Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2079: The Rangers Are the Residue of Design

Episode Date: November 3, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Meg’s experience covering the World Series in Arizona, then discuss the most interesting aspects of the series, what (if anything) teams could learn from the Rangers’ success, the futures of the Rangers and Diamondbacks, the entertainment value of the 2023 playoffs, and much more. Audio intro: Alex Ferrin, “Effectively […]

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Effectively wild Baseball Podcast Hello and welcome to episode 2079 of Effectively Wild, a Fangrafts baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangrafts, and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm all right. Long time, no podcast. I know. We like, we mooshed it all together very close. And then we were not able to talk for many days because boy, is it busy when there's like a World Series in town, dude. Yeah. Turns out it's not that long a break by most podcast standards.

No. But for us, it's like, where are they? I hope everything's okay. Is my feed malfunctioning? No Effectively Wild for five days or whatever it is. We were both clearing our throats before we started as if we hadn't spoken in ages. We were forgetting whose turn it was to do the intro. No idea.

I think we got the episode number right, though. I think so. Yes. I think so. Hopefully. Yeah. Well, I was traveling earlier this week, and then you were covering World Series games on back-to-back-to-belly days. So, yeah, we've both been busy and writing about the series and reflecting. And here we are to talk about that. So I guess we'll just devote this entire episode to the entirety of the World Series, which has transpired since our last episode. Which I guess maybe says something about the series itself. It says something about how long the series lasted.

Five games, in case anyone missed it. But we can talk about the series and we can talk about the Texas Rangers, your 2023 World Series champions. World Series champions, Ben. Yeah. Champions for the first time ever. And we can talk about the losers of the World Series. We can talk about the losers of the World Series.

It feels harsh to lead with losers because they did, after all, lose later than everyone except the Rangers. But they did not win the World Series, the Arizona Diamondbacks. And we can talk about the playoffs as a whole. And then next time it'll be on to the offseason. Oh, my God. We'll turn our attention to all of that. Yeah. But not yet. Not yet. Let's linger to the off season. Oh, my God. We'll turn our attention to all of that. Yeah. But not yet. Not yet.

Let's linger on the World Series. So how are you doing? Because you've been at the ballpark. You've been in the press box. What was it like to be on the scene? This was your first in-person World Series. Overwhelming. Awesome.

Flummoxing in terms of actually producing words about which we don't need to linger on because why make my problems other people's problems you know like that's my problem and john's problem is not it's not a real problem you can do the roger angel and just come out you know a month or two later just come out with the long form in the print edition of fan crafts. Yeah. I told someone that you had comped to that. And because they know me, they're like, oh, so have you been unable to write since he made that comparison? And I was like, yeah, that's pretty much it. So it's all your fault. Really?

It was just really extremely very cool. It is an interesting dynamic. You know, I had not experienced it within the World Series context specifically, but you get to know a place, right? You have sort of your closest big league park, and particularly if you work within baseball in some capacity, like you come to view that space as a place where, you know, you go and see games, but also where you're working. And so you're kind of aware of it. And then all these other people show up then. And, you know, more of them even then,

then showed up for the division series or the championship series. So there's this like huge influx of folks many of whom had not sort of experienced chase and all its charms and quirks before and so i had the opportunity to at times get sort of reflexively defensive on chase field's behalf um when people noted things that are true but still, I was like, you don't have to be so mean about this weird little ballpark in the middle of the desert. But it was just a profoundly cool energy around the scene pretty much the whole time.

I have to hand it to Diamondbacks fans. They were there. They were loud in a game where they were watching their team get blown out very early, stuck around, you know, like nobody left during that game for really. People were there to see the almost comeback. So I thought that was pretty cool. You know, as you think about a fan base and a place sort of cementing itself in a baseball tradition and finding its way as a very young franchise, I think moments like that are really critical to sort of that connection and glue. I got to see the Rangers hit some balls

very far. I got to watch the Rangers take advantage of defensive miscues and bullpen games i got to see zach allen uh take a a world series game to a no-hitter in the seventh and then i saw what happened after that uh spoiler alert he didn't do it you know didn't pull that off but especially given sort of how mediocre his postseason performance had been to that point it was cool to see that sort of rally it wasn't obviously enough for them to live to fight another day but i think it would have been hard for them to ask for much more from gallon in in that start. So that was cool. I got to see Bruce Bochy get so impatient to be done with game four that he inexplicably put Jose Leclerc into a game where at the time his team was leading by six runs.

So we should talk about that probably. I got to see Corey Seager be pretty, pretty good at baseball. I got to see Marcus Simeon be pretty good at baseball, which was nice because he'd had a rough go of it before that. Saw a gutty Nate Evaldi performance. Yeah, it was really something, Ben. You know, it was a big sporting event in Arizona. So I, of course, saw Jordan Sparks sing the national anthem, because how could you not? Right. I think that's in our constitution here. Yeah, it was really cool.

It was really very cool. Did you find that being on the scene helped you understand what was happening better? Because I find that when I cover postseason games, it's fun. It's a great atmosphere. I don't know that it actually improves my coverage because it depends on where you're seated also, if you're in the regular press box or the auxiliary box and what else is going on and how the Wi-Fi is. I find that if I'm just sort of writing about what happened, that in a way I can follow the action a little bit better and have more information at my fingertips at home. Yeah. But there are ways in which if I'm writing about the ballpark environment and the atmosphere and what the crowd was like,

or maybe if there's some reporting. Now, in the playoffs, your ability to ask questions and just talk to people is kind of limited too, because there's only so much availability. And as you said, there are just so many people kind of crashing your local party. Right. And also they put the transcripts of the press releases online at a website that anyone can access without actually being there or even being a credentialed media member. So in what ways did you find that it helped your coverage or your understanding of what was transpiring and in what ways was it like cool to be there, but maybe not actually helping you produce coverage? Wow. What a lovely out you've given me that it's really just all about being in the aux box.

Yes. you've given me that it's really just all about being in the aux box. Yes. I am interested in it from sort of a more anthropological perspective, which is why not having run today is fine. It's fine, Ben. It's fine. I would say it wasn't fun. And so I think being there was incredibly useful because you just, you walk around and

you see stuff and what stuff you see is, is I think really helpful to that purpose. Um, because you're not limited to what the broadcast camera shows you, um, which is a lot, um, particularly in the post season, but you know, you, you see special little stuff when you're away from the camera's eye. So I think in that respect, very useful, but you're right that from a writing the gamer perspective, I don't know that it is a necessary thing to be on site unless you are sort of taking advantage of what availabilities there are. And you know, the transcripts do go online, but like if you have

specific questions that you want to be able to ask people and obviously like any scrums or anything like that aren't transcribed. So there is value, I think in that piece, but it is an interesting dynamic. Cause it's like, I was in the main box for the first game in Phoenix, sitting in someone's seat who wasn't there cause they didn't feel well. And then they thankfully felt better. And so for the second two games, I was out in the auxiliary box and you are, you know, I want to be very clear. I want to be very clear. This is not like a woe is me kind of a thing, but, um, you know, like you're just dealing, they have to put a bunch of people in a place and, you know, they're trying to balance the dynamic of like, what seats do we give up that people might pay to sit in and where and what, you know, are we sort of obligated to do to facilitate coverage? And like, I could see very little of left because of the structure that supports the big video board and center field. And then, you know, we were at an angle where like anything up against the wall in sort of left center, I couldn't really visualize.

But, you know, in game five, there were a couple of when it started to become clear that maybe like things were going to turn for Gallen. He gave up those two really hard deep outs. And I had to look at the monitor to see the completion of those catches because I wasn't in a position to do it. And like I couldn't really see Alec Thomas's error, which like maybe is a comfort to him. which like maybe is a comfort to him but you know you do get to you you notice things in that setup that you wouldn't get to notice in the main box so like during game four when arizona was trying to come back i know this got remarked upon on the broadcast but like the upper deck started throwing paper airplanes and you know if you're wondering throwing paper airplanes. And, you know, if you're wondering at home, like how did they, you know, we had the stand up to cancer placards and it's like a heavy card stock. So they actually made for like really good paper planes,

I would imagine. Cause you get good zip on it, you know, it's like got sort of a good, it's a useful projectile in that respect. So, so there's that part of it uh i got to watch you know sort of that play out and then i got to watch the left field stands shift as the game shifted from being you know clearly frustrated and booing the pa announcer for telling them not to throw airplanes to chanting every batter's name as he came to the plate because you know here was arizona sort of mounting this rally um that ultimately obviously proved fruitless but you know the the crowd got right back in it and being able to sort of watch that change in temperament wash over the stands

was like a very it was very cool and for yeah for purposes, quite useful. So, like, you know, there's pros and cons to all of it. And I think that seeing just like the madness associated with all of it is really interesting. And, you know, you get a sense of it on TV. Just being there does sort of drive it home, like watching a sea of camera people trying to get up to the front of the pen to watch the trophy presentation. And man, those TV people, they're intense. They're pretty hardcore, man, those TV folks. I got to hear Rob Manfred's pubescent voice cracks in person. I mean, kind of. What was Rob doing on Halloween to lose his voice like that?

It's not the first time I think that he's had that happening in the trophy presentation portion of the program. But yeah, he was not in his strongest voice. It was like me when I had laryngitis a while back and I was trying to get through it anyway. Yeah. I wonder, stuff is kind of going around this time of year. And so, I do wonder, you know, maybe he was getting over something. Maybe. But I guess it depends on, yeah, what kind of coverage you want to do and are you the scene? And can you inject some of that local color into your piece and paint a picture for people as opposed to just doing a straight gamer and recap and analysis of the X's and O's, in which case, maybe it's easier to concentrate on that stuff without

actually being there, or depending on your writing habits and proclivities and ability to write things on deadline and in a crowded ballpark, which is not a strength of mine necessarily. So. No, it's not a strength of mine. I mean, writing on deadline, it's so funny because like writing on deadline did used to be a strength of mine. And then I became mostly an editor and then that strength disappeared. So, yeah. But I don't know, man. It was very, it's quite cool. It's a quite cool thing.

And what a neat thing to like have it just randomly roll into your backyard. The only downside, Ben, was that I missed trick or treat. That was it. That's the only downside. And I'm quite tired, but that would have been true regardless. That's a significant downside. But yeah, and I don't know if you were the one who asked this. I was reading the transcripts as I was writing, and I saw in the Nathan Evaldi interview, there was a question, do you own cowboy boots? And the answer was, I do not. I did not. I did not ask that question, but that is a fantastic question. If you really had a burning need to know whether Texas native Nathan Evaldi owned cowboy.

I mean, it's sort of a surprise, sort of an upset that he does not own cowboy boots. Maybe it's a stereotype. I would have expected Nathan Evaldi to own cowboy boots, but apparently not. And now we know that because someone was there to ask him that vital question. I will say, you know, having been in the celebration clubhouse for the Rangers, they only know the chorus to that Creed song. They don't know the other words to that Creed song. And, you know, I tweeted that and some people like, I think took a little offense and I'm here to say that made me respect them more. You know, I tweeted that and some people like I think took a little offense and I'm here to say that made me respect them more. You know, I was like, we've begrudgingly accepted this bit, but only on the most minimal of terms, you know. Yeah.

And the other thing I will say, and I can't remember if I noted this when we were talking about the D-backs having bounced the Dodgers, but I don't know that there is another, how do I want to put the caveat that I'm about to put on this? Non-bottly fluid or excretion smell, more potent or terrible than the combination of Bud Light and Sheep Champagne when they intermingle. It is like you can almost see that smell. It is so strong. And I know there's a lot of stinky stuff in the world and much of it probably worse.

So let's further qualify it. Non-toxic, non-bodily fluid or excretion substance. But good God, that smell is. bodily fluid or excretion substance. But good God, that smell is, it's enough to make me not want to drink anything at all for a while. But yeah, wow, that smell is bad. That smell is a bad, bad smell. That's a bad smell. Well, I'm sorry you had to smell that.

I mean, it's okay. It was a very weird moment because it is such a cool scene to witness. Yeah. And it is accompanied by a smell that I think could knock over an elephant. I think confronted with that smell, an elephant might simply faint. And they are very big and strong, except when confronted with tiny mice, I'm given to understand. Well, the Rangers cannot be taken higher.

They are as high as they can go because they have won the World Series. They are now off the list of franchises that still have not made it all the way. That list is, what, down to five, right, from six. And we could talk about the series itself. So it was a so-so series, I would say. Game one was a classic, but it was more or less downhill from there. Not linearly downhill, but there was no game that reached the heights of game one after that. No, that was the high note for the non-Rangers faithful for sure. Yes. And, you know, you might be sitting there thinking, well, but surely like the first six innings of game five were exciting for Diamondbacks fans.

fans and i think the answer is yes but so frustrating also that it probably particularly since they did not manage to win probably a low point in a weird way even though gallon was like really shoving um when you go over nine yeah when you leave 11 guys on face that feels you know it does end up feeling pretty bad. Yeah, right. Yeah, that was frustrating because Gallin was quote-unquote cruising, and he was just sailing right through that lineup, just extremely low pitch counts for the first several innings. Meanwhile, Evaldi was constantly in traffic and trouble and was getting out of it over and over and over again. Struggle. Struggle. those tip-your-cap situations to Evaldi for getting out of it, and then also just not great timing on the Diamondbacks part.

The series as a whole, even though it only went five, it was fairly competitive, right? It wasn't like the Diamondbacks were being blown out for the most part. The one game when they were, they ended up making it fairly close. Game four, when they went down 10 to nothing, and then yeah they made it close enough that that bruce bocce got a little nervous but that game was was non-competitive at first and then game two was a blowout in the diamondbacks favor right nine to

one so on the whole when you put it all together the diamondbacks were only outscored by four runs in the series, and they out-hit the Rangers by a significant margin. So they were in these games, and game five, I'm sure, was frustrating because they kept threatening and they kept having chances, and they just couldn't convert, which is often what it comes down to with these postseason games. It's like, do you get hits with runners at scoring position or not? And they did not. They did not. I suppose they didn't help themselves out on one occasion in the bottom of the third when Gabriel Moreno, as I understand it, under his own decision-making power.

That was what Tori Lovello indicated after the game was that Marino decided to get in on what has been a trend of feature of this Diamondbacks team. They sacrificed, I think, more than anyone in baseball in a way that I don't think served them particularly well in this specific instance. That was an egregious one because it's bottom of the third. It's still scoreless. And Carroll leads off with a single. Marte walks and then Marino. So again, first and second, nobody out. Third inning, no score. And he lays down a sacrifice. Now, it was a good sacrifice. It was effective in that it advanced both of the runners. It did. It almost straddled the line between sacrifice and punting for a hit. It wasn't total square away and just punted right back to the pitcher. It know, it kind of, it was well-placed, but it was still a sacrifice and ruled a sacrifice. And I think it was a sacrifice.

And yeah, that felt a little bit like getting high on their own supply of like where the small ball manufacturing runs team. You know, like he's a pretty good hitter. And you had Christian Walker and Pham coming up after that. That's when you want to try to put up crooked numbers, as they say. That's when you want to try to break the game open a little bit. And they didn't even get the one.

But regardless, just not the best idea. Well, and particularly when this is a reductive way to think about it. And it's not as if E Valdi ended up walking five, but it's not like he walked everybody. But like, particularly when a guy isn't sharp and is struggling with command, like,

make him throw you strikes. Like, force him to demonstrate that he can do that. You know, this was at times my frustration with, this manifested a bit with the Diamondbacks, but like with other teams, when they were dealing with a clearly compromised Chapman, it's like, make that guy show you he can throw you a strike, you know, because he's missing and missing by a lot.

These are not small, you know, sort of borderline calls. Often he's like a couple balls width away from the plate. And of all these command wasn't quite that scattershot, but it was at times like not good. It was obviously not good. It was not good the batter prior, you know. So it's like, make that guy throw you a strike. Yeah. He walked Quetel Marte on four pitches.

Yeah. And then Moreno goes up there. Yeah. And the Rangers were aggressive in that game, too, and swinging at a lot of early count pitches. Maybe to avoid the Gall gallon knuckle curve, which he was throwing more and curves had seemingly been a slight relative weakness for the Rangers offensively this season. I never know how much to read into single season pitch type splits on a team level,

but he did kind of adjust his approach and it seemed to be working. And that's why he was getting through it really quickly. And it was almost like, make him work, get him out of that game. But I don't know, maybe that's an old way of thinking because it's not like guys go that deep into games anyway these days, even if their pitch counts are fairly low, you still run into the times through the order effect. And there's kind of a limit on how long you're going to go, which I guess we could talk a little bit more about how Gallin's outing ended in a moment. But yeah, that was not the best. And people, I think, at least a certain sort of fan, are so eager to support the small ball tactics.

If there's any hint that they're working, like with the Guardians last year, just any team that is doing it that way as opposed to just striking out and hitting homers, I do understand it because when that is working well, it is entertaining. And it is different. And it's fun to see a scrappy, speedy team doing its thing.

It just doesn't work that well, typically. And the Diamondbacks, they stole seven bases in the series to the Rangers' one. They were making their speed work for them somewhat. And, yeah, their offensive strengths are different. And they are a fairly high-contact team for them somewhat. And yeah, their offensive strengths are different and they are a fairly high contact team for this era and speed and put the ball in play and all of that. But we just know that leaning into those tendencies, it's just hard to make it work in the playoffs

when you need that short sequence offense. You've got a good defensive team in the Rangers who's making it hard for you to get balls to fall and you've got good pitching. And if you can strike the big blow, if you can hit home runs, again, the studies have shown that the more home run reliant offenses tend to do a little bit better in the postseason. And so, yeah, when there were hints that that was working, it was like, okay, this is fun, but don't fall in love with that approach too much because there really are some limitations to it. or like they are the maybe the best version of that kind of small ball thing because you do have legitimately fast guys, right? Like you have dudes who can take advantage. So it isn't, you know, sometimes when teams are like, we're going to play small ball and I'm like, but you're like old. I'm like, maybe don't.

There's that piece of it. But like they were even within the context of their typical speed, at least a little bit compromised, right? Because McCarthy wasn't able to play this entire postseason due to injury. even within the context of their typical speed at least a little bit compromised right because mccarthy wasn't able to play this entire postseason due to injury so their number two guy in stolen bases was unavailable you know the times when i had watched the d-backs and felt like their offense was at its most potent it was when yes they were aggressive they can put pressure on opposing defenses they you know do so to the extent that

sometimes infielders or even the pitcher make a mistake but they were able to at least on occasion run into one and a lot of that power got sapped in this postseason right like Christian Walker just had such a bad time yeah uh at the plate you know he couldn't buy a single let alone consistently hit home runs which he you know he hit with power in in the regular season after the early couple rounds Corbin Carroll's power wasn't there I do wonder and I say this not knowing anything so I want to be very clear about that but I do wonder like kind of what the state of his shoulder is right now so there's that piece of it Marte's power kind of what the state of his shoulder is right now. So there's that piece of it. Marte's power kind of came and went. The same is true of Moreno.

So, you know, when you're able to combine those things, it can be really potent. And even if the slug you're slugging isn't, you know, exclusively home runs, but you're hitting extra, you're getting extra base hits, you combine that with speed and it's like, wow, you're scoring extra you're getting extra base hits you combine that with with speed and it's like wow you're scoring a bunch of runs and said it was like you have to get a hit you have to do this like station to station stuff and it can just be one dimensional and particularly when stuff is

getting away from you like it can against a rangers offense It's very potent. You just are limited in your ability to really strike to answer back the way that might be the most effective to narrow big deficits. So, you know, it's a problem. And as for Gallin, he was at, I think, 72 pitches through six, six no hit innings, of course. And so I don't know whether Lavello talked about whether he even considered not starting the seventh with him. I'm almost glad he didn't, because that would have been an unbearable bit of discourse, probably, even in this era of pitchers quite frequently getting pulled from no-hitters in progress. It's still obviously rarer for that to happen in the playoffs

and would be more special for a no-hitter to happen in the playoffs. Plus, often when a pitcher is working on a no-hitter or even a perfect game during the regular season, their pitch count is such that you know they almost can't complete it, right? Like even if they kept it going, they would have to throw too many pitches for a team in this day and age to actually leave them in to do it. There are rare exceptions when you'll have kind of a throwback pitch count, but typically not so much. But in this case, he had been so economical that you could actually imagine him completing it. But beyond that, and I know that he's had sizable times through the order effects, as good as he is, but he is so good. He is, at least when he's going well, clearly their best pitcher and one of the best pitchers in baseball. baseball and their bullpen, even though they've had a few guys who've been fairly reliable, they're not so lights out and they aren't so numerous that you would happily entrust that

game to that pen, especially in the third day of consecutive games, right? So it didn't really occur to me that he would take him out or even that he should, really, despite what the numbers might say. But that was yet another illustration, I suppose, of you just never know. You can't count on someone who's pitching even as well and as unsweatily as he was through six you just never know it it's not like he completely fell apart when the seventh started but he allowed three consecutive hits after not allowing any hits up to that point and one of them was kind of bloopy like the seager hit that broke it up was one of those excuse me i'm late on it and it just happened to go in the right place kind of swings. And then there was the Carter double.

And then there was the Garver single that drove in Seager for what proved to be the game winning run. And then Gallin came back to strike out young. So it's not like he was gassed, I don't think. But it's just the latest indication of, yeah, you never know. It's just not really predictive what happens in the first six innings. It doesn't necessarily tell you what's going to happen in the seventh and things can unravel quickly. It's a really tricky dance to navigate. I can totally see being like, I'm just going to stick with the one who brung me, as the expression goes. I mean, it was a couple, I didn't envy to stick with the one who brung me, as the expression goes.

I mean, it was a couple, I didn't envy Lovello having to make that decision, because there were like things weighing in favor of both leaving him in there and taking him out. You know, those two hits in the fifth or sixth were, they were hard. Like they, I was like, oh, those might be home runs. And they weren't, but they felt like they might be. They were loud off the bat. They had big exit velocity. So, you know, there was that piece of it. There was, you know, sort of where he was in the order. It didn't really occur to me either that he wouldn't go back out for at least, you know, maybe the way that I would have approached it is sort of like batter to batter. Yeah, that's what you could fault him for. I think not having someone ready. Yeah, right. And so, yeah, the gink got out of it, but not as quickly as he

could have. Yeah. Like, I thought that he was a little it didn't end up coming back to be a problem later. But like, the fact that he didn't have anyone up and warming when ginkle was kind of going through his second inning and eventually loaded the bases i was like why isn't anyone warming like that i have a very good view of i can see the bullpen only that one not the rangers although it is funny how distinctive a presence chapman is because i looked down and i was like is that all this gem and warming like what are we you know bocce you're trying to kill your fan base like what's going on here bud but yeah i it wasn't an easy decision i think i one thing i have landed on that i feel very confident in is that i wish that we could be done talking about it from like a sabermetric and game theory perspective because it does put a segment of like folks on twitter in a

in a spot where they feel like they need to defend the existence of the times through the order penalty and so then the vibe that they give off is just being like a jerk when zach allen has given up a no hitter and a run in the world series in a decisive game and it's like you know your your tto takes could maybe wait a little bit i don't know i'm just throwing that out there like if you're right does it matter when you tell people you're right and this is a question we could all contemplate a little bit more you know just saying like yeah just saying yeah so i think that there were arguments on both in both directions on that decision. Again, I think you're right that the thing we can fault him for is not having a guy ready to come in at sort of the first sign of real trouble

because the stakes are never higher. It's the most important game of your entire season. And so I think you just have to be ready to go to the big guys, especially since, you know, Thompson and Ginkle and Seawald didn't pitch the day before because of the score in that game. And obviously poor Paul Seawald ran into his own issues in the ninth. But, you know, when you have the guys in your pen who you have good reason to

have confidence in, um, and have kind of carried you and you're into the seventh inning, it's like, well, what better moment than now to like, at least have them ready to go so that you can be quick to intervene when you need to. So, yeah, right. And yeah, I, I would not have done it differently, except perhaps in hindsight, at least having Ginkle up and being able to summon him more quickly. But as with so many of these decisions about whether to pull the starter or not, or whether there was too slow a hook or whether they should have brought in a different reliever, seems like often when we've had that conversation this postseason, it's in a game when that team doesn't end up scoring or scores so little that it's hard to even get that up in arms, so to speak, about it. Because, again, the Diamondbacks got shut out, so that wouldn't necessarily have happened. We can't know whether everything would have transpired the same way if they'd made different decisions in that inning. But you got to score at some point.

It's just a little harder to hold the manager accountable when the team does not score because that is kind of a necessary precondition for winning a game, scoring at some point. They didn't do that. Yep. Yeah. game scoring at some point. They didn't do that. Yep. Yeah. And the Rangers, I mean, they got through this postseason with good hitting, which was

a hallmark of this team all year. They scored, I think, five and three quarters runs on average per game, which is pretty impressive given that you're going up against good pitching and good defenses and colder weather and all of that. They outscored their opponents by almost two runs a game, which is a really impressive pace against some of the better teams in baseball. And they played good defense, which again, they did pretty much all season. And the pitching was good enough to get by. And Bochy almost did the 2019 Nationals approach of there are only so many guys I trust here.

And I'm just going to take advantage of playoff off days to run out the small number of pitchers in my tiny circle of trust here and not have to deviate from that too much. Like in my piece, I think I mentioned that 60%, 60.2% of their innings were thrown by four guys, Evaldi, Montgomery, Leclerc, and Spores, who produced a combined 2.7 ERA. And when they ventured outside of that, sometimes it got a little shaky, but they were able to just give those guys so many innings and then kind of have Chapman get out of trouble sometimes and then get contributions from other sources that turned out to be pretty important

like john gray turning into a bullpen weapon in the series that was pretty key yeah because it wasn't a huge number of innings what did he pitch like six innings or something in this series in two games like but getting that from him, that was pretty crucial because we were talking about, well, how are they going to get through this? You know, it's three games on three consecutive days and there are only so many relievers

who can be trusted here. And so for Gray, it wasn't even six innings. It was two games, four and two thirds innings, but scoreless and looked really good. It looked like a healthy John Gray moved to the pen where stuff plays up. He struck out seven, didn't walk anyone, gave up two hits. And so for him at that late date to turn into an effective

option was pretty clutch. And then you got some good innings out of Heaney, too, and just sources that you couldn't necessarily count on, and they chipped in at the right time. And then you had big game Nate, and he was just awesome. I mean, him turning back into first half pre-injury Evaldi for the duration of the postseason, except I guess for game one when he had kind of a clunker, ended up winning the game anyway. He made six starts in the playoffs and the Rangers won all of them. And he was credited with the win in five of them. And these were like historic accomplishments for exclusively starter in the postseason. And he was just nails Nate again, not for the first time.

So don't know if he is inherently clutch or a great postseason performer, but he certainly has performed incredibly well in the postseason and just came up big again when coming into the playoffs. We had no idea what to expect out of him. He looked horrible when he got off the IL. He was bad and getting worse. And then suddenly, I don't know if he was just treating those starts as a tune-up. It's not like the Rangers had wins to spare at the end of the regular season. But whether he was just getting the rust off or wasn't really ramping it up or whatever, it just clicked at the right time. And suddenly they had an ace-level Evaldi back, and that was

huge. You know, it's such a funny thing because it can turn so quickly for these guys, the way that it can turn and the extent to which it turns is sometimes quite dramatic. I mean, like we've, we've spent the last couple of days and I talked about it in what I had seen, like talking about how great Corey Seager has been, right. And how amazing he was this post-season and the role that he played, especially in the world series in getting these guys across the finish line. But Craig Goldstein noted on Halloween, I think, that coming into this postseason, he had a 7.77 OPS and a 2.36 average.

In 2021, he hit a buck 88 in the 12 games that he played in that postseason. And then, you know, he comes into this year and he's like, you know, drawing comparisons to Reggie Jackson. So it's so funny because it's like they matter so much and they shape our perception of the sport in such a profound way. our perception of the sport in such a profound way. But it's just not a lot of games. And it can really, you know, you can go on a great heater. And I don't say that like Corey Seager didn't have a phenomenal 2023 season. Like, you know, this is him just getting to match being the best version of himself with the most important games of his season, right? And we have seen Evaldi be effective to incredibly good over the course of his career,

depending on what sort of stretch you're looking at. So this isn't unprecedented, but for those guys to have it, like you said, kind of line up, like Evaldi did look so, he looked so bad. He looked still hurt. Like he was pitching like he was still hurt when he came back.

And then, you know, with the exception of a shaky game that he managed to navigate without giving up any runs, like, his postseason was superlative. So, you know, pretty, pretty, pretty good. I was heartened that Marcus Simeon had some big hits in the last few games. Yeah, he sure did. Yeah. And we had said that coming into the series, just not rooting for the Rangers or anything, but just, hey, he's such a good player and he's always there. He's just a fixture in that lineup. He never takes a day off.

He is still underrated. He's definitely on the short list of most underrated players in baseball. Just, I don't know if it's because he doesn't draw attention to himself or just because of the ways in which he is productive, maybe not being the flashiest, but he is absolutely

one of the best players in baseball. He and Seager were like sixth and seventh in fan graphs were this season among all players in both leagues Semyon was I think slightly ahead of Seeker of course he played every game whereas Seeker missed a ton of time but yeah it's a the way that their wars stack up is like a testament to both of them right because it's like Semyon is there every day he's giving you such consistent and quality production and then Seager is so good

and was so good this year that even though he missed a month of action he was still right behind some you know that leaderboard was incredible just like a really they were they both had very special years yeah and seager's game tying home run before the adoliz garcia walk off in game one that was the the huge hit. That was, by championship win probability added, the biggest hit of the season by anyone at any time. But Semien, even though he was somewhat overshadowed, like he had huge hits. So he had that run scoring single in game three and the run scoring triple in game four,

each of which was immediately before more Seager home runs. So again, kind of overshadowed, but still big hits. And then obviously he had the kind of putting this thing on ice home run in game five. So nice for him to have those moments because he had struggled so much for most of the post season leading up to the World Series and had been such a big part of the Rangers season that I'm glad he got to be a big part of the series in the end as well. I do wonder, I'm sure there's a very sort of guy to guy and the extent to which these things stick with you versus just roll off your back with the Bud Light and cheap champagne depends on the person. But I do wonder, you know, if he hadn't had, like, let's assume for a moment, we're writing, you know, the Bizarro World version of Effectively Wild, where we're still on a weird episode number that we don't remember. And he, you know, Semien doesn't turn things around in

the World Series, but they still managed to beat the diamond backs and he's a champion what does he feel like when he walks into that celebration clubhouse like does it matter to him is it something that sticks with him you know it's not like he was a he was dead weight on the team during the regular season or anything like that like by any metric he had an incredible campaign but does it kind of i always wonder like how does that sort of wash over a guy um and it must feel really nice to like not have to worry about it because like it turns out i just had a great world series and uh now i get to soak in this smell and then they start smoking cigars and you're just like how are any of you alive? Like, this combination of smells. Does the Creed protect you from that smell?

Or are you just, like, so soaked through? Are you saturated with it to the point that you, like, don't smell anything? You get, like, nose blindness. You know, I did wander. I stayed on the edge. I was like, because, you know, here's a thought I had, Ben. I bought a poncho, and then i forgot it at home um like a dummy and so i like stayed on the edge because i also thought to myself like i have to like i have to drive home after this and like what if i i would like to think that i would never do anything to incur being pulled over.

But I was like, what if I like go too fast and then I get pulled over and then I smell like this? Are they going to think that I have been, you know? And so I got very nervous about it. Or that horrendous smell of the champagne and the bud. It could have been like the smelly car in Seinfeld when the valet has BO and it stinks up the car forever. Yes. You'd just be marinating in that stench. Yeah, it could be my smell forever.

That's just, you know, that's like just my name, you know, smell. I'm smell. Anyway, that didn't happen. And I stayed on the edge of everything. But also, you know, yeah, you look at those guys and they're coded in it. And if you're Marcus Simeon, you are also saturated with success. So, you know, I brought it back. Nice.

Brought it back around. Yep. And similarly, it stinks in a figurative sense that Adoles Garcia was not around to play the end of the series, which seemed like it could really hamper the Rangers' chances of winning. Ultimately, they barely missed a beat with Travis Jankowski filling in. But Garcia having to be replaced on the roster with an oblique injury after game three, and Scherzer as well, at least they got three scoreless out of Scherzer, which was something before he had to leave that game when his back seized up, as his back is wont to do.

But to lose Garcia when he was on the heater that he was and having the all-time great postseason that he was, that was disappointing because I would have liked to see him add to that, if anything, or at least be on the field when it was all over. So ultimately, it was just yet another challenge that the Rangers transcended, just yet another injury absence that they were able to power past. But yeah, that felt like a big loss in the moment. Yeah, that felt like a big loss in the moment. The game where the ball ricocheted off of Scherzer's elbow and then low back and then miraculously to Josh Young for an out, which just like, you know, you look back and you're like, maybe that's when we should have known that they were going to win the World Series because it does feel touched with narrative. Although there were plenty of opportunities for the Diamondbacks to grab back the narrative and then they didn't they didn't but um but i was sitting there and i thought to myself again this is another instance where i would need to be carried around for a little while and then he just kept pitching for like two more innings and i was like i um baseball

players are not like us they're not like us because my back would have seized immediately and I would have needed to be carried off the field. And that didn't happen. So, you know, I know it didn't go quite how he wanted it to, but gutting through another two innings of work, like that's not, that's not nothing. two innings of work. Like that's not, that's not nothing. Um, particularly when you start to advance in age and can just get wrecked by like bending over, you know, I know that Scherzer has two years on me, which like, it's going to be so sad when he's not around. Cause it's, you know, moving in the wrong direction for, for me being able to say that in general, but two years and he went to two more innings. So I feel like a wimp cause that would not have been true for me being able to say that in general. But two years and he went two more innings. So I feel like a wimp because that would not have been true for me. Yeah.

Now, game four was probably the worst game, even though it didn't end up being the most lopsided in terms of final score. But it was in the early innings and also just aesthetically because it was a bullpen game, at least on the Diamondbacks, and caused a lot of consternation. Almost, we've had it. This is the last straw, a bullpen game in the World Series. How dare you? The sacred fall classic. Now I'm all for having conditions be such that teams would not want to do a bullpen game. I don't prefer a bullpen game.

I don't enjoy the idea of a bullpen game the way I once did when it was new and novel and when teams were afraid to try it. And everyone was saying, I mean, going back to Dave Cameron blogs probably a decade ago or so at this point, just, hey, just do a bullpen game in this wild card game. You only have to win one, and we know relievers are effective. And that was before people were even yammering on about the times through the order effect as much as we do now, but it still seemed to make sense. And now that we actually get that with some regularity, it's kind of a be careful what you wish for situation. So again, I understand

why they did it, but it was sort of a slog, right? You had, what, I think seven Rangers pitchers. There actually ended up being more Rangers pitchers than Diamondbacks pitchers, even though the Rangers ostensibly were not doing the bullpen game. The Diamondbacks used six pitchers. And I think in a way the fact that Ryan Nelson pitched as well as he did as the fifth pitcher in and he ended up going five and a third and giving up one run and walking no one and striking out six. That, again, with the benefit of hindsight, people were like, you could have just had him pitch the whole time and we could have not done the opener and the whole bullpen dance but if you knew that ryan nelson was going to be that good in that game then uh you're you're very smart and you should be managing a major league team i guess i mean ryan nelson's not great now i guess you could make the case that neither were the Diamondbacks' bullpen

options in that game, because it's not like they were throwing lights out relievers out there. But that game, because the Rangers got out to that early lead, and it was only three hours and 18 minutes in the pre-pitch clock era, it would have been a lot longer probably. And it felt longer than that, at least to me watching at home. But that almost felt like a breaking point for people where it was like, okay, you can mess around with bullpen games all you want, but keep them out of my World Series. This is a sacred ground here that you were defiling. I want there to be good starting pitching. I want good starting pitching to be the focus of the World Series. I do think that like it's useful for us to be sort of intellectually honest about the

causes of the bullpen game in this instance, which is that the Diamondbacks had like two and a half good starters. Yes, right. You know, and to your point, like there were people who said, well, why didn't Nelson just start? And it's like, well, because he did that. And it didn't always go great, you know. And I think that it's important to separate out the validity of the strategy in the face of a need like, hey, we don't have enough starters, versus some innate desire on the part of the Diamondbacks or whoever else to be clever. And I think that if you were to ask the Diamondbacks, and people did, they would have preferred to be able to throw a traditional starter out there. So that's what they would have wanted,

but that wasn't the state of their roster because the guy they signed to do that was so bad that they DFA'd him and then he didn't get another job in the majors this year or anywhere else for that matter. Well, I don't know if anywhere else he could be, you know, working for a rodeo. Yeah. But he didn't get another baseball job. I imagine he'll get a ring, right? He'll definitely get another baseball job. I imagine he'll get a ring. He'll definitely get a ring. Almost everyone who does anything for a team that wins the World Series gets a ring these days.

Even though he didn't have the greatest exit from the organization, he's still Madison Bumgarner, and I would imagine his status alone, even though he made four starts for that team with a 10.26 ERA before he skedaddled out of there or was removed from the premises.

He'll get a ring if he wants one, I'm sure. Yeah, it didn't end on a good note, but he'll get an NL champion ring. A pennant ring? Pennant ring is a weird, that's a weird expression. That wouldn't, it's a pennant. It can't be a ring. It's a pennant. You know, it's a different thing than a ring. But anyway, so there's like that piece of it, because I do think that there's this perception. And there have been, there have been times in public analysis where like, I think there have been moments of being enamored with like the cleverness and the cheekiness of the idea sort of for its own sake. But I don't think that's where we're at now. So like I do encourage people to fight with the folks who are currently involved in the discourse rather than people from 10 years ago because they're not doing the discourse now. I mean, it's just like a thing we could all consider.

And I could also stand to improve in this regard. So, you know, let's all make a pledge and a truth to each other to not make up guys. You know, let's stop making up some guys. So there's that piece of it. And then I think that there's the other part of it, which is that we can have kind of a selective memory about this stuff. You know, Bauman wrote about the bullpen game as a phenomena for us today. stuff. You know, Bauman wrote about the bullpen game as a phenomena for us today. And, you know, he made the point that there have been times in baseball's past where like a not very good forced starter just started like a critical game in the postseason, sometimes in the World Series.

And we all just had to like kind of suffer through that. And I, you know, I doubt that that was anyone's idea of a good time either, even though the person who did it went down as having mostly games started on his baseball reference page. So I think the unfortunate thing that we all have to grapple with is that this is incredibly hard. is incredibly hard. There are only so many guys who can start competently, let alone be, you know, dynamic, great, build a memory kind of guys. And there aren't enough of them to go around. And when teams like the Dodgers or the Diamondbacks are like taking a bullpen approach, you know, it's not because they're like, we're going to look so cute. You know, it's not because they're like we're gonna look so cute you know it's because they don't have better options and they're trying really hard to win the baseball game that's in front of them so that isn't to say that we shouldn't try to think of structural changes to

that that we shouldn't continue to and by we i don't mean you and me because they should get people who are actual doctors to do the thing that I'm about to say. But like, you know, hopefully we will have some sort of breakthrough when it comes to maintaining pitcher health and all this stuff. But until, you know, they either have bionic arms or they adjust the rules in such a way to minimize the presence of relievers. This is just, I think, going to be a reality for us for the foreseeable future. This is just, I think, going to be a reality for us for the foreseeable future. And that's partially the fault of nerds, but it's also partially the fault of like the human elbow. And I don't have to wear the human elbows failings, Ben. That's not my fault. I didn't design that thing. Knees either, you know, or hamstrings for that matter. Like, I didn't have a hand in any of that. That's not the problem of nerds. We don't get to decide. And there was some much maligned umpiring in this series as well. That was one storyline. I don't know that we could call it decisive, but we could say that maybe it exerted a little more influence than people would like. So renewed calls for ABS, robot umps, etc. Right.

So were there any other storylines, any other wrinkles to this series, the actual games themselves that you wanted to touch on? Let's see. You mentioned Bochy having to use Leclerc in that in game four right having to well having to electing to electing to and look it didn't matter and i thought that in general like bocce managed a great series he managed a great postseason in some ways you know and i don't say this to to denigrate the decisions that a great postseason in some ways you know and i don't say this to to denigrate the decisions that he did make like in some ways his sort of decision matrix was pretty straightforward in that he his bullpen was not good even the guys he quote unquote

had in the like circle of trust um and his starters were better and often quite good, actually. And so in some ways, I imagine that that simplified the calculus, which is like your prevailing instinct should be to minimize how much the lower leverage guys contribute because, boy, are they bad, some of them, or at least lately. at least lately. But that felt like a panicked decision to me, which is a weird decision for a manager to make when you're up six runs. You know, like, does Jose Leclerc not have rights? You know, like, is his arm still attached? Is he still icing it? Yeah, I was happy for him that he got to rest in game five, except that I'm sure he probably would have liked to be out there on the mound to end it. He's the closer. That's what which could have been a factor if LeClerc had been needed in subsequent games. But yeah, I mean, it was partly like Gray wasn't available. Two other righties had already been used in that game. And so he had LeClerc and Spores, and there were like four righties coming up. So I guess I get it. But yeah, it's enough of a cushion that maybe he could have let Will Smith,

who wins the World Series every year for a different team now, maybe just given him another batter there to see if he could have got out of it. Now, Joe Sheehan made the point that he thought the real mistake was not bringing in LeClerc at that point, but when he pulled Dane Dunning after only one inning, because it was 10 to 1 in the seventh, and Dunning is someone who can go multiple innings, and he seemed to want to spread the work around with his low leverage guys who hadn't really gotten into games. But maybe he could have just stuck with Dunning there and let him get another inning and then you wouldn't have found yourself in that conundrum potentially there at the end.

So maybe it was kind of an earlier domino that was the mistake more than that one. But yeah, having to end up using your high leverage guy who'd been worked so hard this month in that game was a surprise. Yeah. I was like, boy, is he out there? He should rest. And then, of course, it got tighter because of LaCroix not performing particularly well in that moment then i was like oh my god he's gonna have to stay out there because now what if they get into an actual save situation and then he has to like ride him and then he's not gonna be available like it did it did for a moment that ended up not mattering at all that yeah It sure did feel for a second like it could be an incredibly consequential

bit of acting on one's anxiety. Because if somehow the Diamondbacks had managed to rally back, answer back, Ben, the rally backs are the in-game folks that are on the dugout and the answer backs are that team and if they had managed either thing and somehow won that game and then he hadn't been available still for this for game five you know and you're suddenly you're the series is even you know you're going six like it could have been a lot it could have mattered a great deal it didn't so you know jokes on me

but I will say in the moment you know I was sort of I was of two minds I was like I it would be so cool to watch the Rangers win their first world series as a franchise it would be so neat to see this team that I see in person more than any other big league club, like win a world series, or at least put themselves in a position to go to Texas

and have to do it. You know, I was like, either of these outcomes would be, would be neat. I like so many of the players on both of these clubs, like just a, an all around good time. Right. But, and I think I tweeted this at the time, I was like, if the Diamondbacks win this game somehow, this game being game four, it'll be the funniest thing I've ever seen in my entire life. It will be hilarious. They didn't, but I was prepared to have a hearty chuckle in the Ox box.

Yes. So there you go. And kudos to Merrill Kelly as well for his excellent start in game two. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Seven innings. One man. Yeah. What a feat. will be on one and he goes seven and then it makes sense for him to come out. And then we don't have to talk about it at all. And I think if I recall correctly, and I would have to go back and watch his post game, but I'm pretty sure he said on the Fox broadcast that like,

he went to Lovello and was like, Hey, this thing wasn't working great for me the last inning, this ball got hit hard and kind of was like, I, you know sense like it's okay for me to be done now and so that seemed like it answered a question that i had raised um on our patreon stream about his reaction after being pulled in philly um and how obviously pissed he, what insight might it give us into how Lovello kind of manages his dudes and the communication around that stuff. And I think we got a better answer. Hey, remember when my power went out in the middle of our Patreon stream? That was fun.

Was it fun, Ben? The power did not come back on until like 4 a.m. the next morning. It was out for a long time. You know, I was starting to get worried about my frozen goods. Well, the Diamondbacks power didn't come back either, unfortunately. Oh, boy. Anyway, so that's the series. Now, in the past, we've gone through an exercise sometimes where we've tried to suss out whether there's any larger takeaway from the team that won the series,

how they did it, whether other teams would try to emulate their approach, whether there would be copycats. And this is going back to a quote of Theo Epstein's from October of 2015, the year before the Cubs won, where he said, the only thing I know for sure is that whatever team wins the World Series, their particular style of play will be completely in vogue and trumpeted from the rooftops by the media all offseason and in front offices as the way to win. And that could be their style of play. Maybe it could also be how the team was constructed. Now, he said this game is too nuanced and too complicated for there to be any one way to win.

And that is certainly true. And I'm sure that most people in front offices and probably most media members are not just wildly swinging from one team to the next from season to season. I think we're all familiar with the vagaries of the postseason to put so much stock in that to say, oh, we must completely change our approach now and build teams the way that this team did. Oh, a different team won this year. Let's tear up those plans and do something completely different. But if you were going to try to go through that exercise, this is kind of what I did in my piece, and I'm sure many people did in their pieces, was

the obvious takeaway for the Rangers. And there are some limitations to this that I tried to get into in my piece as well. But if you're going to look at the Rangers and say, what did they do right? How did this work for them? What could other teams emulate or what would we hope that other teams emulate or take away from their success, then I suppose it would be just how aggressive they were in trying to get good again, right? After they were mired in mediocrity for some time and then they said, hey, we're going to spend and we're going to go get, they called it the pillars of their plan and their vision, Corey Seeger and Marcus Simeon.

And not only did they decide to do that, but they picked the right guys, at least so far. And, you know, my piece was basically like, well, the Rangers got more than their money's worth, right? So I think there were some people, maybe some Diamondbacks fans saying, hey, they just outspent us. They just bought a championship.

And after I specifically told people not to do that, you know? Yes, right. My instructions were quite clear, everyone. But what they did do, and I think it was admirable, is that they didn't say we're going to tank, we're going to bottom out to the depths that the Astros or the Orioles did. Their worst season was a 60-win season. And that was before they said, okay, we're going to change course here

and we're going to spend some money. And they went out and got those guys and Gray. Of course, all three of those guys, at least officially, were signed on the same day, the day before the lockout in December 2021. And that was clearly transformative, adding those three guys to the organization. And it was paying dividends in the World Series less than two years later. And then the following offseason, they imported an entire rotation and spent a ton of money on pitchers. And then when there was attrition, and when a lot of those pitchers were hurt or unavailable, they didn't say, oh, well, we tried. They doubled down and tripled down and quadrupled down.

And it was, oh, we got DeGrom. Oh, no, DeGrom gave us six starts. Now we need someone else. Let's go get Scherzer, but let's not just get Scherzer. Let's build in a layer of redundancy here, and let's go get Scherzer, but let's not just get Scherzer. Let's build in a layer of redundancy here. And let's also get Montgomery, which turns out to be important when Scherzer gets hurt. And Evaldi's hurt for a while and Gray's hurt for a while. Almost everyone was injured at some point this season, but they just kept going and getting guys. And they went out and got Chapman,

and maybe that turned out to be a costly trade for them. But right? Like, it's not necessarily like they tried to turn on a dime and get good immediately. It's just that a lot of their prospects didn't really pan out. And then it was, well, we could kind of blow this up and start from scratch again, or we could just really go for it and take advantage of these rich free agent classes. And then we'll supplement around that free agent core. It's a different path. It's not the path that a lot of teams take. And maybe in some ways it's a more difficult path, but they managed to do it. And I don't know whether they'll inspire other teams to do it because a lot of teams were cautionary tales this season when it came to spending and not getting great returns on your investment. So I don't know if there's a larger takeaway from that.

But for them, at least, it worked out fantastically well. And they went from being bad to being champions with very little time in between. Yeah. You know, there's maybe a through line between what Theo said and sort of how we might think about these Rangers, which is that, you know, there are so many ways to get better. And I think that you're not going to always perfectly manage it, right? Like, I'm sure that in this moment, and probably especially when Max Scherzer got hit in the elbow and then the back, that someone in the Rangers front office was like, man, it would be really nice to have Cole Reagans right now. But I think that we have talked a lot on this podcast about there just being a lot of different ways to win and that when you are open to multiple avenues of player acquisition, when you view resources sort of, I was about to say multidimensionally, which makes it sound like I'm like, whoa. But that's not what I mean.

Like when you look at money as a resource, right, so that you're not simply reliant on good player death. Although the Rangers had guys come through their system who are better now than they were and who contributed a lot to this team. When you view the trade market as a place to really try to press and patch over holes that you have developed over the course of the season because of injury, you're going to be potent. And then when you're willing to back all of that with spending, particularly when you're willing to say, look, we're not ready yet. We're not going to be a World Series champion team, but we imagine that when we're ready, it We're not going to be a World Series champion team. But we imagine that when we're ready, it's in part going to be because Corey Seager and Marcus Simeon are really good baseball players. And they're available right now.

And they're not going to be available in two years. They're not going to be available in three years. We need to sign them now, even though it's a little early. Because that kind of talent isn't readily available every offseason. And it's hard to develop. And I don't say that like they're not, you know, an organization that might have some acumen for that, but it's just, it's hard. And when you know that a Corey Seeger is a Corey Seeger right now, like go get him, you know? And so I think that if there is a takeaway, it is if what you really are committed to doing is trying to win a World Series, you can do that, or at least get close and try. And if you're willing to kind of devote resources to doing it, you know, maybe you can turn it around more quickly and i think that one of the great sort of knock-on effects of that is that it can even though there have been years where this

rangers team was very bad like they were trying to minimize the super down years right and so you know sure they lost a bunch of games they weren't in the postseason all the time. But, like, you know, their fans got to watch a Corey Seager and a Marcus Semyon along the way. And that's nice when everything else is going badly. So I just think that they being the example of this aggressive approach actually paying off is really good for the sport. Because the sport's really hard. And getting back to the World off is really good for the sport because the sport's really hard and getting back to the world series is really hard um even when your team is really good and so you just got to be ready to to do what you think is necessary to achieve it and that

isn't to say that like you can't try to balance that to a certain extent with having something that is good and sustainable. I think it's about trying to give yourself margin for error when things that are more readily in your control, both from a selection perspective and also a cost perspective, don't pan out. Because, you know, not every guy you draft that people haven't really heard of is going to turn into Evan Carter. It's nice when they do. That's pretty useful. But you can't count on that all the time. So you need to have ways to backfill when stuff goes wrong, when guys aren't as good as you thought they were, when they don't develop, when they get hurt. Just giving yourself – I'm going to mix a sports metaphor.

When you have multiple checkdowns, you can kind of keep the play alive, even if parts of it aren't developing the way you anticipated. So yeah, I wrote in my piece, it's like the Branch Rickey maxim about it being better to trade a player a year too early than a year too late. Right.

Sometimes it's better to sign a player or multiple players a year too early than a year too late. Because if you wanted to go get yourself a great shortstop this offseason, I got bad news for you. Because your best option might be Ahmed Rosario or former rager Isaiah Kiner-Falefa. There are no blue chip shortstops on the free agent market this offseason. There are no blue chip shortstops on the free agent market this offseason. Now, obviously, that offseason, really the past two offseasons, they were extraordinary in terms of the superstar shortstops available. And the market is especially fallow this offseason.

So those are extremes. But still, if you want to fill a position and you really like a player and he's out there or they're out there, even if it's a little early. And yeah, there were eyebrows raised. Probably my eyebrows were raised when the Rangers spent whatever it was, 550 something million on Gray and Seager and Simeon and seemed to be well short of a contending team and proved to be short of a contending team. They weren't good in 2022. I think they were better than their record suggested because they had that lousy one-run record that maybe got Chris Woodward and John Daniels fired. But they weren't quite ready.

But they were close enough. People were saying, like, well, will they even be good to the Rangers, not just for quote unquote, buying a championship. They also developed a lot of players and drafted players and improved players, right? So, I mean, obviously, Evan Carter was a huge part of their postseason run. Josh Young, those are Rangers draftees. And Leote Tavares and LeClerc, they were amateur free agents that the Rangers signed and developed. And then there were guys like Ezekiel Duran. He made his major league debut with the Rangers after coming over in the Gallo trade. And then there were a lot of players that made their debuts for other organizations,

but really broke out as Rangers, like Nathaniel Lowe, like Jonah Heim, like Josh Spores, and most notably, like Adoles Garcia. Right, of course. And I don't know how much of the credit should go to Garcia and how much of the credit should go to the Rangers for facilitating Garcia's improvements, Garcia's improvements, but he had the fifth biggest improvement in swing decisions by Swing RV Plus at Drew Hawkins Metric this season. And he turned into this really well-rounded player to go along with the great tools that he had. So they did development and they drafted some guys because Seager and Simeon alone would not have been enough. And even Seager and Simeon plus all of the pitchers they imported would not have been enough.

Their lineup was so deep top to bottom, mostly because of players who were not great when the Rangers acquired them and got better. And the Rangers acquired them and got better. So it totally depended on them having the wherewithal to support the superstars that they splurged on with other good complementary players. And they did that. So it's not quite like presto, like voila, just sign a couple superstars and in less than two years you will be world champions. It's not always going to work out that way. You have to do a lot of other supplementary work. And even if you do that work, it still might not work out. It still might not work out.

It's the playoffs. It's baseball. It's October randomness. And as good as the Rangers were this month, it's not hard to imagine a scenario where they slump for a week and they get knocked out or the Diamondbacks get the best of them. That easily could have happened. And then you wouldn't necessarily be talking about the Rangers as an object lesson or a guide for other organizations. You'd be saying, oh, yeah, they won a wild card and then they got knocked out of the playoffs.

That's nice, but it's not necessarily what you're aspiring to. But no, everything worked out great for them. And so now it looks like everyone just do that. Well, you can't always do that. Not everyone can sign all the superstars at the same time because there are only so many to go around. And then only one team can actually emerge from October victorious. So maybe they almost made it look easy in a sense, made it look simple, not inexpensive, but simple. But the fact that they tried to spend their way out of prolonged losing and they did that much at least, and they got themselves to the point where they had the chance, they had the

lottery ticket, they were in the tournament, and then they made the most of it. So that is hopefully something to emulate, even though you have counterpoints in the Padres and the Mets and the Yankees, etc. Right. But that defined the season in many ways. And yet, at the very end, the team that was left standing was one that made a case for investing in your roster. Yeah. I mean, you definitely have, it's, it's such a funny thing. Like what we, I'm not accusing you of anything here, but like what we choose to sort of comp versus not, cause you're right. Like the, the most obvious comps from an approach and payroll perspective, and there are obviously differences between these clubs, but the most common, you know, obvious ones are going to be the Rangers to the Mets and the Padres. And their opponent in this World Series is a club that, you know, has like a big contract on the books, but that's it, right? It's Corbin Carroll and then a bunch of guys who aren't making very much money and whatever you still have to pay to Madison Bumgarner. But as much as the Diamondbacks made the World Series kind of famously,

there were a lot of low payroll teams that also didn't. And so there are a lot of approaches to it. And I think that you can be a team that has a more modest payroll and still be met with success. payroll and still be met with success. But I think like the World Series Championship trophy isn't shinier if your path there is harder, right? So just like make it easy on yourself and you know, have a little Corey Seeger as a treat, you know? What if you did that? And then it works out really well. So. Yeah. So if you're the Mariners and you're an AOS team that's never won a World Series, let's say, and you've got a foundation of good players that

need a little extra help, the Rangers, they just, they did it in an unusual sequence. It was like, when they signed Seager and Semien, you could have said, OK, their prospects all have like 2023 ETAs. So maybe they'll all be arriving. But it was too soon to say. Right. Most teams, they have that foundation in place. And then it's like, OK, let's put the finishing touches in place. Let's, you know, now let's sign like the Orioles right now, you hope, or the Reds, right?

Like, OK, we've got all these great prospects. We've got this cheap, productive core. Now is when you go and you add to that. Whereas the Rangers, they added that and then they filled around that. So they kind of did it backwards in a way. But maybe that's a lesson that you just don't need to do it in a certain prescribed sequence. Just take advantage of what's out there for you. in a certain prescribed sequence,

just take advantage of what's out there for you. So you would hope that if you're one of those teams that already has a pretty strong foundation, like the Mariners or the Rays or the Orioles or the Reds, that you might say, okay, well now we just need the cherry or the cherries on top, which there might not be a ton of those to go around this offseason in particular, but there are always some.

And yeah, you too can do that a ton of those to go around this offseason in particular, but there are always some. Right. Yeah, you too can do that and can add to your team and can potentially put yourself over the top. Yeah, I just think that there are, you know, there are going to be so many obstacles to putting a World Series caliber team, which I think is probably a more productive way of thinking about it than a World Series winning team because of the vagaries of the postseason. But like, there are going to be so many obstacles and guys are going to get hurt. You're going to have free agents that you really do want to sign and they decide that they want to go somewhere else, either because they were offered more money or because they like the weather. I don't know. You know, there are a lot of reasons

that guys sign with a club and they are fundamentally going to only sign with the one. So at least at a time. So it's like, there's so much that can kind of insert itself in the way of you trying to win the world series. But I think that the place it has to start for a lot of these organizations, especially ones that find themselves in tough divisions that are going up against clubs that have already committed significant resources when it comes to how they're going to build their rosters, they're going to say, you know, you're going to have to say, like, we want to win the World Series. Our goal is to win the world series and you have to like mean it. You don't just have to mean it in the interview room.

You know, when you get to the end of season press conference, like you got to mean it in, in the back when you're sitting there amongst each other, getting ready to make a case to ownership about what your budget should be for the next year. Like you gotta, that's where that decision

has to get made. And I think that it has to be met with some real vim and vigor. And I don't want to denigrate the clubs that we've named in terms of the folks doing the work every day to try to put a winning club on the field. I think that every baseball organization, even the cheapest one in the league, has people in it who want to win. And that's what is sort of their animating purpose every day. But you, at the most senior levels, have to be able to sort to the person down the hall's office and say, this is why I need 100 million more dollars. And you got to be able to make that case persuasively because spending isn't the only way to win, but it is a nice one. Yeah. Because you get to watch some really, really talented baseball players as you endeavor to, you know, make your way. So, yeah.

And of course, spending is good, but spending wisely is best. It's not spending indiscriminately. So the Rangers really, they chose wisely with Seeker and Semien. That has worked out. If they had said that offseason, we really want to sign a couple of these star shortstops. So we're going to go get Javier Baez and Trevor Story or even Carlos Correa. Then that would not probably be a case of, yeah, do what the Rangers did because that wouldn't have worked out so well. So they not only decided to spend, but they also targeted in retrospect, at least to this point, the right

guys. And really, regardless of how they age from here, I think they'll probably be pretty pleased because they won their first World Series after 50 plus years in Arlington and 60 plus years as a franchise with all the hardship and all the hard luck and all the close calls and heartbreak that they encountered along the way. That's one of those, hey, if you win one, then that worked. The spending was justified regardless of what happens from here on out. And I guess it says something about the moral and ethical quandaries of fandom that we're singing the praises of Rangers ownership here. singing the praises of rangers ownership here. It's like, yeah, yeah. Emulate the team that is,

you know, uses its fossil fuel fortune and its public funding of its ballpark to spend and also doesn't have a pride night. That's the team that you're not going to find probably, you know, it's the old ethical consumption argument. It's going to be tough to find an ownership group that you can really feel good about. But just in this specific way, it would be nice if some teams could take a note from the Rangers. Yeah. Like, believe me, you're talking to the person who, when she was selecting the art to go with dan's world series uh recap last night was like wow they're a crypt keeper of an owner and or all this chapman are sure in a lot of these yeah i was talking to craig about that this morning actually because we have the exact

same photo and he was like yeah it was real, he was struggling with the same stuff. So yeah, like I have a list of suggestions, um, for, uh, certain members of the organization, um, who might be the ones who were persuaded to spend. But I think that when it comes at least to the roster construction component, um, that they have done a very good job. And I think that they have the right approach to it. They have a GM who seems like he's really got a good perspective on this stuff. And yeah. Yeah. And credit to Daniels as well, who, even though he's no longer with the organization, obviously laid a lot of the foundation for this team to win, which is often the case when a team wins a World Series and has dismissed an executive fairly recently. You can obviously look at a lot of the DNA of that team and trace it back to John Daniels, who, of course, part of Chris Young as well. Yeah.

And I thought it was quite nice um his his name came up a lot this week and it came up because Chris Young volunteered it and I thought that that was a classy move on his part and I also think is Chris Woodward like back in the organization in some capacity because I swear that that guy was just like at their games in Texas. Like, I feel like I saw him over the shoulder of several of the right-handed hitters, like in a team polo. So maybe he was just there as like a guest of the club, but I was like, oh, did he get rehired in some capacity or something? No. Well, it's nice if you can be on good terms with your ex and enjoy your ex's successes, I guess, even if things didn't end so well.

Yeah. So, look, I don't think that this will be transformative for the sport and that every team will now spend constantly. And we've certainly seen teams win with high payrolls before. And that hasn't inspired every single team to run a high payroll. Not that every team necessarily could at the same time. The 2018 Red Sox won the World Series with the highest payroll in the sport. And I don't know if even the Red Sox internalized that lesson subsequently. So let alone other teams. So many of their World Series runs were just so weird, Ben. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just very volatile organization in terms of finishing first, finishing last, winning World Series, being way out of it from year to year. Yeah, you never know with those Red Sox. That was definitely one of the things. I mean, there was a lot from Alex's very good book about them that I took away.

But as someone who, you know, I'm not in the minutiae of the Red Sox in the way that, like, Red Sox fans are. And so you forget, you know, you forget as a neutral and national observer just how much insanity was associated with those teams. And boy, there was a lot of it, Ben. So what do you make of these two teams' respective futures and their odds of being back in this position again? Because neither roster was overall very young, but each had a young, promising core. Sure.

You could certainly envision a lot of future playoff appearances for the Corbin Carrolls and the Gabriel Morenos or the Evan Carters and the Josh Youngs. So which do you feel better about? Which has a firmer foundation going forward, the Diamondbacks or the Rangers? I think that at the moment, I would give the edge to the Rangers for two reasons, one of which I find kind of more persuasive than the other. And we don't have to play over it because we just spent a good amount of time talking about it. But the Rangers, you're right to say, are not young across the board. They do have some young guys. They do have a good farm system. You know, right now we have them with five guys in the top 100. Now, one of those guys is Evan Carter. So, but they have both quality at the top and depth behind that from a farm system perspective. So,

I think that that is promising and they have demonstrated a willingness to spend. And so it's good when you know for sure that that's something that's like a bat in the bag, club in the bag, in the bag, it's in the bag. Yeah. I guess you can carry bats in bags too. Yeah, sure. Yeah. You have bat bags, in fact. So there's that. And then, you know, you look at Arizona and they also have a not bad farm system. I think that when you look at sort of the quality at the top, it is a little bit lighter. You know, they have not actually Jack lighter, which the Rangers do have. So there's that.

But, you know, Lawler, I think, is going to be very good for them for a long time. But the bloom is sort of off the rose with Drew Jones a little bit. We'll obviously have to see what comes of that. But they also have a good amount of pitching that they need behind Gallin and Kelly. And they have that enviable thing, payroll flexibility, Ben. But will they deploy that flexibility? I don't know. I don't know.

Spending money on free agents is the kind of thing that I believe it when I see it. They got Corbin Carroll done for an extension that if he has years that are even approximating the one he just said, I think is going to end up looking like a steal for them. But there's more work to do on this roster. They have many more departing free agents than Texas does also. So there's that. Now, you know, Texas has some players who are old, and so they have to grapple with that piece of it. And despite having just won the World Series, I think we did view them coming into the season

maybe as further along than Arizona, but sort of in the same light in that it's like promising and exciting, and there are players and pieces here that we really like. And also there's still work to do, which was wild to be able to say about the Rangers who had just signed to Grom. The Diamondbacks 15.3, but they were far from a lock as it was. They played quite well run differential wise, certainly. But yeah, coming into the season, it was not assured that they were just smoothly going to transition into being a playoff team, let alone a World Series winner. Right. And so I think that like bright days are ahead for them. But there is weirdly still work to do there. But now they're going to get all the money and attention that comes with being the World Series winner.

You know, when you get to do a postseason run, that's a lucrative thing. You generate excitement. People buy season tickets, you know. So I imagine that they have good things in store for themselves as a franchise. But, you know, there's still work to do. It's funny, like there was for a lot of the teams in this year's postseason, as we said, it was like, hmm, you get like two thirds of a functional team. You got to figure out that other piece at some point, you know, sort of a funny combo of things. But yeah. And another way in which the Rangers spared no expense was in hiring Bochy. I don't think his contract terms have come out, but he is believed to be among the best compensated managers. He made $6 million in his last season with the Giants, and then the Rangers lured him out of retirement.

with the Giants and then the Rangers lured him out of retirement. So, yeah. And I think it was reported that however much he was making, it was more than Woodward made in his four seasons as the Rangers manager combined. So, I don't know. Wow, good for you, Bruce. Yeah, I don't know how much of their success to attribute to Bochy, but it could be a fair amount to just, they were buffeted by fortune in so many ways this season. Oh, yeah.

You know, having a calm veteran seen it all mentor type at the helm couldn't have hurt. And he certainly didn't shoot the team in the foot with his moves this postseason on the whole. So and really, even the moves where they didn't do great from a dollars per war perspective, even where you couldn't say it was the most efficient spending, they needed all of those guys to get there because they squeaked into the playoffs. There were only two games ahead of the Mariners, granted with the tiebreaker in their favor. But like Jacob deGrom made only six starts for this team, but the Rangers won all six of those starts. So take Jacob deGrom away and maybe they never make the playoffs, right? Maybe they don't.

So even though they were kind of just, you know, this guy got hurt. Let's go get another guy. You know, it's not exactly how you draw it up. this guy got hurt. Let's go get another guy. You know, it's not exactly how you draw it up. And maybe it's not how Ray Davis would have preferred the bang for his buck,

at least until they actually ended up winning the world series. But, but ultimately maybe they needed every one of those contributions to get there. How about that? I didn't even think of that. I didn't even think of that, Ben,

you know, like what happens if, you know, I don't know. He couldn't have thrown them all. I understand. But like, what if it's Dane Dunning, you know, and he was good in the first half, but like, what if it was Dane Dunning, literally Dane Dunning instead of DeGrom? Like, where are they then? Huh? Yeah. Yeah. Maybe, maybe watching the playoffs from home, like the rest of us. Yeah, and then the Mariners would be in the postseason, and then I would be. Here's my final observation of the in-person World Series experience.

When someone is throwing, for a while, a perfect game, and then a no-hitter, it is incredibly tense. And I, at one point, checked game day to see what had happened. I was there, Ben. I was at the ballpark, though, because I was seeing it in real time. I was so nervous because the atmosphere was tense. Not in a bad way, but people, poor D-backs fans. They were like they were really ready to explode. They were, yeah.

And they didn't they didn't get to. Yeah. They didn't get to. And my last observation following up on a previous stat blast about these playoffs being a bit boring, being a bit on the dull side. I think that turned out to be the case. All the ways we can break that down statistically. Sometimes people ask, like, was that a good season or not? And that's almost too big for me to wrap my arms around. Yeah, that's too hard a question. How do I quantify whether it was a good season? Is it just a few salient storylines? Is it playoff races? Is it record chases?

Who even knows how to say whether one season was better than another, was great season. But with the postseason, I think because it's more contained, it's a little easier to try to quantify at least whether it was good or not. It was obviously good for the Rangers and their fans. And I'd imagine that Rangers fans, after all they've been through over the years, probably were happy to have it be a cakewalk aside from the ALCS for them not to be pushed to the brink, except for that one game against the Astros

because they've been through plenty. So just let them have a relatively low stress path to the pendant and to the World Series. But yeah, just following up on some of those stats. So even with both of the championship series going seven was only the fourth time ever that both had gone seven. Forty one of fifty three possible postseason games were played, 77.4%. That's a little bit below the divisional era average of 80%. It was the fourth lowest rate of the wildcard era, but really it was more about the quality of games than the quantity even. So by average total per game change in win probability

added, this was the least exciting postseason since 1989 and the least exciting ever among the 39 postseasons with more than 16 games played. And then if we go by average championship leverage index, which is essentially how tense do these games feel on a moment-by-moment basis, this World Series ranked 97th out of 119 and the lowest since 2012. This year also had the least tense wildcard round ever and the least

tense divisional round ever by average championship leverage index. So if not for the championship series, which ranked 13th out of 54, this October would have been bleak. So thanks to Michael Mountain and Kenny Jacklin for those stats. But I think that basically backs up our feelings. Like there were obviously a handful of classic games. There was game two of Philly's Braves and there was Game 4 of the NLCS, and Game 5 of the LCS, and Game 1 of the World Series. We'll remember those, but those were few and far between. And also, the fact that the road teams weirdly went 26-15, and the Rangers themselves 11-0 on the road, that just quieted the crowds, right? And because the home team was so often on the losing side, that just suppressed the sound a little bit. There were fewer opportunities to explode. And as a spectator, whether remotely or in the park, I feel like that dampens the experience a little bit when the crowd isn't as into it. Yeah, definitely. I don't know. It's so funny

because it felt really exciting at times for me, but I think that part of that was that I got to go to stuff. Yeah, right. That helps a little bit. Yeah. So we'll see if there's any larger legacy, not of the fact that it was a bit of a slog or a bit dull at times, but also some of the upsets.

I wonder whether Rob Manfred is almost relieved that the favorite won in the World Series at least. So there's not another round of the 84 win negative run differential Diamondbacks going all the way. Yeah. Do you think that them losing suppress any of that discourse? maybe maybe in a microscopic way but yeah i mean i'm not even as interested in the the tv ratings for the world series which were extremely low but yeah i think that obviously reflects the demographics somewhat in the time zones and everything but the games themselves aside from game one not the best but if you're a rangers, I don't think you care about that in the slightest. So, yeah, we'll see MLB revisit the playoff format. Whether there will be meaningful changes, I'm skeptical. Maybe we'll see reseeding, for instance.

That would be a nice little thing that it seems like maybe MLB is receptive to. But I'd be surprised if there were more sweeping changes. This is kind of what MLB wanted it to be, if not in the specifics than in the broad strokes. Yep. It was at least something that they were comfortable with, right? Yeah. Well, congrats to the Rangers and their fans. Yeah.

Condolences to the Diamondbacks and their fans, but also congrats to them for getting as far as they did. Yeah. It was a very successful season. There's not only one successful season. I reject that. I refuse to look at the sport that way that there's one winner and 29 losers. I think teams can win and be successes to differing degrees. So the Diamondbacks had a hell of a season too, just given the way it seemed to be trending at times.

So I think that probably a lot of their fans would have been pleased if you had told them, hey, we're going to win the pennant. I don't know if they would have said, well, if we win, if we lose in the World Series, so what? At least we got there. Once you get there, you really want to win. But still, maybe when the dust settles and they have time to reflect the fact that they went all that way if not all the way pretty successful and surprising and uh joyous season it's good for fandom to come with a feeling that you i i know that entitled is like kind of a loaded word, but like entitled to yearn for more, to strive for more. Like, I don't think that the project should ever be, well, just be content with that. Like, just be happier here.

I mean, it's a tricky balance, right? Because I think you're correct to say that you don't want to reduce this incredible thing that they did to like the fact that they lost you know to do that is to miss on miss out on so much and to not give an honest accounting of what they achieved but i also think that it's it's good if you're a diamondbacks fan to be like i don't like feeling like this i want to feel feel elation today. I want to be getting ready for a parade. Um, and I think that fans coming to expect that and, and demanded of the clubs that they cheer for is good for the sport. So I hope that you don't want to turn it inward to the point that you're bitter, but I think using it as a like, hey, we have new expectations now.

You know, we've been to a place we didn't expect to be and it was pretty cool. And I want to see the smell that Meg just described. You know, that's a, I think, a potent thing. You know, that's, I think, a potent thing. And I think particularly for a club and a fan base as young relative to the history of baseball as the Diamondbacks are, like, really powerful to shaping your understanding of what it means to be a fan of this club in particular and not just baseball in general. So I don't want to tell. I mean, like, I, I know how it feels to be disappointed by sports. Um, and so I'm, I'm not going to tell anybody to move on today because, you know, they, well, you know, their, their world series run ended less than 24

hours ago. But once you've sort of sat with that feeling, like, don't try not to marinate in it, you know, because, a cool what a cool thing you got to witness you know people know who corbin carroll is now they know who zach allen is like you're you're in it in a way that um is really special and can't be taken for granted like just ask rangers fans right like yeah it can be a while. So be sure to enjoy the thing that you did experience and then, you know, be open to having new expectations and I think embrace those. So, yeah. Yeah. I hate when I write something quickly and inevitably think of something that I wish I had written after the fact. I get some of that esprit de l'escalier after I've already published,

but I can say it on this. That's why I wait to publish, you know? You've had all the possible thoughts that you could have. Yeah, so many, arguably too many. But at least I have this podcast to be my mulligan and to say something that I should have said the first time. But since I already cited one of Branch Rickey's tenets of team building,

it's better to trade a player a year too early than a year too late, I think you could also say about the Rangers, another Rickey saying is luck is the residue of design, right? So you have to have both a plan and then things also have to go your way to have that plan come to fruition. And so that was what happened here. The Rangers are the residue of design. There's our podcast title.

Yeah, there you go. They had a plan. They executed that plan. You're going to be like, that sounds gross. Maybe, yeah. I mean, we talked about the stench. So I guess residue being somewhere in the title probably works on multiple levels here. There you go.

Yeah. Things worked go. Yeah. Things worked out for them, but they had to have the appropriate tack and strategy as well. And then you hope for the best. And this was the best. All right. And with that, Off-Season Effectively Wild recommences. For those of you who haven't been with us for a winter before, good news. Hopefully good news.

We don't stop. Effectively Wild keeps coming on the same schedule. We just have to work a little harder to find stuff to talk about, but we rarely have trouble. As long as there's no lockout, we're usually good to go. Off-season Effectively Wild gets a little looser, a little sillier, if you can believe it. We get to go off the beaten path, take some interesting detours, interact with listeners even more regularly via email shows and other exercises. In some respects, I enjoyed doing the show even more during the offseason, at least relative to the postseason. Another reason why we didn't have an episode

before now this week is that it was tough to record during the World Series. If we had done an episode prior to Game 5, what would we have talked about that wouldn't have been superseded before we could publish the podcast? So stick with us. We'll have some fun. As I always say, apologies to Rogers Hornsby, or no apologies, really. He was kind of a jerk. But contrary to his famous saying, there are better things to do with your winter than stare out the window and wait for spring. We'll find other ways to entertain ourselves and hopefully you as well. So we hope you'll keep us company and that we can keep you company and we will get to opening day together. And by the way, the aforementioned Michael Mountain let me know he's doing a full re-listen of Effectively Wild.

And apparently on episode 112, Sam introduced it as episode 111. And this was never acknowledged or corrected. So the podcast timelines branched long, long ago and we weren't aware of it. So 2077 was far from the first time. If you're a year-round listener or you just want to ensure that there's still an Effectively Wild to listen to when the 2024 season rolls around, you almost ad-free, and get themselves access to some perks. Brian Dahm, Sarah H., Ryan, Eugene, and Bernard Healy, thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, which similarly stays hopping all off-season long. There's already a hot stove channel where you can keep tabs on all of the off-season

transactions, which have already begun. And of course, Patreon perks also include access to monthly bonus episodes, those playoff live streams we did last month, discounts on merch and ad-free Fangraphs memberships, and so much more, patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Help us squirrel away some resources for winter. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site, but anyone and everyone can contact us via email at podcast at fangraphs.com. Send us your questions, send us

your comments, send us your intro or outro theme. If you want to join our listener created rotation, 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'll be back with another episode soon. Talk to you then. Baseball is a simulation. It's all just one big math equation You're all about these stats we've compiled Cause you're listening to Effectively Wild

With Ben Lindberg and Meg Rowley Come for the ball, banter's free Baseball is a simulation It's all just one big conversation. Effectively wild.