Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2391: It’s the World Series, Baby

Episode Date: October 23, 2025

Meg Rowley and guest co-host Ben Clemens of FanGraphs discuss the conclusion of the ALCS, including Dan Wilson’s decision to the turn to Eduard Bazardo to face George Springer with runners on in the seventh rather than bring in a higher-leverage reliever like Andrés Muñoz. Then they preview the upcoming World Series between the Blue […]

How can you not be pedanted? A stab blast will keep you distracted. It's a long slog to death, but they're sure to make you smile. This is effectively wild. This is effectively wild. This is effective in wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2391 of Effectively Wild, a Fangrafs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and today I am joined by Ben Clemens,

also of Fangraph's Other Ben, who is kindly filling in for Other Ben, who's going to be Other Ben for this episode while he is traveling. Ben, how are you? I'm doing well. How are you? I'm doing okay. I've reached a place of peace. We have not podcasted since my Seattle Mariners were defeated by the Toronto Blue Jays, who will now advance to the World Series, where they will meet the Dodgers. We do not have to linger over long on that, but the people demand their answer about that game, which I was disappointed by. I am not hesitant to say, although I do like this Blue Jays team quite a bit, and I'm excited for them

and their players, their fans. It was a thriller. I can say that about Game 7. We could talk about any number of things. The advisability of wearing a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey when you're arriving at the ballpark, given that franchises playoff, legacy, struggle. Wait, who did that?

Vladdy. Vladdy wore a Maple Leafs jersey to the ballpark that day. I didn't see it. That's bold, yeah. Yeah, very bold. Although I saw someone joke on Blue Sky that the Mariners countered by wearing Mariners jerseys to the ballpark. So I don't know how you want to weigh the various vibes.

I don't know. I assume the Leafs are fine in October. Yeah. October doesn't tend to be their difficult month. It is a, it is just a lovely jersey, you know. It really is. Just the problems that they're historically cursed. Yeah, it's really, it's really beautiful, though.

We could talk about how the starters performed. We'll talk about Shane Bieber within the context of the World Series. But I think, you know, that game for having been played over several hours really came down to just a couple of seconds. You will be continuing your story tradition of grading the ALCS manager, losing manager, Dan Wilson. So you don't have to give the whole game away here. But what were your impressions of the decision to when he had to relieve Brian Wu? bring in Edward Bizarro rather than some of his other high leverage options. What did you think of that choice?

Well, I feel like you and I both first guessed it rather than second guessed it, because it just didn't make a lot of sense to me. Yeah. I make this joke a lot, but the idea of the playoffs is to just, you know, make the whole plane out of the black box. Right. Or, like, come as close to that as you can. And every manager is basically just trying to have as many of the important at-bats in the playoffs

have their best pitchers on the mound as possible. possible. At the end of the day, it's much more complicated than that, but that's the goal is simple. And, you know, the Mariners had mostly their best pitchers pitch this game. You know, they came pretty close to doing that. So they got, I'm just pulling it up now, four from Kirby, two and a third from Wu, one from Munoz. And, you know, that is, that is seven and a third innings. Given that, it seems very strange in a game where the Mariners were really focused on having their best pitchers pitch a lot and important moments to have definitely the worst pitcher who pitched for the Mariners all night face the Jay's best hitter in the biggest spot.

Yeah. Yeah, that's bad, basically, is what I have to say about it. I wouldn't have done that. I know that, like, there's routines and everything, but, I don't know, Matt Brash. Right, yeah. I, you know, I, well, the first thing I want to say, because I feel so, I feel very bad for Edward Bizarro, who really was something of a revelation

this year. There were times in 2024 where he was like unplayable, where if we were going to transpose his performance from that season into this one, he would have been filling like the Carlos Vargas role on a season roster where it's like

this is the guy you bring in to mop up when you're either really ahead or really behind. Yeah, where he was good this playoffs. I mean, he wasn't outrageously good. You get a $4.50.5th, you know, he walked 2% of batteries he faced. That's pretty impressive. But he was a good arm for them over the regular season. He, you know, was one. Yeah, he's just not, like, you just can't do that. You have to have the best players pitch then.

And I feel like, so I haven't gotten through all of the Mariners games, like, line by line yet. Yeah. But I did feel like Wilson really loved going, Bizarro, Brash, Munoz. Yes. Like, not mixing it up much. not really varying it a ton based on game situation. I mean, he wasn't doing it when he's getting blown out. Right.

But it really seemed like he wanted, he was locking them to innings. Yeah. It almost felt like. And I feel like a lot of the other managers in the playoffs. And I would opine that I like what they're doing better than what Wilson did. Would target their guys for matchups they liked. Or they would say they would target their guys to avoid over-taxact. the same matchups more than they had to.

Basically, like, I would like to be solving for a few equations at once, and I felt like Wilson was not in that situation. So I didn't like it. I mean, that's not what it determines the game. But I do think that I read all of Bazaardo's quotes after the game, and I feel like I actually put things in pretty good perspective, where he was like, you know, I threw a really good sinker, which is what I do, and then he had a home run.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So, like, you shouldn't put yourself in a situation where that can happen. Right. Like, you should put yourself in a situation where Andres Munoz is there. And Andres Munoz has probably never said that sentence. I threw my best fastball and he hit a home run. Right.

And I think that, like, I don't know what their internal math looks like on various matchups. And I have had a hard time, this postseason, I had a hard time with Wilson discerning which moves were definitely him and which came with more of a, like, front office seasoning. Because there did seem like there were times where he was, like, maybe listening. to a directive and other times where he was like, no, these are the roles that these guys play and those roles correspond with innings and absent, you know, getting blown out in one or blowing the other team out, we're going to stick to those. So I don't know if they had a sense that like for whatever reason, maybe Munoz doesn't match up well against Springer

and Vladdy. Maybe they didn't like that matchup or something. But even if that's the case, like, first of all, Bizarro threw the night before. So he wasn't a fresh arm, and you have Matt Brash. And maybe in that moment you're worried about Brash, like, you know, there are times when Brash will, you know, he'll put a slider in the dirt and it skitters away and then it advances a runner. But you have two runs to play with there. Yeah. So, like, even if that's true, even if you're worried about Brash, you know, mislocating and Cal Rale not being able to corral it. and, you know, then Barger comes in from third.

Well, so what? Like, I mean, not so what. It's not a good outcome, but it's a better outcome than a George Springer three-run shot, right? So I just- I'm also a little confused, like, could Brian Wu have just faced him? Right. This is the other thing. I'm like, I get that you have, you know, you have two guys on, and Wu has been hurt,

and he had thrown two winnings, and maybe you think he's fatiguing. but is it really worse you know i saw joe posnasky kind of lay out their options and it just felt like wilson picked the worst possible one right they could have left woo in they could have maybe intentionally walked springer i wouldn't have loved that decision that would have been low on my hierarchy of choices but like last on mine but yeah it's like uh it is it is an option there they could have brought in brash they could have brought in munoz and instead they brought in Bizarro, and then they are sitting at home now. Yeah, it's absolutely no knock on Bizarro.

It's just, it's weird. Like, I really think that it is truly like a weighted random outcome generator. It's not like they were fated to lose because they brought him in, but they just didn't give themselves the best chance to win. Like, there were better options. That's not to say they would have won if they chose something different. Just the point of managing is to give yourself the best chance to win the game and let the players are going to win or lose the game.

But this doesn't feel like a spot where the manager put his guys in the spot where they were most likely to succeed. So that's basically what I'd say. I'll probably have more detailed thoughts on it when I write it. But, yeah, I really disliked it. And that's not second-guessing. At the time, I was like, how does this make sense? Well, I didn't have the Fox booth on in that moment. I had the Mariners radio broadcast on instead.

but I did see on social media that like even in that moment Joe Davis was like so hey what are you what are you doing you don't want to go to Munoz here and that's a you know I think Joe Davis is a reasonably analytically

inclined broadcaster he's not at the very least not antagonistic to the notion of it he's called a lot of postseason games but also like he's a national broadcaster and he's got smoltz in there as an anchor so when when that guy is saying hey don't you want to go to your

leverage arm here or your higher leverage arm here, you've probably made a bad choice. I don't know if you caught the clip of Joe Davis mentioning how powerful the Blue Jays were and how many home runs they'd hit. It was pretty amazing. Because, you know, one of the big through lines, the playoffs has been that the Blue Jays are the scrappy, contacted, oriented team who hits 75 infield singles a game. Right. And, you know, that was going on. You don't need to name any names, but you can guess who was saying it. And Davis was like, you know, that's a great point. they have hit 17 home runs in their six victories. Right.

It's like, wait, what? That was one of the things about smoltz that I found so just confounding was that, sure, you can, I've said this on the pod before. If you have an aesthetic preference for contact, that's fine. I do think you need to, like, engage with the game broadly where it's at. And you also should engage with the game that you're calling. And he would be making that point as various players on both teams. being his tanks. Yeah, and it's like, so, but so, John, you notice how the score did go up even though it was a home run?

There was a great one where Nailer hit a home run while Smoltz is talking about how much he loves to shorten up and go the other way. He just hits a home run, and he's like, great approach there. Yep. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. I actually, I feel like I'm coming back around a little on Smoltz, specifically when it comes to talking about what pitchers are trying to do. Sure.

Because he, I feel like the broadcast has done a good job, Joe Davis specifically, he's done a good job asking him, like, hey, John, like, if you were pitching, what would you do here? Right. And I think that's pretty cool. But yeah, I mean, look, announcers are just obsessed with small ball. I don't think it's a small, specific thing. Like, Arod.

Arod loves bunts, and Aeron never bunted. It's just a, it's like some mind virus that gets into you when you switch to the booth. Yeah. And I think that if you, again, like, if you, I, I, it is fun when you have a varied offensive approach, which I think is. is actually the story of this Blue Jays team. We can talk about this, I guess, in the context of the World Series,

but I think that they are, like, admirably balanced, right? They do make a lot of contact. They, you know, they are prone to contact over a strikeout. They don't strike out a ton. Like, they've lowered their strikeout rate in a way that's, frankly, incredible, relative to last year. But they also marry that with power, right? Like, they can hit big home runs.

They have guys who do. They have guys who are super. aggressive early in the count. I still don't understand why George Springer ever sees a first pitch fastball. Like, at this stage in the game, you know he's going to say in that. Like, what are we? So anyway, I think that if you want to see a team that has like a varied approach and is sort of responsive to game state, I get why that's appealing.

That's appealing to me. But being a grump about it, I think, is where Smoltz really runs into trouble. Well, I am excited to preview that in the context of the World Series because I'm actually, I've done a lot of research onto the Jay's approach, as it turns out. Allow me to say just one, two, two-ish quick things about the Mariners and then we can move on to the World Series. So as a final point on the Wilson decision in that inning, I think you're right that, you know, ultimately it comes down to guys executing. I think one of the things that you do very well in your write-up. of these managers is to be clear-eyed about the role that process plays and not, you know, credit a manager for something good happening when bad process preceded it and not dinging them

when, like, their thinking was sound, their approach was sound, but the player just didn't execute. I do think the combination of bad process and bad results just feels, it just feels so much worse. I would still be very disappointed to be sitting here, prepping for a blue, Jay's Dodgers World Series if, you know, Munoz had come in and he had given up that homer for sure. I'd feel less bad. I'd feel less bad because it's like, hey, man. Do you feel worse about that or the Crawford Bunt?

Okay, so the Crawford Bunt is a facet, was a fascinating moment for me in terms of how the analyst part of my brain and the pessimistic Mariners fan part of my brain interact with one another, right? because the analyst part of my brain knows that that is like kind of a catastrophic decision. He at least got the bunt down, so it's not the worst outcome he could have had there. But like, you have to know who is coming up behind you and the limited ability that that part of the lineup has to do anything at all, right? So you just, you can't give an out away there. That's the analyst part of my brain.

The pessimistic fan part of my brain that is having to come to talk. terms with the day getting kind of long for J.P. Crawford as a player, was like, well, at least he didn't ground into a double play. Yeah. Yeah. Which was my baseline expectation of J.P. Crawford in that moment. Now, that is perhaps overly pessimistic, even for Crawford as he is now, which is still, you know, a useful guy. His main decline is coming on the defensive end of things, I think, more than it is at the

plate. And he did double later in that game. so shame on me, but I did have to have a moment of like, yeah, that was bad. And he wasn't guaranteed a double play there, Meg. So do you, I have a question that is maybe too unkind to the Mariners. Oh, no, no such thing. They just forgot Crawford wasn't batting ninth? No, I don't. I don't.

But he bunted a decent amount this year. He did. And it usually makes sense because usually, like, the good hitters are coming up next. Right. Not Leo Rivas. Right. Yeah, and God, and this is

this is an unkind thing to say about the Mariners, at least in a backhanded way. The funny thing is that, like, Leo Rivas isn't even the worst part of that little stretch of the lineup, right? Because, like, Leo Rivas has no power to speak of. Like, I don't think that Leo Rivas could have

gotten a sack fly, even if he had made contact just because of how limited his powers. He does have a good eye, right? Like, that is a hitter who would, We'll draw a walk. He drew some in this series even, right? I think he is discerning at the plate.

But the fact that, like, that's the best you can hope for with the rest of that stretch of the lineup. It doesn't speak well of the bench that they came into this series with. I would basically say that Crawford fails to make an out like 30% of the time. Like, you reach his base fairly often. And you just can't be throwing away outs when the bottom 30-year lineup. is Crawford Rivas Robles. Yeah. Like, I really disliked that.

I think I might have disliked that more than bringing in Bizarro. It's close. I just thought both were like, what are we doing here? It's close. It's pretty close. I still think the Bizarro one is worse just because your available alternatives are so much better. That's true. That's a good point.

Like, the Crawford thing was picking between a variety of bad options. Yeah, but it was pretty bad, though. It was pretty confounding. And I do wonder, I'd have to go back and look because I'm sure he was asked afterward. Like, I imagine that that decision came from the dugout, that that wasn't Crawford on his own? I was not immediately able to find out, despite doing a lot of looking at it. But I kind of assume it was some blend. Yeah, okay.

I think that that was actually a good way of putting it. Like, when the available alternatives are meaningfully different, that makes it feel worse. Yeah. Whereas, like, I will say, though, if I were trying to imagine a. a matchup that is going to go really poorly for me. Shane Bieber needing a strikeout against Leo Rivas is like really up there. Really up there.

Yeah. Just like a terrible guy to have pitching in this situation. Well, let's maybe use this as a way to transition to talking about the World Series because Bieber is one of a couple of guys on that Blue Jays team who I am

really unsure what to make of as it pertains to the World Series. Because Bieber, you know, he had his first start, his start in Seattle, other than the home run, was very good. Secondaries were working. He was mixing pitches really well, able to certainly exploit a Mariners lineup that has a fair amount of swing and miss in it. And then his second start was, well, almost not good enough for them to advance, right?

We have this fiery, passionate, gritty Scherzer performance where, again, Like, the secondary stuff is working really quite well. But who knows what you're going to get at a Max Scherzer? Totally. So let's start with the pitching. Let's talk about maybe put the pitching for both of these teams in conversation. And I almost feel like we don't have to talk about the Dodgers starting pitching because, like... Have you heard they're good?

They're really good. I said this on the last episode. I enjoyed watching Blake's Snell start. That never happens. It's first time ever, yeah. I don't know that I can prove this. But these are his three longest starts in his entire life, right? I don't know about entire life.

Do you think Blake Snell knew the seventh inning existed before this year? He's like, whoa. It's kind of amazing how he's turned into a guy who gives you length as well as rate. Because I always thought the joke with him was like, it's going to be the best five innings you've ever seen. Yes. I mean, I went to a ton of Blake's Nell starts last year when he was on the Giants. Right. And they were like, honestly, at the ballpark, they're kind of nice because I had time to walk around.

Right. You do have time to get a beer when Snell is in. You used to. The new Snell is, he's just too fast. But yeah. I used to kind of enjoy him in person and dislike him on TV because he just tried to go to three, two counts in everyone. Right. I am loving his new, his new approach. Yeah. So it's like Snell is amazing. Yamamoto. Great. Yeah. Great. Glass now has been pretty steady. They, you know, aren't getting the kind of length out of him that they're getting out. of Snell and Yamamoto right now, but it's not bad. And then Otani is Otani, you know, and his starts are complicated by the fact that he has to go out there and hit three-home runs, but it's not like he's only going three innings or

anything like that. So their rotation is quite stacked, and then you have the, and then you have the Blue Jays. And you got Gausman, who is very good and also looks like he just walked off the set of the three musketeers, Trey Savage, we should talk about him. in greater depth in a second here. And then you have these question marks with Beeper and Scherzer. So advantage Dodgers,

but let's talk about those Blue Jays guys. So talk to me about your impressions of Trey is Savage. I think that it's too early to come to a long-term conclusion about him. But one thing that I feel really comfortable in saying about him in the short term is he has a really smart approach of just his two great pitches.

And he just throws him a lot. And I feel like one thing that has worked to his advantage is that teams really load up on lefties against him. So far, at least, in these playoffs. But he's, like, so good against lefties, because

you know, his best pitch is a splitter. That is, he throws, let's see, 35% splitters against lefties. And that is just, like, a pitch that good and 50% fast balls, he's not really giving them any breaking balls to look at. It's been working really well.

Galsman's very similar, right? So both those guys have big reverse splits. Galsman has it over 10-year career. So he just lefties don't hit Gousman well. Same deal. Good splitter. I think Yosavage is a similar kind of pitcher. I think that one thing that is going to be a good thing to watch in this matchup is that

the Dodgers are a relatively patient team, or at least they have a lot of patient hitters on their team. They've got some very aggressive hitters, too. but to, you know, get through the Dodgers clean, you've got to pitch to Muky Betts and Freddie Freeman. And while Freddie Freeman likes to swing, both of those guys have a really good sense of the strike zone. Max Monty.

In any case, like, the Dodgers definitely have some guys who you need to, like, attack diligently in the strike zone. The Savage walked a ton of guys, he's walking a ton of guys in the playoffs even, even as he performs well. And I think that that is going to be kind of a weakness there. I do think that, generally speaking, having these righties with big splitters does line up well for the Blue Jays. I think it puts the Dodgers in a bit of a bind on, like,

how do you attack this lineup? Because the Js don't really have any left-handed relieving to speak of. Yeah. So you would think, great, I can just, like, you know, fill my lineup with lefties. Like, don't let Tommy Edmund get in there, that kind of thing. Because, you know, he's much, he's at a big disadvantage swinging lefty against righties with good off-speed stuff. Yeah.

You can imagine, like, really tilting your team that way. The problem is that that doesn't work that well against these two, against the Savage and Galsman, just because of their particular pitch mix. And if you're using your worst hitters to try to get a platoon advantage against a guy who doesn't surrender platoon advantages, you end up in kind of an awkward spot. So I think that's going to be an interesting thing for the Dodgers to decide what to do.

It's like, you know, Alex Call has gotten some of these starts historically. Right. Like against the Phillies, who have a ton of lefty starters. Call was kind of in and out, and he played both games, the Reds series, I believe. But he's kind of there, like, against Wrighty's guy of choice, except that then they went away from him for the CS. Yeah. I'm just very curious to see how they approach the fact that it's all righty starters, but it's not really all righty starters in the way you'd think about it from Toronto. Yeah. And they're, you know, you're right that they're, like, their bullpen tips hard on, on righties. And like, the guys they have who are lefties aren't, you know, they're not their high leverage guys, right? It's Little and Flew Hardy and Eric Lauer. And I mean, I think Brendan Little is interesting and, like, he's got some nasty stuff. But yeah, he's not really a high leverage reliever. He had a 15% walk rate this year. So it feels a little.

dangerous to put them in there. Yeah, I mean, normally speaking, you'd be like, this is fine. Like, this team can't really attack our lefty weakness, so I don't mind starting some lefties. It's just that, and, like, against Bieber and Scherzer, I'd be, I'd be in for that plan. Yeah. I don't feel so good about it against Gousman. Yeah. Where, like, it's just like a not, not a great move for the Dodgers. One thing I'm very interested in as it relates to this is, so Max Muncie is a left-handed hitter. And he plays third base now, just because that's how the Dodgers line up.

So he'd be someone who would normally, like, definitely get all the starts in this series. But, and maybe this is getting into talking about the Blue Jays offense, but the Blue Jays put a lot of balls in play. Yeah. And they're extremely right-handed. Yeah. And so Muncie is going to be basically front and center. He's going to be one of the two defenders who is busiest in this series. And he's not good at third base.

He's not awful. No, he's very impressive. It's very impressive how good he is there, honestly, because I thought he was, I thought they would try this two years ago and be like, no, okay. He's playable, but that's a lot of stress to put on, you know, a bad defender, as it were, a defender who's playing a position above his normal ceiling. Yeah.

And they're asking him to do that because they know that the tradeoff is worth it, and it has been. But when you combine the fact that he's not that great of an option against Gousman and Yes, Savage, and the fact that he's not a great defender against a team that has a bunch of righties who put the ball in play, I think that's actually an interesting point for the Dodgers. They could move Enrique Hernandez to third. Yeah.

And I don't know, rejigger the outfield around a little bit in matchups where they don't think that Muncie's lefty bat will be as useful. Right. And then just rotate as soon as the splitter pitchers are out of the game. I think that's an interesting option. I think that there's a lot of interesting things to think about in terms of given

that Blue Jays pitcher's particular vulnerabilities and strengths, how should we change our lineup around, even though they're all righties? Yeah. Well, and it's interesting because, you know, you're right that they could bring Kiki in and I guess play call. They could play call in the outfield.

That's kind of the problem. Right. I mean, this is, it's funny because, like, Heson Kim is a pretty nifty little player, but there's a lot of, there are a lot of bad bats on that bench. I mean, there are a lot of people. bad bats on most

benches. For sure. If the bats are good, then they're typically in the lineup. But there are some bad bats on that Dodgers bench. You're not going to start

Justin Dean in a World Series game. I know that Call is theoretically not your choice against, like take Max Muncie out of the lineup for Alex Call against the righty.

Seems weird. Yeah. But what if you just did Miguel Rojas? Like, what if you just amped up the defense? I don't know.

Call is a good defender. I think that there's going to be I think that that's a really interesting access point, basically. And honestly, I think they're probably mostly just going to stick with Muncie and be like, eh, he's a good playoff performer. But I think that it is a place where if there were no ego in the consideration, if literally the most important thing was just to win the game and it was all robots, I think you'd really want to consider what to do with Muncie here in a spot where his advantages are neutralized and his disadvantages are tightened. And, like, they'll probably just play them anyway. But I think it's an interesting spot where something could be done. Or maybe they should just bring Michael Comforto back and give themselves.

I'm kidding. It's sort of remarkable that they stuck with Comforto as long as they did. For so long, yeah. So long. I think they were trying to kill Craig Goldstein. I think that they were just motivated to kill him. I'm curious, again, like the Dodgers, you talk about their lineup. I think you've highlighted some of the matchup concerns.

but, like, did you know this show Yotani is good? Right, yeah. When we say about this group, they're pretty great. I'm actually, I'm writing the preview for the World Series now, and it's like really hard to write about the Dodgers lineup. Yeah. Or the Dodgers rotation. Yeah.

There's been so much written about every guy. Yeah. That it's tough to find new things. Yeah, they're incredible. I do think that they're a really good matchup against the Blue Jays, just in general. The Blues don't really have a lot of kind of high-octane or weird relievers. Yes.

And I feel like that's a good way to put some stress on you is basically to have just an ever-varying, like, Ray's style, like, what are we even facing? Right. That seems like a good way to attack the Dodgers. They're not set up for that, yeah. Giving Otanyan bets, a ton of new looks. Or, I mean, yeah, you could have Tarek Scouble, too. I mean, the Js don't. Sure.

Yeah, I think that for a normal team, like, without any. of the very, very best players in the game, a good way to attack the Dodgers is by presenting them a ton of different matchups. The Jays are not really capable of doing that. I do like that they have the two similar archetype starters and then kind of different relievers. But, yeah, it's just going to be really tough for them

because they don't really have a lot that they can do other than just, like, throw our guys out there and see if your guys can hit them. And the Dodgers have been hitting them all year. So I think that that is going to be a bad trade-off for Toronto. They don't have any way around it. Yeah, they just kind of have to live with it. Try to limit the damage.

I would basically say, it's not like you should treat the bottom of the lineup as high leverage, but getting those guys out matters a lot. Yeah. Like, that's what they did to the Mariners. Right. And the ALCS, I have this stat for you. Just as a quick callback. The Mariners, 7-8-9 hitters batted.

114-205-143 in the ALCS. And if you do that, it's much easier to attack these offenses with great home-run hitters in the top third. Right. You're at least optimized to limit the damage if they get into one, if there's no one ahead of them on base, which...

Yeah. Now, the Dodgers' bottom three is a lot better than the Mariners' bottom three. That's what the money's for. But it's still the same principle applies. I do think that if the Blue Jays do a great job of shutting down the Dodgers, I bet you will look back, and we won't point to this as the key,

but I bet you they will have done pretty well against the so-so guys. Yeah. Like, if the second-tier people are beating you up, it's just you're not going to have a good time. Yeah, I feel like one indicator of Dodgers performance will be, like, if we're hearing about post-season Enrique Hernandez, they're in a bad way. And I don't mean this as a slate against Kike,

because I think that he's a fun little player and he clearly plays very well in October, but, like, you should be able to neutralize Kiki Hernandez at this point in his career. And if they're not able to do that, you know, if Andy Pyes is hitting a home run. Baseball is one of those classic things where, like, weird stuff can happen. Yeah. It's not like he couldn't have a great series in the Dodgers lose, but I, you don't want that for Toronto. Like, you do not want to sign up for let Kiki do well and see what happens from there.

No. Right. Yeah, if he's adding to the legend, you're probably. in rough shape because that means he's either hitting a home run or on base ahead of Otani, Betts, and Freeman. And that's not the business you want to be in if you're in Toronto. I think maybe we should just talk about these bullpens a little bit more. You're right to say that like Toronto's has been, I think, a more persistent weakness for them than than Los Angeles's. That's hard to say, has been. Although we can, we should dive in on on their guys also. But yeah,

You're really counting on Jeff Hoffman. I don't even feel that bad about counting on Jeff Hoffman. Like, relievers go in and out of effectiveness, but he's been a very effective closer-level reliever in the majors before. But then it's like, and that's it. Right. Like, Jeff Hoffman is the good part of the bullpen by online. Right.

I mean, Louis Varland is good. Yeah. They pitch him two times a day, so I don't really know how long that can go. He also has a six-fip in the playoffs. That is very home run-driven. He's just been getting rocked. Yeah. Like, the contact has been very loud.

When it has happened, yeah. Yeah. He has a lot of strikeouts, and he's not walking too many, so those things are working out okay. But the contact has been incredibly loud. I don't think that that's the kind of pitcher you want a ton of against the Dodgers who don't strike out a lot for how much power they have. Like, you can kind of get away.

Like, O'Neill-Cruz types. Yeah, Louis-Varland's probably good against them. Dodgers-type. less so, because I feel like he can hide his homer-proneness by just having more at-bats where it's not competitive, where there's no balls in the strike zone, and people are swinging at bad stuff. And the Dodgers just don't do that a lot. So I think the Toronto bullpen is going to be like a big problem. I mean, it has been. It's definitely been the worst part of their team by a lot in the playoffs. And they've been able to overcome it. And so that's, you know, that's their blueprint

right here is just overcome it. Like, just play well enough that the fact that our bullpen through two rounds of playoffs has a 552 ERA, 570 FIP, and is walking five batters per nine, those are bad. That's real bad. It's not even like an outlier babbip either. They've allowed a 289 babbip and still they're just getting, you know, they're getting hit hard. If that continues, it's going to be bad for them. If it gets worse, I don't think they're winning.

Right, yeah. The bullpen is really awful. And so I think that lots of times John Schneider is going to be looking down at his lineup card and it's like, okay, do you want to let Shane Bieber face Shoheyotani for a third time? Like, no. Okay, cool. What are my alternatives? Yeah, but also. That's going to be a really interesting spot is the two lesser pitchers, Scher and Bieber of the rotation. I like Beaver a lot. I just think he's still injury compromised or still getting back into the swing of things. They're going to have to, in bad spots for them, face good Dodgers hitters. There's just no way around it. And those matchups are going to favor the Dodgers, but they're not deterministic. Right. Yeah.

Like if Shane Bieber strikes out Mookie Betz and Shoya Otani with runners on in the sixth inning or something, that's a good sign. If he's not even facing them, it's hard for me to wrap my head around how the Blue Jays make this work. And then on the Dodgers end of things, what do you think of Rokey? you were very enthusiastic about Rokey in one of the pieces you wrote. I can't even remember now. You've written so many in the last month. And I had to be like, hey, you're right. But also it's been too.

I think it was maybe the series preview against the Reds. Did you write that? Was that yours? Okay. So before the postseason started. Yeah. And I said, hey, he's thrown twice in relief. And then Rookie made me look dumb in some ways and smart.

because he's been at times completely dominant and at other times has clearly not really had a good sense of where the ball is going. So having had a couple of rounds of playoff Roki now, what is your current assessment of Roki Sasaki? I would prefer the starters to him still, like, but I think he's the best pitcher on the Dodgers other than them. Yeah. I actually think that maybe he's just a reliever. Right, yeah. He's a really good reliever. Yeah. I think that letting him just basically throw his fastball and his splitter looks pretty good. Yeah. And having them all kind of like amped up with the adrenaline of going shorter bursts.

It's not like he's striking out that many guys. And, you know, the fastball shape thing, it's not fixed by him being a reliever. It's still a bad shape. It's still not what you want out of your, like, 100 mile an hour throwing starter is a hitable fastball. But I think that amping up the miles per hour a little bit and getting to throw more of split has just worked out pretty well. Yeah. And I also, I feel like it's good for his health.

Yeah. It seems like it seems like it's agreeing with him in many ways. I mean, he stretched out to three innings, like just fine by pitching this way, which also really surprised me because he's been working more frequently than he ever has before. Right. Obviously, much shorter bursts. Right. But his ability to kind of maintain the reasonably high octane stuff, even for a three-inning

stretch kind of like on demand was very impressive to me. Yeah. Yeah. I think I was probably too sure that he was going to hit, like that he was going to work out. Yeah. But he has, and the rest of the Dodgers bullpen has not. No. And so that basically means that, yeah, I think that Dave Roberts's preferred, like, plan every game as eight innings of my starter and then Sasaki.

I agree with everything that you've just said. And I think, like, an underrated part, we all, we had a lot of conversation as an industry about Roki's fastball shape when he was struggling as a starter as well. We should because it was bad. I think a thing that was underrated was just like how badly things were going for him with the slider. And now he barely has to throw it, right? Like he can just completely de-emphasize that pitch. You know, maybe it's you show it to show something different every now and again or as like a get-me-over. But, you know, he hasn't really had to rely on it at all.

And so I think as much as anything, just being able to sideline that offering has been good for him. I am going to be so fascinated to watch Rokey having to locate with a disciplined, not strikeout prone Blue Jays lineup, right? And that particular matchup I'm very excited for because, you know, I feel like I'm sounding like I'm like a Roki truther or something. And I don't mean it like that. Like, this is obviously working. And the splitter is unbelievable. And he's doing quite well. I do think that there is some, like, location-related vulnerability with him.

Oh, yeah. And we saw some of that. I guess in the Brewer series, it didn't end up matter. Clearly. Didn't matter. But I do think that, like, if you have a team, like the Blue Jays, that have a lot of very discerning guys, they are going to be able to say, I'm not swinging at that. And how that battle gets won, I think, is going to, might end up mattering, like, in a big way in a big spot. I agree with that.

So I'm very curious to see how that kind of shakes out for him when you have what he has, but from a velocity perspective now that he doesn't have to save anything. And with that splitter, it might not matter anyway. It still might not matter. But I do think that if you're the Blue Jays, that's the sliver of, okay, I can sort this out with this guy that you have to kind of grab hold of or try to. Well, the funny thing is, like the Dodgers would, like, only really want to throw him. I'm looking at this right now, and he has thrown as many

innings as the next two relievers in the Dodgers bullpen combined. Oh, yeah. Like, they're just, that's basically their plan. Yeah. To me, one of the really interesting subplots of kind of Dodgers bullpen against Jay's offense is the Jay's don't strike out, and they also hit for a lot of power. Yeah. And the way that you do that is by swinging early, basically, right? They're a very early swinging team. I think they had, They saw, like, the third fewest pitches for plate appearance this year in the majors. They were in-two-strike counts, like the third least often. They were one of the most aggressive teams on in-zone swing rate.

And I think that this strategy makes a lot of sense. It's basically, if you get the two strikes, you're going to have a bad time. Yeah. They're going to throw one of 18 absurd secondary pitches that they learned in a lab. Like, don't do that. Just swing early. It's basically, it's more complicated than that, but it's not that much more complicated than that. you don't strike out a lot

if you don't get laid into counts. And it's like the Blue Jays walk a ton despite being discerning. Yeah. They're just like trying to put the ball in play. Yeah. But like with power. Right.

They're basically taking their big cuts at fastballs early. Yep. Great plan. Kind of confusing when what you're trying to do is get their starters out of the game. Yeah, yeah.

So on the one hand, the Dodgers' starters' best skill is missing bats and the Js don't swing and miss very often. Yes. But on the other hand, the Jays do swing a lot. Yes. And you could imagine, like, Snell or Glass now has a one, two, three inning on six pitches, and you're just like, ooh, like, that's bad. That's an extra inning for them later.

I want to face that guy. And so I do wonder if the, like, how the Jays are going to square this circle, like, how they're going to figure this out. Like, what do we do here? Because the way that I'm thinking of it is, like, pitches per plate appearance. some teams try to operate on the per plate appearance part like try to get more pitches per plate appearance the JAS is try to get more plate appearances Yes, yes, yeah, yeah

They're just like it improves our OPP to have the at-bats be shorter because we're not striking out and so that's fine and we'll see more pitches that way And so you could imagine like in the games where the hits are falling that this looks really bad for the Dodgers Yeah

that their pitchers aren't striking anybody out and Max Muncie is like flailing around at these ground balls because they're, you know, they're hit 110 miles an hour by Vladdy. Like, it's like not a fun place to play defense. Boba Shet's back and he, like, that's basically what he does is like hit really, really, really hard, low-ish contact. Yeah.

I can imagine the way that this works out well for the Blue Jays. But on the other hand, like, you can definitely see the way this doesn't work out well. Right. Is that you start swinging early to try to put the ball in play. Right. You make outs by doing that. Right. And then you're just facing the same guy for longer.

It's an interesting kind of bind. The correct thing to do might be theoretically to wait the Dodgers out, but no one can do that. Yeah. Look at the Brewers. They didn't even come close, and they're the most patient team in baseball. You just can't get to the bullpen if you can't get the starters out. So I think that the Js basically need to approach that by swinging more, but that feels strange. It does feel strange.

But, you know, maybe George Springer will be like, okay, fine. I don't know that I can physically swing more, but I will endeavor to try. If I'm a Blue Jays fan, you know, obviously he hit the big tank, but even just, sorry to have a quick digression on George Springer, the difference that a day made in terms of, or I guess was it just one day, I guess it was just one day, he looked like he was not going to be able to play in that first game where he came back from cracking his kneecap. He didn't actually do that or he wouldn't have been able to play. to play at all. But he looked incredibly compromised in game six in a way where I was like, if they advance, I don't know what good it's going to do him if he can't go. And then he looked fine after that, Ben, was the thing. And then in Game 7, he looked fine. You know what's really incredible? He's definitely playing right field in the World Series, right? I can't imagine making up the lineup otherwise. Well, I guess part of it's going to depend on Beset and being back. Sorry, I'm saying

If Bichette is back, then, like, there's no... Bichette is definitely not playing the field. No, you have to de-h-ins. Right. Yeah. I think you have to de-h-m. At least initially, right? Like, I can't imagine.

I would be absolutely shocked if he plays the field at all in the series. There's just the kind of injury that he had, like a knee spray and a ligament spray in your knee. I don't see him playing a quick change position. Yeah. You want to minimize the move there. And, you know, Jimenez has been respectable. They have ICAF. Like, they have some options to, like, you know, rejigger stuff.

But, yeah, you would think that Bichette will DH. And then, yeah, I guess bring her to the outfield and park her to the bench. So the way that I have it in my preview is that I think they're going to probably put him to third against Ritees and bench ICF. Yeah. moving Clement to second. But then against the lefties, yeah, to the bench. To the bench, yeah. With ICF in a second.

Yeah, that makes sense. Like, none of these are good. Right, yeah. But all of them are a lot better than not getting to have Bo Bichette. Right. I think it's all worth it, assuming Bichet is like some reasonable approximation of himself. I think I would take like 95% Bichet, honestly, and play D.H. Oh, yeah.

I have a very strong feeling that whatever George Springer's injury is, and whatever his advanced defensive metrics play, that he is quite capable of playing a capable right field for six World Series games. Yeah. Clutch may not exist, but players who get themselves into their best shape for the playoffs absolutely do exist.

And George Springer feels like he's one of those guys where, like, the regular season is, sure, partially about the stats that you accumulate to get into the Hall of Fame one day and get paid and all that, but also partially about getting ready for October. Yep. I'm very interested to watch that, because like you said, he looked like, yeah,

I was very confused about how in the world they thought this was going to work to let him keep playing and steady it the biggest hit of his career. You know what? Maybe not. He's had too many big ones. But one of the biggest hits of his career. It ranks, though. It ranks. And I would offer that on an org-adjusted basis, certainly the biggest, right?

Because he had huge hits for Houston. But after a while, it's like, oh, to secure another World Series trip for us, whereas, you know, that. they're going to be playing that highlight in Toronto for the rest of our lives. I agree. Regardless of whether or not they win the World Series, we're going to see that forever. You're going to see that. And you know what? The Mariners are going to see it every time they go to Rogers Center for the foreseeable future.

They are 100% going to play that before every game when the Mariners come through. I'm sure that they play the Batista one before every Rangers game. Oh, yeah, I would. I mean, the thing is about Canadians, they are nice, but they're. They are human, and human beings, you know, they engage in pettiness on occasion, even when their maybe baseline disposition is one of politeness. It requires some ellipses, but the thing about Canadians is they are human. I really enjoy it. They are.

I do wonder how many times we're going to see the tariff ad during the World Series. You don't have to hand it to Ronald Reagan, but he was right about tariffs in that clip. I didn't see the ad live because I was maybe watching on MLVTV. And it didn't, it didn't break through. I'm not going to miss the MLV TV ads, Ben. I'm ready for a new, I'm ready for a new crop of those. Could I bring this in a potentially controversial direction just briefly? I don't understand who they hired to do those Google cloud ads, but fire them.

Oh, yeah. No, this is not controversial. This is a tremendous take. very, very, I think down the middle, down the middle take. I just don't understand, like, obviously, the people who are doing Google AI work with baseball are very good at math and science and also baseball. Like, they definitely are. They're working with Tom Tango.

They're coming up with new stuff. They're understanding how to use the terabytes of data they get every day to make Stadcast better for us. And honestly, Stadcast rocks. Like, the amount of data we get out of that stuff is incredible. Yeah. Let's go make an ad about it. It'd be really cool to talk.

about, like, stolen-based takeoff rates or how much your extra step makes you more likely to go. What if we made it about tapping the plate with our bat? I... Yeah, I had a lot of issues with this. Patrick Dubucoord, a great piece about those ads for BP. And, you know, he really honed in on, like, the math needs to math.

Like, the science needs to mean something, and the way they're doing it doesn't. And the other objection I have to those ads is that I think that you can have a lot. of fun with admitted false precision. Right? Like I love to operate in that space as a writer. I think that if you want to come up with like a goofy metric and you are upfront about the fact that you are mostly just having some good fun and that this is not meant to, you know, it'll tell us something about baseball, but not in an analytically rigorous way. Great, great conceit for many an

article a ton of fun to be had i could imagine a version of a piece i would write where i would like obsessively watch plate taps and whether they jump over the the foul line right it's like an incredible sambiller article yeah yes exactly and it hasn't said i'm very skeptical of the notion that only 50% of players are doing that which is the stated stat in that jumping over the foul line no way yeah yeah none of these stats are real well but it's also just like that isn't that betrays like a lack of good baseball sense. I think the number is way, way higher. Most players, most players do that. Most players do that. What are we, what are we, anyway? I would be surprised if it is below 99%. I agree. And so I'm like, to your point, who are these ads for? Who is writing them? Yeah.

Because they aren't, they are trying to have fun, but they are also not admitting to the imprecision of the thing that they're measuring. The thing that bothers me the most is that if you're going to waste the time to do all this, like, do it on something useful. Or tell me a joke. Like, I like Geico ads. Like, I don't know. There's a lot of ways to have a good advertisement. This is just like, this one feels annoying because it's not for the non-statheads.

Right. But it's not for the stat heads. Yeah. The fact that those ads get played so much on MLBTV and the fact that they loop and you hear that same, same audio stinger. over and over again. Like, I'm in the tank for Google. My wife works there.

Like, I'm, of course I am, but I'm just like every time, I'm like, oh, yeah, they're, they're rough. I, yeah, you got to have a, I like, I really like the way that the actress and the one Guyco ad does the, oh, he does look like Daryl. I think her line read is so perfect in that, in that ad. And I tend to not want to remember insurance ads at all, although I do like the progressive backup quarterback. ones. I think they're pretty funny. Especially the Teddy Bridgewater one where he's a backup listener. I, you know, you got me.

That one's good. That one's good. He's funny. That's funny. That's a good conceit. I like that they have a new round of them, so I'm not sick of the ones we had. I feel like they're more creative than they were the first go-round. Like a backup emotional support friend.

That sounds fantastic. The backup family portrait taker. Yes, the Tommy DeVito is way up there for me too. Yeah, I wish they'd found a way to work his agent into the ad, though, because that guy. So much of, yeah, I guess that's my point. There are so many creative ways that you can take sports advertising. Yes. And the company that, in my experience, like, advertises the most to me because of their deal with the league around data, is advertising in the worst way.

Yes. I wouldn't rather see a blue chew ad. Oh. But it's closer than you'd like. Yeah. I've already, I'm sure, bored our listeners enough with some of the weird, like, geographic-specific ads that we get in Arizona. There's some, there's some dark stuff that they clearly think Arizonans like, but it is, it is rough. Although, since I've been trying to listen on the radio, we're just getting a lot of Mike Piazza, great moments, defining an Apo Taco advertising.

I've heard that a lot, too. Yeah, because whenever I'm driving around, I just put on, like, playoff radio. Yeah. And the Mike Piazza, like, I thought both teams played a great game. One is like, yeah, they must, the pseudo-random algorithm isn't working because it just picks the same one every time. Yeah. And it's frustrating because, as we've said before, like, they just have access to every clip, you know?

All of them. They don't have to clear anything. They just have it. It's theirs. They could pick any random assortment of things. Okay. here's a question for you about the World Series because I feel like we've talked about

both of these teams' rotations. We have a sense of their lineups, their bullpens. I do think that the Bichette of it all is like an interesting potential wrinkle. I can't wait to see what shape he's in. I hope that he is a good version of himself because it's more fun when guys play well

in the World Series than when they don't. Do you feel like there is any appreciable difference as these guys are as tacticians between the managers? Do you think that there's any advantage or disadvantage to be gained there for these guys? So I am going to go see Craig Goldstein at Christmas, and I don't want him to kill me. Okay.

But I think Dave Roberts is a pretty good tactical manager. He is fine. Yeah. I think Craig will be very upset to hear me say that. But I think he's gotten pretty good. And I think it's pretty impressive that last year, the thing that – so, again, the whole point of the game is to make as many of your – played appearances on the pitching side out of good pitchers as possible.

And so last year, he did that by just being like, this rotation has got to go. And I'm just going to use my relievers in, like, ridiculous spots. You're going to be like, why do you have a reliever in there? And it was definitely the right choice because that rotation was awful. And he was just like, the right way to do this is to

I thought he was really clever about using the bad relievers in blowouts either way. He understood the limits of his bullpen and got the guys that he wanted to get the outs in most frequently. So this year they gave him a totally different team. All-starters, worst bullpen in the league, seems like.

And he's like, okay, I can do that. Like, great. I'll just lean on my starters, like, way more than I ever have, and do the opposite. Like, let Yoshinau Yamamoto pitch a complete game in the playoffs. Very on Dave Roberts like. But I think he is just pretty good at saying, like, I want my best guys to have the ball more often. Yeah.

Like, why would I be the Dodgers manager if I weren't trying to lean on the fact that I have the better guys than them. And he's done a really good job of that. So I'm very confident that he's going to do a good job managing. Look, the little tactical stuff that sometimes we all get very obsessive about when it's a quarter of

a percent difference here or there. Yeah, I'm not confident he has that all down. That's tough hard. And I'm not confident that I'm measuring it right even. But I used to think that he was just like trying to get Clayton Kershaw's playoff moment all the time and not managing to win.

And now I think that he's basically like managing to win really well on average. I'm very impressed by his ability to kind of switch up the way that he's managed to fit his teams. And I think that some of that is experience and some of that is probably that maybe these past teams, like he was set up to where it was a kind of no-win situation in terms of like looking good managing because he didn't have starters who could go deep and he also didn't have good bullpens. But now he seems to be pretty good at using his tools. I'm less sure about Schneider. It's hard to tell.

He hasn't done a lot of things that have made me gasp. Yeah. And I also think that he has a lot less moving parts. Right. You know, the Dodgers have this interesting dichotomy where it's like they have the best rotation of all time.

No, they don't. But they have the best rotation on a relative basis that they've had in a very long time and a terrible bullpen. And see Roberts's thing is to like lean really hard one way and he's good at that.

Schneider's thing is like, we got an okay rotation in a bad bullpen. Right. And, like, how do you balance this? And also, no lefties to leverage. Right. So much what he's doing is being like, well, all right. Yeah, these are my options.

And the pinch hitters aren't that varied either. There's a lot of, like, let's out hit them and like, let's use Miles Straw for defense. It's good, good plan. But Roberts has harder decisions to make, I'd basically say. Yeah, and to your point, more of them. And I do think that, you know, there have been times in the past where I I have felt like Dave has been perhaps not, like, the best tactician, or he's made pitching decisions that I found a little bit confounding. But I also think that part of it is just that, like, he's there all the time.

And there are just a lot more decisions to nitpick, which doesn't mean that when he makes a bad one, we have to be like, oh, Dave, you know, like, he's capable of making bad choices. Bad Dave. Yeah, oh, Dave. He'll get you. But I also think that a lot of the time, it's just, hey, you know, how these guys are always playing October baseball? You got a lot more grist for the mill to find something you don't like. But also, like, that probably has made him better. Yeah, I would say.

Experience makes people better at things. And no one has more experience managing in the playoffs with the weight of expectations on your shoulders and good players on your team. Like, if you made Dave Roberts run an upstart team, maybe he wouldn't be good at it. Yeah. Because, like, he doesn't really know how to handle it when you have, like, one starter that you need to. to make, like, the Tarex-Cruble problem. Right. It's like, our run convention is not good, but we've got this one guy.

Yeah. Roberts has never really been in that position. Yeah. So maybe he wouldn't be good at that, but I would lean things his way. And it's funny because I feel like a lot of casual baseball fans, and even Dodgers fans, don't feel that way. Because he just has a, he's got a lot of tape of not doing his good stuff, but he's improved every time. Yeah, I think that that's right. And I do think that, you know, one of the things I've come to appreciate,

about him is that I think he you know like snicker did a really good job of this in there when the Braves won the World Series and you just mentioned with with Roberts like he has a really good sense of like no one went to hold him and no one went to fold him you know and he doesn't he doesn't misplay the leverage very much anymore yeah snickers a very good calling up by the way he was awesome at it yeah he was really he was you know he only had a couple of guys he really trusted, and they never pitched in games when the Braves were going to lose in a way that was obvious. I thought he did a really good job.

And Roberts has done a really good job of this, too, is being willing to switch in-game. Yeah. It's like, oh, yeah, like, we gave up. And then our mop-up guy held them to no runs for four innings, and we scored three. And, like, now it's the high leverage guys. Right. Yes. Yes.

Yeah. I think that that skill of, like, knowing when to use your bad guys is. is, like, very important and very underrated. Yeah. And I think that a lot of managers just really, like, spend so much time looking at these packets of understanding how to maximize every single matchup that they miss the meta-matchup, which is that, like, it's your guys against fatigue also.

Right. Yeah, it's a seven-game series. You do have to, you know, and I don't know if I've always been in, like, in the Mariners postseason run, for instance, completely logically consistent. on the score, but you have to walk this fine line because you don't, I think you don't ever want to punt a winnable playoff game. That's a wild thing to want to do or to allow yourself to do. But you do have to know when, like, you just don't have it and make decisions accordingly. And, you know, you're not always going to be able to make a perfectly good one. You might just have, you know, a bunch of less bad options to choose from. I think a thing that is hard

to wrap your head around, and I've spent a long time trying to wrap my head around it, is when we say punt, which is just the way to describe it, right? It's like if you're not using your best guys, you're punting. Right. What you might actually be saying is like, by not using my best guys in this situation, I'm 20% to win instead of 23%. Right. Whereas, like, I know that I'm going to have some future situations

where I can go from 60% to 80% by using my best guys. And what you're really doing is saying, well, the advantage I'm getting from fewer runs in this game is less. It's not that the game's over, because, like, hey, if my guy hits his top end outcome, I can still win. Right. Like, you know, sometimes you put in Jack Dreyer and just, like, no one can score on Jack Dreyer. Right. That has happened a lot this year, in fact.

And similar deal with some of the guys in the Jay's bullpen. It's just hard to say, like, I'm not playing my best guy. Right. At any point, like, you know, we'll yell at you for putting in Edward Bizarro. Yeah. If you do that, too much. But it is important to know when you're not getting. the kind of leverage multiplier

that you need on your good arms because they can only throw it so often. Right, they can't go every day unless they're Louis Varlane, in which case they might pitch in multiple games. Games we don't even see. Yeah, now, like, let's see if Schneider does this. I have no reason to think that he's not going to be able to,

particularly, but I'm confident that Rogers can weigh these tradeoffs correctly because he has shown that he can do it over multiple years now. And I will be interested to see if Schneider can match him. It is definitely a skill to know when you're beat or know when you're likely beat and try not to throw too much after that narrow chance of coming back. Is there anything else about this particular World Series matchup that strikes you as note-worthy? Or are we sufficiently previewed, at least for now?

I'd say one small thing I will be watching is what will the running game look like for the Blue Jays. Will Smith? Not like a bad thrower necessarily, but not a good thrower. And currently compromised a little bit still. Currently compromised a little bit still. Now, we don't know how that's going to affect his pop time or anything.

Right. But certainly not Patrick Bailey or, like, Luis Terenz. Like, he's not a run-game shutdown guy. The Blue Jays don't run, though. They have one stolen base in the playoffs. Yeah. So that feels like kind of a, a lost opportunity for them to put some pressure on the Dodgers.

And pressure is going to be important because, like, there are definitely going to be a lot of, like, multiple dry games where the Blue Jay is just, the balls aren't falling. And when that happens against the Dodgers, it's going to be the eighth inning and, like, Yamamoto's going to be in there. That's going to feel really bad. Those games are going to be really important to, like, create a little offense. Yeah. I would expect that to come from stealing, but it'll be really interesting because it's just against tendency. Yeah, like their fastest guy who was on the CS roster was probably a sub. It's probably Joey Lopifito, who I don't imagine is going to make the World Series roster

with them bringing a Bichet back. Yeah, he's like probably the cut for Bichet, right? Yeah, I would think so. I mean, he was only added because Santander couldn't go anymore and they had to remove him. So I don't imagine that Loparfito will make it, but he's definitely, even some of their, this is like a very simplistic way of looking at it. Even some of their, like, littler guys aren't, like, super speedy, right? Like...

Well, do you know who led them in stolen bases this year? I had to look it up. Oh, gosh. Was it Varsho? Springer. No way. Was it really? 18 steals.

That's fantastic. Well, he's not stealing now. That kneecap is barely attached. Well, it's really interesting. Like, I feel like their best chance in the series is going to have... It's going to be having Springer be like an all-around right fielder. Yeah. How about that?

Yeah. a peak Jason Hayward or something. Yeah. But he's like hanging on by a thread. It's very interesting. Varsha had two steals. Yeah. And some of that is that he only played in 71 games, but some of it is just that he's

like not that. He's not, he's reasonably fast, but like in a, I'm good straight line in the outfield kind of way. Like he's not a base runner. Yes. But it's not steals. It's not steals. He's good to double play avoidance.

Like he is good at taking the next base. He has some speed. but it's not, like, blazing, you know? So I think that'll be, like, really the only guy who, if they get on, I'm going to be like, yeah, he should go, is Andres Menez. And he's not, like, getting on is the problem for him, not what happens after that. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I think that'll be probably advantage Dodgers.

Probably the Jays just won't try to steal. And that'll be great because it's a place where the Dodgers have struggled at times. And it does seem like a way you can trouble them. But I just don't. I don't see how Toronto is actually going to access that weakness. Take care of it. Yeah, that's not there. And vice versa, like, the Dodgers don't need to screw around with doing that here.

Like, that seems like a good way to shorten some innings in a way you don't want. Yep. And, like, Alejandro Kirk is just very capable across the board. Yeah. I don't want to be, like, testing him in a way I don't have to when it feels like the weak spots in their team or elsewhere. I will say that one of the things I am most looking forward to about this World Series is getting to just, like, unambiguously enjoy Alejandro Kirk again. Because, you know, like. Because you're so mad when he beats you, but you're happy to?

Yeah, I just, I love him so much as a player. He is, I might have said this on the pod before. Like, he's such a great athlete to point to when you're trying to get people to understand the different bodies and shapes that athleticism can manifest in, right? Because you look at him and I will say, they were hitting this point a little hard on the broadcast this last round. I was like, you've talked about Kirk's body maybe enough. you guys. You can kind of slow your role with this a little bit. But here I am about to do the same thing. Like, he, he looks the way he does, and he's, like, not an Adonis or anything like that, but, like, he moves back there really well. He's got a tremendous amount of flexibility in his hips

and his lower half. Like, he's literally the best blocker in the major leagues. Right. It's amazing. Kind of amazing. I think that the descriptions of Alejandro Kirk are certainly furthered by the fact that he has like a creator beard. I think if he had a different beard, it would be less like, look at this guy. But he just looks like, yeah, the beard is like the thing

that you would see on one of those randomly generated player pictures for a fictional player in an old baseball video game. Yeah, and you know, it's clear that he is just like such an important like glue guy on that roster. I mean, being really good at baseball will help

with that, but also he's just like a really important good guy. Like, it's sad but happy too is I can't really talk about Alejandro Kirk as like this underrated player no one knows about anymore.

Right, because he's like a gold glove catcher who hits a clean up for a team in the World Series. It's like, okay. Yeah. Yeah, we can't be calling him

underappreciated. Like he's a 116 WRC plus as a catcher playing a really good defense. And yeah, his team is about to go to the World Series. And I always love, I love any player

particularly a catcher who has precisely one stolen base a precisely one stolen base guy is that's one of my favorite kinds of guys you know that is a beautiful kind of guy so I'm excited to be able to enjoy Kirk again

I'm really excited about this matchup like I think this I know that the Dodgers are you know they've rounded into form they look like this you know unstoppable force but I I don't think that they have encountered a lineup of the caliber that they're about to.

They certainly have the pitching advantage, certainly among the starters, and they do have a lockdown guy. But, you know, I think that this will be a series. I don't think that, you know, this isn't going to be Dodgers in four or anything like that. So I hope we get a good one because, you know, especially for a team,

when you have a team that hasn't been there in a long time, you want those guys to have a good series. Even if they don't win. Like, it's just like, don't have getting there be the accomplishment. Like, go take it to these. these guys, you know. And I don't dislike the Dodgers. This isn't an anti-Dodgers take, but you wanted to be a good show for everybody. Yeah. You know how people look short, standing next to tall people? Yeah. I feel like that's kind of gone on with the Blue Jays standing next to the

Red Sox and Yankees. Like, they're a big market team. I was writing out this in my preview. They're a model franchise. Like, this is what you want to happen. This is how you want your teams to be run. They have, like, they draft well, they develop well. They sign big free agents to come there. They spend a lot of money to do so. They extend their guys by paying them a ton, and they score a lot of runs and prevent a lot of runs. Like, they have the best record in the AL, and they did so by beating up on the AL East. They, I feel like they're getting this like, basically these are these big underdogs and they're lovable kind of vibes. But that, I feel like sells them really short.

I called them and the Dodgers both model franchises in my World Series preview. And, like, actually, I do mean that. Like, this is what you should want your team to do. yeah i i think that like if i can if i can offer um a preemptive edit to your to your preview which i haven't looked at yet i mean i do think that there are places where the dodgers have an obvious advantage as a pertinent like they are a much better player dev organization their farm is in better shape and i think you you know you savage aside like you definitely see it on the pitching side of things but the ways in which they are better don't really

matter right now. Like, they, they mattered to getting here, but Toronto did that, right? Like, it doesn't, it doesn't really matter whether they have a better farm or not or more top 100 guys. Like, who cares? For sure. They're, their best guy is in the World Series preparing to pitch against the Dodgers, right? Like, their top prospect is Tray Savage. So I do think that there are differences, but... Yeah, perhaps the trajectory is not the same, but... Right. Let me put it this way, I would love to be a fan of either of these two teams. Oh, yeah, 100%. They both seem like, like, not everyone can always have it.

Not everyone can be the best. Only one team can. But I, the Js are, like... They're good. Go to work. Yeah. I think that it is doing them a disservice to treat them as a Cinderella here. Yeah. It is reasonable to favor the Dodgers. Yes. Because they're a better team.

Yes. That's basically why I would favor them. But I think, like, Zipods are 60-40. Yeah. I think that that sounds pretty right. Yeah, that strikes me as about right. That's a better chance than the brewers had, I guess. I haven't looked yet, but surely.

Yeah, actually, we thought the brewers had a better chance. Interesting. But I guess my point is, like, the brewers were an underdog, right? Like, they're... Right. That's the kind of underdog that people mean when they say underdog. Not the Blue Jays. The Blue Jays have the top five payroll and, you know, a bunch of stars and big TV market.

I don't know. Like, that's the main plan I'm trying to make is that these are both big market teams who play like big market teams and do big market things to make their teams better. Yeah, I think that when it is reasonable to note the gap in resourcing on a payroll basis between the Dodgers and Toronto, and it's like, it's a not small gap in absolute terms, but that doesn't mean that Toronto is under-resourced, right? Those are not the same statement. like yeah the the dodgers payroll is almost 400 million dollars but the the blue jays are running a 260 million dollar payroll and it's higher than that from a luxury tax perspective this is not like you know they aren't the pirates they're not the brewers like this is a big market team they have resource behind them and when they were facing down a roster that was maybe going to be kind of shamblesy they they invested money in that in that team

And they have so far been rewarded for that. So, you know. I concur. I think that they, they're a lot more like the Yankees than people give them credit for. Yeah. And in like a good way. Yeah. I mean that as in like when you have a hole in your team.

Like one thing you could do is say, I've got a seven-year plan to eventually replace this. Right. Or you could just be like, hey, George Springer, come play for us. Right, right. Anthony Santander. I mean, that one didn't work out yet, but like, come play for us. I greatly appreciate that about the Jays that they seem to understand what the money's for. And I feel like a lot of teams.

don't necessarily. They operate in a lot of ways like a club that is trying to accrue small advantages, as many teams do. But they don't then let that must accrue small advantages mindset confuse them out of like using the fact that they have money to like pay players for their services and get better. I really appreciate that about them. And I think that that's going to be one thing that I really like about this World Series is this Toronto team is awesome and has been fun for years, I think, and has kind of gotten, like, short shrift. Yeah. I'm glad that I'll get to see a little bit more of them on a national stage.

I mean, I've watched a lot of them, but I'm glad that everyone will get to watch a lot more of them. Yeah, I think that it's a good matchup. I think that, you know, if I am able to disengage the fan part of my brain, the matchup that was likely to give us a much more interesting series than if Seattle had advanced. And I can't wait for it to start. Ben, thank you so much for filling in for other Ben. You're a prime Ben when you're the co-host. Folks should check out. You've had a ton of stuff up on the site.

Your Fielding Bible Awards, balloting breakdowns are coming out. You obviously have the World Series preview, the top 50 free agent ranking looms. But is there anything else that you want to plug or tell people to check out while you're here? I'm very proud that I got to vote for the Fielding Bible Award. Those are like an award that I've cared about more than almost any other award since I've been following baseball. So yeah, I would just say if you like defense, if you like reading my five things columns and stuff, one of the big like advantages of that is I watch so much baseball to write those that I get to vote on these year-end awards and like feel both like I'm doing a service by doing a good job of this and feel like I'm not having to stress too much about making the wrong choice. I really enjoyed those.

I spent, I mean, it would not shock me if I spent more aggregate hours thinking through my votes than, like, most of the rest of the panel combined. I really care a lot about those. I cared a lot about my write-up for them. And if you like that, you should check them out because, yeah, I put a lot into this. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for sub and for other Ben, and we will see everyone in the World Series. that'll do it for today you can support effectively wild on patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild the following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going keep us ad free and get access to special perks

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