Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1918: Call Off the Search for the Secret Sauce

Episode Date: October 21, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley review the results of the 2022 minor league free agent draft, discuss Gold Glove finalists and a study about the lack of special ways to win in the postseason, recap the first few Championship Series games (and banter about José Alvarado and same-named athletes in multiple sports), and answer listener […]

So we sat and talked, then we walked and talked, but thought it was the truth. What is your secret? Drag it on and on, even favorite songs, but your divisions roll. What is your secret? What is your secret? to today's playoff talk, I figured we should probably close the loop on something. Now that the regular season is over, we can report the results of the minor league free agent draft. Oh, well, that's rude of you. Yeah, I know. It's also kind of rude to myself. Spoiler, neither of us did very well. But just to be accountable podcasters, I saw that the current keeper of the Effectively

Wild Wiki, Raymond Chen, who is great and diligent at doing that, although I know that he would like some assistance if anyone out there would like to help document Effectively Wild episodes with Raymond, he would appreciate it. But he has updated the page for the minor league free agent draft with the 2022 results. And he notes in parentheses that these totals are unofficial pending certification by John Chenier, official statistician, stat keeper, draft recorder of Effectively Wild. But I don't think that we're going to have to call in John to certify these things or go to a recount or anything because it's not close. No. So this is episode 1798 is when we conducted this draft January 14th, 2022.

And for those of you who were not with us, we do this every year. And the conceit here is that we draft minor league free agents and we just draft guys we hope will get playing time in the coming regular season. And then we just count up the batters faced or plate appearances or both that they amass. And just the most major league playing time wins. That's the whole game. And we welcomed in Ben Clemens of Fangraphs in this draft to join us. A rare non-host appearance by someone in the minor league free agent draft. And what did he do? Did he thank us for inviting him by just rolling over and just drafting a couple guys and then going in the tank to make us look good? No, he did not. He came into our turf and he completely cleaned our clocks and embarrassed us. It's ugly. It's not even close. And he will not be invited back.

So the totals are Ben Clemens got 1,440 plate appearances and batter's face combined, 1440 plate appearances and batter's face combined which is I believe the second highest total ever by a drafter and the highest total by someone in a draft where we drafted 10 players so Jeff

in 2019 he got 1640 that's the record but we drafted 11 players that year for some reason so Ben leads in the 10 player draft era and i came in second a distant second with 422 combined plate appearances and better spaced and you brought up the rear yeah with a a grand total of 56. Yeah. Yeah. So that's how that went.

So we didn't do great. If you look at the hit rate of just how many guys we got who got any major league playing time, made it at all, you had three, I think. You had Nick Plummer, your leader at 31. Yeah. Followed by Dylan Thomas with 14, and then Ryan Castellani with 11. And I also had three guys. So we had the same success rate of predicting major leaguers, but my guys got a little more playing time. Got a little more playing time.

So Mark Leiter Jr., 282. Yeah. Magritte Sierra, 96. And Yolmer Sanchez, 44. And then Ben just completely, just, I mean, unbelievably lapped both of us multiple times over. Now, he did get the gift of the first round pick because we were trying to be polite and say, hey, you're our guest. We shouldn't have done that. No, won't make that mistake again yeah that was terrible the future guests is gonna be at a disadvantage coming in but he took jose iglesias whom i would have taken also with my first pick i think he was kind of the the obvious guy who was a minor league free agent but we were sort of surprised yeah right fluky reasons. Yeah, right. Like he was clearly a major leaguer. He was going to be a major leaguer. And he was the leader on Ben's

team with 467 plate appearances. But you could have subtracted that and it still would not have been close. So you could have taken away a couple of Jose Iglesias from Ben and I think he would have been all right. So he also had Mike Alfranco who got 388. Thanks Nationals. Also Ty Black, 193. Anthony Bemboom, 59. Oh, and Christian Bethencourt. Yeah, 333 plate appearances. Who knew that was going to happen?

I guess Ben Clements, but other than that. Ben asked me in our Slack the other day he's like you know would you have thought that any of the minor league free agents drafted would get playoff plate appearances let alone you know any at all and i i think fairly said to him well if i had anticipated that i probably would have drafted differently now wouldn't i have yeah yeah I guess this is not counting the five plate appearances that Christian Bethencourt got for the raise in the wildcard rounds. I don't think that needs him. Yeah. I think he's all right without those, but that did happen. Yeah. I mean, I was not thinking about Christian Bethencourt because he had not been a big leaguer since 2017 and only barely then. Yes.

And somehow this year he got 100 games in and not only for the Oakland A's either, for the Tampa Bay Rays of all teams. It was like a league average hitter. Yeah, that's what happens when all your other catchers are hurt. Somebody's got to back up Francisco Mejia. And he pitched four innings as well. He had that short-lived two-way player experiment. Back before Otani, we were so desperate for two-way players that I was getting excited about Christian Bethegor. Yeah.

He actually did pretty well as a pitcher. But yeah, he was not only a consistent big leaguer, but a productive one. So didn't see that coming. Ben Clemens did. Anyway, congrats to Ben. Yeah. I wasn't totally serious about him not being invited back, but boy. Anyway, I guess he went 50-50, right?

Because he drafted five guys who were big leaguers, which I think is probably about par. I would think usually that's roughly what we do. So we just, we just had bad years this year. What can I say? Yeah. I mean, we can acknowledge the reality of it being strangely timed as an exercise this past time because we were in the lockout. Yeah. Yeah. Didn't bother Ben, but for some reason it affected us disproportionately. Well, right. Because, you know, again, he got to take Iglesias.

Yeah. That's it. Yeah. You know, clearly that had something to do with it. But, yeah. I don't know. I have to think about my, I have to think about stuff, you know. I got to question my approach here.

Yeah. I'd like to win one year, you know, or at least do better, certainly do better than I did. Yeah. A lot of luck, a lot of randomness. So I don't know if one bad performance means you got to go back to the drawing board and tear up your whole strategy, but I don't know that anyone's strategy is like, I don't know that we've completely cracked this exercise despite doing it for so many years in a row, but it's always fun. Anyway, you got a few months to prepare. I guess the list is not out yet probably, but one of these days, yeah, people will let us know as soon as that Baseball America list is out. Oh, yeah. We can start prepping. So you can just do double the prep this year to make up for last year's performance.

You know, it's good to stay humble, though. Yeah. Because once you think you know everything, you're not fun to be around as a person if you think you know everything. I will say, to transition us away from this topic and into something really silly, we could feel badly about this, but Ben, have you seen the nominees for the Golden Glove Awards? Have you seen the finalists? I just got an email.

I have not actually read it. I'm going to say a name to you, and you tell me. Just like top of instinct, first thing that comes to mind, whether this person would to your mind register as a gold glover. Ready? Yeah. You think about Juan Soto being a gold glover? Well, this might be colored by what happened in the most recent NLCS game. Ah, transition within a transition. Whoa. happened in the most recent transition within a transition whoa yeah he was not able to to see a ball despite the sun so i guess that can happen to anyone but uh no regardless of that particular play i would not think of him that way because like the thing about it is this i think that juan soto is a fantastic baseball player. Controversial opinion.

You know, I think he's one of the best hitters of his, or maybe any generation. You know? Yeah. He's internationally gifted at that. Combines that innate gift with what appears to be very diligent and concerted preparation. And then he also plays the fields.

So, that one's funny. Am I about to get wound around the axle about gold glove finalists man it's so embarrassing for you even the fact like do we have to do finalists for everything gold gloves come on finalists you know who won let's not stretch this out finalists i guess the point is to get us to talk about it, I guess. I don't know. I guess it works. Exactly what they want. Yeah. Or I guess we would talk about it anyway if he actually won one, but because he's a finalist. But it has come up before the topic of his defense, right? Because it's been all

over the place. I don't know how good a defender he actually is or bad. He was first percentile in outs above average this year. That's not good. First is bad. First is the worst one with percentiles. So that's not good. But he was 90th percentile last year. So that's a huge swing. I don't know what to make of that. And then the year before, he was 15th percentile. And then the year before that, he was 90th percentile. And then the year before that, he was 11th percentile. So and then the year before that, he was 11th percentile. So I guess good news for the Padres is that he's due for another 90th percentile here next year. But I don't know what like obviously like he did change corners at some point there and it seemed like maybe that had benefited him.

And I think like he had maybe devoted himself more to it and there were some things written about his preparation and everything. So it seemed to pay dividends. But then first percentile this year. So I really don't know if he's good or bad or depends on the season or what. But I would not think of him as a finalist, quote unquote, for Acolyte Glove. Probably not. Yeah. Ickle Glove probably, no.

Yeah. Well, and it's interesting, too, because Tommy Edmund is a finalist at second base, but then also as a utility player. Uh-huh. And it feels like you should pick one or the other, right? Yeah. Doesn't it feel like you should pick Dalton Varshow, also a right field finalist and a utility finalist? Huh. Hmm. Interesting.

That's interesting. Yeah. I applaud and have applauded on the podcast that they have the utility category now. Yes. It's good to have that. Yeah. And I still don't think they've said, or at least I haven't seen what exactly the criteria are for that, like how many positions or how many innings. I don't know. Yeah. It seems like if you play enough to qualify at one position, maybe there would be a way to set the the minimums such that you would not also qualify for me yeah right yeah i mean i get that maybe you know second base or right

fields depending on which of these two guys we're talking about is like the primary position but it seems like you know it kind of goes against the spirit of the thing doesn't feel like it goes against the spirit of the thing i really i very feel like it goes against the spirit of the thing? A little bit. I very much enjoy that both Jeremy Pena and Carlos Correa are finalists for shortstop in the American League. That's delightful. Tommy Edmund, 100 in percentile in outs above average this year. So that's good. Yeah, he's a good little defender.

Yeah. Baseball savant and stat cast in general have done wonders for percentiles, I think, just in general, just in how often we talk about percentiles and cite percentiles. I like a good percentile. I've used percentiles in my writing before. It's just a nice way to represent things. But people love to screenshot that little handy-dandy reference of all the percentiles according to StatCast. So, yeah, people talk about percentiles a lot these days,

and that's good, I think. Yeah, I think that it's useful statistical education and in like a nice digestible form. Mm-hmm. All right. Well, we'll wait with bated breath to see which ones were the finalists who win and which ones were not. Did I see, did someone say Vlad was on here?

Am I imagining that? He is the finalist of First Space. You are correct. Wow. Yeah, you are correct. I would not have expected that either. No, that's a little bit. 15th percentile, speaking of percentiles.

Yeah, that's a little surprising. I'm like, I don't know. It's a funny exercise. I think the most important thing for all of us to know is that unlike in years past, the winners will be revealed on Tuesday, November 1st, because someone probably was like, remember last time there was an election year and we did it on election day and everyone was like, this isn't what we want to care about today yeah well i'm glad we've got a full 10 days to discuss and debate and dissect the finalists before the winners are revealed that's great yeah i mean i gotta gotta really nothing else to talk about in baseball these days so should we win like no december yeah uh anyway dalton varsho's awesome by the way yeah dalton varsha rocks yeah that breakdown of positions like he he should win the utility just for being a catcher and also like yeah just like

even if he's not the best at them like if you're a catcher and a center fielder and a right fielder but he plays center a lot yeah he's like okay at it and also catches. It's so weird and wonderful that that happens. It's so rare. I think that if you are a credible defender at those three positions at the major league level, you should just win the utility role. It's a remarkable thing, really. It's pretty incredible. thing really it's pretty it's pretty incredible he's i almost miss when the gold gloves were so wacky that we actually like did have something to talk about because because now that they have the safer defensive index that's factored in there and yeah it's calmed it down dramatically

it's good i mean it's more accurate i guess although maybe there's still some strange ones but we used to get a lot of mileage a a lot of material out of just, you know, because you would have like the good hitters would win every year, even if they weren't actually good fielders or just Derek Jeter would win every year. You know, you had and then you had guys who like played 38 games or whatever it was the year Rafael Palmeiro won. Right, right. That's right. Oh my gosh. It was voted on by just people who probably didn't give a lot of thought to it and also just like hadn't looked at any numbers and just that guy made a good play against us that one time. So, or if you had won before,

they would just give it to you forever basically until someone else came along. So yeah, it's good. I guess it's more accurate now, but I guess you could say that about just about any awards now. They're probably because i think we would all admit that even though we have made strides on the public side in terms of measuring that stuff it is an area where i think there's still the greatest amount of you know sort of nail biting that we're getting it right there's still work to be done to improve those metrics and so i think

having it it's probably an area where a straight, like here's what, you know, outside above average says is probably missing some stuff, even though I think that that, you know, metric is getting more reliable. They're all more reliable, right? But yeah, one thing that we don't want to incorporate into a defensive award is how many home runs someone hit. Because, you know, Ben, that's not defense. No.

Although they do say that the best defense is a good offense. So maybe someone just took that to heart and ran with it for 20 years. Who could say? You know, I should have said, I should have announced that you and I were finalists for the minor league free agent draft championship. And then we could have waited until November 1st to reveal who actually won. That would have been better.

We were. We were finalists. Yeah. Yeah. So I feel good about that. Sure. Yeah. You know, it's nice when you can set up exercises

that put yourself in a final position. Like how clever of us. Yeah. I don't think that overconfidence was your weakness when it came to the minor league free agent draft. No. I think that if you go back and listen to any of our minor league free agent draft episodes, I sound like I am in agony the entire time. I am miserable. There was the year I went totally off script. That one went badly. Then there was the year that you swooped in

and took Kriesmont and I was just. Yeah. Got your head the rest of the draft. Yeah, it was in my head the rest of the draft. So anyway, yeah, I am often miserable. I worry about shaming myself and my family and so far have lived up to that. So let's talk a little bit about playoffs. There hasn't been that much baseball since we last spoke. We are recording on Thursday afternoon. So This is before ALCS game two. So we've seen one ALCS game and two NLCS games. And I just wanted to mention Dan Szymborski did an article this week for FanCrafts where he did yet another look for some sort of playoff advantage or disadvantage, which is, it's a windmill that

sabermetricians have been tilting at for years and years now. And every now and then it's good to go back and confirm that, yeah, we still just can't find anything really that helps you win in the playoffs. Like he was looking at basically what factors, if any, help you predict playoff outcomes over and above just knowing the team's full season run differential and just adding other elements and variables to the regressions to see if any of them turned up significant? And almost none of them did. Barely, barely budged anything. And then how reliant you are on home runs. That was maybe a slight advantage actually toward being more reliant, which I think I and others have studied that and found that to be the case, even though people always seem to think that being reliant on home runs is bad in the opposite, that being able to score with one swing is good when it's cold and also when the opposing defenses and pitchers are good and it's hard to string together rallies. So other than that, though, basically Bupkis, he plugged in like 60 something variables, it sounds like, and just nothing really came up like contact rate or how you finish the season or speed or whether you were clutch during the regular season or whether there was playoff experience on the roster, etc.

So you can he was looking at full season stats. And when he does his zips playoff odds, then he'll factor in who is actually on the roster at that time. So that helps, obviously, to in who is actually on the roster at that time. So that helps, obviously, to know who is on the team currently. But beyond knowing who is on the team, which is a pretty low bar to clear, there doesn't really seem to be anything that we've been able to detect thus far. And every time I see one of these studies, I am initially sort of surprised, like, well, when are we going to crack this thing? When are we to figure it out but why though like why should there be anything right like they're still just playing baseball like it's they're it's baseball games it's the same rules minus the zombie runner so why should

there be some sort of secret sauce like magic bullet kind of this is the way you win in the playoffs like if there were wouldn't you just do that all year or like why would it work only in the playoffs like not that much is different like you're facing good teams and it's colder yeah but that's that's about it so like i the schedule obviously is a little bit different so yeah i mean i i guess maybe you could, I don't know whether he looked at this or not, but whether you looked at, if you looked at, like, I don't know how lopsided your rotation is or something or top-heavy, right, just so that, like,

maybe if you don't have such a good fifth starter or fourth starter and that doesn't matter that much in the playoffs, but really, like, there shouldn't be anything. It would be weird if there was something. So I don't know that we will ever... It always seems like, oh, when are they going to finally... Ken Rosenthal wrote something this week where he was talking about playoff randomness and how we shouldn't blame the format for the upsets we've seen necessarily. And he had something in there

just trotting out the old Billy Beed and Moneyball line about shit not working in the playoffs and it being a crapshoot. And then Ken said something like, well, maybe it's about time. That was 20 years ago. You know, why doesn't one of these smart people figure out what it actually takes to win in the playoffs? Well, there just isn't anything like not only are they short series. So even if you did find some advantage, it would probably just be swamped by just the variance and the randomness of all of it. But also, how big an advantage could it be?

It would have to be just maybe a few points of win probability here or there that would basically be drowned out by everything else. So it really shouldn't surprise me, I every time i find like the the null hypothesis here where we just kind of uphold the idea that there's nothing there's no secret postseason sauce i understand why we feel like there should be something because you're right that from a pure baseball perspective like it's not that different, right? Maybe your overall quality of competition is higher, but it's still just baseball, like you said. You got to score more runs than the other team. And at the end of the day, that's really what it comes down to. But I think we know, again, there are things that we either can't measure or can't measure super

precisely. And I wonder if part of what we're, what we're searching for is like an understanding that we, we feel pressure as individuals. And so surely people in, in high stress situations that occur in front of everyone, like there must be something that allows them to rise above. And I know Dan didn't put his study in those terms. And I don't think that like you or joe has either but like i i get why we look at it and go well it's like there's something weird and it's it's unusual for its degree of observation while under pressure and so surely there must be something that differentiates the teams that are able to handle that and we look to things we can

measure to try to sort that out and then it just ends up being a lot of right you know randomness even if that were the case i guess you couldn't really test for it because if it were like post-season pressure and clutchness well regular season results wouldn't really have any bearing or tell you anything about that so you still couldn't predict it. It's a conundrum. Yeah. Well, speaking of that, so we got a couple games, good games in the NLCS. So it's split. And according to the ZipSods, this is really close to a coin flip. We got an email and I mentioned in the article that I wrote about the playoff upsets after our conversation about it on the podcast.

But the idea was basically that we shouldn't say coin flip. It's more like playing poker because there's some skill to it. It's not completely random. And you have certain cards that you draw and you play your hand as well as you can. And I think that's true. It is a good, probably, way to think about it. And this was Paul who wrote in to us about that. But really, now it's a coin flip in this series. According to the ZipSods, it's like 50.1% to 49.9% or something. It is basically teetering right there. And that's because it's been split. And the first game, probably not that much to say

about it it was just exactly they're being really good yeah bryce harper hitting one into the first row and kyle schwarber hitting one into the like to the infinite row yeah he hit one out of our orbit it reached escape velocity that was something 120 miles per hour boy so that was it basically that was the scoring and then the second game was much more interesting and exciting you had the other phillies ace going aaron nola and things started well and the ph Phillies managed to kind of dink and bloop and Juan Soto losing a ball in the sun and other defensive misplays on the Padres part. That led to a few runs for the Phillies in the second inning. Just really Snell kind of getting victimized by bad ball placement and bad defense behind him. And then the Padres just came all the way back in a really exciting fifth inning. So they had that exciting seventh inning rally against the Dodgers in game four of the division series where they scored five runs. And then they scored five runs again in this inning and took the lead and then tacked on a little more. And that was that.

and took the lead and then tacked on a little more. And that was that. So it was a great rally and a big day for the trade deadline additions on the podcast. Really, like everyone, Soto had the big game-tying double after losing that ball in the sun. And then Brandon Drury and Josh Bell each homered and also had RBI hits later in the game. And then Josh Hader, who looks untouchable now he pitched a nice inning too so yeah that kind of paid dividends not all those guys lived up to what the padres hoped that they would be during the second half of the season but in this game they all came up pretty big well and i think that we should say for the first game of that series like

let us not forget the noble efforts of you darvish because sure he gave up those two home runs and again not convinced that the schwarper one has actually landed but no he still pitched a heck of a game even though he made those mistakes he just made more of them than zach wheeler had so you know sometimes you you pitch a good game and and then the other side does that too and then you go oh boy oh yeah did you have a good game and then the other side does that too, and then you go, oh, boy. Did you have a moment of panic during the Schwarber home run that that guy was going to drop his baby? Oh, yes.

I was very worried about that baby for a second. It's not a knock on that guy. It's just that I don't know that we should let people with droppable babies be sitting in the front row of the upper deck. I think that that should be non-baby seating so that I don't have to feel so stressed. He looked like he had a good grip on the baby. I'm not accusing this guy of not tending to his child, to be clear. But I just, you know, you get these big swells of feeling.

You reach for a thing instinctively and then it could have been a bad baby day. Thankfully, it was fine. Like a roller coaster, you must be this tall to ride. feeling your reach for a thing instinctively, and then it could have been a bad baby day. Right. Thankfully, it was fine. Like a roller coaster, you must be this tall to ride. You must be this tall to sit in the front row of the upper deck. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, because that's a popular genre of fan highlight, right?

Yeah. The person with the baby who's trying to catch something. Catch the ball with your baby. Right in the mouth. Throw the baby at the ball and it'll come to the ground no nobody does that they're not some of those monsters right some of those it's like okay the baby is is firmly secured you know like maybe they're they're strapped in or something and it's fine it's like okay this was just an athletic feat you were

carrying a baby and also you caught a ball the baby was not endangered or anything and then sometimes it's like maybe you should have been more concerned about the baby than the ball concerned about the baby yeah one time um when i was a very young person people who live in seattle will be able to locate the era of of seattle by this statement there used to be a barnes and noble at university village in in seattle and it was like a two, a big, you know, multi-story in-person bookstore, which sounds like a very old fashioned sentence to say now. And you had to take escalators between the upper level and the lower level. And this guy had his, I think the baby's fine. Like I want to preface the story by saying, I think the baby's fine.

These people might be divorced now, but I think the baby's probably okay. And he had the stroller facing, you know, falling outside forward rather than backward, which is how you're supposed to. And his baby fell out of the stroller, Ben. And it went down the escalator stairs. And then from above, I just hear this woman scream,

you broke my baby. And I was like, I hope this man understands the hierarchy of affection in his household more clearly now. And also that you shouldn't break babies. Don't break them and don't drop them at games. You know, that's what I think about babies.

Yeah, babies are pretty resilient, I have found thus far. We have not dropped our baby. She has dropped herself a couple of times. And you feel bad whenever that happens. I think probably any new parent is like, oh, no, my baby fell or whatever. And then every other parent will be like, oh, that's fine. I dropped her all the time. Or like, yeah, she fell out of her high chair.

They wiggle. She fell off the bed, whatever it is. It happens. And fortunately, they're pretty flexible. And that's why we have skulls, I guess. But yeah, anyway, she's fine. She's old enough that we can't just put her down and have her stay there until we retrieve her,

which is nice in some ways, certainly nice for her. But also it was quite convenient to be able to just plop her down and know that there was nowhere she could go. That was great in some ways. So that's not the case anymore. No, no. Anyway, so that was fun.

I think both of these teams are pretty fun and pretty evenly matched. And there's just like a lot of star power. And I think it was important for the Padres to try to get one of those games. Obviously, it's a short series. It's not anything amazing, I can say. But I think particularly just because if you can sort of steal one of the Phillies aces games, there's a bigger drop off from their one and two to their three and four, let's say, than there is for the Padres. You can just throw Musgrove at you. It's like it's not that big a step down if it is a step down, whereas with the Phillies, there's a clear hierarchy there.

So if you can take one of the ace games from them right then you probably feel pretty good about that yeah i think that it changes the outlook for them considerably to be going back east you know knotted up rather than down which is an obvious thing to say because like winning more games than not in a best of seven is like obviously good but yeah it does feel for the reasons that you said, like it was important for them to sort of right the ship. And you know, not only to get like big moments from guys that they brought into the team at the deadline with the express intent of like being more competitive

at this time of year, but like Manny Machado is still Manny Machado. That's pretty cool. And I know it's not a representative sample of innings but like Josh Hader seems like he's right at the ship somewhat so you you look at this team and there are still parts of it that are you know maybe less good than say the Dodgers were that made us all think well the Dodgers you know probably are the favorites in that series but it's not exactly the team it was pre-de all think, well, the Dodgers probably are the favorites in that series,

but it's not exactly the team it was pre-deadline either. And with the guys that they acquired starting to do this stuff, they hoped they would. Like, yeah, you look at them, you're like, well. And then on the Philly side, you know, Kyle Schroeder can still send the ball to like Jupiter. That seems cool. They can't play defense still, like seemingly.

It's not the best when it comes to that stuff padres in this game but you know high skies man they they it's a problem you got the sun up there yeah but sometimes you have a defensive miscue in the ninth inning and it doesn't end up mattering you know and then they just the phillies just won game one so i think there's just a lot of fun and just the right amount of like potential for chaos in the nl side of things to keep it you know feeling lively i'm sure it's very stressful for philly fans in particular who sound like during every philly's game and particularly in the playoffs like i do when I have to do the minor league free agent draft, which is just miserable and prepared to meet my end at any moment. But sometimes they win and then sometimes they get bested by good pitching and a bunch of fun deadline acquisitions.

So what do you think? Yeah, I don't know if Dan tested whether trading for one Soto is a factor that helps predict playoff success, but it can't hurt, I would think. That probably would help. It's not really replicable, unfortunately, for the most part what. But he looks unhittable again and has been. And he's, what, struck out eight consecutive opponents, I believe, which is a playoff record. So even though he's not going to give you more than an inning or maybe four outs, which he did the other day, that's pretty good. And when you got him looking as dominant as he does right now, and then also, and then also you've got Garcia there and you've got Suarez. It's a pretty good 7-8-9 now. And the Phillies, they got Robertson back. I don't know whether he's still compromised at all.

I think he gave up a run. But when you have Dominguez and you have Alvarado, who looks as good as he does now too, I guess, speaking of relievers who went through some rough patches and now work unhittable. So that's not a bad combo either. Yeah, it's a fun NL side of the bracket. And I don't know, it's just we talked about it on our last episode that the AL side of things is kind of who we expected it to be and so when you look at the balance of the of the postseason i think having i don't want to call it the chaos bracket because that like does you know that doesn't sort of do justice to the quality of some of these players and to these teams like these are not bad teams they are just not the

teams we expected to see and they do have you know again chaos potential but they are good clubs and so you know it's nice to have that sort of balance between the you know the houston and yankees of it all and and then the side where we are seeing guys and teams we haven't seen in a while it's cool. throws me for a second because obviously I think of the Philly. So people who are fans of one sport or the other, their mind's going to go to the other. So I don't know what we can do about this, but if we could like maybe the way that like when you see a politician and you have like the D and the R in parentheses after their name, maybe we could do like jose alvarado parentheses mlb or something like that just just to keep it straight yeah i don't know if anyone else has had this problem but i have definitely

had the jose alvarado confusion strike me at times yeah or like um you know so many hunter renfros right and by so many i mean two but know, that's more than one. Right. At least it's spelled differently with them. It is. It is spelled differently. So that helps a little bit. But if you're just hearing it, you can't tell the difference. No. Yeah.

Unless you're like talking to a dog or a toddler and spelling things out so they don't know what you're talking about. Then you'd be able to tell. Well, maybe you should have to spell it out then. In this case, that would not help, again, with the Jose Alvarado issue. No, it wouldn't. Yeah. By the way, we didn't clarify. We're in a new round here.

I don't want to belabor anything, but I have seen several threads started in the various places where people talk about Effectively Wild. Oh. Mentioning the fact that we never explained the best of seven. Oh. Because you might hear some people now, because this series is split, the NLCS, people will say, oh, now it's a best of five because you might hear some people now because this series is split the nlcs people will say oh now it's a best of five right and then people will get confused because it's i thought we were done with that right but no this is the best of seven yes so yet again like a third round and a third playoff format a third number of games they just cannot make up their minds

so this is you got to win four to advance. Four out of seven, just the majority. Right. And yet again, any order is fine. Right, you don't have to be consecutive. Do not have to be consecutive. Wins do not carry over across rounds. Right. The slate is wiped clean.

Totally new. And that's really all you have to know. And fortunately, the World Series, same deal. Right. Best of seven. So you would think it should continue to increase, right? Because if we go best of three to best of five to best of seven, I mean, it seems like there's a pattern here. Like if this is one of those number games where they show you a few numbers and they're like, okay, what's the next number?

And you have to extrapolate from the sequence, you would say that the World Series would have to be best of nine, right? And there have been some early World Series that were best of nine. That used to be a thing. So maybe we should bring that back because this postseason is not lasting long enough as it is and going deep enough into November. We should make World Series best of nine. There would be some nice symmetry if we did that. But that is not happening. There would be some nice symmetry if we did that, but that is not happening. So one final way they're messing with their minds is that they accustom us to the number of games changing every round, and then we'll get to the last round, and they'll be like, oh, psych, same number, now best of seven.

Still, you just need four to win. And so, but, you know, just to anticipate the question, Ben, if it were a best of nine, then how many well i would think you would probably need five yeah to win a best at nine right but again not consecutively we're just you know we're we're preparing in in the event that something dramatic happens which you know it's been it's been known to dramatic things have been known to and maybe what the commissioner's reaction to this postseason will be is to say, you know, rather than doing what we assume he'll do, which is to panic at the notion of there being any extra innings baseball played in the month of October at all, he'll simply say,

I like all this extra baseball. I'd like there to be more. I think we need a best of nine format for the world series and then he'll call us and he'll go i'm like do they have to win that and we'll tell him and then we'll have to remind him they don't have to be consecutive because that rob he always gets that wrong you know he's like oh i sometimes i remember but then i think oh so you know if you need suggestions about how to improve baseball, call us and don't be surprised when that conversation is longer than you anticipated. Right. Yeah. I could have saved this for next time and done this as a pass blast for 1919 because I think that 1919 was there were originally like there was going to be a reduction.

There was a reduction from best of 9 to Best of 7. I think it was 1904, maybe, which there was no World Series. But after that, that was when it was due to be reduced to Best of Seven. But for a few years after World War I, they went back to Best of Nine, I think three times, beginning with 1919. And people did not realize that that was the case until shortly before that series started. They were like, oh, wait, I didn't realize that we were going back to best of nine. So everyone had to be reminded about that. And they sent a memo around, I think, and all the players were like, oh, forgot about that. So you never know. It could happen again.

We might just flip on our TVs for the World Series and find out that actually it's best of nine. But I don't think so. This would be a bad year for that because we're already going deep with the late start to the season. I know. Well, and, you know, so stressful for me because I'd be like, I need someone to write gamers. Yeah. So in the ALCS, the Astros are up one zip. Yeah.

And they did it in, I guess, a pretty Astros way. way. The Astros, we praised their pitching previously, and they managed to sweep the Mariners, even though Justin Verlander was rocked in his start, which was weird because his late season starts, it was like he was allowing no hits in half of them, it seemed like, and he allowed lots of hits and lots of runs to the Mariners, and then they won that game anyway. But in this game against the Yankees, he was good again and he struggled a little and then he settled down and was good after that. There was yet another Harrison Bader homer. I think it must be like a reverse Samson situation where he cut his hair and got more power possibly.

So he had another homer, but there was not a lot of Yankees offense in this game because there was good Astros pitching again. And so it was a 4-2 final. There were some people a bit up in arms or up in arms about the arms that Aaron Boone had elected to use in this game. Because it seems like Boone just like, there are only a few pitchers

he really wants to use right now, which I get, like he's missing a good number of the arms that he relied on throughout the season. And so now it was almost like he was auditioning other candidates for late inning work. It's like, how about you? How about Frankie Montas? You haven't pitched in a really long time

yeah could you be like a great lady to garb yeah maybe not or clark schmidt how about you you want to maybe clark schmidt okay he hasn't really used luchavino a lot which is odd because he's been pretty good as a yankee so yeah so he was okay in this game schmidt, not as much. Montas, not as much. Yeah. So that was it, basically. But, you know, I guess you can't use Wandi Peralta in every game. No, probably not. Which they did do in ALDS. But, yeah, because there's potential, again, for a lot of games to happen on consecutive days in this series. It's just it's weird that, like, Wandi Peral Peralta is like your shutdown guy for this team

yeah I didn't necessarily see that coming but he's the guy who is I guess kind of the de facto closer now and then you've got Clay Holmes as long as his shoulder holds up there's just not a lot like advantage

Astros when it comes to the pitching so right yeah and you know There's just not a lot like advantage Astros when it comes to the pitching. Right. Yeah. And, you know, it might have still been advantage Astros even without all of the attrition that they've had in the Yankee bullpen. Like they are just so stacked there, but the attrition certainly doesn't help. stacked there but the attrition certainly doesn't help like if i felt like being snarky you know if i were like in the mood to be snarky and not have someone very rightly point out well hey meg didn't your mariners not win in advance so why are you being snarky like you you could counter that to me being snarky like i would say you know it's really that hard to score more than one run

against justin brilliant like he's got some runs against just. I've seen it with my own eyes with an offense that is heavily invested in Adam Frazier. So like, you know, it's possible. No, that would be rude of me because, you know, the Mariners, they didn't win. So it doesn't matter. Yeah. Ben, what were your impressions of the strike zone in this game? Yeah, not the best. Maybe.

It wasn't maybe the best. No. I say the following. I think that fandom involves enjoying grievance. I think that we like to feel ourselves aggrieved as fans. And I don't think this is unique to the Yankees fan base, so I want to make that very clear. I think it is one of the fun things about being a fan is being able to feel aggrieved. I don't know. We just have this inclination toward it.

I don't think we should provide fans with actual grievances because then we'll never stop talking about it. That's what I have to say. Call a good zone because it's fair and it's good for the game to have a good and accurate zone. It's also a mark of self-preservation as an umpire. I would think about it that way. Also, you should do it so that I don't have to hear about it.

Yeah, the ump scorecard for that game seems like it was roughly average. Maybe there were some big glaring misses. And you'd expect and hope that it would be above average in the playoffs and that you'd have your best umpires out there. Seems like it slightly favored the Astros according to scorecards. Anyway, it's just the Astros, like I've been looking at these baseball prospectus game previews that they've been doing and they have the whole bullpen lined up there for every team.

And I think they have it by deserved run average. And the Astros just do not have a worse than average pitcher. Like every pitcher on the Astros, they're all good. They're all good. Like some are better than others, but they're all good. Like there isn't really anyone who comes in and you're like, okay, you know, we got a chance. Or even like as an Astros fan where you're like, uh-oh. I feel nervous.

Yeah. Like the Astros' worst guys, like other teams would take them at this point. Like there just isn't a hole. And so the Yankees, I think, have 13 pitchers on this roster and there's just a whole bunch of them that you know they're not feeling good about.

It's like unless it's Loaizaga or Holmes or Peralta at this point, you just kind of hope the starter will go deep. Yeah, whereas the Astros, it's just guy after guy after guy. So they just look tough to beat. They have holes in the bottom of the lineup for sure. And the bottom of the lineup, like against the Mariners,

I forget what the stat was exactly, but it was bad. They didn't have hits from those positions, which is not shocking when you look at the players in those positions. So if an Altuve or someone has a bad series too, then it's glaring. But really the good guys are so good. It's not like as good an offensive team, I don't think, as some of the past ALCS Astros teams when they had Correa, when they had Springer, when they were just – Brantley. Right. Brantley.

Right. Brantley's absence is big, too. And it's also just, you know, it leans one way. So like against right handers, you know, it's a pretty right handed lineup, too. So I think like it can be it can be beaten offensively. And yet the right handedness, that's another way in which you miss Brantley because he would even things out a bit. Yeah, he would have tipped it back in, not in balance, but closer to it, right? Yeah. And so they don't scare me maybe as much as they used to offensively, although the best guys still do. But the pitching, it's just, man, guy after guy after guy, you just can never feel good about beating them.

No. I mean mean i gave an ungenerous bit of snark and so allow me to give a generous bit of earnestness like i do not envy the yankees or particularly their fans having to sit and and watch this because it's not comfortable it isn't comfortable when you have a lead because despite you know we talked about the bullpen being depleted but like there are good pitchers on the yankees but despite that you have these you have a couple of real otherworldly hitters on the astros so even with the lead you're like how secure is this lead and i'm here to tell you not secure it's not secure you're not safe leave wherever you want

make sure your roundhouse isn't about to hit somewhere else you know so that doesn't feel good and then you know if you have the unfortunate experience of being at a deficit it doesn't feel good either you know even last night when they managed to get a little something going in the eighth and it looked like well maybe they'll they'll do something here against, you know, Montero's been great for Houston. And then you're like, oh, let's bring in literally Ryan Presley to stamp this out and he'll throw some stuff to Matt Carpenter and Matt Carpenter will have no idea what it is and he's just going to swing through and then be done.

Like, it doesn't feel good. It's not a comfortable viewing experience. And I would imagine that for fans of a team that is as at times dominant as New York, an uncomfortable experience both for what it is and for its lack of familiarity. When was the last time? I know that there was the stretch

where they looked like they were going to blow the division, but then they pulled out of that tailspin and Aaron Judge had 62 home runs. And I bet they came into the postseason feeling like all right here we are then you still have to deal with these Astros yep they're always there they're always there in a row yeah it's really if you look at the full season numbers it's pretty close like it looks like it would be kind of a toss-up in the way that Padres Phillies is but if you say, second half or more recently, and maybe that's kind of iffy to do,

but if you do divide it into halves, then the Astros just seem like a much more formidable team than the Yankees do at this stage. And it could go any way. And by the time people are hearing this, there will have been a second game. And for all I know. It could be tied. Yeah. So I'm not saying this is over by any means. Yeah.

I mean, so I think two things. One, I think you're right to, you know, we should not overreact to a small sample. I do think that there is something to be said for comparing how these teams have done in the second half when there has been like meaningful attrition, right? So when you have a change in personnel because guys are hurt like that's something that is useful for us to to keep in mind but you're right it's not over right now the the game by game odds at zips seem very lopsided because the astros have won one game and the yankees haven't but you know like tyon versus Verlander was always going to be tilted in Houston's direction.

And, you know, some of the other matchups are much closer, the Delta, and then some of them, you know, on a game-by-game basis, we favor, or rather Zips favors the Yankees. Sometimes that margin is slim, but it's not as if they're on the wrong side of every one of these games. And, you know, particularly if they're able to hold on and make it a series, then, you know, like it's always a series, but like a longer series, right? Seven, right? But not. Exactly.

And you have to win four, but they don't have to be in order. So if they can, you know, stay in it and see Garrett Cole maybe more than once. Yeah, right. The Astros have won one, which means they need to win three more. Three more. So yes, three shall be the number thou shalt count. Yes.

Right, three. Right. All right. So that's what we've seen so far, and we'll have another game to talk about next time. I have a few emails here, a few playoff-themed emails. We could maybe start with a pedantic one, which is from Dennis, who notes that until this year, the division winners were guaranteed a spot

in the so-called division series, hence the name. Now that Rob Manfred has gotten his way in the National League, only half the teams playing in the division series this postseason were division winners. Putting aside the question of the fairness or unfairness of subjecting division winners to a play-in series, is there a reason beside inertia that we're still calling this a division series? Shouldn't it just be changed to round two or something? In any event, I hope Rod Manfred is pleased with himself. which first came about in 1981 when you had the strike season, the split season. And so you had the winners of each half from each division played each other in the best of five, which was called a division series. And then it came back. And at least until 2012, I guess you couldn't have intra-division matchups in the division series.

And now you can have that. But Dennis has a point here. You're not automatically in the division series. And now you can have that. But Dennis has a point here. You're not automatically in the division series if you win a division. Now, if you're in it, I guess, well, no, you can't even say. I mean, there are some teams that didn't win a division that were in this because they won the wildcard round and they beat division winners. The Cardinals did not make the division series this year, even though they won the division and made the playoffs. So do we need a new name? Should we just slap a quarter finals on it or something? We can't call it the quarter finals because then we would have to call the

championship series, the semifinals and the world series, the finals. So it needs like a name, like it's baseball convention that it has to be named something right so the wild card series the championship series the world series yeah we need something i guess i'm okay with keeping division series personally do we need something different i mean so here's the like in the division series round you are guaranteed one division winner in each game right that is true yeah so i think it's fine i mean i get i acknowledge the silliness here and we could come up with something else But I think that doing that would be confusing to people because we're used to calling it the division series. It does feature division winners, even if it, you know, potentially features one fewer of them than it did historically. Right.

What's the difference between two and three? Like it's. Yeah, I think it's fine. Yep. It's OK. The thing is, it's one. Yeah, I think it's fine. Yep, it's okay. The thing is it's one. I also think that by keeping it the division series, we leave alive the potential to express our objections to the format by having the reminder of it not being what it was. True.

And as I've said, we love grievance. Yeah. Well, actually, this next question is about grievance in a sense. So this is from Jack, who says, hear me out here. You've got your two types of people. You've got the people who think there shouldn't be a strike zone on screen during baseball broadcasts. And you've got the people who see it as the exact truth. For example, if an ump calls a pitch a ball that was just above the on-screen strike zone, they freak out.

example, if an ump calls a pitch a ball that was just above the on-screen strike zone, they freak out. What if they changed the graphic so that the side-to-side strike zone remained as it is, but made the top and bottom a gradient? They could have it fade away gradually to represent the ump's discretion about where the strike zone is. I think this is a perfect idea and would like to patent it. Well, I think two things. One, I think if you're going to try to represent the strike zone probabilistically, you need to represent the whole zone that way, right? So you don't want to just do the tops and bottoms because there's discretion on the sides too. Am I misunderstanding what he wanted to do?

No, it's true. I guess on the sides, there shouldn't be. There shouldn't be, but we know. There is, certainly. We know. Yes, right. shouldn't be i mean it's like there shouldn't be but but yeah we there is certainly we know yes you know we're out here defending the strike zone from the the invasion of the robots or at least the umpires that call it we should be honest about these things yeah like the probabilistic nature of the strike zone is a four-sided thing yeah you know but top and bottom is even fuzzier just because it's like where the shoulders and the armpits and the knees you know more variation in it certainly than there is side to side that should remain consistent but we know ben we know that it doesn't so i think

if you're going to represent it probabilistically like we should do the whole we should just do it we should do the whole thing um but here's where I have to confess that I am one of those people that doesn't think that having the strike zone on the broadcast is particularly useful. I'm not a huge fan of the K zone. I like the direction that sort of representing the strike zone has gone in recent years, where I think that when they are trying to talk about calls that were like controversial or, you know, let's see where it was that many broadcasters are opting to use rather than just their K zone. They are trying to use, you know, the, the stat cast like 3d zone and you get the

whoosh from the side and you see the ball go through there and everyone goes, ah, it was a strike all along where they go, he should be run out of town. But it's more, it's more, I think it's a more useful representation and acknowledges that like our viewing experience is better when we're not really thinking

about what the umpire is doing at all. And so having some sense of how accurate controversial calls is, I think is good to do. But I'm not a fan of having the zone on there all the time. I think it makes us unhappy. I think it is a contributor to our discontent. So that's what I think about that.

Yeah. Craig Goldstein and Patrick Dubuque, they published a plea about this last November. And that was one of their arguments, at least. One argument is that it's not actually exactly the strike zone. It's not. And also, yes, just the grievance and just everyone's mad constantly. I don't hate it. I don't mind it that much.

I also wouldn't miss it that much. I guess I'm almost agnostic when it comes to this, really. it that much. I guess I'm almost agnostic when it comes to this, really. I think that the suggestion that Jack is making here, it makes some sense. I don't know that the networks would want it because they probably want the grievance, right? They don't want it to be shades of gray. They want it to be black and white. They want it to look like that was definitely a strike or definitely not a strike. And so if you had it kind of fuzzy, people might not like that. I mean, they might not like the uncertainty of it, even though that's the way the strike zone actually is.

And like there is a rulebook zone. There are rulebook dimensions. It's just with the top and bottom, it's like, well, you know, is he crouching a little differently or like at what point exactly? And can you actually know like where his shoulders and his armpits and his knees are and the hollow under the knee or whatever? And that stuff, it's definitely fuzzy. So, yes, I think it would be more intellectually honest maybe to have that be a gradient. But then if it were a gradient, what is it actually telling you at that point?

It's just like, well, it's somewhere in the vicinity of the strike zone. Well, we knew that. I mean, that's another argument in favor of not having the zone there is that like we basically know where the zone is roughly, like especially if the camera is centered, right?

If it's not an off-center view, if we're getting the directly behind the mound, you know, from center field view where there isn't like the parallax effect that you might have to correct for, then I think it's even less essential because it's like, well, we all know basically where the zone is.

Like we can see if it's a little wide or not, probably at that point, we're not going to be fooled by catcher framing maybe as much as the person who's squatting behind the catcher and trying to do all of this super quickly. So I don't know. I don't hate it, but I think if you're going to have it, then maybe it might as well just be the one line, even though that's an oversimplification because at least it's giving you a reference and then you can decide what you

want to do with that whether you can take it as gospel or you can say yeah it was close you know it's close enough like i think we all understand that if it's or hopefully we do that if it's just like kissing the line or or almost that it's like well you know it's close enough that maybe at least vertically that could have been a strike even according to the technical definition of a strike so i think maybe making it blurrier would be almost like defeating the purpose of having a thing if you're going to have a thing in the first place which maybe you don't need to but but if you're going to might as well just draw a stark line and then just say well this is technically what a strike should have been maybe yeah. Yeah, I think that that sounds right.

I think that sounds right. But I think that we should just do away with the whole thing entirely. I'd be okay with that, too. I guess they have found that people like it, you know, unless they just decided that they do and now we're all used to it. But you would think that they must have maybe tested this or gotten some feedback or something at some point. Like, hey, do you want us to do this because it's it's spread like it's on a whole lot of networks and it's like constantly there and they're somewhere maybe it's a little less it's like more uh opaque than others or or more transparent than others but it's definitely caught on so they

must think that people like it and they probably do or it probably at least leads to like more conversation and just because people are pissed which is not necessarily good but they want people to talk about these things and get up in arms about them so all right nathaniel says i was thinking about your recent discussion about success during the regular season versus the anything can happen postseason and had what I think is an interesting, not necessarily good idea. In addition to getting home field advantage in a bye, the teams with the best record need one less win to win the playoff series. I don't think this would work for every round. The wild card should remain best of three for all teams, but each team with a bye in the division series would only need two wins instead of three, while the

other team still needs three. Boy, this would throw a wrench into our primers. Oh my gosh, our bit would have to go on forever. Then the team with the best record in the championship series would need three instead of four. For the World Series, it would return to a straight best of seven, since if a wildcard team made it this far, they deserve to finish on a level playing field. What do you think? Is this too extreme? It certainly adds more incentive to fight for seeding. So this is something that has happened in Korea in KBO. I don't know what format they use this year, but I know that they have done this at least in the past where they have like a kind of ladder type thing where it's like each team, it goes by seeding and like the lowest worst seeded team plays the next lowest. And then, you know, winner of that one plays the next lowest. And then they like work their way up, which sounds good, I guess. I guess by the time you get to the end, maybe the best team has been sitting around for a while.

They have fewer teams, so there'd be less of a weight. But also, at least initially, they do have the worst team in a 1-0 hole. And then you have to come back from that deficit, which is tough to do. So they have fewer upsets there than we do. And maybe that's good. I don't know. So what do you think of this idea of basically starting you from behind? I mostly don't find it to be necessary. And I think we don't have to relitigate our whole conversation from the last episode, but I think in part because I don't experience profound discomfort with the variance that exists in the post-season format. I've sort of made my peace with this being something that is just subject to the variants of short series, and I don't really feel the need to shift the balance around in that

particular way. It would sure drive the folks who are mad about the postseason not meaning as much relative to the regular season even more wild, right? because then it's a shorter series to begin with so i don't feel the need for this and i would also acknowledge that like if you know this was the way that i had interacted with the playoffs for my whole baseball viewing life like i'd probably think this is the best way to do it so i don't think it's a bad system. It's just not a tweak I find to be particularly necessary to alter my understanding of what this all means. Does that make sense? Yeah. It would achieve its goal.

So if you think this is a worthwhile thing to do, then it would be a good way to accomplish your objective. Right. So in the NBA, the better team advances like 80% of the time in a best earlier with teams coming from the wildcard round and having less rest, which you could argue was a benefit or a negative. I would argue it's probably a benefit. But I think that in this ALCS, you had the Yankees who were coming off of not having had a day off before this series started because of the rain out, whereas the Astros had had some time off and had been able to set up their pitching staff the way they wanted. So they would have had a pitching advantage regardless, but also the Yankees came in having to go to five games with Cleveland, so they didn't get to set things up the way they wanted.

So that kind of thing, that can give an edge to one team in the playoffs too. But there are only so many things you can do really just because of the nature of baseball and just the variability of all of it in a short enough series that you could play the postseason on a timeline that isn't like months and months long. If you wanted to like shorten the regular season and play a longer postseason, something like that, you could. I think KBO, like half the teams get into the playoffs, which is what Rob Manfred wants, if not more than half, right? And I think if we get to that point, like if you get to the point where let's say there's expansion and there are 32 teams and you let like 16 of them in or something, then maybe at that point I could start to see this making sense because- would have some pretty mediocre teams getting in.

So maybe then, if you want to just say, okay, everyone gets in or we'll open the gates, you can all come in. But if you're bad, you actually will have to have some kind of handicap applied here. So I don't know that we're quite at that point. But if we get to that point, then I could see it being a pretty good solution. It's like, okay, you get into the playoffs, you get to call yourself a playoff team, but also you have a higher hurdle here than the other teams do. So maybe, maybe I would keep this in my back pocket. Currently, I don't know. It's a pretty big stick to wield because it it really does hurt you quite a bit but I might consider bringing it out depending on how the the format changes right

and we would before we had gotten to that point yell very loudly about how the format shouldn't change of course yes right all right so I'll save some non-playoff related emails maybe for next time because we will only have had one more game before we next record. And we can just wrap up with the Pass Blast here. So this is episode 1918 and we're doing a Pass Blast from 1918. Remember when everyone used to chant 1918 at the Red Sox? That hasn't happened in a while. I'm sure Red Sox fans That hasn't happened in a while. I'm sure Red Sox fans don't miss that.

But that made me think of that. There's a little pass blast for you. But this pass blast comes from Jacob Pomeranke, who is Sabre's director of editorial content and chair of the Black Sox Scandal Research Committee. And we're just a year away from the Black Sox here. But 1918, this one is about Babe Ruth's walk-off triple. So Jacob says, the American League home run record was a source of excitement in 1918 when baseball's best left-handed pitcher, Babe Ruth, hit an astounding 11 home runs in his first 43 games.

More than five other teams would hit all season. By early July, the 23-year-old Red Sox star was only five homers away from the AL single-season high of 16 set by Sox Seabold of the Philadelphia A's back in 1902. On July 8th, Ruth and everyone else at Fenway Park thought he hit his 12th homer, a game-ending blast to break up a 0-0 tie in the 10th inning against Cleveland, but an obscure baseball rule took his home run away and gave him a triple instead. Here's how the Cleveland News explained it. Quote,

Will Babe Ruth, the mammoth, the Goliath, the colossus, the uncanny, or whatever you will, of the Boston Red Sox establish a new record for hammering out home run drives this season? Sox Seabold, who holds the home run record Ruth is aiming for, made 16 wallops, good for the Grand Tour in 1902. Big Ruth was unfortunate last week when Cleveland played in Boston in that he really cracked out a home run, but received credit for only a triple. It so happened that Amos Strunk singled in the 10th inning and Ruth followed with

a drive into the right field bleachers. As only one run was needed to win the game, Babe received credit for only three bases. The drive was the longest in the history of Fenway Park. The ball landing high and dry three quarters of the way up in the bleachers. It was a clean home run drive, but the baseball rules cut the smash one base. This is an unjust rule and should be changed for any time a man drives the ball out of the park enclosure. He's entitled to a home run. And we've talked about, I guess, a variant, a relic of this now, right, where you have a walk-off and you still don't get credit.

It's not counted as the full value if you hit like an automatic double or whatever into the stands. value if you hit an automatic double or whatever into the stands. And at this time, you would not get credit for the home run either. It was just the run scored, the game was over. And Jacob writes, 50 years later in 1969, the creators of the Baseball Encyclopedia rediscovered this lost home run by Babe Ruth. As Henry Aaron and Willie Mays were both getting closer to his career record of 714, an MLB records committee originally decided to give back Ruth's lost home run and change his career total to 715 before reversing their decision and sticking with the rules of the time. But after switching to the outfield full time in 1919, he shattered the single season home run record for the next three years in a row from 29 in 1919 to 54 in 1920 to 59 in 1921. And it is odd that we really don't know how many homers Ruth hit according to modern home run rules because he only hit one of this kind where it was a walk off. And so he was credited with a triple instead of a home run as he would be today. But there were two other rules in effect during most of his career or a lot of his career that affected his home run total or

could have and are totally different now. And he would probably have a different home run total now because, first of all, they had automatic doubles back then. If they bounced over the wall, it was a home run, a bounced home run, like through the 1930 season, I think. And if it went over the fence, like it was a homer. Now, people have said and researched that like when he hit 60 in 1927, that they all cleared the fence and there weren't any that actually bounced over. But like I've seen people, if you Google it, like there are some people who say like, well, he never hit one that bounced over the fence. I mean, that seems impossible. Yeah, it seems wrong. So who knows how many he was credited for that. Yeah, that seems wrong. went over the fence and were credited as homers back then. And it's hard to research because you wouldn't necessarily have mentioned that it bounced before because it was a home run. Yeah, it wasn't relevant to our understanding of what the result of the at-bat was, right? Yeah.

And so we'll just never know. And then there was another rule, though, that took some homers away. I think this was also maybe through 1930. So again, the bulk of his career that if you had a ball that went over the fence in fair territory, but then landed foul, it was still said to be a foul ball. It was all about where it landed, not where it passed the fair foul pole. So almost certainly he had some taken away because of this that we would consider home runs now that were not then. But who knows? Like maybe it evened out. Maybe it didn't. Probably not exactly. But like one of the most famous numbers and records for a time in baseball history, 7-14. baseball history, 7-14, well, it really wasn't. I mean, it certainly wasn't 7-14. If you count the walk-off, it was 7-15. And then there are these other two rules that we just have no idea really how it affected it. So basically, who knows how many home runs Ruth actually hit,

like as we understand home runs today. I guess you could play the same game with all the other factors, I guess, that affected whether he hit homers or didn't, like the park dimensions and, you know, segregation and all the rest. But these are like literal rules that, you know, we're not having hypotheticals here about like, well, what if the dimensions were different or what if the black players were actually playing in the league at the time? This is just like he hit these balls and it was just called something different from what it would be called now. And we just don't know. We don't know. It's pretty weird.

Yeah, it is weird. You know, we should just be clear that even in a sport as obsessed with records and record keeping as baseball, that there's still, you can still fudge it a little bit depending on when i mean you can't get confused about who the real home run record holder is but otherwise you know there's all sorts of stuff that can go sideways on you did you see speaking of uh the the new

babe ruth the the real true two-way player shohei ot Otani, he conceded that he had a good year personally, but he said that he's not feeling so great. He has a negative impression of the season because of how the Angels did. He said August and September in particular felt longer to me than last year because the Angels were not able to play as many good games as we would like, including 14 consecutive losses. The Angels were not able to play as many good games as we would like, including 14 consecutive losses. So I have a rather negative impression of the season, despite being as incredible as he was. And that's about as pointed as Otani will get, I guess. He's probably not going to come out and demand a trade or say the Angels are a disgrace or slam ownership or the front office or anything. But that's for someone as polite and measured in his comments as he is to say that. I don't know. I wonder whether he could get traded

now that there's like cost certainty, now that we know what he's making in arbitration. And it's a lot, but it's not a lot for Shohei Otani. So I wonder, I guess maybe it depends on like ownership and just how quickly the sale of the team proceeds, but it just wouldn't shock me at this point if he, at some point there were an Otani sweepstakes. I don't know. Yeah. I think that if the sale moves quickly, the odds of him getting traded to my mind go up. I feel like if there is still a pending sale, because really, I know Mike Trout is Mike Trout, and his performance after he returned from the injury was really incredible.

And also, their main ballpark draw right now is Otani. I haven't looked at the attendance splits in games where he's the starting pitcher versus not. But I feel comfortable speculating that it is likely dramatically better for Anaheim when he starts versus not. So if you're preparing to do a sale, you might not want to have that draw removed if you're trying to appeal to a prospective owner. But after that, they might decide, we're going to tear it down. We're going to trade this guy. We're going to use whatever prospects come back for him as the start of something new in the organization. So I think if the sale goes through quickly, the odds of him getting traded are higher.

But I mean, i know you weren't faulting him but like who could fault the guy because he's just paying attention yeah you know and i i think that this weird thing happened with him where because he does seem like he's you know like a a good hang and a good teammate and you know he he seems upbeat and positive that people have ascribed to him like a maybe a lack of competitive spirit there i think the guy wants to win a world series you don't do what he does for as consistently and as long as he had like if you're endeavoring to be two-way otani you want to win a world series you know, and you are likely not content with the individual awards, even though I'm sure that he finds those to be quite satisfying. So, you know, I don't know. I feel bad for Angels fans. I don't want to say let's, you know, strip this franchise for parts and let these guys go to other teams and enjoy, you know, potential success. But I do think that baseball would be better if we got to see Otani in the postseason.

And he has another year in Anaheim, and then he's a free agent again, and he'll get to decide where he wants to go. And so maybe what would be best is for him to stick it out in LA another year so that the fans there can enjoy that, and then for him to go somewhere else that's fun and exciting and ready to play postseason baseball like seattle you know just like name one of the places that's ready for that not the only place but only one of the places

yeah and you know i think i've said it before ben if anaheim feels like they have to move mike trout and his money in order to get a deal done for Otani. I know that Seattle's farm system isn't good anymore, but they do have payroll room. So I'm just saying, I don't know, we'd have to figure some stuff out. You'd have to find room for him, but I'm confident Seattle could do it. So if they have to trade Trout and Otani to the Mariners

in order to make things work for their sale, I guess, you know, I guess. Yeah, yeah, who could have? Everyone's like, what if, you know? I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Who could have? Everyone's like, what if Meg went back to not being a fan? That was better. Who could have a non-negative impression of the Angel season, really?

I guess it speaks to his team first nature that he would have a negative impression of a season when he personally was awesome, especially during August and September. Yes but yeah the agile season not a lot of positive vibes there other than his own performance so not much there to really hang your hat on yeah you know and i've seen people say like oh he made a mistake signing there i still like if i could send him where i wanted to send him i still would not mess with the success that he has had on an individual level. Like I just would not mess with it. Yeah, if he had gone somewhere else that wanted him, he probably would have played some playoff games by now. But I just I would not mess with it because the Angels, like no matter what else they did, they may not have put a competitive team around him, but they sure gave him a long leash.

And in fact, the fact that he did not have a competitive team around him but they sure gave him a long leash and in fact the fact that he did not have a competitive team around him maybe that helped maybe that led to their just indulging his desire to be a two-way player and just ultimately taking off all the restraints and letting him do his thing like that has mattered so much to me that i would not want to do any kind of butterfly effect thing that like maybe some other team doesn't give him that chance or just doesn't give him as much rope to prove he could do it or you know he gets hurt and then they still let him do it I don't know that 29 other organizations would have allowed him to do that so I'm just I'm glad that worked out and yeah it'd be nice to see him in the postseason at some point.

But him not in the postseason has just been the greatest source of joy in baseball for me over the past few years. So I'm OK with it. Yeah. And I think that, you know, it's easy for us to to second guess that choice in hindsight. But wanting to go to a place and play with the best player in Major League Baseball and think that surely they're going to have to be able to figure out the pitching. I get that. At least I'm Rondon. There are reasons to think that this was going to be a super fun and competitive Angels team.

They were a fun and competitive Angels team earlier this year. Yeah, for a little while. I remember telling you, it's okay to be excited about the Angels, Ben. Why would you lie to me like that? Well, you still got to watch Otani. You ended up being fine, but the fans I feel bad for. Yeah. All right.

Well, it'll be fun if he plays in the World Baseball Classic. Yeah. Oh, we get WBC. I'm so excited. Yeah, that'll be fun. Yeah, and there's some speculation maybe that they could use him as a closer, a reliever, if he pitched for Japan in the WBC. Because it starts in fairly early March, so he wouldn't be stretched out as a starter by that point unless he started training early. And I would not want him to do that because he just has such a heavy workload as it is trying to do two things.

Yeah, I think recovery is important given what he does during the regular season for sure. It'd be pretty fun to see him come in as a closer. I wonder what entrance music he would choose. Anyway, that's something to look forward to. Yeah. I don't know anything about his musical taste. So yeah, I would enjoy that. Yeah, WBC.

A lot of it's going to be here in Arizona. I feel very fortunate. All right. Oh, and also Jose Ramirez is having hand surgery. Just like every year, we mentioned Cal Raleigh and his injuries, but it's very eye-opening. It's a useful reminder, I think. Every year, the playoffs end and then immediately, it's just like a rash of surgeries just because all these players were playing through injuries. It was just like a rash of surgeries just because all these players were playing through injuries. And Jose Ramirez, I guess it was not unknown. He was having thumb issues for a while. And it's clear in his performance because he had an incredible start to the season and still had a great season overall. But he might be the third place finisher in the AL MVP race despite the fact that he was dealing with a thumb issue for like half the season, if not more. And his numbers were like, okay, but not great. And so he was

playing through that for months and it was like a four to six week recovery time. And he just didn't want to do that. And maybe the guardians were better off with him not doing that, even if he was diminished,. It didn't seem like, ultimately, they won the division with a bit of a cushion, but it didn't seem like they would until the very end. So he just thought it was more important to be out there. So it was not the fully operational Jose Ramirez who was playing in the ALDS recently. So just important to remember, if someone is not playing great at this time of year or is not playing at all and you're wondering why aren't they using this guy or that guy. Not always, but often it turns out, oh, as soon as the season's over, well, here's why. So there are just things that after this long season, like everyone's nursing something at this point of the year.

Yeah, I think that it is, like you said, it's a useful reminder that we never have a complete, a totally complete picture. And sometimes these guys are really, they're doing a lot of work to be out there every day. So, all right. Well, we will enjoy some more of that work and we will be back to discuss it soon. I just wanted to mention one more thing about Otani.

I saw a story this week about a survey that was done of Japan's biggest sports stars. This was conducted by the Sasakawa Sports Foundation, the Sports Life Survey, which is an annual deal. And people in Japan were asked about their favorite athletes in June and July of this year. And Otani didn't just lead. He completely blew away everyone else. 29.1% of respondents selected Shohei Otani as their favorite athlete. 28.3% for female respondents. 29.9% for male respondents. And no one was anywhere close. So 29.1%. Second place was Hanyu Yuzuru, a figure skater, 5.5%. So Otani named almost six times more often, which is amazing. Like 29.1%, that in itself is an enormous number. And the fact that no one is even remotely close to him is also impressive. Ichiro, by the way, was number three. But that struck me as amazing because in the US.S. you would not get anywhere near that kind of consensus. I just looked up. There was a morning consult poll that was done last summer, a favorite sports figure poll among U.S. adults, and Tom Brady led at 7.1 percent. That's like less than a quarter of the share that Ohtani got. Michael Jordan was second at 4.5% with LeBron at 3.6%. So not only was the leader

far, far lower, but also the second place person was far, far closer, which I guess makes sense. But maybe that just speaks to the differences between Japan and the US and how fractured the audience here is and just how many options there are for famous sports stars and people just sort of in their own sports silos. But man, mega, mega popular. I wonder how far back you'd have to go in U.S. history to find someone who was the answer on 29.1% of respondents' surveys. Maybe Babe Ruth. I don't know. Otani would be at the top of my list too, for many reasons, but I do appreciate in addition to his skill and his two-way prowess, just how personable he is and how he doesn't come off as intensely competitive,

even though of course he is to have gotten where he is and to have done what he's done. He's as driven as anyone in the world, I would think, and yet he doesn't really show it outwardly. He shows it in the sense that he gets pumped up when he does something good, it outwardly. He shows it in the sense that he gets pumped up when he does something good, but he's always completely courteous, in control, never really looks like he would snap at you or punch you if you talk to him at the wrong time. And he just generally seems to be pretty affable. Everyone loves the guy. He's such a singular talent that in a sense, he could almost be entitled to act entitled, right? Or he could certainly get away with that. And he just seems to be the most respectful, amiable person on the field. Also, just wanted to read one response

we got from a listener to our conversation on the preceding episode about playoff randomness and why we watch if it's not necessarily actually telling us which team was best. Bradley says, why do I watch the playoffs when the games don't tell us anything meaningful about who is better? I personally think about it sort of like my relationship to works of fiction. Why do I care what happens to Anna Karenina? Because Tolstoy convinced me that I should, because the experience of reading the novel makes it impossible not to. This isn't diminished by the knowledge that it's not real. Tolstoy's prowess as a novelist renders that irrelevant. I guess this is to say, if you render artificial stakes convincingly enough, it doesn't matter that they're artificial. Major League

Baseball, for better or worse, has done this very well. The players, like the characters in most works of fiction, play it as if the stakes are natural and real and true. So, I don't know. I sit at home and I care. And I get it. That totally makes sense to me. And, of course, people just have an emotional bond with their baseball team that they've watched all season and they want it to keep winning. I don't disagree with any of that. I think what I was getting at is that you can't have that emotional attachment and then not also be upset when you lose.

So it's just sort of the flip side of being deliriously happy when your team wins a playoff series or wins the World Series is that you're going to be quite upset when you lose a series, when you get eliminated. And so you are going to get people say, oh, this is a failure and a disgrace. You almost inevitably have to get that kind of response if you're also getting the polar opposite joy when you win. So we can sit here and say, oh, it's not predictive or it's not indicative of true talent. And that may be the case. But if we all looked at it that way, well, it's not predictive or it's not indicative of true talent. And that may be the case. But if we all looked at it that way, well, it might not be as fun unless we completely reframed our relationship to the regular season. And also, I just am not sure that you can be fully invested and on board

and thinking that this matters a lot and it means something and then also not be sort of disproportionately upset when you lose. Those things kind of go together. So in a sense, I was almost defending the almost out of proportion responses to say the Dodgers losing or the Mets losing and pointing out, hey, they had great seasons and anything can happen in a short series. Yeah, all that's true. But if you're a fan and you've bought in on the playoffs really mattering, then in a way you almost have to buy in on it being really, really bad when you lose. Not something that can just be dismissed easily as, oh, this isn't reflective of their true talent. Probably a small consolation at this point. Also, if you're

interested in Babe Ruth's somewhat amorphous career home run total, there is a book from 2007, I believe, called The Year Babe Ruth Hit 104 Home Runs, Re-crowning baseball's greatest slugger by Bill Jenkinson. I have not had the pleasure of reading it myself, but it was cited in a number of things that I was reading as I was reading about Babe's home run total. He apparently exhaustively went through game accounts and tried to come up with estimates for how those rules and other conditions at the time may have affected and perhaps even suppressed Ruth's Homer. So I will link to that if you're interested in checking it out. As a reminder, we will be doing the first of our Patreon live streams on Saturday for NLCS Game 4.

We will be hosting that in the Effectively Wild Discord group. If you're any level of Patreon supporter, you can get in the Discord group. If you're a $10 a month supporter or higher then you get to listen along with our live stream and meg and i will talk and chat during the game we'll also do another one during the world series so that's a reason to sign up which you can do at patreon.com slash effectively wild and the following five listeners have already done so liam dunn william Thank you. it out patreon.com slash effectively wild get yourself some goodies help us stay ad free help us continue to do the podcast on the schedule that we do you can also contact me and meg via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the patreon messaging system if you are a supporter

you can rate review and subscribe to effectively wild on itunes and spotify and other podcast platforms you can follow effectively wild on on Twitter at EWPod, and you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. We also have a Facebook group, facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing and production assistance. Thanks to you for listening, and we will be back with one more episode before the end of the week. Talk to you soon. Listen to the rebel of the real war

Singing about some people That we don't know Don't count me out Don't count me out Cause everybody loves a comeback. Don't count me out. Please don't count me out. Cause everybody loves a comeback.