Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2238: That’s a (World Series) Wrap

Episode Date: November 1, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Games 4 and 5 of the World Series, with an emphasis on Game 5’s error-plagued fifth inning, managerial moves and bullpen performance, the significance of the Dodgers’ victory and the future of the franchise, puzzling stats about sweeps and teams that fall behind 3-0 in best-of-seven series, cluttered […]

Hello and welcome to episode 2238 of Effectively Wild, a FanGraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Raulia of FanGraphs and I am joined by Ben Lindberger of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm a little tired, but I'm energized and I have a question for you, which is this. If I had told you on Wednesday prior to World Series Game, some important facts or what might seem like important telling facts about what was going to go down in that game. What odds do you think, what victory probability do you think you would have given the Dodgers? If I had told you that Jack Flaherty would

last four outs and give up as many earned runs, that Garrett Cole would give up zero earned runs over six and two thirds innings, that the Dodgers would use eight pitchers, that the Yankees would out Homer the Dodgers three to nothing and also out hit and out walk them, that Aaron Judge would finally get going and have a multi hit game including one of those dingers. If I told you that collection of facts,

what win probability do you think you would assign to the Dodgers in that game? 21%. Yeah, that seems generous, if anything, to me. Yeah. It didn't go that way. No. I think I would have said,

okay, so we're going back to LA. We're going to get more baseball. We're going to game six. That is not the way it worked out. LSW It is not. The Los Angeles Dodgers are the 2024 World Series champions. CB They sure are. LSW They sure are. Yeah. CB What a weird ass game. Another- LSW What a weird ass game. Another What a weird ass game....case where it really matters where you put that hyphen. Yes. But I mean, from the Yankees perspective,

maybe it was also a weird ass game because it really was wild, ineffectively wild. Just the definition of ineffectively wild from the Yankees perspective, I cannot really recall seeing something that strange or at least that strange in that specific way. We can talk about weird games, but this was weird in a way that I just, a comedy of literal errors, except a tragedy depending on which team you were rooting for,

just an unbelievable fifth inning. It was a weird-ass game. And I want to say again, all the butts looked pretty normal, as far as we could tell. But the vents on the field, quite strange. It also wasn't a weird-ass game, because we have remarked several times this postseason that the Yankees are often playing some sloppy-ass baseball. Not that their asses are often playing some sloppy ass baseball.

Not that their asses are sloppy because yeesh, but that they are often playing, have played a pretty sloppy brand of baseball. And there have been games where that has been the difference and there have been games where it has been successfully overcome by- Yeah, they got away with it a bunch of times. Yeah, by the other things that they do well or by their opponents playing similarly sloppy ball, but too much to overcome yesterday clearly despite the fact that there were individual aspects of their performance that were quite good like I came away from

The game yesterday before the the Dodgers had pulled ahead, right? So, you know, we have the slop ball, we'll detail the slop ball in a moment, but the Yankees had retaken the lead, they held a narrow margin. I believe Garry Cole was still in at that point. Yes. John Carlos Stanton had a sacrifice fly, They were up 6-5, bottom six. And I thought to myself, well, I don't know that the Yankees deserve to win this baseball game, but I think Garrett Cole does, right? Yes.

You know, we talked last time about how we hadn't seen a, and I'm going to do the big swear, we hadn't seen like a **** you outing from Garrett Cole in this postseason. It had been, you know, at times kind of mad, it had been good enough. There had been moments that were quite strong, but we hadn't really seen like a signature great Cole start in the postseason. And I would argue, I think Ben, that this was a great start from Garrett Cole. And we'll talk about the role he played in the slop because despite most of the slop happening to him, there was one notable moment of slop. He was an active participant, yes.

Yes, in which he participated in the slop, but I thought in general acquitted himself quite well. And really, while it wasn't maybe masterful, it was gritty, you know? It was not distracted by the slop. I thought that was quite admirable and I was very impressed. But ultimately, I thought that for all of their shakiness on the pitching side, that the team that deserved to win that game ended up doing it.

Yes. Once the Dodgers came back from the five-nothing deficit to tie, there was no part of me that thought the Yankees were winning that game. And not even in a cosmic justice sort of sense, like they don't deserve to win this one. Maybe there was part of that, but it just felt to me in sort of a Smoltzian sense that there had been a shift, that this was just not happening. And my instinct is to be highly skeptical of that instinct and to not give it credit and to say, well, I would have said that about the Dodgers who looked fairly lifeless in the first four innings of that game. It looked like the Yankees were all over them. And then suddenly the tables were turned and who's to say that the tables could not turn back? But it just didn't. Even when they took the six-five lead,

even when they went back ahead, there was just no part of me that thought, yeah, this lead is safe. Yeah, they're going to lock down this one-run lead here after failing to secure and protect and preserve the five run lead just seemed like it wasn't happening and it didn't. And boy, did it get undone in a memorable way in that fifth because Cole was cruising quote unquote, and we know that cruising is not really predictive of future performance, but it's not as if he fell apart. No, he didn't cease to cruise.

It's just that there was turbulence. There were choppy waters all around him. Yes. He hadn't a lot of hit in the first four innings. Correct. His command looked good. He was dialing it up to the high 90s. He almost looked like vintage coal and he was painting.

I explained the concept of painting for a picture to my daughter using Garrett Cole to illustrate the concept because he was doing that. He was just dotting the edges, the corners. Yeah, and so everything's going fine, just routine. Okay, this is the biggest start of his career potentially. He's gonna get them to win. He's gonna make this a series again. And then we get to the fifth and again, it didn't fall apart immediately.

It was one of these things where it sort of sneaks up on you. Now Kike Hernandez singled, okay, you just, you can't keep Kike off the bases in the postseason seemingly, but that's all right. That's just a lead off single. All right, you're gonna give up a hit at some point. But then Aaron Judge, Aaron Judge who really was on the redemption tour here. It looked like he was turning things around.

Now I had thought and I had said that it looked to me like he was starting to refamiliarize himself with the concept of the strike zone in the two previous games. That clearly he had flipped some sort of switch where he had decided not to swing at everything indiscriminately. It seemed to me like he was kind of getting his timing back, getting his pitch recognition back. I know he made a little mechanical change that Verducci detailed on the broadcast and explained it as, well, he just did the same thing that he did when he fixed himself in April, which if that was really what it was, it's like, wouldn't that be the first thing that came to your mind? Like, hey, last time I was slumpin', I did this little

thing. Maybe I should do that thing again and see if it works. Anyway, it seemed like it was working. And he drove in the 11th run in game four, which was at least sort of a symbolic victory. And he was starting to take some walks and hit by pitches. And he was getting on base, he was contributing. And in this game, he got two hits and extra base hits. And he hit a home run, a vintage Aaron Judge home run. And he even made a brilliant catch in center field.

He was doing it all, both sides of the ball. And then he neglected one of the first pieces of advice you receive as a baseball player, which is keep your eye on the ball. And he did not do that. He kept his eye on Keke Hernandez and he dropped the ball. And it just clanked off his glove. Just the most routine kind of play, just a rare error, I would say, especially for a pretty skilled defender. Okay. Well, at this point, I'm starting to get a feeling

of foreboding and I didn be clear, I didn't have a real rooting interest in this game other than the fact that I wanted the series to continue. And also I preferred to write on Friday or Saturday instead of Wednesday. So a lot was at stake for me personally. How much was I going to get to sleep and when was I going to have to blog? But beyond that, you feel some sort of sympathetic anxiety, I think, in any postseason situation. And when it seems like stuff starts to unravel and then Will Smith comes up. Okay.

He grounds to short. Initially I'm thinking, Oh, double play. Well, it probably wasn't a double play ball. It was a hit a little too slow and soft and, and too deep in the hole. Fine. But you've got a good glove in Anthony Volpe here. He's got to play it first. Probably he's even got to play in front of him at third.

It wasn't a ridiculous decision for him to try to get the lead runner there, but it was a ridiculous throw to try to do it. He bounced the throw, the runner's sliding in, Chisholm couldn't glove it, understandably. So here you have two normally sure-handed fielders just making pretty egregious mistakes. And then Cole really impressed me after that. Because you got bases loaded, no outs. And you're thinking, uh-oh.

And then Cole comes back to strike out Lux and Otani swinging. And he was really reaching back. He was digging deep and he just blew them away. He got Otani with this nasty knuckle curve. I know Otani was not quite himself at this point post shoulder injury, but still he made some nasty pitches there. And so you're starting to think he's going to get out of this. He's going to pitch around it.

But no, and that's the point where his pitching did slip a little, I suppose. And also Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman were up and that's always trouble. So at that point, there were some actual hits that scored runs and you could keep Freddie in the park for one game, but you could not keep him from driving in multiple runs. Yeah, it must have felt like cold comfort where you're like, well, I did contain him in a certain way. Cold comfort?

Cold comfort? Cold comfort? Cold comfort? Cold comfort? Cold comfort? Cold comfort? Sorry. Hang out with me too much.

They did contain him in a certain sense, in an importantly different sense than what they had managed to do for much of the series, right? Yes. But it still wasn't sufficient in terms of keeping runs off the board. Freddy comes up after Mookie. What Mookie did was score a single, but let's be real here. This probably should have been two errors if we were really scoring fairly here. The Yankees made three errors in this game because the catcher's interference is scored

as an error. And also there was a balk on a disengagement violation, but every possible way you could screw up the Yankees did in this game. So that play, which at that point, after he strikes out Otani and Lux, we still got the shutout going here. And Mookie comes up and I know people have made the joke, someone named Mookie hits a grounder down for space line against the New York team. Historically, this has been bad news in the postseason. This play, so how would you apportion blame here? If you had to hand out, if you had to

divvy up the discredit between Anthony Rizzo and Garrett Cole, how would you assign that blame? I anticipated that this question might come my way as we talked and I've been debating. I don't know what my exact percentage is. I've vacillated on that over the last 10 hours or whatever. I think that I would put the majority, how big a majority? I don't

know. Margins might be tight-bent, but I think I'd put the bulk of it with Rizzo actually. Does that strike you as ridiculous? Because here's my, let me explain my thinking and then you, and then you tell me. My guess is that Garrett Cole was exhausted in that moment, right? He's had this huge emotional inning. He's had to really bear down to get Lux and Otani swinging. He thinks that he's out of it, right? I bet he thought he was out of it. I also imagine that what he thought was that Rizzo was going to charge that ball and take it himself. And he didn't do that. He didn't do that. He didn't do that and then Mookie was safe. Now, I don't know if that was necessarily the exact right thing for him to have thought, but I think that's what he thought. And I think that, you know,

if I had been Anthony Rizzo, I would have thought, I'm gonna charge that ball and do it myself. I think that's what I would have assumed in that moment. I do wonder if they would have been well served for someone to be yelling, mind, mind, mind, mind, mind, like they were seagulls in Finding Nemo, but they didn't do that either. And so their bets stood. And I agree with you, why that wasn't at least one error, if not two, I don't understand. The mysteries of scoring elude me at times. But I went from going, oh, to, oh no. CB Yeah. Yeah, that was an ordinary effort situation. That was a very routine play. I know no one fumbled the ball or anything. It wasn't off anyone's glove the way

the judges was. It wasn't a bad throw. There was no throw. That was the problem. But that was one of those cases where, okay, this was an error in judgment more so than a physical error, an error in execution, but it's equally egregious if not more so. Would you agree? Would you put more of the blame with Rizzo than with Cole? Am I being reasonable to you think? I think so, yeah. Maybe it's 60-40. There's plenty of blame to go around on both sides.

Yeah, I think it's close to be clear. I don't think this is like a 90-10 situation or anything, but I still think the majority of it has to sit with Rizzo. Yeah. When I was watching it live, I think initially my impulse was, oh, why didn't he get over there? Because often it is the pitcher's fault. They just, they have a brain fart and they just forget to run over there. And that's not really what happened with Cole. As you're saying, he's probably tired and there's probably part of him that's thinking, ah, I did it. My job here is done. I actually escaped this gym somehow, but he did break that way.

Just the muscle memory, the pitcher's fielding practice. He, he was off like a light. He was on his way and then he saw where the ball was and he saw where Rizzo was. And I think he thought, oh, he's got it. Which I think was a fair thing to think having watched the play many times. Now some angles could maybe be a little bit deceptive because of just the, the parallax and the angle and maybe Mookie like, you know, he's closer to the camera and Rizzo's farther away.

And maybe you can't quite tell exactly how far away Rizzo is, but we've seen enough of these plays where watching that, granted there was a little bit of a strange spin maybe, and maybe Rizzo anticipated that it would get to him faster and that he wouldn't have to charge and it sort of slowed down and just, everyone just got kind of caught in between. But yeah, I think if you looked up a zillion examples

of that play with Rizzo specifically, or just generic first baseman, most of the time they would take it themselves and it would be fine. And I assumed that if, cause it just took a long time to get to Rizzo and he didn't come in on it. So even if Cole had made it to first, I'm not totally sure that the throw would have been in time. Cause Mookie's fast and he's busting it down the line to his credit. And so I don't know that the throw would have been in time, even if Cole had gotten there.

I think it was kind of incumbent on Rizzo to make more of a move on that ball. Yeah, I agree. They would have been hard pressed to actually complete the play and secure the out even if Cole was moving a little bit faster, Rizzo had charged harder. I don't know that he gets there in time to get the ball over to Cole, even if he had gone to cover. I always wonder for guys in that moment, baseball is so, I think part of why we do end up emotionally invested in baseball players to the extent that we do is that unlike say in football, you get their full face, you know, in the course of the game.

You're getting their full face, unless they're a catcher, but like you're getting their full face most of the time that they are on the field. And I'm sure that both of those guys knew, God, they're going to zoom in on my, I'm going to do another story. They're going to zoom in on my, I'm going to do another story. They're going to zoom in on my face right now. They're going to be zooming. They're going to be trying to count pores on my stupid face at this moment. There's just nowhere to hide. There's no privacy in it. And I'm sure that, you know, on the one hand, you're sitting there thinking, okay, that was a bad mistake. That's a, that's a flood, but we,

it's only one run, right? We can still get out of this. It's still five to one. Our offense is clicking. They haven't been able to really do anything without our assistance to this point, right? With the exception of Fernandez's single, like this is all us goofing, and so we can stop doing that, and then it'll be fine.

But then, Ben, I'm here to tell you you that didn't end up being true at all. BF No, it did not. Yeah. And I don't know whether that was just the coal at his concentration slip slightly and he's demoralized by the fact that he's just stuck in this never-ending inning that he can't escape from. And he's probably a bit winded at that point. I think it was Joe Davis, maybe who was expressing some surprise that someone didn't come out and try to slow things down or give them a bit of a breather. But I was also surprised by that. Maybe it's frustration or maybe it's just the fact that Freddie Freeman and Teasker Hernandez are good hitters, but Freeman drives in a couple of runs, ties

the all time world series record with 12 runs batted in, in five runs, ties the all time World Series record with 12 runs batted in, in five games, by the way. Not seven, five, he did all that damage. And then Teoscar doubles and suddenly it's tied. Colt deserves credit for then getting out of that inning, but then also coming back after the number of pitches he threw in that inning, how long he was working, how red in the face he was. And then the Yankees did get a little rally going. They didn't score, but they gave him a bit of a break between innings.

And then he came back out and threw an inning and two thirds after that. And that was pretty impressive really. And I, I questioned it when he came out for, questioned it when he came out for the seventh, was it? And I'm thinking like, how many pitches has he thrown at this point and are we gonna get ourselves into trouble here sticking a little too long with him? But Boone was going batter to batter with him and he got a couple outs and then finally got pulled

when he let someone on base, but you know, 108 pitches. It's nothing extraordinary really, but these days in a world series elimination game, it feels like something. And that is probably a reflection of just the bullpen being tired, the bullpen not being the best bullpen to begin with. And you've got Cole who seemed to have his stuff. And again, wasn't really undone by bad pitching was just undone by errors going on all around him, including one that he contributed to.

So it was pretty impressive that he was able to put all that behind him and still stay in the game as long as he did and continue to give the Yankees a chance to win and leave the game as the pitcher he did and continue to give the Yankees a chance to win and leave the game as the pitcher of record with a lead, which ultimately was not preserved either, but he did all he could. I don't fault him that much except for half-ish of that play. He showed up, he did what the Yankees signed Garrett Cole to do in that kind of game. It was just, the circumstances conspired against him. Yes, they sure did. I felt for him in that moment. I, you know, I think that it had to just feel lousy and I was also impressed by him coming back out

like you. I didn't know if it was a good idea. I was not convinced that that was the right move. And I, the entire time I was like, surely if there's ever a time for a mountain visit, it's right now. Like go, just let him catch his breath out there. Like what are we, what are we up to? But yeah, he, he managed to sort of rally back. But ultimately it wasn't enough. Maybe it was heirs, maybe it. Maybe, maybe it was errors. Maybe it was Cole.

Maybe it was maybe it was Maybelline, you know, entertain that as a possibility. Last thing I want to say about that half inning is just that it felt nightmarish obviously for Yankees fans, but nightmarish in the sense of that kind of dream that you have where everything's going wrong and you can't quite figure out why because the dream logic or illogic is happening. And for some reason, basic tasks allude you and you're trying to get away from something or you're trying to get towards something and you just can't quite, you sort of asymptotically approach whatever it is that you're attempting to do and you just can't complete the task because it's a dream and it makes sense to you maybe in the moment.

And then you wake up and you're like, why couldn't I do that very simple thing? Well, it was a nightmare. It was a dream. It had that sort of feeling where just get one of these outs. Basically, Cole got six outs in effect, you know? And the saying is always, well, you can't give a team like the Dodgers an extra out because they'll take advantage of it and they'll make you pay. Well, you definitely can't give a team like the Dodgers in a World Series Illuminati

game three extra outs. Yeah, you can't give them six outs? What are you doing? That's too many. No, that's twice as many as they're supposed to have. That's twice as many as the standard half-ending allotment. And yeah, it just, it felt very much like this sort of spiraling everything's falling apart.

And I don't know whether it was one thing leading to another was just a succession of unrelated independent events that just happened to cluster in the worst way for the Yankees and the best way for the Dodgers. But it just, it had that feeling to me of there's just no real logic to this. What is happening? All the, the rules have broken down. These are the most basic baseball plays.

These are the best baseball teams in the most important moment when they're focusing and concentrating and who knows, maybe that was part of the problem. But you know, maybe Aaron Judge doesn't miss that ball. Maybe he's not distracted by GK in a game on May 18th or something. But it's just really incredible how everything really unraveled there. Okay. Please proceed to something other than that inning. Okay. So the last time we potted was before game four. We knew it was going to be a bullpen game, but we didn't

know the exact way that Dave Roberts was going to deploy that bullpen. And he went with his low leverage guys. We got to see low leverage Ben, you know, and then we saw quite a bit of Landon Nack and Brent Honeywell with some Hudson sandwiched in between there. I want to know what your experience of Robert's choices in game four was in real time and whether your experience of it in hindsight changed as this game was unfolding, this game being game five. Because I remember thinking largely in line with what Michael Bauman wrote for us after game four, prior to game five, that the idea that you're going to

use your low leverage guys to save your high leverage guys, knowing that like, you're only going to have to do one bullpen game, hopefully, hopefully, hopefully, Ben, hopefully, that part of it, I was fine with it. I was like, okay, fine. I remember game, hopefully, hopefully, hopefully, Ben, hopefully that part of it, I was fine with it. I was like, okay, fine. I remember thinking, well, you're only within a, you're like within a run now Dodger. So maybe, maybe now is the time for us to see Copac and to see Trinen and like you could, you could start to press your advantage if you wanted to here.

Maybe you just throw Razor out there to see if he can keep it close and you can tack on a run or something. But I wasn't overly fussed. I was like, eh, you could have been more aggressive. It didn't really read as capitulation to me, although I know that a friend of the pod and in-person attendee of game four, Craig Goldstein, was losing his gourd in the Bronx. You're kidding me. Craig, during a Dodgers game? Doesn't sound like him.

He was like, look, I want to see Ben Casparius and I want to see Brent Honeywell, but not like this. You know, not like this. So anyway, but I wasn't fussed, right? And then we get into game five. And as you've noted, Jack Flaherty, he didn't have it. It went badly for him. It looked like it was going badly from the start.

He never settled down. He only ends up throwing an ending on a third. He gives up four runs. Two of them are home runs. He gives up two home runs. He walks the guy. It was just like, it was bad. It was bad.

And so now you're like, okay, now we are actually having our second bullpen game. And so maybe we're happy that we have all of our very good guys rested because the New York bullpen ended up getting kind of taxed the day before, right? Luke Weaver threw a bunch. They had to bring Holmes in, Canley, whatever. So you're like, okay, okay, okay. Maybe, maybe it's fine. Except you're now you're down four runs and then they were down five runs. And you don't have any of your low leverage guys because you've used your low

leverage guys the day before. Um, and now you are going to have to use your high leverage guys and sure the next day is a rest day, but you're giving Soto and Judge and Stanton and all the rest more looks at these guys. And you're maybe running out of pitchers. How did that happen when the whole idea was that you were saving the guys you really needed for the next day? And so I thought to myself, well now in hindsight, I have a great deal to say about Dave Roberts,

but then the Yankees forgot how to play baseball for a minute and it didn't end up mattering. And I say all of that because, well one, I think it's worth us talking about the pitching and the sequencing here, but also I just want to reiterate that like so much of, there are the process-related pieces of what a manager does. And I think there's process related critique to be leveled here that is fair. But then also it's about execution and you have no real control over that.

And so I think that Dave Roberts from a process perspective maybe goofed it a little bit over the two days, but then the Yankees couldn't execute and it didn't mattering. It just didn't matter. It ended up not mattering and the Dodgers won the World Series anyway. So again, it's not to say that we shouldn't critique process or that it's not worthwhile for us to assess how these guys are doing.

We run a series every year where Ben Clemens painstakingly goes through all of these managers' performances and decides if he thinks that they were sound. I think that that's a good thing for us to do. I think it's a really important thing for these organizations to do so that they can, if things didn't go great, give notes of improvement to their guys. But also, man, sometimes you just don't cover first base and then it doesn't matter. And so we should grant grace in these moments also, because I think that that has to be

so frustrating. You're Aaron Boone. You're like, okay, okay, we're going to do it. We're going to live to fight another day. We're keeping winter at bay a little while longer. And then, you know, you're really good pitcher and you're generally like, you know, sure-handed first baseman just experience a joint brain fart and all of a sudden you're, you know, staring it down. I didn't really have a problem in the moment with Robert's semi-punting game four, because you know, at this point you have a

comfortable lead and you don't want to get lax and you don't want to let them off the mat. You're stepping on their throat. You don't want to ease off the pressure here, but sometimes you have to just because you only have so many guys. If you're Tate Roberts, you just. And so many is not many at all. And so, I didn't really have a problem with him bypassing some of the higher leverage arms in that game when it got away from them a little bit. And granted, he perhaps helped it get away through his choices

in that day, but I'm okay with making that calculation and saying, we'll get them next time, we'll rearm, we'll restock. We've still got three shots to get them after this. I think maybe where you could fault him is getting a little too cute and a little too matchup oriented in game five early on and burning through some of those guys that he had saved. Yeah. And that's how he ended up in a situation where he almost entirely ran out of pitchers

by the end of a regulation length game. Right. It's like, who is pitching the ninth inning of this game? Who is it going to be? So I think you could look at that certainly in retrospect, easy to armchair manage now and say, well, couldn't you have gotten a little more length out of those guys? Because when your starter gets pulled after four outs and then you're only getting two outs out of Banda and an inning out of brazier and an inning out of Copac and an inning out of Vesia. And then you end up stretching Blake Trinen for two and a third and he was great,

but that's not something he's accustomed to doing. Right. And then you're leaving yourself in a spot where you're bringing in Walker Bueller, who pitched on Monday to finish out this game. So I think you could fault him maybe for, I'm all for getting aggressive and trying to stop the lead from inflating. But yeah, if he had to do that over again, maybe he would have tried to get a

little more length out of those guys. But I didn't have a huge problem with how he managed game four or really the series in general. I saw some people objecting to Aaron Boone using Weaver in game three in a lower leverage spot so that by the time he comes out in game five, he's looking a little gassed and this is his third straight day working after being worked pretty heavily all October. And so some of those situations you want to get a guy a little work. He hadn't pitched in game two. I get that, but also does that then have an effect down

the road, whether it's fatigue wise or familiarity effect wise? I don't know. We'll never know. And also it's silly because best laid plans and men, whatever it is, and God laughs and however that saying goes. And Anthony Rizzo just stands there and watches a slow grander come toward him like it's the henchmen in Austin Powers with the steamroller coming and you're just frozen in place and unable to move out of the way. So we analyze these things and

then ultimately it comes down to a routine liner just clanking off the outside of a glove and a normally dependable fielder just yank in one the dirt and who could ever anticipate any of this. Aft gang aglae, the best laid plants of my son Matt. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Bueller coming in, it was appropriate maybe that it ended that way because that's just the most Dodgers, the most Dave Roberts move.

And in this case, I think it was justified because he just was out of pitchers. He said after the game that if the game had gone on, if it had gone to extras, that he probably would have used Hudson for an inning. And then maybe he would have had to use Casperius for a couple, but then you're already stretching guys who are already tired. So Bueller, and it was the classic kind of Roberts, everyone's asking like, did you know that he was available? Was this part of the game plan? And then Roberts saying, oh no, it was the seventh inning, he volunteers.

It's just the classic Kershaw move. But it was kind of justified in this case because it wasn't just a like, hell yeah, let's just YOLO, this'll be fun for the story. This was legitimately probably their best and maybe most rested option at this point. And Bueller looked good in his previous appearance and looked good enough, got the job done in this one. But yeah, sort of fitting that it ended that way in a postseason where Roberts largely avoided that move out of necessity and also largely avoided self-sabotage and getting himself into trouble.

Here he went back to that well, but for a legitimate reason and it worked out just fine. I imagine that he would have been ecstatic no matter how the pitching unfolded yesterday, provided that they had won. But I don't know if you watched any of the trophy presentation ceremony, but Dave Roberts having a great time. He was so happy. And I do wonder if somewhere in the back of his mind he's like, can't touch me now. Like, it doesn't matter. We're down.

We're here. We are. We're world champions. I didn't have nearly the same sense of dread at seeing Bueller warm that I've had in the past with Kershaw. And it just goes to show when you don't have terrifying context to draw from, you're like, this could be fine. You know?

Maybe the secret all along was Clayton Kershaw being unavailable all October. That was the secret to the Dodger's success. Okay. Okay. But to that end, true or false, if Otani does not goof up his shoulder, do you think that the Dave is like, look, I know the front office has said you're not gonna pitch, but what are they gonna do?

Kick me out, you know? What are they gonna do? Say I gotta go? No, get out there, buddy. He couldn't do it though. Couldn't do it. And if Otani had insisted, Roberts always makes it sound like,

well, he said he was available, what could I do? He just went down there to the bullpen, he's was available, what could I do? He just went down there to the bullpen, he's warming up, what am I going to say? No. Yeah, it's like, who am I, the manager? What, in this academy? Yeah. And it was nice, you know, Bueller, possibly his last outing as a Dodger. And if it is, that would be hell of a way to go out. And the tough season that he's had, coming back from Tommy John surgery and just not really getting his act together until the most important moment and obviously a history of being a big time postseason pitcher and all the success he had with that

organization and going back as far as he does, one of the longer tenured Dodgers at this point, even though he's only 30 years old. Nice to see him be the one on the mound in that moment. So I was happy for him that he could close that out, get a game finished in the best possible time to finish a game. So yeah, that was exciting. There's a level of incompetence sometimes where it ceases to be fun, even if it's a back and forth affair, it's just so sloppy that it just doesn't feel, the suspense doesn't feel earned almost. But in this game, it did. The stakes were such that I was on the edge of my seat here and not just because I was going to find out whether I had to blog. It was

more than that. It was just getting caught up in the moment and feeling the secondhand strain of everyone involved in that game. So I'm glad we got another good game. Even if it was a weird one, this, the series was kind of bookended by great games and, and Yankees mistakes from games, right? Just littered with many Yankees mistakes, physical, mental, managerial. The Yankees easily could have won both of those games and really should have won at least one of them. And so they gifted a couple of games to the Dodgers,

but also the Dodgers took advantage of those mistakes and they played well at other times. And you know, I'm glad it wasn't a sweep and I'm glad that we got at least a few more memorable moments before the season ended. I also was glad there are definitely plenty of guys who have moved on to other teams, but it made me happy that there is so much connective tissue between the 2020 team and this team. I think we've talked before about how legitimate was the 2020 World Series, like should we count that as a trophy the way that we do other other World Series wins just given the nature of the season. I think that they've been pretty level-headed about the whole thing and haven't taken like outsized umbrage at the suggestion that it might be different

than other years, which is not an opinion that I hold, but I know plenty of people do. But I think it was clear from the way that all of those guys were talking about what this win meant to them, that, you know, it feels good to have that sort of monkey off their back, right? No one can say that this is a different win than any other full season years World Series in. I'm not going to put pitching injury bad luck up against a global pandemic in terms of the degree of difficulty, but a season that had a fair amount of hardship for the Stodgers team in terms of their need to sort of combat injury and bob and weave around that stuff. I'm so happy for, you know, there are always guys where you're like, man, good for that

guy. Good for Brent Honeywell and Michael Koepck. What great strokes of luck those two guys must feel like they've had this year. Cause you go from getting DFA'd by the Pirates and languishing on the White Sox to being a World Series champion. That's gonna feel great. You know? It must.

Yeah. Or what about Tim Hill getting released by the White Sox and suddenly he's pitching high leverage moments in the World Series. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty incredible. So I know that the middle three were a little less compelling on a game by game basis, but I still would give this entire postseason a solid A in terms of the degree of sort of

enjoyment and entertainment I experienced just masterfully distracting. And now, Ben, what are we going to do with ourselves? Get excited about the Braves trading Jorge Saler? I don't know. I don't know if I can get up for it in the same way. No. No, the yawning abyss, the gulf of the off season looms before us, but we can tackle that next time. But yeah, it's nice when you can get sort of a signature moment, even if the series doesn't go in your favor.

Anthony Volpe hitting the grand slam in game four, hometown hero for at least one game. And how often do you see him pull a fly ball in the air hard like that? That's a good sign. That's something you could take into next season and say, I should do more of this. It could be the very first time. You could tell me it was the very first time and I'd believe you.

Now he did more of that last year and then he brought this more line drive centric approach into this season and it didn't unlock his capacities in the way that everyone hoped it would. But maybe that's something he can build on for next year and say, and maybe I should get back to that. Because when I do that, good things sometimes happen, great things in this case. And yeah, I think that really the Dodgers, I wrote about this in my piece. Now Dodgers fans probably wouldn't appreciate this comp, but it almost reminded me of when the Astros won one above board legitimately. I am not likening winning one in a

pandemic season to winning one when you cheated that season. I am not at all drawing any kind of equivalence there. I'm just saying that for Astros fans and players at least, and even for me, when I wrote my post-World Series wrap-up 2022, I was like, okay, well, you know, the Astros, they behaved badly and we don't need to forgive or forget that necessarily, but also they have sustained that success and you do kind of have to hand it to them at a certain point. And the Dodgers, you have to hand it to them too. Now I handed it to them for 2020. I would still hand it to them for 2020.

Again, I will remind people that they had the best record in baseball that year in the regular season. And they had to play an extra playoff round because it was expanded playoffs. They had to beat the Brewers in a best of three just to get to a division series. They had to play in neutral parks from the division series on. So they didn't have home field advantage, really.

Everything was harder for them that year in the postseason than it would have been in a normal year. So I get it's a weird year. And so there's a tendency to say it doesn't count and kind of write it off. But if you just drill down to the specifics of it, there's nothing that screams illegitimate in my mind when I look at what they did there. But enough people think that that I think it was a load off and a number of them mentioned that, you know, there's just, there's no asterisk anymore.

Dave Roberts said, and, and Bueller, you know, bleeped, got, got bleeped. Yeah. Trying to brought it up. Yeah. Yeah. People were invoking this. So clearly this was something that it was a load off their minds to win one without any kind of caveat and they earned it.

And yeah, on the one hand, things went according to plan. They have constructed this roster where they have splurged on stars to a greater degree than they used to, outside stars that they have imported. They went and got Mookie Betts and then they extended him, signed him to a big contract. And then they signed Freddie Freeman and then they signed Shohei Otani and then they signed Yamamoto and they spent more than a billion and a half or committed more than a billion and a half dollars just to those four guys, let alone everyone else.

And so in one sense, they were trying to build this super team and just go get all these elite players and it worked. Ohtani is the NL MVP. Betts had the highest OPS in October for the Dodgers, which was also nice because any lingering of Mookie can't hit in the postseason stuff got put to bed this October. And Yamamoto, even though he was hurt for months, even though he was not at his best after that, he mustered their strongest start of the World Series and two of their four strongest

postseason starts. And then of course, Freeman wins World Series MVP. So those guys delivered, they got them there. On the other hand, so much went wrong. They start the season with the projected best starting rotation in baseball. They end up ranking 20th in FanGraph's War and they end up having to do in effect back to back bullpen games to clinch the World Series and they're relievers through 58% of their postseason innings and then everything else just bets being pressed into service as they're starting shortstop without much warning and then he got hurt and missed months and then everything else that went wrong for them, leading the majors in days missed to injury games missed to injury.

And then when they win one, it's almost funny after all of the close calls and not so close calls and heartbreaking losses. They win one when they are short handed, when they have probably their weakest team in several seasons and this is the one where everything just works out and when their backs are against the wall, they get the big hits and they get the big outings and you just, you would not have predicted that, yeah, this would be the

time and whether it is pure randomness, whether it is something about rallying around, given just the state of the roster and everyone having to pick up the slack, it just worked out in such a way that the Dodgers, they were due, right? And they probably quote unquote, should have won one that they lost. And maybe this was one that they should have lost

that they won, but it evens out when you get into October enough times that in my piece, I called it a large sample of small samples. That's what they've had. And it's a good way to put it. Thanks. Most teams do not get a large sample of postseason appearances. And so you get lucky or you get unlucky. The Dodgers having made it 12 years in a row, the third longest streak and still counting, they have now just, they got the law of large numbers on their side here, like make the postseason

enough times and eventually it's going to kind of even out. And I had a table that other Ben Clemens helped me out with the data for this one, but this was suggested to me by Zach Cram and I dug into this. If you add up the preseason and postseason World Series odds for the Dodgers. So the Dodgers have been making the playoffs every year since 2013. Fangrass playoff odds go back to 2014 and the BP playoff odds conveniently go back one more year to 2013. Which is exactly the period that I needed. So Ben sent me the 2014 to 2024 odds and then I supplemented with the BP odds for 2013. And I added up all of the World Series probabilities for the Dodgers on opening day of each year.

And then at the end of the regular season of each year or the start of the postseason. And if you add up those probabilities from each year to get the total World Series cumulative probability over that span of 12 years, this would tell you how many World Series should the Dodgers have won over that span of 12 years, this would tell you how many World Series should the Dodgers have won over that time or would they have been expected to win? Right.

And here's the answer. If you go by the preseason opening day probabilities, the Dodgers cumulatively should have won 1.7 World Series over this 12 season span. If you go by where the odds stood at the very start of the post season, which is probably the fairest because we focus so much on all of the post season struggles. Here is their expected tally of World Series championships, 1.99. So they're right on track.

Right on target. Yup. That's're right on track. Right on target. Yup. That's great. They have played perfectly to expectations. That's fantastic. They just needed to keep going back year after year after year. They had to do the last, we have to go back and they went back enough times that eventually after all the improbable losses, they had some improbable wins

and it all evened out, which does that mean that the sting and the stain of the early exits and the heartbreaking losses go away necessarily? But if you look at it sort of dispassionately as fans are famous for doing and statistically, this tells you A, like even if you're the favorite, the field is still heavily favored over you in any particular postseason. So it's not surprising when you lose in any given October and even over these 12 opportunities that they've had, two was the expected number of wins and

that's how many they won. And so, you know, like Andrew Friedman called it an organizational failure last year. And that was part of the pitch to Otani. That was something he cited as part of the appeal. The fact that they've been so successful and yet they see themselves as a failure. Okay, we're aligned. We want to win.

That's our top priority. And with this one win really, they went from, by the numbers, at least failure to meeting expectations perfectly. So there's a pleasing sort of symmetry to that in my mind. There's a lot of hooey about shoot for the moon and you'll land amongst the stars, you know, all of this stuff. Oh, the stars are farther away.

So I've always thought that that was sort of in reverse. Am I getting the expression wrong? I'm not, I think I'm getting it right. No, I think you nailed it. Yeah. Yeah, the moon is closer. It should be the other way around. The moon is like right in like astronomical terms

right there. Yes, yes, yes, to an incredible degree. Our next door neighbor. Yeah, yeah. Anyway. I guess it's true though that if you miss when you're shooting for the moon, you would eventually land. I mean, it would take many, many millions of years, but eventually you would get there.

Right, which within the sports context would be devastating how long it would take you to get out there. Yeah. Just think about how far past your prime you'd be. Anyhow, there can be a lot of silliness around that and it can feel kind of trite and try hard, but it takes so much because it's so hard to do. I think the Dodgers are a really important narrative corrective to this like, yeah, win 85 and see if you can get in there and anything can happen.

And it's like, yeah, that's true. When we grapple with like the randomness that is attendant in the actual postseason itself, like sure, yeah, that's real. But your odds of getting a World Series win, they go up pretty dramatically the more often you're in the postseason, you know? That's a pretty helpful way to give yourself the best chance of lifting the trophy at the end of October.

So it takes a tremendous amount of commitment and there are a lot of ways to do it and you don't have to spend, at least not to the degree the Dodgers have, to be in the thick of things every October. But I thought that the way that Stan Kastin talked about it, the way that Friedman talked about it when they were acknowledging all of the work

that goes into winning a World Series and how many people and how much sort of coordination there needs to be across your front office and, you know, scouting and player dev and all the work the players put in. Like it is just, it requires so much to be that consistently good and you want to be that consistently good to put yourself in a position to win and to win the whole thing. And I like it when we get underdog teams and we've talked about that.

You want there to be narrative diversity in the way that your post seasons are composed. And if it's only ever the heavy hitters, that gets boring. But it really, I think is important for the sport, for there to be times when teams like the Dodgers win, and to really validate the model and say, it takes a lot of time and resource to take advantage of a sloppy ass inning. And that's good, it's good for baseball. That's good. One of good for baseball. Like, you know, that's good.

One of the things Robert said, he was referring specifically to the 2024 team, but he said, we did go through a lot, but one thing is that we just kept going. And that's the thing about the Dodgers. They just keep getting there year after year after year. And as I put it in my piece, you just, you keep showing up for those bingo games and eventually your winning numbers will be called. You'll have the right card, you'll get the right draw. So that's something that no other team has done as successfully as the Dodgers over this

span. And I think even the Yankees, you could have envy for the teams that have done it more consistently. The Yankees have had the second most regular season wins during the Dodgers postseason streak. And for that matter, over the 15 years that the Yankees have not won a World Series, but unlike the Dodgers, they haven't made it every year. They missed the playoffs in 2013, 2014, 2016, 2023. Also, sometimes they've gotten in, but they haven't really entered as favorites the way that the Dodgers or the Astros have. There hasn't been a whole lot of confidence that they could make it

through the bracket. And so if you're a Yankees fan, and again, people may not feel much sympathy, but you know, lots of fans of most teams would, would gladly sign up to lose like the Yankees do. But if you're the Yankees, I think you're still looking with some degree of envy at the Dodgers and saying, they just always make it. This felt like, you know, we finally got there. We actually got to a World Series for the first time in a while and will we be back next year? Who knows?

Maybe. Whereas with the Dodgers, it's seemingly just a fait accompli that they will be back year after year after year. And we could talk about when or if this run of theirs will ever end. And people have been writing about that. I wrote about that for the first time in 2015. There's no end in sight. So I don't know how the perpetual playoff machine stops rolling. If you were to try to look for some sign of a flaw in the foundation, one thing that I was surprised to find, I had a chart in my piece about where the war come from

on the Dodgers and where they've come from on each edition of the Dodgers during their postseason appearance streak. And even though, as you said, there's a fair amount of continuity between the 2020 team and this one. Of course, Kershaw is the only constant throughout this entire streak.

But there are players who've been there for a while or have left and have come back. But the composition of this roster, the makeup of where the production comes from has changed dramatically. So in 2020, the Dodgers were still one of the more homegrown teams in terms of the percentage of their war coming from players who were originally signed by them or drafted by them. And now they're not, they're on the opposite end of the spectrum. They're the least homegrown team.

They had by baseball reference were 3.9 war this season from players who were quote unquote homegrown, who were drafted or signed as amateurs by the Dodgers. Basically in the clincher, it's just Will Smith and Gavin Lux and Bueller, by the way, Will Smith, one Will Smith or another has now won a World Series for five consecutive seasons. It was not the Will Smith we expected, but there's always a Will Smith standing at the

end of the proceedings somehow. You can't tell people this, Ben, because it's already annoying enough that there are two of them just from a player linker perspective which is clearly the perspective that everyone cares the most about in this conversation. You can't be telling people to name their kids Will if their last name is Smith. We have enough problems. Yeah there's no shortage of Will Smiths to go around which is perhaps how this has happened but for, the Dodgers got more production out of homegrown guys than free agent signees. And this year it was heavily, heavily skewed. It was like

28 war from free agents and four war from homegrown guys. They had like a third of the production from homegrown players this year than they had in 2020 in a 60 game season. So it's a total change in how they make up their roster, the degree to which they will splurge on outside stars. And they've targeted the truly elite guys for the most part. And they've picked their spots pretty wisely when it comes to deciding who to hand these mega contracts to, but it is still a change in the way that they've operated and perhaps a smart change again. Maybe Andrew Friedman just needed some time to adjust, to acclimate to being in charge of a large market, high payroll team and saying, no, I can afford to take some pricey risks

here. And on the one hand, it's just more dismaying to everyone else because, well, the Dodgers are still smart and doing drafting and developing well. And also they'll just break the bank for the elite prospects. Did you see Corbin Burns' eyes emoji quote tweet? He quote tweeted a Dodgers tweet that had an image of all of the stars winning the World Series. And he had many eyes emojis, like just basically batting his eyes at the Dodgers. And they're already reported to be interested in Wonsoto and Roki Sasaki.

So again, maybe they'll just run this back. And I guess if they keep signing players who are not of advanced ages when they sign them, like Sasaki or like Yamamoto, et cetera, then they could forestall some aging, but they did have the oldest position players in the sport this year, I think the seventh oldest collection of pitchers. So maybe at some point, if you're not constantly refreshing your roster

with those inexpensive and young homegrown guys, then it becomes tough to sustain things. And you end up in more of a Yankees sort of situation, but it's hard to look ahead to next year at this being the best team in baseball this year, even with all the on-field hardships that went through and then projecting probably better health and Two Way Otani, though I guess there's no guarantee that Two Way Otani will be much more valuable than DH Otani was this year, because how much better could he be? But yeah, I don't know that this is going to end anytime soon. It's like I've said, when you have multiple avenues of player acquisition and development,

like you can just do this, right? You can be like, hey, in 2020, we've got a mostly healthy pitching staff, we have Corey Seeger, it's all our own guys. And then in 2024, you can be like, all of our own guys are hurt, or at least a lot of them. But guess what? We made these other guys our own guys by giving them a lot of money. And so we can just do it that way, you know? And other, it's not, I hadn't seen Corbin Burns do that. It's not surprising to me. For one thing, you want to go play for a team that seems committed to winning. All of these guys are maniacs.

They want rings so badly. They all want rings more than anything. They want rings in a way that would probably be uncomfortable for them to discuss in front of their spouses in couples therapy. That is the degree of ring wanting, right? So there's that. And also they want to get paid.

And so the Dodgers present the opportunity for you to go with not very much incredulogy or doubt. Why not both? You know, just why not both? Now, it is funny because as we have joked, they only get so many roster spots. So at a certain point, they are going to, by pure roster math, be limited in who they can sign. And I am curious, we don't have to jump ahead to their off season too much because we got

a whole off season to talk about everybody's off season. But I think I have been mentally crediting them with some share of every free agent, right? Not like the singer share, but some portion of every free agent. Like, yeah, they're going to be in on that. People are like, oh, well, the Yankees lost, so now Wonsodo's going to be a Met. And maybe Wonsodo will be a Met. Maybe Wonsodo will be all kinds of things. But some part of me is like, is he just going to be a freaking Dodger somehow? Is he just going to end up being a stinking Dodger somehow? But there does come a limit to these things, right? They can't sign Juan Soto and Roki Sasaki and, you know, they only have so many spats.

Even if the ownership group decides, we don't just blow it out. We don't care. We'll pay whatever tax we're going to inspire the other owners to contemplate weird, arcane rules that really only apply to us. Even if they don't care about that, they can still only field so many dudes at one time, but it does not shock me in the least that every other dude who is not currently a Dodger is like, we kind of want to be a Dodger though. CB I especially because Otani almost made it look easy. I know it wasn't easy, but it went so according to his plan where it was just, I'll go sign with the Dodgers because they'll give me the best chance

to win the World Series. And then all I need is a single season. How bad do you feel if you're the Angels? You just do this little Los Angeles switcheroo and after not even qualifying for the postseason for six consecutive years, yeah, just go sign with the Dodgers. It's just the proof of concept. I mean, that's why they got him or one of the reasons why they got him is because they could offer him the best chance of being in this position to win the World Series. And then he immediately demonstrates just the proof of concept. Yeah, you want to win a ring? Go sign with the Dodgers. Yeah. And then he does that out of the gate. No waiting period, no delayed gratification whatsoever.

So of course, if that's what you want to cross off your list. And I've seen people already saying, oh, wow, now what does Otani have left to accomplish? Now he's got a world series title. Is he the goat? As if he wasn't before, probably on a rate basis. And so that whole conversation, if you're looking from the outside in and you have not yet collected your ring, then yeah, why would you not want to be a part of that? Unless you start to feel like you didn't earn it, which is, I guess, seemingly the

way that Mike Trout feels like he's just got to grid it out and gut it out and stay in one place and just still live or die with that one team. I saw Mike Trout trending after. I didn't even click to see why because I could imagine, but I just, I felt bad for him without even looking. But if it gets to the point where the Dodgers run that play every single off season and they just always get the top free agent and you know, maybe like it is a change as I was saying, the way that they're built and I'm not suggesting that there is a more or less righteous way to win a world series or that there's any way to guarantee that you will win one.

But I suppose if they kept doing that play, okay, who's the best free agent this off season? All right, we're gonna go get that guy and maybe we'll get the best hitter and the best pitcher. Why not? And then they won the World Series every year. Well, at a certain point, maybe some of the sense of accomplishment would wear off.

But again, they've had to fight and scratch and claw for the World Series that they've won. Here's the thing. They'd have to fight and scratch and claw for the World Series that they've won. Here's the thing, they'd have to fight and scratch and claw. It's incredibly hard. And like the Dodgers being able to sign all of the marquee guys is a testament to the Dodgers. And it's also an indictment of the 29 other teams, right?

Like at some point you look at it and you're like, I don't know, this seems like a skill issue for the whatever team it is. I get being kind of bored of teams and bored of their presence in the postseason, which is why it's good that the postseason is so hard and that, you know, winning a World Series is so hard because we do want there to be, you know, different new clubs. And I think it is good for a lot of different fan bases to get to sort of see it as a possibility that their team might win. That's important for the sport too. But at a certain point it's like, I don't know, do you want to keep letting the Dodgers beat you or would you like to present a compelling alternative?

And to be clear, there are other teams that sound really good for agents. There are other really good teams. The Dodgers just beat one of them, right? So it isn't as if they're the only game in town, but I think that at some point, you need to stop pointing the finger outward and look inward and then say, why can't we sign Rocky Sasaki? I mean, this off season,

probably because he's not gonna come over here, but at some point, he I do think will just end up being a Dodger though. That one I feel, I don't normally feel super confident about true free agents, right? Not guys who've like, you know, they had an option or da da, there's a, but like real free agents hitting the market wanting to hear from all 30 clubs. But Sasaki, I feel pretty confident about going to LA.

There are certain teams, we take teams and owners to task who don't spend what they could. And there are plenty of those. There are also some cases, I think, where if you're going up against the Dodgers in the bidding, and the Dodgers are willing to match whatever you're offering, then you just can't compete at a certain point. If you're talking about maybe there are geographic advantages, maybe there are sponsorship advantages, maybe there's just the fact that they're good every single year. Maybe there's the fact that you're playing

with a bunch of superstars, though there are certain players who would probably consider that a downside because they want to be the guy. They want to be the man maybe. But if you're say the angels, right? Who ultimately didn't match what the Dodgers offered, but if they had, would Otani really have had any reason to stay with them? Or there's a certain point where it becomes tough to match all of the soft factors and just again, the track record of development and improving players, which that is a skill issue. That's something you could get better at too. And it's partly resources, but they have all the advantages, all the institutional advantages, the friendly

broadcast deal in an environment of broadcast uncertainty. I'm not suggesting that just any team can outbid the Dodgers and persuade any player to sign with them instead of the Dodgers. There are a lot of reasons why the Dodgers just have an edge there, financially, monetarily, but maybe even more so in ways that you just can't counter. So that does get frustrating at a certain point. And yet there are plenty of examples of excellent players that the Dodgers didn't get. And also plenty of examples of guys that other teams could, you know, Juan Soto could have been a guardian this year. That's like my go-to example that I keep citing.

There's no real reason why they couldn't have traded for him and afforded him for at least one year. So opportunities like that do arise and there are teams that are just much too complacent about seizing them. And look, I'm being a little bit snarky, you know, I'm having a touch of snark in that. I think that there are a lot of other clubs that they're great organizations that run really well. They have a lot of smart people working for them.

They're very compelling as free agent destinations. And you can tell because again, not every guy signs with LA and it isn't just a matter of them only having so many roster spots, right? But when, when people get, you know, worked up about the Dodgers thing or they're like, you know, there's hand-wringing, I'm like, yeah, stop bringing your hands, start writing some checks. That would be my advice if I were, and then the owner would be like, why do you talk like that? What's that about? What's going on, Meg? And I'd be like, I don't know. Here I am. We were regaled with lots of history about World Series and best of seven series in general

that started with one team up three nothing. And we all know that yes, the Red Sox are the only team that has successfully come back from that deficit in baseball. But it does surprise me some of the other stats about just how quickly teams that go down 3-0 have historically rolled right over. It's improbable, right? So I was reading USA Today had the summary,

there have been 25 teams in World Series history who have trailed three nothing. The Yankees are one of just four to have even forced a game five. That's I don't know if that's seems statistically significant. I haven't haven't I don't have the P values handy. I haven't done the team tests. It does seem weird because we're talking about World Series teams. And even though, okay, when one team goes up three, oh, this is maybe sort of a skewed sample and maybe that team is better.

And that's why it went up three, oh, but it can't be that much better. We're talking about the World Series here, World Series teams, even if it's a mismatch by World Series standards, we're talking two competitive teams. And so for the stats to be that lopsided that the Yankees are just one of four of the 25 to have forced a game five. And then of those four, none ever made it to a game six. This is in the World Series. And then if you expand to all best of seven MLB playoff series, 41 teams have won the first three games against their opponents in all but 10 occasions. Those clubs have gone on to record a sweep.

So it's not just that they finish it off, they win, but they almost invariably win immediately. And I don't know if that has to do with, is it a home field advantage thing? I haven't worked out if you're up three, oh, would you usually be at home or what? The Dodgers weren't obviously, or does it have something to do with it being an unusual mismatch by World Series Sandwich? Or is it really just the morale? Is it just being so demoralized that you're in such a deep hole, you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel and you just fold?

Is that it? Is this clear evidence of how much motivation matters? Is this vindication for smolts? Are there other factors that we're not considering here that make it so likely? Okay, you get to game four. I'm trying to puzzle out like, where are you in the rotation? Is there something about this that like you're lined up to lose disproportionately in that game, but it just seems more pronounced than I

would expect even given all the factors we're raising. I agree. It is. Yeah. It's, it's quite surprising. And I, I do wonder if it's like a rotation, how the rotation lines up kind of a deal that you're just like going to see a top starter more, but like that isn't always true.

Yeah. And you'd think that the team that is up three-oh is not necessarily going to be going for the kill. Like we just talked about with Roberts. You might take the foot off the pedal because you've got the big buffer to play with and you might think that if anything, your odds of winning one would be better than you would otherwise expect. So weird, right? Just sort of strange.

Yes. I don't know, like you said, I don't know that it means anything, right? I don't know that it says anything, right? I don't know that it says anything, but it is very odd. You know, it is way more lopsided than I would have expected it to be just, you know, given the coin flippy nature of a lot of these games. Neil Paynett, his substack, has documented what seems to be a surprising decrease in sweeps, not just in MLB, but also

just across men's pro sports finals in the NBA, in the NHL, all of these leagues that have best of sevens. Oddly, 15 or not quite 20 years ago, it seemed like there's just been a fairly dramatic decrease in the rate of sweeps. And it's been a hobby horse of mine. Don't predict sweeps. If you're entering a best of seven, statistically speaking, it's just never really the right move. It's never the likeliest single outcome to predict a sweep. But also there's been this market decrease in the rate of sweeps across sports seemingly, even as there's been an increase in what Neil calls a gentleman sweep, which is what happened here.

We're basically, we'll let you win one, you know, we don't want to embarrass you. So you can, you can have one and then we'll win in five games. But it is, uh, it's, that's also surprising. And uh, Neil has some theories about that. There could be a conspiracy theory. Maybe, maybe somehow the broadcasters are conspiring to extend these series so they can maximize their revenue. The, the officials are in on it.

The leagues are in on it. Or it could be something about scouting and the underdogs are learning to, uh, fight back more effectively than they used to, or it could have something to do with changes in series format and rest and travel days maybe. But it is, both of these things are surprising to me. And I suppose the samples are small enough that maybe you can't make too much of it, but something to watch. So before we wrap up, there wasn't that much to say about game four, but one thing that has caused a lot of discussion, can we talk about the two numbskulls for a second here

before we move on? And the numbskullish reaction to the numbskulls in some cases. What the heck is happening here? What are people thinking? And to be clear, I think it's probably a subset of people reacting this way. But the way that these two guys have been elevated by some into some sort of folk hero here, we're talking about the guys sitting down the line and there's a Gleiber foul ball

lifted and Mookie comes over to try to make the catch. And these guys decide that actually they are participants in the game and they are just going to try to strip this ball from Mookie. They're going to try to wrestle this ball out of Mookie's glove. They're gonna just tag team him essentially. One's gonna grab his glove with the ball and Betz's hand in it and just try to forcibly remove the ball from the glove while the other guy then grabs Betz's other wrist to stop him from stopping his buddy from doing what he's doing. And ultimately no harm done and Betts doesn't get hurt and the ball is extracted and Torres is called out. There's no gray area about what the correct call here was. But the way

that these guys maintained that this was some sort of innocent reaction heat of the moment, just trying to help the team or trying to pretend that this ball was in the stands and thus in their domain, which it quite clearly was not. This was in the field. This was very much Betts's ball. He had the right of way here. And the way that these guys kind of crowed about it, and then in some quarters were held up as people who were heroes for trying to help the team,

this was incredibly confounding because this is a violation of all that we hold dear about the sanctity of the field and the players. If it's in the stands, okay, it's anyone's game. It's fair game, but you cannot be touching the players. You cannot be forcibly, physically interfering with the players. This is not something to celebrate. I couldn't believe it. First of all, I couldn't believe it as it was happening. I half expected them to say, them being the fans, to say afterward one asked, like, I do not know what came over me. I took leave of my senses. Yes. I blacked out. Yeah. Abandoned me in that moment. It was unreal. You can't touch the players. No touching of players ever.

No touching. The Arrested Development. No touching. No touching. And look, it happens on accident sometimes, right? Like you have incidental contact with guys sometimes. This was totally intentional. Totally intentional, very aggressive, thankfully did not result in any injury to Betts.

I don't know how likely that was, but I don't think that we should ever be in a position where we can find out. And yeah, the reaction to them, ridiculous. And it was interesting to me because it's like, you know, so Jesse Rogers reported this story and Jesse does some good work. I hate to call people out, not his finest moments around this, either from the tweeting perspective. The story itself was kind of fine, but the tweets, Jesse do better my guy.

Like you don't hold this guy up as a beaut. What are we doing? Excuse you. No. And I'm a, I'm going to say something and it might strike some people as vaguely problematic, but I'm Italian American so I can say this. Cappabianco, my God. If there is one good detail of this story, it is that I mean, and then people were getting all worked up because they were being mocked as Italian Americans. And look, we are not a

monolith as a people, but we're often ridiculous. It's fine to make fun of us. I'll say that we're doing fine. It's fine. There's no, it's fine. Cappabiaco, my God. But so there's a quote from him, same age as me, I know better, okay? I know better at 38 that you're not supposed to be doing that. Why don't you, Austin? What's up with you, Austin? We always joke about the ball in our area here, I'm quoting from Jesse's piece. We're not going to go out of our way to attack. If it's in our area, we're going to D up. Someone defends, someone knocks the ball. We talk about it. We're willing to do this. So here's the thing. I don't know how often this is even an opportunity for them. I know they're season ticket holders and I don't know if they have a hierarchy of being complete

goobers in where in the regular season, no, but in the postseason, yes, surely. This to me suggests not only a lack of remorse for the incident at hand, but a potential confession of future incidents. CB 0 Yes, this is premeditation and lack of remorse. So why, why, why would these guys be allowed back in the ballpark not only for the next game, which as we know, they were not, right? Their tickets were taken away. They were given to a pediatric cancer patient and his family, which seems much better.

Although, and again, I don't think you should touch the players, but that kid had the opportunity to do the funniest thing ever. You didn't. I mean, I don't think there was a foul ball that went that way, but anyway, I don't, you can't let these guys back in a big league park. I'm sorry. You're done. Once you're grabbing players like that,

game over, game over, man. No contrition. They're complaining about the fact that Mookie had some harsh words for them in the moment. Please. Those harsh words were entirely justified. Then they're complaining about the fact that they couldn't give their tickets that they weren't allowed to use to family members. They got a refund for the game that they were banned from attending. I get that they're season ticket holders and teams probably don't want to piss off their season ticket holders, but this is one case where you got to draw the line. Yeah. And, and I know people we've talked in the past about, well, is it actually enforceable to ban someone?

Now, if they have season tickets, you could probably stake out their seats, but, but what's to stop them from sneaking in elsewhere? Well,andrelik report it about that? And maybe it's a little dystopian and big brother, but in this case, this specific instance, I'm kind of okay with it, which is basically that there's facial recognition technology that's just scanning everyone in parks all the time. And is that a little unsettling? Yes. But if it allows us to keep these characters out of the game, then good. Because really, you can't let them go. You have to send a message. And also specifically with these flu-like, we're like, we did it and we're probably going to do it again if the opportunity arises. And I get why maybe there's initially an impulse to say, oh, colorful characters and New Yorkers and Jeffrey Mayer. And, you know, there's sort of an intrigue to fans having some impact on a play and like that,

that line between the field and the fans being crossed. And there's something sort of seductive about that. Cause maybe we all imagine ourselves in that game at some point. I understand if ghost coming back to 24 hours, the cornfield, his business, he's, he's a goofus from Connecticut. Like everyone relax. Yeah. If I had not seen the play, then I would understand why the initial impulse might be to be inclined to sort of celebrate or find some mirth in this situation.

Because I understand the appeal of the idea that fans could impact play on some level. There are plenty of people who will refuse to move during a rally. They will not budge from their seat or they will don a rally cap or they'll just cheer really loudly. And what is all of that? If not some deep seated, perhaps sheepish feeling that maybe I could have some effect on these proceedings. Maybe I could contribute in some way, or maybe more

tangibly waving towels behind the basket when an opposing player is shooting free throws. We want to think, okay, we could, we could make some contribution here. We're not just bystanders. Our presence is important. We're participants in this in some level and not just because we're paying for season tickets. So I understand the sentiment of that, of like, hey, yeah, you go guys, like you cross that inviolable barrier that all of us were prevented from anyone who dreamed of playing in a World Series game someday. You in some indirect way got to live the dream by almost, but not actually really having any kind of effect on this play for one mere moment. You got to touch the ball. And I get the sort of tribal, this is our turf. We have home field advantage.

You're going to come into our house. We're going to make it tough on you. You know, just that impulse that leads to throwing the ball back after someone hits a home run in your park. Like, yeah, get out of here with that business, right? But that's a fun fan tradition. And this is not, this is dangerous and obnoxious and just beyond the pale. If you want to have the institution of Bleacher Creature, right? If you want to allow for the institution of Bleacher Creature to proceed, if you view this as an important cultural artifact of your city and fan base, that's fine. But in order to preserve the Bleacher Creature, you have to excise the grabbers. You

can't have room for grabbers. You have to send a message because inside every Bleacher Creature is send a message because inside every Bleacher creature is Yahoo from Connecticut longing to inappropriately touch a player. And I know that many of the Bleacher creatures are not from Connecticut, but you understand what I'm trying to say. So you must say, no, there shall be no initiated contact between fans and players. End of story, like full stop. It's non-negotiable. How many more cliches can I offer here?

You have to say that because it can be dangerous. It can escalate. There's already nonsense that goes on out there and you don't want any of that nonsense to end up being a more dramatic or debilitating story. And so, no, I say kick them out, ban them for life, be done. I don't enjoy the sports surveillance state we live in, but if ever there is a public good case to be made for that kind of stuff, it's this. Like, I'm sorry, you just can't be grabbing, you can't be grabbing. They were so aggressive. Yes. It was one of the wilder things I've ever seen take place on a field. And I've seen people naked at the ballpark, Ben. I've seen them with their bits hanging out. And this was crazier than

that, you know? And I guess the story had longer legs because there was a Gronk connection. So Gronk comes out and it turns out that Gronk went to college with this guy. Is Gronk Forrest Gump? Is he actually, you know, like I just want to know. He's just present at all of these. He has some personal connection to all these moments. But Gronk comes out and basically says this guy's a headcase, a wild boy, a menace, maniac status since college has been confirmed. If Gronk is confirming your maniac status, I don't know what that says about you, but clearly this is not an isolated incident. I love that you're like, you know what I am? I'm an expert on Gronk. That's my...

Look, I've learned a lot about Gronk over the years, sometimes against my will, sometimes not through any effort of my own, by osmosis, we all learn about Gronk at some point. We're all set to learn about Gronk. I still don't understand baby Gronk. I still don't know about that. And you know what? That's fine. I don't need to know.

Something, the Rizler, that's none of my business. Who is that? none of my business. Who is that? I don't, don't tell me. I've got good news, my, one of my colleagues at The Ringer is writing up a Rizler FAQ as we speak. So. I'm not gonna read it.

And it's not, it's, that's not meant as a knock on, on the FAQ. I'm sure it will be very edifying, but I only have so much space, you know? It'll answer a lot of questions that you are not asking. So. I'm not asking any questions. you are not asking them even infrequently, it sounds like. Zero times.

I'm like, I saw it, I saw it as a thing that it existed. And I was like, that's none of my business. You know, it's kind of how I feel about TikTok. I'm like, yeah, that's not for me. That's fine. By the way, if the player does come into your territory, if the player takes a tumble, takes a topple, is reaching into the stands, I'm not saying go to town on this guy, like

have some courtesy, but also you don't necessarily have to get out of the way and go out of your way to make it easy for an opposing player to reach into the stands and catch a foul ball. If you want to just sit in your place in the seat that you bought a ticket for and make someone reach around you, then that's your well within your rights. I would say in that point, you know, that that is a little home field advantage. You know, maybe a golden rule and do a solid to your fellow human. But if if the moment calls for it, then you could be an obstacle. You could be

an impediment, just a passive lump that is sitting there that the player has to work around and navigate. That I think is perfectly fine and acceptable. And that does not violate your fan base bill of rights or go too far. But this was not that. This was not even remotely that. This was extremely aggressive and this was not a souvenir that was being taken away from you. This was in play. This was within the fields of play.

This was not your ball. You cannot call, I got it on this one. I just think that, sure, you can be a lump and you are not required to take your lumps. I think that sometimes people's instinct when they see a giant pro athlete flying toward them in foul territory, which is not what happened here, but like, you know, sometimes like a, an infielder will be trying to make a play in the stands and you can see people trying to get out, get out of the way can see people trying to get out of the way. I just tried to get out of the way of the microphone in a way that I'm sure Shane's

going to be really excited about. But you try to get out of the way. You're not required to offer yourself as a human pillow for their landing. I don't think that that's the thing that's required of you either, but you must simply keep your hands to yourself in the field of play. There can be no grabbing and everyone relax about the Italian part of this. It's fine. It's fine. I'm telling you it's fine. I'm not saying that all of you should do it all the time, but we have a lot of ridiculous

floating around. There's grist for the mill. The last thing I'll say is that I think Optistats and the Optistats Twitter account, the one that has produced some incredibly convoluted but also sometimes quite clever fun facts that we have played count the qualifiers with a lot lately. I think they're out over their skis. I think now Rob Mayne's our friend, he takes issue with the saying out over your skis because that's actually not a bad way to ski. That's kind of

proper skiing technique. I'm a skier. It's okay. But putting that aside for a second, I think they're a little high on their own supply. But you're taking a tum, aren't you like, isn't it meant to convey like you're taking a tumble over your skis? Maybe so. Yeah. If that's just your sort of default stance as you're going downhill, then that's okay. But if you're out of your skis because you're going head over heels, that would be bad. I think that's what that means.

So maybe you can, if you can justify some of these recent Optistats tweets to me, because we've had a couple lately that just seem over determined. So there's this one about Otani. In MLB history, over 30 players have hit 50 homers in a season. Over 200 players have had 50 stolen bases in a season. Over 150 players have won MVP. Over 1500 players have won MVP. Over 1,500 players have won a World Series. Only one has done all four, same season or not, Shohei Otani. He did it all in 2024, assuming he wins MVP.

Now, I just feel like this is a little more complex than it needs to be. If you wanted to do it, I mean, he was already the first 53-53 player, homers and steals, not just in a single season, but over the course of a career. So you could say that he's the only guy who's ever stolen that many bases and hit that many homers in any season, let alone the same season. Here we've got several different things. It's this genre of this many people have done this, that many people have done that and Otani, he's the only one who's done all of them and he did it all in the same season. It's like when the broadcasters would be like, and by the way, he pitches after

they regale you with some impressive stats about his offensive performance. That was one of them. The other one was the Yankees are the only MLB team to blow a five plus run lead, allow five plus unearned runs, commit three plus errors, commit catchers interference, commit a balk, ellipsis, all in the same game. Regular season or postseason since earned runs became an official stat in both leagues in 1913. I don't believe that we need this much information in these stats. I think they're stacking more things than they need to.

And in fact, in just a landmark investigation that we did on a previous episode, Ryan Nelson determined that there was one of those where it was clear that they had one more qualifier, one more layer than they needed to, because the previous layers were sufficient already, already satisfied the condition of this is the only guy who's ever done this, and they just kept stacking stuff on top of it. So I think they have now reached the point where they're just adding more and more and more to it to make it

sound more impressive, but it backfires. And it actually makes it sound less impressive to me because I sort of see the artifice here. Right. And all fun facts lie, as Sam says, but you want to try to hide the lie. There's supposed to be some sleight of hand here. And I feel like I'm following the card trick, the shell game here that's happening. I think that's right. Yeah, I'm thinking about skis. Yeah, I still wanna interview whatever mad genius produces these stats.

I wanna talk about the process of this happens. But- Stats by stats. I mean, it's just rebranded stats by stats. It's in all caps in the old- It's Opta stats. So we wanna talk to Opta. Let's get Opta on the podcast. Whoever that person is, we'll get OptaStats. So we want to talk to Opta. Let's get Opta on the podcast. Whoever that person is, we'll get Opta on here to answer for, for some of

these kinds of convoluted fun facts. All right. Well, we talked through that and maybe next time, gosh, I've got all these notes and links and things that have been waiting, sitting, not just the, the boring transaction stuff that happens immediately after the World Series where I'm always like, just give me a day. Can we just digest what happened there before we go from the highest of stakes to the lowest of stakes again?

But lots of interesting stuff has happened, not necessarily the Horhace-Helaire trade, but Alex Kirilov retired. What? Didn't see that coming. The White Sox have a new manager. Congrats, I guess, to Will Venable condolences as he embarks on this new phase of his career. He's, he's got a tall task in front of him. There's just, you know, a lot to talk about. There was a, a glove flip.

Is glove flipping the new bat flipping? We will discuss the, the check swing challenge system. We got to get into that. There's a, a new general manager named Manasian. And yes, there is a relation. We got multiple Manasian general managers. We got bros, B and GMs. Are they going to talk trade together?

Just a lot of stuff to discuss, but we will get to that next time in the many, many episodes that followed that. So thanks as always to everyone for sticking with us. Yeah. Yet another season in the books and MLB ends or at least MLB games take a break, but we do not. We're here. We'll keep you company all winter. If you'll have us, we will have you and we hope that you will stick with us and we will see each other through that long wait. And, you know, maybe we can talk about what, if anything, teams will learn,

what lessons there will be, will there be any, any copycats who are taking things away from the Dodgers and how they went the distance here and where will Juan Soto end up and the Dodgers, you know went the distance here and where will Juan Soto end up? And the Dodgers, you know, so much went wrong for them, but because they spent so much money, because they targeted that talent, they raised their ceiling so high that even though they fell short of that ceiling,

their floor was championship caliber. They had such depth that they were able to weather the vagaries of the regular season. There's so much to discuss. As always, a pleasure to discuss it with you. So enjoy another MLB season in the books at Effectively Wild. It was a great ride.

All right, that will do it for today. I do have a few more thoughts on the World Series, but I'll save them for next time because next time will be soon. For now, you can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash Effectively Wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad-free, and get themselves access to some perks.

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Check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash effectively wild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via email. Send your questions, comments, intro and outro themes to podcast at fangraphs.com. Speaking of themes, I'm gonna play a new one for the outro today. It's from listener Daniel Lewis, who submitted it months ago, and I said, Daniel, thank you, this one is too scary to be in our

regular rotation, but I'll find a time to play it. Maybe a horror-themed episode, maybe Halloween. And here we are, in honor of Halloween, potentially for one time only, I will in just a moment play you Daniel Lewis's Effectively Wild theme. You can, of course, 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 find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. And you can check the show page of Fan Crafts

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