Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2540: The Fly Test

Episode Date: October 6, 2026

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Cal Raleigh and Josh Naylor and whether end-of-season surgeries for disappointing players are encouraging or frustrating, then share their takeaways from the first six Division Series games, including thoughts on Drew Rasmussen, an Austin Wells mistake, Rays crowds, Aaron Judge’s role in Rich Platelet, Poor Platelet, Grant Taylor (and whether postseason teams are pushing high-leverage relievers too far), the Blake Snell spectator experience, the upside and drawback of Chris Sale, two tantalizing fly balls (and a Ty France roof-related “what if”), how to tackle Jacob Misiorowski and Mason Miller, the Padres’ star scrubs, Jackson Chourio, and much more. Audio intro: Nate Emerson, “Effectively Wild Theme” Audio outro: El Warren, “Effectively Wild Theme” Link to MLBTR on M’s injuries Link to FG on Rasmussen Link to RHP SP velo Link to Rasmussen leaderboard Link to Wells article Link to Wells clip Link to Wells quote Link to Wells math 1 Link to Wells math 2 Link to Wells math 3 Link to stop sign Link to Apes movie clip Link to Ben C. on 3B outs Link to Judge taunt Link to Schlittler comment Link to Rays attendance article Link to PH penalty info Link to Somehow, Tellez returned Link to Judge therapy info Link to PPP study Link to BP on Taylor Link to Taylor as SP note Link to Langs Taylor note Link to Ben on not enough pitchers Link to Pham comment 1 Link to Pham comment 2 Link to post on Pham Link to Pham fly article Link to Pham and Manfred Link to Ben on October 2019 balls Link to Sam on October 2019 balls Link to Miz fouls fact Link to Cleveland tourism videos Link to Ben L. on Sale in 2018 Link to Ben C. on Sale Link to Pages ABS ban Link to FG Atlanta-LA preview Link to Miller tipping story Link to Erickson comment Link to France fly clip Link to Tango on France’s fly Link to Pelletier on France’s fly Link to Leighton on France’s fly Link to Sheehan on France’s fly Link to Eno on France’s fly Link to France fly data Link to FG Brewers-Padres G1 recap Link to FG Brewers-Padres G2 recap Link to Chourio hit clip Link to MLBTR on France Link to AC joint info Link to AC joint debridement info Link to TFCC tear info Link to wOBA-xwOBA leaderboard Link to Harris transactions Link to Salas history Link to Merrill catch Link to Díaz mechanical change  Sponsor Us on Patreon  Give a Gift Subscription  Email Us: [e-mail]  Effectively Wild Subreddit  Effectively Wild Wiki  Apple Podcasts Feed   Spotify Feed  YouTube Playlist  Facebook Group  Bluesky Account  Twitter Account  Get Our Merch! var SERVER_DATA = Object.assign(SERVER_DATA || {}); Source

Oh, and welcome to episode 2540 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs, and I'm joined by Ben Lindberg of the ringer. Ben, how are you? Just dandy. How are you? I'm fine, yeah. Well, great. Now that we've established that, we can proceed with the podcast.

We have a whole lot of playoff talk to do. So we are recording on Monday afternoon. and as is always the case, this will be slightly out of date by the time you hear it because there are games taking place on Monday whose outcomes we do not yet know. However, we have a whole weekend's worth of action to catch up on. So I think that's just fine. And then we'll be back to catch up once again later this week. Just before we dive into the playoff action, can we get to some surgery news?

I just saw this before we started recording. This is relevant to you as a Mariners fan. The Mariners announced that Cow Raleigh and Josh Naylor underwent surgical procedures on October 3rd. So it's surgery season. You have the first wave of surgeries after the regular season ends, and then you have another wave of surgeries after the postseason ends or after players and teams get eliminated,

and then we find out what injuries they were hiding all along. or at least not publicly acknowledging or playing through. And we have learned that Raleigh underwent a left shoulder acromioclavicle. Oh, boy. Acro myoclavicular. Oh, no. No. Not that clavicular.

That can't be how that said. Acro-myoclivicular debridement procedure, which I guess I just could have said AC debridement. That would have been a lot easier. And then Nailer underwent triangular fibro-cartilage complex repair surgery on his right wrist. So that's, let's just call it, AC debridement and TFC repair. So Cal had left shoulder surgery. Nailer had right wrist surgery. They're both expected to be ready for spring training.

But how does that make you feel as a Mariners fan? because, of course, they're underperformances, big part of the Mariners' disappointing season. Both of them were way worse than they had been the previous year. So does this make you feel good? Because, hey, at least there was an injury that was the root cause, and maybe they've addressed that, and they'll be back to full strength next season.

Or does this make you frustrated that evidently there was some underlying issue? And I don't know exactly how severe these problems were, or when they were feeling it or how much it impaired their performance. But you could interpret it as, oh, they could have gotten this taken care of before or they were playing through something and did they tell the team or did the team know

or should the team have made a different decision, et cetera. The cope part of me is thrilled that there is a reason that one can point to other than like a WBC related curse that strikes, you know, inconsistently. because, you know, some people went to the WBC and I've had just fine seasons. I don't tend to get all that fuss about the notion

that we don't know everything. I mean, I guess the thing you want to know is was a determination made in a reasonable way that, like, them continuing to play through these injuries would not compromise their way. long-term health. I also don't know what the typical recovery time is. I guess part of why I'm not all that exercised about it is that, like, let's assume

that these would have been season-ending injuries, which seems likely, question mark. I don't know what your typical debridement costs you. As an aside, just like the worst sounding thing. It's so, you know, if you could have like onomatopoeia, but for what a surgery does, you know? It would be that. It's like that. And I am resisting the urge to Ralph a little bit because,

but like, let's assume just for the sake of, you know, shooting the breeze, that these surgeries would have at the time that they discovered there was an issue, knocked them out for the remainder of the season. Well, I don't know that anything really changes in terms of the Mariners. fortunes. Yeah. You know, I guess I don't care. Like, I suppose as a member of the media,

I should prefer transparency on the part of teams in terms of what's going on with their guys. But I also just, you know, you called it a surgery season, which suggests that this is just something that happens every year where it's like the guys, some number of guys who had bad seasons

and were underperforming, you come to find out actually need to go under the knife for this, that or the other. So I am not that worked up. Maybe I don't have any more worked up to give the Mariners this year. That's also a possibility. Maybe I should be exercised. Yeah.

But I'm not. So here we are. You know, what are you going to do? Sorry for bringing some Mariners banter on you. I know that you thought you were safe from that, at least for a while. And then suddenly jump scared. Yeah. From Mariners.

Being forced to contemplate the 2026 Mariners again. I mean, like, it's not. I guess it's not super surprising. And again, it is nice to be able to point to something, particularly, well, I don't know. Like, are you more likely to need to be debrided once you've been debrighted the one time? I don't know the answer to that. I don't know what. I mean, shoulder stuff is always a little concerning.

Like, if I'm ranking my concerns, the fact that the shoulders involved for Cal seems subop. famously shoulders important for hitting also important for catching you know wrist not unimportant either right yeah like an important yeah but like wrists are my sense of wrists is that once they've been repaired they're less finicky whereas like shoulder stuff can be around you know can just be a thing that looms in the background like you worry about guys separating their shoulders about them pulling more stuff. Is it really the shoulder or is it more about the clavicle? Do you know?

I think it's shoulder, but... But you said clavicle. I mean, I know that that connects into the shoulder. Left shoulder, acro. Don't make me say it again. I'm going to make you say it again. Yeah, I guess... You make me think about the Mariners, so now you have to say...

It is the joint that connects your collarbone, your clavicle. To the top of your shoulder blade. the scapula, so maybe that's perhaps sounds a little less concerning. Yeah, it's not like inside the joint, you know? Like, once you start monkeying around in there, the first footage of surgery

that I ever saw, and I do not seek out that footage because, I mean, everyone just listened to how I reacted to the word depredment. My stepmom had to have her rotator cuff repaired, and they like gave her the video of it. And I don't remember,

if she thought we would want to see it or if she was just watching it and we, meaning my sister and I happened to walk into the room. But it made it her, there's like fluid in there. It looked like under the sea. It looked, well, mostly I just remember and I was very young, but even then I remember thinking to myself, well, that's none of my business. You know, I'm not supposed to see in there. Like, that's closed off for a reason. It's because we're not supposed to see it. Bodies are marvelous, but they are also sometimes gross, especially on the inside. They are, Ben, they are always gross. There is just like some amount of gross working in all of us all the time.

And all we can hope for is that the gross stays inside where it belongs, but doesn't like lead to other gross. Yes. Because sometimes you want to be as non-continent. of it as possible. Yeah, I don't want to... You just don't want to be aware of the umpire zone back there. You just want everything working as intended.

Yeah. And yes, if something, if you're forced to examine your insides, then something has gone wrong. Or you are trying to stave off something going wrong. Correct. Because, you know, I get those photos after colonoscopies. But that's an attempt to prevent something. They just give them to you.

They just give those to you. And I was like, oh, again, none. And that's my insights. And fundamentally, I was like, still none of my business. You know, you told me that everything's fine down there. Yeah. You're the one who's qualified to evaluate these photos. I don't need to see them.

Yeah. Anyway, people will be dealing with news of this sort during this month and perhaps into November. And we can just be conscious as we watch the playoffs that these players are not functioning at peak efficiency. for the most part. Many of them are compromised in some way. Not all of them are compromised in some way that will require debridement or some sort of surgery, but at

least rest and repair. And of course there are some players we know are dealing with various nagging ailments, Shohei Otani, etc. or people who aren't even playing like Aaron Judge but we don't even know. It's just the tip of the iceberg, I think,

what we are actually aware of, and then teams are aware of more of the iceberg, but only the players themselves are aware of the entire iceberg at all times. So we can keep that in mind when perhaps players are not being used in a way we would expect or prefer or not performing in a way we would expect or prefer. So there will be two more American League games by the time people have heard this, but we will discuss the first games in each of those series. Chicago leads one to nothing as we speak, and Tampa Bay leads the Yankees one to nothing, Chicago over Cleveland, that is.

And of course, we will check in on the NL series as well, especially Brewer's Padres, which has lived up to its billing as the series everyone was excited about. And Milwaukee's up two nothing, but it could have easily been two nothing San Diego. This has been an extremely close series, hard-fought, exciting. controversies and standout performances and lead changes and one-run margins of victory. And, of course, the Atlanta-L-A series tied at one game apiece. So much to discuss here. I guess maybe should we just go over the AL before we get to NL just because there will have been AL action more quickly after we speak. And also there's been less of it.

So maybe we can just, we could start with raise Yankees. And obviously the story of game one was Drew Rasmussen. And he was fantastic. And I was happy for him, happy to see him have that kind of performance on the postseason stage because he needs that national shine. I think he's kind of become a go-to answer for a lot of people. if you're asked and you're in the know and you're just asked to say, who's an underrated pitcher, then Drew Rasmussen might come to mind in the way that in the past,

I don't know, Jose Ramirez or someone on the position player side might have been the go-to answer. Rasmussen kind of fits the bill because he's just been so consistent and so effective for the race for several seasons now, and he just does not have that reputation. He's on a six-season streak of having a two-something ERA, which is generally a good sign. And I think the reason he has not received the acclaim that you might expect of someone with those stats is that some of those seasons, not a whole lot of innings. So, 2024 was fewer than 30 innings.

2023 was 44-something innings. He made eight starts in 2023 and 2024. He made four starts and worked in relief more often. And his career high innings pitched was this season with 172, which is kind of a lot now. But before this season, it was 150 last year, and that was the only time he had gotten to 150. So between not throwing a lot of innings and his being on the raise and that leading to a lower national profile, and also just he's been sort of a swing man at times. And it's always that raised pitching staff kind of amorphous with the starting and relieving assignments.

And he has done a bit of both over the years and started as a reliever and then converted, obviously, quite successfully. So what with all of that? And I guess the fact that he's got good stuff and solid strikeout rates and everything, but not like mind melting in either category. So, and, you know, I guess, yeah, especially for a righty, like it's good Velo, but in this day and age, not super spectacular or sensational. So it was nice, is all I'm saying, for him to have this moment where he not only delivered

from a run prevention standpoint, but also went eight innings, which is if he were doing that more regularly and also posting this sort of run prevention, then he would be better known despite being on the race. This is just not what you expect from Rasmus, and you expect him to be good, but you don't expect him to be good,

good and go that deep into games because I think he had thrown eight innings in a game once before this in 2022. And so you just didn't see that coming. I didn't at least even with an Aaron judgeless Yankees lineup. I would not have bet on Rasmussen holding them down for that long. Right. Yeah. It was just he was so dominant. He was so efficient. I would argue that now look, this is a very particular perspective and I am sure that Drew Rasmussen would have preferred to throw a complete game

to throw no hitter, right? Despite his efficiency, as the game crept on, you know, his pitch cow is getting up there and he famously plays for the Tampa Bay race and he had not surrendered a hit. So I'm sitting there and I'm like, we're going to have Ray's no hitter discourse. We're going to

have it. It's going to be brutal. It's going to be really annoying because he's probably going to get pulled here. And then he gave up a hit that didn't end up mattering, although we're going to talk about that hit. And then, you know, he was able to get out of it. Brian Baker came in and did Brian Baker things. Bing, bang, boom. Perfect.

I have no notes. But yeah, I agree with you. It's an impressive, the sum of greater than the sum of his parts. What's the expression? You know, it's like that where you add them all up and you. Right. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. that sort of is how I think of him because you're right. Like the Vilo isn't, well, it's not bad, but it's not overwhelming. It does feel like this is sort of a broader comment, and it is largely due to, well, the presence of Mason Miller and also Jacob Nisorowski. But this feels like a very high octane postseason. They are not the only guys throwing hard, although they are doing their part to bring up the averages. You know, and then you have, you have Drew with his, like, like a 96 mile an hour average

fast while lost in you're like, oh, this chump. I know. Yeah, it's pretty ridiculous that we're poo-pooing, sitting 96 as a starter. That's, but that's actually, well, during the postseason for right-handed starters this year,

that's average. And of course, he's part of that. During the regular season, 95 was average for a four-seamer for a right-handed starter, 95.1. So a little. love average. But yeah, I mean, that just tells you how hard guys throw now. And then, yes,

during the postseason, not only do you have better pitchers on the hole and better pitchers on the hole tend to throw harder on the hole, but also the individual pitchers are also ramping up their personal speeds. So, yes, it's 96. It's just, it's pretty pedestrian. It's just, yeah, that's nice for you, but it doesn't stand out. But obviously, he made it work just fine. And He typically has great control and just he was toying with them. And I was also quite relieved that we did not get the no-hitter. There was part of me that was as soon as Austin Wells got that hit, and obviously my thoughts and emotions changed during his rounding the bases.

However, just as soon as you got the hit, not that I was rooting against the Razor-Rasmussen, but there was part of me that just exhaled and she was relieved. that he did get the hit so that we would be spared that possible backlash. Because, yeah, I think even if, yeah, I mean, even if Wells had gotten out, it's unlikely that Rasmussen would have been back out there, right, with, gosh, what did he throw? It was up there, and it was the race. He threw 101 total.

Yeah, okay. Yeah. And really, like, he shouldn't have come back out. And Baker's great. And that would have been totally defensible. But, you know, maybe there wouldn't have been as big a backlash because he did go eight. And it's not like he's ever a guy who does that, really. So this wouldn't have been full on Kevin Cash and Blake Snell back in the day.

But there would still have been a bit of grumbling about it, especially if the race did not finish off the shutout and win the game. So we were spared that. And everyone could just focus on how great Drew Rasmussen was. Yeah. And he was tremendous. and, you know, dealing. He had the lead from the third inning on went around to hit that home run,

but it was just a one-run game, right? Like, it's a super pressure-packed situation. He struck out 10. It's just, you know, it was a really incredible performance, I think, you know, whether he becomes someone who people are aware of more generally going forward. I don't know. I think that race pitchers generally,

even their starters, have to sort of battle a higher baseline of anonymity than your average guy, but taking it to the Yankees in the postseason at a time when I think the general perception, and you talked about this even when we discussed this series going in, like the general perception, I think, is that the Yankees are a better true talent team than the race, even though they didn't win the division.

And, you know, we certainly saw, it's not like Air Cole pitched badly, right? No. We still got a pretty good coal star. and the rest of that lineup, even outside of Judge, at least has the ability to run into one, you know, you could see them losing this one, but them being able to secure it behind Rossman's,

and like, it's a big deal. It's a real big deal. And should we talk about the Austin Walsh decision? I'll just note that since 2021, and you could start with some other year, if you want, but since 2021, Rasmussen has the third best park adjustment, ERA of anyone with at least 600 innings pitched. Behind only Chris Sale and Zach Wheeler,

he is eighth in park-adjusted FIP over that span. Now he has barely more than 600 innings pitched over that spin. And so if you go by war, he's 28th, which accounts for why his profile isn't quite as good as the inning-pruning stats would suggest. But nonetheless, when he is on the mound, he is really good. And yeah, Austin Wells, he hits the double and he goes for third and he gets thrown out by a good distance. And it was obviously a mistake.

We can talk about why I felt a little bit bad for him just because getting the hit was actually counterproductive for him and for his reputation. Because if he had just made an out, then no one would have fixated on him because everyone was. making outs. The Yankees lineup couldn't do anything with Ray's pitching on that day. And so Wells, for being the one guy who got a hit and an extra base hit, no less, he ends up being the goat because he quickly did something bad after doing something good. So I guess let that be a lesson to you to just fail in a lower profile way. If you don't stand out at all and everyone else is sticking up the joint around you, then you'll just blend in.

But if you actually stick your head out and you do something good and then you fall flat after that, well, then everyone singles you out and takes out their frustration out on you. So the other Yankees hitters deserve some blame as well for not doing anything. I just want to say that. It's not as if he lost the game single-handedly. But that was a major mistake for him to go for third. I just, so it was a major. It was a major mistake.

It was a good throw. You just, when you get the stop sign, man, you got to stop. And I know, you know, he's running. He's hauling ass. He's trying so hard to, like, make something happen. And so by the time he looks up and can see the third base coach throwing up the stop sign, maybe he's too far down toward third. But like, Austin, you're a catcher.

You're a catcher and you're not very fast. And you need base runners. You need base runners so bad. You doubled. You were in scoring position. Right? You just, you don't. I saw a lot of people making this point,

so I'm hardly coming up with anything revelatory. But like, you just, you can't, you can't make the last out of the inning at third. You can't. You shouldn't make the first one there either, you know? And it's like, this is a, there are some like baseball truisms that when they are put to scrutiny and rigor they don't stand up but that one does man you just can't do it it's like such a bad mistake

and you weren't you were given the information you needed by the guy who can see what's happening in the outfield and he was saying don't do it is bad big arms up no doubt about it you know like the creatures and planet of the apes you know they put up to say don't go here you know what we're talking about yeah this is It's bad, and people ran through the win expectancy math and the run expectancy and all the rest. And you have to be damn sure that you are going to make it because getting to third adds 1.2 percentage points of win probability. But getting thrown out costs you 8.4%. Obviously, these numbers aren't perfectly precise. But that's the ballpark, basically.

And so the break-even rate, it has to be really high. You have to be really, really confident that you're going to make it. And you have to be right. Because he was evidently pretty confident, but also wrong, to be confident. He was very confident. And so, yeah, that is one of those just time-honored rules of thumb that totally holds up to the Sabremetric scrutiny. And in fact, Ben Clemens walked about that just last month. And so, yeah, do not do that.

And he owned up to it. I mean, he said it was the wrong risk and that he shouldn't have done it. But he did sort of defend himself to some extent and was saying you have to take risks. In that situation, obviously the risk was wrong. I took the risk, didn't work out. And yeah, you do sometimes have to take risks. But not that one. It just that didn't pay at all.

And, you know, he was talking about how, well, he couldn't be sure that he would score because sometimes the ball gets through the infield. quickly at the drop. And so if he had been on second, maybe you're not really in scoring position, at least automatically. The thing is, though, that he probably would have been pinch run for if he had just stayed on second. So he wouldn't have actually had to score. A faster runner would have been tasked with that responsibility and probably would have been more capable of it. And Wells, by his standards, was actually motoring because I saw, according to Stackcast, It was the fastest home to third time of his career.

Not that I guess he's had that many home to third times, but it was also the fastest home to second time of his career. So he was really running. You can't get on him for not hustling or anything. But he did not look at Luis Rojas at third, who was very clearly holding up the stop sign before Wells even got to second base. So, yeah, you can't. can say he was running really hard and thus he didn't pick up the third base coach,

but you do have to do that. You absolutely do have to look. The other thing is that he said that he was not conscious of. It didn't cross his mind that Victor Mesa Jr. has a really good arm out there. He's 94th percentile in arm strength. And he also didn't think about the fact that Taylor Walls is a great defensive shortstop. And so, yeah, it was a good relay by Mesa and Wals.

but those two guys strong arm and strong defender, and so not totally out of character for them to have a good relay. So the fact that he was not thinking about that suggests, and I get that it's hard to think while you're hitting and you're running and all the rest of it, but that's why you should study the scouting report and be conscious of that when you come to the plate or when you're on base and just, hey, okay.

And maybe he wasn't expecting to potentially triple there. But, yeah, you have to know the arms and the defenders and that has to affect your calculus. Or if you're not going to think of that and you're just going to say C ball, hit ball and C base, run base or whatever, that's fine. But then you really have to pay attention to the base coach who is, you know, you're offloading that mental load onto the base coach. But then if you're ignoring the base coach, well, that's worst of both worlds. Yeah. So you can't be oblivious to the base coach. oblivious to the traits of the defenders out there

and also just to the situation. And so, you know, look, I mean, everyone in the world has piled on the guy. So, like, we're just joining the chorus here. It's not really a, I mean, Aaron Boone said it was bad. Like, he wells himself copped to it to some extent. So, you know, yeah, you're not getting unique analysis here. But that was a bad one.

Yeah, it's one of the. it's definitely one of the most sort of memorable and important moments in that game. So, you know, I agree the reason the Yankees lost is not solely on Austin Wells' shoulders by any stretch. But it didn't help, you know. It didn't help. Yeah. And he said that I'm quoting from the athletic piece here, well said that before the series, he thought if he had a chance to get an extra 90 feet,

he was going to take it. Every 90 feet in the postseason is precious, and he believed that matching the raised strategy of being aggressive on the bases, when warranted, would be crucial. Well, when warranted is doing a lot of work there, obviously. This was not warranted. But obviously, when Wells says,

that's what they do here, and that's why they're super successful here, definitely that was on my mind. Well, you're Austin Wells, though. You're a catcher. You have 17th percent. sprint speed. So what works for Chandler Simpson or some other... It's very different. Yeah, so you can't just emulate the winning ways of the raise if you do not possess the skills

that make those winning ways. So yeah, look, we all have brain farts. Most of our brain farts are not quite as high profile and costly as that one was. So, you know, the one hit in the one hitter ends up making him kind of the scapegoat. But yeah. It was really bad. Yeah, it was, it wasn't great. Yeah. Okay. Well, perhaps he has learned not to do that again.

I would suggest that he will probably be station to station from now on. Anyway, it was quite a display by Rasmussen. It was kind of comeuppance for the Yankees. People were circulating that there had been a game earlier in the year when Aaron Judge kind of mocked Rasmussen because the Yankees'clock. because the Yankees knocked Rasmussen out of a game and Judge held up his arm for the lefty as if signaling for the reliever

and so kind of gloating that they had knocked Rasmussen out of the game well Rasmussen got his revenge and also the Cam Schlittler quote about Ray's crowds where Schlittler kind of became the heel, the villain he said and he was asked about the crowd at Rays games and he said I wouldn't say there's really too much of a home crowd here.

I expect there to be a lot of Yankees fans. In some ways, you are to an extent kind of playing at home. I feel like the guys are excited to have that atmosphere here. No, he's not entirely wrong. Obviously, there's something to that. There is a large contingent

of ex-New Yorkers who are now in Florida, and you have Yankee Spring training in Florida. And so, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of Yankees fan representation there. And that was in evidence. too, but I think Ray's fans were motivated by that quote, and they were pretty darn loud too. And Rasmussen did what he could to quiet the Yankees fans in attendance, and people were pretty

into that no-hit attempt and the Yankees getting shut down. So could Schlittler have been a bit more diplomatic, I suppose, if he didn't want to be bulletin board material? And obviously, he has a tendency to do that and hold grudges, and they seem to fuel him. So I wouldn't want to get on his bad side because it seems like usually he backs up the talk. So, you know, it wasn't inaccurate what he said. I guess he could have taken a more measured tone or watched his words or something. But I kind of like that he doesn't.

It's more interesting that he doesn't, frankly. And it's nice to have heels. It's nice to have a little sort of, you know, low stakes, just sports stakes, bad blood and grudges. Yeah, like there is risk attendant with this strategy, this approach to prodding at opposing fans. I'm sure he's aware of that. He doesn't seem like a dope. But I think that particularly when it concerns a division rival, some of this stuff is really fun. Now, I'm a neutral observer to the rivalry.

So, like, I don't know if Yankees fans were like, no, you said us up. he probably will be pretty good in his start tonight. I would guess if I had to make a guess and feel confident that it'll withstand the time of editing. Yeah. It's pretty likely. We'll see. I will return. I'll circle back to that on the outro, but people will know by the time they're hearing this.

Hopefully this won't be a repeat of, oh, here comes Hunter Brown. Right. Now things will be better. Yeah. Okay. But like Camshel, there's a better starter than Hunter Brown. Like, let's be serious about this. And he certainly looked fantastic his last time out.

So I think it's going to go fine. I think that having some ribbing is fine. And, you know, from the raised fans' perspective, like, good on them for sort of rising to that and saying, no, we're here. And we love our team. Like, no, no bad stuff here. Like, the atmosphere was so lively on the broadcast, and those fans were amped. It was great. And I'm not saying that that is purely in response to Cam Schlittler, to be clear.

But, like, this kind of push and pull, I think can be really exciting, especially this time of year. So I enjoyed it. I hope that people didn't feel too mift or felt the right amount of mift, right? You know, and now, now Schlittler has to go out there and, like, you know, do it. Exactly. Because if you talk to big game, you got to, I don't know, carry a big curveball or whatever. Yes, the booze will rain down if he does not deliver and does not silence the race fans in the crowd. I also felt for John Carlos Stanton because he had the extremely tough assignment of coming off the bench hit.

We talk about the pinch hit penalty where non-regular pinch hitters, they typically perform worse when they're. pinch hitting, which sometimes is because they're not at full strength and there's something bothering them physically, which is why they weren't in the starting lineup to begin with, but also because you're coming in cold off the bench and yes, you can warm up and you can potentially plan for it and maybe you can hit off the trajectory or whatever, but it's just not quite going to be the same as having gotten those reps. And so there is a sizable pinch hitting penalty typically. I wonder what the pinch hitting penalty is when not only are you pinch hitting, but you have not had a plate appearance in a major league game since April 24th.

And you're called in to go right on right versus the other team's excellent closer, Brian Baker. That's, whof, boy, I would not want to have to hit in that situation. I was sort of expecting that he would be just completely blown away and would look terrible and would swing at three pitches in the other batters box or something. He actually didn't. He actually, he looked pretty. pretty good to me. Like he, you know, had a take. Like, he seemed to be seeing the ball okay as far as we could tell. But ultimately, Baker did get the better of him. But boy, that's a really tough assignment. That's, uh, whof, it's, uh, when you see someone come back in the postseason after a long layoff, obviously, Kyle Swarber did it, but Schwerber had been in the AFL. And so, or we saw like, Rowdy Tellez, he's getting it bats for the Braves. And he had And for the Big League Braves in months, he was in the minors, of course.

But, yeah, sometimes people just show up all of a sudden in the postseason. You haven't seen them for months. Maybe you've forgotten that they were even still on the roster in the organization. And there they are at a super important moment. By the way, as Aaron Judge heals and attempts to return for the ALCS if the Yankees make it, I've had to familiarize myself with this new terminology, because the kind of injection judge got is different from the kind of injection that we've been hearing about, because he got a platelet poor plasma injection.

Yeah. Instead of, this is the new thing. Instead of the platelet rich. It's like a poor man's platelet rich injection, or that's what it sounds like. It's bad branding, I guess, for the platelet poor plasma. It sounds like they couldn't afford the platelet rich plasma or something, but that's not actually what it is. But I read up on this. So it turns out that, and this is like pretty new and experimental and it doesn't seem like there's as much history and literature as far as the effectiveness

of the PPP versus the PRP, which is in itself confusing terminology because PPP in my mind in a baseball context is position player pitcher. And then PRP, makes me think of the loans. And so the portfolio reinvestment program, the state funding initiative. And so I thought you got those backwards, like PPP, like the COVID loans. Oh, yeah.

Well, that's the loan too. Yeah. So I guess there's multiple possible things that this could mean other than what it actually means. But yeah, so you have to make sure that you're dealing with the right PPP and PRP here. But basically it seems like with the PPP, this is what they are using now when it's a muscle issue as opposed to, say, a ligament, a tendon.

Because if you do the PRP, and in each case, it's derived from the patient's own blood. And you take them out and you put it in a centrifuge and you spin it around really fast. and then you get some stuff out of it. And so the platelet rich, obviously, you got lots of platelets and the platelet poor. You don't. You just have like the plasma left over after the platelets are removed mostly. And so it seems that the platelet rich plasma, that can be good for tendon stuff and ligament stuff and it can promote healing. But evidently, it can maybe backfire if there's a muscle.

ailment, and then it can maybe cause scar tissue. And so if you do the PPP, the platelet pore, then that can actually help with just like muscle tissue regeneration. But it seems pretty cutting, bleeding edge and sort of experimental. But I guess they were convinced that there was enough to make it worthwhile. But yeah, I thought this was a typo when I, because I'm like this has been around, I guess, but I wasn't really conscious of it. peering about the platelet rich. And then with Judge, I thought someone had screwed something up. And no, it turns out you want fewer platelets maybe with a calf issue.

Yes. When I saw it in copy, I was like, oh, that's a mistake. I got to fix that. And I was glad that I actually took the time to look. Can I ask a question that I promise I don't mean as an accusation? How is this different than PEDs? I mean, like, I understand it. therapeutic for recovery, but so sometimes it's a penis. So I'm just, I, I just think it's good to

think about the ways in which that line is less clear than we sometimes want it to be, especially for something experimental. Like how does, how does, because I imagine that for something like this, they want to say, well, this is very obviously different than like, and again, I'm not saying it's not different. I'm just, I'm a, I'm a dumb non-doctor, afraid of debridements. And so I am here asking a question about, like, what is the process by which this procedure is vetted or allowed? Does it require some sort of exemption? Is it just, they're just like, this is fine.

It's close enough to PRP. It's just, they're just the sad platelets. And so that's fine because we are aware of platelets. Again, I'm not trying to cause trouble. I'm not stirring it up. But it did make me think. I was like, this seems like a relatively new approach. The benefit of it relative to PRP in certain circumstances seems like it's being well articulated.

So I'm just sitting here as a person thinking thoughts and asking questions. And I'm happy to accept answers. I'm not Rogan, okay? Yeah. But I was thinking about it. Yeah. If PRP is allowed, which it is, then it seems to be consistent to allow PPP because it's sort of the same idea. Right.

You know, you're taking... Right. Just one letter off, really. Maybe that you're taking something from your own body and then you're putting it back into your own body. Obviously, though, having made an important alteration to it, but not like injecting something that didn't. come from you, just taking it out, spinning it around a little bit, putting it back in. And so I guess that is maybe a meaningful distinction from injecting some foreign substance. But yeah, it's squishy.

It's squishy lines. And then, you know, you have things like peptides, which are banned, I believe. But some of those, yeah, I mean, some of those are just about, like, promoting your body to manufacture more of something. And I mean, I guess that's not unlike, you know, HGH or testosterone or whatever, where you're just, it's a naturally occurring chemical, but you're taking unnaturally occurring amounts of it. Yeah. So I guess, but you could also say, well, this is an unnaturally occurring mixture of platelets or plasma. And so, yeah, all this stuff, it is, it's, you know, and we've talked about this with LASIC, for instance, which is,

It's a form of enhancements, right? I mean, maybe you're just saying, well, I'm kind of getting to the body's natural ceiling or something. But, you know, it's not your personal natural ceiling. And everyone has different natural ceilings for every substance and capability and everything. But yes, it is sometimes hard to draw distinctions. And I guess sometimes health considerations come into play. Like, you know, obviously there can be negative. effects to testosterone, to steroids, etc.

Maybe not so much in moderation, but yeah, there are definitely downsides and health risks that you're taking that maybe you aren't taking with something like PRP or PPP, so that could, I suppose, come into play. But yeah, some of this stuff, it's, yeah, it's, you know, not the clearest, boldest lines. Yeah. I mean, sometimes, like, it makes your, your, your balls small. Sometimes you launch a project of global fascism. Like, it's a real range in terms of the downsides of overjuicing on the testosterone.

I'm just, you know, like there's a real range. Anyway, so those were thoughts I was thinking about things. Yeah. Well, we wish Aaron Judge and his platelets in plasma well. So the White Sox Guardians game, there probably isn't quite as much to say. I suppose, you know, in the race game, it was the big blow was a solo shot by Jonathan Aranda. In the White Sox game, I guess the hero who emerges from the White Sox playoff run thus far has been Grant Taylor, who is just showing unprecedented degrees of going long. It's pretty impressive.

I mean, he went four innings in game one of the ALDS after having a long but less long out. in the Wild Card series. And he appears to be utterly unfazed by this so far. And I know that he has a four-pitch mix. He has been under consideration as a starter, at least earlier this season they talked about transitioning him to a starting role next year. I don't know if that's still in the cards

after the season he had in relief. But he has the tools, I guess, to do that. And to go through a lineup multiple times. but he doesn't, in theory, have the conditioning. He has not been asked to do that sort of thing ever. I mean, four innings. This is not his regular role. So the fact that he has handled this so well,

that's, and we have seen some other guys who will come up on this episode who have not handled that as well. And it's a lot to ask of anyone. So hats off to Taylor. And I don't know. And also, I guess, kudos to Venable for flipping the switch realizing that this is different in October baseball, and you've got to be more aggressive and everything,

but can he keep doing that? Can Taylor hold up to more of that workload? I guess you worry about that when you get there, if you get there, and he's helping them get there. Yeah, I have to imagine. I think that, you know, his use in the wild card round suggests the Venable is quite comfortable with him kind of going long. I do wonder if he would have gotten quite that many pitches,

have gone that many innings if they had had to play the next day. Yeah. Yeah, I have to think that the fact that they were off. Yeah, that extra off day for sure. Yeah. Had something to do with it. But yeah, like they clearly seem comfortable with the idea that he's going to go deep off and didn't have to travel, right? Like we talk about off days in the postseason and there are.

more of them with, you know, sort of relative to what clubs are dealing with in the regular season, they are traveling on a lot of those off days. So it's like, is it really an off day? I mean, it is. You're not throwing, but you're like, I know they fly charter. But it's, you know, it does feel like an important distinction to make. Like, it's one thing if you're like sitting in Cleveland, like, what are you going to do in Cleveland? Okay, I went to the Rock and Bowl Museum. and rounds were playing, so I guess I'm not going to do that. Clevelanders are going to be upset at you. I like Cleveland.

Relax. I've only been there one time, but I had a great time. There is good eating in Cleveland. I was, we ate well in Cleveland back when they had that All-Stra game. Like, that was fun. And that's a nice ballwork. I'm not hating on Cleveland. I'm just saying, like, if you're from out of town, what do I do?

Whether there's anything to do there. Geez, well, I'm just saying, like, the big, you know, there are, a couple of known big tourist attractions, one of which is the Cleveland Guardians during their season to be clear. Like, what's one of the things you do when you're in Cleveland? Well, you go to a Guardians game. Guess what? If you play for the White Sox, you've already done that.

Anyway, I imagine that he will probably not always be deployed quite so heavily, quite so long. But I also think that Venable seems to be adopting a mindset of, like, well, I want him to throw me, show me he can't throw strikes. And until he does that for a couple of batters in a row, well, you know, here we go. Yeah, well, because he made it through four because he was so efficient. Right. Two hits, no walks, six Ks, and 42 pitches to get through four innings.

So that's, yeah, you can do it if you're that good, I guess. And, you know, I guess that was still an outlier because I talked a lot about how we had many three or more inning saves this year. Yeah. This was a four-inning save. Right. And Sarah Lange had the stat. This was only the sixth four-inning plus four-plus in the postseason in the saves our official era since 1969. It was the first since Lance McCullors in 2017 in ALCS Game 7.

And then there was Madison Bumgarner in World Series Game 7 in 2014. And before that, you have to go back to. 1983. So yeah, that was something. And, and obviously they, you know, it wasn't like Parker Messick was bad, but, uh, right. The White Sox bullpen day just did the trick and Hagen Smith was the opener. And he went to interthirds and was solid. And then just the whole line after him held up their, their end of the bargains too. And we talked about how there would be a lot of White Sox strikeouts, but there might also be some home runs. And the series would come down to, So would there be enough home runs to make the strikeouts tolerable?

And the White Sox did strike out 10 times in this game. But they got two homers. They got the big blow from Morikami. Now, that was only one homer in this game because Montgomery had the double. Yeah, he doubled in Kyle Thiel. Yeah. Yes. But Murakami absolute bomb off of Messick.

Deux destroyed. Duh. Stroid. You know? Yep. It's like I don't think it's kind of. controversial to say that Murakami had a very successful first year in Major League Baseball. I also don't think it's controversial to say that as the season went on some of the potential pitfalls

to his profile that were highlighted before his signing started to make themselves more forcefully known. I think that that's fine to say. Now, was he bad at that time? No. Like, August was his worth month, and he had an 86 WRC plus. That's not great, but it's not like catastrophic, right? And he was on the upswing as things went on. But like, he didn't, he, he didn't maintain quite the same level of production. He had 207 on the year, right? But 129 WRC plus, great, wonderful, 35 home runs, amazing.

But when he gets into one, it goes very far. And it is, his like, I squared this up, I barreled this ball. how many stack has things can I mix into this metaphor he is one of those it sounds different coming off his back kind of a guise and it sounded really different

coming off of his back and I have found well this is less true in this round I realized during the wild card that I get fooled at Petco a lot like there were balls

that I was like oh that's going out that did not at Petcoe during their wild card series against the Cubs. I didn't have any doubts about that Murakami home run. So that was pretty cool.

And also, like, weird and fun that, you know, like a team scored its runs entirely on the contributions of, like, one guy who hit 207 for the year and one guy who hit 197 and was in the midst

of, like, such a bad tailspin. in September that I was like, they might need to just like not play Colson Montgomery to give him a little bit of a blow and let him like regroup mentally. That, that dude had 25 WRC plus September. He, oh my God. Wow. It was really bad. It was really just, I mean, he, he struck out 45% of the time in September. And it's not like he stopped stranging out on the postseason, but he got, he got it done when he needed to. So that was exciting. Yeah. The Guardian's actually struck out more than the White Sox in game one.

They struck out 12 times. So if the White Sox can keep that ratio, that probably bodes well for them. Speaking of fly balls that are a bit deceptive, Tommy Pham was upset that one he hit in that game did not get out. It was far from the most notable or controversial non-homber. Are we going to talk about the National League games now? Yes. But Pham, who is obviously extremely online. and perpetually aggrieved.

He was posting multiple times about how that ball did not get out. And I thought off the bat, it looked like a homerty. It looked like he was going to get out. Yeah, he may have had a point, and he's posting, how this ball not get out,

106 exit velo at 31 degrees, goes 366 feet with crosswind. I hit a similar ball two weeks ago, 420 feet. That was on Instagram stories, I think. Then he was commenting on some other Instagram post for everyone chirping,

here's the facts. He'll chirp right back. Wind was blowing right to left at nine miles per hour. Montgomery hit a ball, Apo to right center field 98 at 24, and it went 368 feet. How does his ball go further?

Apo into the wind. At least we won the game. Oh, it's good that he acknowledged that, I guess. But being up six runs gives our guys a blow. We use them different, so it matters. Okay, but like, I'm sorry. Is the assertion here that the ball did in fact leave the ballpark?

He's saying it should have that given the lunch conditions. But it didn't though. So like who cares? Yeah. This is such a, this is such a funny thing. This is such a funny thing to get like worked up about. Here's the main reason it's funny. They won the game.

They won three nothing. And he's upset they didn't win six to nothing. I guess they might have not had to use Taylor for a fourth inning, but still. Tommy, your manager was going to run that guy out there. I mean, maybe, maybe. If it's a 6-0 game, he probably does go to lower leverage guys. Sure, sure. But you didn't hit it out.

Like, it's unfortunate. It's bad luck that it didn't go out. I definitely thought it was gone off the bat. I remember thinking it was gone off the bat because I remember thinking 2026. is so freaking weird that Tommy Fam is hitting home runs in the postseason for a team. They haven't trailed this postseason so far. The White Sox now, they won't have played three games. So, like, I guess there's time.

But things are going so well for them. This is a charmed, beautiful, happy existence. What's your damage, Tommy? I just like, I'm not, I know I sound mad. I'm not mad. I just am confused about like what you're in the starting lineup in 2026 for a postseason team. I think, yeah, what? Yeah.

Is he trying to say that it did, they reviewed it. They looked at it. And I'm glad they did. Like it did, it was hard to tell initially whether he had caught it cleanly or trapped it. Like there was some ambiguity about whether he had actually caught it or just like mushed it up against the wall. Worth looking at. But he he just made a good play on that ball and it was just unlucky. Like what? Yeah, no, that's all he's complained. I think he's complaining solely about the fact that the ball did not carry that it died and given those launch conditions

you'd expect it to have carried better. Well, yeah, he's always fighting with someone. But But, you know, if this were pervasive, we would be interested in it, obviously, if it was, this, there have been cases before. I mean, what was that postseason when the ball suddenly seemed to be dead? And, you know, if, like, there was some evidence that the ball was not carrying and that would be relevant, obviously. Sure. And, you know, on any one, it was, what, I think it was 2019 was the year when the ball seemed sort of dead in October. And I think I wrote about that. Anything in October of 2019 might seem dead relative to the 2019 regular season because the 2019 regular season was nuts.

Yes, that is true. But yeah, if this were not just an isolated incident, then that would obviously be of some interest. And, you know, you can just get kind of a dead ball because the parameters. We've talked about this before. Rob Arthur has written about this. It's just you can be within the legal parameters. and you can have very different carry just based on that individual ball. So maybe he did get a bit of a dud there.

I don't know. Sure. But yeah, ultimately doesn't change too much, most likely. Yes, they did. So let's move to the National League here. Okay, cool. Let's do it. I think, yeah, I mean, look, Brewer's Padres is most interesting.

So I guess we buried the lead. But maybe we'll save the best for last at this point. and we'll just dispense with Dodgers Braves, which has been a competitive series. The games themselves have not been quite as riveting as rulers and Padres have been. But they've been fairly close and watchable. And so in game one, just Scoobble showed up

and was good. It wasn't like peak sigh scoble, but it was a solid start. One run, six innings, seven, K, And I guess that's most of the story, really. And I guess the other encouraging thing for the Dodgers in that game was that Teasca Hernandez and Kyle Tucker both homered, as well as Max Muncie. The Dodgers scored all of their runs on homers in that game.

And we talked about how if they were getting good Mookie back, because Mookie was excellent late in the season. And even Teosker and Tucker finish really strong. They hit well in September. So if they have those guys back, that's a huge boon to them. And Edwin Diaz, for that matter, who pitched in game two and looked quite good and has had a string of effective outings here. And there was at least an explanation on the broadcast for a mechanical change he made that might account for this run of success. So obviously they're in some danger here because the Braves did win the second game.

But if the Dodgers have the Hernandez-Tucker Diaz bets that they hoped to have and didn't have for much of the season, well, suddenly they do start to sort of look like an October juggernaut. So we'll see if that continues, but not a ton of controversy otherwise, really, in that game. And I was thinking that the Dodgers were a good matchup for the Braves because the Braves in the regular season did not hit well. against lefty pitchers, and a few of their best hitters are lefties and aren't terrible left on left, but still worse than when they have the platoon advantage. And so it seemed like the Dodgers with their lefty heavy staff would be a pretty good matchup for Atlanta, lots of lefty starters, lots of good lefty relievers. And that was the case in game one.

But then in game two, which was really close, one run game three to two. but Atlanta came away with the win. More heroics from Ray Kerr, who has showed up big so far. Yeah. And Blake Snell was excruciating. He was just at his most Snell-like, like three and two-thirds. Only one run, three hits, five walks, five strikeouts. He threw 90 pitches.

He threw almost, he threw more than twice as many pitches in three and two thirds as Grant Taylor did in four. It's just, oh, it's so nails on a chalkboard. It's like he needs something more than a pitch clock. In addition to a pitch clock, he needs a pitches per plate appearance limit, I think, because it's not just about the time between pitches. It's about how many pitches he throws. Oh, my gosh. Goodness, I just can't take it. So, yeah.

Yeah. Snell, smelled it up. Yeah. It was the full Snell. As it was happening, and I can't believe we're starting with the pitcher who was there, and not the pitcher who wasn't, but we'll get to that in a moment. Yeah. As it was progressing and it was clear that we were getting one of those Snell starts, I thought to myself, well, I feel like I haven't been annoyed with Blake Snell very much in 2026.

all. And then I remembered he only started nine games in the regular season because of injury. And I was like, oh, right. That's right. That would be why I haven't thought about him. I acknowledge that this sometimes works great. It didn't work well in game two. And even when it does, it does suck to watch. And so there we are. That's just the reality of Blake Snell. We have complained about the aesthetic pretty much the entire time he's been in the majors, although it is more notable now to me just because, like, I don't know, it's like you put him up there with like,

in contrast to Yamamoto, and you're just like, oh, my God. So there's that part of it, not to say that every, you know, starter that he shared a rotation with in San Diego or Tampa Bay was like exactly the same as this. And he should have that one year where it was like less bad, but still, I just, you know, like, Again, I'm happy for you, Blake Snell, that you got paid.

It also, I just, I would pay to not have to watch you, bitch, ever again. That's the thing I would pay to do. So there's that. Should we talk about Chris Sale, though? Should we talk about the Chris Sale of it all? I think we should. So the Braves had a lefty start also, Ray Kerr, but not Chris Sayles. Yeah, Ray Kerr, Rekir.

Yes, yes, he did. So this was big for the Braves to get the win without sale starting, but obviously led to a lot of second-guessing of Walt Weiss using Sale to close out the wildcard round, given that sale was not available here. And also questioning of why he wasn't available here, because really that was my bigger question is just, okay, if Walt Weiss knew that by using sale, in that game for an inning or so 21 pitches is what sail through in that relief outing.

And that was ostensibly on his throw day. And gosh, I mean, late in the season, we were seeing Yuri Perez, of all people, just throw in relief on his throw day. And here we have Chris Sale, who evidently is incapacitated by throwing 21 pitches. And then, you know, he threw 95 in the start preceding that. So it wasn't like he had gone super deep in that game either. And I know that they used him really carefully this season, especially late in the season. And he didn't often start on four days' rest.

I mean, he was getting extra rest usually. He only did it twice. Okay. And it seemed like part of that was just trying to avoid a breakdown or trying to save his strength for the postseason in theory. I have to think that when. Weiss used him in relief in that game. He was not thinking that that would preclude Sale from starting game two, even though... Maybe he should have known, but...

Right. So, okay. So, first of all, I have to admit that our conversation about Chris Sale last time gave me anxiety, because in our preview, and I noted this on the pod, that we felt compelled to, like, note that his availability was not certain. It seemed likely that he would start, but Walt Weiss told reporters that Chris Sale could still start game two after his relief appearance, but that they would be very conservative with his recovery.

Could is a very different word than should. And I said to Jake, who wrote our Dodgers Braves preview, and we should make sure to note this and, like, highlight the potential differences in they're expected both rotation and probability to win the series given one or the other. And then you and I talked and then I was like, oh no, did I lead Jake astray? Like, should I have downplayed this more? And then I felt so vindicated by Wal-Wise being like, no, he's not going to start. And I was like, well, your choices are really weird, but I feel better about mine.

So that's great. Which I realize is important only to me, Meg, but, you know, not unimportant to me, Meg. So there we go. I didn't realize just how conservative they had been with him. Because, you know, you mentioned that he didn't start on sort of four days very often. After the first two turns through the rotation that he got, he didn't start on four days the rest of the year. He was five plus the rest of the time. He only started three times in September.

And so I think you're right to say, I bet that Walt Weiss told himself as he, not only only called to the bullpen to say, hey, Chris, get warm, buddy. But I don't know if that's how he said it. But that's just me, assuming that that's how Walt Weiss talks to Chris Sale, which is a deranged way to assume he talked to him because I just imagine Chris Sale inspiring fear and everyone. But there's that part of it. And then there's the, hey, Chris, go back out there, right? Because Sale came in to face Harper with no, with two outs and no one on in the eighth. And then famously went back out for the ninth and at a certain point was getting into like the bottom of the Phillies went so he made two decisions to bring him in at all and then to to take him back out there

and I imagine that what Walt Weiss said to himself at each point in that decision tree is well it's Chris's throw day I assume although I think it is useful to probably know that like if you're going that long between starts like is two days after your throw day but probably so it's your throw day. You were going to throw today anyway. So go out there. Lockdown this series send us to the DS. We'll catch a game too because surely you'll be able to recover because my feeling about it the whole year was like not just that Chris Sale is old. He has an injury history. But that this was this was mostly load management on the briefs part. Let's make sure that this guy who is so good and is throwing so hard is available for us in October

because like in 2024 when he won the sye he didn't pitch that postseason because he heard his back in September and he was unavailable for all for their postseason march in October. So I get all of that but I assume that Walt Weiss assumed

well we've just been careful with him in between but he'll be able to go but why Walt? Why do you think that? You've been so careful with him and you know it's a possibility that he might not go

And you're up four runs. You're up four runs. Yeah, it was not the highest leverage outing. You're up four runs. I had no problem with Sale being used there, assuming he can come back for game two. But then you have to know he can come back. Yes, you have to know. And maybe Sale had given an indication that he would be okay,

and then he didn't recover as quickly as he and Weiss anticipated. And there was reporting that earlier that day, Chris, Sale went to a while Weiss and was like, I feel amazing or awesome. I don't remember which of those words used. but even though I just said it had been on this like 20 minutes ago. But he told him, I feel great. I think that Walt Weiss was like, perfect. I've been looking for an excuse to use you tonight.

And now I've been given one. So get out there, my guy. It's just we, on some level, I'm sure, sound like we are being a little unfair to Walt Weiss, that we are being uncharitable to him because, well, hey, they won game two, right? And Chris Sale's going to start game three. and, you know, it'll be fine. But it didn't just delay his first start of the series. It also means that he's not lined up to pitch again in the division series.

It doesn't affect, he would have taken the ball twice in the CS and the World Series, assuming they advanced regardless. I think the math works out the right way there. But he can't pitch game five now unless you're sending him out there, again, in relief, I suppose. Right. Like, don't you want, if you are staring down elimination and the justification for using him in game three was I'm staring down elimination, don't you want him starting game five? And you could have had him start game five? Well, at this point, I mean, I guess they got away with one because at this point, it doesn't really matter anymore, right?

Because he's starting game three. He won't start game five. But regardless, he would have. Yeah, but he would have started only one game beyond game two, regardless. Regardless, right? So now he's starting game three and not five. Yeah, no, it's definitely better to, I'm saying at this point, it doesn't matter anymore. At this point, it's not continuing to impair them in this series.

But obviously it did lower their chances of winning the series. It's just that they happened to win this game, which is great for them. I'm not trying to yell at you, to be clear. I just was like, how did you let this happen? No, it's, you have to know your personnel. So it's on Weiss not to perhaps. appropriately factor in that that could have happened. It also is a real drawback to Sale.

And Sale is great. And he helped carry that team to the playoffs. Oh, yeah. But this is a longstanding issue with him. You know, he's going to be a deserved Hall of Famer. He's fantastic. But people have strengths and weaknesses. And Chris Sale's strength is not late in the season.

He has, in his career, a 5.83 postseason ER. Not that he's thrown that many innings, partly because he hasn't always been available when the postseason rolls run. 3.8 FIP, which is better than the unsightly ERA, but still about a run worse than his regular season average. And late in the regular season, he has been worse historically. He has allowed a 710 OPS in September slash October in the regular season, which is easily his worst month in the regular season. 625 is his overall OPS allowed. So this has been a pattern with him. I wrote a piece about this in 2018 about how the catch with Chris Sale is that you can't necessarily count on him late in the season.

So, look, he's fantastic to have. It's just that you would hope that your ace, your future Hall of Famer, 37 or not, would be able to come back and start on slightly less long rest than he's accustomed to when you have gone down one game. in a best of five series that he would want and be able to take that ball there. And you're just not necessarily going to get that with Chris Sale. But you take what you can get. And yeah, I mean, if it comes to game five, knowing that he'll be on his ass for the whole NLCS if they use him in relief in that game. I mean, you know, you got to get there.

That's the important thing. And if it's close and if they really need him for a high leverage outing with lefties up or something, I guess they would do that. but yeah, you got to be wary. It has to be an emergency in order to break that glass now because you just can't count on him bouncing back.

And also, if Didier Fuentes can just throw every inning, then you might not need him in relief. So Fuentes tried to do the tailor here. He tried to do the full Grant Taylor and go four. Now, I thought that was a little much. And I first guessed that. I was chatting with Zach Cramm during the game

and Fuentes came back out. for his fourth inning of work in the ninth. And I thought, this is pushing it. There's no need really to go four with him. You have, Marcel Iglesias, who's pretty good also out there. And Fuentes was like the higher leverage guy down the stretch for Atlanta, and he's been fantastic. But four innings, that's a lot.

You're asking a lot. And he did then give up the home run in the ninth and had to be replaced by Iglesias in the end, because Muncie took him deep after Freeman had homered earlier in the game. So Dodgers still getting a lot of their runs on homers. But yeah, that I think Weiss got a bit greedy there. But this is a theme. This is something we're seeing. And obviously it's going to come up in a second when we talk about Mason Miller.

I think teams are playing with playoff fire here when it comes to the firemen. Because, boy, it's worked out well for Grant Taylor. Obviously, Fuentes, you know, one run in three and two thirds is still fantastic too. But you can't just, yes, it's a different environment and you absolutely want your high leverage arms out there. But you can't just ask them with complete confidence to just go twice as long as they're accustomed to going with regularity and just expect that they will be entirely unfazed by that. That's going to come back to bite you as often as it makes you look brilliant. So I would be careful not to touch the stove too often when it comes to stretching these guys to two, three, four innings. That's, you're really, you're asking for trouble, I think, much as I applaud it when it works.

So ultimately it did work and Eglacius got the last out and, you know, they've been able to bring back Suarez and use him, which if he's effective, that's that's huge for them to have him is another reliable arm out there. So, and they did just enough on offense to make it happen and even the series. And so, yeah, to get that game in L.A. without sale on the mound, that was really huge for Atlanta, really big win for them. Yeah, I just hope that Walt Weiss isn't like, see, my process was flawless. It all worked out fine. I do think that Fuentes is like a really powerful weapon for that. You know, he has been toyed with as a starter of various points in his career, including this season. So, like, him being able to give you real length seems plausible there, even if maybe not quite, to your point, not quite as much as they tried for.

It is interesting that several of these bullpens seem to be marked by their managers being like, here are the guys I really trust. And if there is any amount of leverage in this moment at all, they are getting the ball and no one else is going to touch it. even if it defies their usage some during the regular season. And I think you're right. Like I want managers to be, to appreciate the difference in both the schedule and the leverage that the postseason presents them. But it does maybe suggest that if this is how you're going to use these guys come October. And look, like, who knows?

Maybe, maybe Ms. Miller just had a bad night, you know. But maybe do a couple more trial runs of this during the regular season. and just to make sure that he can do it, you know, and to get him comfortable with the notion. And I'm sure all of these guys are like competitive maniacs. They're never going to tell you, no, coach, I don't want the ball. Yeah, and they're probably going to say skip, I guess, because it's not college baseball,

unless they're talking to a coach that maybe they meant to coach. Sometimes they say coach. They might not all say skip. No one can call me, coach, but I wish they did. Yeah, and you're right. Fuentes was a starter last year, but this year he made, One start, and it was three innings, and it was in April.

And the only time he had gone longer than three, which was four, was in his very first game of this season, which was in late March. And, yeah, he had not been asked to do this much. You know, two innings every now and then, yes. But four, who. And they were good for and efficient four, but, yeah, none of us. Okay. Anyway, be careful out there, everyone. Okay, so Brewers and Padres and, yeah, I mean, this has delivered.

I said last time that I was sorry that this couldn't be the NLCS matchup because I want to see more games between these two teams. But they're giving us our money is worth, at least in these first couple. So where do we even begin? I mean, it's just obviously there's the France batted ball. It's just, I come back to it. I mean, it's 2-0 Brewers. it's a pretty commanding lead and a best of five. But it's a three to two win and it's a four to three win.

And each of those wins could have easily been losses. So, you know, it's not like the Brewers are dominating here at all. I mean, they're playing well, mostly. But yeah, it's two to nothing does not reflect how close this series has been. And just so much star power and so many exciting players just doing their thing. So in game one, the Padres really made the Miz work. That was impressive. And I don't know, you know, it was their approach, as I think Stamban said during the in-game interview,

that they went in there with a mindset of let's run up the pitch count and get him out of the game. I don't know how much of that was them making good on the game plan or the Miz just not being at his sharpest. But they fouled off 30 pitches from the Miz in the first four innings. And I saw the stat from Codify. the most fouls by an MLB team in the first four innings of a postseason game in the pitch tracking era. So they were really making Mizrowski work, and he was not entirely missing bats as often as he is accustomed to. And they did get him out of the game. The problem was that the Brewer's bullpen is also good.

So that's the downside, I guess, of you get the starter out of the game. Now, you know, you get Mizrowski out of the game. I think that is, that's a good thing, regardless of who. comes in after that. But actually, he allowed two runs and the rest of the brewers relievers, five guys who came in after him, didn't allow a single run the rest of the way. So we talked about this, I think, before, that the Padres have an incredible bullpen and the higher profile pen, but don't sleep on the Brewers pen either, because that is a solid unit too. And they did their thing. And the brewers, they can hit a homer every now and then. And they scored their runs

on dingers in game one as well, Jackson Churio and William Contreras, with the game winner. And so, yeah, I mean, it was just a close, exciting game, which obviously the Thai France padded ball was kind of the headline because that was one way in which potentially it could have swung the other way. How familiar were you with the ground rules at American Family Field before this incident occurred? Not at all. Not at all. Not with that particular one. No. And the broadcasters weren't either, obviously, although I did see that, I mean, obviously the umpires were and the team personnel were. And actually, this had been discussed. I saw. So this is in the genre of player predictions and baseball team predictions. And so there was actually some footage from before game one when the coaches, managers, umps met to discuss the ground rules as they were exchanging the lineup cards. And there was an amusing moment when Matt Erickson,

the Brewer's third base coach, they were told that if it's fair, wherever it comes down, whatever happens, that's what we've got. And then Stamin asked for a clarification, it can be caught. And an umpire responded, yes. And then Erickson said, I haven't seen that here in six years, so it'll happen tonight. And it did. Now, I wouldn't quite count that as a prediction.

That's in that genre of, we all do that, right? Baseball, it's unpredictable. The wacky thing you're not expecting happens. And so we joke about, oh, that's never happened. Just watch. It'll happen tonight, right? Which does that count as a prediction? I wouldn't really.

I mean, technically, I guess, sort of. But, you know, he said that not because he actually thought it was going to happen, or he had some sort of insight. It was a joke, right? And then it turned out to actually happen and sort of seems semi-pression in retrospect. But very amusing that that even came up. Although, for all I know, people have made the same observation and joke before prior games. And it just didn't happen.

And so we never got the clip of that because why would we? Did you think that that ball had gone out? I did not. Or would have gone out? I did not off the bat. I was definitely doing a, uh, you know, like maybe, but I definitely did not have the sense that, oh, that's gone. That's a no doubt or anything. The broadcasters, they thought it was out.

Yeah, Przinski, Wainwright, like, yeah, they came down very firmly on the side of Padres got robbed or bad luck. to be clear, no one is disputing that the ground rules were interpreted correctly. They were. Correct. People have questioned whether those should be the ground rules now. But everyone was warned. Everyone knew coming in. They hadn't just changed the rules or anything.

That's what is supposed to happen if a ball hits there. It's just that balls never really hit there. So no one was aware and it hadn't swung this sort of game before. But yeah, no sour grapes in that sense. You know, both people were playing in the same park with the same rules. and everything, and it just so happens that this came into play for a Padres' Badded Ball. But the broadcasters, I think, were way too certain that this was gone. And I think their reaction to it probably colored some of the public reaction to it during that incident.

Hard to say exactly, because I don't know how many people are following their lead or even listening to it. But I think the tone with which they talked about, it sort of led to a lot of people very confidently proclaiming that that ball would have been gone. I'm open to the possibility that it would have been gone, but I think the data leans towards not being gone. Yes. Yeah. And I think, you know, a lot of people were doing the sort of like,

you know, similar batted ball characteristics per stackass and how many of them were home runs. And it was very few. It sounds like, you know, I know, you know, did a whole deep. dive on this at the athletic. And I think the part of it, the people, it did, I didn't think that it was a home run. He, I'm going to swear, he hit the shit out of that ball, to be clear. Like, that was a loud contact.

It just seemed so high. Like, the launch angle seemed so steep that I thought it was going to die just shy and and be caught. I didn't think it would clank. I didn't think it was hit that high. But as, you know, as 49 degrees. That's a moonshot. It's a moonshot.

Now, if the roof is open and the, you know, the wind's moving right and that's like maybe, you know. Yeah, we can't rule it out, which I can't rule it out. So I was talking to Petriello about this and I was talking to Alan Nathan about this. And I was just trying to speak to as many people and get as much information as I could. because the automated stat cast estimate said, what, 325 feet and said it would have been out only in Houston with the Crawford boxes, you know, one out of 30 parks. However, what Petriolo clarified to me, because I had thought that that was maybe just based on the initial launch characteristics of the 49 degree launch angle and whatever it was 106 miles per hour rounding up. But Petriolo said that that does take into account the collision because it was tracked after the collision also. And so I said when it says estimated distance of 325 feet and would have been out only at Diken, is that because the ball was still being tracked after it hit the roof and that's how far it actually went?

Or is that a pre-roof estimate? And Petriolo said the first, the former, that the ball was still being tracked. after it hit the route. And he said, and that's really important. People are assuming it's pre-roof, and thus France got robbed. Because people are saying, well, if Stackass estimated 325 feet and it hit the roof, and presumably that may have knocked it down and maybe it was still climbing. So if you interpret it that way, then you'd say, well, 325, it could have gone farther, maybe

if it had not hit the roof or whatever. Whereas Petriello says it's actually saying, after hitting the roof, there's only one park, it still would have hit the seats in. There is not an estimate, he says, for a collision-free outcome. However, people can kind of do their homebrew estimates by just looking, I guess, at, you know, initial launch characteristics. And if you hit it this high and this hard and maybe take into account that it was pulled, obviously, down the line, too, that has some bearing on this, of course.

So he also said he's not a thousand percent confident in the 325 being perfectly fully tracked. He said, I think it's pretty close. If it's off, it won't be by much, but I'm not going to the wall on 325 anyway, although it almost went to the wall, I guess. And so he also said, you know, the interesting thing is that you can't completely trust the stat cast on a ball like this because it was a weird outlier. Not only did it hit the roof, but also it was hit at this unusual trajectory. Right. The characteristics were so extreme. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like that Pete Alonzo Fairfowl call that we talked about late in the season. Yes.

And we were saying, well, why can't they just use Stackcast or people were suggesting? And maybe they could, but they'd have to get more cameras and they'd have to do other things because the system is not really set up to account for all the edge case fly balls that are at some weird trajectory. Because now if it's like a pitch in the strike zone, well, they have all the cameras concentrated on that where an inch makes a major deal. And so the system is set up to have incredible precision when it comes to those pitches. But when it comes to a ball down the line or whatever, then the system does not have that same

sort of standard of accuracy there because it doesn't have to, I suppose. And it would be difficult to. So the point is when people looked at as similar batted balls as they could, most of them were not out. There were various tweets, you know, like Tom Tango had. a tweet, Vivian Peltier, who is an analyst for the Dodgers and also is still allowed to tweet and stuff, also did some analysis of this and showed various possible trajectories with estimates of the batted ball spin, which is something that is not in the stat cast data, the public

stat cast data. And all of Vivian's estimates either fell short of the wall in fair territory or were foul because that's the other thing. Right. Yes. It's like, and I think that people got really wound around the question of, you know, did it clear, would it have cleared the wall or not?

And maybe we're underappreciating the fair foul question. Yeah. Which was also, I think, an important piece of it. I mean, look, if I'm Thai France, I feel, I'm going to swear again, please bleep, I feel fucking jobbed by that because he revolved that thing. I get Thai France being. mad because he was clearly mad but I didn't think

that it was going to clear the fence now Craig Goldstein pointed out something that you know I think to get to your point about like should these be the ground rules it is kind of weird that it can ricochet like that and just be caught for an out as opposed to just being a

dead ball so that part of it like I think you know thinking about those ground rules is fine but I didn't I don't think it was going to be a home run. I don't say that to be sassy to Ty France or to discount the frustration on the part of the problem. It's just

like the lousiest luck, you know? And then the next day the brewer is like, what? You want the roof open? The roof's open now. You know? Here it is. And Typhrants played the next day like a man possessed. So maybe it was useful if ultimately futile for him.

Yes. And I put this to Alan Nathan and I got from someone with a team some of the stat cast output and sent that to Alan and he plugged it into his trajectory calculator. And for those who don't know, he's the physics of baseball expert who often weighs in on things like this and has been on the podcast before. Yes, indeed.

And wonderful guy. Yeah. And his expert opinion, he said, as with any calculation, there is some uncertainty in my result. But I think the conclusion that it would not have been a home run is pretty solid, given the information I have. Yeah. You are free to quote me.

And I just did. And, you know, there is the, because the spin, like I think France was saying, there was backspin on it. That can have some effect on how well it carries and does it go foul or not. And I did just get some information on the spin from someone with a team who told me that the spin on the bat at ball was 3,823 RPM with a 160 degree spin axis. I don't know what to do with that information. But if any of you do, then please feel free to plug that into your models. I just sent that to Alan to see if that improves his estimate in any way. Because, yeah, the problem is the spin.

Teams have access to that. MLB has access to that. It can have some bearing on the way the ball travels. But in the public sphere, we don't get access to that data typically. And so even now presented with it, I don't know what that means, really. Right. Someone smarter and more expert than me might be able to do something with that. But, yeah, I'll report any additional info I get from Alan.

Tom Tango also tweeted that like he looked up the most similar batted balls to two francs and it was like the top 25 including France the other 24 all went foul so yeah and that's if you include foul balls the first way he did it he didn't include fouls and he got like of the most similar I think four were homers and 13 were out

so I don't think it would have been out just based on my initial eyeballing of it but also just all the data that people have brought to bear. Yeah. But there is some uncertainty. And I think that that's kind of fun in a way. It seems like we should have a conclusive answer to this. Right.

Because it's 2026 and we track everything with this incredible level of precision. And so it seems like we should be able to say, yeah, that was almost certainly this or that. And we can't quite reach that level of precision. Yeah. And that's kind of fun because, I mean, I'm all in favor of more knowledge. better information and everything. But, you know, it leads to one of those, well, it's a longstanding debate. I mean, people will remember this forever, regardless of the outcome of this series.

It's just these are the debates that we have forever, right? I mean, people still talk about when the Padres were in the World Series in 1998, and Mark Langston threw a pitch to Tino Martinez and Tino took it, and it looked like it should have been a called strike three. but it was called a ball, and then Tino hit a Grand Slam. I was at that game. I was pretty pleased about that outcome. But that still, that game one call that preceded the Grand Slam,

that's still notorious among Padres fans, because it's not as if they've had a whole lot of trips to the World Series. So these things loom large. It's like you're being a little rude to the Padres. Yeah. And so if that had happened today, then we would know whether it was a strike or not, and probably it would have been overturned if it wasn't,

or, you know, if Mark Langston or the Padres Catcher had challenged, then we would not have to deal with that. But these what-ifs are always fun topics in baseball and the playoffs. And so on some level, I'm glad that we still have some uncertainty and still have some what-if, and we can argue this forever, as long as people are arguing, I think, with the right information and everything and, you know, are armed with as much knowledge as we can bring to bear, which I think affects the odds.

But the other thing is that, well, just as Tommy Pham was complaining about, this is one batted ball, it's one baseball. And so we can, until the cows come home, we can do savant queries, and we can look at how similar batted balls traveled or didn't. But we don't know whether this particular ball would have traveled better or worse than most of them, so you can never rule out.

And regardless, it's bad luck for the Padres because it was caught by Jackson Trio. It was an out. So, I mean, that's the worst case scenario. And if it hadn't hit that thing, it could still have been an out, but it might have been something better than an out. So obviously it would have been better for the Padres if it had continued on. I did think the broadcast gave a ton of credit to Truro for catching that ball. And I do think he deserves some credit for it for playing that Karam.

But it does suggest to me the fact that he was able to catch it seemingly fairly routinely. That does suggest to me that it didn't actually alter the trajectory. that much because... I had that thought too. It probably was close to its apex, its pinnacle anyway. And so that makes me even more confident that... Because if it had totally redirected

and he was going way back and then had to come way in or something, then maybe we would have seen that reflected in his having a tougher time making the play. Whereas, yeah, it might have just about expended its energy. And once it reaches that pinnacle, it's going to come down pretty straight. So I don't know that it actually made that much of a difference.

Anyway, it's one of those legendary plays. And people will argue about it forever. And we can't actually provide a conclusive answer, which in a way is kind of cool. And it's really something that Thai France is just like the man of the hour. You know, Thai France, what a season Thai France had. I know. The Padre's roster and lineup is such a strange amalgamation.

of superstars. We referred to it as stars and scrubs on a recent episode, and that's true, except that in this case, the scrubs have all played well, mostly. So it's like Ty France had a 141 WRC Plus. He was by WRC Plus the best hitter on the Padres this year, and who would have seen that coming? He was like basically a replacement level player

with a below-average WRC plus over the previous two seasons combined, and then the Padres pick him up. and somehow he has a 140. Now he had one of the biggest Wobah minus X Wobah over performances of anyone in baseball this year, so I guess you could say

his luck evened out. Maybe he was due for a little lousy luck after having benefited all season. But that lineup, it's like, okay, you have Tatis and you have Merrill and you have Machado. But then you have like Samad Taylor had a 129 WRC plus this year.

Dustin Harris was DFA three times? times this year. He's batting in the two-shot. By the Padres recently. Yeah, the Padres, he was in the minors, they got rid of him. Luis Renhifo, who I know got hurt, but like he was an important addition for them, 126 WRC plus in 38 games when they needed that. And then Harris and yeah, it's just unlikely sources of offense. And so I don't know if, you know, some of those guys will turn into pumpkins in the postseason. But despite being thwarted on that batted ball, France has still had huge hits in the series and a lot of them and driven in runs.

So I just did not expect to be thinking about Thai France quite as much as I am right now. I think it was the White Sox who DFAed him twice and the Astros did too. I don't think that the Padres DFA'd him. No, yeah, he was released by the Padres on August 5th. And then they re-signed him right away. That's right. You're right. He was re-signed right away.

That's right. Yes, the Astros selected him off waivers in April, and then he became a free agent, and then the White Sox signed him, and then he was released by the White Sox and then signed by the Padres. Yeah, so. Yeah, signed release, signed release. Yeah. Batting second in a playoff game. Second.

Yeah, it's pretty well. Bunkers. Yeah. Amazing. So, yeah. And then we should talk about the Roars because you're right. It's like that game won, it was like, oh, boy, you know, when when Ben previewed this series, he tried to think about other previous of the series.

You tried to think about it through the lens of failure. Like, what are the failure cases that lead to either of these teams getting eliminated from the postseason? And Mizorowski not being sharp was one of the fail cases, right? Because it's like this guy is so important. He's the best pitcher in baseball, maybe a question mark. But also, as we noted, like, they had to handle him very carefully in the second half. He wasn't quite as good. So, you know, you get the non-sharp version of Mizorowski.

the having to battle version of Mizorowski, which again wasn't like terrible, but you get that guy and you think they're not going to win. And then you get the really good version of Michael King for the Padres in game two. And it's not like Logan Henderson was terrible, but he wasn't as sharp as King was, right? And this team doesn't hit home runs

except when they need to in game one to win the game. And, you know, all of this is preamble to say, man, Jason Trio's so freaking cool. What a great, what an amazing, incredible thing. What a trium. And his first two seasons, it was this weird, like, back and forth, vacillating, different dueling halves of him. And then he puts it all together this year, 130 WRC plus he draws this incredibly tough assignment. Mason Miller walks the bases loaded.

What's that about? And then, like, again, you got to give these. guys like some trial runs at expanded roles i think this is a thing i'm going to start believing and saying even if there is evidence to the contrary but i think it's true yeah you don't want to wear them down but there has to be some happy medium between to be a couple of times and it's not like she never went more than an inning during the regular season but he didn't do it very much he he mostly was a one inning guy which inning that was did move around a little bit but like he was mostly a one-inning guy, and I think you got to give them a little more practice.

And maybe they felt like they didn't have the luxury of doing that. Maybe they think I'm crazy. You know, it wasn't like they were, they locked in their playoff birth like a month ago. No, they had to battle to the very end. So maybe you just have to like get through the regular season as it's presented to you and hope that you're able to get these guys comfortable with expanded rules come October. I don't know. But he walks at bases loaded.

It brings up Trurio. Truro is up there. He is not trying to walk. He is trying, well, he's trying to hit another home run candidly. Gary Sanchez pinch hit. He didn't swing, I think, in that whole play appearance. Sanchez. Gary, again, we are, it is 2026.

And Gary Sanchez and Tommy Fam are in important spots on playoff teams. It is up is down. It's a lot of fun. You know, I think Gary's probably happier with his night than, than Tommy was, although same result, ultimately, isn't it? And so it's just, I don't know, I'm amped about it because it was so exciting. And I think that one of the knocks on a guy like Mason Miller is that it can get to a point where it feels a little predetermined, right?

Where it's like, well, what are you going to do against this guy? He's so good, right? We know how this is going to go. And provided he is able to command his stuff even a little bit. he's just going to get you. And so to have the surprise of it is so exciting and to have it come from this guy who goes up there swinging at 101, right? And then he gets like 102 and he's like,

now I'm going to swing at that too. And and and, but it was like, you know, the location on that fourth pitch that he fouled off, which was 103 miles an hour, is just, you know, it was like, okay, and now I'm going to get the slider. and that slider was going to be way in the dirt. And I will say that Friday for me

and kind of looked like he indicated that a little too early. And then... And then... Yeah, he came through. Yeah, that was as good as it gets. That's what you want with postseason baseball, really. And Churio has come up big time and again. He's 14 playoff games now.

1,030 OPS. Pretty good. He's the guy you want it up there and Miller's the guy you want on the mound for the podger. It's not like I wouldn't have tried to throw Miller for two innings, too. And he ended up throwing 40 pitches, which was, I think, his high. Obviously, he was a starter in the past, but since he became a reliever full time in 2024, that was his high pitch count.

And he hadn't thrown more than 34, I think, in more than two years. And now he usually doesn't need many pitches because he's just mowing people down. But, yeah, even so, I'm not saying it wasn't a risk worth taking. I think he's so good. Of course it was. But it's just you are taking a risk, even with Mason Miller. And he did lose a little bit of command there and wasn't getting the whiffs that he needed on the slider and everything. So, yeah, and testament to the Brewers as well.

And also the challenges in that game were wild because there were, I think players went 10 for 12 in. ABS challenges in that game. So they were prolific and, well, I guess they would have to be accurate in order to be prolific or else they would run out. But, yeah, it was not the greatest showing for the Ups. Yeah, Campi had two, Contreras had four, Bowers had two, France had one, Sal Freilik had one, Gary had one. It was also, while we're speaking about this, I meant to mention this when we were talking about White Sox Guardians, that was the worst zone I've seen in a while.

Like I have felt this year, both because you have the remedy of the challenge system and also because I think that Oms just seem like they are calling a more consistent tight zone. It hasn't been notable to me. And that's not to say that there haven't been games where the zone has been bad. There have been.

But in general, I feel like they're like, you'll never believe how bad the zone was games. were less frequent this year. Anecotal, my perception, but that was my perception. And then there was that game, and I was like, what's going on back there?

What is happening? Thank God for the challenge system, because you know what? Wasn't a narrative in that game that had one of the worst zones I saw all year? The zone that was terrible. Like, it didn't determine anything,

in part because, like, the challenges were applied judiciously, although they seemed like both of those dugouts told their guys, like, don't challenge early. Just don't, just don't challenge early. Because there were a couple of times where the hitter made the stink face about a strike call. And I was like, you can just tap, tap, tap, tap, tap my guy.

Like Randall Gritchick, why do you look so aggrieved? But I think Randall was told that he was not allowed to tap, tap, tap. Did you see that Andy Paez is not allowed to challenge anymore? Oh, he got a mandate. I think he got a mandate. I think that's what Fabian reported that he's been told, don't do it anymore. Oh, dear. Also, the Padres, you think of the Brewers as a solid defensive team,

but the Padres out-defendant. ended the Brewers in game two because the Brewers made three errors and then in the 8th no one covered on the bunt by Taylor after the ball got by Terang and the Padres had that great catch by Merrill on the

Yelich fly in the 7th. Croninworth babbled and threw a ball away in the 7th when he was sort of screened by a runner but on the whole Brewer's defense did let them down in that game. They won anyway but something to watch. And Ethan Salas

was not catching game two, but I am impressed that he's caught it all. I mean, it's really at his age. He is the youngest postseason catcher ever, I believe, and it's really something to stick him in there and have him learn the staff and everything and handle the pressure. There's a reason why catchers rarely get that sort of assignment at that age. It's a lot to handle, and usually it takes a while for catchers to get together offensively and defensively. So for him to have been plugged in there and actually be getting some serious postseason playing time. It's a timeshare, obviously, but he's getting some of it and he hasn't embarrassed himself or anything. That's quite precocious of him.

I mean, forget Catcher. He's just one of the youngest postseason players in a long time. But, yeah, you're right. Like, it is very impressive. I can't remember if I already said this on the pod. So apologies if I'm repeating myself. but one of the, did I talk about how one of the benefits of PCA blowing his challenge early was that that Cubs Padres game ended up just being like a normal pitch framing game after a while

because like Carson Kelly also lost a challenge and so they were just out of challenges quite early in that game and, you know, we saw in the game he did start against the Brewers that like, you know, he still is not a very prolific ball blocker, right? His defense is quite good, but he does kind of have a hard time with balls in the dirt sometimes. And as I think I mentioned when we talked about his call-up, like there was a while where it looked like he was kind of afraid of the ball. That doesn't seem like a problem. He's so poised. He's incredibly impressive.

But it was very fun for me, a framing freak, to just like kind of get a framing game from Ethan Solis in that game against the Cubs. Because I was like, I don't know, buddy, this is what happens. This is why you don't do it in the first inning if you're not one. I'm really sure in the moment isn't super high leverage. Yeah. Speaking of blocking, I'm watching on YouTube TV, which you're not, so I don't know if this is the same. But on mine, at least in some of these games,

the way that it's miced up, one weird thing is that sometimes there's like an echo, like I hear the pitch hit the glove twice, just in quick succession. And then as if the audio is coming from different sources or something. But also I was hearing very clearly things that you don't usually hear with the batter umpire catcher interaction. And there was one time, I think it was in game two of the Dodgers Brave series

where it was, I think, Drake Baldwin blocked a pitch and you could hear home plate dump Chris Guccione saying really loudly, nice block! I was surprised to hear, but I guess it makes sense because you're not just blocking the ball. You're also blocking Guccione from getting hit by that ball. potentially. So, yeah, that's a little window into a grateful ump.

Hopefully, still an unbiased ump, but nonetheless an appreciative ump of a catcher who spared them a bruise possibly. So I also noticed, I forget which play made me observe this, but I always think that on a force play at second when a runner is sliding in and the ball just barely beats them, I always think that they beat the throw. I always think. I'm always like, oh, got to change. challenge that one. It's sort of similar to my my check swing, my initial inclination is always,

which way is it? My initial inclination is, I think, always that they went around and then I watched the replay and it's the other way around where I think, oh, no, actually, maybe they held up or am I getting that backwards? I've talked about this before. But on the force plays at second, it's definitely that I always think like, oh, that that foot they slid in before the ball got there and then nine tens out of ten or more I see the replay and no actually they did time it just perfectly and they don't even bother challenging but yeah it's kind of like when the neighborhood play used to be a bigger thing before replay review I would always think oh he didn't touch the bag there and then you'd see the replay and back then sometimes they actually didn't because there was no

challenging but yeah I'm always fooled by that but those those middle infielders they they know how to time it really precisely most of the time yeah anyway this This has been great fun and as disappointed as I am that we can't get a Padres Brewer's NLCS this series has delivered. I am starting to, you know, we're a long way away from this happening, obviously, but I think I could get into a Spider-Man pointing meme Brewers-Rays World Series. I think that could be fun. That's, I guess, kind of MLB's worst nightmare from a broadcast ratings and also salary cap narrative perspective. But Brewers Rays, like, that'd be pretty fun.

You know, just like two teams that have never won a World Series, so you're guaranteed a first-time champion. A lot of overlap in the brain trust of those teams. Some similarities in the way they built their teams and have sustained their success in those markets and everything. So Brewer's Race, I could get into that as a consolation. But also, I think if the Padres managed to come back in this series, a Padres, Dodgers, NLCS, obviously the Dodgers would have to beat Atlanta to make that happy. But that would be pretty exciting too. And I would be rooting for the Padres just to give us some new blood in the World Series and a team that's never won one in the World Series. But that would be narratively satisfying if someone slays the Dodgers for it to be the Padres with the history between those teams and the rivalry, if you can call it one.

So that's something to look forward to also. All right. Well, we can, I guess, go watch some hastily. made Cleveland tourism videos now to come up with ideas for other things to do on an off day in Cleveland. Well, after we recorded the White Sox won again, and they needed only a measly four outs from Grant Taylor this time. Another one-run game. We've seen a lot of those this postseason. They could easily go either way, until they go one way. And then they can't go the other. Good pitching performances from Gavin Williams and Sean Burke. And the rays held the Yankees' bats down again. Pushed New York to within one loss of elimination.

The trough was loud with a very large crowd, and the raise knocked Cam Schlittler out after four and a third. Only two strikeouts. Tough to strike out those rays. And against the team that puts the ball in play, it's a bad idea to play really lousy defense. Meant to mention, by the way, that there was some suggestion that maybe the brewers were picking up pitches from Mason Miller, that perhaps he was tipping. There was some photographic evidence, perhaps, of him holding the ball differently before fastballs and sliders. I never know whether to buy it, but it would help explain why so many of those. Brewers hitters refused to chase Miller's pitches in that second inning of work. Of course,

the Brewers pretty selective to begin with. They have been accused of picking up pitches legally, that is, before. By the way, Anthony Kay pitched in that White Sox game. I keep meaning to mention this great stat from the Josiah newsletter. Anthony Kay led the majors with 26 hit batters this year, and as Joe noted, that's the most of any pitcher since 1909. No pitcher has hit more than 26 batters since 1901. That's a lot of HBPs. Oh, and, Tommy Pham, not one to let a grievance go easily, had a little encounter with Rob Manfred. Here's how the Chicago Sun Times described it. As an intrepid reporter was interviewing MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred outside the White Sox dugout Monday before game two,

Pham left his batting practice session to ask Manfred an important question. Rob, what's going on with the balls? What balls, Manfred replied. I can't be hitting no doubters, man, and not helping them in getting out, Pham said, probably half joking and half serious. How am I supposed to get a job next year if that ball don't play? go out. You're on your own with the hitting out thing, Manfred replied. Fem continued, have you seen Major League? When Willie May's Hayes hit the ball and he pimped it and it didn't go out, someone made a

clip of me doing it. They put them together. It was funny. I need a good ball. It's good to see you, Manfred said. What an interaction. We teased this last time, but I forgot to re-tease it today. We will be doing our first Patreon playoff live stream this Sunday during NLCS game one. So sign up now, if you haven't already, and you want to join us for that. Speaking of Patreon, you can support the podcast there by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild and signing up to pled 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, Ben, Gregory Sherrod, Andrew Home, Connor D, and Eric Burton, thanks to all of you.

Patreon perks include access to, well, the aforementioned live streams, and a third unrestricted episode each week, plus monthly bonus episodes and membership in our Discord group, which is where those playoff live streams take place. You can also get personalized messages, prioritized email answers, Fangraphs memberships, shoutouts at the end of episodes, potential podcast appearances, and more. Check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash effectively wild. If you are Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via email. Send your questions, comments, intro, intro themes to podcast at Fangraphs.com. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on Apple Podcast, 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 in the podcast posted fan graphs or Patreon or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We will be back with another episode later this week. Talk to you then.

What's the greatest?