Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2382: The October Bandwagon

Episode Date: October 2, 2025

Ben Lindbergh brings on Hannah Keyser and Zach Crizer of The Bandwagon to banter in a hopefully not-immediately-dated way about the first two days of playoff action, including the Dodgers dispatching the Reds, Dave Roberts using “Strategy,” Aaron Boone’s perceived mismanaging, the flamethrowing Mason Miller and a playoff-pitch-speed conundrum, and more, plus conversation about how […]

Hello, I'm going to waste my time tracking all these statlines, but it's here I found my kind, I'm all Effectively Wild. Hello, and welcome to episode 2382 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from FanGraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of the Ringer, not joined today by Meg Rally, of fan graphs who has fallen ill or has gotten more ill since the last time we talked. You heard how she sounded then, since she has lost her voice and found a fever. Terrible timing, not that there's ever good timing to be sick, but this week is among the

worst ones to be a baseball editor and also be ill, but we will have her back as soon as she's able, and maybe next time she will rejoin us and we'll do some division series preview. But we have two able fill-ins for Meg today, which I am also. so excited about. Zach Kreiser and Hannah Kaiser of the bandwagon substack. Hello, Hannah and Zach. Hello. Hello, hello.

Great to have you both. I feel fine, and I hope I sound fine. It takes two of us to make up for Meg, though, so we need our full strength. Big shoes, it's true. And, yeah, I hope that I did not drive her deeper into the throes of illness. To be clear, I did not force her to podcast the other day. She podcasted of her own free will, but hopefully. having to talk to me for all that time, didn't make things worse. She hasn't blamed me yet,

at least. But I'm happy to talk to both of you. And I think this is the first time that you've been on Effectively Wild together since one of the year-end podcasts in 2023, episode 2105. And that was when you were former colleagues and future colleagues, but not present colleagues, I believe, because that was before you launched your substack. So how has the bandwacken been going? It's been going good for me as a satisfied subscriber, but for you two. That's funny because I don't remember there being a sort of in-between time of us working together because I think we continued. It doesn't feel that different in terms of our relationship to one another because

it's bandwagon is so much an extension of our friendship about baseball, which is just we were already sending each other things, telling each other ideas, and when we were writing for other places, and still when we write for other places, like bigger. picture stuff where we're always talking to each other about it. So I always say about Van Wagon that like I simply couldn't do it if I wasn't doing it with Zach because it is so much an extension of the way that we are constantly conversing about baseball naturally. Yeah, I had to introduce Hannah to a lot of people because I got married this summer and she was in the wedding and congrats. Thank you. I kept introducing her and someone was eventually just like, isn't she

just your business partner? I was like, I guess so. Yes, that's an easier way to say that. Yes. Yes. I felt very welcomed by Zach's friends and family at the wedding because he has such supportive friends and family who are all, well, not maybe not all, but predominantly bandwagon readers, subscribers, they know the bandwagon. And so they felt like they knew me. And I was like, oh, hi, yes, you hear from me three times a week. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know how you feel about the concept of a work spouse or whether that would be a loaded term at an actual wedding. But I guess that's something you could have gone with as well. But it's been great as a reader, and I'm glad that you got back together again in a professional capacity and have entertained us all.

And as we were talking about before we started recording, this is a tough time to do a three times a week podcast or newsletter, for that matter, because there's just so much baseball happening that whenever you dip in, you will inevitably be out of date by the time people listen to you or read you. so we're going to do our best to steer clear of immediate, obsolete status on this episode. We'll see how we do because we're recording on Thursday morning. This might be the brightest and earliest, effectively wild, has ever been recorded. I don't know. I'm not much of a morning person. I'm forced to be by being a dad, but I'm not really a morning podcast person, especially because Meg is not on Eastern Time, but we are all on Eastern Time.

And so we took advantage of that and we'll actually post this podcast at a normal hour, but there are three games on this day and three series still unresolved. So we'll do a little bit of talk of what has happened so far. And how have you two navigated these first two days of the playoffs with four games each? Are you just sort of veging out in front of the screen for 12 continuous hours, at least as work and life allows? Or how do you watch these games? How do you consume this fire hose of baseball? As work and life allows, certainly. It's interesting, I found the three-game wild card.

Even though during the regular season, we cover many three-game series, but when it comes to the postseason, I always found the three-game wildcard series to be really tricky to cover in person, too, when I was at Yahoo and actually at these games, because of the way that it feels like it's over before it started, but also it can change directions so quickly. So somebody wins game one, and you're like, oh, my gosh, the other team. They're on the ropes. They're on the brink of elimination. Like, you know, is this a Yankees season, a disaster? And then they win the next game, and you're like, never mind. It's all even down. It can be very hard on the ground to write about the three-game wildcard series as well,

because whatever trend you feel like you noticed in game one, if you need even sort of like one more data point for that, it could be all, the whole series could be over the next day and it could be rendered and rendered moot. So we're missing, I'm realizing that it really, behooves you to have a West Coast correspondent because I'm watching as much of these games as I can, which means that I am predominantly watching the less interesting matchups during the day, then I am having to do bedtime and dinner for the baby at some point during the Yankees Red Sox, and then I am falling asleep at some point during the Dodgers games at night.

And I'm doing the opposite. So this kind of works because I have a day job. And so I do not see much of the Guardian series or the Cubs Padres series but I've been intently watching the Red Sox Yankees and the Dodgers Reds so I was up all the way through the end with the Roki Sasaki inning last

night we can I imagine we'll talk about the strategy at some point Oh yeah Yeah so I've been kind of doing the opposite I watched But the three game series is weird because I watched Game 1 of the Yankee series with a friend Who's a really big Yankees fan and I left that and it was like well their season's over

or like that was the feeling in the room. Yeah. And then, you know, it did all change the next day. Pretty much for all the same reasons, it didn't work Monday or in game one, it worked the next day. I was doing, I do some S&Y, and I was doing S&Y during game one of the Yankees game. And I realized, like, right before we went on there, I was like, well, no one is going to be watching us, huh?

And they were like, no, definitely not. So we had a monitor in the studio. We were turning on the Yankees. game during commercial breaks and had the producers in our ears giving us updates while we were talking. So that has been a fantastic series. It's only two games, but fantastic. Yeah. And it's some of these series if they end quickly, then I feel almost silly for the big buildup to that. It's just like the NL Wildcard race, so consequential. We're tracking this for weeks and weeks and weeks and we'll be the Mets, we'll be the Reds, we'll be the divebacks. And then the Reds just

managed to pull it out on the last day of the season, and they're already gone. That's the end. That's the resolution of that whole race. You never know if it would have happened the same way if one of those other teams had won. But the Dodgers for all the fretting about their bullpen, which, you know, that part at least has continued to look vulnerable in the first two games, but they very quickly dispatched Cincinnati. And we would have liked to talk about the Reds. I know we have a long running bit on this podcast about not talking about the Reds. We were we were willing. In fact, we sort of sang their praises last time we were talking about, oh, you wouldn't want to face the Reds. Look at this rotation. Oh, Hunter Green. Oh, boy,

this could be possible upset, and maybe the Dodgers would have rather face the Mets. And no, it's over. And it wasn't particularly closer contentious. So, yeah, they took care of business quickly. I feel that way a little bit, though, about the Guardians' Tigers series, where it was like this huge tigers collapse and the Guardian's surge. And the result is they're just playing each other in the same series. understand that the guardians are at home, but, like, I tend not to get to fuss about, like, oh, are the division winners getting enough of an advantage in a wildcard world? But that has provided some fodder for the, like, maybe there should be, well, really, there should be two wildcards.

Like, the idea that the tigers got overtaken by the guardians, but it sort of doesn't matter, that bothers me. Does that bother either of you? Yes, except, well, it might matter, I guess. Well, it matters that the Guardians made the playoffs, and really the outcome of this day, I think, determines how much it matters, almost in retrospect. Right, yeah. I've talked about the thing that we're not going to be able to know. Right. Yeah. If the guardians lose, then the fact that they came back to win the division and make the playoffs is just kind of a – it's a fun fact that they had the biggest comeback ever, but ultimately it doesn't amount to that much. And then if the Tigers just win anyway, it will be as if they had won the division.

So I think that is still sort of to be decided just how much. But I understand what you mean that it felt like last week we were watching a playoff matchup, more or less, between these two teams. And then the outcome is that we get to watch another one, exactly one week later. But it's fun. And it's kind of like who will hit worse in this series, and that will ultimately determine who wins it. But by the time people are hearing this, that will be decided or about to be in that Dodgers series. So we were deprived of a Shohei Otani pitching appearance in this series, though we've got one coming up on Saturday with Otani versus Christopher Sanchez, which is quite a way to kick off that NLDS. But we got some other impressive pitching performances.

We got some impressive Otani offensive fireworks. And, yes, we got Roki Sasaki continuing to look like the answer for the Dodgers late in the game, which is sort of surprising that he could come back and immediately. look that good in that role. And if the Dodgers do just sail to a repeat and defend their titles successfully and everyone is fretting about whether they have broken baseball, then I guess that will be part of the pile of ammunition that actually getting Roki Sasaki did matter in the end because he turned into an October bullpen weapon. But you alluded to it, Zach, the big news here bearing the lead, at least for effectively wild, is that Dave Roberts did use quote-unquote strategy. Again, this is, of course, the decade-old talking point on this podcast of mid-plate

appearance pitching changes, bringing in someone to replace someone else in the middle of a plate appearance, specifically in this kind of context, where Alex Vescia came in to replace Emmett Sheehan with a one-two count. And that's when it really does count, I think, because if someone is just losing it and goes down 3-0 or something and you just have to get him out of there before something worse happens, I don't know if that's quite strategy. And it's not strategy if someone gets hurt in the middle of a played appearance in you. It has to be a tactical move to try to flummox the batter. And Dave Roberts is really the one guy since we've been talking about this ad nauseum who has actually done it in a big league game because he did this last July. And we talked about it on episode 2187. This was sort of originated by Joe Girardi 10 years ago now, where he did it in 2015 with Dellen Batanzas, and then famously in effectively wild lore, just justified it by saying strategy and refused to explain any more about why he had done that. But I subsequently wrote about it and dug into it, and it actually happens quite often in college baseball. And it is very much within the rules, which surprises some people every time they see it. They just don't know that you can do this, especially in a three-batter minimum era.

I think people are always sort of surprised. Wait, you can make a mid-plate appearance pitching change? Yeah, you can. And Dave Roberts did it again here with Vescia. And I guess it worked, kind of. I think it worked. He got the one-pitch strikeout. And actually, there was a pinch-hitting appearance here, right?

So there was a counter to the strategy where a pinch-hitter came in. But I don't think that invalidates the utility. of strategy because then you've got someone who's cold and, you know, there's a pinch hitter penalty and there might be a mid-plate appearance pinch hitter penalty that's even worse than the regular one, who knows? So I think this was another proof of concept. And if you're Dave Robertson, you don't know what to do with your bullpen, then you might as well do strategy. So I'm glad you invoked that, Zach. Did you enjoy seeing this happen? Yeah, I think my favorite thing about this, which I feel like the effectively wild audience is like the audience that saw this anyway,

but it wound up that Alex Vesia struck out Will Benson, even though that was not a matchup that ever occurred on the field. But in the stats that Alex Vessia struck out Will Benson. So I don't know how often that has happened in Major League history. I'm sure it's happened mostly because of injuries, but we can add it to the strategy logbook now that it occurred. Yeah, and then I guess, I don't know whether strategy is just judged, whether the successive strategy is judged by what happens in that plate appearance and that played appearance alone. Because it was partially, I guess, because Sheehan had gotten into trouble in that inning.

So if you want to say it was sort of a desperation thing, I guess you could have because the bases were loaded, right? I forget exactly the play-by-play, but it was like Gavin Lux had done. singled, right? And then Austin Hayes walked, and then Sal Stewart singled. So it was and then there was a wild pitch, I think, because Lux had scored. Yeah, then there was a wild pitch. Oh, and then Ellie walked too. And then there was a sack fly. So Sheehan was looking shaky. But he did get up one, two in that plate appearance. Vesia came in, struck out Benson. And then after that, Matt McLean walked. So it was a little shaky, but then T. J. Friedel struck out and Vesia got out of it without any further damage done.

So Dave Roberts seems to be the guy who will actually implement strategy in the majors these days. And I appreciate that for him, but probably easier if he can't just bring in Roki and just blow everyone away. And I will be curious to see how he handles that and also Kershaw, potential Kershaw appearances and just sort of the bullpen hierarchy there because the high leverage arms have been among the worst. and they've kind of had to rebuild that on the fly. So that'll obviously be an ongoing storyline in the NLDS, but we will see. Hannah, one thing I wanted to ask you, so as we've been having our hands full with baseball here and trying to decide how to apportion our time, there are some teams that are not playing this week that will be playing as of this weekend.

And of course, there's been so much discussion of the buy and whether it's good or bad and whether it makes you rusty. And you wrote about this a little bit for the ringer last year when you wrote about the Phillies and how they had a buy and how they were handling that. And that seemed to be something that you were kind of fascinated by, just like what teams are doing or doing differently to stay prepared but not tire themselves out. And we've seen some of that this week, too, where the Phillies had a split squad scrimmage, which was well attended. I mean, they charged admission. They had fans come. There were like 30,000 plus people there, I think, right?

And then the Mariners also did this with Ichiro. With Ichero. I think that Ichero playing in the split squad Mariners game, like if I was on staff somewhere and could travel to any game, I think that's the one I would have most wanted to see. It was the Mariners split squad game with Ichero playing in the outfield. Yes. We're actually going to have later this week,

I guess tomorrow, because it's the only day left in this week. Dan McQuaid of Defector was at the Philly Scrimmage game, and he asked me if he could write something, a little something for bandwagon about the experience. And Dan has even better Philly bona fides than I do. So I said absolutely. And he actually just sent it to me. So as soon as we're done, I'm excited to read it.

Yeah, I'm really interested in this because it's, I'm always interested in rule changes that introduce uncertainty. We're going to get a big one next year that allows teams to kind of take their approach in different directions. And then, you know, because by virtue of teams going in different directions, you get different results. And then at what point do other teams think that the results everyone's getting are sort of significant enough to try to conform to whatever's worked best versus just being sort of small sample size noise? So I've been really interested, like, since we got the buy system in how different teams would approach it, because you kind of only get

one crack at each year. And you only get one crack at it if you were good enough to get the buy. Like, you get the buy you get to be like all right what do we think is the best way to approach this week and then whatever happens happens and then you've got to wait 12 months win your division again to be like we actually don't like what we did last year let's try something different this year or do you run it back and say you know that was only a data set of one we still think that what we did last year was the right way to do it so i've just been really interested in kind of in how teams yeah i really enjoyed last year talking to the Phillies about that somebody texted me about the fact that the Phillies went so sort of realistic with this interest squad game that

they even had the Yohan Duran entrance video playing. And they thought that that was kind of eyewashed. That was like a bridge too far in approximating a real stressful game. And I was like, if you're going to approximate it, you've got to approximate it. Yeah. So I should have gone. I thought about it. I told them I was going to come. And then they didn't have that much media availability. So I didn't bother going. There's some risk to it, especially just the more life like you make it because someone could get hurt, someone could pull a muscle or something. And then maybe that backfires, but I do understand why there might be some use in sort of staying ready like that. It's not all teams are handling it the same way. As you said,

it doesn't seem like every team, you know, they're doing workouts or they're practicing or you always have some trajectory arc or some fancy pitching machine you can train on. But yeah, how do you navigate that injury risk or just everyone's a bit banged up at this time of year? And so actually just not playing might be beneficial in some cases. It is really interesting. And like you said, there's no way to know whether you did it right. It's almost like analyzing elections or something after the fact where we know what happened, but you only get one every however many years and how many conclusions can you draw from that, really.

Echro, being in right field, just was charming regardless. And so I love the fact that he's having this baseball afterlife where he just hangs around, you know. he's just there, he's in uniform, he'll just show up at like a girls high school game or something in Japan, like he'll just be there. He loves the game. He loves being around it. And everyone loves having him around too, which is the other thing. Because sometimes you get a situation where someone just like awkwardly won't leave. And it's like, your time is over. Like make room for the next generation. I think I've mentioned this before. But I kind of did this after I graduated from grammar school, as I call it, or elementary school, as many people would, or maybe even middle

school. But I went to the same school from, like, nursery to eighth grade. And so I kind of had trouble adjusting because I'd been there for so long and had been with the same classmates forever. And then all of a sudden, I went to high school and it was just a different place. But it was only a few blocks away. And so while I was still sort of psychologically transitioning to this new school, I would just go back to my grammar school after school. And obviously, none of my friends were there, but my teachers were, including some teachers I was pretty close to. And I would just, like, show up and lounge around. And I don't know whether they thought this was weird or not. They didn't say so. They didn't, like, push me out of the nest, but I probably needed to be

pushed at a certain point. But it's not like that with Eitro. It's not like, oh, poor Eitro. Like, he can't let go of his former glory. He can't move into his post-baseball life. It's just like, he chose here. This is so awesome. And, you know, and also he, like, looks the same because he just keeps himself so fit that he just fills out the uniform the same way that he always did. And everyone just seems charmed and delighted by having him here. So there's none of that. He has a really charming relationship with Julio. I mean, he's around, like, he's, he's around baseball, but he's specifically around the Mariners. He's in spring training a lot. I mean, it's, I think that is part of what makes it really charming is just the relationship he has with one particular fan base, one particular team, and then even like one particular sort of superstar, this idea that like, it's like if you went back to your elementary school, but you had like a little brother who was there. And like everyone was like, that's so sweet. You're like, you're the like cool older brother hanging out. Yeah. Not sure your younger brother would like that. I'm an only child, but you have an actual younger brother. So you might know. But thank you.

Yeah, I feel like they would not like that. Maybe not. Maybe Julio's like, hey, man, this is in my outfield now. Yeah, right. The whole time we were talking about this, I just thought about how it feels like one of the awkward ones was Albert Pooleholes where it's like, hey, man, why don't you just retire with the angels? And obviously, that took a turn afterward for the positive. But I don't know. If you do it long enough, they might make you the principal, I guess, in this analogy, since they want to hire them to be the manager, apparently. I mean, you know, so there might be benefits to just showing your dedication.

It's possible. Yeah, no, how can anyone resent the presence of Etro? I think this is a unique case where no one's like, why won't you leave? It's time to move on already. And plus, he's probably imparting wisdom and, you know. I do wonder, like, is his wife, like, let's retire? Yeah, I don't know. I always wonder.

I wonder that about sort of all baseball players who fail at retirement, who their retirement rebounds and back to them into baseball. Yeah. It was like, what, you weren't having fun at home? That sounds so nice to be at home. Yeah, it's true. Yeah, this, that life can be tough on romantic relationships for any number of reasons, but probably the primary reason is that you're just away so often.

And I imagine that probably a lot of baseball guys get through that by promising basically like, you know, I'll be done. I'll be basically retired by the time I'm 40 or whatever, and then we'll be together forever. and will be set for life and we won't have to do anything, but then a quite high percentage of them can't let go of the game. And so they end up, and even if you're a coach or whatever, you're doing the same thing. Like, you're traveling just as much as you were

and maybe even in less glamorous conditions with a lower salary, or if you go into a front office role and become a GM or something, then you're probably even busier than you were before. So, yeah, I imagine there's some baseball spouses who are like, I thought that I just had to stick it out until this time. But no, it turns out this will actually never end. We're so far afield of the playoff right now. But I feel that way so strongly about Buster Posey.

Like, wherever he took 20-20 off to be with his kids, he's got twins, he's got four kids. They all have, like, between them, they have like three names. Their names are all very similar, which I, it's a strange choice as a parent because I find it hard to, like, not say my cat's name sometimes when calling my son. And then I thought that was an indication of sort of desire to, you know, treat baseball like the job that it is and then move on from it so quickly. And then since he's gotten into, I do kind of want to talk about the like Buster Posey, man, as this is, he's now, we should call him Gerald now. That's his real name because as a GM or a Pobo, is he a GM or a Pobo, do we know? I think he's a Pobo. Oh, well, as he's Buster Pobo.

Buster, right. He Buster to Posey. He is so much less cute and cuddly. Like, did you see his Bruce Bochy comments? He was kind of like, kick rocks old, man. We don't need that. I think it all harsher in text version than in reality. Yeah, as a manager, he, you know, extended an invite in some capacity, right? He wasn't like, no, we want no part of him anymore.

But, you know, he did kind of throw some cold water on the idea. Because a lot of people were speculating, oh, Buster will get his old, his old, I just think he's come off as so dispassionate and frequently to the to the Giants benefit, although not enough this year. But I just like the, Ben, you've written about the retrend of players becoming front office executives. And I think people expect them to kind of be like more touchy-feely, more less analytical. And maybe they're less analytical. But between him and Chris Young, C-Y in Texas, Craig Breslo. And Craig Breslo, they're very competitive.

They're very, like, ruthless in their approach. And they do just sort of speak, like most other baseball front office executive speak, which is sort of surprising, too. Yeah, I do want to talk about some of the turnover or non-turnover that we've seen this week. I guess maybe the last playoff thing I wanted to bring up, Zach, you were watching Game 1, Yankees Red Sox, you said, and the vibes were bad among Yankees fans, as they often are, frankly. And especially in this game, I think people were ready to come for Aaron Boone

and run him out of town on a rail and tar and feather him. The pitchforks were out because specifically, I guess, the sin in this game was that he benched a bunch of lefties. And Garrett Crochet was pitching for the Red Sox, who was not just a normal lefty, but among the best.

and just absolutely eats lefties alive. And so Aaron Boone decided to sit some of his lefties. And that was kind of controversial at the time because some of those hitters are the best hitters on the team. And then maybe became more controversial in retrospect because those guys were in the lineup in game two and mostly contributed in pretty important ways. And on the one hand,

I think this is sort of overblown in the way that a lot of criticism of Aaron Boone seems to be to me, and that it's like, the man didn't invent platooning. Like, we're angry at Aaron Boone for platooning now. That's something that previous legendary Yankees managers are famous for. Is this something that you blame him for? Like, do you think he specifically made mistakes there? It was kind of like the, oh, analytics run amok.

Like, we're benching our good players as if analytics, which is always a very nebulous term, is just like platoon splits, I guess, is analytics now. And if it's on anyone, like, is it on Aaron Boone or is it on Cashman? And, you know, Yankees fans, to be clear, are quite happy to come for Cashman as well. But, like, if they just don't have great right-handed options, then I guess the question is, do you go with your left-handed options, even if they're the better players, even if they are going to be worse against Gare Crochet? And then, like, whose fault is it? Is it Boone's fault for not having better options available? Yeah, I thought it wasn't interesting.

I kind of do blame someone. I don't know if I blame Aaron Boone or the front office. I think it was too much, right? I think if you look at this from an analytics lens, if we want to talk about it that way, the analytics would also say that, like, Ahmed Rosario's six hits against Garrett Crochet might not be the leading, like might not overwhelm the fact that he is just overall a worse player than Jazz Chisholm

and pretty much every other possible way. And in this key playoff game, do you want to, you know, risk that in all the ways? Like, I mean, I thought even the play that Jazz Chisholm made against Masa Taki Yoshida in game two was like a carbon copy of the play that Yoshida basically won the game on in game one, and it's sort of tough to, I don't know, I thought it was a little too much. If you want to sit Ben Rice for Goldschmidt, that kind of makes sense to me for a little bit. the infield triumvirate of Ahmed Rezario, Jose Caballero, and Anthony Volpe, obviously

Volpe hit a home run, so what do I know? In both of these games, where did that come from? It leaves something to be desired even when you're just looking at it that way, and it became apparent somewhere in the middle of the game to like, oh, you might not ever get to a right-hander. You know, Crochet is pitching so well that you're just not going to get to a right-handed pitcher. I think at that point, they had to perhaps it might have been better of air and and Boone moved better. Maybe it moved faster.

Maybe it doesn't make any difference. But I think particularly bringing in Jazz Chisholm as a defensive replacement when his, I think his spot in the order was eight batters away, that was the thing. I was like, I don't know if he gets what he's trying to do here. Right. Yeah, I think that substitution maybe bothered me more than not starting jazz in the first place. Because, yeah, like, jazz is a better player than Rosario, but against lefties, not necessarily. Not that much.

Yeah, maybe not at all. I mean, you don't even have to look at the, that. a head-to-head versus crochet, a tiny sample. You can look at a bigger sample, and, like, Rosario Career versus Lefties has an 800 OPS. He's actually a pretty good player against Lefties and Jazz Career 665 OPS. And, you know, we know platoon splits need to be regressed and all that,

but not tiny samples. So I think you could make the case that it actually was your better of lineup with Goldschmidt, with Rosario, et cetera. But then, yeah, when he put Chisholm in for defense, That was after the seventh and took out Rosario, and that gives you another left-handed batter with Chapman looming. And so then Chisholm ends up facing Chapman with the bases loaded and won out in the ninth and flies out as the Yankees squandered that opportunity there. So it was almost like if he had decided on that course, he should have stuck to his guns all the way. Because if you're going to not start jazz because you think he can't handle lefties as well, you kind of have to forecast that he might have.

end up in a big spot against an equally difficult lefty in an even higher leverage moment. But, but yeah, you could, you could fault, you know, they had the same issue last year, really, where in the World Series, it's like Jose Trevino is up in a big spot because they just didn't really have a good bench option from the right side. And, you know, a lot of teams have weak benches these days and bullpens are so big and everything. But you could fault the Yankees because they are the Yankees. And they don't have to scrimp and save and cut corners. And so if they don't have a great bench option, and, you know, you could say maybe

they should have carried Austin Slater on the roster. They have, like, Jason Dominguez in there and J.C. Ascara and these guys who may not played or kind of like emergency options. And so maybe it's helpful to have Slater there. I do think Boone gets more abuse than he deserves, given just the Yankees' general success against him. There is this prevailing idea that even if there's... pretty good under Boone. They'll never be good enough. They'll never go all the way because

he will inevitably make some massive mistake. And, you know, sometimes he does. The Nestor Cortez decision still flummoxes me from last year. But it's weird because, and, you know, he takes all this abuse also for pulling Max Fried when he did, which seemed to me to be kind of a standard decision. Yeah, yeah. That seemed very down the line of what most managers would do in that situation. And And Freed's not, has never been a complete game-to-style workhorse. He's not a huge guy. Like, no one has ever thought, oh, Max Fried should go eight here. Yeah, he wasn't even really dominant in that game.

He was in trouble. And, yeah, he'd lost velocity, too. Like, he was starting to lose speed, and the Red Sox had a bunch of righties and switch hitters coming up. Like, that was an obvious push-button move. And obviously, it's going to look bad when you bring in Weaver. and then immediately he walks Sadan Rafael, which isn't that easy to do after he falls behind O and two, and then there's a double, and then there's a single, and then everything is falling off the rails. And so the manager's always going to get blamed for that by some contingent of the fan base, I guess,

and the New York Post back page, just because when you have a starter who hasn't allowed runs, and then your relievers do, even if Weaver was like the hero, the revelation of last year's postseason. So that was kind of unsurprising, but a cheap shot. You could kind of fault him for some other decisions. But as usual, with Boone, I think it tends to be a bit blown out of proportion. I actually wrote about this a little bit in the bandwagon that we just had published about the idea of like, you can always sort of blame the manager because he did make the decision, but it's so hard.

I sort of wrote about this idea, like, we don't have expected stats for managers. So you're always just like, you're always going off. results and not process. And we're obviously talking about the process now, but I think it's just impossible for people to separate in their head the process from the results. And it's impossible for them to see, I don't know, it feels like this whole season and we have, what, eight managerial opening. So now this off season is a little bit of a referendum on like, do managers matter at all? Like there was the Dave Martinez quotes and the nationals. It's like, are they making any difference? Because it feels like they're making no difference on the like grand scheme of things.

But then on these individual games, we're so inclined to lay perhaps an undue amount of blame at their feet because you can see how the individual decisions played out in a way that gets kind of erased by the big picture. And it obviously seems like it comes down to the players and the roster construction when you're looking at like a wide lens view. So I'm just kind of interested. I'm really interested in this way of like Aaron Boone both is to blame, but also we don't really know what history. process was or like and we can ask him about it but he doesn't really give particularly satisfying or like illuminating answers we also like can't see the effort like it's really it's like you can see luke weaver like you know that luke weaver is like trying to make a good pitch and trying to get through the inning in a way that i think people don't extend that same grace to the manager

they don't think he's like trying to get it right even though he quite obviously is like even when he is getting it wrong. Like it's in the same way that I guess we do this with players too. It's like people give them a lot more grief for mental errors than for physical errors and everything that the manager is doing is a mental error. So we feel sort of more justified in saying like, you idiot, why would you do that in a way that like we're not going to be like, well, I guess Luke Weaver's an idiot because he gave up runs and walks.

So I just, I find that to be so interesting. And it's like, it's obviously so magnified in the postseason. It's extra magnified in New York that. I now can't watch a Yankees game, as is what I said in bandwagon. Like, when he took Max Freed out, I was, all I could think about is, is Aaron Boone thinking about his postgame press conference? Like, is he like practicing the answers in his head when, when Luke Weaver is blowing the game?

Like, because he must know that that's what he's like, oh, shoot, now they're going to ask about this. And like, and then the next day when he, when he leaves in Rodin and it like started to look like I was like, oh, no, he's thinking about it again. He's probably just thinking about it. He's just watching Rodan throw ball after ball to open the seventh inning. Just like, oh, no, each one of these is making my post game. But maybe that is a joke, but also a genuine question.

Like, is, is, do you think, do you think Aaron Boone thinks about his post-bate game press conference when these moves backfire? I wouldn't blame him if he does. That's not like a value judgment. That's not like a, he's not like focused on the game. he's just thinking about his reputation. It just feels like it would be hard not to. Do you think he's thinking about the bonus game press conference? I think probably most managers are on some level.

There's some risk aversion there, probably. There's some kind of cover your ass if I make this move and it backfire. You don't want that to come into play, and I would hope that it's not ultimately the determining factor. But I think it has been, in many cases historically, where you make the move that will get you criticize less or it's just more defensible. but I don't know, maybe Aaron Boone's just used to it at this point and has a thicker skin or knows that he can't really win with Yankees fans. Like even if they win the World Series, it feels like most Yankees fans would think it was in spite of Boone, not because of him. It's a really, it's a fraught thing.

I guess this kind of relates to our Pujol's discussion and the Eitro discussion. Like, this is a good move for Eichro to be in these low-stakes positions. Because he's beloved, he's a franchise icon, he can. can do no wrong. If Ichero became the Mariners manager, probably the first time he made some bullpen move that backfired, people would be like, Yichro, are we sure about this guy? I don't know. So you can really just, because Aaron Boone was Yankees' legend, Yankees hero, gave me my best memory ever as a fan with that home run. And now, you know, that has been completely supplanted in the minds of most Yankees fans by these perceived or actual managerial sins.

and failures. So it's a good way to squander all that goodwill. You can squander the goodwill, even if you gained it as a manager. I feel that way sort of about Brian Snicker stepping away. I like Snicker a lot and really respect and admire his career. Every time I go to a minor league stadium, or actually not a minor league stadium, a minor league, you know, like a stadium but below minor league stadium where there's not like a real stadium, it's just like a field. Every time I go to a minor league field, I think man, Brian Snicker loves baseball so much more than I do because I simply wouldn't, I would have quit. I would have quit decades ago if I had to toil in the minors for as long as he did.

But it struck me the couple of times this season that I saw the Braves who were having a disappointing season. But the, I felt like a lot of, even just seeing them when they would come to New York or come to Philly, it felt like there was like animosity toward, from the fan base towards Snicker in this sense of like this old man is, Well, some of that was pretty pointed with like the Acuna stuff. Yeah. But like, and he, he, there's no reason for him to not be beloved by that or by that fan base on a grand scale. But you're right. Then they have one disappointing season. And it feels like he squanders a lot of that goodwill right before he retires. Yeah. You got to walk away on top. That's the only way. I think it's, it's like that you either die a hero or you live long enough to become the villain. I think that applies to managers. Maybe there's then a cooling off period. And you can forget a. out the most recent missteps, and you can remember the good times after you go away for a while.

But no, just come back as the spring training instructor slash right fielder in split squad's postseason warm-up scrimmage games. And then no one will ever be mad at you. Ichero can't be the manager because he wouldn't have enough time to work out is the main reason. Well, Gabe Kapler did it, so I don't know. That's true. And he wasn't a very good manager. Maybe.

Should have spent less time working out. Yeah. kudos to YouTube, by the way. I received the fresh edition of the bandwagon 13 minutes ago in my inbox, which is a disorienting experience to receive an email from the two people you are currently podcast. I'm going to assume that you just had that scheduled for 947 AM for some reason and that you weren't somehow actively writing the bandwagon as we were podcasting the bandwagon. We were struggling to get all the pictures in. Yeah. There was a gift that was fixed. I see. But other than that, no one was actively writing the bandwagon. bandwagon. I'm sure it would not be the first time that other work was done while this podcast was being conducted. Anyway, it feels like Boone has, he's kind of a mix of like, you know, he blows up constantly

in games, but then weirdly doesn't show enough passion after the games. It's like if he could find a middle ground where maybe he just blew his top a little less often when he was actually in the game, but then, you know, showed a little more passion perhaps after the game, maybe that would resonate a bit better. with fans. I don't know. I think he sort of salted the earth at this point. A good point about him thinking about the press conference. It seems like he was hired because he would be good at the press conference and it's hard to separate that from everything else about him. Yeah. And there's an element of he's too good at the press conference and it seems

like he's hiding something or, you know, he's hiding what he actually thinks. And he feels like a great candidate to have like they should expand the MLB coaching lexicon. just a little bit more. I think about this with beleaguered football coaches sometimes will tell you like, oh, he's giving up play calling duties

or he's got a coach who's in charge of telling him when to call timeout in the last two minutes, which seems like kind of the whole point of his job.

But I want to see a baseball team be like, we have appointed someone else to decide when to go to the ballpen. We're letting Boone continue managing in terms of doing the press conferences.

Aaron will be delegating that responsibility and he will be deferred. questions at the press conference, but he will be the raw, raw figure head leader. I just want to see how that goes. I don't think it would go well, but I want to see how it goes. Yeah, it's kind of like the Key and Peel Obama Anger Translator sketch, sort of, where it's like, he's both of them, though, in the sketch.

Like, he's the, you know, calm, cool, collected Obama after the game, but then he's like the angry Obama during the game, and maybe he just needs to blend both of them in some way. but I don't know. Maybe it wouldn't really help at this stage. Or maybe this is the point. Maybe this is why he has such job security. He takes the blame. He's the guy. He's the punching bag. Not that it's saved Brian Cashman from being a target, too. But it does take a little bit of the focus off the players, maybe, because everyone's so upset about Aaron Boone all the time that, you know, they're not giving players as hard a time. Like, he's just. I might be mad at Luke Weaver. He's such a fun, silly guy. Right. It seems like you could shove him in a locker. The vibe he gives off. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, last thing on the wildcards, Mason Miller pitched, and he was impressive, which is nothing new. He's Mason Miller. So maybe some of this is just like a national audience discovering Mason Miller for the first time, perhaps, on this stage. But also, he was good, even by Mason Miller standards. as you noted in the bandwagon, which I have skimmed while podcasting. Wow.

That's even more impressive. Adrian Morehoen may be the more important reliever, the most valuable reliever in this bullpen. But he's not quite as visually impressive, quite as sexy this stuff as Mason Miller, who set a couple records here. First, he became the first big leaguer to strike out the first eight batters faced in his postseason career, which is really announcing your presence with authority. And then also, he threw a pitch 104.5 miles per hour, which is not only his hardest pitch ever, and that's saying something when you're talking about Mason Miller,

but the fastest tracked pitch in the postseason ever. And that pitch, so two things about it. I mean, first of all, it was totally nasty because it wasn't just the speed. It was also the location, which was just pinpoint on the corner of the plate. and Carson Kelly just went down looking at it because what else could you do, really?

And some people were hyping this up as maybe the best pitch ever thrown. So I don't know. Yeah, I have no idea what to do with that. Oh, yeah, it's like right on the corner. I'm watching it now. Yeah, it's pinpoint. It's pretty.

And Brett Anderson, former Big League pitcher, he tweeted this is arguably the best pitch ever thrown by a human being. He did caveat by a human being. So I guess he's not including pitching machines and or alien. or other species, I don't know. But best pitch ever by a human being,

I was trying to figure out, like, how would you quantify that? How would you determine that? Obviously, it's, you know, he probably wasn't thinking of it as something serious that you could actually determine in any objective way, but how could you even?

Because hard to argue. I don't know. You might have to employ robots. Could you get the trajectory? I don't actually know. Even though we wrote about trajectory, we did a big feature of this together at you. but like can you program trajectory throw like that exact pitch and then have just like every we got to have every batter face it yeah and see like of a hundred views how many times can they make contact kind of like that seems to be you're basically your speed running expected like whiff rate or something is exactly what you're trying to do yeah if you could simulate it so if we had the batter equivalent of the trajectory arc where we had robot battered

then we could just have the two trajects face off each other because neither one would get tired and they could just throw this pitch and try to hit it over and over and over again. Well, and then you'd need to, of course, you'd need to, because you couldn't even do it against the same batter over and over because then they would learn. They would know what was coming.

Yeah, so you'd need it to be for the first time every time. Of course, you could probably quantify this in some way with some sort of stuff-based model that takes into account the speed and the movement and the angle and the location and all of that, I assume that you could get pitching bod or stuff plus on a per pitch basis and just say, like, you know,

did this have the highest expected run value or whatever? I don't know if that would satisfy anyone because a large part of this response was about the just visual impressiveness of the pitch, the aesthetics of it. And good pitches don't always look like good pitches. Sometimes there's an element of deception there or sequencing or whatever, but this one just...

Well, often there's an element of deception or sequencing, which is sort of what my thought is, is it's, right, it's like, how many other pitches are there even in the running for, like, best pitch in a vacuum? Because there aren't any, that many other 104 mile an hour pitches. Like, there does have to be some sort of, like, standalone property to it that is impressive because it's not so much about the sequencing when you, when you watch the abat. Another theme of this postseason, though, it feels like already two days in, is guys hitting, new velocity heights because of the postseason adrenaline. I'm sure we get

that to some extent every year, but it feels like we've gotten a lot of that. Like, if you skim bandwagon, I feel like we mentioned this several times just in the bandwagon of like, oh my gosh, Garrett Crochet is still throwing really hard late in the game and Tarek Scouble still throwing really hard late in the game. That guys were really, you could

see on the radar gun the stakes, which I think it's probably always true a little bit, but felt especially true, in part because everybody, you know, lines up their aces to go these first two days of the postseason. So, yeah, I thought that, like, I would love to know, maybe someone has already done this. Have you seen this, Ben Orzac, like, peak velocity in by postseason? Are we at a new peak for, like, peak average? Yeah, I was going to say, I remember an Enosaris piece from some years ago where he wrote about how there is like a lower standard deviation of velocity in the postseason. Like guys are just closer to their max effort all the time, which makes sense. I don't know if that's less pronounced now because just all pitchers are throwing max effort pretty much all the time, even during the regular season.

But that has historically been something. You're going to face more speed in the postseason just because the pitchers are better. too. Like, you're just going to have better pitching teams and better pitching teams are often going to be harder throwing teams. So you're seeing nastier stuff, but also, yeah, guys are reaching back for a little extra throwing as hard as they can. And that was one of the things I was going to ask about this. Like, is it surprising that the fastest postseason pitch is not the fastest pitch, period? Because I actually would have expected that, yeah, it is, right? I mean, the samples are obviously smaller. Like, there are many fewer postseason pitch.

pitches than regular season pitches. But that doesn't matter that much when you're talking about individual pitch speeds. Like, you know, it's not really a sample-sized thing so much. It's just, you know, takes one pitch to throw the fastest pitch. And often you are getting the best pitchers and the hardest throwing pitchers in the postseason. Like I'm searching on baseball savant right now for the fastest pitches thrown in the regular season or postseason. And Miller's pitch here is the 30 second fastest pitch on record. I don't know whether at fan graphs, when you have a tie in a leaderboard, there is actually under the hood.

It goes out to more decimal places, and that does actually reflect the ordinal ranking of those things. I don't know whether that's true on baseball savant or not. So maybe it's a multi-way tie. But either way, there have been 29 pitches tracked at 104.6 or faster. Oh, my goodness. And they're from Chapman and Duran and Ben Joyce. and Jordan Hicks, and these guys have pitched in the postseason.

Obviously, we've seen plenty of Aroldus in October and some of these other guys, too. So, yeah, it does sort of surprise me that the fastest pitch is not a postseason pitch. And those are not, those pitches from those other guys are not in the postseason. No, we know that for sure. Okay. Yes, yeah, that is surprising. I mean, there are, you know, there are regular season matchups that have a lot of stakes, too. And maybe, you know, we guys talk about a postseason atmosphere sometimes in the regular season.

So maybe it was one of those. But that is, that is surprising just because I think if you were, if you, like, if your introduction to baseball was this season and then you watch these last two games, you would be like, oh, my God, everybody, the pitchers just get even better in the post season. Because they do, it's, they're pitching longer, they're pitching faster, and they're pitching faster longer. This is not to dunk on the reds again, but, uh, You know, when Chapman was throwing his absolute hardest, which I don't remember if this is still true. I think he had the fastest pitch ever for a long time, but I think that fastest pitch came when he was with the Reds, and they were very much not in the postseason at the time. 2010, the fastest pitch on record, 105.8. And this is, of course, like this was pre-Hawkeye and the multiple versions of Hawkeye, and so this is like Trackman or whatever, and, you know, there's enough inconsistency and differences in calibration and everything.

that you can't really take it as gospel. But, yeah, that's a good illustration of this, is that Chapman in 2010, he threw pitches 105.8, but in the postseason, so the previous... They actually did make it that year, but... Yes, and the fastest postseason pitch before Mason Miller's 104.5 was Chapman's 104.2 in 2010, NLDS game three.

So even Chapman was not throwing his hardest pitches that year. I guess you could say, like, you know, some pitchers are going to be tired and worn down by the time you get to October, so maybe that's part of it, is that you just don't have that top speeds at that point, but it does still somewhat surprise me. Well, maybe that's why these last two days have really stood out to me is because I think probably that becomes more of a factor over the course of October, and so that doesn't explain why we don't have more the fastest pitch in the postseason. But the velocity of the last

two days really, really stood out to me. And maybe that's because by the time we get to the World Series, it really feels like everyone's, like, running on gas. And you're not necessarily seeing the best pitches, even if you're seeing the best pitchers. And so these last couple of days, it felt like, oh, my gosh, all of these pictures are so good. Well, we will continue to monitor this and cover it as best we can. And we can do some series preview next time. And I think the only thing that stood out to me that I wanted to mention that I mentioned in a ringer piece, but not on the podcast. We were talking about how it just, you know, it seems like there's no consensus favorite,

and it's very open, even more so than it typically is in the postseason. And one illustration of that was there were, according to five different sources I checked before the postseason started, there were five different favorites. So, like, Fangraphs had the Mariners as the favorite to win the World Series. Baseball prospectus had the Blue Jays. Neil Payne, also on Substack, who has his own model and projections, based on ELO ratings, had the Brewers as the top team. Polymarket had the Dodgers and Fandul had the Phillies.

So five different teams and all fairly defensible. Like, you know, looking at that, I could kind of buy it for just about any one of them that, yeah, I guess I could see that maybe they're actually the favorites, whether through some combination of the strength of their roster, how good they were this season, whether they have a buy or not. So I like that. I like that that's the case that it does still feel like there's some uncertainty. I don't know whether the Dodgers' dominant performance over the Reds has made people say, oh, actually, yeah, maybe we sort of slept on the Dodgers or they slept on themselves. I don't know. I've heard a lot of talk about just how impressive the pitching performances have been this postseason.

And that's true, but I don't know if that's unusual because you're going to get your aces going in the first couple postseason games. You're going to get Terrick Scoobal, and you're going to get a cursive. and, you know, Snell and Yamamoto and all these guys. So, like, how bad could it be, really? But there have been some good games and some good performances. And I imagine that will continue. Let's hope because we have to write indoor podcast about it. So some of the turnover that we've seen, you mentioned, Hannah, just how many managerial vacancies there are right now. I don't know whether I'm leaving anyone out, but we've got the Braves moving on from Snitker, which they made it sound sort of mutual and amicable, and maybe they're kicking him up to the front office.

You know, he's just an Atlanta lifer and has had such an incredible career in that organization and just generally the trajectory of SNIT, just being a long-time minor league coach and manager and then getting the interim gig and then making the most of it, taking that team to the postseason so many times and winning a World Series and not having been a high-level player and all that. The Giants moved on from Bob Melvin. The Angels have moved on from both Ron Washington, whose contract was up and Ray Montgomery, who was the interim guy. And then the Rangers parted ways with Bruce Bochy. It is, it's always kind of confusing to figure out how to describe these partings of ways.

Like, were you fired? Were you laid off? Forcibly retired. Yeah, like, you know, ushered into a well-deserved retirement or your contract. was up, which is different from being fired, obviously, if your contract is not just renewed. The language differs, the circumstances differ, but ultimately what does not differ is that there's going to be a new manager. And then we still, I guess, technically have a few interim guys hanging around right now, the nationals who just have a new pobo and presumably we'll

have a new manager, Orioles, Rockies. And that's the other notable thing I want to talk about is that Rocky's new GM as well. So sometimes it's the baseball operation. leader here changing or not changing. And then we also had some notable non-changes, which we touched on last time, Carlos Mendoza, staying with the Mets, et cetera. So since we talked about Posey, the thing that made the Melvin switch interesting was that his option was picked up on July 1st, and that is kind of whiplash there to say, oh, yeah, we want to keep this guy in July, and then in late September decide,

actually, no, we don't, not that much changed in the interim. What was interesting is that Posey essentially said that he picked up that option because he hoped it would be motivation for the team. Like, it wasn't so much that he had faith in, yeah. It seems like backward. It seems like play well or Bob Melvin gets the axe. Yeah, I thought that too, actually. Right. Like, you'd want to light it.

They don't give horses a sugar cube during the Kentucky Derby. They whipped them. Yeah, yeah. So here's back early at the athletic Posey acknowledged what he denied. July that picking up Melvin's option was an attempt to instill confidence within the clubhouse and help the group write the ship. We all felt the season was going in a direction we didn't want it to go, Posey said. Our hope was picking up that option provided a morale boost. So that is an interesting, it does, I get it, I guess, but I could also just as easily understand

completely the opposite perspective, which is like things are going in a direction. We don't want it to go. Let's not keep going in that direction. Let's go in a new direction. But then I guess, you know, you end up with like either lame duck manager or a new guy in the middle of things. And yeah, maybe if you're worried about like, people are losing confidence, we have to, we have to reaffirm that we like this group and we like this manager and there's going to be continuity or something. So I guess I sort of get it. But it's rare to see the option pickup followed by the immediate firing. I think that for non-people within the actual game, I have probably skew a little bit more towards the, I think managers do matter side of the spectrum, because

I'm basing that on no special reporting, but simply feeling like, well, my boss makes a different, like how I feel about my boss makes a difference in how I feel about my job. So, but this feels like a real testament to believing that the manager is making a significant difference because it looks kind of stupid. It looks kind of stupid to do this, to pick up the option and then, and then cut ties with the guy. So you would think if they thought he was even like, like if they thought that it wasn't making that big of a difference, they would just ride with it. And then if they're bad, you know, fire him in the middle of next year. Like then, you know, at least you get the the motivational kick of a mid-season firing maybe. But they really felt like they couldn't

go into next year with Bob Melvin. And that's not a comment on Bob Melvin by me. It's a comment by Bob Melvin by Buster Posey. But that feels like a real, like he's putting a lot of stock in in both the appearance of a commitment to the manager and who the actual manager is, which is interesting. Maybe that's the player in him coming out. Yeah, because this could look either decisive or indecisive, depending on the perspective. You could say, well, he's not worried about appearances or about making himself look like he flip-flopped or he's rudderless or something. He's just doing what's best for the organization.

But he also does look like he's rudderless. Yes, but also, yeah, it's like. He adjusted to new information. Okay, they didn't play that well down the straight. They missed the playoffs. But then, like, you know, they didn't miss the playoffs by much. And so he was asked also, like, what if they had won three more games? And they were in the Wild Card Series this week.

Like, when Melvin be the manager and Posey said, it's hard to say. We are where we are right now. So the hypotheticals don't really come into play for me. It's always, it's nice. You can always sidestep that question by just being like, I don't want to get into hypotheticals. We get into hypotheticals all the time in other areas of life. That's what this podcast is. based on. If we didn't want to get into hypotheticals, I don't know what we would talk about,

but it is a convenient way to escape a question like that. Do you think Buster Posey, when his family's on like a road trip, he gets lost, and then he is like, no, no, no, I got it now. I'm definitely sure we need to go this way. And then, like, two miles later, he's still very sure that they need to go a different way this time, but he's very sure still. He seems very decisive, even just, but not consistent in where he's going. Yeah. I guess there's some value in projecting confidence, even if you don't have it. But it's better to have it. It's better. I mean, it's better to have it and have it be based on something because there are plenty of people who are confident irrationally. They shouldn't be as confident as they are. But that's something that appeals to people in leaders is just looking like they're confident all the time, even if they have no idea what they're doing. And so maybe Posey has mastered that. Who knows? Or, you know, maybe it was sunk cost and he perceived that and moved on. I don't know. We'll find out, I guess it depends on which direction they go next with the manager and also with the team. And all these manager conversations and Boone, like one thing Boone is criticized for is basically being a puppet of the front office, I think, which is weird because it's like, how can you criticize him both for the moves he makes and also for not really having any agency in the moves he makes?

Like, you've got to pick a lane, I guess. And also, it's not like the next guy's going to be different in that respect, you know, unless I guess there's a complete regime change with the Yankees. which probably a lot of the people who are calling for Boone's dismissal are also calling for, but seems a little more far-fetched given Brian Cashman's seemingly lifetime appointment in that organization, which is, I guess, part of what people are upset about. They think, oh, there's complacency, and you're not held to any standard, and there's no punishment for failure, et cetera. But most managers these days, it's not like there's any manager out there who's really, like,

kicking it old school and just, like, telling the front office what to do and dictating every decision. And none of them is doing that. There's some variation, of course. I will push back a little bit on the idea that, like, if the front office is weighing in, then that means the manager isn't sort of either responsible or culpable. Because I think it's a little bit like the relationship between the owner and the GM, where you can say, like, it's hard to judge a GM who has a bad owner because he has a bad owner, unless you think that part of his job is knowing how to work with the owner.

And I think that that extends to the manager. And maybe especially for the manager, like a lot of people will be like, well, the manager is just middle management. It's like, well, middle management is a tough job. You have to answer people both above you and below you. And part of what makes you good at that is being able to navigate that push and pull and being able to kind of like advocate for both sides to the other side in a way that doesn't piss anybody off and kind of keeps relationships smooth and the shit moving forward. I think that's like we maybe allow for that even more so with GMs. Like think about like Dave Dombrowski with affiliates. people say part of his skill is getting owners to open their pocketbooks. And it's like, well, that's a really valuable skill to have if you're a GM. And I think probably there's an

analogy to be made about managers. If you're a manager who thinks we can't run this team based entirely on analytics, you've got to have a little bit of feel for these things. Or your players feel that way. I think part of your job is to message that to your front office and convince them that there is value in like the human element. And if you're not doing a good job of that, I think it actually kind of is fair to criticize Boone for being a puppet if you think he's not bringing any feel to the game. And you think that would be a good skill for a manager to have would be to convince the front office that they need to kind of deviate from the plan occasionally. I don't know. I think about that a lot with like GMs hate when you blame them for things.

They kind of always want to tell you what the excuses. And I'm like part of the job is to overcome those potential excuses. Like, that's why it's a high-paid job. That's why it's like a pressure-packed job because you can't control all the elements, but you are responsible for kind of like controlling how those elements are messaged. And that's the other thing about Boot. If he was so good at the press conference, people wouldn't be mad at him all the time. Because he would, even if he was messaging moves from the front office,

he'd be messaging them in a way that felt more palatable. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if this adds on to your point or counters it. I'll find out by the time I finish it. If you think about the Brewers specifically, they have had the same leadership over the past few years, the front office leadership over the past few years, and they've generally operated that team in the same way for many years, even though David Stern's left and Matt Arnold took over.

But the Craig Council Pat Murphy dichotomy is like they're not similar at all. They work together the whole time until council left. But counsel, I don't remember anything he's ever said at a press conference. I can't think of anything he's ever said other than just like, I mean, I have spoken to him, and I remember what he said to me, but he never said anything interesting. Yeah, I remember George Webb Burger Gate is what comes to time. Yeah, he said he had, whether he was aware of George Webb or not. But, yeah, when he's talking about baseball, not so memorable.

But he has this, like, you know, mad professor look in the dugout. And then you have Pat Murphy who says memorable stuff all the time. That's pretty much all he does. He comes out with pancakes in his pocket or whatever. and is giving these weird interviews and also has this like gruff old school personality even though he's implementing and even the way we view the Brewers

has changed through the fact of how Pat Murphy talks about it. They have, you know, kind of taken on this idea like, oh, they do all these little things right, which I think is not that different from how they've always played, but Pat Murphy accentuates that image of them and maybe that helps the players think about themselves differently. I don't know,

So I'm not sure if that says the manager is really important or the manager just has to work with the front office, and there's multiple ways to do that. But that is just like the clearest opposites can do the same job type proof for me. Yeah. I think the most interesting dismissal this week was Bill Schmidt, Rockies, GM, because anytime the Rockies actually make a change, that is somewhat noteworthy, especially when they signal that they are actually. going to make an external search for his replacement. Now, this quote came from A. Monfort, Walker Monfort, who is the team's executive VP and also the son of owner Dick Monfort and said, we are setting our sights on finding the right leader from outside our organization who can bring a fresh perspective to the Rockies and enhance our baseball operations with a new vision, innovation, and a focus on both short and long-term success. This change delivers an opportunity to shape the future of our club

and move forward into a new era of Rockies baseball. So exciting. Sounds like the Rockies are ready to turn over a new leaf. We'll see whether that becomes the case or whether this outside search uncovers some heretofore unknown Montfort, who has not been working for the Rockies already, perhaps? I think they've done this before where they conducted an external hitting coach search and then they ended up hiring Clint Hurtle, who technically was external at that point,

was the former Rockies manager, so maybe they'll just rehire Dan O'Dowd or something. I have no idea. Can Bud Black be the GM? Yes, exactly, right. But I think what's interesting about this is the idea that maybe this actually is a plum assignment. Maybe this is a job people would want. I saw Jared Diamond of the Wall Street. I was going to reference Jared's tweet.

Yeah, so Jared tweeted, I need you all to understand how many very smart people people in baseball view running the Rockies as a dream job. It's the ultimate challenge trying to figure out how to build a winner in that environment. Smart executives are tantalized by it. They want to prove they can do it. Enoceris also said, an executive once told me this was his dream job. I was surprised, said something like, it's the toughest job in baseball. That park, the altitude, sap seven or eight wins from your team every year. If you win there, you're a genius. So this is interesting because it is very much kind of the arrested development meme, like, well, did it work for those people? No, it never does. I mean, these people somehow delude themselves into thinking it might, but it might work for us. So other executives are maybe eager to go into this meat grinder. But it's true, like, do it for the story. Just yolo, let's run the Rockies. And maybe if I actually win here, you know, it's not quite maybe Theo winning the World Series with the the Red Sox and the Cubs, but it's the next best thing.

In fact, I remember an old effectively wild conversation where we were thinking, what could Theo do next? What would be a worthy challenge for him? And he should now be the Rockies GM. He should be the Rockies GM. He should definitely be the Rocky's film. Yeah. It's apparently a beautiful place.

Oh, sure. Yeah. On the one hand, yeah, so Thad Levine, formerly of the twins, has been one of the people connected with this early on, has expressed an interest in it. Yeah. He's coming for your job. Yeah, well, we got to get him off our corner. He should keep the podcast if he gets the Rocky's job and just tell us all about it.

Jerry DiPoto did it. You can do both. You can multitask be a GM and a podcaster or a pobo and a podcaster. But, yeah, so there are a couple things I think that are appealing about this. Yes, A, there's the... Pobo podcast. Yeah, we'll workshop it. There's something there.

But you could sell this based on, yes, it's the ultimate challenge. and this team has never won a division title, let alone a World Series, so you could do it, you could get the glory, you could be hailed by everyone for fixing the Rockies, solving Coorsfield, etc. Also, yeah, it's a pretty place. It's a nice place to live. You know, it's a good ballpark environment, even when the team is historically terrible. And historically, there's been great job security, right? There's not been a lot of turnover here. Even if you suck, you can keep your job for years and years and years, that's especially true, I guess, if you're kind of, you know, you've been groomed for the job, you've been promoted, you've been with the Rockies

forever, so maybe there wouldn't be that same sort of loyalty if you're an outsider who's brought in, but still, you look at this and you think, well, they're probably not going to be too quick on the trigger here, but the downside, of course, is that, yeah, like, no one has really won there, so will you actually do it, or will you just be the latest to fail? And then And there's, I guess, the question that a lot of organizations might have just about, well, what's the institutional investment going to be and will there be meddling? It's not like a pirate situation. You know, Dick Monfort isn't Bob Nutting. He's like incompetent in a different way, sort of.

He will spend more, but not wisely and doesn't seem to be great at hiring and, you know, just has too much faith and internal promotions and nepotism and everything. So, yeah, are you going to be wondering, like, well, is there going to be one Montfort or another breathing down my throat if I take this job and how long a leash will actually have? And will they let me really revamp the organization and clean house? Or will it be like, I'm the one new person, but I have to inherit everyone else who's unfireable? So it is pretty intriguing. I wonder what kind of person they will hire. But even expressing a willingness to just do something completely different, I guess, is good. can't get worse. For a while, I tried to get executives to talk to me. I had this, like,

this is the peak people don't want to talk about hypotheticals. I wanted executives to talk to me for a story that I had an idea about for a long time, which was if you could design the ballpark to be especially extreme and then build your team to fit it, would, like, could you be extra, could that be advantageous? Like, if the GM got to design the dimensions of the ballpark in addition to setting the roster. And the Rockies are. are kind of the only version of that in real life where it's like you could you it's not the dimensions obviously but right there is an element of like well could you tailor your team to your ballpark specifically in such a way that I mean that's everyone knows that that's that's the trick with the

Rockies I will say however they didn't want to talk to me about this so I don't know who these executives are that Jared spoke to were so excited to run the Rockies but whoever they were they were not the same ones that I was asking about asking this question about because they did not want to engaged with this hypothetical of like, what if you made a giant ballpark or a tiny ballpark or an uneven ballpark? Couldn't you, you know, like, hey, wouldn't that be a market inefficiency that you could exploit to build your roster to suit it? Can I interrupt with some not news, but maybe news? The Athletic just tweeted, ranking MLBs open and potentially open managerial jobs, and then they have a little asterisk next to some of them. And then at the

bottom it says jobs not yet vacant. And they put the Astros on here. Oh, interesting. Are they firing them? I would be more inclined to give Joe Espada a manager of the year than I wish to fire him. Not that those things are mutually exclusive. Sometimes you can get a Joe Girardi manager of the year gets fired. But no, that seems like a great job of managing. Joe Espana has been in the organization forever. I thought they loved him. They thought he was kind of, you know, low-key the de facto manager for a long time. I'm intrigued by that. Is there a James Click situation happening there where secretly Jim Crane doesn't like him? Yeah, you never know. Oh, I left out the twins, of course, in my rundown of managerial vacancies. Yeah, because that seems, you know,

Rocco Baldelli is out, which is another case of sacrificial lamb, I guess. You know, it's just, you're going to get fired if your team has poor results, but in this case specifically, it's hard to pin it on Baldelli just given the lack of investment in that roster from that ownership group over the past couple of years. So I imagine that he will get interviews and other looks elsewhere. But yeah, that's a lot of managerial openings or presumed openings right now without even getting into hypotheticals as some people hate to do. So, yeah, I am fascinated to see which way the Rockies go with that and whether they actually do kind of have their pick of the litter when it comes to execs, or whether that's a harder sell for some than you might imagine. It is tantalizing,

though, to if you think that you have the secret to course field, and I don't know that there is one, to be clear, it is, it's possible that it's not like, oh, someone just has to crack that case. It might just be a disadvantage that you can maybe minimize or ameliorate, but you can't actually turn into an advantage for you. But, because, you know, I know the Rockies have looked into that and Dan O'Dowd talked about how much time they spent trying to figure that out and maybe someone can do it better and maybe it is just like a certain mix of pitch types or I don't know you know it's a training to to try to counter the course field hangover or whatever but it's not like home and away platoons just guys who don't play on one or the other yeah two entire rosters and

just you have a home Rockies and a road Rockies I'm sure plenty of great players would want to sign up for that arrangement. So we will see. I did want to follow up on Alex Cora's comments the other day, because Meg and I talked about this last time, and we gave Cora some grief for pulling the nobody believed in us about the Red Sox. I believed in them. I picked them to win the World Series. Yes. Many people believed in them. I picked them to win the World Series. Yep. Before the season started, you did? Before the season started, I did. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So you were among the many who believed in the Boston Red Sox. he got some pushback on this, not just from effectively wild.

I think people came with receipts, and he did take some criticism for so emphatically stating that, because you can't get away with, like, in some cases, okay, it's sort of strange belief that you play the nobody believed in us card, but this was among the most egregious instances of it. So I think it was the day after the follow-up comments were not as widely reported as the initial comments, which is so often the case. But so I think the day after he came out, and I'm quoting here from Red Sox Reporter Max Rullo, Alex Cora jokingly clarified his nobody thought we were going to make it to October statement from yesterday to open his pregame remarks.

Quote, after the trade, after the trade. My bad, my bad. I got emotional yesterday. Sorry. So I don't know. Is he jokingly clarifying or is he joking while clarifying? Is he actually saying that that's what he meant and he was misinterpreted or taken out of context? Or is he laughing it off and trying to reframe it and walk it back now?

I don't know. But he's now claiming that he meant that nobody believed in them after the trade, which is a little more defensible, certainly, than the nobody believed in us before the season. Because I think at the time the Red Sox traded Raphael Devers, which was mid-June, I think they were 37 and 36. and their playoff odds, according to Fangraphs, were 31%. So their odds were worse than they had been at the beginning of the season. And also, they just traded Raphael Devers, their best hitter. So that's not something that usually does inspire a lot of confidence. Like, you know, it usually sends the signal that you don't believe in you if you trade your best hitter.

But here's the thing. I don't believe that that's what he was talking about because who was issuing picks then? Like, what was the, what was the, like, where was he receiving this message that people didn't think that he was going to make, that the Red Sox were going to make the postseason? Like, maybe people were like, wow, surprising trade. He's such a good player. And I guess that could be interpreted as like, you guys just got worse, but they did just get worse. And that's fine. They still haven't became it.

But I don't believe, yeah, no one was, there were no, no one was issuing any kind of predictions at that point. This is like an editor's note that explains why actually there does not need to be a correction. Yes. But we just found a reason. Yeah, yeah. And there was another follow-up featuring the Red Sox and Craig Breslow in this case. Because one of his quotes at the time that he traded Devers, and this was one of the ones that didn't really resonate well, is I do think that there is a real chance that at the end of the season, when we're looking back, we'll have one more games than we otherwise would have, which was a suspect. Yeah, it was a suspect quote at the time because, well, he was.

He wasn't just saying we might win more games without Devers than we won with him, which is true. I mean, they ended up doing that, I guess, winning percentage-wise and maybe just pure wins-wise. But that kind of thing, that's not the same as what he seemed to be claiming, which is like, actually, we will win more than in the hypothetical, the alternate possibility where we had kept Devers will actually do better than that, not just, you know, because you could trade your best player and just go on a run and that could be completely random and have nothing to do with the trade. was actually suggesting a cause and effect there. And, you know, he said, I think there's a real chance. I guess he didn't guarantee it. But, but even so, it is an unusual thing to trade your best hitter for people who probably aren't going to help you nearly as much in the short term and express some confidence that you'll win more games this way than you would have. I think that was, you know, seen as somewhat outrageous at the time. Ultimately, though, the Red Sox did do better

without Devers than they had done with him. And I guess the Giants did worse with him than they had done without him. Not because of him, to be clear. I don't think we can pin this on Devers because he had just fine. Ultimately, he slumped at first in San Francisco. But then he turned out to hit just fine. I think he did hit better than Red Sox D.Hs hit the rest of the way. And, of course, he ended up actually playing some first base with the Giants,

which was funny after all the rest of it. But Bresla was asked about this just the other day by Pete Abraham of the Boston Globe, just revisiting his quote from after the Devers trade and asking how he felt about it now, I guess. And so he says it was not at all intended to be a criticism of Rafi and his talent and what he adds to a lineup, though hard not to interpret it that way to some extent. The best way for winning the most games is oftentimes having the most talented guys, you can possibly have, but there is a roster building, team building component to that. There's a versatility and flexibility that afforded Alex and afforded us in terms of moving

guys around and being able to use the D.H. spot to maximize the matchups, getting outfielders off their feet, and a clear runway to keep Roman Anthony and Willier-Bray you and sit on Rafael in the lineup. When you put all those things together, we have a chance to play really competitively and constantly make sure we're creating the most beneficial matchups than we can. So, you know, that was sort of a word salad, as is often the case with baseball executives and Craig Breslo specifically, but he's not walking away from it. So how do we think about that now? Because this is another, it's like we were talking about with the scrimmages to prepare for a playoff round. You don't know. You can't know. Yeah, you get one trial and then

you have to draw whatever conclusions you can from that. So do we think that the Red Sox were better because they were able to use, I think, 11 different DHS after the trade and just cycle players in and get guys. And, you know, then there's the clubhouse component, which looms over all of this. Whether or not, you know, Devers is a bad clubhouse guy, it was obviously something that was hanging over this team and was a distraction. And Trevor Story said the day of the trade was such a surprise, but I feel like we pulled together afterward. In our minds, it didn't mean the season was over. I think we felt like we had something to prove. This is interesting strategy.

Maybe all the teams should trade their best hitter. And then all the remaining hitters will pull together and rally because, you know, they want to prove that they can win without that guy. I guess that's sort of ewing theory to reference one of my boss's famous, famous lines. So what do you think? Should we look back and say, yeah, that trade made sense. These guys were right all along. Or do we say, no, actually, we're going by process, not outcomes here. And we still think it was weird in some.

ways, at least in the short term, or do we say, well, we'll never know, and good for them. They made it, but hard to draw conclusions from that one way or another. I think they could have tried firing the manager first to see, you know, if we want to really come full circle on all the things that might have affected it. But, you know, we won't know. He didn't fit into that team as it was in the process of being constructed defensively if he wasn't going to play anywhere. But I think they'd be a better team with him on it, but there was all.

also just this element of the relationship breakdown kind of had to happen. So I respect the decisiveness of moving on from that. It's like if we're, if we're starting the story from this is already broken, then yeah, I think they had to do what they did. It just, ideally, it wouldn't have been broken. I think that's a great way of putting it back, because I think that when I look at the Red Sox overarching what happened with Raphael Devers, I put a lot of blame at Craig Brezlo's feet, but I actually think this is a case where the ends justifies the means and to be consistent with everything I've been saying about like the GM has to work with the owner and the players and the manager has to get like in this situation he was in he made a very bold potentially disastrous choice based on information that you can't have outside the organization which is like what was the dynamic and I think if it works then we have to give him credit like even if even if there's a world in which it doesn't work. and then we don't give him credit. Like, in this world, he was clearly making this decision based on some rationale that was

only available to people within the organization like that based on information only available to the people. And he was making a decision that he thought was best. And maybe, you know, there's only 51% chance that it works out this way. But there's at least 51% chance that it works out this way because it did. And then I think we have to say, like, well, then, okay, you looked at it the information in that moment and you made a bold choice and that choice banned out. So, like, you are correct.

You deserve the plaudits of having made the choice as opposed to just, like, letting that situation. Like, right, if Raphael Devers could have traded Craig Breslo, maybe that would have also worked. But he couldn't do it that way. Like, you know what I mean? Does that make sense that it's like, if everything we're saying is true and, like, there is some additional special sauce that just is like, what is the dynamic and how are these people getting along? Then I think you have to say, like, if you're, if you're the one who. changes it and it works, then you were right to change it. Yeah, this is why watching the postseason is so fun but so frustrating to analyze because

we just, we never know anything. Not that we know that much during the regular season for that matter, but we're just constantly analyzing decisions based on what happened after the fact or trying to analyze them based on what you knew going into the decision, but then never really knowing if we have all the factors and all the intel, because I've written about this before, but it's just, you know, people second guess and first guess things in the playoffs. And we never know what those decisions are based on and teams have more information. There, inevitably, there's always the case of like the day after the postseason ends, seven guys have surgeries on things that we didn't

even know we're injured. Right. So there's that. We don't really know what the state of anyone is, for one thing. And then I think fans often still assume that matchup decisions are made based on very simplistic information, head-to-head records or maybe like platoon splits or something, but it's so much more sophisticated than that. It's based on, you know, similar pitchers that you've faced and swing planes and which pitches the pitcher throws and arm angles and all this stuff that in the public sphere we don't really have that great access to. And so we're working with incomplete information and no one knows how it would have turned out otherwise. So we can always speculate and say that was the wrong move because it backfired. And therefore,

this other move that I would have advocated. It couldn't have gone worse. Maybe it could have gone better. So it's a tough environment when it comes to actually trying to apportion blame or credit. And yeah, this is sort of similar. You know, I think the Red Sox, what has changed for them since then? Maybe I don't know how many people are really lamenting the loss of Raphael Devers, because in the moment, it brought up old wounds and reopened them.

And so, you know, you couldn't help but think of the mookie trade and then Bogart's being allowed to leave and other things. And people were pointing out even then, well, actually, maybe letting Bogart's leave was the right move. And maybe it will work out in the long term to let Devers go because so we won't be on the hook for that contract and maybe he won't age well and everything. But also, gosh, you look at the Red Sox lineup right now and it would be better with Raphael Devers. Like, they weren't a great hitting team without him, especially once Anthony got hurt. Like, in September, they were middle of the pack offensive team at best, and you'd sure like to see Rafael Devers big bat in there. So who knows? Because we can't really quantify the club has stuff either.

And then, yeah, if that's like a self-created problem, then do you reward Breslo for getting out of a problem that he himself had a lot to do with causing? it's just it's very very confusing i mean i think the reaction at the time it is not invalidated even if they like go on to win the world series because i think it's fair for red sox fans to say like this organization really like mishandled three young potential superstars in a way such that now we have none of them and one of them we don't have because he was so personally offended of the way he was treated like that's what i mean we kind of just restating the same thing. But it's like, I think it is fair for fans to say, like, I wish we had not gotten to this point, maybe because they wish they had kept Mukki or they wish they had kept Fogart,

although maybe they don't wish they'd kept Fogartz, or because they wish that they hadn't offended Raphael Devers in this way. And that's not invalidated, like, even if they win the World Series. But again, it's like, you do have to try to, like, move forward in such a way that puts, like, I actually do commend Breslo, but also the rest of the Red Sox. Like, that is a tough spot. That is your front office doing a thing that makes it feel like they've hamstrung your on-field ability a little bit in an effort to kind of free you up to play better. And they responded by playing better. And that is impressive. Yeah. And I thought they could have even done more at the deadline to help with the versatility and the roster construction and everything. And I guess the

Anthony extension also helps from a PR perspective. So that'll ease the sting of losing another great player. All right. Well, I will let you two go and hopefully not take ill after this. And we've all got... I don't think it transmits that way. No, it's not comfortable that way. No, probably not. And so we've all got baseball to watch and cover. And Zach has a whole other job about to begin. So I guess so if you want to just give a little sales pitch for the bandwagon before you leave, tell people where to find it and what it is and why they should sign up as I have. The Bandwagon is a three times a week baseball newsletter from the perspective of trying to help you be a smart fan. We try to make it very easily digestible during the regular season. It was Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

As Ben now knows, we're going to respond to the flow of the baseball, so it will still be multiple times a week, but we're going to do it at times that make sense for the baseball. If you're not a subscriber yet, this would be a great time to try and give us a spin. It's bandwagon.substack.com. Yes, and we have not decided exactly how we're going to navigate the rest of the postseason. We only really got through the wild card, but we do know that we're going to be even more regular come World Series time. We want to be reacting to games really quickly because we know that not all content can do that. So we're going to try to do that come World Series time.

So it would supplement an effectively wild listen, which will still be put out three times a week and thus be more bigger picture. We will try to be more immediate in the World Series. But, yeah, subscribe now and enjoy the postseason, and then we'll do fun stuff in the offseason. Yeah, and you sometimes respond to things we say on the podcast in the newsletter and vice versa. We sometimes talk about things that you wrote, so we're kind of in conversation, even when we're not literally in conversation, as we have been today. This is tough to answer because there are three teams that will be eliminated by the end of the day, but what is the best bandwagon team this October? Just snap judgment. It's the Mariners.

It's the Mariners. It's the Mariners, yeah. Obviously, the Mariners. Yeah. It's like so much, obviously, the Mariners. I'm both, like, rooting and not rooting. Like, my dream World Series matchup is probably Philly's Mariners, and I don't know if I want that or not.

It's almost like one of those things where it's like, then everyone will get excited about it. And they'll be like, no, stop. This was my very special postseason matchup that I was rooting for. Yeah, as we talked about last time, there are a lot of easy to root for teams and narratives here. It's just, you know, whether the guys. Guardians advance or not, how they got in, and then the Padres and Brewers also not having one, and the Guardians not having one for even longer and just, yeah, there's a lot of fun stuff.

I'll give you a sneaky one. The Blue Jays fan environment at home is so cool, and I think people have kind of forgotten that because they keep getting, they keep not winning any games in the postseason when they get in, but, you know, the 2015-level Blue Jays playoff games would be really fun, so I could see them being a good answer to. Yeah. I also, I got my parents' tickets to the Phillies Division Series game one because my dad turned 70 recently.

And so as a gift, we got them, him and my mom tickets. And now that's Shohei Otani's first postseason and Major League Baseball start. And I can't believe that they're going to be watching it in person live. So, like, also just like that series is going to be so much fun. I can't believe we're getting like that many big personalities this early in the postseason. facing off. Yep, lots to look forward to. All right, Kaiser and Chryser, Chrysler and Kaiser, always a pleasure. Thanks to both of you. Thank you. Thank you. All right, a few closing thoughts and updates and follow-ups for you. Meant to mention the debut of Guardians' prospect Chase DeLotter

in game two of the Wildcard series. He's one of the top prospects in the sport. He's number 29 overall, according to fan graphs, number two in the Guardians' organization. And he made his major league debut in game two. Now, that's not unprecedented, though it is one of my favorite postseason phenomena, the MLB debut in the playoffs. He was the sixth player to play in his first MLB game in the playoffs. However, I think this was an especially difficult assignment for him because not only did he have to make his debut in a postseason game, but he had not played in any professional game since July 11th because he had hemate surgery. And he was just off for all that time. So he'd been building up, preparing, he thought, for the Arizona Fall League, not for the playoffs. And so he hadn't seen any sort of action in a very long time in months and months. He also had not played center field since the previous season. He didn't play center field at all in 2025.

He hadn't played since, I think, August of 2024 in the minors. So this was tough in any number of ways to just be promoted to the big leagues. for the first time, to play for the first time anywhere in months, and to play a position that you hadn't played since the previous season. And perhaps that showed on his first opportunity when in the very first inning, he got a ball, he kind of lost it in the sun, and it clanked off his glove. And he said at the time that when that ball hit the ground, I was in shambles right away, was his post-game commentary.

And I felt bad just watching it. You had to feel some sympathy. But he recovered, and later in the game, he had a long extended at bat that resulted in an out. He drew a walk. He hit a ball very hard that he did not get a hit on. And also, he got an outfield assist. He threw a runner out at third base. So it all worked out.

He was able to make light of it after the fans gave him kind of a joking ovation when he caught a ball the next time he had an opportunity. And he played along with it and seems to have a good head on his shoulders, which is maybe why they felt comfortable. promoting him. But boy, that's a really difficult position to be put in. And I guess if the Guardians had better position players and better hitters, they probably wouldn't have tried it. But between that and thinking highly of him, they did, threw him right into the deep end. And at first, he floundered, but finally he floated. Also, speaking of Cleveland, we got an email from listener Preston, who directed our attention to a photo from after Cleveland won in in 1948, Game 6 of the World Series, in which Bob Lemon and Gene Bearden full-on smooched.

We talk a lot, and by we, I mostly mean Meg, about how the players should kiss, but only if they want to. Well, as I said to Preston, looks like they wanted to. And as Meg replied, nothing little about that one. This was not just a little kiss. This was not a little peck. This was a full-on lip-lock. Lemon started that game. Bearden saved it.

So clearly there was some gratitude there, and that was expressed in a way we. typically don't see these days, let alone 1948, I will link to it. Also, got an email from listener, Patreon, supporter Russell Goldstein, who sent along some interesting data that I wanted to share. Russell writes, this past weekend as I was watching my Mets crumble yet again, I started

thinking about how not only were the Mets extremely streaky this year, but it felt like many teams in MLB had a lot of long, winning, or losing streaks. I set the minimum streak at five, but also broke down streaks longer than that. So I went down a long rabbit hole of winning and losing streaks in 2025 compared to MLB history.

There actually were some interesting results, and my suspicion was correct that this was an extremely streaky year. I'll link to his data, but here's the summary. 2025 delivered 179 combined winner-loss streaks of five-plus games, just three shy, of the 2001 and 2019 record of 182, good for third all-time. The season's 98 streaks of six-plus games were five short of the all-time high, 103 in 2001 and 2019, slotting 2025 in fifth place overall with 53 streaks of seven or more games. 2025 matched the fifth highest total ever recorded and came within six of the 1978,

benchmark of 59, the 30 streaks of eight-plus games tied for the seventh most in history, maintaining 2025 inside the 95th percentile even as it sat six back of the 1998 record. The New York Mets became the first team since the 1966 Reds to post three balanced six-plus game, winning or losing streak pairings, balanced meaning three or more six-plus game winning streaks and three or more six-plus game losing streaks, tying the second highest total ever. New York also joined the tiny 26-season group with two matched seven-plus game streaks, matching the all-time benchmark for that category. The Rockies 12 separate five-plus game losing streaks equaled the 1909 senators for the most in MLB history

and marked the first modern club to suffer that many. Also, I put a stat blast request from listener and Patreon supporter Ben Zimmer to Russell. Ben asked, besides the 2025 Braves, how many teams have had a winless road trip of seven plus games and an undefeated road trip of seven plus games in the same season? And Russell responded, besides the 2025 Braves, two team seasons match the seven plus game road trip double. The 1968 Phillies, who had a seven game road winless swing from July 19th to July 25th. 1868 and a seven-game road undefeated swing from July 11th to July 15th. There were two doubleheaders in that stretch, and the 1991 Mets, who had a 10-game road skid from August 9th to August 18th, 1991, and a seven-game unbeaten stretch from July 1st to July 7th. Thanks to Russell and Ben Zimmer

said, I remember that epic O-N-10 death spiral by the 1991 Mets, and yet somehow this season was even more dispiriting for Mets fans. Indeed. Listener and Patreon supporter Michael Eisen also sent in some data in response to a recent conversation we had about the democratic distribution of stolen bases these days, that it kind of feels like anyone can steal a bunch of bases. Juan Soto led the National League and stolen bases. And we talked about, is it too easy? Is it cheapening the accomplishment to some extent?

But mostly we wanted to know how different is this. And Michael found it is, in fact, different. It is an outlier. So he wanted to find out how widely distributed. stolen bases are across the league. And this turns out to be a bit tricky to answer because we looked at, say, what percentage of steals were recorded by the top 100 base dealers in each season. But that gets distorted because, of course, there are more base dealers.

There are more players now than there used to be. So we had to account for that, and he found a way to do it that controls for the number of players. So he looked at what fraction of plate appearances you need to reach a certain fraction of stolen bases. So if you sort all of the players by stolen bases, annual. look at how many plate appearances they had. Compare the fraction of the overall number of plate appearances and stolen bases and say to get to a certain threshold of steals, a percentage of league-wide steals, what percentage of plate appearances do you need? Because if you need a higher percentage of plate appearances to get to the same percentage of stolen bases, then it's

because the stolen bases are more democratically distributed. So you need more players to get to that total. The steals aren't all concentrated among a small elite group of base dealers. And he found that 2025 stands out in the post-war era, 1946 on, this was the most democratically distributed season when it comes to stolen bases. So, for instance, this year to get to 10% of stolen bases, you needed 2.6% of plate appearances. That's a lot higher than the percentage from 1946 through 2022, just before the rules changed, when on average you needed 1.5% instead of 2.6. Or to get to 20% of steals, this year you needed 6.3% of plate appearances. The historical average was 4.1. And that stays consistent at basically every cutoff for stolen base percentage up to 50%.

It's hard to explain it, but it does support what we were saying and thinking. I will link to Michael's spreadsheet and also some of the graphics that he made. He also found that there is only a weak correlation between the total number of steals and how democratically they're distributed. So he says the annual rate of stolen bases per plate appearance is independent of the stolen base democracy, which puts to rest the argument that this is somehow just because there are more steals. It's not that. It's genuinely a change in who is stealing. So good to know, good to get confirmation on that.

It's not a value judgment. This isn't necessarily good or bad. But it is, in fact, new and unusual. And finally, the athletics announced that they will sometimes wear a jersey next year that says Sacramento, I know real big of them, to actually represent the city that they are playing in. We took them to task a bit for that early this season. And we talked about how even if there is an inherent impermanence to this arrangement, even if you have your eyes set on Las Vegas, A, there's some uncertainty about whether that will work out, but B, be good guests. Don't shy away from the fact that you are, for now, playing in this city instead of the city where you were or the city where you hope to be. And we talked about how people in Sacramento must have mixed feelings because, hey, you get a major league baseball team. That's cool. But also that team has gone out of its way not to brand itself as a Sacramento baseball team. They just call themselves.

the athletics. They don't want to be known as the Sacramento athletics. They don't want to have Sacramento on their jersey. How could you not feel a bit spurned by that? And there was a recent feature by ESPN's Tim Kewen, who wrote about how John Fisher has true to form sort of salted the earth in Sacramento and everyone's mad at him and they're out of Oakland, but not much has changed, et cetera. Well, when we talked about this going into the season, we got some good emails from people in Sacramento. Some of them A's fans, not all of them, who wrote in to talk about how Sacramento was perceived and how they're thinking about this and how they're kind of cautiously optimistic in some cases. They're going into it with their eyes open. They know that maybe this is a fling, but they'll enjoy it

while at last if they can, but they also feel bad about the franchise having left Oakland and not really putting down roots in Sacramento. Anyway, in the wake of Kewen's feature in this first season being in the books, I followed up with a few of those listeners who had written to us back then in March. And I thought I'd read one lengthy response here from one of them a woman who wants to be identified as E.J. And had some interesting, wide-ranging thoughts about this unusual situation. And E.J. lives in Sacramento pretty close to Sutter Health Park. She's not native to Sacramento, but she went to college in the Bay Area, has family around. So this was kind of a homecoming for her. And here's what she had to say. My feelings about this whole season are,

I feel the need to defend Sacramento from people who talk smack about it. The A's themselves have a lot of fun young players and some interesting things going on, even though the team performed poorly this year, having Major League Baseball in Sacramento is very strange, very cool, but very temporary. As for the A's themselves, the team, I've grown to love them. Brent Rooker, Nick Kurtz, Jacob Wilson, Shea Languiliers, Lawrence Butler, Tyler, Tyler, Denzel Clark, Mason Miller, when he was here. All these guys are so fun and exciting. Oh, and that former Padres prospect, Leo DeVries, is incredibly intriguing.

I keep thinking about kids in Little League in the Sacramento area who get to see their favorite players. I keep thinking of kids who see these dudes hit bombs to Tower Bridge and fall in love with baseball. All that said, the team wasn't good this year. I think the hot start was pretty exciting as well as the strong finish, but you can't not win games for an entire month. So it's a mixed bag. Love the players, love the promise, but obviously the A's were not successful. I'm not an A's fan, so I regard their poor performance with emotional detachment, and I latch

on to cool players I like who make circus catches and hit dingers, and that there are multiple AL Rookie of the Year candidates on this team. There's promise here. Then she links to the meme where one person is saying literal, coolest thing ever and the other has their thinking cap on and says, this effing sucks, actually. E.J. says, that's kind of how I feel when I hear from people who've never been to A's games here and really experienced how electric it got during some games. Clearly, they didn't watch Nick Kurtz hit multiple walk-off homers in a row up close for a reasonable

price. I felt a lot of resentment for people who say bad things about Sutter Health Park without having gone there. It feels like SFgate, the Bay Area newspaper, just has an F. Sacramento beat going on. There's been a couple articles about how season ticket holders lose money every game, as if selling the tickets to turn a profit is the purpose of season tickets. Actually, this is a classic Bay Area capitalist grind culture mindset I always complain about, and that the season could not have gone worse.

If the only people interviewed were scalpers who felt burned by not being able to turn a profit, they're going to be bitter and angry. And reading these kinds of articles, they're so much talking negatively about Sacramento, but basically zero about the players. It's like they don't want to get excited about the actual baseball and would rather just talk smack about sack. They aren't representative of regular people who watch these games.

Living here, what I see is that there are a lot of young baseball fans who finally get to see the majors up close and more often, even if it's in a minor league park. To be completely honest, too, from a fan perspective, the smaller park gives such a great up-close view you wouldn't get anywhere elsewhere for a similar price. And the home run lawn seating is so charming. I mostly watch A's games through day-of-25 lawn tickets,

if I can't find a reasonable price for a seat, which I often can. I feel like a lot of the ticket pricing talk at the beginning of the season has totally stabilized. It's really cool to see how packed that hill can get with families who want to have a good time. That's the side that people don't see when engagement baiters come to games and take pictures of empty seats 40 minutes before first pitch. All that said, I'm not trying to cape for John Fisher or the A's organization. I hate the system that allowed John Fisher to just move this team because he wants to and then pretend it was all fans' fault.

Don't get it twisted. I think he is a terrible owner. I get that there are facility issues with playing in a minor league park and all the issues that players have been vocal about are totally valid. I think Luis Severino is completely in the right for feeling upset that his routine is messed up by pitching at Sutter. I get that, and it's absolutely ridiculous that the A's still have comments turned off all their social media. I was waxing poetic about all the kids seeing the young A's core hit home runs earlier, but those same kids won't be able to comment about how much they love the A's Young Corps. Disallowing people from even saying, wow, Nick Kurtz hits dingers on social media because they're afraid of negative comments is silly and stifles new fans.

For baseball fans, living in Sacramento who aren't A's fans, I just think the fact that, MLB is in Sacramento for a couple years is still so weird, but it's pretty interesting that Sacramento area fans of teams who don't ever really get to see them play can do that now. It's hard for me not to be excited about being able to see that even temporarily. I think it's sad to say that part of the draw of going to an A's game in Sacramento is for the away team's fans. It's out of touch and an insult to Oakland fans, I get that. It's hard to say a part of it is not true, though.

Philly's fans here were excited to see Bryce Harper. I'm a Cubs fan and I was stoked to see my team run up the score historically. I attended multiple Mariners series, and it was incredibly fun to see Cal Rally in action. Next season, I'm sure that Shohay Otani coming to Sacramento for the Dodgers series will be a story. It's hard not to acknowledge that part of what makes Sacramento baseball fun is that I am in a way team fan and just a general baseball fan. I also see that back in March, I had some pie-in-the-sky optimism that maybe MLB could stay in Sacramento, but after this year, I know that won't be the case. It does feel temporary, and it does feel like they're going to leave town in a few years.

I think maybe the Las Vegas Stadium will get delayed and the A's will stay here longer than planned. but I know they don't want to stay forever. We get constant reminders that the A's are moving to Las Vegas, and there's this billboard at the back of the park for Las Vegas. I get it. They're leaving, which makes the state of Sacramento's relationship with the A's kind of weird. I've never seen anything like it. There's Sacramento merch in the store,

but I know those are just curiosities that will be rare in a few years. And the A's are going to wear a Sacramento gold jersey on Saturday's next season, which kind of feels akin to buying expensive earrings for a platonic best friend. But that jersey is clean. I unfortunately have to hand it to them. It looks cool. Cynically, I know this is probably a money grab directed at people like me, general baseball fans who live here and feel defensive about the city and feel some Sacramento pride,

but I think it's going to work. That is going to pull in more Sacramento fans and make them some money. Some of the most popular giveaways were Sacramento-themed gear. We know what this is. It's temporary. It's weird. It's a novelty. And in 20 years, I'll have a Sacramento-A's crewneck and be like, wow, what a strange three to four seasons that was.

It's all just a weird little perfect storm. It's an anomaly that the A's are here. They should not be here, but they are, and I'm excited to see Major League Baseball here next year, too. Thank you, E.J., and maybe the A's will play a bit better in Sacramento next season, because they did have a pretty pronounced home road split. They were better when they were away. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon. com slash Effectively Wild, where you can sign up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad-free, and get yourself access to some perks, as have the following five listeners, Paul, Strawberry Jams, Nick Devlin, Jenny Lynn, and Joel Hashimoto, thanks to all of you.

Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams coming up later this month, prioritized email answers, personalized messages, discounts on merch and ad-free fancrafts memberships, and so much more. Check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash EffectivelyWild. If you are a patron, 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. You can rate, review, and subscribe to EffectivelyWild on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, music, 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 our slash Effectively Wild. And you can check the show notes at Fangraphs through the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited. today. Thanks to Shane McKeehan for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with another episode before the end of the week, which means we will talk to you soon. Effectible Sauvage Hello and welcome to effectively wild. Wait, that's not how I say this.

I almost started doing an intro for one of my other podcasts. You got the words right. Just midway. Yeah. I started with the hello, and that's the way I usually. start okay let me do this again i'm all out of sorts meg is not here