Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2234: Swing States

Episode Date: October 22, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Ben’s surprise presence and PitchCom conspiracies, recap the big moments (and big swings) from the end of the ALCS and NLCS, compare and contrast Juan Soto and Giancarlo Stanton, consider the 2025 outlooks for the Guardians and Mets, discuss the implications of a World Series matchup between big […]

With Ben Lindberg and Meg Rowley, come for the ball, banters free. Baseball is a simulation, it's all just one big conversation. Effectively Wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2234 of Effectively Wild, a FanGraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of FanGraphs and I am joined by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, you're here. Weren't you supposed to go away? Weren't you supposed to be away? Ben Lindberg Yeah. This is my Dante from Clerks episode.

Not even supposed to be here today, but you can't get rid of me that easily. I can't get rid of myself. I realized that my flight was leaving late enough for me to record an episode beforehand and then we got resolution to the championship series. We know the world series matchups. I just wanted to talk about the baseball. So here I am. Sorry to everyone who was looking forward to my absence. Hate to disappoint you. I mean, I'm sure that everyone is happy that you're here, Ben. The people like you. You're a very popular Ben.

Among all of our Ben's, one of the most popular, I would say. Well, such a lustrous constellation of Ben's in the effect of the wild orbit. But we can wrap up the CESs. We can talk a little bit about what lies ahead. A yawning gulf of four baseball-less days between us and the World Series as we record here on Monday afternoon, but a lot to look forward to, a lot to recap. Let me ask you first, are you someone who partakes in pitchcom conspiracy theories?

Do you buy that there's gamesmanship going on here? Just in terms of like players maybe fabricating pitchcom problems in order to say, give their pitchers a break or have some kind of conference. We have seen a lot of pitchcom now functions or people just tapping the head. It's like Luke and Han in Star Wars in the stormtrooper helmets. Oh yeah, it's not working. I can't hear you. It just seems kind of like, could this possibly be happening legitimately this often? And I've heard, I think it was Joe Davis even expressing this on baseball broadcast, just saying like, I always wonder if this is legit because we've been using these for a while now. It's not super complicated technology. Sometimes it's that the volume is too low to be heard.

And I get that playoff crowds are louder. So you'd expect that to happen more often. But if it's a charging issue, I don't know, shouldn't we have this down pat by now? So do you ever suspect that this is just a way to get around the pitch clock or usually the umpire accompanies the catcher if there's any sort of mound meeting about this. So you know, you can't sneak in a mound visit illicitly in theory, but there could be other advantages, you know, get a, get a reliever warmed up. Here's what I'll say. I think that the answer lies somewhere in the middle on that one. Do I think that there have been shenanigans of some stripe when it comes to pitchcom?

Sure. Sure. Of course. Like of course, Ben, of course. But do I think that every single time it is a result of needing to buy time or what have you? No, I don't. I do think that there are legitimate issues up there.

I think the technology is more finicky than people necessarily realize. I do wonder about the battery life on these things, like my God. Also like, it's technology right next to a sweaty head. The thought that it would malfunction every now and again, or that you have to be able to distinguish between and determine, is the issue simply that it is too loud in the ballpark for me to hear versus the thing isn't working? There's some merit to that. So I think it's probably a rich tapestry of actual malfunction, loud ballparks,

and some amount of shenanigan. You can't shenanigan every time, right? Because then they're gonna crack down. You have to maybe strategically deploy your shenanigan. But I think we like a little bit of shenanigans, you know? We don't want it to rise to the level of us feeling like it's cheating, right? The electronic science feeling, the banging scheme, that was too much. But we like a little bit of, you paying close enough attention to tell me not to do this?

We like that. You think these guys need to tuck in their jerseys that much? No, they're reaching for stuff in their belts. Come on, we're reaching for stuff in their belts. Come on, we're not new. And who among us hasn't neglected to charge something at an inopportune time? Yeah, that has definitely happened. There are probably people whose job that is and there's redundancies and you've got extras.

And it is jarring when you see relievers warming up in the bullpen without their hats because the pitchcoms are being charged as they're warming up to come into the game. If it's a night game, there's really no purpose in the cap. You don't necessarily need it, and yet the players look naked. They look unrecognizable without it because it's part of the uniform. And so you see them with their bare heads. It's scandalous. It's very odd, but that does go to show that in theory, at least they are charging the things. And to be clear, I'm pro pitchcom. I really like pitchcom. I think it's very odd, but that does go to show that in theory, at least they are charging the things. And to be clear, I'm pro pitchcom. I really like pitchcom.

I think it's a pretty elegant solution to the problem of science doing. I think it's helped speed up the game. You don't have to go through just a Nordic number of sign sequences where the runner on second, you probably have less cheating unless we find out someday that there's hacking going on or something. Supposedly it's impervious to that, but then again, they can't seem to keep the things charged and audible, so who knows? There are fewer cross-ups and that's probably good for health and safety and also

fewer passballs and wild pitches. It's just a good thing in general, but I do wonder. I would like to talk to players sometime down the road after they're out, after they're willing to speak frankly about whether they've ever bent the rules a little bit to give someone a breather with the pitchcom. Yeah. I think that in general, it is fine and it has done what it needs to and pitchcom good. And there are these little bits of having a fiddle with the thing and that's fine also. I realized part of why I feel put off by them starting to do their warmup tosses without the hat is it makes them look rushed. It makes them look like they slept through their alarm or something.

Like I'm not ready. And that's not true. Like you said, they have to put the thing in the thing and that's fine. Well, pitchcom conspiracies are no, the Dodgers advanced, they beat the Mets in six, the Yankees advanced, they beat the Guardians in five. The ALCS turned out to be far more exciting. That's some close games there at the end. We talked about one classic last week and then there was another one before we could even post that podcast, the Friday game, when we were live streaming for our Patreon supporters. That was another great game.

And on the NL side, you had two teams basically trading blowouts or at least games with wide margins there. And so we didn't get quite the nail biters, but still some excitement. We didn't get a lead change until the last game of the series and that was early in that game. So yeah, not super scintillating action there, but stars starring and also some surprise players unexpectedly producing and being big heroes,

Tommy Edmond coming out of nowhere, NLCS MVP, Tommy Edmond. Do you remember when the Dodgers acquired Tommy Edmond at the deadline, it was an afterthought. I mean, we mentioned it probably, but it wasn't seen as that big an acquisition, I guess because he hadn't played in the majors so far this year. He had been hurt, he'd been on a rehab assignment where he wasn't hitting all that well. And it just, it looked like a depth move. He'd been productive in the past, just good glove guy,

decent, bad, versatile, utility type. And he's come up huge, right? And it's just another case of Edmund and Kike Hernandez and some of these guys who might not be starting, let alone cleanup hitting in Tommy Edmund's case in game six, the prototypical cleanup hitter, Tommy Edmund. And the Dodgers, like they've had so many injuries that they're relying on guys down the depth charts,

whether it's these bullpen games or whether it's backup infielders. And a lot of them have come up huge. That's as big a reason that the Dodgers have advanced as Shohei Otani and Mookie Betts, et cetera, though they've certainly done their part too. AMT – Yeah. I mean, I think it's been a really nice mix, particularly if you take the two CSs in combination. You've had guys who have played really important roles and are to your point sort of lesser known to a certain degree.

And then it's like, and then it's Juan Soto, you know? Then it's just Juan Soto hitting a three run shot and helping the Yankees advance. So I once again think that the balance of the thing has been pretty good. And I know that where it ended up taking us is the two number one seeds facing off in the World Series. But like, that's not a bad thing either, right? To have the best teams be the ones that are there when the dust settles facing off, I think is satisfying in its own way. You know, it's so funny.

We're never satisfied, collectively, is a thing that I've noticed because there has been a grousing about these being the two teams and it's the number one season. Then last year when it was the D-backs and the Rangers, people were mad about that. You know, I think sometimes you just want to get a little worked up. And the takeaway is really that for fans, the conversation about the big market powerhouses versus the smaller market mid payroll team, none of that is actually that genuine, I think. I think that really what people are mad about is, my favorite team isn't in the World Series. Yes.

Yes. And that sucks. You can just say that. That's okay. You can be disappointed by that. But I think that sucks. You can just say that. That's okay. You can be disappointed by that. But I think that this is an exciting matchup. It does have less prominent guys, although like Tommy Edmond was like a notable prospect. He was an important part of that St. Louis team.

It's not like he's, you know, he's not as anonymous as some of the relievers that we might see. But, you know, I don't think it's a bad thing for the sport to have like Soto and Judge and Otani and Betts be sort of the anchors of our World Series experience. And then, you know, we get to see how both of these teams sort of navigate their pitching. But yeah. I have thought that too. To be fair, I guess it's maybe different groups of people who were angry about last

year's World Series and this year's World Series. It's probably not the same people being outraged that the good teams didn't make it last year and the good teams did make it this year. And I don't think fans need to care about TV ratings per se. I was on Hang Up and Listen and I treated my fellow panelists to a brief rendition of Take Me Out to the Ball Game where I substituted Root for the ratings. I don't think we need to espouse that idea, but if you're a baseball fan, it's not a bad thing that more people are watching baseball. Granted, a lot of those people

are in New York and Los Angeles. Maybe that's not relevant to you, but for baseball to be a bigger deal, which I think it would be, and you don't wanna go too far with that. You don't want the juggernauts, the Titans, the high payroll teams, the perennial contenders in the world series every year, that would be boring. But we're nowhere close to that being a problem.

There's so much parity in baseball and you have to look back only to last year to see it and Neopane ran the numbers and he found that this year, the correlation between spending and winning was actually below average in the regular season. And we're just one year removed from all the fretting about the Mets, the Padres, the Yankees, they all missed the playoffs, the Angels, right? And the Orioles and the Rays and the Diamondbacks and the Marlins made it. And you could even say this year, the Rangers, Giants, the Blue Jays, they all had losing seasons. The Guardians, the Orioles, the Brewers, the Royals, the Tigers, they were all in the thick of things. So I don't think that's a huge problem. Obviously, what spending gets you is a better chance to get into the tournament

and to not have a losing season, which the Yankees have not had for a few decades now, and the Dodgers are always in it, but that doesn't guarantee anything. You can buy yourself a ticket into the playoffs to some extent, though that is not a constant, but you cannot buy a championship. The system just isn't set up that way, and it's less and less favorable to the favorites, so to speak. isn't set up that way and it's less and less favorable to the favorites, so to speak, right? I mean, you have more teams in the playoffs, you have more playoff rounds, you're going to get even fewer times when you have the best team or the team with the best record in their respective leagues matching up. We just in the wild card era, that's 27 seasons and it's happened four times, I believe. Cleveland Atlanta in 95, Yankees Atlanta in 99, Red Sox Cardinals 2013 and Rays Dodgers 2020.

And you could even look at the history of the Dodgers and the Yankees and surely we're gonna be treated to or bombarded with tons of archival footage of the boys of summer and the golden era of baseball. And people are going to be citing how many times these two teams have tangled and the Yankees are eight and three head to head lifetime against the Dodgers

in the World Series. And from 41 to 81, these two teams faced off 11 times in 41 seasons. It hasn't happened in 43 years since. And since their last meeting in the World Series in 81, they've both reached the postseason in the same year 11 times, but only twice did they both even make it to the Championship Series, 2009 and 2017. And now we see just how hard it is for them to get all the way.

So I don't see it as that big a problem. The Dodgers have won one World Series since 88 and some people perhaps unfairly discounted because it was 2020. And meanwhile, the Yankees are mired in their longest pennantless drought as a franchise since Babe Ruth showed up on the scene. So I get it.

I understand why people aren't really rooting for the rich to get richer. And maybe this is sort of a normie sentiments or it's for the casuals kind of, we want to see the best teams and the best players, but I'm into it. AMT – It's like so many things. It's like, you know, types of hitters, it's types of pitchers, it's types of teams. You want sort of a diverse, interesting ecosystem. You don't want the same, exact same teams in the postseason mix every year. You don't want the same exact same teams in the postseason mix every year.

You don't want the same teams in the World Series every year. You do want variety because again like apart from those two teams, you have 28 other fan bases who are like, when do I get mine? So you want there to be a mix of things. It feels like, you know, it sort of is a good way to demonstrate there being a vibrancy to the sport. But I think it's okay to want the like the normie matchup every now and again. We liked Pacific Rim for a reason. Sometimes you want like the big Jaeger and the Kaiju to fight each other and see who comes out on top.

Just make it a very topical reference that everyone had top of mind this morning. Those matchups have a lot to recommend them and they can be great fun. Like sometimes you, that's what you want. You don't always have to root for pluck. You want some amount of pluck, right? You don't want it to only be Kaijus and Yeagers. Yeagers? They were called Yeagers, right? Why did they call them Yeagers? That was a, anyway, that's not the purpose of this podcast, but you know, you don't want that every year. That can be tiresome, but you know, you want it to sort of make sense. You want to see the best guys, you want to see the biggest stars. And those guys aren't always on teams like the Yankees and the Dodgers, but they're on teams like that a lot, right? How vindicated do we all feel that in his very first year freed from the Angels, Otani

is just in the World Series. He's just in there. That's cool. That's so cool. We get to watch Otani play in the World Series and it took one season. That's great. That's exactly how this is supposed to work. So people can feel however they want to about it for this particular matchup.

And I know there are people who hate the Dodgers and there are a lot of people who hate the Yankees. And you know, like those teams squaring off, maybe you don't have a good avatar for your own, your own rooting interest in one of those clubs if you root for a team that is constructed differently, spends differently, what have you. But I would like just invite people to think about the fact that you get to watch these two teams which are stacked full of guys who are the faces of the sport in all the important ways like square off. That's really exciting. I'm excited. I didn't, as you know, as many of our

listeners will know, and certainly as the folks who turned in for the Patreon stream on Friday will know, my main rooting interest coming out of the CSs was that I needed one of them to go six, because I know that this is a stretch that is now game-less, I know that everyone doesn't know what to do with their hands in this time, but this is a necessary schedule situation for me personally gives us time to kind of soak in this matchup, do more preview content. I think that stuff is fun. But beyond it going six, I didn't really care who emerged from these. But now that this is the matchup we've got, I think I wanted this. I mean, it wasn't

what I predicted precisely, but it is, I think, a good matchup. I think it's going to be a lot of fun. CB Yeah. And if you like to hate the Yankees and the Dodgers in a sports hatred kind of way, I think it is actually beneficial for them to win one now and again, which it's counterintuitive because you want to root against them. Yet, if they never win, then they maybe don't make such effective heals and villains. They have to be the big bullies and to be the big bullies,

I guess maybe just outspending everyone is sufficient and going and getting Otani and getting Yamamoto, but also sometimes they have to win so that you can kind of renew the enmity toward them. So if you think that it's good to have villains in a sport who kind of pull everyone else together. Now, the problem here, of course, is that there's no underdog to root for, really. It's just the battle of the Titans. But just in general, if you think there's some utility in having the big bad bi-coastal behemoths here, then every now and then they actually need to get some swagger back and they need to kind of throw their weight around a little bit and win one.

I'm not expecting Guardians fans for instance to say, yes, you know what, it is actually it's better for baseball that the Yankees win one finally. I'm certainly not expecting that. If your team just lost and lost to one of these teams, then I do not expect you to be behind them and taking the long view here. Of course, you can hate them and you can root against both of them somehow, or you can just tune out entirely. I would not begrudge you that.

But I think there's something to be said for it every now and again, not every year, not even as often as it happened during the so-called golden era where it was just perennially Yankees Dodgers, right, or one of the two, if not both. Well, things were less balanced back then than they are now. And who knows if the stars will actually show up and be the stars of this series. It's not just Otani and Judge, obviously. These rosters go deep star wise. You've got Soto and you've got Garrett Cole and you've got Mookie Betts and maybe you've got Freddie Freeman. We'll see. And who knows whether they'll be the stars of this series. I've seen some people cite the 62 Game 7 series, Maze versus Mental at the stars of this series. I've seen some people cite the 62 game seven series, you know,

Mays versus Mantle at the peak of their powers and Mantle was MVP and Mays should have been, he was runner up and they combined to bat 189 with no homers and one run batted in. So maybe we'll get that. Maybe it'll be the Hernandez's again. Maybe it'll be Austin Wells and Will Smith, who knows, right? But at least we get to see the stars. And yeah, Otani, he's won a Japan series.

He's won the WBC. If he now adds the World Series to his collection, on top of all the individual career accolades, he will have reached the pinnacle from a team competition perspective too. KS There are definitely fun narratives to be found just in those kinds of stories, but you're right, you never can predict who it's going to be. The fact of Otani's resume, should they win the World Series, will just be determined whether he's the guy who wins it for them. We have yet to see, but yeah, when you bring all of that together, it's like, wow, this guy's just gonna end up being, as it turns out, really important

to the global history of the sport. And we get to watch him. And that's also very cool. Yes, and I wanna turn our view back a bit before we look forward just to see how they got to this point. And the ALCS in particular, so maybe we could talk about the two big plate appearances and we could go back to talk about Friday if we want to and some of the

previous games, but the deciding one there, it came down to, or at least you remember those two plate appearances, John Carl Stanton and Juan Soto. Just these, just two massive consequential at-bats, both ending in home runs. And it was really a study in contrast in those at-bats and in those hitters, because Soto to me just looks as in command as a hitter can. Like, he looks like he's the boss, he's in charge, you know? Like, you're coming into his kitchen and you just have to hope that he maybe misses one, but he's not going to get you out of trouble. He's not going to miss much. Whereas Stanton always seems vulnerable to me. He always seems like someone you can pitch to.

And maybe that's deceptive and maybe that's how pitchers get themselves in trouble, but he will look awful on a pitch and then he'll hit the next pitch 450 feet, you know? Whereas Soto never looks anything less than balanced and poised. And I think people might forget like Stanton in his prime, he was an all-around player. Like he could kind of do everything. You know, he, 10 years ago, 2014, he stole 13 bases in 14 attempts. He was well above average for years in right field. He had some seasons when he played almost every game. And this latter day Stanton, I think I talked about last time how it's just, he looks like such an Adonis still, and yet he's so fragile, you know, just the contrast between his physical strength

and his physical fragility. He just looks like if he breaks into a sprint, he will tear his entire body in half, you know? And so he never really does. He just trots, which is easier if you can hit the ball 450 feet consistently. So he has produced less war in the past six seasons combined by baseball reference at least than he did in a few individual seasons.

Like he's produced 4.6 baseball reference war over those six seasons in 505 games. That's less than he produced in 2012 alone in 123 games. So 114 games this year, he was less than one war. Like you would not have expected him to be the big star of the postseason so far. And in this at bat, where he comes up against Tanner Bybee with a runner on, just like the first couple pitches,

he looked completely overmatched. Like he, he looked like he was out of his depth. Bybee who's been cruising to this point, hasn't allowed a run, throws a slider so far outside that Bo Nailer's entire upper body was out of the strike zone. Like no part of Nailer's upper body was behind the strike zone box. He just set up way out there from the start and that's where the pitch was. And then there was a change up way below the zone. And Stanton swung through both of those. And I thought to myself, well, why would you ever throw him a strike? Like just keep throwing him those pitches until he shows that he can actually take one. And then to his credit, he did third pitch. They go way back

outside with the slider where the first one was. And this time he restrains himself. Then a curve in the dirt, which he doesn't bite at, then a change up way inside. And none of those was close. It seemed like they had reached the same conclusion. Well, we're not going to throw one over the plate to this guy because he will chase. And then they throw the slider full count and it's supposed to be way outside again, clearly nailer sets up where he did for those first couple. It was just way outside there and it just missed. It just leaked back over the plate and became this fat pitch and Stanton just drilled it 117 and a half miles per hour, 446 feet.

And he took his slow trot. But it's just, it's odd because at no point in that play appearance before he hit the home run, did I really feel like he's going to come through here, Bybee's in trouble, like he's playing right into Stanton's strengths. And I've seen some people suggest this was one of those like try to deke the pitcher into throwing me something by looking really bad. But I don't think it was that because they were setting up way outside, like they didn't mean to throw him a strike and it was just a mistake and he capitalized on it. But it's such a land of contrast when I watch John Kroos Stanton, like Just looks like the most powerful athlete ever,

and yet he's so physically limited and also will just look horrendous on a swing and then will hit a ball harder than anyone is capable of hitting it. It's just kind of like a one-dimensional player at this point, but it's a pretty fun and ultra-powerful dimension. I still think, and look, I know I was saying this when he plays on the same team as literally Judge, I still think that when it comes to a guy whose contact, like the sound of the contact when it is made flush, when he really gets the barrel to it, like the degree to which it is genuinely arresting. I think Stanton still leads the league.

I think he leads the league by a not small margin. Because it's like when he really gets into one, you just, I'm going to do a swear, I'm sorry, all you can do is say, holy s***. It is unreal. It is unreal. And I remember looking at his stat-cast metrics around max exit VLO, average, the exit velocity of his top 50, because that tells you a little more than average does to look at sort of the exit feel on the top 50% of his contact. He had this streak going, and I haven't looked to see if it's still true, but he had this streak going where you would look at the leaderboards

and Stanton was nowhere to be found. And it was because he was never clearing the qualified bar, right? He was never on the leaderboards by default just because of how infrequently he was playing to your point. But then when you would drop the number of required plate appearances down to like a hundred, it's just every single year that guy is at the top. He is at the top by a comfortable margin. You would give anything for those kind of margins in some instances right now, right? Like he was just, it's just the, it's just the most genuinely thunderous arresting contact I have ever seen in person. It's, it's, it's more than judge. It's more than gallo.

Like think of any beef boy and you think it's someone else. And then you're like, it's Giancarlo. Like it's just Giancarlo. Like it's just Giancarlo. Like it is unreal and you're right, it is such a weird disconnect because of the injuries, because of how the strikeout issues have cropped up over time. Just the dude's stance doesn't look like

it should produce power like that. He's so closed off. For him to be able to whip the bat through the zone like that and make that kind of, it's unfathomable. Yeah. Even the stance makes him look exploitable. It's like, you can pitch to this. How could he even reach? You can pitch to that guy. How can you even see it? How can you even see it, Ben? Like, that's what it looks like. And then you hear it and you're like, oh, s***. Yeah. Yeah. And he just has hit home runs on trajectories that really no one else can't because he can hit them low and they get out because they just like, they keep climbing or they just don't have time to sink because he hits them so hard. And you know, probably be an

interesting Hall of Fame case someday for people to wrestle with. Like if he manages to get to 500 homers, he's at 429 now, not counting his 16 in the postseason, but at his recent rate of 25-ish a year, he'd have to go into a third season to do that. And that's assuming he stays even as healthy as he has the last couple of years. And he turns 35 after the World Series shortly after. So will he even make it to that point? I don't know, but if he does, it'll be an interesting debate because he's at 44-ish war, depending on which war you're looking at. He's not going to get to the 60th threshold that we think of now as, oh, you're

kind of in the hall of fame conversation. And yet at his peak and even as an old dude, he might be even less durable from here on out. He might strike out even more, but he's going to have that old man power till the day he hangs him up, I think. There will be people who look back on that and think, well, he was famous, he was one of a kind, he should be in there. Maybe he'll be more of a veterans committee type, who knows? I don't particularly care that much about who gets in or doesn't anyway. The point is, regardless of whether he's ultimately enshrined or deserves to be, he will be remembered for a really long time, not just because of how great a player overall he was in his earlier years, but just that absolutely breaking the

scouting scale raw power that he has. It is just incredible. And Soto, on the other end of things, I think Soto doesn't get enough credit for his power probably just because he is just so disciplined and so selective and doesn't swing at pitches he can't hit, but he has a ton of power obviously also. And so when he comes up with two men on with the chance to take the lead and he is facing Hunter Gaddis who he's seen twice already in this series. Who knows whether that mattered? Is that reliever familiarity effect or is it just Juan Soto? But he saw seven pitches.

So Stanton saw six in total. Soto, this was just kind of a clinic. This was just like spoiling nasty pitch after nasty pitch, you know, pitches that anyone else probably would have let go by or just wouldn't have been able to make contact with at all. Just painting the corners perfectly located. with it all, just painting the corners, perfectly located. And he just spoiled pitch after pitch after pitch until he finally got the fastball

that he seemed to be looking for. And it wasn't even a bad pitch particularly when he first swung at it. I didn't know that he had gotten enough of it for it to get out because it was quite high. I think it was a strike. It kind of just clipped the top of the zone, a high strike. Again, instead of out of the zone where Naylor wanted it,

he was almost standing. He had his target well above the zone and it was a little lower than where he wanted it. Not that Soto was likely to chase as high as he wanted it, but he got the pitch that he was waiting for and somehow got around on a 95 mile per hour fastball just up at the shoulders or wherever it was and just put a charge into it to take it out in center field. And I just, you love watching Soto for different reasons.

These guys are both great spectator experiences because every time Gaddis would make a nasty pitch Soto would do the nod, acknowledging like, all right, I'll see you. But also, well, that's not good enough. What else you got? You send the best up here and I will keep fouling it away until you make a minor mistake, just a tiny little mistake. That's all I need. And I will hit it the heck out of here. tiny little mistake, that's all I need. And I will hit it the heck out of here. So, and not just hit it out, but then also pause on his way down the baseline to exult in the home run with the Yankees dugout. And then after the game in a TBS interview says, I was telling myself I was all over him. I was all over him. I was all over him. And he was. Those were just like contrasting plate appearances, like totally

different approaches at the plate, different strengths as hitters, but both just sort of biding their time until they got the one they wanted and then they didn't miss. I continue to think and like, I'm going to say that like, one sort of an underrated power hitter and it's like, well, yeah, you just hit a three run shot to like send them to the world series, a dumb egg. But like, it's not the thing that people think of, I think, most often with him, right? It's the discipline, it's the shuffle, it's the, but like he can get into one when he wants to. CB Yeah, Soto, he doesn't swing, like he swings hard, but also is quite controlled. Like he

doesn't strike out that much. He's not like a Luis Araya or anything, no one is, but also is quite controlled. Like he doesn't strike out that much. He's not like a Lisa Reisz or anything, no one is, but his combination of contact and power and force is pretty much unparalleled. He has this happy medium where he's a pretty good contact hitter despite not really getting cheated, not really holding anything back. He can combine both of those qualities. Yeah, for sure. And so I think it still surprises people when he like lays into one like that, but he does it, you know, he does do that. That is part of the profile. I don't know, he might be one of my favorite hitters to watch just because he has the ability. I mean,

like, again, I'm taking such a brave stance, really you know, Ben. I like watching Juan Soto play baseball. I don't know how I came to this absurd conclusion, but the ability to blend is such a discerning eye with the kind of power that he's capable of when he, I mean, he had like a 569 slugging percentage this year, right? He hit 41 homers. He hit 41 homers, right. So, but I'm just saying like, I don't think that the power is the first thing that people think about.

And that's, you know, a perfectly reasonable stance when a guy has a 419 on base percentage and is walking almost, you know, 20% of the time. Like you're gonna think about other stuff maybe, but like he can get into one. He can really get into one. He can really get into one, Ben. Soto turns 26 on Friday, first day of the red series, and he's about six war behind

Stanton career. So Soto may catch Stanton next season when he's nine years younger than Stanton, who's been quite a star himself. So that's how good he is. And yeah, it's like Ted Williams, you probably think about how disciplined he was and how he hit for high averages and everything. And also he hit a zillion home runs despite missing tons of time in the service. I mean, certain hitters can do everything. So that's probably what we should really remember them by. Yeah. Yeah. The completeness of the game is just like really remarkable from someone of any age,

but someone so young to do it so consistently. It's a really, he's a remarkable guy. What's your, what's your current Juan Soto contract estimate? Yeah. It's funny. Like people have been talking about, oh, he's,, he's up in the price tag every day he plays. I don't really believe that. I don't know that he's earned himself more money this postseason. I think everyone was well aware of what Wonsodo brings to a team. No, it was just me. It was just me, the bravest podcaster, the bravest little podcast gal. That was me. I'm the only one who knew. He's doing what Wonsodo has done for years now. This isn't even his first rodeo. He has won a

World Series and hit home runs in that World Series. So I don't think it's taking anyone by surprise. The only way that it might possibly be making him more money is in the sense that it puts pressure on Hal Steinbrenner even more than there was already to just shell out whatever it takes to keep one Soto. Whether the Yankees win or lose really, because if they lose, well then you've got to get one Soto because where would you be without him? We came up short again and we won't be back here without him. If they win, well, what excuse do you have for not bringing him back? He is the perfect Yankee.

He helped get us there. He can play in New York. You're flush with World Series revenue and all that comes with that. So what's your excuse for not paying him top dollar? So maybe in the sense that his leverage has increased even more with the Steinbrenner specifically, but beyond that, I mean, you know, he was not going to have a fallow market for his free agent services. So I think 600 is like the starting point at this point, right? And I think it'll just be a very long-term deal. So it'll be probably 600 over, I don't know, 14 years, something like that. Yeah.

And maybe there's even a premium where it goes beyond that, but that's sort of like table stakes. And we had that discussion about like, will there be bad blood or bitterness because he's teammates with Aaron Judge and Aaron Judge, can you have a higher paid player on a per year basis than Aaron Judge? They can just tack on enough years that they can get in 600 plus and have a lower AAV than Aaron Judge. I don't think that's really a stumbling block here, but yeah. I mean, I guess the question is like, will he get a deal that in present day dollars is worth even more than Otani's? Like you could even have that conversation with him. I don't know. He's just, man, he's going to cash it and it's going to be as soon as the world series ends,

the big storyline of the off season is going to be where does Juan Soto go and for how much. But for now, we know where he'll be for the next maximum seven games. Yeah. And yeah, gosh, I don't think that it changed. I don't think his performance in the postseason changes my base assumption about how much he'll make. I think that him having the platform year that the platform year that he did, it certainly helps the case, right? Like he just turned in a remarkable season. But yeah, I don't think that anyone in a front office is like, Oh, maybe we should

be scouting that one-soto guy. Where's our advanced? Do we have an advanced guy out there? He's a remarkable talent. And because he is so young, you can just, you can make the years work however you need to, right? Like you're not worried about it the way you would be if he was, you know, 35 instead of about to turn 26. Like the fact that he's hitting free agency when he is just gives so many options both to him and to the team that signs him. It's like, it's really remarkable. I, I do think that, you know, because he's a Boris guy, it's not like he's going to sign the day that, you know, free agency opens, but I am increasingly convinced that he will end up remaining a Yankee.

I think that I feel increasingly convinced of that. I'm sure that other teams will give it the old college try and we know that the Mets will be keen to be bitters there, but I think he's just going to be a Yankee. I think he might just be a Yankee, Ben. Yeah. He has sounded receptive without undercutting his bargaining position. And why would he not be really? If he wants to win, the Dominican community in New York, people love him, he's performed well. Everything seems to be pointing toward that, but there may be other teams that have some say in that. And I felt almost bad for the Guardians

because it's like their big outfield acquisition is Lane Thomas and here they are just getting bodied by Juan Soto and John Kroos Stanton, these guys that the Yankees have paid a ton for. But this is a case where, look, the Guardians, in theory, they could have had Juan Soto, right? Who knows? Maybe they couldn't swim in the same waters free agent-wise, but are you telling me that they couldn't have afforded to pay Juan Soto for a single season? I don't think so. All it took was talent to get him,

right? He didn't have a no trade clause. The Guardians, they have young guys, they have prospects. Like they could afford to pay him $30 million or 31 or whatever it was for a single season. So it's the Guardians. I mean, I feel bad for Guardians fans cause it's not their fault that their team and their ownership group won't spend

on that type of player typically. But you know, you had Jose Ramirez, who's a superstar, although he didn't have a big series, but he didn't have a sidekick the way that Aaron Judge did. Aaron Judge had Juan Soto, Ramirez didn't have someone like that. And if the Guardians had gone out and said, yeah, we'll get Juan Soto for one year,

in theory, they could make a move like that. He could have gone, the Padres went and got him and you know, they were willing to spend and you tell me the guardians couldn't have theoretically had one Soto for a single season. So feel bad for the fans who were like, well, we have one lane Thomas who, you know, he had huge hits, but he's no one Soto. I could understand why you might feel like, well, the game is rigged, right? Like here are these teams with the super high payrolls

and we're down with the 25th highest payroll and how can we compete with the scraps that these teams are throwing us? But, you know, get mad less at the system sometimes than the Dolans or whoever is deciding not to spend as much as they theoretically could. You'd be justified in feeling disappointed.

I mean, like Lane Thomas had a nice postseason. Oh, he did, yeah. You know, he did a great job, but you're right. I do think it is illuminating. And look, sometimes it's plenty. It's maybe more than enough, right? They were in the World Series in 2016, right? And they almost won the thing.

But I do think that the way that their roster ended up being constituted showed some of the limitations, right? That they are constrained in meaningful ways. And that front office group, that team, those guys managed to bob and weave with that in a way that I think is really impressive. They made it all the way to the hell, yes, right? They did that with like one and a half starters and, you know, a lineup that wasn't particularly deep.

So it's not like it can't be done. And there are probably are years where the dice roll goes differently and that's enough to put them in the World Series and maybe win the thing. But it's like we often talk about when we're discussing kind of the flexibility that having payroll as a resource to deploy gives you, you're not solely dependent on your internal drafting and development, your ability to kind of get the better

side of trades more often than not. It just gives you this incredibly rich, literally and figuratively resource to deploy to try to bolster your roster. And it manifests in ways beyond free agency, although that is the biggest one, right? Like the ability to take on money in deals because you want a guy, because you want to hold onto a prospect. And so rather than sending out a player you're excited about in the future, you take on payroll from someone else.

It just gives you more options when it comes to putting together a competitive team. It doesn't mean that it's the only way to do it. I think Cleveland is in the category that Tampa Bay is in, where despite my frustration with their ownership group, clearly the folks who are working for that team, both in a front office capacity and the players themselves, they really wanna win. But they are being hamstrung in a way that is a choice

that ownership is making in terms of their ability to add guys through other avenues and that's gonna hurt you sometimes in the CS, sometimes long before that. But it makes the path harder and the path is already quite difficult. You know, whatever, whatever we might say about the state of parity and they're not being any super teams this year and you know, all of that of an expanded playoff field, like it's still very hard. And so that's why I often will say, why not make it a little bit easier on yourself?

Life is hard enough. If you're a billionaire, make this thing easier. You can just throw money at it. That sounds great. And I think they could be back. They're not a particularly old team. A lot of things went right for them this year, but also a lot of things went wrong. So if you go by base runs, run differential, it's I guess more so base runs and third-order

record than run differential because the run differential was pretty good. It was the timing of when they scored their runs and how. So if you believe base runs that they were more like a 500 team that played 11 games over its head, well then there could be some regression coming, less clutchness coming, and also when you have one of the best bullpens ever, that's not necessarily something you can count on year after year. Then again, starting pitching has been a strength for the Guardians in the past and it really was a weakness for them this year, so maybe that comes back to the pack in a positive way because yeah, they really were piecing things together and some of their guys were gassed.

I mean, you know, I don't know if you can blame Gaddis being fatigued or anything. He looked pretty nasty. It's just that the other guys live in big houses too or drive big cars too or whatever you say and one so can afford the biggest, or is about to be able to. But you know, you were really working that pen hard. And I wonder whether Voht looks back and says, should I have pulled Tanner Bybee as early as I did in the previous start? And you know, like Cade Smith looked pretty gassed.

Now he was still effective and you know, was brought out of the pen again. I felt bad for the guy, like his VELO was down, but he was still getting it done in game five. And they just did that all postseason because they basically had no recourse. I mean, maybe they could have stuck with starters a little longer than they did in certain cases, but this was the only way that they were going to make a deep run was just by relying on that pen. And they did more than any other team, except for the Braves who played two games, but them aside, the Guardians got 39.4% of their innings from starting pitchers. So you can do the math. It was a vast majority coming from the relievers and they made that work. Next year, who knows, as we've said, the AL Central, it's no push over anymore.

Will they make moves? Will they supplement? You know, they had pretty decent attendance this year. Will they loosen the purse strings slightly and will they get guys back? You know, some of the starters who were missing this season, do they come back healthier and more effective? Who knows? So I don't think it's a cinch that they'll be back here, but they have managed to remain respectable to competitive throughout this run of people bemoaning their lack of spending. So that is a testament to their

front office, even if it's an indictment of their ownership. I think that that's right. Next year, we're going to get like postseason teams where the starters all go like six and we're going to be like this new innovation where you have good starting pitching, man. They've really figured it out. And there were some bad defensive plays on the Guardians part. And you know, there's been some sloppy play on a lot of teams' parts this postseason, but the Guardians are a team that is there in part because of their defense, and so it's more notable when it doesn't go well. But some of the double plays they turned in that

last game, and I know there was a costly last one, right? Like Juan Soto, just like me on this episode, maybe shouldn't have even been there when he hit that home run because, you know, he wouldn't have come up probably if Rokio hadn't tried to turn that double play and rushed it and missed the ball and not gotten the out at second. He probably couldn't have turned it anyway, but I kind of understand why he would have thought he could because they turned so many just sweet double plays, a few of them, like a few innings in a row. And it was just a defensive clinic at second base, like so many pretty plays

there, those platinum gloves and gold gloves absolutely earned. So, you know, that double play combo is going to be in place for a while. Both of those guys are, are pretty young and are under team control. So, you know, there's a foundation to build on there. And there were a lot of build on there. And there were a lot of impressive aspects to their season and their playoff run. And they ran into a team that was firing on most cylinders, if not all, but you know, they made a credible run.

Yeah. Although a team that had its own bit of sloppiness, which I will be, I'll be curious to see what that looks like in the World Series. Gotta clean that stuff up, Yankees. You can't be so sloppy. You can't be sloppy like that ahead of better hitters, you know? The defense cannot do that with guys who can actually hit, or at least more of them. I think it could prove costlier the next time around. Yeah. I've been treating myself to Yankees radio broadcast, just savoring the last John

Sterling that we're going to get probably. And the downside is that I've been subjected to the Odyssey run radio broadcasts. And so I feel the pain of people who listen to those more regularly. It's not just the going to commercial early and coming back late and sometimes cutting off actual broadcast or game action. But it's also the fact that the ads are so repetitive and sometimes super loud, but it's not even like gaining the revenue seemingly of having the local ads. There's a charm to the local ads on video broadcasts. Even on WFAN, even listening to John and Susan, where they're just sticking in an ad just every 30 seconds, it's like, top of the fourth is sponsored by X.

And that was the first walk of the game and it's sponsored by X. And then there's this like convoluted tie-in to the sponsor that is not really related to walking or the top of the fourth or anything. And the broadcast booth is sponsored by so and so. It's very old school. And there's something, even though it's just like, we've complained a lot about ads this postseason, but that doesn't bother me. There's kind of like a charm to it and you get your local broadcasters and it's not really making me miss anything. I still get my patter and my banter between John and Susan. And if in the downtime between pitches, they have to put in a plug for a sponsor, fine.

Doesn't really distract me the way that flickering and haloing players superimposed against digitally inserted backdrops do, or even like minimizing the screen so that you can bring up some other ad for five seconds that's in a larger window or whatever. But the one downside is that for whatever reason, they just bring you away from the local ads to give you the same national ads over and over and over again. Almost all of them are just promos for MLB basically, which fine, but I don't totally

understand it. Like, aren't you forgoing revenue here by just cutting away from the local ads with actual sponsors to plug just MLB and tell fans to take surveys. And it's just seared into my mind, this ad read, this promo, calling all baseball fans. You hear it like two or three times per ad break, basically, just over and over and over again again emblazoned on my brain

and I don't get it but it has been a pleasure to get re-inquainted with John and Susan and I bring that up because John Sterling the other day when the Yankees ran into multiple outs on the bases in the same half inning Sterling said that's what they do run the bases like drugs and Rizzo is going to be picked off he's in the middle between second and third. Hedges now throws to second on the way to third, back to second, back to third, tagged out, end of inning. Boy, if that wasn't the Yankees, that's what they do, run the bases like drunks. Well, Gleiber will lead off the next inning. Which, you know, it's like, that's when you just kind of don't give a f*** anymore, right?

You're mid-80s and you're on your way out and maybe it's like slightly politically incorrect or whatever, but just kind of tell it how you see it. And I don't know how he called, actually, I may have been listening, but when Gleyber, it was Gleyber, right? Ran into that out and he's been great all postseason. He's like been consistently on base for the big Boppers, but that was just one of the worst sends. It wasn't even like he ran through a stop sign. He got the windmill cause he went off the game with a hit.

He singled and then Soto doubled. And so you've got no outs, Aaron Judge coming up next, Bybee already on the ropes and he got knocked out of his previous start early. So that's going to be in the back of his mind. Why in the world are you trying to score there unless you're 99.8% certain that you're going to make it. And it took a perfect relay. Another example of great defense on the Guardian's end. But why even risk that with no outs and Aaron Judge up next? That was ultimately not costly. It didn't matter, but it looked like it might for, you know, when they didn't score for

the next several innings, that was just, that was a misread. Yes, it was a misread. It really was. Yeah. You got to be, you just have to be sure. You have to be sure. All right. So that's the Yankees and the Guardians. I guess I probably have less to say about the Dodgers and the Mets. I have a Mets fan friend who was regaling me with his litany of complaints about Carlos Mendoza. And of course, when you're ranting about a manager these days, you're really ranting about the front office and the manager,

some combination of the two, but you know, he's going on about all of these decisions and bullpen mismanagement and why isn't David Peterson starting and why is Jeff McNeil starting and why did he bring in this guy and not that guy? And there might be merit to some of that. And I understand the frustration, but also you ran into just the Dodgers buzzsaw of a lineup here and they were just clicking and it wasn't just the stars, but it was, you know, the, the dregs of the lineup that was coming up big and just showing how selective they are. And that fairy dust that the Mets had sprinkled

on the rotation, just it wore off, I guess. And I looked in the past into, is there a playoff familiarity effect when it comes to starters starting multiple times in a playoff series? And you might think that there would be, but at the time, this was 2016 when I did this research, but I couldn't find a playoff familiarity effect

at that point for starters going again in the same series. Though I could imagine that if there were such an effect, it might apply to someone like Sean Manaya, who I think Tommy Edmond even said in a mid-game dugout interview, like he has this weird release point and angle. And so seeing that a second time, maybe that's beneficial. But you know, much as I think Aaron Boone made a smart move in moving up Stanton, which

he had been hesitant to do because he didn't want to cluster the righties and give the Guardians an easy path through the lineup in the late innings, but Austin Wells not hitting. And at some point you just got to get someone who's going to be coming up with the bases full, who's going to actually hit and provide some protection. So, you know, you stack your righties just to get standing up there. And that works out for Boone and moving up Tommy Edmond of all people with, with Freddie Freeman out of the lineup that worked out for Dave Roberts, even though again, you leave yourself vulnerable maybe to reliever coming in and mowing down your guys, but it doesn't matter if you're not going to have a

late and close situation because you score a whole bunch early on. So I don't know whether you fault Mendoza, like the much maligned managers Boone and Roberts have on the whole, I think, had good post seasons. Obviously it helps if your players play well, makes you look smart, but you know, you could get on Mendoza for certain decisions, I suppose, but I don't know that they made the difference. LSW There have been times, there have been times where I have felt like they, like he kind of stuck with a guy a little too long. I don't know that he always deployed his leverage relievers the way that, you know, made good sense to me.

But I think on the whole, it was doing the best he could with what he had. Would I have pulled him earlier? Maybe, maybe. But maybe you say, like, do I trust all of the arms I have out there? Is everyone available? I don't know. I try not to get on managers too much just because they have such a better sense of reliever availability than I do. But I don't know. He was very aggressive about when he brought in Edwin Diaz. He was like, we're going to have Diaz deal with the

most fearsome hitters that they have in the lineup. But he didn't account for Tommy Edmond. Like, you know, Tommy Edmond does have like a career 500 slugging percentage against lefties. So like, it's not like there's, there's nothing to it. But yeah, what a weird, what a weird puzzle to have to try to fit together. Maybe you should have put Grimace out there. I'm really happy to be done with Grimace. Can I say that? I'm sorry, Mets fans. I'm not trying to rub it in.

Again, it was too many things. It was just so much stuff. Well, I'm not with you on that. I like that there were a lot of things. I think their bit was too many bits and I think it was a good bit. No, it's too many bits. I don't miss Grimace either because at some point you're just advertising McDonald's. It's like we all got roped into free promo for McDonald's. I don't know how many people were

like, hmm, this Grimace character, that reminds me I should go get some fries and a burger. But obviously that was earned media, I guess you could say. So yeah, it was a strange situation that we will all look back on and wonder what the heck was that all about. But the Mets were fun. They had an enormous number of really great moments and great comebacks. And you can only do that for so long until they're just leads that are insuperable. And the Mets, they were also, like Dante, not really supposed to be here this season. People wrote them off and they really like, they made an incredible run.

They played like the best team in baseball from June 1st on wins and losses wise. And they have more competition in the division. Presumably the Braves will be back in healthier next year. And they also have a lot of free agents. So there are a lot of decisions to be made there. It's not just Alonzo, it's also JD Martinez and Severino and Quintana and Manaya, who has an opt out that I'm sure he will exercise and Iglesias and Winker and Bader.

Like a lot of the guys who got them there will be free agents. And I don't know how many they will want to bring back or will bring back. And they've got a good core there and they've got some stars signed for some time and they'll have Senga back hopefully for the full season. So they'll be in this thing, but there are questions certainly, and I guess the question is like,

will Steve Cohen splurge again? Will he decide that, yeah, this team was good when he wasn't expecting it to, and now he will continue to supplement it and go back to his big spending ways of all of a year or so ago? So we'll see what tack he takes. Look, I think that some of the way that Steve Cohen gets talked about is unhinged and we don't need to be quite so impressed. But I will say this, if I had to take a stand one way or the other, does he stand pat or dramatically increase payroll? I think I'm going in the dramatically increase payroll direction. That man is in a hat in the first row of seats at these games, he is basically walking away from the hedge fund business so that he can spend more time on the Mets.

That does not strike me as the move of a man who's like, we need to go nickel and dime some guys though. Now do I think that this free agent class is set up to like supplement them in the way that they want and need outside of Soto potentially? Not especially, but I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if they are, for instance, extremely active in whatever starting pitching market emerges, right? Not only, I wouldn't be surprised if they bring some of their own guys back, but you don't want to go into opening day with the rotation that they have as it's currently constituted.

They need reinforcement there. I know you're right, Sango will be back and hopefully he'll be effective and great and everything will be fine, but they need more on the pitching side. I think a lot of their free agent decisions are actually fairly straightforward in terms of who they might try to bring back and who they're going to. I would be very surprised if JD Martinez is a Met next year. I think that that's a fairly easy choice. I don't know that you're losing sleep over, no offense, the decision like to bring back Bader, you know? Like some of these guys just, they were fine, but they weren't great. Like you're

probably going to be content to let some of the relievers they have here go. I will be interested to see what they do with Jesse Winker because I don't know, he seemed to really enjoy being a Met as it turned out. He wasn't as good for New York as he was for Washington, but he was very effective in the postseason and he has sort of a vibe that I wonder if they will want to just have in the clubhouse because it seemed to gel. There have been times where Winker's personality hasn't seemed to necessarily gel with the clubhouse and it did seem to gel with New York. He seems like he was a popular guy there. I wonder what they'll do there, but I don't know. I don't think we need to do the weird fawning Uncle Steve stuff. Relax. Just because

he's on Twitter doesn't mean we have to be impressed. It's a post-Wilpon syndrome sort of thing. It is. And I will say this, like whatever else you might say about the guy, someone who like worked in finance in the early 2000s, I could say a lot, but when you're at the point that you have the polo, the zip up and the hat on and you're not up in the box, you're down in the seats. He at least is affecting the aesthetic of an owner who wants to make owning the team and investing in it his personality, which might not be affectation at all, right? He seems to be having a good time.

He is still a finance guy. We should remember how Cohen made his money. It's not like he hasn't shown an ability to be ruthless in his business life in the past. But I think that guy's going to want to write some checks, whether he finds, whether he in the front office find the right fits for those checks, you know, is going to be the story of their off season. But to give credit where it's due, he seems primed to want to be a spender in that division. And I think, given how competitive their division is, that's going to be necessary for them. It is a way for that team to throw its weight around because we know that the Phillies are going to keep

spending money, or at least it seems like they will. You're right to say that I think Atlanta will be better next year just by virtue of being healthier, hopefully. And you know, they invest in their roster too. And then like the Nats are, you know, they're not like an amazing team, but they're on the come up, I think. Like that club is getting better. So you're going to have to do stuff actively to keep pace. And he strikes me as someone who is keen to do that. So see, I can say nice stuff about the Mets. It's not just me being like, Hey, pick a lane with your bits. You know, there's, there's good stuff there. It was an exciting team getting to watch Lindor be in a championship series again was incredibly gratifying.

That's so fun. And it clearly energized their fan base in a way that was really exciting to see. So it's not all me being like, hey, be done with some of these. But I will just note that on a team with a seemingly endless supply of bits, the pumpkin disappeared and then guess what? They turned into a pumpkin endless supply of bits, the pumpkin disappeared and then guess what? They turned into a pumpkin, Ben. Where was the pumpkin? You leave the pumpkin by the wayside

and then the magic is gone. You need a pumpkin. Where was his pumpkin? That was the key to it all somehow. It was the pumpkin. The foundational bit. Yeah. Yeah, you could say this about every lineup, but one Soto would look good

in that Mets lineup. So we're not getting a subway series, but I guess we could still get a Soto series, a intra city Soto sweepstakes. That's one way I guess the Yankees could end up not siding Soto as if the Mets do, but we'll see. That's intrigue for another day. Meant to mention, by the way, because the last time we talked about Emmanuel Classe giving up those runs, and that was before he took the loss in the Friday game, which we were live streaming during. And granted, he didn't get hit hard. It was some squibs and some singles that did him in that day, but still it was unusual to see him be so vulnerable. He seemed like he didn't have his command, his usual pinpoint command. We got a question from Kevin D who said Emmanuel Classe allowed five earned runs this regular season in 74 1 3 innings,

but allowed eight earned runs in the playoffs. is that the most regular season innings pitched by a player who allowed more runs in the postseason. And yes, it is by a lot. So I ran that little stat blast and I will link to it on the show page. But Emmanuel Classe with 74 and a third regular season innings, by far the most of anyone who has allowed more postseason earned runs than regular season earned runs. Second place is Bill George of the 1888 New York Giants, who played in the pre-modern World Series that year for the Hall Cup against the St. Louis Browns. And Bill George, he had 33 and two-thirds regular season innings, and he gave up five earned runs, just like Klasay. And then in the postseason in 10 innings, he gave up eight earned runs, again, like Klasay.

So that's 1888, and also it's less than half as many innings as Klasay. Other guys who were toward the top of that list, you got George Frazier for the Yankees in 81, 27 two-thirds regular season innings, Grant Dayton for the Braves in 2020, 27 in a third innings, Marcus Stroman for the Blue Jays in 2015, 27 innings. So it's as much a testament to Klasay's incredible regular season as it is to his much worse postseason. But it was quite striking to see Klasay be touched up as much as he was because you figured that

was going to be the Guardian's path through the playoffs is get the ball to Klasay with a lead as often as possible. And they did that sometimes or at least with a tie and it didn't go the way they wanted it to. Yeah, I do wonder, like, you know, I don't think that he, I wouldn't ever say like that he was overused. You know, you do just, it's a long season. You do wonder how much of this is just like the guy being exhausted. I don't know. Like I also think that sometimes really good hitters are going to get you. And sometimes that includes Kerry Carpenter from the right side. So the Dodgers, look, their lineup and the Yankees too, they're actually constructed pretty similarly offensively, which is something I'm watching in this series is that neither

of them chases, right? They don't have high outside the zone swing rates. They are the two most selective teams in that dimension of things. And I was wondering how that would affect just like the pitching approach. I was surprised to see actually that the Yankees and Dodgers pitching staffs were not particularly reliant on chases. They're like middle of the pack because I was thinking, gosh, like each of these teams will be the kryptonite to the other because you know, neither of them chases and they will take their walks. And so if their pitchers

can't get their walks, then they will be unmoored. What will they do? That's not so much how they succeeded actually. They didn't get that many chases. They got a pretty high rate of whiffs on the chases that they did get, but just not that many chases really. I guess, you know, more beating hitters in the zone, that sort of thing. And of course, full season stats are very different from how these teams are currently constituted, especially in the Dodgers case., but you know, similar offensive approach and good bullpens, although you would not have thought that the Yankees had a good bullpen

coming into October particularly, and weaker rotations, especially in the Dodgers case. So there are some similarities to the way that these teams are made up. And in terms of starting pitcher innings, so it was Atlanta at the bottom, I mentioned in their two games, and then Cleveland, and then Detroit

with their scubal plus pitching chaos approach, they had 41.0% of their innings coming from starters in the postseason. The Dodgers were right there though at 41.2%. So almost as bullpen set trick and approach as the guardians or the Tigers. And it worked, you know, when they did bullpen games, mostly it worked other than that one landed Knack game,

which arguably wasn't really even a bullpen game because Knack is mostly a starter. It paid off. I mean, you know, they were shorthandhanded and like Flaherty didn't give them much in his last start. He was good in his first start obviously, and Yamamoto just like, he's been effective-ish in his last couple of starts, but he's not who he was at the start of the season, I don't think. He's just not missing bats the way he was, let alone going as deep into games. So it's going to have to continue to be a bullpen centric approach for them.

Whereas the Yankees, they have actually gotten the majority of their innings from their starters, which is saying something this postseason, 53.5%. So still pretty bullpen reliant, but they at least do have some starters they trust to a greater extent. So I think the off days help the Dodgers. The fact that they didn't have to go seven, they can rest Freddie Freeman, they can rest these tired bullpen arms, maybe they get Vesya back, who knows. They are much more banged up and shorthanded than the Yankees are. So I think the layoff benefits them more.

I think that's right. I mean, the Yankees, it sounds like might get Cortez back. Yes, exactly. So it's not like they're at completely full strength or anything. I think the long layoff does allow rest in a lot of key places for Los Angeles. You know, maybe they'll get Freddie Freeman a new foot by the time that rolls around. I suppose it's really the ankle that's the problem. Yeah, foot's okay as far as we know. Yeah, so maybe they'll get him a new ankle in that time.

But yeah, being able to come in with the guys you have on your playoff roster rested and hopefully, you know, the guys who have been dinged up better enough to be added. Although you know what this might mean, Ben. You know what we might get. We might get World Series Joe Kelly. We might get- Oh, what we might get. We might get World Series Joe Kelly. We might get- Oh, that, oh gosh.

We might get World Series Joe Kelly. We will have to see whether the purpose of this Dodger season is to win a World Series or to engage in a psychological experiment as it pertains to Craig, you know. Poor Craig Goldstein, yes. Poor him and his perennially pennant winning Dodgers, I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. and his perennial lead pennant winning Dodgers, I know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, I think that the long layoff is useful in that regard. Speaking of long layoffs, just to return to the sort of the way the field is set up, do you think that the Dodgers and the Yankees being the ones that are about to play the fall classic will put to bed, the rest versus not rest argument for the top seats. One would hope it didn't make much of, what was it, three of the four teams that had the bye advance this year.

So in addition to the long history of it not mattering that much as Ben Clemens has noted. So I don't know, I'm sure that that line of thinking and complaining will crop up again the next time that it's relevant, the next time the very small sample evidence supports it. But, you know, yeah, I never put much stock in it and definitely don't now. Yeah, I think it was silly to begin with, but it was popular, you know, silly things can be popular, I suppose. The Dodgers, as good as they've looked this postseason, the Yankees haven't had as hard a route here.

They haven't had to play as many games and they have faced weaker opponents, you know, no shots at the Tigers and the guardians, but probably not as good as the Padres at least if the nets maybe were up there. But you know, the Dodgers have been played tough and have had to go to more games and just really the Yankees had their fair share of injuries this year, but their roster has really rounded into shape at the right time where they're just, if they get Cortez back, they've gotten Rizzo back and he may still be playing through pain, but he's playing effectively.

He hit well certainly in this series. So, you know, comparing and contrasting the injured first baseman, I think the Yankees have the better of that in this series. And the Dodgers are without Rojas, right? And, you know, just so many, I mean, down an entire rotations worth of starters, if not more than a full rotation, including players who absolutely would be getting starts for them in this series. And the Yankees, who are they missing? I mean, Ian Hamilton is out for this series now and some guys that they never had healthy this year, like Jonathan Loisica who pitched like four innings for them this year, or Lou Trevino who never pitched for them this year or last year for that matter. Those are the,

them this year or last year for that matter. Like those are the, you know, DJ LeMahieu, are you lamenting that absence, Yankees fans? Probably not, right? So who are you looking at right now other than Hamilton and maybe like the idea of Jonathan Luizaga as he once was a couple seasons ago that, you know, this is like a team at full strength essentially, which is not to say that it doesn't have holes and doesn't have flaws. It does, but they're not really injury related. You don't have to play the what if game and say, if only we had this guy, whereas the Dodgers, you can very much play that game. And to their credit, they haven't had to because they have just made it through anyway, and they've made it work. But you could absolutely say, what if they had, I don't think you can say like, what if they had healthy two-way Otani really, because they never had him. They will next year,

hopefully, but that was never in the cards for this year. But what if you had healthy Tyler Glass now? That totally changes the look of this rotation. What if you had maybe full strength Freeman and full strength Yamamoto and Vessia Vesya, maybe they'll get back, who knows, but they're just so many players who would make them better. And it's quite a testament to their depth that they have made it this far. And that according to the Zips odds as they stand as we record right now, almost literally could not be closer. It's not 50-50. It is 50.149.9 in favor of the Dodgers, according to Zip. So that says something about the strength of the Dodgers roster that even without much of it, they are still, if not favored, certainly projected to play the Yankees to a

standstill here. AMT – Isn't it exciting that it's so close, right? That you look at it and you think to yourself, either of these teams could emerge triumphant and not because they're both wimps, but because they're both good. Although, as you say, they each have their weaknesses relative to each other. I think it it's, I think it's wonderful. I'm just, I am very excited for this World Series, Ben. It kind of has crystallized for me just in the course of us talking about it.

I was preparing for the positive, I was looking at, you know, how do the guys do, what are we looking, it's good. I think, I think Ben it's good. You know? I think so too. We don't have to be hipsters. I mean, yeah, sure. Like- Yeah, you don't have to be hipsters. I mean, yeah, sure. Right.

Yeah, you don't have to be cute with these things all the time. You know, like sometimes you can just call it like you see it and I call it good, you know? Yeah, the extremely online baseball knowers that we are and that we cater to, they could appreciate a Diamondbacks Rangers World Series. They could be happy for the Rangers winning their first franchise title. There's something to be excited about in every matchup, but it's okay when we get the red meat for everyone.

When, what it is, it's not just that like, oh, these are the two teams from the big markets, it's that they're the best teams and they have many of the best players. And that should be fun for anyone who appreciates high caliber baseball and entertaining rosters and personalities and stories. If we can't get into that, then what's wrong with us? It's our problem, I think. So yeah, like you don't have to be thrilled that the Yankees or the Dodgers will add another title to their collection.

Hey, the Dodgers have lost the most world series of any franchise, you know, which means they had to be in a lot also. Right, yeah. But they've only won the sixth most, the mere sixth most titles thus far. And I guess, you know, if you wanted to, like they have lost eight of the 11 matchups with the Yankees, if you wanna try to find

like the little brother of the two, although they've been more successful in recent years. Let's just appreciate the great baseball on display. Now you may have seen Sarah Lang's note that this will be the sixth World Series between the two leagues' home run leaders, after Babe Ruth and George Kelly in 21, Babe Ruth and Jim Bottomley in 28, Luke Gehrig and Mel Ott in 36, Joe DiMaggio and Mel Ott in 37, and Mickey Mantle and Duke Snyder in 1956. That's how long it's been. She also noted that with Otani and Judge the presumptive MVPs, this will be the 7th World Series matchup of MVPs in the Divisional era since 1969. Moog Powell and Johnny Bench in 1970,

Fred Lynn and Joe Morgan in 75, Joe Morgan and Thurman Munson in 76, George Brett and Mike Schmidt in 80, Jose Canseco and Kirk Gibson in 88, and Buster Posey and Miguel Cabrera in 2012. Of course, not all of those guys were necessarily the most deserving MVPs, which got me curious. And I asked Ryan Nelson, frequent stat-blast correspondent,

to try to quantify the star- studdedness of these rosters. And I asked him to look up how many times the most valuable player by fan graphs war in each league has met up in the world series. And it has happened before. It has happened several times before, but not in quite a while actually. So 1923, Babe Ruth and Frankie Frisch, 1929, Rogers Hornsby and Jimmy Fox, 1946, Ted Williams and Stan Musial, 1956, Mickey Mantle and Duke Snyder, 1976, Joe Morgan and Greg Nettles, 1983, Cal Ripken and Steve Carlton and 1989, Will Clark and Ricky Henderson. So not since 1989 have the war leaders in each league met up and gone head to head and toe to toe in the World Series. So that's something

to be excited about, let alone the supporting cast of everyone around Ohtani and Judge. And then I also asked him, because it's the holistic group of, of talent here. It's the deep benches of stardom that we have. And maybe this is kind of convoluted, but I, I noticed that there were, I think there are seven players on these two teams combined who are under 35 and have more than 35 career war. So the over 35 under 35 club, right? So you've got seven. I have, uh, you've had Otani, you have, uh, bets, you have Freeman, you have judge, you

have Soto, you have Stanton and you have Cole. You don't have Kershaw because he's no longer under 35 and he's also not active. I don't think I'm leaving anyone out. Am I omitting any stars here? Anyway, I asked him to look up the most over 35, under 35 players in any series in the past. This is not just players who played on a team that went to the World Series at some point that season or even players who were on the World Series roster. These were players who played in the World Series roster, these were players who played in the World Series. And there's a two-way tie for the most between 1977 and 1978. When? Who played in the World Series, but the Yankees and the Dodgers. And I will tell you the collection of

stars who played in that year. So I said you had seven this year, you had nine in 77 and 78. Same guys both years, you had Reggie Smith, Greg Nettles, Tommy John, Reggie Jackson, Thurman Munson, Don Sutton, Roy White, Paul Blair, Catfish Hunter, and maybe not all of those guys were huge stars, but they were well-known names and they had certainly produced even if people weren't looking at war at the time. The Dodgers and the Yankees. It's kind of a theme that

these teams have had good players in the past. That 78 series, I think, by the way, was the highest World Series TV ratings ever. I don't think we're going to get 1978 level ratings. It's just a different world in a different broadcast environment, but We'll come as close as we can these days and to find the most in a non Yankees Dodger series 75 Cincinnati versus Boston legendary series, of course There were eight that year Joe Morgan Johnny Benj Pete Rose Louis Tiant Tony Perez Carl Yastrem ski Rick wise Rico Petrocelli 2001 Yankees Diamondbacks. There were eight. Luis Gonzalez, Mike Messina, Kurt Schilling, Bernie Williams, Matt Williams, J Bell, Chuck Knoblack, and David Justice. And then there were two previous years that

also had seven. 96 Yankees Braves and then 76 Reds versus Yankees. So those are all the series. This is tied, I guess, for the fifth most star studded world series matchup ever in terms of those parameters that I defined there. There was a theme of a lot of Yankees teams in those series. So I guess that's not surprising, but yeah, there's just a lot. There's something for everyone to be excited about. There's something for everyone to be mad about. I am pretty excited for this series. I think that's the theme of this podcast. Yeah, I think that it's going to be fun.

All right. I meant to mention, by the way, how I think we had discussed that the Dodgers had a lefty mashing lineup, the best lineup against lefties this year. Not that it was much worse against righties, but that was a bad matchup for the Mets. In their lefty heavy rotation, Dodgers had a 121 WRC plus against left-handed pitchers this year. In that series, they hit 310, 429, 494 against them. The Dodgers are a pretty balanced lineup. The Yankees have more of a platoon split. They were the best hitting team against right-handed pitchers, 120 WRC+, compared to a mere 107 against lefties. So that's maybe a tough assignment for all the Dodgers' righties,

another reason why I'm sure they hope to have Vessia back. And hey, maybe this goes without saying, but I think it's probably good if a big spender wins once in a while so that other teams will take a cue from them and say, hey, maybe we should spend. Maybe we should try to, if not, keep up with the Joneses, Steinbrenners or the Coens or the Walters and at least spend more than we would otherwise. Every now and then, I think it's helpful to have that reminder. Hey, paying players pays off with wins and championships sometimes, but not so often that it becomes bad for competitive balance. One last observation. Have you all noticed

how Ron Darling refers to the postseason as the post if he's citing playoff stats for instance? He will say that so and so has thrown 13 innings in the post. Does this bother anyone else or is it just me? I don't know why it bothers me. You save yourself a couple syllables, I understand what he's saying, but in the post maybe it's just that no one else really refers to the postseason as the post? Maybe it's that the post is already a basketball term? Speaking of basketball, sometimes NBA fans will refer to the yofs just dropping the play. That saves even less time and effort, but for some reason I don't

mind it as much. Maybe because there are no alternate meanings? Whereas the post can be kind of confusing? We were talking last week about how it's helpful to have synonyms – playoffs, postseason, October, etc. So the post is sort of another one. Maybe I just need to get used to it, or maybe Ron needs to stop trying to make the post happen. I think that's it for me this week. I know, I'm the boy who cried podcast hiatus, but I am traveling, Meg has other replacement co-hosts lined up, I will be listening along with all of you if I am not on the pod, she'll

be doing a more in-depth world series preview before that series starts, And if you miss me, you can hear me on Hang Up and Listen, or you can listen to me talk about video games at Button Mash. You know I do a video game podcast too, right? Ringerverse feed, check it out. I write too. Another way you can support my endeavors is by helping to fund this podcast on Patreon, which you can do by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild.

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cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. I'll be back at some point. Meg will certainly be back soon. Enjoy the con before the World Series storm. If baseball were different, how different would it be? And if this thought haunts your dreams, well, stick around and see What Ben and Meg have to say

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