Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1921: Always Tell Me the Odds

Episode Date: October 26, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Ben’s baseball Facebook friend recommendations, the Phillies’ odds against the Astros in the World Series, Kyle Schwarber’s mechanical bull ride, a hidden perk of the Astros’ pitching depth, whether we judge managers too much by their rings, the career and legacy of Dave Dombrowski, the Marlins hiring Skip […]

Oh, baby, baby, be my friend Baby, baby, be my friend Baby, baby, be my friend I will love you till the very end Hello and welcome to episode 1921 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Reilly of Fangraphs, and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? At a loss with what to do with myself. There's no baseball all week. What is this? Is this how the offseason is, but even longer? I mean, maybe. Although, not as long as some recent offseasons have been.

Oh, that's true. Yeah, that'll be a nice little silver lining after the last Out of the World series. I never really endorsed the sit around and stare out the window and wait for spring approach to the off season. There are better ways to do it. There are better things to do, but there will be less time to sit there and stare out the window and wait for spring if that's what you're inclined to do. I hadn't thought of that. Yeah, it's a nice little, it'll be good when people immediately post the number of days until pitchers and catchers report, as they tend to do after the World Series ends.

It'll be fewer days than usual. Yeah, it'll be a number of days, but a countable number. Isn't that nice? Yeah. So can I say something nice about Facebook? I mean, sure, but I might have feedback. So there's really only one thing I use Facebook for anymore, which is the Effectively Wild Facebook group. I will sort of auto post my articles there sometimes too, but I don't really use it in any kind of personal way.

I don't post updates or anything like that. And I rarely friend people either. People friend me and I'm a friendly guy. So generally I say, okay, because again, it's not really, I guess it's a personal, not like a professional page, but I don't have anything personal on there in particular. I've had like the same profile photo for, I don't know how long, like 10 years or something and you can't even see me in it really. So that's the level of engagement I have with Facebook other than the Effectively Wild Facebook group, which keeps bringing me back. But there is now a second selling point of Facebook, which is that when I log on, Facebook recommends friends, right? It wants me to friend people.

And very often, I don't know whether you've had this experience too, but it will recommend that I friend random baseball guys. So I guess it's because I'm just friends with a lot of baseball industry people, like other writers or whatever. Or maybe it's that people who friend me, like I'm Facebook friends with a lot of complete strangers. I'd like to think that they're nice people. I don't know. I assume that they just know me or my work somehow. And again, I let them in usually because why not? What are they going to see in there? Right. And because of that, I imagine that the people who are inclined to friend me because they've

read my writing or something like that, probably they're also friending a bunch of other baseball people whom they've heard of for some reason. And maybe because of that, because then I have mutual friends with those people who I don't actually know, Facebook thinks that I should just be friending all these other people I don't actually know who are very often baseball connected. So it seems like the recommendations rotate. So if I log on one day, it'll show me one smattering of strangers. And then the next day, it'll show me another smattering of strangers, I guess, because I didn't bite at the first group.

Just today, this is a random day. Here are the baseball people whom I recognized when I looked at my Facebook friend recommendations. Just the former major leaguers. It's like a remember some guys like meet a major leaguer every time I open Facebook. So Gene Lamont is a recommended Facebook friend who, based on how things are going, seems like he might be up for the White Sox manager job any day now again. Seems like he might be up for the White Sox manager job any day now again. Yeah. Kelly Gruber, Joey Terdoslovich, Chris Young, not the Rangers Chris Young, the MLB Network Chris Young. Okay. I was just going to say, you need to be more specific.

Yeah. Marquis Grissom. Okay. I always liked, I enjoyed Marquis Grissom. I'd like to be his friend. Sure. Marquise Grissom. I'd like to be his friend. Lenny DiNardo, Scott Main, and then a few other people, maybe not major leaguers, but like Joey Gomes, not Johnny Gomes, not Connie Jones, but Joey Gomes, former minor leaguer. Sandy Alderson was on there. Isla Borders was on there. That's cool. But I'm

mostly focusing on the former major leaguer. So like every time I log on there, it's like, do you want to be friends with this former major leaguer you probably haven't thought about in years? And I don't. I mean, I don't not want to be their friends, but I don't want to bother them. I'm not in the business of trending randos, really, but I enjoy the little glimmer of recognition. It's like what David Roth got when he would open up a pack of baseball cards and remember some guys, and I, like them in their prime in uniform on the field. It's like, okay, they're broadcasting to everyone that this is a former Major League Baseball player. I used to be a Major League Baseball player. Yeah. And we all, you know, present versions of ourselves in public and on social media and everything. And that's what they're broadcasting.

Others, though, not at all. It's just, you know, just some guy, you know. Not at all. It's just some guy. It's like just someone with a polo shirt or whatever or with their family sometimes. But it just reminds you, these are just guys. Now, granted, these are, for the most part, I guess I named a couple of good players there, but these are a lot of fringy guys, a lot of remember some guys. Journeymen amongst them. Yeah. And you might think that the journeymen might be even more likely to want to advertise that they were former major leaguers, right? Because, you know, if you weren't that good and people might not remember you as that, then you might want to just jog their memory by having a photo of you in uniform, let's say. Yeah. by having a photo of you in uniform, let's say. Interesting, yeah. I don't know if there's a pattern there necessarily, but it's just kind of nice to be reminded,

A, that these guys exist, and B, that they're just dudes, you know? They're just like off doing their thing. They've moved on from baseball in many cases. They're just living the family life. They have some other occupation now. They're just wearing a polo shirt. Like they're just civilians now and they have Facebook profiles like a lot of the rest of us do.

Just, you know, leading regular lives. So this is the second good thing about Facebook and it's not necessarily replicable. If all of you listening create a Facebook account, if you don't have one, facebook will not necessarily recommend a bunch of random former major leaguers to you it requires having some sort of network here that you have not exactly curated but has happened somehow but if you are in that position then it's just a nice little thing i look forward to opening facebook not only to go to the effectively wild facebook Facebook group, but because I want to know. It's like clicking on baseball reference on the like, take me to a random page button, except I see some former major leaguers smile and face. Yeah, I mean, it is. I wonder what my approach would be. Because on the one hand, like you want

to, maybe it's really important to signal that you used to be a big leaguer, but maybe you've like accepted that you're not anymore and you've moved on maybe you don't want to like answer a bunch of questions about it if you are recommended to randos maybe you really like like i bet a lot of them are playing golf or there are a lot of them playing golf that seems like a thing yeah not today but certainly sometimes yeah i mean like it is like some of them are playing golf so there's that you know they do like their families uh so they want to be like here's my beautiful family i don't know what my approach would be i also only use facebook at this point for the effectively wild facebook group i have a a very strict no randos policy, which I'm sorry to the folks who have been like, oh, I'm going to friend Meg.

And I'm like, no, it's nothing personal. I just even though my only use for it really at this point is one that is largely professional. I don't cross pollinate. You know, my public social media is Twitter. That's it. Yeah. The rest is not for. No, I'm sure it's like

you're operating the way it's maybe better to operate which is that if you're interested in seeing updates from your actual friends then it's probably good to restrict it to your actual friends because yeah that could be nice if you want to keep track of your former school friends or whatever or see their family photos or something great but as it is if i actually look at my news feed then it's just news about a bunch of people i don't know largely just not all that helpful to me really unless it's about some random former major league baseball player right and you know like if that's not the way that you want to use facebook or instagram or what have you it's spent i'm not saying everyone has to use it the way I do.

I'm just saying that's the way I use it. So I don't get as many. I don't get quite as many, although I do get some where people are like, do you know this person? I'm like, I sure don't. You know, Jeff Francois and I are not acquainted, but thank you for thinking I want to be his friend. Yeah, that's kind of nice.

Just a reminder. They're just people out there in the world. I guess Gene Lamont seems to be still a senior advisor to the general manager of the Royals in his 56th season in professional baseball. You make those friends and then you're like, you're none of you actually that far removed from the game. The number of you who are really doing something different, quite small.

Anyway, this is an off-label use of Facebook, but it's kind of nice. So yeah, that's my little observation about Facebook and baseball players. Can't wait to find out who the smattering of strangers, but not complete strangers, people I have heard of, at least even if they haven't heard of me, that I will see next time I sign on. You just never know. Yeah. So I was looking at the Zips fan graphs odds for the World Series, which are available now,

and they're not as lopsided, I guess, as one might think. As you might have thought. Yeah. as lopsided, I guess, as one might think. As you might have thought. Yeah. They're still lopsided, but they're not, they're, you know, you're not looking at it like, that's not a stable table. Don't put anything heavy on that, you know? You're like, there's an incline,

but it's a hikeable one. I'm putting all sorts of things together and seeing which of them sticks. I don't know, much like this weird table I've built. It's like a 58-42,42 roughly advantage for the Astros now, which if you want to take heart as Phillies fans, I believe that this is not the most lopsided matchup of this postseason. Oh, no. There have been some 60-40s, some slightly more. I think it was Mets-Padres was a 60-40 and we know how that ended. So there's that.

And also Astros over Mariners was a 60-40. That did go that way. Dodgers over Padres, I think was also about 60-40. So there've been multiple upsets already this postseason where a bigger underdog, according to the Zips odds, has advanced, has won, albeit in a shorter series. So that's something. Take heart, Phillies fans. I mean, Phillies fans, hearts are full as it is. But if you are at all intimidated by the Astros, as you should be, it's not a coin coin flip but it is also like not the most heavily weighted unfair coin right i'm gonna say something and i mean this exclusively as a compliment i mean it 100 as a compliment if something could exceed 100 as being a compliment that's the way i would mean

this this is a population of people where they literally have to grease the poles to keep them from climbing where you say i dare you to do that and they're like i'm gonna i'm gonna do swear i'm gonna do it and so philly people don't strike me as intimidated by the astros whether it would be advisable for them to be intimidated or not no they are they are prone to catastrophizing but it i think that that tends to come in-game. That is an in-game activity or a post-game activity. It does not strike me as a lead-up to game activity. And so I think that Philly fans are probably looking at those odds the way that they look at a greased light pole and say,

but could I still climb it, though? Let's give it a try. I mean that, again, 100% as a compliment. Yeah, well, you have to have that attitude and it's it's totally doable like yeah it's lopsided on paper and in zips as we discussed last time but i do think that the phillies are a better postseason team than their regular season stats would suggest for for a few reasons i mean, if you think that they've been a different team under Rob Thompson than Joe Girardi and you want to just toss out the Joe Girardi results,

you could do that. And also, I think you have a fully operational Bryce Harper here, which has not been the case for some months. That's a difference maker. And then I think probably the Phillies roster, you know, if you have less depth, it does benefit you to have to play a best of seven instead of 162. This is, by the way, a best of seven. Got to win four. Four. I think we've mentioned that, but just a reminder. Four, but importantly, not consecutively. No carryovers, no consecutive, nothing like that. Yeah. But I think if you look at the Phillies and their top two starters are great, their top three are playable, and they have a good two or three guys at the back of the bullpen. Yep. So when things get compressed, then it favors them. I think it's still an advantage that the Astros have the depth that they do, but it's a greater advantage, I would say, over the course of a very long season than it is over a week or two.

So that probably narrows the gap a little bit. But, you know, it's very plausible that the Phillies could win. It's very possible that the Phillies could win. Yeah. And, you know, I think if you're a Philly fan and you're looking for like a reason to be excited, like you could think back, well, last time, you know, the Astros lost a game. I think Aaron Nola was on the mound. Is that the last time ever? What if I looked it up, Ben?

I don't really recall them ever losing. I don't think they've ever lost. But I know that they, those Astros, I know that they did lose to the Phillies. I believe they were an all-on-the-mount. And did you know something, Ben? You know who's starting? You will be on the mount very soon. Very soon. I think game two, I'm given to understand, is anticipated to be an all-on-the-mount start.

So, you know, you could be like, yeah, yeah, okay. I've pulled up a thing. On October 3rd, the Philadelphia Phillies at the Houston Astros, so even in enemy territory, and you know what they did? They won 3-0. All right. They won three runs to zero runs. That's what they did.

There you go. Bryson Stott hit a home run. So did Kyle Schwarber. Well, look at that. The Mariners and the Yankees' problem is that they did not have Aaron Nola, I guess, and the Phillies do. So there's your trump card. And we also got an email from Patreon supporter Will, who is an Astros fan, and he pointed out that the Astros are 0-2 against perhaps flukily good NL East teams on a heater in the World Series of late.

So perhaps it can be a trifecta. We'll see. I just hope it's a long competitive series either way. So that would be nice. And I guess these odds, though, don't factor in the fact that Kyle Schwarber was riding a mechanical bull recently. I don't know whether you saw the footage. Oh, I saw it. Yeah. So, you know, he held onto that steed for quite some time. He was eventually jilted by the bull and he did fall. It looked fairly gentle, but

that is like, we've talked about the multiple celebration related injuries that have happened already this postseason. Yeah. David Robertson on the Phillies, Lance McCullers on the Astros. Like humans are fairly fragile beings. And on the one hand, I don't want to tell Kyle Schwarber not to have fun and celebrate and be the prince of the city at this point. On the other hand, mechanical bull, I don't know. There are definitely less risky activities that baseball players have gotten hurt performing. I simply would say, Kyle Schwarber, don't do that. Don't do leave that to like leave the mechanical bull to philly fans yeah

leave it to as we've established a population of people who look at a grease light pole and see a challenge rather than a deterrent okay leave it to them because if they break themselves it'll be troublesome to them and you know potentially their families but once they hurt themselves they'll just sit there and watch you play in the their families. But once they hurt themselves, they'll just sit there and watch you play in the World Series. Whereas if you get hurt, you're going to hear it from them and you'll feel very sad. So you stay away from that for now, you know, just stay away. Yeah. I mean, have fun, like go out, be in the bar, have people buy your rounds, like whatever. I mean, what's the point of- a... By other people around? That too. Sure, yeah.

I guess he could afford that as well. But yeah, enjoy the fruits of being a Major League Baseball player on a team that is going far in the playoffs and is just the toast of the town and everything. Like, why go to all these lengths? Why make all the sacrifices

and put in all the practice time that Kyle Schwarber certainly has over the course of his life if you can't enjoy and take a little victory lap and just bask in the adulation of a city? But also, maybe save the mechanical bull riding. Just defer it, not don't do it. I don't know whether Kylewerber's contract specifies that he cannot ride mechanical bulls or real bulls for that matter. Sure. I'm sure that the floor was padded and maybe the operator of the mechanical bull was going easy. Like, I'm sure they knew who was riding that bull and would not want to be responsible for injuring a crucial player for the Phillies on the eve of the World Series. But, yeah, I might say exercise restraint. It's not riding a motorcycle and breaking a bone and doing it

again after you already did that. It's a little less dangerous than a motorcycle, a lot less dangerous, but still, just take proper precautions, I would say. I guess that it makes sense that there would be varying levels of, what is the right unit of measure here? A buck to a bull? You know how they make bulls do the bull stuff, right? Bronco's buck. No, not the mechanical ones, though. Yeah, well, because they're not real, Ben. No.

He didn't write a real bull. He's not Madison Bumgarner. Yeah, Bronco's buck, I guess. Bulls could buck. No. He didn't ride a real bull. He's not Madison Bumgarner. Yeah, Broncos buck, I guess. Bulls could buck. I don't know. Why not? Yeah, bulls bucking, sure. But so bucking, we'll use that as the measure.

It sounds a lot like another word, but that's neither here nor there, you know? I guess it makes sense that there would be different bucking settings to a mechanical bull right they don't want to just if you've never ridden one before they're not just gonna like leave you don't want to fuck you up right so it's a dangerous segment we stumbled into i guess that's fitting given the subject matter but yeah if you're the person who operates the mechanical bull you have big responsibilities there like you went to work probably thinking i'm just hoping no one cracks their head open on my watch because then i gotta do stuff and there's paperwork and then kyle schwarmer walks in and you're like oh gosh

the like the hopes and dreams of a whole city might be yeah you know determined by the setting the bucking setting that i use such such intentional articulation on my part here because i don't you know i did one swear a related swear and it was a big swear but we're not trying to get anybody in trouble on their ride home you know yeah right you don't want to be the the bartman i mean bartman unfairly maligned oh poor guy if you are are the mechanical bull operator who pressed the lever all the way to the top or set it to the max bucking setting and just bucked Kyle Schwarber right off there and he landed the wrong way. And he's a hefty gentleman and he lands on the wrong digit or something. It doesn't take much not to be available for the next couple of weeks. So yeah, be careful.

Maybe my views on this are colored by watching the Taylor Sheridan verse and Yellowstone and it can be dangerous to be bucked, I have learned. But I guess less so, again, by a mechanical bull, but still. You just have time for so much TV. Do I though? I don't know if I do have time, but I... Well, you sacrifice sleep to get it, so it seems like a not great bargain to me,

but I just remain in awe of how much more plugged into the culture. That's like an affirming way to describe it. My initial approach was judgmental. You're just a lot more plugged into the culture than I feel like I am sometimes. It's interesting. Yellowstone like a lot more plugged into the culture than i feel like i am sometimes it's interesting yellowstone is a pretty important part of the culture i would sacrifice that show they do yeah rightfully so there's like a extended universe i'm given to understand oh yeah extending more and more all the time across space and time right yes

man yeah many different eras of the Sheridan verse. It's wild. Who would have known? Yeah. So another advantage I think maybe that the Astros could derive from the depth, though, I was just saying that maybe depth matters a little less at this time of year than it does over the rest of the year. But I do think

that one thing that we have speculated about in the past but never really knew existed and now know exist is the playoff, especially playoff, familiarity effect for relievers, which when we had Cameron Grove pitching bot from Twitter on the podcast and I mused out loud, I think, when he was on about whether there might be some reliever familiarity effect within a series, let's say, and he then did the research and showed that there is, and there is a significant one seemingly, especially in a playoff series because playoff series longer than your average regular season

series. And so you're going to have more opportunities to see the same relievers over and over again. Plus you have advanced scouting and more prep and everything. So, you know, I'm not saying that Bryce Harper hit that home run off of Suarez because he had faced Suarez in one plate appearance previously in that series and I think grounded out or something. But statistically speaking, it does seem like when you see the same reliever within the same series, especially, let's say, three times or more, there is a real

penalty there. And I do think that that's something that maybe the Astros are less susceptible to just because they don't have- They seemingly have an endless supply of very good relievers. Yeah. You can just kind of pick a name out of a hat and you do okay. Whereas with the Phillies, it's like, all right, it's high leverage. We have, I guess, maybe four guys, maybe. You have Alvarado and you have Dominguez and you have Robertson and you have Eflin. There's a smaller circle of trust, perhaps. And with the Astros, not. I mean, obviously, there's a hierarchy and there are some higher leverage guys and lower leverage guys, but save your guys' arms, especially at this time of year.

And so save your leverage guys for high leverage moments regardless. Although having been off for several days at this point, you might want to just get them some work also. So that becomes a consideration. But I guess really like you're not gonna not bring in your fire breathing closer guy because he's pitched a couple times in the series already like he's still going to be your best option most likely but if you don't want that option to be diminished at all in effectiveness then you just have to maybe be a bit careful when it comes to like well do we want to use this guy for an inning to get him some work? Or maybe it's

like not really high leverage, but it's not a blowout. Like maybe we'll just get this guy in there. But if it is someone whom you expect to be in that spot in a make or break game a week later or less than a week later, then yeah, you want to maybe use those resources sort of sparingly. It does seem like this is an effect that does carry over into the regular season as well, although less so, and it happens less often in the regular season. But it seems pretty pronounced, and it makes sense to me that it would be. So I'll link to Cameron's research from earlier this year on that, but it has been fairly convincing to me. So that's something I think about, like when the Yankees were using Wandi Peralta in every single ALDS game. And I guess he had only one, I think, where things

went awry and it was like the middle one and he had a couple of good games after that. But in addition to the fact that there might be some fatigue that sets in at that point, there does seem to be some familiarity effect so something that's worth keeping in mind like we're we're fully on board with the times to the order effect for starters in the postseason certainly and I'm sure that there is also some familiarity effect for starting pitchers within a series I looked at that in the past and didn't really come up with anything but maybe if you looked at it in the way that Cameron did you could find some signal there but it's kind of a corollary i guess of not wanting guys to face the same hitters multiple times in the same game too often you also it seems don't

want them to face the same guys multiple times or many times in the same series well and i wonder if we will continue to see as we have increased potential via the expanded format for division foes to meet at various points in the postseason. If you will see that sort of familiarity effect potentially compound because you have guys who have seen each other for, who have already seen each other for like 19 games during the season although you know who knows but like maybe you see that even more pronounced because we have division foes who are already like hey we know them we don't like them you know that's what they say yeah so that's just something i'm keeping in my mind as i watch these things and also i think one of the the stakes of the series we've talked or thought about dusty baker you know everyone's talking about how people are rooting for dusty and his his players are rooting for dusty to

get his first world series win as a manager i should specify he did win one as a player but i think he's been a manager longer than he was a player at this point and he does not yet have a ring so i think even Astros haters, like that might be sort of the silver lining if the Astros win. Well, at least Dusty got one, right? And on the other hand, like people will certainly say that about some Phillies and hey, Bryce Harper, he doesn't have a ring

and other guys on that team too. So whoever wins, like you can find some, oh, I could be happy for that guy at least. But I was thinking, A, it's kind of weird that like we judge managers and executives on rings. Like Bruce Bochy is a Hall of Fame manager. I think everyone agrees because he's won whatever it is, four pennants and three World Series, right? Like if you win three World Series, like you're basically a shoo-in as a Hall of Fame manager. And he has, I think, a sub 500 career managerial record, right?

And just like it doesn't even matter. He's Bruce Bochy. He's got all the rings. And we really judge managers based on that. And we really judge managers based on that. Like Joe Pesn exclusive list of guys. It's like Bobby Cox, Walter Alston, Earl Weaver, Tony La Russa, Sparky Anderson, Joe Torre, Dusty Baker, Davey Johnson, Terry Francona, and Dave Roberts could join that club next year. But that's an exclusive list. And Baker is on it, Davey Johnson on it as well. And maybe there are other knocks against Johnson or maybe he didn't have enough years in or something. But it seems to just dwarf everything. If you're a multiple World Series winning manager, then you're not basically. It's almost disqualifying, which is kind of odd because we don't think of it that way

for players, right? It's like it's a nice feather in your cap if you won a ring or more than one, but it doesn't keep you out. I mean, Fergie Jenkins never pitched in a postseason game. He's a Hall of Famer. And it's looked on as not your fault, really. Whereas with a manager, I guess, even though a manager only has the talent they're given, I guess, because it's a manager's job to get more out of that talent. Whereas with a player, it's just get the most out of your own talent. People don't really hold it against you, I guess, on a career level if your teams weren't that great. Well, I mean, some people do but yeah i guess

some people do but but it would not keep you out right whereas like dusty this might make or break his hall of fame case right if he wins this or or not potentially i think a lot of people would advocate for him to get it anyway but it would be a harder road and it's kind of weird just like given that we have accepted that there's a lot of randomness that goes into this. And especially now, like when having the best team in baseball

is far from a guarantee of actually winning a pennant, let alone a World Series. Like there's just so much randomness that it seems like as we adjust our baselines for like starting pitchers, know where you're not going to have to have 300 wins to get in the hall of fame as a starting pitcher because no one's going

to have that many wins for a manager maybe like in this era when there are just so many playoff teams and and even the best team in baseball is a significant underdog to win the world series any given year, I don't know that that should be looked on as a prerequisite. So it'd be nice if Dusty won one, but if it didn't, because he's gotten this far, right? So are we saying that the whole evaluation of his career rests on whether he wins a best of seven series over the next couple of weeks? Is that going to swing him from one column to the other? When you think of it that way, it seems sort of silly. I think that it makes sense for front office leaders to be judged by how many

World Series their team, or maybe postseason versus a more useful way of thinking about it, how many postseasons their team makes. Because I think that directionally, that's what we want. We want teams to be oriented toward making the postseason and winning there. So I think that having a sense of how many Octobers did you matter in is useful for that reason. But I agree that having a specific fixation on how many World Series won maybe obscures

what a manager really has control over. But I understand that instinct too because it's something we can point to that's measurable and that we see. And so I really think that we struggle to properly evaluate managers at all, whether it's in the course of a manager of the year vote or just the way that we talk about them in sort of our day to day assessment of their team during the regular season. Because as we've discussed, so much of what matters to a manager doing their job well happens away from our view like we just can't see into that stuff so there's you know there's that piece of it

that i think it is a tangible thing for us to latch on to but i think that you're right that like a more you know there's something to the idea of like a team making it to october but we could probably zoom out a little bit and say, well, how many post-seasons did the managers club participate in and have that sit alongside? Like, what was their regular season winning record? I'm trying to say, what is their regular season record? I could just say that. I could just say record.

You don't have to say winning record. That's part of it. You know? Hopefully it was a winning record. Yeah. But I think that, I think it's fine for us to think about the postseason part of it and then you know if there are any particularly egregious managerial decisions sure you maybe factor those in but yeah it seems it seems like a lot to put on the manager to say well your hall of fame chances hinge on you having won a ring and it's

like well i don't know that seems sort of, but it's a hard position to evaluate for voters. So I get why you grab onto the ones where you can like count a thing. We love to count stuff. Yes, count the rings. Yeah. Well, I wanted to mention this also because Dave Dombrowski's resume now

bolstered even further, but what an incredible career this guy has had. I feel like I haven't talked enough about just what a career he has had over such a long period because he is now he's now won a pennant with with four different organizations. I believe he is the first GM ever to do so and is attempting to become the first GM to win a World Series with three different teams. So his Hall of Fame resume, like they don't put a lot of executives in the Hall of Fame, but I can't imagine that they could keep him out whether the Phillies win this series or not. Just like looking at what he has done, because like he's not mentioned probably as often as some of his contemporaries like he didn't have a money ball book written about him there's no Dombrowski

ball and there's no like the the amount of attention that Andrew Friedman has gotten that Theo Epstein has gotten that Billy Beane has gotten like Dombrowski I don't think has has had that maybe because he's been kind of itinerant and he's been working here and there and so he's not associated with one organization perhaps or maybe it's because his style has evolved over the years and he's done different things in different places which if anything is a point in his favor, but it would be hard to pinpoint exactly what's the Dombrowski way or what's the inefficiency that he exploited at least earlier in his career. But he's done everything. I mean, he started with the White Sox, then he goes to the Expos, and he built up a good young homegrown team there and left to join the Marlins.

But the Expos won with largely the team that he constructed. Like, you know, they had the best record when the strike happened in 94, which is the great what if of former Expos fandom. That was largely a Dombrowski built team. Then he goes to the Marlins, an expansion team, starts with them before they're even in existence and builds them up and built up a lot of good young talent there and good player development acumen. And of course, when they won the World Series in 97, it was with a lot of high-priced imports. And then he presided over that Jeffrey Luria fire sale. But he also had homegrown talent there and then developed a new crop of young players with the Marlins who went on to be the foundation of the 2003 World Series winning team.

He, again, had moved on by that point, went to the Tigers. The Tigers were terrible. He built the Tigers up into a really great team, won two pennants, never quite broke through and won a World Series, but turned them into a perennial contender, developed a lot of good players. Then moves on to this latter phase of his career here where he's kind of like the closer where you call in Dombrowski to just get over the hump. And then he wins a World Series with the Red Sox and maybe the greatest season in that franchise's be a ton of subtlety to what he does and maybe that's why he doesn't get the cred maybe that's why there's no Dombrowski ball book because

it's just like he signs a lot of good players or trades for a lot of good players so like earlier in his career he was the person building up the talent in the farm system. And now often he's the one trading it away to go get good players, which is a skill also, certainly. Maybe people imagine that it's an easier skill to replicate that, you know, going out and getting the high priced player. That's something anyone could do in theory. do in theory, but he seems to have the ability to talk owners into spending, right? And loosening the purse strings and just going and getting that last piece that the team needs. And I don't know that we can give him like an enormous amount of credit for what the Phillies have done this year, just in that they barely made it into the playoffs, right? And they weren't a great team, into the playoffs, right? And they weren't a great team, certainly. And I think Schwarber was a very good signing and Castellanos didn't pay off quite so much. And a lot of the foundations of this team

predate him, right? So just as he left other organizations, then they went on to success without him. You could say that some of the foundations of this team are from the earlier era, from the Matt Klintak era. And he's not the one who signed Harper, right, or Wheeler, right? Like these guys were there and he sort of supplemented and may or may not leave the Phillies in a better place when it's all said and done. And like obviously there were some deals that were made with the Red Sox that don't look so great in retrospect, but they've already built their way back up, right? And he's not going to be the guy trading away Mookie Betts, at least. There's that. He might trade the prospect who could turn out to be great one day, but he's not going to be the guy coming in and trading your current superstar.

be the guy coming in and trading your current superstar. It's like if you can persuade Dave Dombrowski to work for you now, it's because you already have some semblance of a contending team. He's probably not at this stage of his career going to want to get in on the ground floor and build things from scratch. So he's going to be the one you call to come in and put the finishing touches on the roster and take you to the promised land. But the fact that he's done these different ways of team building and winning and that he's done it in so many different places, like you just said, if it's fair to judge a front office person or at least fairer to judge a front office person by the team's success or by the number of titles, the fact that he's done it in so many places is kind of incredible because it's different ownership groups done it in so many places is kind of incredible because like

it's different ownership groups it's different markets it's different levels of investment etc etc and he's kind of in the constant wherever he goes he seems to produce winners well and i think that you know it's not that he's never traded good players away or good prospects away he's certainly done that but he does i think have a sense of like who ought not to be messed with some of the time like you know like devers is still a red sock you know and they're in a position where they're not entirely bereft of some of the the guys who you would think you know might be important organizational pieces, right? Who knows what he will end up doing, but he didn't trade Xander Bogarts, right?

So there are times where he has looked at guys and said, no, this player is a foundational piece of what we're trying to do here. We're not going to move them. And I think that being able to go into an ownership group and persuade them to spend money in this era of baseball should not be like an underappreciated skill right like that means something because i think you're right now we can i guess have a conversation about how well off the the org would be if they still had mookie bets but like if he's still in charge i doubt they they don't trade

Mookie Betts right like they don't do that they probably extend him they give him a big contract would they be better off with him I mean like I feel like they'd probably be pretty well off with Mookie Betts because it's Mookie Betts and like if your skill is getting ownership to say no we want to we're we're trying to build a championship team. We're trying to compete right now. And part of what we need to do is spend money. Like you sign Mookie bets and that doesn't have to be the last thing you do. You're the Boston Red Sox. You can do other stuff on top of that. You print money every year, right? Like, so I get that there have been times where his approach has left organizations prospect poor.

And I don't you know, there's there's a conversation to be had about like how much that matters. But you're right that like he has won a bunch of places. He's gotten ownership to commit to the hard part, which is spending money, which should be the easy part, because you can just spend money, you know, like to a point. And you have to pay luxury tax and all that stuff. And I get that that's not the way the teams operate now, but spending money is a lot easier than having to deal prospects. Spend money instead.

That's so exciting because then it's just like money. Money's fungible. Prospects aren't. So I agree. I think that he has a weird, at times overlooked quality to his career. And I think the part of it is that there is this persistent sense that like what he will do is he will come in and he will trade your

future away and all you'll get in return is like literally a world series like what is this balance that we're doing and that doesn't mean that every move he's ever made has been the right one and he hasn't traded good players away. But sometimes you have to trade good players to get really good players back. I don't know. It's a weird career to try to evaluate because he seems to have done the thing that we most often judge front offices on over and over again, which is winning a World Series. And yet there's like, I don't know if it's just because we're like so process oriented or what, but we're like, well, but not that way.

And it's like, but they have the World Series rank. You know, like the thing about it is, if you look at that Red Sox team, they won a World Series. We all watched it. Yeah, if you look at their off-season moves from last winter, probably like the dollars per war on that was not great this year, which absolutely no one will care about because they won a pennant now. valuable, obviously, perhaps not as valuable as one would expect given his home run total. But it was so close in the end, they just so barely made it that, yeah, I guess he could have spent that money more, quote unquote, efficiently, right? He could have perhaps signed better players than

the players that he signed. But ultimately, even if it's just like a brute force approach to it, it's like, here's hundreds of millions of dollars and it'll just get us like that all important last couple of wins that they needed ultimately to get into the playoffs. And then once you're in the playoffs, well, this kind of thing can happen. So he didn't make the Real Muto trade, for instance,

but he did keep Real Muto around. He signed Real Muto to a big extension and he's been a core part of this team. So again, I guess it's just that like, yeah, we prize the executives who like see something others don't or they're able to tap into some unsuspected skills or they, you know, some underappreciated player, they pick off the scrap pile or something. And yeah, of course, all of that can be very valuable. And I guess it would be harder to write a Moneyball-style book about like, you know, you don't have the Billy Bean at the table with the scouts kind of conversation about the 50 feet of crap. It's just like, yeah, we're up here and we're just going to sign some good creations. Maybe the drama, the conflict, the narrative is not there, but

ultimately the winning is, and that's something that Billy Beane has not been able to do in the playoffs. I was thinking about this because a friend of the show, Brian Bannister, had a Twitter thread about Dombrowski this week, and Bannister is now the director of pitching for the Giants, but he worked under Dombrowski for the Red Sox for five years. And he had this thread where he said he's sharing why Dombrowski is such a special baseball executive. And here is what Bannister said. He has a tremendous pulse on his organization. Dave is always present. He's in the manager's office, the coach's room. He's on every road trip. If there is a fire to put out or something isn't working, he calls everyone together and finds a solution fast. So, again, not that most GMs are like absentee or anything, but they all seem to work pretty hard.

But I guess if you want to give someone credit for deciding to move on from Joe Girardi when they did. Well, perhaps that's Dombrowski saying that something isn't working and calling for a solution. He continued, he responds to everything. If you send him a letter, he always writes you back. If you send him a text, he always texts you back. I've sent him texts throughout this postseason, even mid-game, he's texted me back every time and usually within minutes. He believes in blue chip players. So this is kind of what we were just getting at. In today's analytical game, it's often about who wins the trade or dollars per war or other internal valuation metrics. Baseball teams have become very smart, but this can lead to a lack of trade liquidity. By always waiting patiently for quote unquote smart trades or avoiding larger free agent contracts, it admittedly reduces career risk and public

scrutiny. But by being willing to lose a trade slightly at times from a valuation perspective, it gives you access to special players. Dave believes that players with a proven track record have special qualities and will rise to the occasion, especially in the postseason. This occurred when we won the World Series in 2018, and it's occurring for the Phillies right now. season. This occurred when we won the World Series in 2018, and it's occurring for the Phillies right now. Now, Bannister acknowledges this approach is less sustainable long term, but it can result in juggernaut teams. With Dave, there is no doubt that the only goal is to win a ring. If everybody else at the poker table is playing the safe percentages, the person willing to risk more chips can be disruptive. And he hires talented people, allows them to do great things.

The freedom and trust that Dave gives his staff is empowering, et cetera, et cetera, creative freedom. And then it goes on to talk about treating people with respect and other behind the scenes things that we would not see quite as much, but people like him and respect him. And apparently it's mutual anyway. That's kind of what we were getting at. And I guess you could say, well, that's easy for Dave Dombrowski to do or not easy, but easier at this point when he's in his mid-60s. He's already made his money and his resume and he's won his rings and his penance. and he's clearly being called in to do this very specific job of just, hey, get me from the one-yard line to the end zone. Or not one-yard line, but somewhere in that half of the field.

So if other GMs were tasked with that exact task, then maybe they could do that too. Maybe they're just not operating that way because that's not what they were hired to do. But he's really good at doing that thing that he was hired to do seemingly. So you just, you gotta give him credit that it's quite a career and a legacy he has built up here. Yeah, I think that like,

we're probably guilty of this. So I don't mean to like give us a pass, but it's like you look at an organization like Tampa where it's like you are setting out to do an already hard thing and it is being made harder for you by circumstance because you work for a team that doesn't want to spend a lot of money. I think that we appreciate cleverness and we appreciate like a team overcoming that circumstance and we can sometimes lose sight of the fact that even if you're the red sox even if you're the dodgers even if you're the yankees even if you're a phillies team that is willing to spend it's still incredibly hard to do and you can spend badly some of those detroit teams he oversaw, one could argue,

maybe didn't spend super wisely all the time, right? But they spent. So just because you are not having to overcome a self-imposed deficit doesn't mean you're not setting out to do an incredibly hard thing. And that doesn't mean that Dombrowski is not above reproach. We are watching a team comprised almost exclusively of DHS, right? And it turns out you only get the one, you know, it's this weird thing. You only get the one DH and yet here they are trying to do this thing.

So it's not like there aren't things you can point to with even this Phillies team and be like, well, there might be some roster construction weirdness here, right? Like we can do that. I think that that's a perfectly reasonable, like, accusation is probably stronger than I mean, but, like, thing to note about this team that he, you know, is spearheading. But I also think that just because they are not having to recover from self-inflicted budgetary wounds doesn't mean that what you're doing by reaching the world series is any

less impressive it just means you didn't like put ankle weights on before you try to run the race you know and i think it's important for us collectively to note the difference right because if you don't you can get overly charmed by people having to overcome their own self-imposed hardships. And it's like, that isn't necessarily charming. You can just spend money instead. So I think you're right. It's a good thing to grapple with. Yeah.

And because there's just so much random variation that happens here, like if the Brewers had won a couple more games, the Phillies would not have made the playoffs. We would not be talking about Dave Dabrowski right now. And that very easily could have happened. Or if the Red Sox, like that was a great team, but they could have not won the World Series and then things would look a little different. And then if you don't convert the way that he has, like once he converts, like you can trade all the prospects you want and tie up all the money you want.

And no one will care that much if you win that world series like you know i guess some red socks fans like not that long after that world series we're like why did we sign this guy to this contract i don't like fans have uh pretty pretty short grace periods typically but if you win the world series then it does kind of justify everything like you could leave your farm system just a smoking wasteland for the next person and you get to ride off into the sunset. Hey, I did my job. I won the World Series. I got my ring. And a lot of that is dependent on having a great postseason run and actually winning that series instead of not winning that series.

So, again, a lot of that could have gone the other way, too. that series instead of not winning that series. So again, a lot of that could have gone the other way too. But the fact that he's done it so many times in so many different places is the thing that really impresses me over such a long period too. I mean, he's been in the game for like, 45 years or something at this point. Everything has changed since then. And he has remained adaptable and nimble enough to at least like seemingly recognize talent and put people in place to be able to operate in these conditions. So there's something to be said for that too, just to be able to adjust and not only win one way or in one place or at one time, but to keep doing it. And when you've done it in this many places this many times, yeah, any one of those times, a lot of things probably had to go right for you to win. But on the whole, when you keep proving repeatedly that you can deliver, then it's probably not just a fluke. It's Dave Dombrowski. Yeah. I mean, sometimes you are but a man who looks like George Plimpton. And, you know, you start from there and then you add baseball to it and see what happens.

Yeah. Hall of Fame hair, too. Yeah. And I guess we should note there was a managerial hiring while we're talking about evaluating managers and such. So Skip Schumacher is now the Marlins manager, which is, I guess, a guy named Skip is on the nose, really, as a manager. I guess he's not technically named Skip. His actual name is Jared. You mean he wasn't named Skip at birth?

Seems that he was not. Jared Michael Schumacher. But yeah, I mean, do you call him Skip? I don't know how common Skip is as a managerial nickname these days anyway, but if it were, would you avoid calling him Skip? Because then it might just sound like you were calling him by his his name or his nickname interesting so you think that by virtue of his nickname being skip if a player called him skip yeah it's like too informal it's like yeah interesting well you know i'm gonna think about that for a long time i think because yeah it's not like you know you're you're doing your retrospective on the season in front of your locker as a yankee and going well aaron said you know like that would be wild that would be unheard of yeah and it's so funny because we're we're more comfortable with

the nickname which seems inherently less formal, right? Right. So we are comfortable with informality, but not familiarity. Yeah. But then again, a nickname is a mark of familiarity. What is our standard here? What value are we trying to uphold, Ben? That's a good question. Language is wild. Love it.

I guess you could call him Skipper. Skip the Skipper. If you're a guy, let's say that you're, pick a nickname. Pick a nickname for an American man. Chuck. Chuck.

Pick a different nickname. Pick a nickname for, it doesn't have to be an American man, right? Part of the problem here is that we sometimes aren't talking to enough folks. So pick a man's nickname that isn't Chuck. That's the only nickname I could currently think of.

That's not the only nickname you know. Every other nickname has flown out of my mind. Chuck is the only one. We're going to pick a manager who we thought to maybe be on the hot seat, but it sounds like he's going to keep his job. So like Aaron Boone, right? I think that there are people in baseball, you tell me if I'm right. I think that there are people in baseball who call

Aaron Boone Booney. They call him Booney. Of course. Congratulations, Ben. You're now a player for the New York Yankees. You're coming in to try to right the shortstop ship. Congratulations. You're a yankee and you will refer to your manager aaron boone as booney right and i i am a i am meg and i don't play for the yankees and i am uh i'm there in the clubhouse to do some reporting and we run into each other if i called aaron boone booney you look at me weird and be like you don't have a right to that right you'd be like that's that's not for you you're not part of this yeah circle of of no feel yeah right you'd be like that's inappropriate and you tell other players like she's she doesn't get it it's not right she doesn't

have feel for the situation because she can't call him boonie yeah you know so it is a thing that is both less formal than calling him Aaron and more familiar than and familiar, right? Fundamentally familiar because it is a thing that if, you know, like if people on Twitter try to call me by a nickname that only my family uses, which is funny, again, because I go by Meg as my pen name even though my name is megan you know i bristle because i'm like i don't know you like you don't get to call me that because you're not you're not one of my people and i don't have anything against you but you're not entitled to that because we're not familiar we're not friends so anyway this has been me trying to

understand language for like four or five minutes yeah well chuck was really the only nickname you could think of yeah that was all i could that was it do you know any do you know anyone who goes by chuck do you know a chuck i'm trying to think if i if i know a chuck i mean like we all know of chucks right like uh you're from you know you're from new New York. Like your senator goes by Chuck. Yeah. But you don't know him, I assume. I worked for the same website as and emailed with Chuck Klosterman. I wouldn't say I know him, but I would call him Chuck if I were to meet him.

Right. But Chuck Klosterman goes by Chuck publicly. Chuck is one of those names that you say it four times and you're like, that's not a name. Barely a word once you've said it four times in a row this is weird i remember sam once wrote an article about baseball nickname conventions mostly it's just like add a y to everything i think but it's not an ironclad rule hence booney right exactly but yes it is a it is a weird bit of business because you're right that I think a manager would look at a player calling him by his actual given first name and think that's inappropriate. But you can call him Booney. That's not a name at all.

Yeah. It's a weird business. It's a strange job anyway i guess when you look at skip schubacher and you see that he has like a career 0.9 war according to fan graphs and yet he played 1149 career games in the majors and got almost 3600 plate appearances like that's a future manager right there if you manage to have that long a career and you weren't actually that valuable as a player although maybe he was perceived to be more at the time than he would be now but still you know you can usually guess that maybe there's some sort of clubhouse

thing going around you know people like him he's a He's a leader. He wasn't hurting himself in the character personality department probably because you can be deficient in those respects if you are a very good player and still hang around. But if you're not, it might be tough. So that's a sign perhaps. And he is a first-time manager, I think, at any level, although he was weirdly an associate manager with Chase Tingler with the Padres. But he's been a big league coach for several years now. He was Ali Marmel's bench coach with the Cardinals this year. So he seems to have been much in demand. He's 42, I guess. back to just hiring very old and experienced managers after what seemed to be a period of hiring more Schumacher types of younger, recently retired managers, although Marmel is one certainly. But I guess there's still interest in some new blood. And I don't know anything about how he'll be as a manager, but people seem to like him and appreciate the hire. Although I do hope that the guys who also interviewed who seemingly have been bouncing around for a long time, like Joe Espada,

Luis Rojas, the Yankees third base coach, also Matt Quattro, the Rays bench coach. But it's a very white group on the whole managers. That's been a sort of a persistent storyline. So who knows not saying that entered into the equation here at all. Just saying that, like, you know, you see that happen many times and other qualified candidates seem to have the qualifications that a manager often does are kind of in the interview merry-go-round or not so merry-go-round trade. And after a certain amount of time, you start to wonder, like, is this just for show interviews? Like, why are they not getting hired? Anyway, not impugning this specific process. I know nothing about it.

Skip Schumacher, like, he seems to fit the bill too. But, you know, you just wonder because, like, there are some names that get mentioned a whole lot and don't get jobs. Yeah. Yeah. I think that this is in some ways how this stuff can kind of persist because if you drill into any particular hiring process, you'd be like, well, that's totally above board. But then nothing changes at the macro level. It changes at the macro level. So we got to, I think we have to interrogate those processes, even when we don't have reason to think that they're, you know, being biased in any, you know, overt or maybe even intentional way and be like, well, yeah, but it sure does seem like there are guys who don't have managerial experience who get hired. And some of those guys kind of look a particular way, perhaps at the expense of other guys who have either managed at the minor league level for a while or who have similarly sort of proven themselves in a bench coach kind of capacity. So I don't know. I think it's important

for us to ask that question because you're right. There are a lot of names that we have come to know as perennial candidates, and it would be nice to know them as big league managers instead. Yeah. Maniakta is a guy I always think of as, I wonder why he hasn't gotten another chance. He got a couple. He was a manager for the Nationals and with Cleveland, too. I was just looking at his Twitter, and someone was tweeting at him about, why is Maniakta

not getting a new opportunity to manage? And he said, I've learned to be okay about things I can't control. I was looking at his Twitter just the other day because he came out as a mound move backer, which I was excited to see. He endorsed the idea of moving the mound back to 62 feet. And he was going on a whole thread about how there are other factors too, He was going on a whole thread about how there are other factors too, nothing like the short reaction time that hitters have now contributing to strikeout rates, the swings and defense and all those things are factors. But he's pointing out that it's just very hard to hit the ball as it is pitched today. I was just happy to see that because I still don't know if that would work, but I still cannot quit the idea. And it's

exciting for me when someone who is like in the game and very experienced in the game sees some value in it because often with people who've been in the game for a long time, it's like, no, we must stick with the way things have been done. But he's always seemed like just a smart person to me. And I don't know if it's just that I'm biased because he's sort of, you know, sabermetrically oriented and was a baseball prospectus reader and I don't know if it's just that I'm biased because he's sort of sabermetrically oriented and was a baseball prospectus reader and was endorsing that back when it was still strange to hear that kind of thing from

someone who is in uniform but I'd like to see him get to manage a good team someday. Anyway. So just a couple last things I want to note. One is that games this postseason have not been super long, which is kind of nice. Anthony

Kastrovitz, I mean, some of them have. Excuse you. Some of them certainly have. But on the whole, I felt like the pace and the length has been pretty good. And Anthony Kastrovitz did five things we've learned from a wild 22

postseason for MLB.com. And one of them, he's making the case that it's about pitch calm, that we have not seen as much slowing down with runners on base as we normally would nine inning postseason game dropped from three hours and 37 minutes last year to three hours and 21 minutes so far this year, which is better. Obviously, shorter. I mean, it seems like postseason games get longer and longer every year. And I have not felt so much slog this postseason. It's felt like it's moved at a pretty decent pace. So I don't know if it's pitch calm. I don't know if it is the fact that just scoring has been down. There just hasn't been much offense. And so that'll tend to move games along.

This is, according to Baseball Savant, the postseason WOBA this year so far, 283. That is the second lowest after 2012 going back to 2008, which is what they have in their site. So it's been an offensive outage too. And I guess starting pitchers have gone a little deeper as we've discussed, perhaps because of the offensive outage, but that might mean fewer pitching changes. So could also account for some of the upsets, the lower scoring, the run environment, the more upset friendly it is whatever the explanation it's uh it's been kind of nice it hasn't felt like things have gotten quite as bogged down as i'm accustomed to seeing in the postseason yeah i i agree it does feel like they

have moved at a clip i mean i know when we did our patreon live stream of which game was it uh we did it during what proved to be a cs yeah four four yep because it was the bullpen day yes when the first inning took an hour and we thought oh no oh no we are going to be here all night we live here now but even in that game where the first inning was so protracted, it got back on track pretty quickly and moved along at a decent clip and didn't strike me as being overly long. I think it has been fine and has been kind of zippy. Yes, not bad. Snapping my fingers to indicate it zippy.

I don't have an accordion to play, which is how you indicate zip. If you're Italian, you need to play the accordion. I also wanted to note that Shohei Otani's former team, the Nippon Him fighters, the NPV professional entry draft was held late last week and the fighters drafted a two-way player named Kota Yazawa. And I just wanted to mention that just in case it turns into a story, he turns into something. You heard it here first, unless you heard it somewhere else first. But this has been very rare in NPB.

Even post-Ohtani, there's not been any wave of two-way players or anything. According to Jim Allen, I think this is just the second time post-Ohtani that someone has been drafted as a two-way player. And the first one was not even allowed to two-way play. It was Junya Nishi of the Hanshin Tigers. He was drafted as a two-way player, but then specialized even before his career started. So it's still very rare, but the fighters kind of an out of the box team. And obviously they have the history of Otani and they have big boss

Tsuyoshi Shinjo as their manager. That's right. Yeah. He's not going by big boss apparently anymore. He is retired big boss. He's just Shinjo again, but still quite a character. Anyway, they have drafted Kote Yazawa. And I don't want to set expectations too high. He is not the next Otani. As far as I can see, like he maxes out. It looks like at like 94 on the mound. And I think he's only like 5'8 or something. He's not a big guy according to pictures I've seen and one bio page I saw.

But they're going to give him a chance, and they seem excited about it. Shinjo is quoted as saying, when no other team named him, I jumped and shouted. This was in the first round. He was a star for Nippon Sports Science University, and he seems like he's confident. He said he's looking forward to facing the best young players there are, Murakami and Sasaki. He wants to pitch and bat against them respectively. He wants to strike

batters out and hit home runs. So it seems like the right organization to be with. No idea whether he will actually persist into a play or whether he will be a success. There's no other Otani, really, even if you let someone else try i don't know that anyone else has the the physical skills and the build and everything else that otani has but nice to see someone at least uh take a run at it so good luck to him agreed okay let's see here i have we have neglected to do a stat blast for a while here. So I have what should be a fairly quick one, I think. Set some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's to day stat blast.

So stat blast, as always, is brought to you by the baseball reference StatHead tool, which, even though we have not done a formal StatBlast segment in a while, we've cited the StatHead tool and we've used the StatHead tool because even if we were not sponsored by StatHead, we would still be using it and citing it all the time because we actually do believe in it. This is not just marketing speech. We're not reading ad copy here. We really love and use StatHead and always have. So go to StatHead.com. Check out all of the options that are available there, not just MLB, also other leagues, but you can use our coupon code WILD20 to get a $20 discount on the $80 one-year subscription. So a couple of questions we have gotten here. So here's one from Justin, Patreon supporter, who says, as one is wont to do, I got lost amid the aisles of baseball reference this evening. See, baseball reference, it's not even sponsored. This is not a setup or anything. It was just inspired by a question about baseball reference.

While being distracted from my original mission of researching early Latino players, I stumbled upon a significant milestone within Major League Baseball historical totals. Measuring from 1876 to the present, all-time home runs have eclipsed all-time stolen bases. As of today, when he sent this September

28th, there have been 1,093 more homers than steals. If you measure from 1871, taking account of the National Association to the present, there are still 600 more steals than homers. For argument's sake, let's take 1876, the start of the National League, as the official starting point. My question is, who slugged the home run that turned the tide of history? Secondly, I have to imagine this is the first time homers have eclipsed stolen bases on

the all-time list, or is it? So I asked Ryan Nelson about this. It's tough to pinpoint, but he notes the real answer is that stolen bases weren't tracked in their current form until 1887. So the stolen base is actually still likely ahead of the homer. But if we track from 1887 forward, the home run all-time total just passed the stolen base all-time total in 2021. In fact, it was specifically on April 27th, 2021. MLB entered that day with 29 more all-time stolen bases than homers.

On that day, there were 37 homers and six stolen bases you could go through those game logs and attempt to pick out who it was exactly who did it looks like it was most likely someone in the rockies giants game that day so we will leave it to them so we're obviously in a home run over stolen base era here but that could be changing potentially right because if we have stolen bases boosted next year with the relaxed pickoff attempt rules or or i guess the tightened pickoff attempt rules depending on your perspective if we see stolen bases leap up if mlB gets its way and we get a more contact-oriented brand of baseball with no shifting and more incentive to put the ball in play or so MLB imagines. Who knows? Maybe stolen bases could nose ahead again one of these years.

Perhaps this is not settled permanently. Perhaps not. But if I had to bet. Yeah. I think the arc of history here has trended toward power over speed in baseball. But again, it fluctuates. It goes up and down depending on the era. All right, so that is one question.

Another question we got, this came from Max, another Patreon supporter, who said, In the Mets versus Cubs game on September 12th, Michael Givens came in to pitch the top of the seventh and eighth innings. In the bottom of the eighth, D.H. Daniel Vogelbach hit in his spot in the batting order fifth and walked. Givens is then inserted as the pinch runner for Vogelbach, removing Vogelbach from the game. Has this ever been done before? I guess Givens never was replaced in the game as he was the most recent pitcher to pitch and then Vogelbach reaches first. He removes the DH from the game. We've seen pitchers being inserted as pinch runners before, but it feels rare to see

the current pitcher be inserted for the current DH when he is already in the game. So Ryan, our frequent StatBless consultant, find him on Twitter at rsnelson23, he said, took me a few times to wrap my head around this one as far as searching the data went, but he finally found this video, which he links for me, and I will also link on the show page, but it's from the YouTube account Close Call Sports, and it's called Ask an Ump,

Can a Pitcher Pinch Run for the Designated Hitter? And it happened in this case, July 26, 2020. So Ryan found this video proving that it had happened at least once, and he was able to use that to figure out how the data is represented when this happens. Using that, I was able to find that this Michael Lorenzen example, this is from 2020, is one of only example, there have been three. So this required a DH. So it had to be in the last 50 years or so. But still, it has apparently happened only three times in those years.

And it's weird enough that when it happens, people question, is this something that can happen? Does this break baseball or not? But apparently, no, it does not. It is just very rare. Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. And last one I have here.

This was submitted by two listeners, actually. So one is Paul, Patreon supporter, who says, George Springer just got his 1,000th career hit. Now, this was sent in mid-August, August 17th, but we got around to it eventually, which also happened to be his first career pinch hit. So his 1,000th career hit was also his first career pinch hit. Paul says, this feels like a lot of career hits before a first pinch hit. So is this interesting? pinch hit. So is this interesting? Maybe not, as players who mostly start for most of their career would not have many pinch hit opportunities until later in their career when they would have racked up a lot of career hits. So he points out it might not be notable, but it might. We also got this question from Claude, a Patreon supporter, who asked about this just this month, which jogged my memory, even though this happened in mid-August. And he noted that Springer previously was 0 for 10 as a pinch hitter. So he had pinch hit.

He just had not pinch hit, if you know what I mean. So this question, has anyone had more career hits than George Springer before their first career pinch hit? And the answer is yes. And in fact, many, many, many more hits than that. So the answer is A-Rod, Alex Rodriguez. Yeah, Alex Rodriguez got his first pinch hit in 2013. He had 2,919 career hits at the time. Wow. Yeah. So he had had pinch hit opportunities. So 96 through 2010, looks like he pinch hit, let's see, 1, 3, 5, 8, 10, 13 times, I guess, before finally doing it successfully. successfully. So it took a while for him to do this or no, even more than that, 14 times,

17 times. I think it was maybe his 18th. I'm trying to minimize my live counting on the podcast, but something like his 18th opportunity as a pinch hitter. And he just had not had a pinch hit until this day in 2013. So he is the leader, 2,919 hits when he got his first pinch hit. And Ryan notes, as far as we know, Cap Anson never had a pinch hit appearance, and he had 3,435 hits. So if we can trust that data, that would be the most hits before a pinch hit, but he never got one either. So not sure if that counts. After A-Rod, Cal Ripken got

his first pinch hit with 2,911 hits, just shy of A-Rod. Then Derek Jeter with 2,846, Luis Aparicio with 2,284, and Billy Herman with 2,128. They are the only players to have more than 2,000 hits by the time they got their first pinch hit. However, 43 other players got to 1,000 before their first pinch hit. So Springer is not an outlier, but he is in the top 50, even if just barely. Interesting.

Alright, so we will end with the Past Blast. This is episode 1921. And as always, this Past Blast comes from the year of the episode number, which in this case is 1921. And it comes from Sabre's Jacob Pomeranke and Black Sox expert Jacob Pomeranke. This one, he titles it 1921, a short series and a long format. We actually just alluded to this the other day.

The 1921 World Series was the last one to be played using an experimental best of nine format. We actually just alluded to this the other day. The 1921 World Series was the last one to be played using an experimental best of nine format, and the first where every game was played in the same ballpark. The New York Giants beat Babe Ruth's Yankees with every game being held at the polo grounds, which the two teams shared. So I guess you can't call it a home field advantage, or if it is, it's for both of them. Giants manager John McGraw was one of the few people in baseball who objected to the change in format for the World Series. Here's what McGraw told reporters a few months after the Giants won the 21 World Series. five and nine affords a much more fair and decisive test as to which is the better team than the old plan of four in seven. In the shorter series, there are many more chances for luck to figure in the final result. A best four in seven series has very seldom been convincing to establish

in my mind the fact of the winner's superiority beyond a doubt. But when the series is played in the same city, as it would be again between the Giants and Yankees in 1922 and 1923, McGraw said he was in favor of a seven game series instead. The mental and physical strain on the spectators, he said, was such that it is more tiresome, it is painful, the daily drag of the pocketbooks of the patrons is to be considered. The players also need a relief from the mental strain they are under. They absolutely require the relaxation that travel from one city to another affords, a day's rest. And Jacob concludes, in most of the previous Best of Nine World Series, attendance had fallen the longer the World Series went on.

You might think it would increase because you're getting closer to the clincher but no it tailed off only 25 410 fans showed up to the polo grounds for the giants one nothing win in game eight of the 1921 world series so i guess even though the stakes are super high at that point it's like haven't we seen this show before in the same city in the same park we can't just keep coming every day. So forget about the best of 75 series that you would really need to reliably have the better team advance. Even best of nine seems to tire the fans, at least when it's in the same city and they're going to the same park every day. But interesting that McGraw was like, you know, best of seven? No, not enough. Interesting that McGraw was like, you know, best of seven.

No, not enough. That doesn't decide anything. We need the best of nine. But we haven't had it. Now, we're almost at the century ago mark with the past blessed. So next time we will finally catch up to 100 years ago. Wow. What are we going to do when we go through all this? That's been a topic of some discussion I've seen among the listeners.

Some have assumed we will retire the segment. Some have wanted us to continue into a hypothetical future and do a past blast of the future where we supply what happens. I don't know. We'll have to think about it. Yeah, we need to invent time travel i think is really the only possibility here because as it is i i think we're on track to to catch up sometime around the middle of next year or next season sometime so yeah you know ben we do a lot of uh shows for this show we do we do a lot of episodes, so. Interesting. Alright, well that's the end of this one. Alright, you can support Effectively

Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help us keep going, help us stay ad-free aside from our StatHead sponsorship, and get themselves access to some perks. Ben

Beanstalk. Not as in Jack and the Beanstalk, spelled completely differently. Perhaps it's even pronounced Beinstock to prevent just this kind of confusion. I'm sorry, Ben. You signed up for Patreon. You're pledging money to support the podcast, and here I am bringing up what is possibly a sore subject without your last name. You don't deserve this. Also another Ben, Benjamin Lomaster, Michael S., Lena Gordon, and David Kim. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to monthly bonus episodes, one of which Meg and I will be recording this coming weekend, as well as playoff live streams. We'll be doing another of those sometime soon too. You also get discounts on merch and ad

free fancast memberships and access to the Effectively Wild Discord group, now creeping toward 900 members. Join the ranks, you'll enjoy it. You can also write to me and Meg via email at podcastoffangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. You can join our Facebook

group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to effectively wild on itunes and spotify and other podcast platforms you can follow effectively wild on twitter at ew pod and you can browse the effectively wild subreddit at r slash effectively wild thanks to dylan higgins for his editing and production assistance we will be back with one more episode before the end of the week. Talk to you soon. Until we skip the life completely.