Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2077: Now I’ve Seen Everything

Episode Date: October 27, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the end of the NLCS, discuss the discourse surrounding the improbability of and fallout from the Diamondbacks-Rangers World Series matchup, banter about the Brewers always losing in the playoffs to eventual pennant winners, preview the World Series, postulate a conspiracy surrounding this postseason’s lack of extra-inning games, and […]

Well, the curveballs bend and the home runs fly. More to the game than meets the eye. To get the stats compiled and the stories filed. Fans on the internet might get riled, but we can break it down on Effectively Wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2076 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Reilly of Fangraphs, and I am joined by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you?

I am quite all right. How are you? Snakes alive! They are still alive. It is true. I, Ben, I'm flabbergasted. I am, I am shocked. I feel like I've been ensorcelled. I've been bamboozled. I've been shocked. I've been moved to surprise, you know? You're going to get to cover a World Series. Oh, man, we have to figure out our pod schedule for next week.

Oh, boy. That's going to be a problem. Oh, yeah, it's going to be real rough, huh? That's not interesting to other people but us. Yeah, I'm going to do some words do some words i think nice i'm very excited i am shocked though i i shouldn't say that because you know there are uh very good players on that diamondbacks team and if you had asked me prior to game seven which I don't think you did, to construct what is the avenue through which the Diamondbacks might check the world and win game seven

and advance to the World Series, it would probably have involved Corbin Carroll having a pretty good game. And it also would have involved Brandon Fott keeping the ball mostly in the ballpark. Did he give up a home run? Who can even remember what happened a couple of days ago? When was that? That wasn't two days ago?

I don't know. We have two off days in a row, and I'm completely unmoored from reality. I am untethered. It's those long layoffs. They affect the players and the teams and also the podcasters, clearly. Yeah, definitely. Definitely the podcasters, clearly. Yeah, definitely. Definitely the podcasters. Well, it's, yeah, championship series under the bridge.

But I'm sure they're happy with how it turned out. And you had said, I think, in the episode preceding Game 7 that we hadn't seen the best of Corbin Carroll in the series. And then we saw the best of Corbin Carroll in Game 7. Well, and here is the thing that I would submit. And I mean this as a as a compliment and it's not going to feel that way but i mean it that way so don't anybody get it twisted i maintain that the the best of corbin carroll from a playoff play perspective is perhaps yet to come right we have seen him be more potent like on a per played parents basis right he's hit home runs he's hit doubles but like

um he really did put him on his back and then run around with them on his back around the bases with his little legs so yeah he had a he had a hell of a time and um it was it was i submit to you good he did give up a home run. I'm not crazy. I remember stuff. I was like, I feel like he gave up that one home run. And he did, Ben. He gave up one home run to Alec Baum. Wasn't enough.

Wasn't enough for the Phillies. So that's the thing that Brandon Fott did. But yeah, Corbin Carroll was quite good. I feel like the Diamondbacks, despite the fact that like if you're to place the phillies pitching staff on a spectrum from like super easy to run on versus um super hard to run on you know aaron nola's at the easier to run on side and i would say the ranger suarez is on like the harder to run on side he's still not like super easy to run and they have real mucho back there regardless but you know the the snakes were like ah snakes alive we gotta we gotta embrace chaos i'm like now i'm mixing up all the stuff but yeah so they stole some bases they had some well

timed hits corbin carroll was three for four he uh you know, he put them ahead. The Phillies did endeavor to answer, but they failed to. So here we are. I was going to say, I mean, kudos to the Diamondbacks. Impressive to come from behind in that series and to go to Philly and take two in that ballpark. Although, really, if they did that during the regular season, we wouldn't think anything of it whatsoever. Oh, wow. They went to Philadelphia and won two whole games in a row. Congrats.

We would not. You should get to go to the World Series for that. I mean, in that sense, it's not actually that impressive. But it felt impressive that they did it at the time. People didn't think they were going to do it. People said they were going to retire if they did it and then reneged on that. But they said it. That's how unlikely they thought it was.

And I guess it's harder to do in the playoffs when your opponent is pulling out all the stops to stave off elimination, although you are also pulling out all your stops. So maybe that's kind of a wash. But yeah, it felt momentous. And yet, in the grand scheme of things, they won two games in a row in Philly. It happens. But it was good. They quieted that crowd, which is tough to quiet, at least when things are going their way. which is tough to quiet, at least when things are going their way. They did do that. They had timely hitting. They stole four bases as a team, the Diamondbacks did.

Carroll accounted for two of those. I really like it when Christian Walker steals bases because he's a good base runner despite being kind of slow. And also, I picked them as my base running team, and then for a long time it was like, remember when I did that? Why did I do that? And stealing no bases, but they stole some bases. Corbin Carroll had a great game.

Gabriel Moreno continues to be just a really potent hitter in the postseason, so that's fun. We were treated to being very nervous because of Andrew Sol Frank again, but then Ben the Gink was there, and it ended up being fine, despite him allowing, I imagine, for Diamondbacks fans, briefly terrifying hard hit ball by Bryce Harper, but he didn't get all of it. Mm-hmm.

And then, you know, it's time for Paul Seaball to pitch, and he closes things out. I am just using all of their catchphrases. Can I ask you an aesthetic question, Ben? Sure. What do you think about answer backs as like a rallying cry for these Diamondbacks? How does that sit with you? You know, does that feel corny or does that feel cool? I don't hate it, I guess. Yeah. I don't know how I feel about it. It's kind of creative. I don't know. Any sort of playoff tradition or hand gesture or dugout, whatever it is, is kind of corny on some level. But if you're in the throes of that, then it's fine.

You don't find it corny. Then you're totally in the spirit of the thing. So it's only the sore losers and the neutrals who are like, look at you guys having fun with your corny slogan or whatever it is, but they're having the time of their lives. So why rain on their parade? I do like it when it is something that feels like an organic expression that kind of comes out of the ballpark. Like snakes alive is perfect because the sign was so, we'll call it bare bones.

That's a polite way of describing that fan sign. It was very bare bones. And it's funny because they have like a little station when you walk in the ballpark where you can like make a big sign. And like you can make it look nice. More, less bare bones, you know. Spooky. But, you know, it's like this organic thing. And then the team had like a you know a

good laugh about it and won that game and like it feels organic and of the moment i don't know about answer backs like i i i can't decide and we'll see what comes of it in the world series i suppose yeah snakes alive versus creed the matchup we've all been waiting for i guess the only downside of this matchup which does not need to be a downside if you just tune out certain conversations that you're not interested in but but look just when we thought that the playoff format talk had subsided it did subside for a little, and then it came back in full force once the Diamondbacks actually won the pennant, and people woke up and realized, wait, the Diamondbacks are in the World Series. That actually happened. That did happen, yeah. Sure. On paper, they are one of the weaker.

They would certainly be one of the weakest, if not the weakest, World Series champions based on regular season results. And of course, these two participants, to some extent, are unpredictable, unpredicted. People didn't think that the odds were great of a Rangers-Diamondbacks matchup, and they weren't great. And there have been various ways to show that, and whether you use preseason playoff odds or whether you point out that these two teams two years ago were both quite terrible. In fact, historically so for two pennant winners in the same season, they lost by a lot the most combined games two seasons before they made the World Series. So that whole conversation and of course, the wild card qualifying for the world series again it just it ignited a new round of discussion about whether we need to rethink this whole thing and i don't know

maybe there could be some productive outcome of that but in the short term there isn't in the immediate term and we also had that exact conversation earlier in the playoffs as well as last playoffs right and i don't know if there are a lot of new wrinkles to it but it's maybe just more people paying attention now because we actually have a final two and you know it yeah it's not how you drew it up but there is a virtue to having it not go the way you drew it up. Also, surprise is nice if you can get yourself in the appropriate mindset to just enjoy being surprised and more of a March Madness mindset. And then there's the whole adjacent conversation about TV ratings, right? People get very fussed about TV ratings, which you don't necessarily need to care about.

Now, the TV companies, the people who paid for those deals, maybe they need to care about them. But the rest of us don't necessarily need to. Now, I think it's good if more people are interested in the World Series and want to tune in to see who's playing. I think that is generally a good thing because I like this sport and I want it to do well and be prominent. But that is a line of discussion, I guess, that what do you do with that? Yeah, maybe the World Series ratings won't be as high. The CS ratings were quite high. They were the highest in several years, I guess, probably mostly because they both went seven games, but also because you had the intra-Texas rivalry, which is a real rivalry and

even more of a rivalry now. So we had some intrigue there. And if the ratings are not so hot, I won't care at all if the series is good. That's what matters more to us, I think. But obviously, Rob Manfred might care about the ratings. Some owners might care about the ratings. Network executives might care about the ratings. And I guess I would rather have the ratings be high than low in sort of an abstract sense, but not if it comes at the cost of having the same teams in the World Series year after year, even if there are maybe more people who would tune in to watch some of those teams. So I'm not bothered by it, especially. We're really no less likely to get a good series than we would be with any other matchup, right?

I mean, there might have been matchups of better teams and I guess slightly higher overall caliber of play. But that is far from a guarantee that you're actually going to get a more exciting or competitive series. So I hope we do. I think a couple of things about this. The first is like and do I know if the if the list that I'm looking at is a good list? Ben, I don't. I don't know. I googled media market size, and this is a list I found. So, like, you know, there might be some squish in these lists, right? But I think part of it is, like, the Dallas-Fort Worth area is a huge media market. Like, it's a big media market. And I'm here to tell you, the Valley's a big media market and i'm here to tell you the valley's a big media market too now we can talk about the relative enthusiasm that arizonans have about the diamondbacks compared to some other franchises that is a topic of conversation among sport folk here right because there are a lot of

transplants and there's sort of a sense that there's a lack of enthusiasm. But these are not small media markets. And so that has a built-in audience. I imagine the World Series always has a built-in audience. I think it kind of just depends how you talk about it. The Rangers have never won a World Series. How exciting to get to watch them try to win their first World Series as a franchise, right? Super exciting.

And they've got Max Scherzer. They have Corey Seager. They have, you know, big game Jordan Montgomery and big game Nate Evaldi. They have Bruce Bochy back in the postseason. They have a literally very tall general manager, which is just fun for everyone, right? Big guy. Big story. And then, like, you have the presumptive NL Rookie of the Year playing for the Diamondbacks. Yeah.

Phenoms on both sides. Phenom versus Phenom. You've got Carter and Carroll. Josh Young. I mean, there's a lot of good youth. Like, these aren't young teams. There are young, promising players. Yeah.

They're not really young teams on the whole, but there are individuals that we can single out and say, how cool is it that that guy gets to be on this stage in this season? Right. And you get to have the dynamic of the D-backs and the base stealing. Are they going to embrace chaos? Yeah. Against Jonah Heim, who's good at limiting the running game. That'll be fun to watch. Really fun to watch. And so I think that a lot of things can be true simultaneously. Like, I think that a lot of people enjoy the World Series because it's the World Series and you get to have the pomp and circumstance of it. You hope you get to see some good baseball. But it's like, you know, a thing that baseball fans do to mark the end of your of your time watching baseball at least domestic baseball

within a calendar year and uh you know you're just gonna tune in and see that and so there's that contingent if you don't care about the world series if your team's not in it that is also fine like it's you know that's your business you don't have to spend seven of your evenings engaging with this stuff potentially that's also fine you know it's just like i don't know i i'm wary and wearied by the like it means something if you watch it it means something if you don't i don't know just like it's like it's like food discourse i don't know what the baseball equivalent of like not eating a dolphin is but just do that and you can engage with it as much or as little as you want to i think the idea that this is like inherently less exciting because

of the teams involved is kind of silly i also i'm kind of surprised by the persistence of this idea that these aren't the best teams that were in the playoff field. And, you know, in the Diamondbacks case, like certainly not. You know, they're like American League squads that arguably had more had a better postseason resume, you know, an argument for the playoffs than the D-backs did. But guess what? They play in the American League, so they don't get to be in the National League playoff field. That's just how it works but it's not as if you know a team in the 80s in the 80 win range winning or advancing to the world series is new you know i i i do wonder if we're a little you know sure of ourselves when it comes to the playoff fields being responsible for this we didn't like the expanded postseason i still don't

like the expanded postseason i wish the postseason were a little bit smaller but like the cardinals won the world series and what wasn't there oh six team uh 83 win team you know yeah the giants famously like had a couple of those yeah the 87ins were outscored on the season, right? And as were these Diamondbacks. The 2021 Braves won 88 games, right? And so that's, you know, granted, that's more wins than the Diamondbacks team has. So I'm not trying to do weird math here. But, you know, this is not an unprecedented thing.

And I think as long as in general, it's not what we always get. Like, it's fine to get every now and again. And it's fun when that team like can actually lay claim to the nobody believed in us. Like Mantle is such an overused trope in baseball, but like nobody believed in this d-backs team to make it to the world series there were people who thought including me that they were going to be like a fun wild card contender and they might surprise people but like i didn't have any idea that they i sent spent the beginning of the episode talking about how flummoxed i am so you know i think every now and again it's fun it's fun to have a a weird one it's fun to have a weird one we do so you know it's such a staid and and like you know quiet sport so let's do a weird one it's good to do a weird one every now and again i think i guess it's because we had in the first couple seasons of 12 team playoffs we had a lot of upset discourse, right?

Right. And because it accompanied that change, and obviously that change made it more likely that we would get more mediocre teams and thus more upsets. Right. But it's not necessarily a one-to-one thing. Like, we're doomed to having this every single postseason forever now. Right. to having this every single postseason forever now. So it's partly, yes, that the conditions, the playoff format is conducive to this outcome. And it's partly just that this happened to happen two years in a row.

So maybe we shouldn't overreact to that, I guess, even though this result was foreseeable, just not necessarily that it would happen immediately and in back-to-back years, right? So, yeah. But there are upsides to it, too. How do you feel about the Brewers stat was going around, right? That every team that has beaten the Brewers in the postseason has gone on to win the pennant, right? So, the Diamondbacks beat the Brewers, right? And the Braves beat the Brewers in 2021. The Dodgers beat the Brewers in 2020. The Nationals beat the Brewers in 2019. The Dodgers beat the Brewers in 2018. The Cardinals beat the Brewers in 2011. The Phillies beat the Brewers in 2008. The Cardinals, way back in 82, beat the Brewers, and the Yankees beat the Brewers in 81.

Most of those teams not only won the pennant, but also won the World Series. So how would you feel if you were a Brewers fan? Because one way to interpret that is, hey, we lost to the team that made it all the way. We didn't get knocked out by some losers, right? Like they beat other teams too and they actually deserved it and maybe they were hot and other teams couldn't handle them either. So that might be sort of a silver lining

that might make you feel better about yourself or maybe it would make you feel worse because you got to see those teams and play those teams and have your shot at those teams. And you kept losing and they kept winning. And then they got to the promised land that you were denied entry to over and over. I would feel upset. I think I would feel frustrated.

I would find it motivating. I would view that group of teams as the peer group against which I need to compete, not my division as much. Because, you know, we've talked about how the central, the NL central is not as weak as it once was. And there are some teams in that division that aren't really good now but probably will be in a couple of years and have young exciting players and are kind of in an up-and-coming phase but you know relative to some of the other divisions in the sport it is a winnable division so i think that if i wanted to not sort of fixate on being either proud or sad i might say say, you know, having that as a consistent trend would probably reorient my perspective on, you know, which clubs are the clubs that I should really view myself as striving against. And it's probably not just the Cardinals, the Cubs, the Reds, you know, the Pirates also, I guess. Right. But like, I would look at it and go, hey, I need to do work here so that I can overcome this persistent

barrier, understanding that there is so much randomness in the actual postseason play, but that you want to put yourself in the best position you possibly can to compete against heavyweights. And that means being a heavyweight and not being content to just win the Central, but to go out and be a club that can win its first World Series, right? Yeah. They don't have one, right? Am I right? No. Yeah, you are right. Yeah. I got a little list because, you know, it's going to keep contracting and then there will

only be one, Ben. I would probably just feel bad about that regardless of who beat me along the way. Well, sure. Yeah. Maybe it would matter a little bit. I mean, I think you're disappointed no matter what, right? Yeah, right. I don't know that it would make my disappointment that.

It wouldn't make me feel so much better. Like, oh, we still lost and we're out of it. But at least we lost to the eventual winner. I don't know. I don't know that that's making that much of a difference emotionally for me. But it's noteworthy that that has happened, at least. Because, like, here's the thing. If you're one of the teams that the eventual World Series winner beats on the way to winning the World Series,

it means that you're just like, odds on in so many highlight packages, right? And you turn on October Baseball, and they're going to show the prior years, and you're going to go, oh my God, there we are again. There we are again. There's that strikeout again. There's that home run that died at the track. There's that home run that they hit the track. There's that home run that they hit that didn't die at the track. And you're just going to be reminded of it over and over and

over again. And so in some ways, it would be better if you lost to a team that doesn't end up winning because you at least don't have to relive your trauma every after. You know, just like put unnecessary therapy speak on it. it. You know what I'm mad about? Probably not as mad and sad as Brewers fans are about their franchise not winning a World Series, but a little less so. We haven't had an extra inning game this postseason. We've not had a single game go to extra innings. That's sure something. Yeah.

It's odd, right? It's surprising. I guess it's partly a function of the lack of close competitive games with lead changes and everything earlier on. But I feel and I don't even get to see what it looks like again. That's what I want for this World Series. My rooting interest, please give me an extra inning game just at some point. These two teams with their bullpens, I think that's probably the last thing they need is an extra inning game. Oh, my gosh. We just see so much Slade, Zaccone, good gravy. We met him once in a Meet a Major Leaguer segment, and here he is in a World Series.

But, yeah, like, just once. You know, we have one more series to go here before they force me back into a zombie runner existence and subject me to that again. Just give me, like, a little taste of what we're missing, of what we used to have. I feel very disappointed. I feel robbed that we haven't had one. Do you want to feel conspiratorial then? Would you like to engage in some? Some maybe there is a conspiracy cahoots that involves the commissioner to avoid extra innings games because he could not possibly stand to watch normal extra innings baseball. Yeah. How do you think he is affecting that outcome of not having any dark magic? Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, like, I can't come up. I cannot. I cannot for the life of me architect a real baseball way of doing that. Like that isn't. No. Like, no. Because here's doing that. Like, that isn't... No. Like, no. Because here's the thing. Like, would... I'm trying to think of the games that came the closest. Like, there was one of the games in that Phillies D-back series.

Was it Game 3? Where it was like, oh my God, they may... Where they walked it off. Didn't they walk it off in Game 3? Wasn't Game 3 the walk-off game? Well, couldn't it be a juiced ball? Anti-juiced ball, just, you know, mixing and matching, putting them in there? People already think that he does that with somewhat flimsy evidence.

But, yeah, that would be the way. That's an existing conspiracy theory that we could just graft onto this one that you're coming up with on the fly. We're going to get such weird emails now. We're going to get so many weird emails. And you know what? I'm excited to read them. I think it's going to be fun. He wants us to forget about what we used to have.

He doesn't want us to remember what extra innings used to look like because then the groundswell of support, the opposition to the zombie runner would rise again. opposition to the zombie runner would rise again. And so he wants to end the movement and snuff it out by just depriving us of the recollection of what we used to have. Right. That's right. That's what's happening here. Yeah, that is right. That is what he's coming for.

I'm not asking for 18 innings. You know, Nedevaldi has had that experience. We're going to get 18 innings now and it's going to be your fault. And I'm going to be up at like four in the morning, weary eyed, editing a game or being like, I don't know, man, there are words here. Are they the right ones? You know what it'll be? It'll be game one on Friday when we're doing our second Patreon playoff live stream. And then I will be I will be hoisted by the petards because I have said that that's what I want.

Or or it'll be one of the the games here in arizona because what would a meg postseason experience be without an 18 inning game i was there for the last one yeah well you've got evaldi evaldi has experience in 18 inning playoff games so he can do it yeah so that's that's my main rooting interest in this series. Give me at least one extra inning game. Just at least one extra inning. Yeah. Just give me a tenth.

That's all I ask. A tenth where there is not a runner to start the inning on second base. And to be clear, that is all you're asking. That's it. That's the extent of the ask. It goes no further than that. Yeah. Yeah.

What else are you excited for in this series? I guess you've got Adoles Garcia and, you know, he's had this layoff. So I'm sure he was hot. And now he's had the layoff. So he's inevitably going to cool down. But he has a shot at having an all-time great postseason if he finishes strong. So interested in seeing whether he can sustain that heater that he was on. We mentioned the Phenoms on both sides.

We mentioned the running game versus Jonah Heim. I guess I'm interested in what is Max Scherzer right now? Yeah. And I guess Zach Gallin has not been at his gallinist, his most gallant lately. So I believe in a bounce back for Gallin more so than Scherzer, although it would not shock me if Scherzer had some vintage throwback game, at least for a few innings. So, yeah. Are the aces, or at least the erstwhile aces will they pitch like that or will they or scherzer at least continue to be ciphers in this series i am very curious to see i know this is gonna be like you know this is um kind of boring in comparison to um the dynamism of the hitters who've been doing well and the pitchers who have or haven't yet.

But I am very interested to see how both Bochy and Lovello approach their bullpens and the usage of those bullpens. I feel like for both of those managers, their circle of trust is so tight and small and the odds that they are able to avoid, you know, getting into the softer parts of their relief cores, I think is, you know, pretty low. And we've seen what that can look like for both squads. And sometimes it's been serviceable and sometimes it's been disastrous. So I, you know, I'm curious to see sort of how they think about approaching that i'm curious which of the cost goes that we will be playing these series in this series and people come away thinking the best of we are looking at roof open in in phoenix next week almost i'm crossing both of my fingers and all of my toes um because we are like forecast for the

80s um which is prime roof open territory and uh really changes the way you experience that ballpark in person at least i think it looks a lot better on tv also so you know there's that piece of it but yeah i think the strategy uh an approach to the bullpens is something that i'm really interested to see play out because even though they have gotten this break in theory you know everybody is going to be available and rested at least in the early going you know a lot of these guys have been used quite extensively and they are going to be tired even if they are rested and i'm not just saying that to segue to a potential conversation i really am interested but i realized this outside and i was like boy this is a nice little segue i set up here yeah that is i think also the most interesting

storyline of the series to me and i want to return to it in just a moment because it will lead right into the topic of our interview today. Anything else? I mean, these are both good defensive teams, right? They both excel on defense. The Rangers, if there is a biggest mismatch, just like one unit, one aspect of a team, would it be Rangers offense versus Diamondbacks offense? Is that kind of like the most lopsided? Probably, right? I think so. Because there are bullpen questions about both teams.

There are rotation questions about both teams. The defenses are both good. The base running, I mean, I guess you could say maybe Diamondbacks base running they have an edge not that the rangers are bad there so in theory they have an edge but it kind of depends again like how they are approaching heim and what they think about what they can do there so you know i think that's a more open question than it maybe appears on paper. But yeah, it isn't that the D-backs lineup is bad. And particularly at the top, it is very dynamic.

You have Marte, you have Carroll. But it is just, they have those two guys who are really, really good. Moreno, I think we can safely put in that category also. I've really liked what Lovello has done moving him up. But the depth behind the best parts of the D-backs lineup compared to the best parts of the Rangers lineup, I think there is a clear imbalance there. rangers lineup i think there is a clear imbalance there right like arizona has those two guys and then they have like four two or three guys and then they have three to four like good role players and then the texas group is like literally cory seager literally marcus emmy and literally it was garcia like they just i think have brighter star power evan car Carter is in that mix right now. And then the depth behind them is deeper and better. You know, they're not always hitting at the same time,

but like their options there, I think are pretty compelling. So I agree with you. What do you make of Fott, who has looked quite good? The sweeper's been sweeping, how sweeper it is. What is he right now?

I guess is the question. How good is he? Because he was a great prospect and high expectations. Yeah. And then the results were not lights out immediately. And, you know, there were some ups and downs throughout the season.

But there have been some ups lately when he's looked quite good. And the Diamondbacks really could use a third stalwart in that rotation. They could also use a fourth for that matter. But really behind Gallin and Kelly, like if Fott could at least be a third guy. Because behind that, it's like, you know, you're looking at bullpen games. You're looking at openers basically for them. But having at least a credible three would be big. Yeah, I think and I should say as a little teaser, Chris Gilligan is actually writing about Fott for us for tomorrow.

So that will be fun and we will see if he agrees with me. I mean, what I have observed of Fott, the sweeper is very good and has been working really well for him. He's also mixed in the changeup, I think, much more effectively and has been executing that pitch well. You know, when you look at how he approached the Brewers in the wild card series, it was clear that stuff wasn't quite working for him, and he became very fastball slider dependent. He wasn't mixing in any of his other secondary stuff because it was getting lit up, and so then he got lit up, and he was pretty predictable. That wasn't all that was wrong with that start, but I think that was a contributing factor. He's said as much after the fact, but what we have seen from him as this postseason has progressed is that, you know, he has been able to mix and match more of the super has been so effective. He's been commanding it really well. It's,

you know, all of his like breaking stuff seems like it has a really good depth. So I just think that it's completely possible that we are seeing like the best couple of starts of Brandon Fodott's life you know not his one against the phillies was like good i think the the effort he had the one against the phillies he had in philly was good the game three start was like superlative he was fantastic so will that be a thing he is able to sustain through the world series in the rest of his career to come i do not know but the fact that he has been able to both execute the stuff he was already leaning on and then find greater sort of efficacy with that change up i think is a big deal for him. So, and I think, you know,

when you look at the, you know, the various sort of pitch models, that sweeper of his is like, really, really good. It has been very, very good. So I think, you know, having that work as well as it has has allowed the other stuff to, to really play. So it's cool, man. Like, you know, he's so, I think I've said this before, he's a very young looking person and he's very rosy cheat. And so he can look so young and stressed, you know, it can make him, it can read like that. But i think that he has shown a very steady kind of heartbeat in really all of his starts after that milwaukee start and i don't think he's a guy who you're like well he's going to give us a hundred pitches he's probably not a guy at this stage who will reliably give you 80 even maybe but he you know seems like he is very capable of kind of turning a lineup over at least two times now what a task right like he had to deal with philly that

was hard dealing with the rangers isn't easier they have a lot of guys who are very aggressive on first pitch they can bop their you know's going to be a tough challenge for him. But yeah, he's a destroyer. And right now, a pretty good one. So how exciting for him. Yeah. Kind of hope Marcus Semyon has a decent series, too. It's been so rough.

Yeah. He's had a rough postseason. You know, it doesn't mean anything. But it obviously means something to him and probably to Rangers fans. And he's just such a good player and he was such a big part of why they're here. And he is probably also an underrated player, the kind of player you just kind of like to see get some exposure and show off what he can do on this stage. So hope he has some nice redemption moment at some point i uh i said this about corbin carroll uh to michael bauman before well i'm gonna tell you a thing you didn't know i

said so he was having this bad time right in the cs and then he had this great game and before they played game six or maybe even while they were playing game six bauman and i were kind of chatting back and forth in slack and you know i didn't think that corbin carroll's struggles in the cs meant anything and i said to him i was like they don't mean it doesn't mean anything except that he might be about to go home like that's the part of this time of year that is so rough because it's like does it change my opinion of Marcus Semien as a player that he's had like this kind of cold streak in the postseason? No, but it might end up meaning a lot in the grand scheme of things because if he gets, you know,

if he can hit like he did during the regular season, like we know he's capable of and the rest of their bats stay the way that they have, like, that's a hard one. Like, good luck, D-backs, pitchers. I don't know. You remember when we talked about how the sequencing of a season can affect the perception of it for fans? That was prompted by the Diamondbacks, who at the time, I described them in the podcast description as the flailing Diamondbacks, which they were. This was episode 2044, August 10th.

This is not a long time ago. And we were talking about how we didn't rule them out or anything. I think we allowed for the possibility that they would recover and end up salvaging their season. But at the time, it looked like they might not, that they might have gotten out to that great start and then sort of squandered it. And we were talking about how it's maybe better, all else being equal, to finish strong and to start slow, to have started slow, than to start fast and then have that peter out over the course of the season. Turns out they have finished strong. I would say they have finished quite strong. In fact, strong enough to get into the playoffs and then extremely strong once they've been there. So, yeah.

But that was only two months ago, really, that we were having that conversation about them. So, they've changed the narrative just a bit about their 2023 season since then. Yeah. I mean, it's just funny how you were prone to fixating on the most recent important thing about a team and often that's the win-loss record but like you know the way that we have talked about the rangers bullpen as a liability which to be clear it is but you know you'd forget based on how much time we spend talking about their lousy bullpen, that this lineup was incredible for most of the season.

This is one of the best offenses in baseball. So it is funny how you just kind of forget stuff because you're worried about the thing that might undo them. And I think sometimes we don't wait that properly against the stuff that has gotten them there in the first place or that allowed them to overcome that deficiency know deficiency or whatever and um the adversity made them stronger well it's maybe it did maybe it didn't i mean i think having a a sense of this is like a probably a broader point about like being alive but like having i don't think that adversity is like virtuous in

and of itself and if people can have an easy life, that would be my preference. But, you know, I do think that because the world doesn't operate that way, having confidence in the survivability of something is useful. It like cushions you psychologically when you're faced with a hard time later on. And, you know. We got through that. Yeah. We could get through this. Yeah.

I think it's a meaningful thing. Does it add like exactly 12 runs of value to your club? I don't freaking know. But like it does, I think, matter on the individual player level and in terms of how the staff and an organization can kind of approach a big moment and the letdown from it to say like, well, you know, we've survived other stuff. And like, there comes a point where you just run out of games to be able to survive it. So like, again, much like life, Ben, but until that happens, I think that it does sort of help to have flexed that muscle before. And hopefully it comes in lower stakes moments

than the World Series. But, you know, it's a thing. I think it's a thing. Yeah. That was the same episode we met Slade Zucconi. How about that? Whoa, spooky. Oh, there was one bit of non-playoff related news that I wanted to note, which is that the Red Sox finally hired someone, right, after either interviewing or expressing interest in interviewing and then not having that interest be mutual, unrequited interview interest. But they were trying to hire a new chief baseball officer or head of their baseball operations, aobo, whatever we're calling it. And at long last, the search is over and they have hired Craig Breslow,

former Red Sox, which is of interest to me because it furthers... I love how you're like, it's of interest to me. To other people, no, they don't care about the Pobo. Yeah, no one else cares. But it's of interest to me because, well, A, I have some connection to Craig Breslow. I think he was a Ringer MLB show guest, maybe. One of my baseball podcasts at some point. But also, he was a part of the MVP machine because I was kind of following him as he was trying to remake himself at the very end of his career. as he was trying to remake himself at the very end of his career.

And he was trying to use all the tools that is available, all of the modern player development tools to try to just eke a few more innings out of his arm. And he was in the minors and he was trying to learn to harness his stuff and tweak his stuff even at that age. So that's interesting in the sense that that was only like five years ago or something. And he is now already ascended to running a baseball operations department for a pretty prominent team. Yeah. I mean, I guess it can happen quickly when you have the credentials and the reputation that he had.

I mean, he was with the Cubs, right? And he was in various positions for them, but most recently their assistant GM. And so I guess he has vaulted past GM. He just like he passed go. He's just like, don't have to do GM. Just go straight from AGM to Pobo potentially. So that's a good gig if you can get it. of interest to me is that he is the latest former player to ascend to the top of a baseball operations department, which is a trend. I think I can call it a trend at this point

that I have been tracking with some interest because this is something I've written about. I think this was also mentioned in the MVP machine that you used to have tons and tons of former players who would be GMs. And then they all went away. Almost all of them went away, right? You were down to very, very few. I mean, it was Billy Bean for a while and Kenny Williams for a while, although he was then promoted out of that role. Jerry DiPoto has been there for a bit. But it's been a big drought in former players having those leadership positions.

And now they are making a bit of a comeback, right? I mean, Bean is no longer in that role. And Kenny Williams is no longer in a role for the White Sox. But you have Breslow now. You have pennant-winning team GM Chris Young, who is in that role. And you have DePoto still around, of course. There were other former players who were mentioned, at least considered for this job, right? Whether it was Gabe Kapler or Sam Fold, who is the GM for the Phillies, second in command to Dave Dombrowski, but still high ranking. Brandon Gomes is the GM for the Dodgers under

Andrew Friedman, right? So more and more of these guys suddenly kind of coming out of the woodwork. And I don't know if it's good or bad exactly for baseball, but it's interesting to me that they are finally coming back. And Craig Breslow is kind of a perfect example of why. Now, on one hand, he doesn't break the trend of just Ivy Leaguers getting those jobs. You beat me to it. I was about to go, well, where did Chris Young go to college? Okay, Stanford isn't an Ivy League school, but it's effectively an Ivy League school. It's an Ivy League school, but it's effectively an Ivy League school. Stanford.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. No. I mean, there's that still. Right. There's still prestigious education white guys are happening here. Oh, and I didn't mention Chris Goetz.

Chris Goetz, also part of the trend here. So no Kenny Williams with the White Sox, but Chris Goetz is now the GM of the White Sox, University of Michigan for Chris Goetz. He did go to Michigan, yes. Yeah. Breslow, I mean, I don't know where anyone went to college, unlike Michael Bauman, who knows that about everyone who has ever played during our lifetimes. But Craig Breslow, you know, because I don't know if you've heard this, he went to Yale. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah.

He went to Yale. So, yeah. I don't know what percentage of the time Craig Breslow was mentioned on a major league broadcast during his career that the fact that he went to Yale was also mentioned. But it was a high percentage. I mean, he should have just had it on the back of his jersey or something. It should have just been, yeah, Yale-Breslow, Craig-Yale. Like, it came up every single time. Just like Chris Young should have been Chris Princeton. Right. But these guys are coming back, and I think Breslow is a good illustration of why,

because he is part of this new breed of players who are very into the numbers and the analytics and player development potential and experienced that in his career and played in a post-Moneyball era, and all of these players are just steeped in that now. So we've gone from the era where the players were more old school and resistant to that, and you had these outsiders coming in and being the early adopters and that stuff. They've gone at least a little way around the circle because players are now often leading the way, if anything, when it comes to embracing and learning about these technologies. And if they benefited from them or they had teammates who benefited from them, then they but also don't have the disadvantage that they had for a while of not having the background that owners were looking for, right? The more quant type or businessy background. So now they can match up pretty well there and they have the traditional advantage of

having been around the game and played. So there's no real reason why they shouldn't or wouldn't or couldn't make a comeback. And that does appear to be happening slowly. It's still obviously a distinct minority of the Pobos and the GMs, but it's a bigger group than it's been for a while. Well, and I think that, like, I don't want to knock Craig Breslow. I don't have anything against Craig Breslow. I do think that having a player who is able to sort of operate in both spheres comfortably is immensely valuable. that you need to have gone to Yale or Stanford or Princeton or Michigan, because like, you know,

let's stand up for the very good public institutions in this country, won't we please, to know enough of the analytics to do the level of analysis that like a pobo needs to do, right? Because it's like, if you're a pobo, I'm just really enjoying saying pobo. I'm so happy we've settled on this. It's pobo. It's just, it's really satisfying. It's got if you're a po-bo, I'm just really enjoying saying po-bo. I'm so happy we've settled on this. I'm enjoying you saying it. It's po-bo. It's just, it's really satisfying. It's got great mouth feel. It's just, you know, that's great.

Po-bo, po-bo, po-bo. Yeah. And I saw someone point out, I think it may have been Raymond Chen, our Effectively Wild wiki keeper, who pointed out it sounds like po-ba, right? Which is, you know, like a person in a, you know, has a lot of influence, a leader, right? You're in a top position. So pobo, poobah, both fun words. So pobo, pobo.

If you look around a baseball operations group, it's not like the pobo is sitting there like coding, you know, they are being supported in their decision-making by a ton of people across the organization doing sort of the nitty-gritty work of analyzing potential draft prospects, their own guys doing the pro stuff. They certainly need to know enough to be sort of well-informed in their decision-making. I think it's useful for having a strategic vision of the team and really being able to have in-depth, informed conversations with your staff. But I will be curious to see if the next sort of iteration of this is, hey, I'm a former player. I didn't go to Yale, but I promise that's okay because I understand enough

to know like how to implement this stuff practically, how to hire well, how to have it guide my decision-making. I don't need to be able to like build the model. I need to be able to understand the model's output. Right. And so I'll be curious to see if there's, you know, a further evolution of like how we understand that role, because I don't think while it is exciting and I think that there is real value in having a person in that seat who even it doesn't necessarily have to be a former player, but who is able to be conversant with the playing population and also the front office population and sort of work between those two groups with a fluency basically we aren't broadening and i'm not suggesting you're saying

this but i i want us to be careful that we don't think we're like really broadening it out again like we just spent time talking about like where these guys went to school. And, you know, like not everybody's going to an Ivy or even, you know, one of the like big name state schools. But and I don't want to speak ill of VCU where Jerry DePoto went to school. But like that's an outlier relative to the Folds and the Youngs and the Breslos of the world. So, you know, it's a trend to monitor, and I think it is a trend. And we just don't want to overstate what it indicates, you know? Yeah. And I don't know that there's anything about having been a player that would predict what kind of executive you'd be. Like, you might think, oh, they've been players, like,

they'll be super pro-labor or something, right? Because they were in the union, you be. Like, you might think, oh, they've been players, like, they'll be super pro-labor or something, right? Because they were in the union, you know? Like, I mean, no. That would not be my expectation. That would be a wild thing to expect. Yeah, I could see someone thinking that, you know, why would you not be pro-player on the player's side to some extent if you've been a player? But once you're in that role, it's a different ballgame, right? And you can look back in baseball history. There have been very good GMs who were former players and very bad GMs who were former players. But I wouldn't say that there's a very clear trend towards former player GMs being super pro player or pro labor or anything like that.

Like you look back at, I mean, Branch Rickey for one, right? that. Like you look back at, I mean, Branch Rickey for one, right? You could go all the way back and you would find GMs who were players who were just as stingy as anyone else, I think. So I'm not saying it will change that relationship or anything. It's just of interest to me that at least that lane is a little more open than it was, if not fully open, far from fully open. All right. Well, Craig Breslow was a reliever, which reminds me. I should have saved my transition, but we had other stuff to talk about. I should have. No, that's okay.

We were talking about the World Series, and that was an interesting thing about the World Series. And I think it's maybe the most interesting thing because here's the thing. I've been interested for a while in this idea, this theory, this hypothesis of a reliever familiarity effect. The idea that there is a price to pay for using a reliever many times against the same team or especially against the same hitter in a postseason series. And this first came up on the podcast, I think, as far as I can recall, episode 1793, we were talking to Cameron Grove, the analyst known as Pitching Bot, who has done stuff measurements. And we were talking to him about measuring the unmeasurable. We did that series about that around Christmas and New Year's. So January 2022, this was.

And one thing I put to him was, do you think there's a reliever familiarity effect? Could we look into this? And he did subsequently. And he found one or certainly seemed to find one that there was a degradation in performance. The more times a hitter faced a certain reliever within a post-season series. I think he also looked at regular season two. And Cameron was subsequently hired by the Cleveland Guardians.

Not because of that study necessarily, but he is now out of the public sphere of analysis, sadly for us. But now there has been a follow-up, the first real follow-up that i've seen i guess it's technically not a follow-up because it wasn't done in response to that original study but it's on the same subject and it's in the new fall 2023 edition of the baseball research journal that sabre puts out and so we are talking to its author now david j g who is a doctor, and he wrote a study where he looked at this. And I want this to be true, I guess. I'm trying not to let that get in the way of whether I find it compelling, because I

think I do find it pretty compelling regardless. But I think it would be neat if it were true because, well, really two reasons. One, I guess it would be just sort of funny in a whimsical way if by going all the way that we have toward pulling starters earlier in order to avoid one familiarity penalty, we ran right into the risk of another that was previously unsuspected. That would be amusing, I think, in a certain way. And, you know, I like getting our comeuppance as analysts from time to time, you know, being reminded that we don't know everything. And sometimes we can be wrong about stuff,

or there's still hidden significant factors that could really change the way that we think about baseball. You know, it's not a settled science here. So that would be neat. But also it would be neat potentially because it would provide further incentive for managers to stick with their starters longer so that we would not just get every starter being automatically yanked as soon as they start the third time through the order. And also that would be nice, not just because we kind of like the idea

of having a starter who goes deeper into games, but also because it's become so rote now. It's such a push button decision. We've gone all the way from it being a new and novel and innovative thing. Let's pull the starter early, which at first it was like, ooh, this is the new sexy sabermetric strategy that no one's trying. And, you know, they're leaving value on the table here. And it was almost exciting when teams started doing it. And then they all started doing it.

And now it's just kind of boring again. It's just like you always do it. It's automatic. Now, you know, at least in our sphere, I think certainly there are fans who still look at this and are like, what the heck? How are you pulling this guy who's pitching well? Right. there and because it often arrives at that time and because we know that having been good in that game up to that point is not predictive of future results it just makes sense and so now it's it's almost automatic where you just know like all but the the very very best starters just are not going to go deep into the game it's just it's kind of dull really. Like in game seven, I remember the broadcasters, I think it was game seven, were talking about how they had asked the managers about their plan for the starters in that game. And as it turned out, the starters were both pretty good and stayed in for a little bit, but the managers only wanted to talk about their

bullpen plans is what the broadcasters relayed because that's where the emphasis is now it's like we just want to get this guy through 18 batters or outs or whatever and right then we'll go to the pen and then we'll have this whole sequence so if you had this element of additional strategy where you could consider okay it might be the best thing for this current game to to pull the starter right now, but I have to take the long view. I got to win four in this best of seven, as we explained ad nauseum last year. So I have to hold some relievers in reserve.

I have to keep some guys fresh so that they don't get overexposed by the end of this series. And I don't know if a manager would have the courage of their convictions to be able to stand up after the game and either stonewall or outright say, yeah, I didn't make the move that would have helped us win that game right now because our numbers say that it might have helped us down the road because now they haven't seen this guy that I'm going to use in the subsequent game. You know, you would have to be pretty impervious to criticism, I think, to either stand up and say that or not say that because you don't want to give away your tactics, but that would be your motivating factor.

But if that happened, it would make things much more interesting for us to analyze. It wouldn't just be, oh, they left him in too long. He faced the third time. You know, it would be like, yeah, but there's an additional consideration. You have to weigh that against what does that mean down the road? Yeah. I think that any time we can inject more strategy into the proceedings, the better. And I think that particularly in a time like the postseason where so many of your decisions are so high stakes,

you are constantly doing this negotiation between present you and future you and who's paying the piper at any given time, right? It can feel very rude. Like the fact that Tori Lavello can say he gets 18 hitters plus or minus four, I think reads to people as overly determined, even though I think that that kind of framework is meant to be a general one

that you adjust up or down depending on what's happening on the given day, what the, you know, sort of base state is, et cetera. Having it feel less predictable, I think is good. And I think having, you know, having a sense that there are more possible outcomes in any given game, plate appearance, whatever, is a good thing. I think that we rightly view and you know the balance has shifted a little bit even just in this last year because of the pitch clock and the new rules and everything but you know for a long time our sense of it was that hitters were kind of on their heels

a little bit right the pitching was so dominant and it was hard to adjust the balance back so that it was more sort of equal on both sides. And so if our sports benefit. And, you know, introducing complication to the way front offices think about this stuff is good. And I suspect that there are some diligent analysts out there as we speak, thinking about these very questions, right? You know, by the time stuff rolls around to the public space, it tends to have been at least contemplated somewhat details in the article, but none of them dismissed it out of hand. Some of them discounted the possibility that this could overcome or could quickly overcome the times through the order effect orthodoxy, which has become so entrenched now. wrench now. But some said that their teams had thought about it, that they think it could be a real thing. Others thought that teams should or will be taking this into account, factoring it into their usage models somehow. I don't know how. Obviously, they weren't going to tell me exactly how or how important they think it is. But no one laughed this off at all. They definitely entertained this possibility and the idea that it might mean something. And, you know, I've looked

at a starting pitcher familiarity effect in the playoffs, and I found that there isn't one within a single series as long as you're on full rest. So if you're on short rest, then you're worse. If you're on full rest and you're facing the same team, that doesn't seem to affect you. And the eternal question, which we will talk about in a moment with our guest is, well, is that because they were on short rest and they were fatigued? Or is it because they had had fewer games since their last outing because they were on short rest. And so there was a familiarity effect that hadn't worn off. Right. Because, you know, if there is one in game, then it's not totally unintuitive that there could be one across games.

But how many games does that last? How many days? How many pictures do you have to see in the interim before you forget whatever it was that you saw that could potentially help you? So it's really fascinating to me. And as you said, it really could kind of come to a head in this series specifically because of the makeup of these two teams. So I looked at this with the help of Lucas Pasteleros from Baseball Perspectives, and just in the past several years, the percentage of plate appearances in the postseason against a starter who's facing the hitter for the

third time or more in that game has dropped off precipitously now. It's now generally under 10% of all plate appearances are fitting that description. It's 9% so far this postseason, it was 10%. Last postseason, it was 5% the previous and 8% the one before that. So it's kind of settled in in that range right around 10 or fewer. Whereas it used to be consistently like in the mid 20s, you know, even up to 31 was the peak just going all the way back to 1954, which is what we had easily accessible data for, it was two to three times higher that rate than what it is now. And a lot of those plate appearances that are now not against a pitcher that you're facing for the fourth time in a game or the third time in a game are coming against relievers. And somewhat to our surprise, there hasn't been a huge uptick in the percentage of plate appearances taken against a reliever that you've already faced, say, two or three or more times in the series. There has been an uptick in the percentage against a reliever that you faced at least once. That has increased.

But beyond that, it actually hasn't, which surprised us a little. I think it's probably because, A, yes, there are more innings going to bullpen guys now, but they're also just more bullpen guys. So you are still distributing those innings among more relievers. And then also in recent years, teams have gotten pretty careful, even in the playoffs, when it comes to using relievers every day, right? So there's more consideration given to let's rest this guy or let's not use him three or four days in a row or games in a row. And so again, that leads to the innings being a bit more distributed. But the point is you're shifting those familiar plate

appearances from starters potentially to relievers and sometimes familiar relievers. And so when you have this series with bullpens that were weak, at least on a full season basis, as you said, just a very small circle of trust really on both of these teams. And so those guys could get worked pretty hard by the end of this World Series. Yep. I have a feeling that there's going to be a lot of the gink is here shared on social media and it will be time for Paul Seawall to pitch pretty often. Yeah. And look, the gink has been great, but also did anyone know who the gink was before very recently? Like we, we fall in love and fall out of love with relievers very fast.

And sometimes that's appropriate and sometimes it's not. The Rangers and the Diamondbacks ranked 23rd and 24th, respectively, in reliever fan graphs were this season. And that is, I think, Sean Dolaner looked this up for me. worst or highest combined rank in bullpen war of two pennant winners, except for 2011, which was the last time that the Rangers were in the World Series. That year, you had the Rangers and the Cardinals who were 25th and 27th, respectively, in bullpen war. But other than that, this is about as bad as it's gotten. And you could say, well, yeah, but they've fixed things as the season went on, or at

least the Diamondbacks have. If you just look post-All-Star break, their rankings were actually worse. So you have to drill down to September specifically, really, and October, obviously, to say that the Diamondbacks bullpen is fixed now. And maybe it is. You know, like, they've been really good, and they have new personnel there. They've looked great, but it's still a pretty small sample that we're saying this is like a lights out late inning bullpen core. And we've seen good bullpens go bad in the playoffs and we've seen bad bullpens

go good. So I wouldn't be feeling super confident in either pen and certainly not more than, you know, two or three guys in either pen. series who have had big blowups. Some of them feature, you know, the opposition of the Arizona Diamondbacks. So it's not even a sure thing when you have like the literally the best guy on the mound. But yeah, this is not that. And they're not bad to be clear. Like, you know, it's time for Paul Seawald to pitch, but it's, it's a,

it's an unstable element in the proceedings. And I think that's good. You know, I do. I think it's good. Yeah, I think if you are like a partisan in in this fight, it probably feels lousy. Oh, yeah. But as a mostly neutral observer, I would say that it's it to have a little, ooh, you know? All right. Well, let's take a quick break and we'll be back with David to talk about his research. And you know what? I'm going to retroactively, but also prospectively, declare this a stat blast. This entire, I've blasted some stats. I. Or have had some stats blasted for me. For this segment. So this and our interview, in which David will discuss the stats that he has blasted.

Yeah. This will be one big stat blast, which is presented by our sponsor, Tops Now. Tops Now. And you can find the Tops Now offerings at tops.com. Currently, there aren't any because there haven't been baseball games for a couple days. But there are about to be baseball games again. And that means that there are about to be baseball cards available the very next day commemorating things that happened in the World Series. Would you not want a memento if your team is in the World Series or if you're someone who just enjoys World Series?

World Series, or if you're someone who just enjoys World Series, would you not want to commemorate that with a piece of high quality cardboard that was manufactured immediately after that game? You don't have to wait for next season to celebrate. You can put that thing in pride of place right above your TV in your living room, wherever you keep your trophies and mementos. You can have it immediately after. You can get it the next day. So just go to Topps.com.

Once baseball is being played again, there will be baseball cards back at Topps.com. And we will be back after the stop-blast song. All right. We are joined now by Dr. David J. Gordon. He is the author of the new study we were just referencing in the Sabre Baseball Research Journal, Balancing Starter and Bullpen Workloads in a Seven-Game Postseason Series. David, welcome. Thank you. Good to be here. So what got you interested in this subject? I assume that you've observed how baseball has changed in recent years, but what piqued your interest in this topic? Was it a specific game or series or just something that's been on your mind? And probably the 2016 World Series was what influenced me the most because I noticed that Bill Madden kept on taking out Cubs starters very early in the game.

And by the end of the series, our oldest chap was a shadow of himself. So I was just frustrated with that. frustrated with that. But I think I've always been a fan of starting pitcher performance, and I've never liked how bullpen-heavy the game has become. So I think that's the backdrop. But I've been sort of thinking about this ever since then, and I just decided now that I'm retired, I actually sat down and did some analysis of it. So for our listeners who haven't had a chance to read the study yet, walk us through that analysis.

What pitcher populations were you looking at over which years? And what were some of the conclusions that you drew about the balance between starters and relievers here? I looked at the last nine years from 2014 to 2022. I think the reason I chose that is because a lot of the stuff about the time through the order penalty became popular around that time. And I noticed sort of a jump in the workload of starting pitchers in the postseason versus relief pitchers in the postseason, starting around that time. I used only seven-game series because I wanted to look at a period, a series that was long enough so that teams would really get used to seeing the other pitchers. And I felt like if I mixed five-game series and seven-game series, it would be very hard to sort things out afterwards.

very hard to sort things out afterwards. So that gives me a total of 27 seven-game, potentially seven-game series, nine NLCS, nine ALCS, and nine World Series to look at. I considered all pitchers who appeared at least, all relief pitchers who appeared at least three times in a series. Some only, you know, a lot of them will just appear three times. There was one person, Brandon Morrow, who appeared in all seven games of the series once, but he's the only one of those. So I looked at that, and I think it's a complicated analysis to do,

as I discovered when I was trying to do it, because there are an awful lot of performances to analyze. There's a lot of noise because any one pitcher in any one series could have a bad outing their first time out and a good outing later on. It's a very noisy system, so you need a lot of results. You need a lot of data to analyze it. There's also a difference between quality of pitchers. So managers tend to use their best pitchers more than they tend to use their least reliable relief pitchers. So I wanted to use pitcher's first appearance in a series as their baseline and compared the difference in weighted on base percentage between each later appearance and their first appearance.

And that's what I analyzed. getting into the statistical weeds, but the most analytic methods are based on a normal distribution and WOBA does not have a normal distribution. So I had to use a non-parametric way to analyze the series. Certainly won't go into that on the podcast. We're normally not afraid of the weeds, but I guess there's a height of weeds that could screw your sample up and selection biases and other things that could lead you astray. And I think you did the best you could to adjust for some of those things. So what did you find roughly the magnitude of the effect to be? And you divided it into different groups of, you know, workload and fatigue and rest, et cetera. So what's your sort of general finding about how much it might matter for a reliever to face that team in that series several times? Well, the first analysis I tried

to do was a simple thing, which just looked like, just looked like a person's second appearance, their third appearance, their fourth appearance, et cetera, on up to seven appearances. In each one, the difference in WOBA between their nth appearance and their first appearance. You run into a problem early on. Then the second appearance is not that big an effect. And by the seventh appearance, you've only got one picture to look at. It's not that big an effect. And by the seventh appearance, you've only got one picture to look at.

So the bulk of the data is appearances number three, four, and five. And you find that there's a difference in the third appearance. It's about 59 points in WOBA between the third appearance and the first appearance. And that's a statistically very significant result. It's similar in the fourth appearance, and that's a statistically very significant result. It's similar in the fourth appearance. There are only about half as many pictures to analyze with four appearances, and the results are not quite statistically significant, although they're numerically the same. And in the fifth appearance, you're only dealing with 27 pictures to analyze, but the effect is huge. It's 139 points, not quite statistically

significant because you have small numbers. But there's generally a trend that the more appearances you make, the higher the WOBA gets. And if you combine everybody, if you look at all appearances after the first appearances versus their first appearance, it's about a 40-point rise in WOBA between late appearance and the first appearance. And it's not just a matter of the amount of time between appearances, but the extent of the usage in the initial appearance, right? That makes a difference in sort of subsequent performance. Is that right? Yeah. The first appearance is just, you know, I just use, like, the number, the ordinal number of the appearance, second, third, fourth, et cetera.

So, you know, there's a limit. Since series are played in a finite amount of time, there's a limit to how many days can, you know, if a pitcher pitches at least three times and, you know, if they pitch four times or more, there's only so many days that can go by between appearances, unless you have rain delays or something. But anyway, I did a subsequent analysis that looked at the length of rest that a pitcher had, and I found that pitchers who pitched on consecutive days actually performed quite poorly.

And if they just pitched the previous day, their WOBA was 70 points higher than in their first appearance. And also pitchers who pitched with one day's rest but had faced at least five batters on the previous day, but had faced at least five batters on the previous day, the two days before the current appearance, that their WOBA was 130 points higher than their first appearance. Whereas pitchers who pitched, who did not fall into either of those categories, who either had at least two days rest or had one day's rest but only faced less than four batters in their previous appearance.

In those cases, you had no significant difference between those outings and their first appearance. So there does seem to be an effect of how long the hiatus was between appearances and how many batters they had faced at their most recent appearance. Yeah, so that's one of the questions. Is this a fatigue effect or is it a familiarity effect? Not that they're mutually exclusive. It could be a bit of both. And that's still an open question with the starter times to the order penalty.

I've found the evidence in favor of familiarity a little more compelling than the evidence in favor of fatigue. But again, it could potentially be both or one or the other. That's still sort of not a fully settled question. I guess when it comes to this subject, when it comes to reliever usage in a postseason series, you could say it's somewhat immaterial or it matters a little less because one way or another, they're just, as you said, there are only so many days that you can actually rest. And if you're using the reliever a lot of times, then there's going to be both a familiarity effect and potentially a fatigue effect, right? So identifying which is the culprit or which is more responsible may be a moot point if you just know what the effect is and you're more interested

in the effect, but I am interested in why the effect happens. I'm interested in that too, and I started to do an analysis, but I got discouraged. There was an analysis that I did. I said, well, let's look at. There was an analysis that I did. I said, well, let's look at the regular season, because then you can look at pitchers who appeared on consecutive days. Did they appear against the same team, or did they appear against different teams? These are very labor-intensive things to do, just getting the database put together, at least with the expertise that I have in handling databases and the tools that I have available are such that I have to do a lot of work to get that set up. In the single season, I didn't really find it.

Within the regular season, I didn't find much of anything. I mean, I couldn't even demonstrate to my satisfaction that relief pitchers who appeared on consecutive days during the season did any worse than pitchers who appeared with more rest between their appearances. So I put it on the back burner as something I might look into if I have the energy to do it. But they're sort of hopelessly confounded in a postseason, those two effects, because the pitchers are facing the same team and they're getting of hopelessly confounded in a postseason, those two effects, because the pitchers are facing the same team and they're getting fatigued.

So you can't do an analysis and say, is there any difference between when they pitch with a particular amount of rest against the same team versus a different team? You can't do that analysis in a postseason. As I was reading your study, I kept thinking of the Diamondbacks game three against the Phillies and the NLCS, where you had a young pitcher, Brandon Fott, who has very extreme times through the order penalties, albeit in a relatively small sample, who was given 18 hitters and then pulled after he was going to be faced

with the Phillies lineup a third time through. And they also have a very small circle of trust, you might say, in their bullpen, right? They have a couple of guys who their manager clearly has a lot of confidence in, but in general, a pretty shaky relief core overall. And I was thinking, how would you advise the Arizona Diamondbacks as they go into the World Series trying to balance those considerations against one another? Because their third starter isn't putting up average time through the order penalty numbers, right? His are meaningfully worse than sort of your average big league starter, but they also have a worse than average bullpen. So how would you think about sort of balancing those considerations if you were the Diamondbacks? I can't think of anything to say to Torrey Lovullo. According to my analysis, he did everything wrong. Day after day after day.

And he was just as good in his last appearance as he was in his first. The same with Seawall. You know, all I could say is if you have a large enough sample, you're going to get into trouble doing that. Yeah. Maybe it'll catch up with him in the World Series. I don't know. But I have too much humility to tell Troy that he did it all wrong. Right.

He got the desired result this time, at least. Yes. I guess result matters more than process in any individual postseason series. By the way, I thought Brandon Fott looked like the best pitcher also. Yeah, he looked great. He was a great prospect, I know, but he didn't have a good year. He didn't really show much during the season. And then, I mean, I thought he looked better than Gallin and better than Kelly. One thing that you didn't do in your study is isolate to the specific batter-pitcher

matchups, right? So you looked at the times that the reliever was used against a certain team, but didn't specify that it had to be the same batters. Although, as I noted, the study I sent you that Cameron Grove did, he did that. So he approached the problem in a different way and came up with a similar result, at least directionally. So were you heartened to see the converging results with the different methods? Yes. I was a little bit heartened that I wasn't familiar with this study before I wrote the paper. I thought they would have referred to it, and I might have tried to do something that looked at particular picture batter matchups. I'm not sure that if you look at these individual matchups, that's how the statistics

would pan out. Because, you know, if you're comparing WOBA and each appearance contains like four or five or six hitters, the differences in WOBA are more robust than, say, whether a single batter, you know, if you're looking at single matchups against a single batter, first of all, I don't know how many you'd find where there's more than, you know, two or three repeat matchups in a series. And your results, you'd be analyzing things like the guy made an out the first time, walked the second time, and made an out the third time. So there'd be very little information within each matchup. But if you have enough of them, you know,

to the average out like this does, and I don't know how this, I have a feeling that the statistics that I'm not sure you'd get significance levels. You know, he didn't, he didn't present any statistical analysis of it. So I don't, I don't really know. But I think since we're looking at the same theories, basically in the same, the same games, it is very heartening and encouraging that we both are seeing similar things.

I hesitate to make you speculate. I know that this was not the subject of your research, although you make note of some other research that looks at specific familiarity effects pertaining to particular pitch types. But if you had to sort of guess or speculate, do you think that there is a particular penalty that might be ascribed to pitchers who rely on either a specific repertoire of pitches or a more limited repertoire of pitches? Do you think that that is a factor in sort of how pronounced the Woba effects might be for relievers? Yeah, I think that it makes sense to me. When you look at the data, they're always surprises. They're always surprises. And I'd like one of the all time greats, obviously, is Mariano Rovira. And everything that I've read about him is that he relied almost exclusively on one pitch all the time.

And and he was terrific in the postseason. I mean, he gave up like, I don't have his stats memorized, but I think he... They're very good. The only game I remember that he lost was that seventh game against Arizona in 2001. Yes, I also remember that game. But I think there's probably variation, and there probably are particular pitchers who are more susceptible to the... Just like you point out that Ryan Fott may be more susceptible to the times-to-the-order penalty, there probably are relief pitchers who are very susceptible to this

bias, and other relief pitchers who are relatively immune to it. I think that Ryan Presley was one guy that I didn't see much effect on. He pitched a lot of times in a lot of series. Yeah, there is research that shows that starters with fewer pitch types seem to be more susceptible to the times-through-the-order penalty, so it would stand to reason, I suppose, that relievers who tend to have fewer pitch types or rely on fewer pitch types might be more vulnerable on the whole than starters, although they're not facing hitters outweighs the times to the order penalty, that it's just a mitigating factor, not even getting specific to any one team like the Diamond Packs, but just in general, if you were briefing your manager, if you're working for a team and you want to let your manager know about this recent research, how would you pose that?

How would you frame it as to what they should do in a situation like this? I would say that this effect, on the average, is as big or bigger than the times-to-the-order effect. If I were managing in a postseason series, I had a fixed roster of 13 pitchers, and I had to get by with the same guys for seven consecutive games I would conserve my pitchers early in the series you know one thing is though is I would not be relying on just one pitcher every time there was a high leverage

situation I think I would like to have on my roster at least two or three pitchers I could trust I would be very reluctant to use my best closers game after game early in a series. Of course, if it came down to the end of the series and it was crunch time, I mean, you have no choice. I mean, I think Madden more or less had to use our oldest Chapman in game seven, even though he was clearly getting less and less effective as the series went on. But, you know, at some point, it's not like he had a lot of other choices. But what I would fault people is for saying, well,

if I've got an early game in the World Series, a game two, and say you're ahead six to one or six to two in the ninth inning or something like that, I don't know that I would be using. I think I would want to get by with not using my best pitchers. And I would also want to let my starters go longer if they were still effective, especially if I had a Jack Morris-type pitcher, you know, who's a veteran and who can mix it up and change his approach at different times through the order.

who can mix it up and change his approach at different times through the order, I would not be sort of automatically removing him in the fifth or sixth inning. I might treat Brandon Fott a little differently, but I don't think I'd be automatically removing every pitcher after two turns through the order, especially early in a series. In the late games, if my relievers were fresh,

I would be more inclined to be more aggressive using the bullpen. But I think the problem with going all out, running through all your pitchers, all your relief pitchers, early in the series and giving the other team a lot of looks at them is then by the time the series gets to game six or seven, you've got nothing left that they haven't seen. I'm curious, you know, we've talked about the D-backs and Fott, and I know that your analysis was through 2022,

so it doesn't include this postseason. But as you've watched playoff baseball the last couple of years, are there any teams that strike you as sort of getting hip to this balance that they have to strike? Because, you know, I'm sure that there are front office analysts who are trying to dissect the optimal pitching usage across a seven-game postseason series, you know, every possible way. So are there clubs that you think are maybe a little bit ahead on this and trying to balance those concerns more actively? I don't know that I've been watching the baseball games that critically. I mean, I watch the games, but I don't always watch them from beginning to end.

You know, Bruce Boshy seems to me to be an example of a guy who doesn't go crazy making pitching changes early in the game, although he tended to rely on Spores. He had the Spores-Chapman-Beclair thing, and then LeChapman kind of, I think he soured on Chapman. But one of the things that he didn't keep using was, I think he sort of got on to the fact that Chapman wasn't too reliable early on and was only going to get worse as the series went on. So I like the I mean, he,

I liked the fact that he used Montgomery in that situation, but I don't know. I don't think I could give you a really good answer about that. I think Dusty Baker also seems to have, I mean, yeah, I think he's, I think he's kind of learned over the course of his career and isn't as quick with it. It doesn't, his trigger finger isn't as quick as it... Well, I think his trigger finger was never quick, but I think you could have faulted him early in his career for being too slow to release starters. I wonder about just how managers would think about this because they've all been schooled and conditioned now and probably sternly instructed to mind the times through the order effect.

And so if suddenly people say, oh, actually, we didn't fully account for this other effect that is acting in the other direction, you know, it happened fairly quickly that we saw this great shift in pitcher usage in the postseason. I wonder how quickly it would shift back if teams did reach the conclusion that it was worth moderating that somewhat. And then I wonder how it would affect how managers use their pitchers, because I guess, you know, from a just public backlash standpoint, they probably get more grief from fans for pulling pitchers now than they do for leaving them in. So in that sense, they might be more willing to say,

okay, we'll stick with them a little longer because if someone's pitching well and I take him out, then that never really goes great for me, you know, or often it doesn't. But using other relievers, if your solution were, let's switch up which relievers we use and we can't use our best reliever tonight. Let's use our third or fourth best guy to keep the other guy fresh and not overexposed. Then you'd have to rely on fans understanding that strategy and not saying, why aren't they using the best guy right now? Why are they putting in this guy? Right. So there's always going to be... I know. I wouldn't envy being in their position.

I think, first of all, during the season, I make this point in my article, during the regular season, there's nothing to stop people from managers freely using relief pitchers because there's really no downside to it in the regular season. If you limit starters to basically two or two plus times through the order, maybe with some leeway for giving more time to the veterans. But if you use like five pitchers in a game, I mean, you can send three of them down to the minors

and call three of them up from AAA and have fresh pitchers the next day. So there are at least pitchers that this team hasn't seen. It's probably a good strategy to use lots of relief pitchers during the season. You can tell your starters, first of all, you can tell your starters, throw as hard as you can and don't worry about it. I'll take you out when you get tired. You can tell your same thing to your relief pitchers. If one guy gets tired,

there's another guy. If the games don't go 14 innings anymore because you have the ghost runner, you have a lot of safety valves against overexposing your relief pitchers during the season. Then you go to the postseason and managers are used to managing a certain way. And, uh, but all of the parameters have suddenly

changed to that. You no longer call people up from the minor leagues during a series games can go 16 innings during the world series or during an LCS. And then, and you're facing the same team seven games in a week, or a little over a week. So it's very different. And plus the pressure is on you to win. You're under the microscope in every game. So I can understand how a manager would just say, well, this game one is in trouble right now.

I need to put my best relief pitcher in there and I'll worry about tomorrow, tomorrow. I think it would require a great deal of discipline not to do that. The only solution I can think of is to have not just one trusted reliever, but more like what the Phillies have, a sort of a battery of trusted relievers. Well, is there any further research you would like to do on this subject, or you would like to see someone do to answer any lingering questions you still have? I'd like to go for, you know, I sort of get other things catch my fancy, so I'm not sure, especially because of how labor-intensive this particular kind of analysis was, I'm not sure

that I'm, how much further I'm going to go in this field, but I would certainly like people to try to look at the regular season effects of relievers. It would be nice if someone could do more analysis of how different types of pitchers, other pitchers who are really good at appearing multiple days versus other persons that really lose effectiveness in multiple days. Sort of a lot of the finer points. It would be nice if somebody could get some more convincing data about whether it's fatigue or whether it's exposure. It would be nice if somebody several years from now look at the series that have

happened since then and see if it's the same thing that's going on if you can replicate if the

results say from 23 to 29 replicate the results of what we

last decade so I think things like that would all be interesting

to see I have other things that I'd like to I'm very interested in like evaluating careers for the Hall of Fame and that sort of thing. I've played around a lot with that. Well, I'm glad you found time to look into this once at least and look forward to any further research you do or anyone else does, but we will tell people where they can

find this study. Again, it's called Balancing Starter and Bullpen Workloads in a Seven-Game Postseason Series. Its author, who we have been talking to, Dr. David J. Gordon. Thank you very much, David. Thank you. All right. One more point on that topic I meant to make or really relay because I didn't make this point initially, but my pal and colleague Zach Cram at The Ringer, when we were discussing this research, he said, this might be too much of an extrapolation, but I wonder if this research, Cameron's in particular, suggests that good lefty hitters in particular

are more valuable than you'd expect in the playoffs. Because, and maybe this is just confirmation bias, it seems to me that managers have more this loogie slash loogie adjacent reliever has to face this lefty slugger every time approaches than with righties, perhaps because they naturally have fewer lefty relievers in the pen. But if the lefty sluggers get familiar with the loogie over the course of the series, maybe yet another small southpaw advantage in the sport, as if there weren't already enough of those.

Forgot to ask Meg where we should set the over-unders for the number of times that we will see the Luis Gonzalez 2001 World Series Game 7 play during this series. I'm going to go with four, including pre- and post-game packages. I guess the question is, will we see more Luis Gonzalez or more David Fries? I don't have any painful memories associated with David Fries, so I would much rather see those. Also, an update for the very long-time listeners among you. I'd rather see those. Also, an update for the very long time listeners among you.

If you remember back to our running bit about Diamondbacks headlines contests during the first Sam era of the podcast, this was late 2014, starting with episode 498, where he found someone going by the name Nora Morse, who was spamming suggestions to a fan-submitted game headline contest in the Arizona Republic, including D-backs lousy and how sweet it is. Snakes Alive sounds a lot like a Nora Morse headline. We were always wondering whether Nora Morse was a real person. Well, it came to my attention that there is a Nora Morse on Twitter who quote tweeted the Diamondbacks tweet about the Diamondbacks heading to the World Series. So perhaps Nora Morse has been found after all these years. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you can click the link to the Diamondbacks Headlines contest page on the Effectively Wild wiki.

Speaking of old episodes, even older episodes, some of you may have had a bunch of very, very early episodes of Effectively Wild suddenly download on your podcast apps. If so, sorry about that. It came to our attention that some podcast apps were limiting the number of Effectively Wild episodes that could be displayed to 2,000, which is not a problem for most podcasts, but it is for us. So I asked if we could do something about that so that all of them could be displayed.

I think and hope that that has happened now, but it may have also caused some episodes to download onto your phones, the very first episodes of the podcast. It sounded just a little bit different back then, but that was more than 11 years ago. And to help us keep on trucking, you can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay almost ad-free, and get themselves access to some perks. Christopher Lindahl, Jonathan Schuster, Austin Hall, Brian Hamilton, and Jake Devon. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group, which is where you can follow along with our World Series Game 1 livestream. That's another perk.

As are monthly bonus episodes. We'll be recording one of those soon, too. You can also get discounts on merch and ad-free fancrafts memberships and much, much more. Check out all the options and offerings at patreon.com slash effectively wild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can still contact us via email, send us your questions and comments at podcast at Fangraphs.com. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EW pod, and you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash effectively wild. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We will be back with

one more episode before the end of the week. Talk to you soon. In a world of bad takes, for the good takes, on baseball and life, with a balance of analytics Effectively wild Effectively wild Effectively wild