We're recording on Monday afternoon, so we haven't seen official rosters announced yet. But I imagine he will be in the mix, maybe in lower leverage, unless Dave Robertson comes to temptation. So they still have a lot of guys who are really good. They still have like Evan Phillips, not a huge name, but really good season. He's really good. haven't had as big names and as long track records but the dodgers just they always have guys who are effective it's just that maybe you're not as scared as say other teams would be of other top of the rotations just because kershaw is still really great but maybe not as likely to go as deep into games and you just never know. And Rias has been excellent too. The peripherals maybe not quite as good as the surface stats.

So they're missing some dominant guys and some pretty important players. So they feel somewhat vulnerable. They don't feel invulnerable. Right. They feel vulnerable in Dodgers-adjusted terms. Yeah, exactly. Right. So they should still win the series.

And they have certainly cleaned the Padres' clocks over the past few years. We've all been waiting for the Padres-Dodgers rivalry. And it just has not really materialized because the Dodgers just keep reasserting themselves as the big boys in this division. And they beat the Padres handily in the season series as they have pretty much every year and last time they met in the playoffs they swept them so I don't know if the Padres have any kind of like little brother syndrome heading into this or whether they just want to beat the big boys who knows but the point is that the Dodgers even as the Padres have become quite a good team the Dodgers are still just like leaps and bounds, heads and shoulders above them.

Yeah. Now I feel silly for having even brought it up. No, I mean, I made you pick an underdog. I don't feel like you admonished me. Yeah, to be clear, I don't feel like you were like, oh, Meg, you dumb. Any answer would have been reasonable, roughly equally reasonable, I think.

What would it have been? I mean, because isn't there a scenario where reasonable roughly equally reasonable i think what would it what would it have been i mean because like isn't there a scenario where i just don't want to think that it's only going to be the yankees and the astros and the dodgers and the braves but i think it might be all of those teams i mean maybe garrett will not be all of them right even though each of them individually is favored the odds are in favor of some upset somewhere yeah i mean like if so for instance like you you go through the yankees and you're like okay so the yankees are gonna have a fully

rested garrett cole on the mound and you're like oh garrett cole for garrett cole has been kind of vulnerable what's one of the things that he's been most vulnerable to this year, Ben? It's the home run. I'm going to answer for you. Guess what team doesn't hit very many of those? The Guardians. They did hit them when they needed them, as we noted in the wildcard recap, but not a team that's going to thump.

So then you're like, all right, I guess you got to string stuff together against the Yankees and Cal Quantrill has to keep it together. And then you go to the next game and you're like, well, Nestor Cortez is really, really good. Shane Bieber's good, but he's not what he once was. So do you feel really good about that? I don't know. And then you have Severino who looked really good in the recent tune-up, but Tristan McKenzie's excellent. So it's just like, you know, you can try to talk yourself into stuff.

I'm not even going to touch the Mariners Astros. We'll touch it in a moment, but you don't have to pick them. I know you could recuse yourself. Yeah, I will recuse myself. And then, no, I'll take a stand because I have a lot of experience being honest about the shortcomings of the mariners this is one of the the good things about being a mariners fan is that you can you know you you have no choice but to grapple with reality but yeah yeah and then you look at like

you look at philly's braves and they get to they get to have max free now they don't get as much spencer strider as they wanted but they're gonna have have a lot of Spencer Strider for a long time. I guess we should mention that they extended Spencer Strider. Yes. Literally between when we last talked about how the Braves have extended all of their position players and the only guy they haven't really done is Strider and then, I guess, Fried. Who was under team control anyway.

It's not like they needed to do this imminently, but then they were like, yeah, why not? Why not? Got to catch them all. They needed to do this imminently, but then they were like, yeah, why not? Why not? Got to catch them all. So it's six years, $75 million with an option and a buyout for 2029. Right. But for $22 million and a $5 million buyout.

Yeah. Yes. So it keeps him under team control even longer than he would have been anyway. So they're just going to keep this group together forever, seemingly. But they still don't know about his availability, or at least we don't know about his availability for the series. It sounds like he's probably going to pitch. It's not clear in what capacity, whether he will be kind of an opener piggyback with someone, or he could pitch in relief because he's done that, or maybe he will just be able to go and we'll see. Maybe he will just be able to go and we'll see. But that's a pretty big factor for this series just because it's a step down from Strider to, say, Jake Odorizzi.

Because Strider was one of the best pitchers in baseball once he was moved to the rotation. Yeah. I mean, Odorizzi is fine. It's fine. But it's not Spencer Strider. Yeah. So I would pick the Guardians as the most likely upset team. Again, I'm not saying that the odds are wrong and that they should actually be favored or, right? Not as strong as they started, but they finished strong enough to avert disaster,

which it looked like they were heading toward during their prolonged slump. So they kind of righted the ship. They also have some injuries and are shorthanded in some ways. And a lot of those are pitchers, but also DJ LeMayhew doesn't seem like he's his full healthy self, as Brian Cashman even acknowledged. And he may be even in a bench role or a part-time role.

And they are getting Carpenter back. Of course, he hasn't played in Pickley Games in so long that it's hard to know exactly what you're getting in him. But he was amazing when he was healthy and playing for them. So that could be a bit of a boost but it's still kind of a top heavy team yeah definitely a top heavy lineup which i guess is inevitable when the top is aaron judge but also just you know below aaron judge there's not as much it's not a it's not a slight fall off well yeah there's not as much below him because he is so tall exactly so like there's less down below because he's tall they still hit a lot of homers

as a team not just judge but really like anyone you could slot in behind judge i guess rizzo would maybe be the the best batter at this point it's a big steep drop off and there are going to be some spots in that lineup that you don't feel that great about which obviously is even more true for Cleveland but because the Yankees have really kind of reshuffled their bullpen on the fly and again there's some kind of questionable guys there so Chapman has just deserted seemingly he. He's AWOL, and the Yankees probably aren't all that broken up about it because he wasn't actually pitching well this year. So Brian Cashman's frankness about Chapman just not showing up for the workout, he has been frank about players in the past. It's one of the things I enjoy about Brian Cashman is that he will sort of speak his mind, but also easier to speak your mind when the guy you're talking about is like not someone who would have been issue in for the roster anyway, which is why he walked apparently because they would not guarantee him that he could be on the roster. think of as the the flamethrowing closer so and obviously like the Yankees were quite happy to

have him despite any off the field issues when he was pitching well so he won't be here and then it sounds like Clay Holmes will be but again like he's had quarter zone shots he's had various ailments he was totally unhittable in the first half and then not nearly so much in the second half. So you have a little bit of a closer question. And then Dave lost a lot of players over the course of the season, Chad Green and Michael King, long gone, and like Ron Marinaccio and Wandy Peralta, who I think is available but was recently injured. Yes. So you look at the full season bullpen stats and they're pretty impressive and

compare fairly favorably to Cleveland's, even though the Guardians have a great bullpen too, but it's kind of a different mix. And yeah, you have Loizaga who has come on and looked more like his last season self. And then you have Luchavino acquired at the deadline, who's been great for the Yankees. And you have Scott Efras, who they got from the Cubs, who's been good. And some other serviceable guys in the mix, too. And Lutke and Clark Schmidt is a multi-inning guy. So they still have arms, but it's not quite as intimidating as, say, the seventh to ninth that other teams are running out there now. seventh to ninth that other teams are running out there now.

It's not quite as intimidating as like Pete Chapman and Chad Green and, you know, Zach Britton or whoever they've had in the back of the bullpen in recent seasons. So they seem a little more vulnerable and Cole is very good, but also kind of shaky, kind of inconsistent at times. And Mr. Cortez. Yeah.

Cortez is really good and then Severino again like missed much of the year right looked good lately so just just a lot of like I don't know like yeah this could go well they should win but it would not shock me at all if they did not so it's more about the Yankees vulnerabilities than i guess the guardians being way better than everyone thinks they are that they played for much of the season but again i do think the playoff format favors them to some extent just because you can concentrate the innings with that great bullpen right with uh the top couple of starters who were excellent and if you think there's anything to the idea that maybe there's a slight boost to contact hitting in the playoffs,

even though you would rather have a more all or nothing lineup that hits for a lot of power, which is kind of confusing. Put that all together with the fact that the midges have emerged from Waikiri, and I'm just saying, I could see it happen. I mean, yeah, I could see it happen. I could see it happening. I mean, yeah. I could see it happen. I could see it happening with any of these series. Like how clearly I can see it. Like how distinct the people involved are.

Kind of very series to series. But yeah, I could see it. Do you want to talk about Mariners Astro? Should we just get it out of the way? Yeah, let's do it. So the Mariners are going to play the Astro. Yep. Just generally not been a great thing for the Mariners. No, it hasn't been their favorite. I don't think that it has been the preference of the Mariners to play the Astros,

particularly in Houston. It seems to have been not nice for them. They will, as you know, get to start Logan Gilbert in game one and then go to castillo so that's nice we get to do robbie ray to electric boogaloo i guess so that's terrifying and i am not looking forward to it and then if there is a necessity for game four we go to george kirby relief ace you know right i guess you could go back to gilbert again if you wanted to but that's a conversation we had a couple weeks ago like what do you do which of those guys do you choose it's kind of tough and and you can use the other one in the bullpen as they did with kirby in the wild card round right and you know if you're going five games do you start kirby in four and then

because you want to hold on to gilbert to go in game five against Verlander again. I don't know. I'm glad that they will get to play a game at least at home. That's good. Yes. That seems like a good thing, but I somehow feel like we didn't talk enough, and I know we have talked about it,

and I'm doing that annoying thing where I'm like, we didn't talk about it, and then we totally did, but we maybe haven't talked enough about just how good the Houston lineup is. Like, it's really very good. It's really very, very good. You know? Sounds like you're not looking forward to your team facing it. Yeah, especially the top five or six or so.

Yeah. It doesn't let up. You know, it's really something. I'm just like, you know, you ever look at the leaderboards at Vanagraphs and go, crap, it's not going to go particularly well for them. I mean, it's really something for a guy who played 77 of his games at dh and 56 of them at left field to be able to rack up almost seven wins yeah like you have to be a really good hitter to do that you have to generate a tremendous amount of value on offense because you are dealing with dh penalty and your

primary fielding position being one that has a positional adjustment that isn't akin to D.H. but is still kind of intense. It's not like Jordan Alvarez is playing second base. Although, Houston, try something new. Embrace change in this season that is fall and try something new out. But no, he's just a 185 WRC plus, Ben. Good God. Yeah. There are some outs a 185 WRC plus, Ben. Good God. Yeah.

There are some outs in that lineup. Sure, there are. Some players you don't feel so bad about facing, right? Gurriel at this stage or Jeremy Pena later in the season. Yeah. He had sort of an extended slump. Maybe he's- Chaz McCormick isn't like light in the world on fire.

Martin Maldonado isn't very good. Right, if he's in the lineup. But seems to hit Seattle well just to make everybody sad. So yeah, the bottom of the lineup, it's vulnerable. Yeah. So there's that. But it is really like you run in the gauntlet there. Yeah, you really do.

Altuve and Alvarez and Bregman and Tucker. Those guys are tough. They're there. Yeah, you really do. Altuve and Alvarez and Bregman and Tucker. Those guys are tough. They're tough. They're really very tough. It feels like so many of Martin Maldonado's hits came against the Mariners this year. I know they didn't all come against the Mariners, but it does feel like a lot of them came against the Mariners.

So I worry about that. And then, you know, Houston's pitching is like surprisingly very good. Not surprisingly, but it's surprising that anyone who's actually older than me could be as good as Justin Verlander has been this year. But he sure has been really, really very good. Yeah, I think the longer the series goes and the fewer off days there are, probably the more it benefits the Astros because they have such a deep staff and they really can run out just four guys at least. You would not want to face the rotation and then the bullpen's not bad either.

Right, and then whoever you decide you don't want in the rotation, you're like, oh, would you like a luis garcia to just exist in the bullpen have that here you go you have a very good luis garcia yeah so that's a discouraging prospect it looks like uh maldonado didn't hit the mariners that well this year from what i can tell i mean he didn't hit anyone well ben no but even by martin maldonado standards i guess you just uh maybe you just happened to see i saw a lot of his hits against them yeah i think that i saw him maybe snap a long hit list streak against seattle at a time when it would have been really useful for the mariners to pick up some games

against houston but you know i'm not saying it's science i'm just saying it's how it felt yeah so there's that and then you know you think about things on the mariner side of the ledger from a hitting perspective and they have some guys but they also have their own share of outs that feel like they're stacked at the bottom of the lineup right like once you get past hanager it starts to feel pretty dicey and you know mitch is kind of come and go sometimes so it's uh i don't know i don't know about that but then you, you know, the bullpen's good. So that's good. Yeah, I would not be as afraid of Robbie Ray against the Astros as I was against the Blue Jays,

probably just because they were so heavily right-handed. Yeah. But. But. Yeah. But. Right. Maybe it'll be fine, Ben.

It might be fine. Maybe it'll be fine. It might be fun. Maybe it'll be fine. Maybe what'll happen is that they will get, they being the Mariners, will get some surprising production from the bottom of their order and their big boppers will bop and Luis Castillo will throw another game like he did and Logan Gilbert will dazzle

and the bullpen will hold on and then i will feel silly for not having applied for an alcs credential like who could say that could happen it's not likely or it's not the most likely thing but it could happen and that sure would be fun for everyone what if cal rally hits another big home run against the Astros? Do they have to build a statue to him this year? Do they wait? Do they go with something really straight down the middle? It's Cal in a, like, oh, I did it. Or do they go abstract and they do Cal Raleigh's face on one of those digging construction machines

that they're always trying to sell us on MLB TV because we have like big equipment needs. I don't know. You know, like there's like there's the literal big dumper, that's Cal, but then there's like the figurative big dumper that is one of those, but with his face on it. It did seem like a year or two ago that the Astros were going to go away eventually. Like it seemed like maybe the window was kind of closing like guys were getting older cole was leaving springer was leaving you know and it seemed like maybe carlos correa was leaving yeah exactly right and somehow they just seem to keep being as good as they ever have if not better and they have alvarez and tucker who are still just 25 and pena just turned 25 i believe and then they also in the rotation verlander of course is ancient though you would

never know it from watching him pitch but everyone else in that rotation is still sub 30 and obviously like they still have a knack for player development and pitcher development so suddenly it doesn't seem like the astros are gonna go away anytime soon so they just kind of powered through it and let those core components of their winning teams walk and replace them often with internal replacements and they're still amazing. They don't even have Michael Brantley, right? He's hurt. Imagine what it looks like.

I guess maybe you don't have Trey Mancini if you have Michael Brantley, but yeah, you can't seem to stop the Astros either. They've almost become the Dodgers of the AL in a way. It's not quite as sustained success, but in the sense that you just always expect them to be there in the playoffs and maybe the cast changes a little bit but there's some familiar faces where it's just like yep this is a consistent theme and storyline running through every October you're always going to get the Dodgers you're always going to get the Astros we've seen these guys many times before and when they lose someone they just work someone else in and they don't miss a beat yeah that's true ben that's a true thing about the houston astros it's just continues to

be a true thing you can't even enjoy the fact that their farm system is ranked 28th by our metrics because seattle's is 29th right yeah And they seem to have a knack for getting more out of players than people would expect. And even like going into next season, because the Mariners are ascendant, right? And they had their season last year where they played a bit over their

heads and they contended, but they weren't really that great yet. And then this season, they weren't that much better record-wise. They were just good enough, but they were better in that great yet. And then this season, they weren't that much better record-wise. They were just good enough, but they were better in an underlying sense. And they're clearly on the way up. And they've worked in all these new great guys. And there's a bright future for the franchise, I think.

And yet, even so, what year would you project the Mariners as the favorites in the AL West? Going into next season? Obviously, we don't know what will happen over the winter, but going into next season, would you say the Mariners are favored to win that division? I probably would not. And just projecting beyond that, who knows? The error bars get pretty big the further we look into the distance. But you have like Fran Pervaldez and Jose Urquidy

and Christian Javier and Luis Garcia, like all these guys who in many cases were not looked on as potential ace types necessarily, but they've turned into that, at least in Valdez's case, and the others are really solid starters too. So even if Justin Verlander is not literally ageless and at some point he does

age still you have a pretty solid foundation behind him to the point that they were like trading starting pitching right they traded jaco derisi right at the deadline they're like yeah you know we don't really need this guy we don't need a perfectly good jaco derisi yeah defending champions and and one of the other best teams in baseball, Atlanta Braves, you can have Jake Odorizzi. He's kind of expendable for us just because we have this wealth of starting pitching. So that was kind of a flex, obviously.

They got something back for Odorizzi. They got Will Smith back, but still. I guess if you want to play that game, the thing that would be in, say, Seattle's favor Will Smith's back, but still. I guess if you want to play that game, the thing that would be in, say, Seattle's favor isn't really even that big of an advantage because they don't have a lot of payroll committed next year either. So Seattle right now, and this is before we have integrated MLB Trade Rumor's arbitration estimates,

which got released today and should find their way to the Fangraphs roster resource payroll pages in the next week or so. So stay tuned for that, everyone. So this number will go up for both teams once those estimates are in. But right now, we at Fangraphs estimate they being the Mariners luxury tax payroll to be $126 million for next season. Now, that involves some money coming off the books because Carlos Santana is a free agent, but fine. And Matt Boyd is a free agent, but fine. And Chris Flexen has a vesting option, which I think will have vested,

so he's sticking around. And then you have some potential losses that are more significant, mostly Mitch Hanegar. Right. And then you have some bullpen guys. So and then they have a value will have arbitration raises for guys like, say, Paul Seawald and Diego Castillo and Dylan Moore. But, you know, you're talking about relievers and like 40 man bench pieces. so they have money to spend and have locked up key pieces of their existing core right because castillo is now under a contract extension and julio is and you know robbie ray and his brain handers out is sitting there and jp crawford is coming back but then you look at houston and granted they have some guys that they'll have to replace because Michael Brantley is a free agent. I imagine they will let him walk given the injury stuff and Gurriel is gone and Christian Vasquez and like Jason Castro. But these are like not.

It's fine. And then you look at the bottom and their pay luxury payroll number is one hundred and twenty three million. So it isn't even as if Houston is in a spot where they have this massive payroll that they're going to have to run next year relative to Seattle. They will have to make some additions, I assume. And they will have to figure out

some of their lineup pieces. But it isn't even like they're hamstrung by their payroll in Seattle to just spend freely. Seattle can and should spend freely, to be clear. Right. But. Yeah. Right.

It doesn't seem like this is the changing of the guard series necessarily. Like it could be, but it's not like, hey, we're on the way up and you're on the way down. Right. And this is where we pass you necessarily. But it could be. It could be. The plucky. Well, I don't think it would be that.

I don't think it would be a pass, you know, like a changing of the guard. But it could be. What it could be is like the plucky upstarts are here to, you know, make your life miserable and give you the business. It could be that. And then, you know, then if you win and we have established three, but they don't have to be consecutive. They do not.

Three games, then you're off to the races. I personally, if I were the Mariners, would feel honored to get steamrolled by the Dodgers. I know they have another round of American League business to settle before them, but if it were me, I would be like... Yeah, it would be nice to win a pennant. That would be something. It would be nice to win a pennant that would be something you know you can put that up on your wall say hey we won one of these like every other team i think a lot of my emotional state as it regards to the mariners these days is like i want to stop having my favorite baseball team be the answer to trivia like mean trivia it can be the answer to fun trivia that's fine but like it doesn't need to be the answer to mean trivia anymore and so it should do stuff to

continue to mitigate that like they're on their way but we still we still have some work to do all right well the only series we haven't really discussed is philly's braves which i believe the first matchup between these teams since 93. It's been a while. A lot of intra-division matchups in these division series rounds. So Phillies Braves. What can we say about Phillies Braves? I guess both teams have signed some sort of extension. We talked about Strider. The Phillies have also converted their manager, Rob Thompson, from interim status to permanent, to full-time, which I would say is certainly deserved, at least based on the results. So he's no longer managing

for the full-time job. He got a couple years of full-time managing, so that's nice. Things really worked out for the Phillies under him. So the actual series going into this again like i guess we're sort of sounding the same note with a lot of these it's just one team seems to be clearly better we've talked about how well the braves have played since a certain point in the season after a somewhat slow start once they got all their guys and harris came up and people were healthier. They were just great. They were just about as good as any team in baseball. So they are formidable. And we mentioned that Strider is still something of a question mark. And there is a big drop off there.

So that will matter if Strider can't pitch or if he can't pitch as much as he would have if he were healthy or if he pitches and he isn't as effective because he hasn't pitched in a game since mid-September. Well, that would certainly help the Phillies, as we noted in the last round. They've got a great top two. Their top two can go up against anyone, Wheeler and Nola. That's formidable. Right. But boy, the Braves, they're just, they're good. They hit tons of homers. They're a good offensive team. They have a really pretty scary back of the bullpen. Like they really do have just a shut down late inning bullpen, which was a big factor in their winning the World Series last year. I think the bullpen maybe outperformed how good everyone thought it was heading into those playoffs. Now everyone

understands that it is really good and it's gotten better over the course of the season they just you know they just picked up ricella glacius no big deal from the angels like one of the most high profile expensive reliever signings of the past winter the angels were just like eh we'll just give you this guy you can have him. It is weird. And he's been lights out for the Braves. And he's like their seventh inning guy, you know? Yeah. It's like he's not even the top guy.

He's like the third stringer in that bullpen. So that's pretty tough. That's tough. If the Braves have a lead, and often they do because they score a lot, they will be able to protect it. So it's tough. I hate to be a broken record about anyone can win in a short series, blah, blah, blah. Anyone can win and it is a short series.

It's hard not to, even if you stipulate that at the top of the podcast, which we always do, it's hard not to fall back on those crutches throughout the podcast and be like, well, but you never know, anything can happen. Everyone's just like, yes, we know. You don't have to actually say that. That literally goes without saying.

We do have to say it, Ben, because if we don't say it one time, we will never hear the end of it. That's probably true. I'm just letting you know. I haven't checked them. I haven't read them because I've been busy doing stuff that won't make me feel angry. But I have noticed that the number of comments on the Fangraph staff prediction post started

to go up as the weekend progressed. And I imagine several of them are calling us dumb dummies. So you do have to say it. Even though I said at the beginning, there's a series. It doesn't matter. You got to say the thing. And then people will pretend you didn't anyway yep so you have jansen who jensen look he could be hit at times yeah but still pretty good but then you

have colin mckew you have a glacius like you have some of the holdovers from last year oh that's just a good group it's a good team like it is it's just a good team as as we wade through the post-mortem of the mets season and you know managerial decisions and how you know how differently do things play out if they're more active at the trade deadline like i do think it it bears mentioning and not just to like kind of offer some bomb to to mets fans like that atlanta team is just really good. Like some of it is, you know, you can quibble with how the Mets conducted themselves at the deadline

and, you know, them kind of fading down the stretch and injuries and all that stuff. But like that Atlanta team is really good. It's just a really good baseball team. And they came and took it. Like it was there for the taking. Finishing behind them. Or not even finishing behind them.

They tied them. They tied them. Remember when you had tiebreakers? I miss those. Although I will say this is less stressful from a work perspective. But it makes for less good baseball. So I wish that we would bring the tiebreaker back. Yes.

Although in that case at least, just because when the Braves swept the Mets in that last series, they also went one ahead of them in the season series. Yes. It almost felt like a tiebreaker kind of combined. You know? Yeah. No, that's definitely true. It was, you know, it wasn't quite a 163, but it did feel like an almost equal substitute.

You know, it's good that they got, they had to go at it right at the end there. Yeah. All right. Well, is there any other hope we can offer to Phillies fans other than small sample short series? Well, I mean, we offered some, right, which is that their top of their pitching there is very, very good, and we have seen it be effective against potent offenses before.

And even though the offensive production of some of the guys that they brought in to try to bolster the Harpers and the Real Mujos who they already had, it's been kind of inconsistent at times. But Castellanos is still capable of running into one and then making us all very nervous that someone important has died or done something naughty. So they still have guys who can bop.

The guy who hit the second most home runs in baseball this year is famously a Philadelphia Philly, right? Yep. Yeah. Lead off guy. Yeah. Kyle Schwarber, lead off hitter.

Baseball's great. Prototypical. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And the other thing is that the Braves strike out a ton. Yes. They had the third highest strikeout rate in the majors this year, and so if you're concerned about the Phillies' defense,

which you should be. You should be. There may be fewer balls in play, so that's good. Although, as Ben Clemens noted in his preview, a lot of those balls in play may be fly balls because the Braves hit a lot of those too. And that is not necessarily good news for the Phillies because the outfield defense, at least in the corners, not so strong. So that maybe mitigates what might seem to be a slight advantage there somewhat. But fewer balls in play, fewer opportunities for Phillies defenders to screw up.

So that's something. Yeah, that's something. You at least have Marsh in center, and he is capable, if not amazing. So there's that. And you have Real Muto, and maybe you will get to watch catcher steals. And then what if we get to watch Real Muto steal a base and throw a guy out?

We'll feel so fancy, Ben. And as Ben noted in his preview, if you get a matchup with Jansen, maybe against a good lefty at this point, that would be pretty favorable for the Phillies. Jansen, he's more susceptible to a platoon split now. He doesn't really throw the cutter so much anymore. Favorable for the Phillies. Jansen, he's more susceptible to a platoon split now. He doesn't really throw the cutter so much anymore. So if you end up with Kenley facing Schwarber, Harper in the late innings, that would be a bit scary. Or Minter, for that matter, facing Real Muto or Hoskins. Like, there are some matchups there that, from a platoon perspective, might favor the Phillies. So, yeah, it could work.

It could work. Anyway. Yeah, you know, I think that, look, Philly fans, Mariner fans, especially for them where you're dealing with teams that forget like advancing to a division series hadn't been in the playoffs for a while. I don't want to say like, just be happy that you're here.

But like, I think that it's good to remember that this indicates a lot of things working over the course of a long season in a way that isn't a given when you've had a playoff drought that has been at least a decade and sometimes two. And so being present in the division series is an accomplishment.

That's a thing that you should celebrate. That doesn't mean you have to be content with it, and I don't mean it in a patronizing way. These teams beat two good teams to get into the division series. The Guardians and the Padres have been in the playoffs more recently, but they also beat good teams to get here, right? But particularly for Seattle and Philly, they beat good teams to get there. You get a home playoff game.

You get to say, we played a division series. We weren't just a wild card three gamer. You only had to win two, but neither of those teams played three, but they might have had to have if it had gone differently. So I don't know. I don't quite know how to strike the right balance emotionally as a fan between wanting to appreciate what you have, but not being content to settle with that.

And also not, you know, losing sight of regular season accomplishments in the midst of a playoff race. Like, I think it's just if everyone can take an opportunity when it presents itself over the next couple of days to be like, wow, my favorite team, assuming you are a fan of one of these teams, is playing playoff baseball and they're doing it not just in a wild card round but in the division series,

it would behoove you to do that because who knows when you'll be back. It might not be for a while. Hopefully, yes, but that's not a given. So appreciate while you have it, I think. Yeah, I'd second all that. All right. So those are the division previews, and we'll let some games go by,

and then they will be discussed in this space sometime later this week. And only thing I wanted to mention, non-playoff related, because we talked a lot about what we would do or what one should do if one were to catch a valuable home run ball, whether it be off the bat of Aaron Judge or Albert Pujols. And as we saw, the guy who caught 62, he has held on to it thus far. And I did not realize just how complicated the tax implications are of catching one of these valuable home run balls. First of all, it's kind of cool that baseball distributes memorabilia, game-used memorabilia, so liberally during games, more so than any major sport, right? You have Pox Go flying into the

stands at NHL games sometimes, but not nearly so often. Like you're not getting balls as often as you're getting them in baseball. Balls. People aren't chucking basketballs with great regularity into the stands and throwing footballs into the upper deck, you know, like that doesn't really happen. No. But baseball, just liberally distribute stuff that's being used in the game one second and then someone catches it and they get to keep it that's a cool thing about baseball i agree it's also cool that occasionally

those balls are worth like two million dollars and if that's the case there's this bloomberg article that lays out like how this would be taxed and no one seems to know exactly so here's one paragraph the only irs guidance statement addressing rare record-setting baseballs, a three-paragraph press release from 1998, has limited value for any bleacher bum hoping to capitalize on one of these five-ounce nuggets of gold. Then Commissioner Charles Rosati lamented in the thin statement that sometimes pieces of the tax code can be as hard to understand as the infield fly rule. Asked before judges historic home run whether the government intended to update its views after 24 years, Treasury Department senior spokesperson Julia Krieger would only say, we don't have anything to add.

And so the way that it stands now, it's just like no one exactly knows. So there's something called the treasure trove provision. So again, quoting here, taken literally, the tax code would pull any fan catching one of judges pricey baseballs into the so-called treasure trove regulation. The regulation holds that windfalls dropping into a taxpayer's lot must be immediately recognized as ordinary income. In the context of a million dollar baseball, the tax bill would come to $332,955

for joint filers after the 37% top marginal rate is applied. State income taxes could send the final tax bill to $50,000 to $100,000 higher. And that's just like, if you catch it immediately, you are assessed that as income, basically, the treasure trove regulation. It goes on to say the tax code also might trigger a gift tax obligation for any unsuspecting fan handing a million dollar ball back to Judge or the Yankees. Inexpensive proposition given the 40% top marginal rate. Then it says whether the IRS would ever apply the treasure trove analysis or the gift tax is another question. Because imagine if you were like, oh, I'll do the nice thing and I'll hand this ball back to Aaron Judge.

And then the IRS slaps you withed people even in Congress by saying that any fan who handed the record-setting ball back to the player would be served with an onerous gift tax bill. And that was part of the dispute. Someone actually said, yeah, this could happen. But then they put that three-paragraph press release basically out to say that probably wouldn't happen. But still, interpreting tax law principles that permit a taxpayer to decline a prize with no tax consequences, the IRS said at the time, no income or gift tax obligations would be triggered if the person returned the million dollar baseball. Yeah. And the commissioner said at the time, the IRS person, that the fan would deserve a round of applause, not a big tax bill.

So you could decline to keep your windfall and not be taxed for it. However, the IRS at the time punted on the larger tax question for those choosing to sell their newfound treasure or park it in a display case for possible sale at a future date. The agency offered little clarity, commenting the tax results may be different if the fan decided to sell the ball. So that is still somewhat in question, apparently. So it sounds like there's no way that the IRS would demand that the person immediately pay a tax for like a million dollar asset that they just gained. pay a tax for like a million dollar asset that they just gained. So they would let that slide and that merely catching the ball does not result in taxable income for the fan. However, if the baseball is sold, so this could be characterized either as a short-term capital gain or a long-term gain. So in the context of a short-term gain, the ball would be taxed at the same rate as ordinary income. So record-setting baseballs-term gain, the ball would be taxed at the same rate as ordinary income.

So record-setting baseballs held for more than a year would be taxed at the 28% long-term rate on collectibles. However, this is a quote in here that this would not be good publicity for the IRS. No. Why would the commissioner want to give everyone who loves the Yankees a reason to hate the IRS? I mean, I don't know that the approval rating for the IRS is all that high to begin with. It may have bottomed out at this point. It's like, oh, I was really on board with that IRS. Just love everything they do. Just love being a taxpayer and participating in the taxpaying process. But this Aaron Judge ball thing.

Yeah, that really slipped it for me yeah so the last thing that the kind of compromise proposition here is that the irs would tax the baseball catcher immediately for the retail price of the baseball so 25 right hey you just got yourself a baseball 25 used baseball even maybe it. Yeah, there you go. And then treat the increase in value as unrealized gain. Sure. So that the gain would be taxed when and if the ball is sold, but you wouldn't be hit with some huge tax bill off the bat, literally, right? Well, sure, because the value you know what you're realizing is

hypothetical until you sell it yeah right that's true like you know i doubt that if it let's say they slapped you with a huge tax bill right away and then you sold it at auction and just kidding it's actually worth far more than what they originally assessed you at it's not like they're going to be like oh but we're good you. That tends to not be how the IRS operates. No. Anyway, it seems like no one exactly knows. This doesn't come up that often. It hasn't come up in a while, really. And so everyone's just kind of trying to fumble forward and hope that they come up with some sort of solution here. So interesting article. Seems like something that could be

codified although i guess it's probably not the most it's not the most pressing yeah revision to the tax codes that probably needs to be made definitely not all right you fumble in football ben you don't fumble in oh sure sorry i i mess up my sports sometimes. I mean, you can't football in my life, but it's mostly associated with football. All right. Let's end with the past blast. This is episode 1915, and this past blast is also from 1915 and from Jacob Pomeranke, Sabres Director of Editorial Content and Chair of the Black Sox Scandal Research Committee. 1915, where ballplayers go to retire is the heading for this one. 1915, where ballplayers go to retire is the heading for this one Professional athletes have always known they have a limited window to earn good money in their careers

Before 401ks existed and before social security was established They didn't have many options once their playing days were over The Sporting News reported on one creative plan for retirement in 1915 Quote, what has become of that plan to establish a home for retired ball players to be maintained by contributions from players still able to make good money out of the game? Out in California, Jimmy Burns, a former player and now a member of the legislature, has introduced a measure to pension ball players, but he wants the fans to supply the pensions. The time seems very appropriate to take up the idea of the player's home,

supported by funds from out of the player's pockets. It is true that in combating the greed of the mercenary magnates, they have had little time to give thought to organized effort for aid of their fellows needing care, but now that the Federal League and the players' fraternity have compelled reforms, attention can be given to the broader things. And Jacob concludes, league and the players fraternity have compelled reforms attention can be given to the broader things and jacob concludes while jimmy burns's idea didn't go anywhere in 1915 players continued to push for a pension fund the owners set one up in the 1940s but it was underfunded after marvin miller was hired by the mlb players association in 1966 one of his first major accomplishments was negotiating a new pension agreement between the players and owners.

And, yeah, pensions were a huge deal. Yeah. They were like work stoppages over pensions. And prior to there being a pension, players would often, I mean, teams or players, they would stage exhibition games and benefits maybe for older former players who had fallen on hard times. and benefits maybe for older former players who had fallen on hard times. There was less of a social safety net and certainly less of a baseball player safety net. So players today, they probably don't take it for granted. I'm sure they're quite grateful to have that. But also maybe we take it for granted that that just exists when for a long time it did not.

that just exists when for a long time it did not and you kind of had to go hand in hand or pass the hat to try to provide for some players who could not provide for themselves and so it took a labor movement and it took many decades to get that to happen yeah all right everyone please enjoy your division series responsibly okay i figured i'd mention this just because we were talking about the Astros' future and their player development acumen after we recorded the Giants hired Astros assistant GM in charge of player development, Pete Petilla, as the Giants' new GM, replacing Scott Harris, whom the Tigers hired away from San Francisco. So Petilla is the new number two in San Francisco under Farhan Zaidi. Just seemed worth noting because I remember when I was working on the Astros player development chapter in the MVP machine a few years ago, it seemed like everyone I talked to sang the praises of Pete Petilla, who was not a well-known name particularly.

At the time, I think he was still the director of player development. I'm not sure if he had been elevated to assistant GM by that point, but he started with the Astros in 2011 as an intern and just worked his way up and from everything I heard was pretty instrumental in putting into place their process. Everyone seemed to like and respect him. Don't know him personally. Can't vouch for myself. But I remember hearing at the time people I talked to would say, oh, he's definitely going to be a GM someday and probably not in the too distant future. And that has happened now.

going to be a GM someday and probably not in the too distant future. And that has happened now. Also possibly telling that when James Click of the Rays took over the Astros front office, he kept Pete Petilla instead of cleaning house of everyone from the Jeff Luno era. And Petilla has been up for GM jobs before, including the Giants GM job for that matter. But the Giants already have a pretty good reputation for player development. They've overhauled how they do that over the past few years. So it seems natural that they would be interested in someone who played an important part in that process for some other successful organization. No idea what, if anything, that might mean for the future of the Astros and their ability to keep developing good players. Often when someone puts a good process in place like that, others can come along and pick up right

where they left off. But the Giants could use the help coming off a 500 season and with potentially a lot of turnover in store for this winter. So they called on someone from the Astros, which is hardly new. A lot of other organizations have poached people from the Astros in hopes of improving their own player development pipeline. I'm always interested in which organizations have people poached. Look how many people have gone on to work for other organizations after starting with the Rays. And when we talked recently on the show in a somewhat baffled way about the reports that the Astros might move on from Dusty Baker and Click also, I think I mentioned Petilla as a

potential in-house replacement. Now he's no longer in-house, not in Houston's house anyway. That will do it for today. Thanks as always for listening. And thanks to those of you who have decided to support the podcast on Patreon, which you can do by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. 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. Tim Balfour, Casey Knapp, Nathan Kruger, Dirk Keaton, and Benji Mailings. Thanks to all of you.

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and we will talk to you then. Divided sky, the wind blows high. Divided sky, the wind blows high. Divided sky, the wind blows high. And then you have Craig Kimbler, Craig Kimbler, bleh. Craig Kimbrel. Then you have Craig Kimbrel.