Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2072: Can You Take Me Higher (or Lower)

Episode Date: October 14, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the career of the incomparable Bryce Harper, more “Attaboy” blowback, the end of the Phillies-Braves NLDS, scoring and competitiveness in the postseason as a whole, a Phillies homer-prediction contest, the pitch clock in the postseason, the Championship Series matchups, their most desired World Series matchups, why we say […]

Sometimes I still feel like that little girl Hearing grandma's handheld babies Collecting baseball cards before I could read They say I waste my time Tracking all these stat lines But it's here I've found my kind We're all Effectively Wild Hello and welcome to episode 2072 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters.

I'm Meg Reilly of Fangraphs, and I'm joined by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Doing okay. How are you? I'm, you know, I'm rested. It's an October Friday the 13th. That feels fun and spooky. We

have a championship series field set. I'm feeling pretty good. I'm excited about these matchups. I'm feeling pretty good. I'm excited about these matchups. Yeah. Me too. I was the living embodiment of the guy from the Onion story about Mr. Autumn Man walking down street with cup of coffee,

wearing sweater over plaid collared shirt, except I don't drink coffee, but substitute tea for coffee. And that was me. I guess I had kind of a checked jacket over my plaid collared shirt. But other than that, that was me. I like being that guy. I'm a stereotype and I'm fine with it because as we discussed on our last Patreon pod, this is our favorite time of year. And it's a pretty swell baseball time of year as well. I had one more thought about the attaboy Bryce controversy. I was thinking this because after the Phillies won, they were chanting during their celebration and jumping up and down and yelling attaboy themselves, having used that as motivation. And it occurred to me, I was thinking, yes, it was extremely

anodyne and innocuous what Orlando Arceus said, that taunt was a total nothing burger. And still, I think probably that was sort of specific to Bryce Harper. Like on the one hand, yeah, anyone would be happy that the opposing player got thrown out to end the game and you won a playoff game and you're one away from advancing, of course. But I wonder if the fact that it was Bryce Harper led to a specific taunt as opposed to, you know, as weak sauce as it was, as nothing as it was. If that had been some other player, sauce as it was, as nothing as it was, if that had been some other player, I wonder whether there would have been any attaboy directed to them. I think the Bryce Harper aspect of it is what led to the attaboy, which again, it's still nothing. But I think if that had been some

other player, because Bryce Harper has always been a lightning rod, right? He provokes strong emotions. Not that attaboy, ha-ha, you lost, we won is that strong an emotion. But still, a taunt directed at him. Like, if that had been Mike Trout, let's say, would there have been an attaboy, ha-ha, Mike Trout? I don't think so. Probably not, right? Like, Arcea would have been just as pleased

that he got thrown out and that they won the game. But I don't know whether you bother to do an attaboy for Trout or like, if it's Shohei Ohtani, do you do attaboy Ohtani? I don't think you do, right? Like, there's something about Bryce Harper that provokes and has always provoked some strong reaction. It could be love. It's certainly love among Phillies fans right now. But there's something about him that has always ruffled feathers, even if it's in the most low-grade PG possible way. Man, you're inviting me to contemplate my grand unified theory of Bryce Harper. Yeah, no, it's a big subject.

It's a big subject. I think that you're right that he has a verve, a flair, a cockiness, a complicated machismo. You know, like his vibe is fascinating to me that is often catalytic you know yes um i think you're right about that and it it can it catalyzes all kinds of reactions, right? I think that he has been beloved by his teammates, it seems. He also seems to really rankle some folks. And like, you know, this is a, it was a playoff series.

It was an incredible play. It was a moment that you would be really hyped for if you played for the Braves, I think, regardless of the person. But I think you're right that there does seem to be something about, you know, getting the, the better of Harper that really excites people. And I think that there's like a, I don't even know that it's a grudging respect, right? But there is a respect at the heart of that, right? It is satisfying, right? Because like he is such an incredible player. like looking for the the equivalent in terms of stature and sort of how he's regarded on the atlanta side of things like if you're the phillies and the tables are turned and you get acuna in that moment like that probably feels like a special kind of triumph in a way that maybe it doesn't if it's orlando orcia right yeah or Orlando Orsia. You know that?

Yeah. Or if that had been like Johan Rojas or something. They'd probably be like, who? Right. Right. That kid I've never played against before. He got, you know, they're not going to be like attaboy Johan. Right.

I mean, it has to be a star, like someone with some cachet, but also a specific sort of stardom. Yeah. Someone with some cachet, but also a specific sort of stardom. Like if that had been even Trey Turner, let's say, would there have been Attaboy Trey? Like I kind of doubt it. Yeah. He's polarizing. He's something, you know, I don't know. Catalytic was good.

Yeah. I don't know that I want to put like the value judgment on it that polarizing suggests because I just don't know. I mean like he might be polarizing, but he's catalytic, you know. but it's better for a Patreon episode just because I'm going to fumble through it and I don't know how much gender theory people want to hear on Effectively Wild. But there is something about the way that Harper performs masculinity that I find really fascinating within the context of he's a professional athlete. I was looking through the image database that we use for our pieces when I was editing Bauman last night, and there is a picture, which wasn't the one that we went with, but that is just traditional about the way that he performs his masculinity, but he's also very, I hesitate to use the word flamb or planned or like thought through it is, but he does seem to be a guy who, who folks have strong opinions about. Um, and I think that there's, you know, there's no doubt how incredible a player he is. And I imagine that that is something that

is true when you're on the opposing side, as much as it is if you're in the Phillies clubhouse. But yeah, he does seem to like have a way about him. There's a vibe there that is a complicated one. Like it's sort of shot through with things that are really fascinating to me. I don't know. He kind of reminds me of like David Lee Roth or something. Like I don't. Yeah. Well, he's like, does he qualify as a himbo? Like, I don't want to impugn his intelligence. I just mean in the sense that like, you know, he's maybe more into. That sign can't stop me. I can't read. Yeah. He's more into hair care than your average baseball player who's like wearing eye black and everything. Yeah. I have expressed my concern about how these men do not seem to take care of their

locks in the way that they should. It's like some of you boys need to condition. Yeah. And he's like, you know, been in ads or promos or whatever, where he's like double fisting hair dryers, you know, like there's, I don't know if it's a vanity or what exactly, but there is an aspect to him that has always, I guess, before he fully backed it up, I think people were rubbed the wrong way. Like they thought he was maybe a bit brash. Maybe he was a bit brash in his youth. He was certainly such a star and such great things were expected of him that I think that alone is going to cause a little bit of envy, jealousy, petty shutdowns. Right. I mean, I recall earlier in his career when they used to do like surveys of players, ESPN or whoever would

do those things, he would show up as most overrated, you know, and there probably was a time where he was overrated. Sure. How could he not be? He hadn't done anything yet. Yeah. And he was the highest rated prospect perhaps ever, right? Certainly up there.

So, you know, you're a not even old teenager and you're on the cover of Sports Illustrated, then yeah, there's kind of going to be a target on you. Yeah. And he was not like the most self-effacing, let's say. Right. And nor did he need to be. I mean, he's fully backed it up basically at every step of the way. And I think up until maybe recently, there was a period where he was underrated, if anything. I mean, he's he's as good as you ever could have expected him to be. I guess when you have a 16-year-old or whatever he was on the cover of Sports Illustrated, then maybe the expectations are so sky high that you just have to be the best player ever to fully justify it. Or you have to be Trout.

You know, he's been, I guess, you know, Trout outshined him a little bit war-wise, but certainly not in stardom. And these days, you could make the case that Harper is the better or at least more durable player. So, yeah, he's fully backed it up. And these days, I think he has earned a respect, whether or not it was grudging. And yet he's demonstrative, right? That's what makes him fun. I mean, he's a star. He's not just a star. And yet he's demonstrative, right? That's what makes him fun. I mean, he's a star. He's not just a good player. He's a star. Yeah. In every sense of the world. He seems to rise to the moment or certainly does not shirk, you know, does not shy away

from the moment. And when he finds himself at center stage at that moment, he like hams it up. I mean, you know, he's not just like, I'll put my head down and business like, you know, trot around the bases and just trying to get a good pitch to hit, you know, like he's having fun. That's why people respond to him in one way or another. And even like, you know, when he stared and kind of gloated at Arcia as he was rounding the bases, a lot of players probably wouldn't do that. I mean, even if they hit the home run, they just, they'd put their head down and they'd go, you know, they wouldn't want to make it a bigger thing. But Harper does, like, you know, he will have a very human reaction. I know that

the way that he caters, let's say, to his fan base sometimes perhaps seems slightly calculated, but also seems like maybe he just feels that way. I don't know. He sells it. He makes it work. He's a singular figure in this era of baseball. I'm really glad that we have Bryce Harper

and that he's turned out to be so great and very much on a Hall of Fame path and like getting all the big October moments that Mike Trout hasn't gotten. And, you know, seizing the spotlight and reaching for the mic. It's fine that Mike Trout doesn't do that or that anyone else doesn't do that. But this is entertainment, you know, and Harper is not only extraordinarily talented, but he is extraordinarily entertaining, too. a ton of sincerity there it is pandering but like i mean that as a compliment like that guy knows that's that fan base he knows what sort of is gonna resonate i think that he you know wants them to feel like i am of you and it is a sincere desire to be like the face of this era of Phillies baseball, even though, you know, he's far from the only big contract on that roster.

But like the idea that it's going to be at this point, anyone else is like kind of almost academic, right? Because he's just in a way that like Trey Turner isn't. He is a star. He is magnetic. like Trey Turner isn't. He is a star. He is magnetic. He is a different kind of cat, I think, than a lot of players are today. And he can carry it. He can carry it off because he's so incredible. If he were as good as he is and he were just okay in the regular season or in the postseason rather like we'd still be like he's an an incredible player he is somehow largely met the expectations that were heaped upon him as a

teenager but for him to be you know capable of what he's doing in the regular season and then to be like this in october is like it's a different kind of thing, you know? And it's not like he's the only player in baseball who can be like that, but he is in, I think, a very select group when it comes to the guys who can kind of carry that off. And it's sure something to see. Like, it's just, oh, God, you know? Yeah. That whole thing that we talked about at length yesterday, and so we don't need to go

into it at length now, but I think I was just reflecting on, because I was so stupefied that it became a thing at all. Like, the sports aspect of it and the sports media aspect of it both just Which somehow got worse after we were recording right and threads and support and the bbwaa ended up releasing a statement yes in support of jake and and specifically responding to something alano rizzo said on mlb network on chris russo's show which was like wildly i think wild wildly, out of proportion and out of line. And I think it's similar in the sense that things get blown out of proportion because it's Harper and maybe it was said at all because it was Harper specifically.

And then similarly, maybe because it was Jake, not Jake specifically necessarily, And then similarly, maybe because it was Jake, not Jake specifically necessarily, but it just it exposed this, I guess, like old media versus new media divide seemingly that still exists, apparently. Like it's like, is this 2008? Is this like Buzz Bissinger versus Will Leach or something like we're talking about bloggers having clubhouse access? talking about bloggers having clubhouse access. It's 2023, you know, but I assume that if some old school newspaper reporter had mentioned that in a story, I mean, I guess you could say, well, maybe they wouldn't because they're from that generation or that era or something, but I don't think so necessarily. But if it had been someone who was like, you know, on the beat regularly, on one beat regularly, let's say, I guess there's probably always, you know, on the beat regularly on one beat regularly, let's say, I guess there's probably always, you know, there are people who are covering one team all year, and then the postseason rolls around and people show up who aren't following that team day in and

day out. And maybe there's some resentment or like turf wars, you know, where were you all year? And then maybe it's magnified if it's sort of a younger media member who has absolutely done the work and been there and you know deserves to be there as much as anyone and more than most but but still i guess it exposes this like blogger podcaster internet media twitter personality kind of you know versus like traditional media you know came up to the media in a different way kind of divide. And maybe that was playing a part, too. So the fact that that became such a big sports and sports media story, which was so silly, I guess, had something to do with either the backgrounds or the personalities, the histories of the folks involved. I'm just I'm still trying to puzzle it out. Yeah. I mean, look, I'm also furious with

how young Jake is. Sure. Gets me every day, you know, wrinkles. But I think that there is like there is a tension or at least a potential tension that exists between folks who cover a team are on a beat all year and sort of their day in and day out and national media who can be perceived as sort of parachuting in and they do parachute and you know it's weird for Alana Rizzo to take a side in that because her role isn't really either of those things and hasn't been throughout her career. And I know that, you know, she took time to apologize today. And so I know Jake is sort of keen to, and I'm not like giving behind the scenes stuff. He tweeted this. So I feel like I'm not speaking out of turn. He's like, can we move on to something? Yeah, he's keen to move on because there's really great baseball to be played in their

exciting series here. But I do think that like, you know, there is a potential for there to be, I think, reasonable frustration about sort of how things can play out in the playoffs where you have all these folks kind of coming in and they their job is to get time with players who you have spent a season, potentially seasons, you know, sort of building a relationship with. And I can appreciate and imagine, I mean, I can only imagine since, you know, my role is different than all of these folks that that can be frustrating and it can feel like, why are people touching my stuff? Yeah. It's not a great time to get time with people in my experience because it's crowded and there's often less availability. Which is part of why this whole thing is so funny. reporters have the least amount of access because they don't have, you know, they're not, they don't have a pregame clubhouse availability the way that they would in the regular season.

Everything is, has to be more scripted because of the influx of people who were there. But I, you know, I just think that we as a, as a media should try to at all times sort of keep our eye on the prize, which is our role is to observe, report, and provide interesting stories to the folks who read our work. And there are times when that facilitates a symbiotic relationship between the media and the player. There are times when that is going to necessarily be a tense or antagonistic relationship because what you should be serving in these moments is the story. And sometimes that's going to cast players does kind of talking about the acceptability of certain quotes or not, like, let us keep in mind the backdrop, which is that there is always going to be people who are looking for an excuse to further restrict access. So let's not give them arguments for that based on a misunderstanding and um mischaracterization of what this moment was

and what media availability is more generally and also just like and i saw bradford william davis sort of offering his thoughts on jake um and i will echo a piece of this which is that like jake brings such care to these interactions you know and i don't say that like he's not being a fair or clear eyed reporter but like he does i think more than than many in our profession like take time to to ask about a guy's family to kind of hear him out on stuff like he is trying to have his interactions with these players be more than simply transactional in a way that I think is a really great model for providing good coverage and careful coverage and ethical coverage. And so I, you know, I hate how young he is infuriating. I mean, he and Jordan, the other half of Sessomis Family Barbecue, they've always,

you know, covered players in a very sort of like on the same level way. I mean, they make connections with players, perhaps by virtue of the fact partly that when they started out, they were the same age as the players. Right. And Jake played in college and everything. Right. So like, you know, they have kind of, you know, people who've often been guests on their show and like, you know, they have a rapport with players. I mean, the point I'm trying to make is that, like, I think they have more probably personal interaction with players than your average BBWA member, like by far, you know. So that doesn't mean they're like buddy-buddy in a way that compromises their coverage. It's just like, it couldn't be anything further from the truth that they're like, you know, upstarts who were like, don't know how to act around players or something. Like they probably have a better sense of that than

most baseball media members. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what we can, we can perhaps be done with that. But the part of it that I think we can talk about without being accused of navel gazing is that I wonder what reflection there will be on Atlanta's side about like, like the, the, the way that they sort of own golds this, you know, um, it is such a silly anodyne thing. We talked last time about like, if you are gonna, even if it is, a silly anodyne thing we talked last time about like if you are gonna even if it is i was just about to say very vanilla and that's terrible ben that's like a horrible way to say anything but if it's gonna be sort of as inoffensive and anodyne as attaboy then you know you you can't get mad when the guy does well and the way to answer that isn't to be kind of complaining about it getting back to him but to go out and win and that wasn't what they

accomplished i don't think they lost because of that comment one way or the other either in terms of the effect it had on their play or what it may or may not have inspired in the Phillies. But, you know, the best way to counter trash talk is to win. That's the best way to do it. And I think that there are a lot of reasons why a team as talented as they are, and they are so talented, and I think that they are set up to have, you know, tremendous success in the future. But like sometimes, you know, sometimes your starters get hurt right at the end and you don't

have all your guys and you have your best pitcher and one of the better pitchers in the National League just like give up some home runs. Like sometimes you get got that just happens. So I hope that both for their fans and for the folks in that organization that like what they focus on is what they can do next year to sort of clear this hurdle because it's you know they're so good and for the amount of talent they have on their roster so inexpensive you know this is hardly the last time that we are going to see you know them playing meaningful october baseball but yeah wow uh nick castellanos really can sure hit some home runs when he puts his mind to a can't he my goodness this is a funny thing it's like you know all of all of the lead up to that game um four was about har Harper and what he can do. And like the guys who sent, you know, them forward

to the CS, it wasn't, his game was sort of unremarkable, you know, as these things go. He did have that one moment where it looked like he had really launched one, but then it ended up being a harmless flyout, which cannot be said for Nick Castellanos. The Braves almost came back a couple times. There was the play where the ball got away and Kevin Pillar did not attempt to score. Almost certainly would have made it pretty easily, it looked like, but that is a high pressure situation. in his head at all at that moment. I mean, maybe not. But I wonder if that was in the back of his mind as he was debating, do I go or not? I'm sure he was also thinking, hey, Ronald Acuna Jr. is up and I really don't want to make the last out here. Don't make the last out. That was probably prominent. But, you know, there was a recent prominent example of someone who was aggressive and went for it and paid the price. But yeah, he could have scored, I think. And then maybe that would have factored in in the ninth

when they had that rally, first and third, no outs. And at that point, it was looking like, oh, this is going to be significant, the fact that Pillar did not try to score on that ball that got away. And then Matt Strom came in and just totally shut him down and got out of that anyway. Will you allow me a minor pop culture like cul-de-sac and then we can get back to things? Have you seen the, I've maybe asked you this question before.

Have you seen the 1995 classic, The Three Musketeers with Oliver Plattiefer Sutherland and Chris O'Donnell. Yes. Okay. So first of all, not a perfect film, but I have very few notes. It is an important piece of cinema that everyone should make a point to watch. Wow. 93, apparently. 93? Oh, wow. Yeah. Gosh, I'm falling down on my film studies. 30-year anniversary. Yeah. fallen down on my film 30 year anniversary yeah oh my see it's in that case it is destined because does strom not look like he belongs in that movie to you he like out of central casting for that he

should be chasing down d'artagnan on behalf of the cardinal i did wonder i was like you maybe should have tried to you would have scored i think but i think he probably just didn't want to be the third out with acuna up right like that seems like it's the most likely explanation can i ask about a different thing in that same game can you think of a cooler moment of sports broadcasting than the silence to explosion continuum that citizens bank went on during, before, and then during, and then after the Rojas catch that got them out of that jam. Because that was so, baseball's so cool, Ben. Yeah, I saw Babin's tweet about that in the park. Yeah.

How it was just, you could hear a pin drop as he went up for the catch and there was an explosion. Yeah. It was so cool. I'm struggling to think of a moment that translated better sort of ballpark to broadcast than that in recent memory. Because there are times where you will be like in the park and you can talk about how loud it is. And you can, you know, you get a sense of it on television but it's different than being there and sort of feeling it in your body but like that one i was like wow that was cool anyway i wanted to take a moment to appreciate that and also you know as a philly fan i am not

one but you know i can only imagine philly's fans there's been some there's been some bad centerfield defense uh over the last couple you last couple decades of being a Philly. And how the cycle of emotions one must have gone through to be like, oh, yeah, that guy's really good out there. So it actually might have been fine. Yeah. No, it's a different defensive team these days. We've talked about how these Phillies are not last year's Phillies. They may have a similar vibe, but

performance-wise, it's just a better team. Still good starters, but deeper bullpen and a passable defense and even sometimes a good defense, depending on the alignment out there. You've still got Castellanos. Maybe he's playoff

Castellanos. Maybe that's a different guy. But when you know, when you have Rojas or you have Christian Pache, right? Like these are that particular catch, I guess maybe looked a little more, I mean, it was an adventurous route, I guess you could say, but he's really good. And so, yeah, Mike Petriello tweeted this out recently, how like, if you, And so, yeah, Mike Petriello tweeted this out recently, how like if you, you know, compare their defense this year to last year, it's not day and night, but it's, you know, day and dusk or it's different, right? It's like average at least. And then when Schwarber's not out there, it's actually pretty good.

Yeah. So when you put those defensive replacements out there at the end of the game, it's a shutdown defense. You're filled out with affiliates. So that's fun. What a world to live in that that is true. And if they can teach Bryce Harper the direction to stretch for scoops, then unstoppable. Yeah, that looked like it was not going to be funny. It was his funny bone, fortunately. Oh, I meant to play earlier in the game where Trey Turner got charged with an error. And it was like, it wasn't a great throw, but also like a guy who's played. I don't want to knock him unnecessarily, but like there are times, and I think Bauman tweeted this too, where you can just like tell that Bryce Harper hasn't played first base for very long. And the direction of his lean to try to get that scoop on the Turner error was one of them. And then, yes, there was a terrifying moment late in the game where I, sitting alone in my living room, yelled,

no, no, no, no, no. And the Cats got very scared. And then it was just his funny bone. And further proof that I am different than a baseball player, because if I got hit in the funny bone like he did, I would throw up. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And also, I guess, as odd as it is to see the Phillies with a good late-inning defense, it's also odd to see the Braves and their vaunted offense. And they went down, as Zach Crammond, his piece for The Ringer.

Weird to watch maybe the best baseball lineup in a century. And you end the season with the tying run on base. And your batters are Kevin Pillar, Eddie Rosario left on left, and Von Grissom. That's who you're going down with at the end of one of the most impressive offensive seasons ever. Yeah. You know, baseball, man, it's rough. It is weird to have the guy who, like, couldn't win the shortstop battle out of camp be, like, the guy.

Yeah. That's not, you know, I don't say that to be, you know, ungenerous to the young man. It's just like this is what happens. You can't decide who's up there. Yeah. I don't know if Snitker had the best series. It was, uh, I know he's like, really, he's like, I know you said nice things about me. What if I was worse? Yeah, it was overaggressive sometimes and too passive at other times. But, but ultimately, obviously it, uh, as it always

does, it comes down to the fact that the Braves just, yeah, they didn't hit. I mean, they just, like the Dodgers, they did not hit. It was actually very similar numbers. Each of them scored two runs per game on the dot. One in three games, one in four. The slash lines were essentially the same, like Dodgers 177, 248, 250 with one homer. Braves 186, 255-264 with three homers. Like they just had offensive outages. They're scoring two runs a game.

Like these offenses that, you know, one of them was possibly arguably the best ever, at least, you know, in the DH era or not accounting for pitcher hitting. And then the Dodgers, no slouches themselves. And yeah, the bats just kind of disappeared. And it's like the big bats too, right? I mean, just total outage for the big hitters, the big position players of this season. They just didn't show up. I don't think it means anything except that it's very inopportune timing for those players and those teams. And that's a big part of the

reason why they're out of the playoffs. I don't want to make anybody feel bad, but it is deeply funny that the Diamondbacks hit more home runs than the Dodgers and Braves combined in this postseason. And granted, they had an extra round, right? But still, it is very strange that that would be true because I would have, why does anyone bet on sports, Ben? I have no idea. You know, stuff like that happens and you're like, why do you think this is going to end well? It seems like it often doesn't but yeah it's it's wild how that they had like you're right like

four points at wrc plus separating them and let me tell you how much lower than 100 that number ended up being for both of these teams my god cram cram had the stats for that foursome, probably the top four finishers in the NL MVP race, Acuna Betts, Freeman, Olsen, combined 137-241-157 in the playoffs with the only extra base hit, one Acuna double in 51 at-bats between them. They just didn't show up. And so their teams exited quickly. I mean, this is what happens occasionally. So I've seen all sorts of attempts, efforts to make it mean something. And there might be things on the margin. Like, I don't think the Braves obviously covered themselves in glory on the field or off the field with their, the way they handled the RCA thing or some of the grumbling about the rest and the playoff format and all that. I know Spencer Strider, he said the people trying to use the playoff format to make an

excuse for the results they don't like are not confronting the real issue. You're in control of your focus, your competitiveness, your energy. If having five days means you can't make the adjustment, you have nobody to blame but yourself, which I think is a fine sentiment. I wouldn't even blame them for the rest thing. I would just say bad luck. Lousy luck. Try again next time.

But that's just how it happens. So like the Braves, I don't think they responded to it particularly well, like temperamentally or at least in the things that they said. But I don't think that really was why they didn't do well. If anything, it's the other way around. They weren't playing well. They were frustrated about it. And so they fented that, right? Yes.

That's just, you know, they could have handled that better. But if they had played better, then they probably would have handled it better or they wouldn't have had to handle it at all. Exactly. I think that you have pointed the causal arrow in the right direction there, that a lot of this is people being frustrated that things are just not going the way that they want or expect. And now they have an offseason to think about that. So that was at least a close game where the losing team had chances to even it up at the end. There wasn't really back and forth or a lot of lead changes or anything, but it was still a low scoring game, which seems to be something of a trend, right? I mean, OK, so we have all these upsets to differing degrees to the extent that there is

such a thing as a playoff upset. The underdogs did win for the most part, at least in this series and in the Dodgers Diamondback series. I think the Orioles Rangers are probably pretty close despite the win totals differing. But what we've seen is that those underdogs, if you want to call them that, they didn't just squeak by. They totally trounced the favorites here, right? And so the teams with the five best records are out, and none of them really even came that close. So Atlanta, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Tampa Bay, Milwaukee, they went 1-13 combined in the playoffs, and they were outscored 82 to 31.

They were out-homered 31 to 8. They were used to wipe the floor. Like that was what they just were not that competitive. We're not that far from just like the minimum number of games. Usually you see some series go a little longer, I mean, usually you see some series go a little longer, like have a two-way elimination winner-take-all game at some point here, please. Right. So hopefully that's what I'd like to see in the three remaining series, that they actually go deep and are well contended and back and forth and everything.

But it's not just that. I guess it's also that it's been quite low scoring. I guess it's largely the teams that have lost have been the ones not scoring. But also, it's just not that high scoring in general. Like, yeah, Joshian had this stat in his newsletter that, OK, so like just looking at the final four here, the four teams combined for two losses and have a composite playoff record of 18 and two with a plus 67 run differential. The four teams in the championship series, they're giving up 2.3 runs a game. So that is really ridiculous given the quality of the offenses that we're talking about here. And I really don't know what it means, if anything. There was a FanCrafts post about that today, right?

About whether like if pitching is winning or defense is winning in the postseason now, like whether, you know, pitchers have just gotten so good or defenses or whatever it is, you know, pitchers have just gotten so good or defenses or whatever it is like post wildcard. I guess it's it's gotten more so that like pitcher usage obviously has changed dramatically in recent years. And so we're just seeing teams yank starters so early and just such deep pull pens and using them early and often. And perhaps the defenses are just kind of getting an upper hand bit by bit here. You know, for all we know, like we might just see offensive explosions in the ALCS and the World Series and the NLCS. And then we won't be talking about this anymore. But you would think that just with the me that when the, just intuitively,

that when the series get longer, that you might see things shift around because your ability to deploy your very best guys multiple times is a little different than it is in like a three or five game series so maybe we would see an uptick once we get to seven game series does that seem like a thing that could be real like that seems like a thing that could be real maybe yeah maybe i don't know but i also think that you're still gonna end up with like your very best guys going more often you're getting guys pulled when they have a bad start so you're seeing the best bullpen arms come in um sometimes earlier yeah it's it's tricky it's a a sticky wicket i don't know how you really change the incentives around it but i don't know that you need to because like i don't know pitching matchups are fun like duels are fun in the postseason are you yeah I'm okay with it.

I'm not mad. Don't tell anyone I was mad. He found that since the wildcard era started and since we started seeing all these quick hooks and everything, the divide between postseason and regular season WRC plus has been 19 points before it was merely 14 points. So there does seem to be maybe a little bit of a difference there potentially. I guess you sort of expect that people are really, really living their best lives with these fan crafts, post-season leaderboards. I'm going to, I'm going to use

that for a stat blast today. Like what a luxury to have that. I, people should just be bowing and praising David Appelman or signing up for FanCrafts memberships to support the availability. I guess he'd probably prefer FanCrafts memberships to bowing and praise. He'd be fine with that too. I think he'd prefer

the membership and we should be sure to shout out Sean Dolinar too. what a duo you know real top of the rotation uh one two up there yeah yeah all right so we have matchups here we have the all texas matchup and we have now a philly's diamond matchup, just as we all expected. Suspected. Yeah, we were like, where's the smart money? It's the first time in a full season that all four, the final four, had 90 or fewer wins in the regular season. It's the fewest combined wins, period, by those four final remaining teams. So, yeah, it's not exactly who we expected to be there, except, I guess, for the Astros, who are just always there.

We should just, the A in ALCS just stands for Astros now. Like. We should just, just, just, the A in ALCS just stands for Astros now. Like that's, we should just rebrand it. I mean, they kind of own. You're going to get emails. And I say you,

you're going to get emails. They're going to go to you. I'm going to ignore every single one of them. I mean, look, they basically have set up a residency

in the ALCS at this point. They're like an artist that does a Vegas residency and they do some shows at the Bellagio or the Sphere these days or wherever it is. And you can go see them once or you can go back and see them years later. Hey, I saw them here years ago and they're still here playing. And that is the asterisk in the ALCS these days. Ben, I don't know about the sphere. Like, when did that happen?

I missed the sphere. Very recently. Was there discourse and dialogue about the sphere? What do people think of the sphere? Where is it? What is it? What is it, Ben? It's in Vegas.

It's a music performance venue, And it's like a big bubble. And they can project all sorts of stuff. Stuff on the outside, right? Yeah. And also on the inside. So you can have all sorts of panoramic whatever it is. Oh, that sounds cool. That's the sphere.

Yeah. We should play a baseball game in the sphere. They should play a baseball game in the sphere. Have they made the sphere look like the Death Star yet? Has anyone done that? You'd think. That would be kind of like the first thing. That'd be like the test pattern that you'd use, but I don't know. But if there were a baseball game, then you could make the sphere a baseball and it would be perfect. Yeah, much to consider.

So which of these series, I guess you will be potentially attending, but aside from that that which are you more excited for or more intrigued by i feel like the astros rangers series is much more evenly matched and so i don't want to denigrate the arizona diamondbacks but i feel like the possibility exists for that to get at hand particularly since uh things will start in Philly. It seems quite possible that they could meet with some bad fates. I bet they will be so tight-lipped about Bryce Harper, though. They're just going to say only nice things about him and then see what that does.

It's sort of a nice, natural experiment. If I'm the D-backs, I'm like, okay, we're going to say that his hair is lustrous. It seems like a good dad, you know, like they're just going to be like really nice about him. And then he'll be like, what is this? I can't, I couldn't possibly perform because I've- How do I use this as motivation? Just been complimented the whole time. But I think that things in Texas feel like they might be on firmer footing. I do worry for the Rangers bullpen when having to deal with that offense. But I'm excited for the potential of a Scherzer-Verlander tilt at some point. Like that seems quite fun. I've really enjoyed watching Jordan Montgomery pitch this postseason. And so I look forward to that. But yeah, I don't know. We talked about this when we had a couple of them in the divisional round. But like, I really like division opponents meeting in the postseason. I think it adds a little something to it. There's extra juice there. And so I am happy that we get one of those in the the championship series round

it'll be interesting to watch how does arizona you know we said that the the defense is is better for the phillies and obviously real muto is is great but like how do they think about base running like i'm excited to see that piece of it i am very nervous for brandon fought having to face that phillies lineup i feel agita for the young man already but and like the bullpen we haven't had a you know the thing about the d-backs winning so much is that we haven't had like a d-backs bullpen meltdown in the postseason yet and i i swear it's in there man like i know that they've pitched so much better. And I know that next week, Chris Gilligan is going to write specifically about their bullpen because he is also like, hey, what's going on? But it's in there, Ben.

It's in you. It's right there for them. And the Rangers too. When is that meltdown going to happen? Come on. We've been waiting. Yeah. And so, you know, this is the virtue. And I do see it as a virtue of the longer series is that it does change some of the sort of baseline managerial calculus for usage. I mean, it's not like we are reverting back to what you would see in the regular season, but it feels like they should all be seven games because i do think it would make it look more familiar than than postseason baseball tends to because the odds that you're going to be able to avoid using some of the worst arms in your pen at all seems quite low you know and um that's good because then we get more runs i i this is i don't know

if it's a take or a prediction but i just wonder i wonder we're going to see more runs. I don't know if it's a take or a prediction, but I just wonder. I wonder if we're going to see more runs. We almost have to see more than we've seen to this point, but I also like that there's a lot of uncertainty about the Rangers' staff and their rotation as we speak, at least.

It's like, okay, are we going to see Scherzer and Gray? In what capacity? How good are they going to be? Multiple times? Yes or no? Who could say? I'm afraid it matters. As Dan Szymborski mentioned when he ran a Zips projection for this, like the projection, either way, the Astros are favored over the Rangers by Zips.

But if you give them Scherzer and Gray versus neither, then that like halves the Astero's advantage, essentially, you know, it goes from like 59-40 to 56-44 or something like that, right? And that's, of course, you know, the, I don't know if Zips factors in exactly like their particular ailments and their recent absences. It may. I'm always impressed by what Zips does consider. But who knows exactly what state they will be in after the layoff and after injuries and all the rest. So who knows? So I kind of like that because like once you start getting to the later rounds of the playoffs,

it's a little harder to come up with new things to say about these teams because baseball is not the best sport when it comes to like team versus team analysis or like matchup specific analysis. Yeah, you can talk about this team has done well against this type of pitch or this velocity. Who knows exactly how predictive that is? Or maybe one team, you know, the Astros don't have lefty relievers or whatever, but like all their righty relievers are effective. You can go into here's a spot in the lineup where they have a bunch of guys who are vulnerable to bringing in a specialist. You know, you can kind of forecast that stuff. But the X's and O's of one baseball team versus another, not quite as complex and exploitable probably as with basketball or football or

something, right? So once you get into these later rounds, it's like, well, we've talked about these teams. It's sort of the same team. And now they're just playing this other team that we've been watching and talking about. But it's kind of fun, I guess, when you suddenly get reinforcements, like the cavalry arrives mid-playoffs made it through with this diminished rotation and and now maybe scherzer and gray are here to save the day not that they've needed their day to be saved thus far so who knows maybe they will like pitch better than expected when they were shorthanded and pitch worse than expected when they are longer handed anyway but it's kind of fun that they're giving us a different look, at least,

as spectators than we've gotten from them thus far. I meant to mention, by the way, that we were emailed by a listener, Rob, who pointed us to Matt Gelb's piece in The Athletic because we got another instance of players predicting home runs with a prop. So we talked a lot about the Cardinals hamburger phone this year. And the Phillies have their own thing here. So this is talking about the Bryce Harper homers in game three, I guess. And Zach Wheeler saying, we knew what was going to happen. I think everybody kind of knew there was a feeling, Matt writes, in the bullpen, the Phillies relievers play a game. Every pitcher can throw their hat down once a game, the Phillies relievers play a game. Every pitcher can throw

their hat down once a game, once a game to call a homer. Hoffman tossed his hat in the first inning when Kyle Schwarber let off. Nope. Then in the third, Harper stepped to the plate. There were three hats on the ground, Hoffman said, waiting for that homer. Ryan Kirkering, Christopher Sanchez, and Gregory Soto had tossed theirs. Now Hoffman owes them. So, yeah, one hat throw a game. I like that. I like that you have to pick your spots. Yeah.

I wonder if it leads to any animus between the position players and the pitchers. Because, like, do you get worked up if a guy never picks you to have? Right. Yeah, I mean, I guess if it's in the bullpen, because with the hamburger phone, it was like in the dugout, right? And so in theory, at least you could see that when you're at the plate or when you're in the dugout. But if it's in the bullpen, then I guess you're not going to be able to see who has their hat on the ground.

So it can be kind of discreet. I bet that there is careful accounting going on out there though i bet if a if a hitter wants to know i bet he can find out yeah yeah i'd be more impressed if it if it somehow took into account the odds like the the likelihood of the the batter hitting a home run you know if if you predict that harper or schwarber is going to hit a home run will schwarber hits home runs more often than almost anyone else. Right. So, yeah, he's still unlikely to in any particular plate appearance.

But, like, you know, are you going to be predicting the Johan Rojas homer? Right. I don't know why I'm picking on Johan Rojas. I'm also celebrating his defense. But someone who doesn't hit so many home runs, right? Even, like, is Bryson Stott getting hat throws? Is Brandon Marsh getting hat throws? Like, you know, those guys were offensive contributors, but not huge homer threats.

So I just I'd like to see if they're getting represented here, too, if there's like a degree of difficulty taken into account. Because you could just throw your hat with Schwarber every game and you know you're going to be right like a third of the time or something you produce I mean I guess you can only do it once a game so yeah you have to pick the plate appearance not just the game but but still you know you pick someone who hits a lot of homers you're going to be right more often yeah I think that the odds are definitely in your favor in that regard. So, yeah, they should definitely – they should, like, home run adjust the – we're such nerds, Ben. My God. Like, excuse me.

I'm pushing up fake glasses. I think that you are not adequately – yeah. You know what hasn't been an issue at all this postseason? The pitch clock. It hasn't been a problem whatsoever right like yep cram messaged me we were watching philly's braves and it was during the acuna plate appearance and that was super tense and he was like you know what is what is not robbing any of the tension from this moment the pitch clock yeah like has it sapped one bit of luster for you?

Like, there was some hand-wringing. I mean, players obviously lobbied to have the pitch clock either suspended or loosened. Lengthened, yeah. They wanted longer for both bases empty and, I think, men on for that. Yeah, just a little more laxx at least, a little leeway. And Manfred

in MLB was like, no, this is working pretty well. Let's just stick with this. And I was in favor of sticking with what was working and other than the zombie runner where I'm happy to get rid of it whenever I can. I would prefer consistency generally when we get

to the postseason. So I was in favor of keeping it. There were people who made the case even at the start of the season. People were going back and they were watching like Kirk Gibson's bad and like taking a stopwatch to it. And I think mostly people found I remember David Schoenfeld did this at ESPN. Mostly people found that there would not actually have been pitch clock violations for some of those moments, maybe because some of them came from earlier eras when games tended to be speedier anyway. But there weren't really that many cases where we would have trimmed off, just lopped off those sweet, sweet seconds of suspense. And I always thought, like, even if it's kind of of compressed like it'll still be just as intense maybe it'll be more intense I saw the argument like hey let's let's let this linger like yeah

in a meaningless game in May or it's August and teams are out of it and it's hot and it just feels like it's dragging then we love the pitch clock but in October where it really matters and this pitch is gonna things are gonna swing on on, this will be the outcome of the season. Then we want to let that moment breathe, right? So I saw the argument, but I just, in practice, again, like the games have not been that great for the most part yet, but when they have been good, they've just been as good as ever. Like I'm not concerned at all that we're going to be robbed of enjoyment of great moments that are to come in the next couple weeks yeah i don't i'm not um particularly concerned about that now i'm thinking about that cranberry

song linger oh yeah it's a good song uh lovely cranberries i go i go whole games without thinking about the pitch clock. Oh, yeah. Like, even one time. I go entire games. And, you know, you can see it at certain points on the broadcast. Like, you're going to see it. And I still don't think about it at all. I think I'm just so loathe to hand it to them.

But I got to hand it to them. Like, it's good, Ben. It's good. It hasn't felt hurried. It hasn't been rushed. We still had some long games. It's good. It's fine. I just don't think about it. I just don't even think about it. No, me neither. I'm happy not to think about it at this time of year. Yeah. All right. Are there any other factors that we need to break down for these CSs? Again, people have been seeing these teams, I guess, unless they're planning to watch them in this round, then most likely they've paid attention to these previous rounds.

So they don't need us to tell them who is on the rosters necessarily, unless it's Scherzer and Gray who were not on the rosters previously. It's Scherzer and Gray who were not on the rosters previously. But look, I will obviously be curious to see if the Astros continue to just mash and set everyone down and look like they have just solved. It's like two consecutive years now. It's just been upset discourse. It's been throwing up our hands. It's been wondering, do we need to do something like existential questioning of the sport and philosophy and randomness? And is

this what we want the playoffs to be? And should MLB rethink all of this? And I'm always here for those discussions. And meanwhile, the Astros are like, I don't know what you guys are talking about. We're just over here taking care of business. We're not having any issues like days

off or you know randomness a small sample yeah that's that's a you problem we're over here making the alcs seven straight seasons so i mean sitting there going like sounds like a skill issue to me yeah yeah i mean i do think like the astros have been kind of a well-constructed playoff team. I don't think that's why they have made it to seven straight ALCSs and other teams have shorted out. But I do think in the sense that like they've often been a very good pitching team and they often have like an impressive top of the rotation and a deep back of the bullpen. And then their lineups really throughout their run, I mean, since the sign stealing era and since then, they have often had just a really well-balanced lineup where they hit for power and they also hit for contact. They just hit. They hit in all the ways that you just hit they hit they hit in all

the ways that in every facet yeah and so like they don't strike out a lot and yet they also i mean you know you have like jordan and al tuve and tucker and bregman all these guys who like for the most part brantley right like they're mostly not super high strikeout guys they just it's the best of both worlds. And so I know there have been theories in the past about, well, contact hitters are maybe a bit more resistant to high velocity than others, or, you know, there's some virtue to putting the ball in play. And then we know in general, being more reliant on home runs tends to be a small factor in your favor. And they're checking all the boxes.

Whatever your theory of how to win in the playoffs is, the Astros are like, yeah, we do that. So I guess that's the way to win in the playoffs is to be pretty good at everything generally year in and year out. Now, will they have the good sense to only say nice things about Bryce Harper? Should they defeat the Rangers and the Phillies defeat the D-backs and they advance? Can we briefly, I don't know why I'm making you do this now. Maybe I'll wait. Do you want to rank your preferred World Series matchups now or would you prefer to do that prior to the World Series actually starting? Yeah, I mean, well, when it's actually starting, then I guess we won't have any say in the matter.

Not that we have any say in the matter now, but we can wish at least. So of the final four, which two do I want to meet in the World Series? Well, not the Astros. Well, not the Astros. Not because I'm sore at them for sign stealing or anything, just because we've seen that show. It's a good show. Yeah. Yeah, just a little bit of variety. Yes. So, Rangers, and then, gosh, Phillies and Diamondbacks. I mean, on the one hand, we did just see the Phillies World Series show last year, but I kind of want to see that show again.

And no shot at the Diamondbacks, but there's some limit to my appetite for non-successful regular season teams winning the World Series. I accept that that's how it is. And there's a stance that you could lean into that. You could embrace that. You could say, yeah, what better illustration of the randomness of the playoffs than to have the 84 win, negative run differential, D-backs win. And so in a sense, that would send a message that would just be like, yep, this is what the playoffs are. Take it or leave it. Like it or loathe it.

It's random. You just you have to play well for a month and that's who wins. And any team that makes it to the tournament is good enough to do that. So actually, Joshi and I thought had a good illustration of that in his most recent newsletter where he's talking about all the playoff narratives and this is why that team didn't win, etc. why that team didn't win, et cetera. And he said, you know, if you compress all of the team's records, if you just take all of their winning percentages in the regular season

and compress them down to five games, every single team in the playoffs, including as well as a few teams on the margins that just missed the playoffs, would be three and two. Like that's what they all are. Like there's no team that would even be, you know, two and three, obviously two and three and two. That's what they all are. There's no team that would even be two and three, obviously two and three, or four and one.

They're all three and two, their winning percentages over a five-game series because there's just not enough separation. They're all decent teams, at least, and it's just not enough games. So, yeah, if you want to make that case to someone and just point and say, yeah, this is the essence of the baseball playoffs would be the Diamondbacks winning maybe. But there is a part of me that does like to see a team that did it all year rewarded.

And if they did enough, they did enough to get here. But, yeah, I think I'd like to see a team that was at least a little more successful and the Diamondbacks seem like they'll be back probably like I don't have I guess the same confidence in the Diamondbacks as I have in like oh the Orioles will be back for sure right or like the Braves will be back yeah they've been there for a while already but like the Diamondbacks have enough young up-and-comers to think that're going to get other cracks and maybe with a more accomplished regular season team. So I guess I want to see Rangers Phillies. I guess that's what I'm saying here.

That will be that would be very fun. I also am ready for a new entrant from the American League. And so I think I'd prefer the Rangers. I am kind of indifferent between the D-backs and the Phillies because I really enjoy watching that Phillies team. And selfishly, like, it would be cool to get to cover a World Series game. Right. Which, you know.

Yeah. Yeah. Fangraphs. Heavy representation in the NL in terms of in-person coverage this year. Very little in the AL now. Bauman was like, oh, I guess I should cancel my hotel reservationsator not being there is really good. It's quite something. That crowd and that park, there's something about that. I'm not impugning anyone else's attendance or ballpark, but like that crowd is just, it's kind of different, right? I get into those games more, I think, just because the Phillies fans are so into it and so loud that it's more fun for me to watch.

Not that I'm saying, like, it's a graveyard at Chase or anything, but, you know, there's something about Philly that it's just, it's a good atmosphere for watching either in person or from afar. It's its own thing, you know, so.

Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Looking forward to it. Yeah. All right. I have to wrap up with a stat blast. I have maybe one email here that I want to share with people because I thought this was kind of fascinating even though it's not really specifically playoff related but i got a question we got a question about why we say balls and strikes instead of strikes and balls yeah this was really interesting so this is from justin patreon supporter he said was watching philly's braves with my not so baseball knowledgeable brother

and he asked a question that i immediately had to send over to y'all. Why do we list balls before strikes? I had no good answer for him. He said strikes are what matters more to get someone out. Why wouldn't we count those first? I'm curious to hear your thoughts. who is not a quote-unquote subject matter expert or not someone who is just imbibed baseball and been steeped in the sport their entire life who will ask a question that will just like rock you back on your heels for a second and say, I never thought to question that because it's always been that way. It was always that way. I just grew up with it. It's just received wisdom. You almost need someone to come in with clear eyes as an adult when when you can question those things and be like why do they do it that way although sometimes it's like a out of the mouths of babes kind of question too it's like a kid will just uh just stun you for a second and ask some some obvious thing that you always just took for granted but this question why we say balls and strikes and not strikes and balls?

So I figured this went back a ways. So I checked with Richard Hershberger, historian, former pass blaster for Effectively Wild. And at first, he was sort of stumped, it seemed. He had one theory, which is umpire indicators. So you know the thing that umpires will, or, you know, coaches will have them for like pitch counts and they'll click them or umpires will, will have them something in their pocket to kind of keep track of, of balls and strikes. And he went back to find, you know, they were in use in some way by the early 1880s at least. And so he sent me an ad from the 1887 Spalding Guide, which I will link to for everyone. And even then, it's Spalding's Patent Celluloid Umpire Indicator. And it had balls and

strikes even then. So balls were listed first and then strikes. And so Richard, at first, he thought, well, maybe it's because of this. Maybe these devices were influential and that kind of set the standard. But then that kind of just sends the question back a bit. Well, why did they manufacture them that way? And so at that point, he sort of threw up his hands and he said, well, maybe there isn't really an answer. It was just it had to be one or the other. And it just happened that it was this way, you know, Americans drive on the right and Brits drive on the left. And it just happened that way. Right. And, and also one of the interesting things is that in Japan, I believe

they do it the other way or did until recently they do strikes and balls because I think they, they switched in an official capacity fairly recently because I found a piece in the Japan Times from 2010 where it said Japanese baseball umpires decided Monday to change the order in which they call the count in the upcoming season as used in the major leagues and international tournaments. Until now, in Japan, a full count was 2-3 instead of 3-2, right? So they did that partly because, they said, the head of the Nippon professional baseball empire said it was because there were an increasing number of international game appearances by Japanese professional players. And so because of that, they were playing in the 3-in-2 instead of the 2-in-3. And so sometimes they will change things to sort of follow MLB's example. But I assume if that was officially changed only 13 years ago,

that probably it's still kind of colloquially maybe done the other way, or at least people are familiar with it being done the other way. So that might suggest, well, it's still kind of colloquially maybe done the other way or at least people are familiar with it being done the other way. So that might suggest, well, it's just sort of arbitrary. You know, someone just started doing it that way. Or Richard explained like, well, maybe it's because, you know, traditional Japanese writing like it's in columns and you read top to bottom and you start with the rightmost and you work your way left. And maybe that would actually support, you know, if you like read the other way around, then maybe it's sort of the same except that you read differently there. Anyway, he didn't have a set answer for sure. But then I wondered, well, what about the rulebook? Because in the rulebook, if you look up like in the modern rulebook right now, it says balls and strikes.

So it's kind of codified. It's like, you know, the rule that says the umpire's duties shall be to, among other things, call and count balls and strikes, not strikes and balls. So I wondered, well, maybe it started with the rulebook saying balls and strikes instead of strikes and balls. And so that just became convention. Or then again, it could be that the rulebook said it that way because it already was convention. Anyway, that prompted Richard to then look at old rulebooks to see if it was already set as balls and strikes by then. And he found, you made me look back further and have blown away my umpire indicators theory.

I dived into the rules to find the earliest use of balls and strikes. It is in the 1883 rules, which amend the earlier rule on batting out of order. The earlier version allowed the correct batter to replace the one batting out of order any time before hitting a fair ball. The 1883 rule adds the provision that when the correct batter to replace the one batting out of order any time before hitting a fair ball, the 1883 rule adds the provision that when the correct batter steps up, the balls and strikes will be counted in the time at bat of the proper batsman. I'm sure we can imagine the

scenario leading up to this amendment over the decades since. Balls and strikes have been added to various other rules. I find no examples of strikes and balls. He says, I next turned to newspapers.com. I found multiple examples of both forms in the 1860s. Oh. While strikes and balls is very rare after that. And balls and strikes enjoys increasing popularity over the decades. And if you look at Google's Ngram viewer to see how it appeared in print over the years, you see at the beginning,

there's like a little few blips of both maybe, and then it diverges dramatically and rapidly. So balls and strikes becomes way more popular than strikes and balls. So Richard says, what is going on here? It might just be randomly how it worked out. So they were kind of testing it out in the 1860s. Some people said balls and strikes, others said strikes and balls, and then one went out. But he proposes that maybe there's a phonological explanation. So he says, and this was speculation, but his understanding is that there is a standard phenomenon of word pairs like fiddle, faddle, or topsy-turvy. It's never faddle, fiddle, or turvy, topsy, right? So maybe balls and strikes could fall under that umbrella. And he copied, we're bringing in the big guns here, the linguistic

big guns and other resources. He copied Ben Zimmer, who writes about language for the Wall Street Journal. And he found that word pairs like balls and strikes are known as irreversible binomials or linguistic freezes. And he says, Richard is right that there's some phonological constraints that often dictate the order of the terms in a frozen binomial. One of the constraints is that the term with the shorter vowel tends to come before the one with the longer vowel. Strikes has a diphthong in it, so that's a longer vowel. See also black and white, man and wife, read and write, and shirt and tie, which all have the same long I diphthong in the second element. So he is supporting the theory. So basically, Richard says, to summarize,

it is plausible that early on both orders were used, there being no semantic constraint favoring one or the other, but that the phonological constraint tended to favor balls and strikes. And so this eventually became universal as a fixed expression. And Ben said that sounded right to him. So if someone has another theory, let me know. But that sounds like it does feel easier to say balls and strikes than strikes and balls. That could just be because we're conditioned to say it that way. Yeah. But I guess it's not just that.

So that might be the hidden history of why we say balls and strikes. So I am curious, any of our Japanese speaking listeners out there, if you have any further insight into this, whether there's something similar with how you say balls and strikes and strikes and balls in Japanese, whether one is easier to say than the other or anything that might inform that. Because I was coming up with all kinds of theories like, well, you can have more balls, like the maximum number of balls is higher than the maximum number of strikes.

So like maybe it makes sense to list the bigger, potentially bigger number first. But yeah, no, I find this pretty plausible. A lot of this stuff just evolved. It wasn't handed down on a clay tablet or Doc Adams decreed that it would be this forevermore Henry Chadwick or something. Like sometimes there is some influential figure who just sort of laid down the law and proselytized and advocated and persuaded everyone to do it. But sometimes it just sort of happened almost accidentally, but maybe not accidentally sort of happened almost accidentally,

but maybe not accidentally. Maybe there's this hidden figure that influences us to say balls and strikes instead of strikes and balls. Good question, Justin. Good question. I hadn't considered that and I had no answer, but now I do.

Is it the right answer? I don't know, but I'd like to think so. All right. So I promised the people a stat blast. in amazing ways. Here's to Daystablast. Meg had to go because she wanted to go to a good Arizona Fall League matchup

and who am I to stand in the way of a good Arizona Fall League matchup. And so I was going to do the stat blast solo, except that this particular stat blast has sort of a participatory element. So I couldn't really do it solo unless I did voices and pretended to quiz myself and did a little skit, which I don't think anyone would enjoy. And maybe it's for the best because Meg would have absolutely hated the exercise that I wanted to for this stat blast. So maybe I've spared her.

I think already on this episode, I have invoked the name of my colleague and pal at The Ringer, Zach Cram, three times referencing things he said or things he wrote. And if you say the name Zach Cram three times, he will appear on your podcast. And here he is, Zach Cram. Hello, Zach. I don't know if that's the most flattering comparison you could have made. I guess not. No. I don't know if your ears were burning, but I was talking all about you, and now I'm talking to you. So we've spoken it into existence. And actually, I was going to mention you again because you prompted sort of a mini stat blast, a stat blast

before the stat blast here, because you sent me a question the other day. And then I posed that question to frequent stat blast consultant Ryan Nelson. Would you care to share the question that you asked? Yeah, I noticed that Byron Buxton came up for a key pinch hitting situation in the Twins' last gasp against Houston, and he popped out, if I recall correctly, which came after Jesse Winker coming up in a couple key pinch hitting situations for Milwaukee a week ago, and he did not look particularly good in either of those at-bats. And what both of those players had in common is they hadn't played for several months. They were coming back from injury and came back thrust right into the center of an important playoff moment. The same happened with Matt Carpenter for the Yankees last year, where he struck out in something like 75% of his playoff plate appearances after a really miraculous half season with New York. And I was curious how often players come back from long injury absences in the playoffs and how well they do. Like sometimes it works out, Kyle Schwarber notably in the 2016

World Series. But I was curious what the sample size was and overall performance was for that kind of player throughout baseball history. Yeah, well, the sample is pretty small. And it's actually smaller than I told you it was when I first gave you the answer that Ryan gave me, because I realized that some of those players were from 1918, like a suspiciously high number of them were from 1918. And then I remembered that the season ended early that year because of World War I, which means that they played the World Series in September, and the regular season ended at the very beginning of September, and so no regular season appearances in September or after August 31st, at least. And then at least one appearance in

the postseason, which seems like it should capture everyone. And it's just not a lot of guys. So it's actually 24 players prior to this season, at least according to Ryan's Retro Sheet searching, 19 batters and five pitchers. However, it does sort of support your suspicion here that these guys don't do well. If you look at the hitters, 19 hitters, there's 110 points of OPS difference collectively between what they did in the regular season and what they did in the postseason. So that is a big drop off. I guess the rest of the stat blast is actually going to be about differences between the regular season and the postseason. But that's a big difference. That is a much higher than average drop. And then the five pitchers, which is just a minuscule sample,

but there was, I think, a 0.1 ERA difference there. So it does seem like they do worse, but it just doesn't happen a whole lot. I guess I got Carpenter, I got Pache, I got Johan Camargo, I've got Travis Jankowski, Lurie Garcia, Yandy Diaz did it, Zach Collins, Aaron Hicks. So it has, it's happened, I guess, more often in recent years, probably just because there are more playoffs and more teams, but it hasn't gone great, I guess, on the whole. The first instance other than 1918 that I have here is Pinch Thomas in 1920.

Was he a pinch hitter? I think he was. He was a catcher primarily, but he did pinch hit sometimes, and he did better as a pinch hitter than he did as a catcher offensively, with the pinch hit penalty and all. And apparently he was nicknamed Pinch because he was thought to be good at pinch hitting. So it would have been a better coincidence if he had just been named or nicknamed Pinch already and then he happened to be a good pincher.

But as you might suspect, it was the other way around. Anyway, we've all been talking about a layoff of like four days. So this is like, you're complaining about a layoff of four days. I've been out for a month or more. And also maybe not only am I rusty, but perhaps I'm not fully healthy or I missed a lot of time for some reason. And now I'm coming back from some injury. So for multiple reasons, I guess this is maybe not the best idea. Am I remembering correctly that Schwarber played a bit in the Arizona Fall League in 2016 as a way to get some live pitching before the World Series? I think, yeah, because that's the problem, or one of the problems with trying to do that

is that you can't really get into games otherwise. It's not like you can go on a minor league rehab assignment because that's already done. And yeah, he played, it looks like, two games in the Arizona Fall League that year. And he went 1-4-6. And that one was a double. And then I guess that was it.

He was ready. He was ready to face Andrew Miller and Corey Kluber in the World Series. Yeah, just get in there. I mean, I guess he was in retrospect. But yeah, you know, with all the newfangled pitching machines they have these days, no sweat, I guess. And now the real stat blast, which is presented by our sponsor, Tops Now. And these days, your options for Tops Now cards are going to be a little more limited than they are in the regular season because sometimes there's only one game going on. And so all the baseball cards are going to be from that game. So for instance, if I go to Topps.com right now and I look at all the Topps Now cards, I've got my choice of Nick Castellanos and all of the back-to-back home run games that he had, or I could get a Trey Turner, first four-hit postseason game for him, or Matt Strom, who as we talked about, came in, slammed the door, sent them to the NLCS. Or you could just get a Phillies card. It's just all the Phillies. The club advances to the NLCS. So your options are going to be postseason-centric right now with Tops Now. But if you're a Phillies fan, then you've got a wealth of options. So

that's nice. I forget if you're a baseball card collector guy or whether you were. And feel free to be honest. This is not SpawnCon here. I am not, but I would love a Garrett Stubbs overalls Tops Now card. I think that is in the spirit of celebration. Yeah. As the championship series proceed, as the World Series is with us, Tops Now will continue to memorialize anything that happens in those games of note.

So if you're a fan of those teams or you're enjoying those games, check out the offerings at Topps.com. So we are going to do sort of a postseason-centric stat blast here, which, as I said, Meg would have hated because it's kind of a quiz. At least in some cases, I don't really know the answer until I look it up and tell you. But it's putting you on the spot a little bit. This is like a Michael Bauman style exercise. And I think there's some confusion about how the postseason differs

from the regular season, statistically speaking. And I thought we could maybe clear that up by just looking at how it's different. So I looked up all the stats using the handy dandy new Fangraphs postseason leaderboard, which I cannot get enough of. And that made it very easy for me to get the league wide stats for regular seasons since 2012 and postseasons since 2012, excluding 2020, as I usually do. And I just use 2012 because, you know, it's fairly recent and postseason usage has changed. And also because it was the first year of the second wildcard in each league, maybe watered down the competition a little bit. So I've just got a bunch of statistical categories here, and I will tell you each one. And then you will tell me whether you think these are

all rate stats whether you think it's higher or lower in the postseason than the regular season and then maybe together we can kind of puzzle out the results if anything surprises us to be clear this is not like a you know only filtering players who actually appeared in the postseason thing this is just the entire right league in the regular season versus the entire league in the postseason yes yes so yeah that's something to to take into account too obviously so this is just postseason it's like the postseason scoring environment but obviously the postseason scoring environment only includes the good teams, or at least the good enough teams, the mediocre teams that just squeezed in and also some of the

super teams. So yes, that is a good point. But all right. And also, I have weighted, I guess, it's going to be fairly similar each year, but I've weighted by like the number of games or appearances in these stats. So it's sort of a weighted average of this full 10 season sample prior to 2023. Okay. I guess we'll start with a big one here. Just runs per game. Do you think runs per game higher or lower in the postseason than the regular season? This might give away my strategy for a lot of these, my on-the-spot strategy for a lot of these questions, but I am going to guess for runs per game and probably most other offensive categories that they decrease in the postseason. That is true for runs per game. And this was partly prompted because I saw some

Twitter discussion of postseason stats the other day, and someone was saying that they expected scoring to be higher because all the teams are better, which makes a certain sort of sense, I guess, except that it's not just the offensive parts of the teams are better, but also the defensive parts of the teams are better, right? So the regular season runs per game average per team 4.40 and postseason same span 3.93 so that's a lot it is yeah it's fairly significant i didn't do a percentage decrease here but yeah that's uh that's kind of a lot and it makes sense right i mean not only do you have, you do have better offenses, but you also have better pitching staffs and better defenses. And then while you've got colder weather, right? And you also have more aggressive tactics, defensive substitutions, yanking pitchers, as Meg and I

talked about earlier in the episode. You know, I guess you've also got like more pinch hitters and that sort of thing. But yeah, especially in recent years, you're pulling out all the stops in the late innings and you're only concentrating those innings with your best pitchers. Whereas with your hitters, there's probably not quite as much, you know, like if you do like what percentage of your innings are pitched by your top X starters or relievers, it's going to go up significantly in the postseason. And if you do, you know, what percentage of your plate appearances are taken by your best batters, it'll go up, but it probably won't go up quite as much, I would imagine. There's only so much you can do. It's a batting order and you need people to play all the positions. All right. Well, some of these will probably be similar then. So let's do home run percentage. Okay. So home runs over plate

appearances. I will guess that also decreases in large part because of the weather. Yeah. So it looks like it does decrease, but just a very, very, very tiny amount, actually. It looks like I have to go out to an extra decimal place. It's 2.9% either way, but it's like 2.93% in the regular season and just dead on 2.9% the postseason. So it actually, it doesn't change that much, which somewhat surprises me, I guess, because as you said, it's colder. But I guess maybe this lends some credence to the idea that it's good to hit home

runs in the postseason, right? Because, you know, we talk about like short sequence offense and long sequence offense, and it's hard to string together a bunch of base hits, but a home run, you could score off a good pitcher with one swing, or if it's Lance Lynn, four swings. So maybe that makes some sense. Like home runs decrease less perhaps than other kinds of offense. There's that research about how teams with higher

Guillen numbers, the percentage of runs they score from home runs, having a good Guillen number is actually good in the playoffs. And those two trends in concert really reaffirm why for me, because if home runs are staying fairly constant, but overall runs are decreasing, I think that means naturally the playoff Guillen number has to be increasing by a fair amount. Yeah. Yeah. And I won't quiz you on this one because it's so similar, but I looked up home runs on contact too. So just like what percentage of home runs on balls put in play, like home runs divided by bats minus strikeouts. And in the regular season, it's 4.3%. And in the postseason, it would appear that it's like a little higher, actually. It's 4.46, like 4.5, 4.45. Yeah, 4.5 if I were to round up. So that's, again, I guess sort of

surprising because you wouldn't expect the ball to carry as well in October weather. But I wonder if it's something to do with like playoff lineups, like maybe they're just home run year hitters on playoff teams than in regular season teams. And so if you put the ball in play, or I don't know, like defenses are better in the postseason. So you're just more incentivized to swing for the fences. I don't know. People trying to be a hero, whatever it is. But yeah, it doesn't look like home runs actually change that much, even though the run scoring does decrease.

OK, walk rate. This one is tricky because I could see factors in both directions right on the one hand i think the presence of better hitters probably matters more here than in runs per game there are you know better pitchers but a lot of those better pitchers particularly the ones that managers are being more aggressive with are wilder see jose alvarado or all this chapman uh you might call them effectively wild in certain circumstances managers are probably more likely if like there's a runner on second and first base is open to be more aggressive with either pitching around or intentionally walking opposing hitters

like harper being walked in the first inning so i will guess that it goes up slightly nailed it yeah wow excellent yeah it's uh again very close so maybe those factors that you mentioned kind of cancel out i think it's like 8.2 percent in both cases but it's like uh 0.817 versus 0.824 or something. So yeah, it does. It goes up slightly. Okay. Strikeout rate.

Up, way up, up, up, up. Yes. Strikeout rate goes from, and again, this is since 2012. So we're going back a decade or so here when strikeout rate wasn't quite as high. And this is just kind of an amalgamation of all those seasons. But over that span, 21.4% in the regular season and 24.2% in the postseason. So, yeah, that's where at least part of your big runs per game decrease is coming from. It's not from the homers.

It's that it's harder to put the ball in play. But when you do put the ball in play, it seems it's not that much harder to hit it over the fence in the postseason. Okay. Hit by pitch rate? Hit by pitch percentage? Ooh. So it's not a stat I think about all that often.

No? Uh-uh. it's not a stat I think about all that often. No? Uh-uh. I would guess that it goes up slightly in part because of the wild pitchers. Maybe I could argue that players would be more likely to try to wear one in the playoffs.

You know, you don't want to wear one in July, but now it's more important to lean into one to take the extra base for the team. So I will say it goes up a bit. It is identical. It doesn't change at all. I guess that was ethicalmactic. But yeah, it doesn't change.

Okay. All right. Stolen bases per game. Stolen bases per game, I would guess, go down just by a function of fewer base runners. I would guess go down just by a function of fewer base runners. Yeah, I don't know why it is because I didn't have like attempt raid or times on base or stolen base opportunities that I could easily calculate here. But it does go down. So it goes from like 0.53 per game to 0.48 per game. So not a big difference. And yeah, I would guess it probably

is just fewer base runners. I wonder whether the attempt rate is higher or lower. Probably on the whole, you're going to have better catchers, but you might also have better base dealers, better base running teams. I don't know. I don't know if base stealing is that well correlated with team success. I know it wasn't this year because I know Neil Payne wrote about that. He was wondering whether the new stolen base step-off rules had helped some teams. And I guess it did, but he found there was basically no clear relationship between your stolen base. I forget whether it was percentage or frequency and team success,

because there are a lot of fast teams that are just not very good. So it's not like a clear, strong correlation there. But yeah, I'm going to guess fewer base runners, probably fewer steals, even if... I would totally buy that there are more pinch runners in the playoffs. True, yeah.

And also, I guess if scoring is lower, you're going to have closer games, right? And that might mean that you want to do a Dave Roberts, like you want to have the big steal if you're sort of playing small ball and trying to scrape across runs and manufacture runs. And yeah, you've got your Terrence Gore types sometimes. But yeah, I guess on the whole, that can't counteract the lack of base runners.

Okay. Well, so I have OPS and WOBA, which I guess are fairly obvious, given what we've already talked about. I would imagine they go down as well. They do indeed. Okay. So OPS in the regular season, that is 727. And during the postseason, it goes all the way down to, wow, 670. Yeah. So that's a pretty steep drop. And then WOBA-wise, that is 315 to 291. So, yeah, I mean, I would guess that that's probably a similar percentage difference to the runs per game drop-off. Makes sense.

Okay. How about BABIP? BABIP. So, this is not affected by strikeout rate. Right. Not affected by home run rate. Right. I guess it would probably go down because of better defenses,

but I don't feel confident about this one. Yeah, that actually appears to be a pretty dramatic drop-off. So regular season, 297. And it looks like postseason, 277. That's a big drop, 20 points. BABIP-wise, that tends not to fluctuate that much. I mean, 277 BABIP, that's like going back to, I don't know, many decades. Like when the BABIP went up in the early mid-90s. Before that, it was maybe down in that range sometimes, but that's actually quite low,

which I guess, yeah, it probably is attributable to you're going to have good defensive teams. This is like the inverse of defensive efficiency, basically. of defensive efficiency, basically. So if you have good defensive teams to start with, and then you have your Johan Rojas' that you're putting in, right? Even if you're not such a great defensive team to begin with, then you put in your defensive subs

when you have a lead. And also, I guess, you know, you have better pitchers too, right? Who are inducing weaker contact to some degree. I mean, not every pitcher has that skill and it's not that pronounced. But on the whole, probably a better pitching staff is more likely to induce softer contact and produce easier defensive opportunities. So, yeah, all right. That's a a bigger drop off than i would have expected i suppose you also don't have any playoff games in chorus field in the sample on that

increase uh if it happened yeah excellent point all right uh well this one is kind of a combination of things we've already talked about so i will just say that the three true outcome rate goes up significantly just uh pretty much exclusively because of the strikeouts. Because as we said, the home run rate and the walk rate don't really budge that much. So the three true outcome rate goes from 32.5% to 35.3 or 4%. All right. three or four percent all right so now we get into some batted ball pitched ball stats here which uh in stat cast terms at least with batted balls that only goes back to the beginning of the stat cast era in 2015 we have pitched tracking stats going back to the beginning of this sample. So how about average exit velocity?

I would guess that average exit velocity goes up a bit because I know the research shows that is more reliant on the batter than the pitcher. And the, you know, when a batter swings and misses, that won't be accounted for here yeah yeah so i yeah the research i've seen it is like when the ball comes in faster it it goes out faster like that old saying like the harder it comes in the harder it goes out that is true but it's mostly the batter that determines the exit velocity like the the velocity of the pitch i think it's if i remember the research right it's like one-sixth of the of the exit velocity is like supplied by the pitch or something like that so i guess that might be why but but yeah you're right so it's not a big difference but it does

go up slightly from an average of 88.4 just to 88.6 so yeah it's something all right barrel rate and this is uh basically when you hit it on the sweet spot hit it exactly the way you want to i guess sweet spot percentage is a different stack as that but you hit it in such a way that it produces the outcome you're looking for in a very high wobah so is that i were less common guess so i'm going to change this answer based on a previous answer uh which is i will guess barrel rate goes up and i'm going to say that because home run rate basically stayed the same but my perception is that the a ball hit the same wouldn't travel quite as far in october because of the weather so for the home run rate to be the same i'm guessing there are probably more well-hit balls oh yeah good deduction and that is correct i don't know if if that is why

it's correct but sounded smart to me. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And this actually, this is somewhat significant, it looks like. It goes up from 6.4% to 7.8%, which on a percentage basis, not a percentage point basis, but a percentage basis, is actually pretty big. I wonder, yeah, maybe, I mean, there are certain hitters who just never, ever hit barrels. They're like almost physically incapable of ever hitting a barrel. And I guess postseason teams are just going to have fewer of those just punch list guys. So I don't know if it's just that postseason teams are just going to have better hitters and they're going to be putting their best hitters out as often as they can, whereas the regular season stats are going to be including not just worse teams, but also

worse players who are filling in on off days and that sort of thing. So yeah, barrel rate goes up. Okay. And then I guess similar hard hit percentage. I think this is stat cast hard hit percentage, Hard hit percentage. I think this is stat cast hard hit percentage, which is like percentage of balls hit 95 or higher or something like that. So that's, I guess, in the same vein as the previous two. So it looks like that goes from regular season 35.6% to 35.9%. So it's small, but it's an increase. All right. Some pitch stats here. Okay. Four-seam fastball percentage, just the percentage of fastballs you throw that are four-seam fastballs.

I watched Lance McCullers close out the 2017 ALCS, so I will guess it goes down. Yeah. Well, let's see. So we've got 35.0% during the regular season, and during the postseason, okay, it actually appears to go up, it looks like. It goes up to 35.9%. That actually, that does sort of surprise me. Huh.

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. You would think, I mean, I guess it's in recent years that like teams have really gone all in on breaking stuff and fewer four-seamers, and that stuff is harder to hit. And you'd think like relievers i mean i don't know relievers are often like two pitch pitchers and that's a fair point they do throw a lot of i mean they throw a lot of sliders and stuff but they also throw a lot of fastballs and four seamers maybe

that's why just more more reliever innings pitched as a percentage could Could be. And then slider percentage is the only other pitch type percentage I have here. I would guess, I mean, maybe slightly tempered by getting the last one wrong, but I would have guessed slider percentage is up at least like 10% in the playoffs. Yeah, I would think so too. That appears not to be the case, actually.

It's, let's see, regular season, I've got 16.5%, and postseason, looks like just 16%. I mean, this is going back to sort of before the real increase in slider percentage, but that does sort of surprise me. I'm trying to think of a reason. Yeah, but what about sweepers, Ben? Are they different pitches? Yeah, I don't know if this is including sweepers or not. Probably not, I guess, right? Because this is, I think, the StatCast classification, which breaks it out separately, maybe? So, hmm, maybe it's because it doesn't account for sweepers. Okay. That sort of surprises me.

This next one does not surprise me. Fastball velocity. As up as can possibly be. Yeah, it's up. So 92.8 in the regular season and 94.1 in the postseason, which is obviously going to be both because you have better pitching staffs who throw harder on the hole, and you've got relievers pitching a higher percentage of innings, and they throw harder, and also because everyone is throwing closer to their max velocity all the time because they're amped up because it's the postseason. And even when it's low leverage, it's still high-ish leverage because it's the playoffs. So everyone is going all out. So yeah, big velocity uptick, which obviously is probably related to the strikeout uptick that we already

talked about. Okay. How about chase rate or O-swing rate? so a percentage of pitches outside the strike zone that you swing at so walk rate if i remember stayed similar if not went up yeah strikeout rate also went up though yes i guess it probably goes up just because of strikeout rate going up but the you know batters are probably stingier at chasing than the average regular season hitter. That is true too. Yeah. But it does go up pretty significantly. So regular season, 27.8% chase rate and post-season 30.0%. Despite the fact that there didn't seem to be a great uptick in sliders specifically, at least. But yeah, you're going to have higher strikeout pitchers and they're going to get more chases

and they're throwing harder than they usually do. Okay. How about swing rate? Just a percentage of pitches that you swing at. I'm going to guess it stays exactly the same. Okay. Well, we have in the regular season 46.6%, and in the postseason 47.4%. So there is a slight increase there. Yeah, I don't know what I would have guessed there because you do have more patient hitters, you would think, but also harder to hold up when you've got good pitchers who are trying to get you to chase. Okay. I guess you did just tell me that the chase rate is higher, so I probably should have factored that information in. Yeah, I mean, I guess that's true.

All right. And zone rate, so just the percentage of pitches thrown in the strike zone. of pitches thrown in the strike zone. I would guess that the zone rate probably is down a little bit, but not by as much as like the chase rate increased. Okay, it is indeed down. So regular season zone rate 51.2%. And in the postseason, we have 49.7%. So yeah, that's significant. So I guess probably it's a function of maybe pitchers who can get you to chase and are enticing you with stuff outside

the strike zone. And probably also just fear, maybe. It's the postseason. The stakes are high. The games are close. And as we have covered, it's still a fairly home run friendly environment. And so you're always going to be worried that someone's going to hit that big homer and equalize the score. So you're staying away, I guess, would be one reason at least. All right. This one no longer applies or doesn't apply to the extent that it used to, but pace.

So time between pitches. Memories of Pedro Baez running through my head. I will guess that pace went up. I know that one reason that postseason games got longer is because commercial breaks are longer, but I can't imagine that accounted for the entirety of the increase by itself. Yeah, no pace also went up. It went up from 22.7 seconds on average between pitches to 24.7. So like a full two seconds uptick between pitches, which I guess, I mean, relievers are slower on average than starters. So maybe it's partly that.

You would also think, though, there are fewer runners on base, presumably, and things do slow down when there are runners on base. And also, it's just a high pressure environment in general. So people are being careful and i don't know maybe there are more mountain visits just to make sure everyone's on the same page all of that so i will be curious to see if the the pace changes much if at all this postseason obviously there's only so much that it can really okay how. How about pitches per plate appearance? Strikeouts take a lot of pitches, right? So I'd guess it goes up. Okay. We've got 3.87 average in the regular season and 3.91. So it goes up, but not a huge amount.

All right. And then how about strike percentage? so just a percentage of pitches that are strikes see this is where i could do some math based on the outer zone chase rate you told me and the yeah the zone rate uh i think that probably outer zone chase rate increased by three percent pitch points or so and the zone rate decreased by like one and a half so i think it probably about balances out all right so let's see regular season strike percentage 63.8 and postseason 64.2 so it goes up slightly and then i guess related how about how about called strike rate just the percentage of actually i don't know if this is a percentage of all pitches that are called strike or is this – it can't be percentage of called pitches. I think it must just be the rate of pitches that are called strikes.

I think that must be what it is. I would guess that also goes up slightly. Okay. Let's see. Regular season, we've got 16.9% and post-season we've got 16.7. So yeah, about the same. I don't know. I guess you probably got better framers in the post-season on the whole. That was my thought. Yeah. But maybe you've, I mean, in theory, you're supposed to have better umpires too, right? So they are supposed to be less susceptible

to good framers and mistakes and everything. And if you've got a lower zone rate, you've got people throwing more pitches out of the zone. Maybe that means they're also throwing pitches closer to the edge of the zone as opposed that means they're also throwing pitches closer to the edge of the zone as opposed to over the middle, some reaching, but yeah, maybe that's why. Okay. I think we have come to the end of my cavalcade of stats here. It's exactly what you're supposed to do on a podcast is just read out a bunch of numbers. That is what they tell you to

do on the podcasting manual. So really the main takeaway is that scoring is lower and also strikeouts. I'm glad we spent half an hour coming to that conclusion. We could have just done the one stat and stopped there. But no, we went into all the details. And yeah, strikeouts are higher, I guess, is the big one. And then everything else, you've just got little changes around the margins. But I guess we learned something about home run hitting in the playoffs, and this reinforces the importance of that.

So thank you for playing. Thank you for sparing Meg this exercise as well. People should follow all of Zach's work. He's writing about the MLB postseason sometimes, and he's also writing about basketball sometimes and also culture stuff sometimes. And as I said to you just recently, it's got to be pretty jarring to be someone who writes about both the NBA and MLB. It could not be more different when it comes to the playoff formats. Talk about a sport that changes between the regular season and playoffs. Yeah.

And as you said to me, it is just really ridiculous that every NBA series is best of seven. And in MLB, where we actually need way more games than that to figure out anything about how good the teams are relative to each other. We have single elimination games sometimes.

We have best of three. We have best of three. We have best of five. Not that best of seven is anywhere close to adequate to actually tell anything about those teams either. But do you have a preference because you are so familiar with the extremes of the sports spectrum when it comes to playoff predictability and playoff randomness?

Is one better? I think that baseball playoffs are more fun on a night-to-night basis, but the NBA finals and conference finals especially almost always is a better, more compelling matchup because sometimes that happens in baseball, but sometimes you get two teams that don't necessarily look equal and that doesn't mean the better team wins. But I think the NBA playoffs produce

better months-long storylines and narratives, whereas the baseball playoffs are more consistently entertaining night to night, which, like you say, is just kind of a different flavor of what you're looking for from a postseason tournament. Well, whichever flavor you're looking for, read Zach Cram, because he comes in multiple flavors. Thank you, Zach. Thank you. Okay, two more things about the Braves occurred to me between the beginning of this podcast and now. The first is that the Arcia anecdote was buried in one sentence of paragraph 21 of that story. So if that story, if that bit of

reporting was intended to be something inflammatory, it would have been in the lead, right? It would have been in the moments after the Braves' dramatic victory. Orlando Arcia sat in the clubhouse, gloating about Bryce Harper's mistake. He was saying, ha ha, attaboy, Harper. But no, one sentence, paragraph 21, that says to me, this may not even be newsworthy. That says to me, this is not newsy. This is not going to get aggregated. I'm not burying the lead here. It's just a little bit of color. A detail that helps set the scene, paint the picture. As a reporter, one of the services you provide is taking your reader into a place they can't visit for themselves. So hey, here's what I was seeing. Here's what I was hearing. But it's not noteworthy enough to start there. From some of the reactions, you'd think that it was an intentional attempt to rile everyone up. Almost couldn't have been further from the lead. The other thing I thought is that it was just two years ago that the 88-win Braves beat the 95-win Brewers, the 106-win Dodgers, and the 95-win Astros en route to winning their World Series. So they've been on the other side of this. They've been the team doing the upsetting instead of being upset, in more than one sense

of the word. If winning in the playoffs was all about character and effort and heart, could they have changed so much in the space of two years? Granted, it's a different roster, but Braves fans have seen that it's possible for an 80-win team to topple the Titans. And sometimes you're the Titan that gets toppled. You can help ensure that this podcast won't get toppled by supporting us on Patreon,

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