Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2541: Division Series Theories

Episode Date: October 9, 2026

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about a few days’ worth of Division Series action, including three series outcomes. Among other topics, they discuss clutchness, low scoring, scant starting pitching, paternity timing, pant tightness, fan interference, Yankees-fan frustration, postgame-panelist star power, Championship Series sympathy points, and MLB’s experiment in restricting outfielder positioning. Audio intro: Moon Hound, […] Source

Calculate whore does it come from the heart? Should we use defensive run safe or follow the O? Who's gone with their quips and opinions? It's effectively wild. Effectively wild. It's effectively wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2541 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from FanGraphs presented by our Patreon supporters.

I am Ben Lindberg of the Ringer, joined by Meg Rally of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. Well, we are recording on Thursday afternoon. Much baseball has been played since the last time we talked. There have been what eight games, I believe, since we last recorded. So we won't go over each of them in minute detail, but we will catch up on what we missed. and we have missed quite a bit.

We missed the final four-game day of the season. I mean, we didn't miss it. We were watching. We were following. We just have not podcasted since then. And three of the four series have been decided as we speak. By the time people hear this, it will be four-for-four. So we have an NLCS matchup, and we are running it back.

It's Brewers-Dodgers once again after Milwaukee finish off. San Diego in four games and LA finished off Atlanta in four games. And we know half of the ALCS matchup. The race swept the Yankees and now await the winner of White Sox Guardians game four is the night that we are recording this episode. So we, I suppose, can just talk about what has transpired and what has stood out to us and maybe a couple non-playoff-related topics too. And then perhaps next time when we may know both championship series matchups, we could preview that round a little bit. Yeah. We'll be recording in one more day. And if you'd like access to that entire episode, as well as our first playoff live stream for Patreon supporters, well, sign up now.

We're doing that live stream this Sunday, as we teased one time before, that'll be during NLCS game one. So I guess what stands out to me maybe from the action that we've seen a lot of exciting baseball, obviously, the Brewers Padres series continued to be excellent. And most of the games, if not excellent, at least continued to be close. And so I think maybe what stands out to me from this round or even the postseason so far, we've had a few fly balls that just had they been a foot, farther, a foot in a different direction, inches lower, might have swung things considerably. And I think that's a testament to the fact that we've seen a lot of close, low-scoring games where we can actually point to a single play and a single batted ball as maybe being decisive. And so I'm thinking of not just the Thai-France roof ball that we already discussed,

but also on Wednesday, the many Machado fly that Garrett Mitchell caught at the wall in San Diego and the Anthony Volpe fly ball in New York that was ruled fan interference after initially being called a two-run game tying home run and ended up being just what an RBI double. And the Yankees ended up losing by that one run. So the fact that you could argue that the outcome of those plays was decisive just speaks to how competitive and closely contested some of these games have been and the fact that we have not seen big margins of victory for the most part with, I suppose, the exception of White Sox Guardians game three. Yeah, that one did feel a little bit like, you know, an uncinking of the hose. Yes. And perhaps even if they advance an indication that, yeah, that pitching on the white. The flux side is pretty thin. Yes.

Eventually, Jose Ramirez will have the good game we've all been waiting for, and the bullpen game will come back to bite you. Yeah. On occasion, even the guardians can put up a good number of runs on you when the bullpen arms just don't have it. I thought your takeaway was going to be that these baseball guys got to stop having sex in January. I thought that was going to be your primary takeaway. Yeah. Because, you know. Walker Bueller.

Mason Miller, proud poppas, but yeah, inopportune timing. Max Fried, although maybe not present for the work of his child. You know, look, my judgment about it doesn't matter. His girlfriend's judgment about it is the judgment that matters. We'll leave that to their private discretion. But what I have something to say about that. Look, I didn't say I didn't have judgment. I just said that mine doesn't matter.

Yeah, yeah. I was thinking of that because I saw Mason Miller, I believe it was a Mason Miller. quote about something like, you know, you can't control the timing or whatever. Because, and you can, I guess, technically, kind of, maybe. I mean, we don't know, right? Maybe, maybe he had planned for this. I don't want to scrutinize Mason Miller's sex life too closely, I suppose.

But, you know, birth control's not flawless. Perhaps there were precautions. Perhaps they were thinking, let's wait until it'll be a November due date. or I don't even know what the due dates were maybe, you know, you can't actually control exactly when the baby decides that it's time to be born. But you can control, I suppose, when the conditions are created for that to happen. Or you can exercise some control. And look, you know, again, like players have been having babies at inopportune times

as far as the baseball calendar is concerned from time immemorial. Because, you know, apparently, and please bleep this, but everyone will know what I mean. pitchers be like I guess that's our takeaway. No, I think the more relevant takeaway is yours which is these have been largely low scoring affairs. I think Baumann

crystallized this thought for me where you know, our concern about the brewers, like the concern about the brewers going into October was and sort of has often been well this isn't a team that hits home runs and we know that, you know, teams that are able

to sort of rely on the long ball for their run production tends to a little better in October just because of the difficulty of the pitching and stringing runs together, et cetera. And so they're sort of, you know, bloop-based singles, let's, you know, do some station-to-station stuff

might not translate. Well, it just hasn't really mattered, right? Well, for one thing, they've hit home runs at opportune times, but it's just been a low-scoring environment for everyone. And so with those games kept so close, scratching a couple across has really been sufficient. Do you think Mandy Machado thinks he's

cursed in some way because look we tend to try to issue cheap narratives on this podcast but the degree to which that garret mitchell catch at the wall was practically identical to adam jill's in wbc was well it is the spooky season and it was kind of spooky i just i don't know that i have ever seen a player like he just couldn't believe it and i couldn't believe it he couldn't believe it man he was just like, what the, um, honestly,

I thought he reacted quite soberly given, like the stakes of the moment and how frustrating it must have been. Like, you really, other than, you know, it be in a couple feet in either direction, really couldn't have done a better job there,

Manning. Like, he put a great swing on it. He hit it hard. It went exactly where it needed to go. Almost. Like, it was,

it was really something. Yeah, it was a good call. the broadcast to instantly comp it to the Adam Jones catch on Machado in the 2017 WBC because it really was just a carbon copy of that ball and that catch. It's funny that we still say carbon copy. I don't think I've ever made a carbon copy myself. I don't think even when we were younger, I'm not sure that carbon copying was still in vogue and yet that expression has still stuck with us. But it was almost an identical location.

Now, the catch looked a little bit less impressive because Mitchell was positioned better. And that was interesting. I saw a side-by-side cut of those two catches. And Sam pointed out on Blue Sky, I think outfield positioning has come a long way. That might be relevant to something else we discussed later on this episode. Outfielders are covering more ground, but also they are more efficient at positioning themselves so as not to have to cover as much ground. And you could see that Adam Jones had to range a lot more to his left to right center because he had been more straight up against Machado in 2017. Whereas Mitchell, as he said in the postgame conversation with Tom Verducci, he was shaded that way already.

Now, the situations weren't exactly the same because I think what Tatis was on first when Machado hit that ball. and when he hit it in 2017, the bases were empty. And so maybe there was outfielder's playing back, no doubles defense happening a little bit more with the game this week. I don't know. But also, teams are more adept at playing where they think and expect with some reason that the ball will go. And so maybe it's just Mitchell versus Jones. I don't know. And it's two particular plays.

So it's hard to extrapolate from that. But Mitchell was better positioned so that it was still a good catch. but he was basically camped there just in front of the wall, and he had to fend off the fans, which also will be relevant to the Volpe flyball discussion. But he did, and he was there, and it's a short wall, and so he just had to be there and reach up, whereas Jones was sort of still in motion when he made his catch. And so his catch looked more impressive than Mitchell's did, which I guess tells us something about the eye test and defense and how it can be a bit deceptive. It depends on how much ground you cover. And if you are just adept at covering ground or adept at positioning yourself, then maybe it'll look like a more routine play, even if it was in the exact same spot. But yeah, that was a heartbreaker, obviously, for the Padres.

And if that game had been tied up by that ball, then who knows what would have happened. But as it was, that score stood the rest of the way. And McGill came in and got the save yet again. And that was that. So it was a really hard fought, close series, one-run games up until the two-run game. And it just could have gone either way. And I felt for the Padres because they've been waiting just as long as the Brewers for a World Series. And they have had their chances and their competitive teams and their thwarted playoff runs in recent years.

And years where they seemed better than their record suggests. and their results were kind of confounding. And yet again, they got there, but they couldn't advance beyond the division series rounds. So even though they had won, I think, 19 out of 22 coming into that series, what with how they ended the season plus the wild card rounds, but they ran into a really strong Brewers team that was good enough to top them. Yeah, it's interesting, you know, I do wonder, and they ended up winning that game

where both Miller and, as it turned out, Adrian Mori-Hone were unavailable. Yeah. Sticky shoulder is just like a not- sticky, yeah. Well, and you feel, well, when Craig Slaman was asked after the game about Mori-Hone's availability,

not last night but the night before, he talked about how Mori-Hone was still experiencing a little bit of stickiness in his shoulder from his game one outing. And, you know, you got to feel for Mori-Hone, like this is the last impression he is leaving before he heads into free. agency and who knows what the state of his shoulder is.

So that's suboptimal for him in a number of ways. But it just doesn't sound good, you know, sticky shoulder. And I had joked on blue sky and now I feel bad about it. Like, did he also have a baby? Did he like find a baby on his way to the public? But no, he was just having a hard time bouncing back. I think, you know, as we have talked about sort of how do these teams put their guys in a position to weather sort of bizarre usage come October.

It's just a reminder that not everyone is able to sort of bounce back immediately, right? Like some guys are just out of it. And the look on his face, you know, he was warming at one point late in the game on Wednesday. But just, and, you know, I know that this way lies madness when you're trying to interpret body language. But you just look to the guy and I was like, he can't come in. Yeah. Look at his face right now. He is not available.

He might be technically available. This is your last guess. But if you bring this guy in, he's not going to be able to. to go and then of course it didn't really end up mattering because the game didn't go to extras or anything like that. But, you know, for all the good planning that can go into these things, for all are pleased to managers, please that are largely sort of answered and abided this time of year, like not everybody can just go all the time. So and, you know, that, I don't know that that ended up being the decisive thing in their season, but we thought that the bullpen would be sort of a way for

them to get around the fact that their rotation was pretty thin. And then Michael King is like, no, I'm just going to throw in relief forever. And their best arms were either not as effective as they were during the regular season or unavailable when the team needed the most. It's just like, it's a real shame. I don't, to be clear, I'm not blaming Moriohan for not being like, yeah, let me throw, even though I'm clearly compromised. Like, you know, putting a guy out there who hasn't recovered from a long outing, you know, a couple days prior isn't doing. the team any good either, but it's just an unfortunate sort of reality of their situation this year. Yeah, and after Miller got beaten when he tried to go two the other day, I think Stammon

had said that they might limit him to one. And that was before paternity leave and before he was unavailable entirely. But they had already modulated their approach to him. As we said, maybe you need to train for that. Maybe you can't just be thrown into the fire and expected to deliver every time out. And so, yeah, they seemed to think that he was losing a little something. I know that there were some pitch-tipping suggestions as well that perhaps the brewers had picked up on something. But I never know. Yeah. So Stamon seems that he was already ready to say, maybe we can't push him quite that much. And then he was unavailable. And Moroan was unavailable. And it was funny. I was reading Miller's account of how he found out because he was, you know, the baby was being born.

And so he was not watching the game. And so he shared how he found out about the outcome of that game. It seems that their midwife was a Padres fan. And so she told him how it ended. And he said, who got the save? And because he knew the final score and knew someone must have got the save. And so he said, Morihon got the save. And then the midwife said, no, Michael King did.

And he said, oh, my God. So, yeah, that was unexpected. But a pretty, congrats to Mason and Jordan, his wife and Lincoln, their new dancing baby. Yeah. And what, sorry, Lincoln. Yeah. What is Lincoln? I think Lincoln's a boy.

Boy? Okay. I'm just saying, like, I daren't assume with some of these names these days. Yes. Yes. Yes. And although we were lightly mocking the timing there, you know, we're fully supportive of players being there for that. I mean, you know, we're on record about that.

And it was nice to see that his teammates were very vocal about supporting that too. And everyone was. I mean, that has changed mercifully and I'm glad to see that now no one really bats an eye at, you know, potential elimination game or high-stakes series and you're an important player. No one begrudges. I mean, I'm sure some fans out there do, but everyone involved in that decision is fully supportive of players taking that time. We're just poking fun because, you know, baseball players have like a five-month off-season or more. And so in theory, you could say, well, maybe let's aim for that window. So it's a weird job where you know that you're going to have a significant portion of the year off.

But, look. Sometimes it's a, you know, it's a Friday night and you've had a nice dinner and you just throw away. One thing leads to another. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's tough to plan these things precisely. Yeah.

To be clear. I extended my full congratulations to the billers and they're bouncing baby Lincoln. And I think you're right that just even in the time I have been like professionally covering baseball, I feel like the dialogue around this stuff has just gotten a lot better. And sure, there are still fans who I'm sure give these guys guff on social media. But I think that it is understood that they are outside of the consensus when it comes to this stuff. like, you should be there for your person when they're having a baby and for yourself. Like, yeah, of course.

That's the thing that you should experience, you know. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, when I started covering baseball, there was no paternity leave. There was no official policy. That is, it was 15 years ago. It was 2011. I think Kobe Lewis was the first healthy player to take paternity leave in April of 2011.

So it's not that long ago. I mean, of course, there are many jobs. jobs and industries in this country where it's still not standard or it's very paltry paternity leave or maternity leave for that matter but but paternity leave especially so i mean which arguably is is not quite the same importance physically speaking everybody knows where we stand on this stuff yes okay anyway our listeners know yes i'm sure it's okay right right so it was fun though to see king step up there like it's one of my favorite things about the postseason because pitcher usage can be so rigid these days during the regular season and starters

are on just a set schedule and lots of rest and relievers as we've talked about teams are reluctant to push them to many days in a row and so everyone's always got to get a blow and be off and all that and maybe that's changing just sort of out of necessity and desperation as I talked about and wrote about and maybe that Marlin's usage of guys on their throw days is a manifestation of that, that there aren't actually enough quality innings and arms to go around given the restrictions on their usage these days. But when the calendar flips to October or long October and we see Michael King, a guy who has an injury history and extensive one, and he's coming out two days after going five

innings, granted he threw 72 pitches to get through those five innings, so that helped. But nonetheless, two days after he started, he's coming out and firing two scoreless. And he looked a little gassed, especially late in that outing. I mean, you could tell not his Velo necessarily, but his command was pretty spotty. So, I mean, I think he was impaired by that atypical usage. But nonetheless, gutted it out because he had to. You can't just throw Rodriguez. as for every inning in relief in every game.

And so when Moran and Miller are both unavailable, then what are you going to do? So I love that about the postseason that when your back's kind of against the wall and you just don't have any fresh arms remaining, sometimes very often. In fact, a starter has to step in. It's always an exciting moment.

Well, and it's funny how in games like this where we go in thinking, we know all the pieces of the bullpen puzzle, right? We know that for this game, Mason Miller is unavailable. because he's on paternity leave. But we assume that there's a full compliment. And you look at that group and you're like, well, of course Morihon's going to be the guy who comes in in the highest leverage moment.

And as the game is progressing, you start to think, oh, Stammon's messing this up. Like he's kind of blowing this. And then you realize that, no, you were actually operating with imperfect information. Yeah. And he's up your sleeve. Yeah. Exactly. Or a lack thereof, right?

And, you know, I had that experience. I'm like, why is Matsui still in this game? Right? Like, he went long for him. And I was just like, what's going on here? And then then you start to get the, you know, the Vurducci reports of like, I don't really noticed Adrian Mori Hong getting warm. And it's like, where is Adrian Morihan?

Like, and for a while, he just wasn't visible in the bullpen. So it was like, is he even at the ballpark? Did he like, what's happening? And then you can sort of. appreciate in retrospect. Oh, actually, Craig Stam navigated this pretty well considering the tools he had at his disposal. And you're right. Thankfully, King was able to rise to the occasion. He did look so gassed. And, you know, they pan to the bullpen as he is trying to get through the ninth. And there is Joe Musgrove warming. Fun, exciting. Robbie Ray warming. And I was like,

don't use Robbie Ray in relief in a postseason setting. I have lived that horror film before. It doesn't So, well, so, you know, King's able to have this sort of triumphant moment. He looks so happy and so tired. You know, like, we don't always get obviously exhausted as the facial expression for ballplayers because, you know, they're excited. They're furious. They're, you know, not engaged in a contact sport. And so sometimes I think the physical toll that playing a baseball game takes on them isn't

necessarily apparent just by looking at them. that was not true for Michael King. Michael King looked like he needed a chair to sit down in. But, you know, here we are talking about the triumph when I didn't know being a triumph ultimately. But Michael King, you know, good for you, dude. Yeah. And good for that Brewer's pen too, because even though the Padres pen got a lot of press, as we noted coming into the series, that Brewer's pen, no slouch.

I think Milwaukee relievers allowed three runs, one earned in 19 innings. So they more than match that Padres pen. frame for frame zero for zero, maybe not baby for baby. But that bullpencore is a force to be reckoned with in the NLCS. By the way, I always take time to praise Tom Ferducci. I think he is great at that job. I think he is really, really good as the sideline person, the midgame updates person, the post-game interview person.

Yeah, because that's a role I don't expect a ton from. I mean, I'm not denigrating everyone who does that job. It's just that, you know, the most you expect from that is maybe like a little slice of life, a little local color. You're getting some, you know, kind of anecdote about something somebody said. Sure. Everyone gets a few chuckles out of it and that's it. Or, you know, maybe there's a little insight from a manager or something, but it's usually pretty banal anodyne. Verducci regularly provides actual insights, I think, things that, because he has a good scouting eye.

I mean, I just, I really respect him as a writer. I think he is just maybe the best baseball writer. I mean, he's, he's just great. Like, he's a pleasure to read and just great reporting and lots of sources and just a really good eye for the game. Like, you know, he's pretty conversant with data and analytics and everything. And, yeah, I just, I can't say enough about how good he is in his game stories and recaps. And often he will do double duty and he'll be doing the TV broadcasts and then he'll just like turn around a pristine gamer for Sports Illustrated that has like, yeah, I mean, he's amazing. But the fact that he can do TV well too and not just that he sounds professional and polished and that he has nice hair and all the rest, but that like he actually adds value, I think.

Yeah. It makes me realize things about the game that I didn't. I think he's great in that role. And also I respect that he's just like. Not on social media. He's just like, you know. Yeah, it's really something. Anyway, Tom Perducci, he's great.

Yeah. So, yeah, so the starters, this comes up every postseason, really. And we just got an email from Patreon supporter Sterling, who says, I am a listener slash Patreon supporter and had a stat blast question. It feels like this postseason has featured more bullpen games than any other in my life. Seemingly, every game I watch ends up with the starter being pulled at four and two thirds, or is a game with an opener followed by a bulk reliever and then by the pen? My question is, is this the fewest number of innings covered by traditional starting pitchers in postseason history?

I'm excluding openers from this group as well as bulk relievers who would normally be starting if it were a regular season game, like Sean Burke in Game 2 of the ALDS, who covered a starter's worth of innings in this game. Would love to know if this is true or not. We also got another email about bullpen games that was just seemingly, noticing that they have been more rampant than ever, Jason, Patreon supporter said watching all these playoff bullpen games makes me wonder if the results on bullpens have changed in recent years. Seems like a stat blast idea. I feel like a bullpen game used to be a bit of a punt. You'd probably lose, but some games just be like that.

Have teams done better in those games recently, we could say in terms of team record? But I'm mostly curious about runs aloud. You have to define a bullpen game. But my gut thought is seven plus pitchers in nine innings with no pitcher going more than. than two, but I'd be open to other definitions. Thoughts, I kind of want teams to do poorly when they throw a bullpen game on principle, but they must be getting better results than I'm expecting. So it seems like we do a check-in on the state of the starting pitcher every postseason.

It's just it's always the starting pitcher is so over, oh, wait, the starting pitcher is so back. And no, it's over again. And it's so hard to do this sort of analysis now because pitching staffs are so amorphous in the playoffs now and how you define a starter or a reliever or a bullpen game. As for Jason's question about whether teams are doing better in bullpen games, I would say that until fairly recently, teams didn't really do bullpen games on purpose. A bullpen game, if you had a bullpen game, something went horribly wrong, generally. And I've written about this, and Sam has written about this.

The idea of bullpenning wouldn't come up from time to time. there was a period where there would be a fan grafts blog post. You could set your clock to it at the beginning of the postseason, often authored by Dave Cameron, that would say, the team, you know, in the wildcard game, they should skip the starter. They should just do a bullpen game. And it fell on just, you know, unreceptive ears year after year because teams wouldn't do it. And so I think if you compared results in bullpen games or games where a lot of pitchers were used now to in the past, yeah, for sure, the games now would be way better results for the pitching team because they planned to do that. And if you looked at previous games in an earlier era where that happened, then you'd get a very skewed sample because the only times that those would have occurred really was when the starter got hit hard or hurt, I guess, and exited early.

And then you had to bring it a bunch of bullpen guys. Whereas now, that's the plan from the start. So if you look at just percentage of innings pitched by the designated starting pitcher, we are with one or two, I guess, games left to go in the division series here, at 47.8% starting pitchers. And that would be the second lowest ever. 2021 was the Nadir for starting pitcher percentage of innings at 44.9. However, you almost have to do it manually, which I have not done, but you almost have to go through because, well, you can do it by looking at pitchers who were starters during the regular season, which is something I did last October because the Dodgers were basically just, why don't we make the whole pitching staff out of starters, but they were using them in relief.

And so I did go and classify, okay, these guys were starters and now they're working in relief. And if you did that, then it probably wouldn't seem quite so lopsided because of the Sean Birx of the world who really are starters but are not actually starting the game. So I am sort of sick of seeing TBD versus TBD often when looking a day or two ahead with postseason matchups or just trying to game out, okay, who's really getting the innings in this game? So yeah, I mean, it would be more than half of innings, I guess, if you actually included starters who are not starting because there was an opener. But it's still very bullpen-centric.

And often there is a real reason to do that, even if it is at times a frustrating, spectating experience. Yeah. You know, I think that, like, there are undoubtedly exceptions to this. But I think most teams, if you were to ask their front office, like, what is your ideal pitching staff construction, they would be like, well, I want, you know, in the postseason, I want like three starters I can rely on in a good bullpen and I'm going to deploy those starters. And then when they are ready to hand the ball off in the seventh, while our best arms in the bullpen will go. And

we have a couple of guys for length in case we get blown out. And there it is. But most of the team, like, the White Sox aren't doing what they're doing because they have like a good starter. They just left at home, right? They're doing it because their staff is very thin and they're trying to get their best arms in the games and the moments that make the most sense without punting any games. And, you know, part of it is they've been able to do that because like the Astros were bad. And the guardians, despite their, you know, onslaught of runs on Wednesday, tend to play more low-scoring games so you can kind of piece it together. But it's not like what anybody wants. It's stressful. It's hard to.

to plan. It's hard to plan for them, too, right? Like, they are operating from a very important information deficit, which is how many innings can Grant Taylor throw, right? And in multiple days in a row. How many can he go? They don't know. They are finding out in real time. And part of that is, is, I guess, a little bit fun, but mostly it's like, oh, buddy, what have you wrong today? You know? Yeah. Yeah. And such a nice way about him, by the way. Like, every time they talk to him on the broadcast. I'm just like, you seem like such a steady eddy kind of guy, you know? I feel like that's important. Yeah. I think it is too. It could probably be deceptive sometimes because a manager can project competence and calm and actually not be very good, at least at the tactical stuff. But

that is a big part of the job because, A, a large part of it is just being a public face of the organization interacting with the media. So if you comport yourself well, then that's a big part of the responsibilities, but also you're projecting that to your players and you want them to keep calm. And so if you're keeping your cool, then maybe that's kind of contagious. So, yeah, but it's working. Clearly, the run suppression is working because teams are hitting 207, 288, 334 is postseason. That's a 278 Wobah. It's a 75 WRC plus, which I guess is based on the regular season average. So that's the lowest weighted on base average since 1972 in a postseason. And that was the year before the DH was instituted in the AL. So it's the lowest postseason Woba of the

DH era so far, obviously, that could change. And by WRC Plus, it is not quite as extreme because offense is not at its highest point. Right. Now just generally. of course. Right, yeah. Yeah, there have been, you know, 2012 also had a 75 WRC plus. 2016 had a 74 WRC plus. So there have been a few years recently

where it was in the same range. But yeah, scoring runs have been hard to come by. Joshian called this coming in, just looking at the mix of teams and how weak some of these teams were offensively and how some of the best hitters

weren't on playoff teams. And as Joe noted, low-scoring games generally means not major margins of victory. Close games. And close games means a lot of one-run games. And we've seen a bunch of those. And one-run games means a lot of randomness or unpredictability. And things can go either way.

And so we've seen some of that too. So I like a little scoring, obviously. I think most fans do. But I do think that, yeah, the virtue of having these very low-scoring and close games is that one play can potentially decide things, and that makes that interesting and makes those plays stand out in our minds. And that Brewer's Padre series was,

well, was an interesting mix of great defense and really lousy defense because the brewers were uncharacteristically error-prone. And they made some spectacular plays. Game four. Game four, they were. Yeah, game four, I guess there was the one, Cooper Pratt, maybe booted one.

But, yeah, it was. We got to talk about Cooper Bratt's defense. Yeah, I mean, she's had some... I'm being negatively polarized against Cooper Pratt. He's had some rough plays. He's also had some great plays. I know. And the Brewers have stuck a couple of young guys out there who I think are, you know,

reputed to be good defensively, but it's a tough spot. So, yeah, obviously, we'll talk about the Yankees defense, but the Brewers was not solid either. And they managed to win anyway. Yeah. But, yeah, it was like real highs and lows. And obviously there were some. spectacular Jackson Merrill catches.

And then there was Garrett Mitchell on the Brewer's side and everything, but also the lows were quite low. So it's been spotty. And those aren't the only two teams that have had defensive lapses. But generally, you think of the defense being better in October. And I'm not sure on the whole it has been. But my only regret about that Brewer's Padre series really is that it didn't go five because it felt like, you know, if we weren't going to get a Brewers Padres best of seven, then

at least we could get the full five and the best of five. And we didn't quite. But it felt like we packed five games worth of drama into four. So I'm sated. And I'm sorry for San Diego that they came up short. But these were just two really good teams that I would have liked to see advance. And only one of them could. Yeah.

Nothing about the way that the Dodgers, Brave series transpired, changed my opinion that I wish that Milwaukee and San Diego had been the LCS. Not let the Dodgers play bad baseball, but like that talk about offenses that aren't really clicking the way that you want them to. It's just sort of a, this isn't in its current form, the most exciting vintage of Dodgers baseball that we've had in recent years and we have a lot to compare it to. So there is that, you know? Yes. So if we do stick with that other NL series that's been decided, then there's probably less to say about it. But The Braves bats were shut down pretty well by Los Angeles. And that was not unanticipatable just because the Braves had trouble against left-handed pitching this year.

The Dodgers have a lot of good left-handed pitching, and the Braves handled some of it okay. And then some of it, they looked pretty hapless against. And it wasn't just the lefties, obviously. It's just, I mean, Yamamoto is just establishing a reputation as a great postseason pitcher. I mean, he's just been a great pitcher period, but he's been truly spectacular in the postseason. So he delivered a big boy start, as everyone was expecting. And the Chris Sale versus Yamamoto duel, it was just not really peak Chris Sale. I mean, he was okay, but he was easily outduled by Yoshinubu Yamamoto.

And I'm looking forward to seeing more of Yamamoto. I guess one pitching storyline coming out of. of that series. And, you know, like Glass Now was pretty good, but also kind of wild. He was fine. Yeah. Braves couldn't capitalize on that. There was a lot of, I mean, it's often the case, but often it's teams coming up empty with their opportunities.

It's partly that they don't manufacture enough opportunities, but also the Braves went one for 23 with runners in scoring position in that series, which as Optostats noted was the second lowest batting average with. running in scoring position in a postseason series in MLB history, minimum 20 at bats with runners in scoring position behind only the Dodgers in the 1966 World Series when they went 0 for 22. So if you're not doing the best job of getting guys on base to begin with and then you're not really cashing in any of those opportunities, then you're going to have a hard time winning. And that's just one of those things that can happen in a few games. and it's frustrating. I don't know if it means anything beyond the fact that you're going home because you didn't score those runs.

So now I guess the question to watch is Dave Roberts' usage of Edwin Diaz because Diaz seems to be back in the circle of trust. And that's dangerous. It feels like it's maybe leading up to a disaster. Maybe not because Diaz has been effective of late. he hasn't looked dominant in these postseason appearances. He's gotten the results he wanted, but got in a little trouble or didn't get the whiffs we're accustomed to when he's going well. And he had a string of pretty good appearances at the tail end of the season.

And that just kind of got him a little bit back in Dave's Good Graces. And so now he seems to be back to being the closer more or less again. And I mean, if he really has, if the mechanical tweak that he made has, has changed him back into the Edwin Diaz the Dodgers thought they were signing. Well, that's huge for them. But if he's like a sleeper agent, you know, if he's like a ticking time bomb here and if he's the new Blake Trinan

and Dave's like seeing the pitcher he used to be and he's not actually that guy anymore, that could come back to bite the Dodgers at some point in the next series or two. Look, I want to be clear. Well, first I want to be clear that I know that Blake Trinin pitched better this year than he did last year. But one of Dave Roberts' little quirks as a postseason manager is that he does seem to develop like an emotional support reliever. And he goes to that guy even when he shouldn't.

We joked or I joked because this is a little bit of an off color joke so I won't tag you with it. But I joked last offseason that the Dodgers should just lie to Dave and tell him that Blake Trinon like was dead or missing an arm. you know, like unavailable in an existential sense. Because it might be the only way in which he is dissuaded from relying on Trinnan. Now, I think that Diaz looks, well, Diaz doesn't look like fully operational Edwin Diaz. He has been more effective in his postseason inning so far than Blake Trinnan was at the peak of him being Dave Roberts' emotional support reliever. So I'll give Dave credit for that. But he does not look.

He looks like a guy who is like cruising toward a blowup, potentially at an opportune moment. So I will be very interested to see how they decide to utilize him going forward and how careful they are with him. But yeah, like it seems like you are good for a little bit. And that's enough for Dave. I'm sure that he is looking at all sorts of underlying data that suggests that Diaz is up for it.

But watching him, Like, I would feel very nervous were I a Dodger fan about him coming in in a big moment because it just looks a little all over the place. And Shohei was more or less a non-factor in the series. He had about a 400 OPS. He wasn't doing a whole lot offensively. So the concerns linger there about him and his health. And he acknowledged even when he came back from his little IL break, that he would just be managing his various ailments.

I mean, it certainly sounds as if maybe the time off did him good, but it didn't heal him. So he needs an off-season and wouldn't be surprised if he needs some sort of procedure during that off-season. We will learn that, I'm sure. Clean up. Yes, perhaps. Maybe a debreedment, because it turns out

that it is actually pronounced as a couple of people informed us. we were saying debridement, it's debriefment. Who knew? Well, listener Sarah, listener Mike knew. A lot of people. Probably other people knew also. But that's how you say that. Maybe he'll need one of those.

I don't know. As far as we know, there's nothing wrong with his shoulder, I guess, maybe. But yeah, he's got a couple parts of the body that are barking. So I don't know. Like, they'll keep running him out there. They dropped him down in the lineup, which I think is a reflection of the fact that they must No, he is not 100%. So how much are you going to get out of him is a question, I think.

Other things. So Teoscar Hernandez, I feel bad picking on him because he actually hurt himself on one of those plays in the outfield. But he hurts the Dodgers when he's out there too. And there were a couple costly misjudgments and non-plays by him. And that's not new, obviously. And if he's hitting, you put up with it. But it's a weakness for sure. And he routinely just does not look particularly well suited for a defensive position.

So, I mean, I think he was maybe a little less bad. Maybe, well, I don't know, because they switched him from right to left. He's kind of pinged back and forth in recent years. and I figured maybe he'd be a little bit better in left than he had been in right. And maybe he was, I guess, but not by much. He went from negative 9 to negative 6 in outs above average, going from right last year to left this year. So he's a bit of a liability out there regardless whenever he's out in the pasture.

And also, I continued to just be blown away by. Alex Vescia's pants and how tight they are. They are shockingly tight. Have they gotten tighter or am I imagining that? Maybe his legs got bigger. I mean, I can see his quads. Like I can see the definition and the separation in his quads. That wasn't what I thought you were going to say.

Well, no. I could like identify individual muscles through the pants. That's how tight they are. And they're also short. So they're short and tight. They look like leggings of some sort. Yeah. But they're presumably not quite as flexible as leggings.

I would imagine the baseball pants are not quite as, they don't have quite as much give. And this is nothing new. And if we put Vesia versus Bueller or whoever else up there, I don't know that Vessia's pants are. Yeah, Robbie Ray. I don't know if his are notably tighter, but. It stood out to me, and I'm used to... They're notably tight, though. They are really.

They're really something. They're notably, notably tight. Look, I don't know what it is doing to these men's gut biome, you know. They're playing baseball and spanks for all intents and purposes. I would say, I'd be worried about the... You squish it like that. Yeah, I know. It seems like it's bad.

We need the new, we need a new wave of like Gen Zeres because they'll be like, can I wear you know like very baggy pants i want a wide leg yeah sport pant and they'll be told no because it's hard to play baseball and you know a wide leg pant but yeah it's tight tight tight they are tight tight tight tight pants and you know maybe it provides important support to all of the nether regions and that is but the relief that they must feel at the end of the game when they they're able to un, and they're wearing belts, you know, that remains the funniest part of baseball uniforms, right? Like, they're like real belts, you know?

They, like, have a buckle, like, some of these belts are, like, thick, look, and then they got these tight pants. And I'm like, you know, part of the virtue of the belt is that it keeps your pants up, you know, it keeps your pants up and your jersey tucked in. So you don't, you don't need such tight, tight tight tight pants. Tight tight pants. And, you know, anyway. So there's a lot of tight-panted men, and it is distracting.

Now, sometimes I understand it because when you get like the droopy drawer boys, and there are some droopy drawer boys littered throughout the postseason rosters, they, I have noticed, are the guys where I more regularly say to myself, did he get a little dumpy in the off-season? So maybe the motivation behind the tight pants is to be like, I'm keeping it tight. Yeah, show off the conditioning. Right. Maybe it's about keeping it tight. I'm sure plenty of spectators are not complaining about pant tightness.

That's not the universal concern when it comes to the pants. Yeah, if anything, probably people are saying more, tighter. Right. Maybe this is the way that we bring in a new audience. I mean, baseball butts are famous, right? So why not show them off to their best advantage, I suppose. To visualize each ball, you know? Yeah.

Anyway, should we talk about the dopey fans who go to the games in the Bronx? Should we transition away from tight pants to guys who's... Yeah. I'll also cop to one more mispronunciation of a medical term because not only is it debreedment and not debridement, but also the other term I reference, I believe it's a chromio clavicular. And I'm pretty sure I said it a different way. So this is somewhat esoteric, but apologies to the people with medical knowledge in the audience who were cringing as we said these things. I want to say, though, and I will admit my own ignorance there and also allow that I said it wrong because I clearly did. Debreedment doesn't sound any better, you know?

No. Like it doesn't change the visceral reaction to that procedure that I have. Yeah. It doesn't change it. No, not at all. And also, while we're shouting out postseason performers for the Dodgers, a wild playoff KK appeared as well. And, I mean, playoff KK is just, you know, every time you think, like,

well, he has been fantastic in October, but that doesn't mean he will continue to be. He just defies all forecasts of regression. And it's just, it's always fun to see. I mean, I kind of like that the Dodgers you think of as this very, data-centric progressive analytical organization. They will carry Kiki, even if he's seemingly not contributing a ton during the regular season, because they do appear convinced that once the calendar flips over, he will be a different guy.

And he has been historically, and we've statelessed that before. I know I did it probably last off-season comparing his regular season and post-season stats. And he absolutely is one of the best post-season hitters of all time relative to his regular season performance, which is generally not that impressive. I saw the opt-statt stat that Kiki Hernandez is the only player in MLB history to have at least 10% of his career homers, regular and postseason combined, come in the postseason with a minimum of 100 total homers. And so, yeah, I guess, so you have to compare his home run production

to his playing time in each of those segments. So 11.3% of his homers have come in October. 7.3% of his plate appearances have come in October. So obviously he has played in the postseason a lot and has excelled in it for multiple teams. He's had more than 300 plate appearances in the postseason. But still, disproportionate production of home runs in October. And even more so when you count for the fact that it's harder to hit homers in October because it's colder and because the pitchers are better. So if anything, you would think that his home run rate would be lower.

And no, it's not. He's just, he's really good. And Neil Payne did a piece on his newsletter about Yamamoto mostly. And Neil has sort of a homebrew postseason war that he has calculated himself and found that Yamamoto has the highest percentage of any pitcher of his career MLB war coming in the postseason. And of course, that is partly because he has played exclusively for the Dodgers postseason teams in his MLB career. And so he's getting lots of playoff reps, obviously. But he's had a part of that in that because he has helped extend their postseason runs. So according to Neal's calculation, he has produced, or I guess he did it by windshares,

but 12.9% of his playoff value has been in the postseason. and that's the most of anyone, per his calculations. Mariano Rivera is second at 10.7%. And he also noted in passing that if you do the same exercise with batters rather than pitchers, minimum of 150 plate appearances, Kike Hernandez is number one all time with 10.5% of his total combined value coming in the postseason. So Yamamoto, you expect to be great because he is great at all times of year. Kiki, it's a little more out of character.

but nonetheless, it seems to be quite consistent. And I'm a little bit of a believer in it, even as something of a skeptic when it comes to these things. And I think he's talked about how he's just able to focus better when you have these high stakes at bats and situations. And I think he's even talked about how he has ADHD and that it actually helps him focus somewhat maybe in the post. season. And so it's really interesting. I guess I've just seen it for so long now and with

multiple teams that I almost can't help but buy it to an extent. So we'll see if that continues. But yeah, maybe the Yankees could have used playoff Kike Hernandez or anyone who could have hit a bit better in that race series because they went down fairly quietly, somewhat ignominiously, especially in game two. Yankees fans are out in force calling for Aaron Boone's job and head, which is an October tradition. I don't know if they are any more likely to get their way this year than they have been in any of the previous years, but it was not an impressive showing by the Yankees. It was a pretty impressive showing by the race.

And the race made quick work of them. So takeaways from this series. Okay. Well, let's get the fan interference part out of the way first. And then we can talk about the substantive baseball. You guys got to stop up there. What are you doing? What are you doing?

What are you doing? And I understand that trying to catch a postseason home run is very exciting. But if your hands are extended to the point that you can see the warning track, like, buddy, what are you doing? I thought that the empire should have very good job with that. Yes, I thought so too. I thought that was all very clearly and decisively executed. I thought their conclusions were correct. But you can't be reaching in.

like that. And I don't think that because once we saw the replays, it was clear that it both wouldn't have been a home run and Mesa wouldn't have caught it. Candidly, like the fan interference didn't super change a lot, maybe, right? Because if we assume that he wouldn't have caught it, but he would have gotten the ball back to the infields, like you probably end up with that exact same game state, right? Volpe's on second.

I wasn't 100% convinced. that he wouldn't have caught it, but I think... I don't think he would have caught it. I think he probably would have caught it. I thought they probably put the runners where they should have put them in that. Yeah. Yeah, it made sense. You have the runner going because there are two outs.

Like, I, perfect, great. But you jabonies got to, got to stop. You got to stop doing this, you know? And like, you do it a lot relative to other clubs. It feels like they're reaching in all the time. And this is not a. place where Yankees fan exceptionalism should rear its head, you know? I guess there are some places where you're less able to do it because either the seats are

recessed from the wall or the fences deeper or whatever you don't have as many opportunities to do it. But yeah, I mean, on some level, I guess it's instinctual. And, you know, you should know, okay, I'm sitting here. If this happens, I should not interfere. I'm not in the game. I'm a fan. I'm a spectator. I should not be a participant, but I get why it's probably tough to restrain that impulse in the moment or, you know, you're not practiced in catching a ball that's coming to you in that situation. And so maybe you don't realize that you're reaching over or something. Or maybe you think that you're trying to help your team. And I guess there are times where someone has helped a team, even in a Yankees playoff game, in a year ending in six, let's say. And obviously, a lot of people,

I instantly thought of Jeffrey Mayer Meyer, Mayor and the Derek Jeter Tony Tarasco play. And I felt attacked by Bowman because. Yeah, but then a lot of people had to tell Baumann that they had, in fact, scheduled their colonoscopy. So really isn't he the loser here. If people missed his post, he said, if you're old enough to compare this play to the Jeffrey Mayer play, you should schedule a colonoscopy. And of course, I'm way ahead of him. I've been scheduling my colonoscopies for years and telling everyone in earshot about it, much to their dismay.

So, yes, you should. I co-sign that, but also he's saying that if you remember a play that happened 30 years ago, you might be old enough to be recommended to do that as a matter, of course. But, yes, I thought of that instantly. And, of course, the contrast is, well, back then, they didn't have replay review. And so there was nothing they could do about it. Really, I mean, the umpires could conference and everything, but you couldn't watch the video.

and see. And so, yeah, in the moment, just in real time watching it, I figured there was probably interference because it just didn't look like it was going to be out necessarily. And then suddenly it was. And Mesa looked a little flabbergasted by what had happened. And so I figured they took their time showing the review. But I thought once they finally did, it's like, yeah, okay, that's kind of what I thought. But this is 2026, not 1996. And so this call did not go the Yankees way. And maybe that ends up doing them in in this game. It's 4-3 instead of 4-4, and that ends up being the final score. So, yes, I will echo what you said.

Don't do that. But I guess it is good, not good for the Yankees or their fans, but good for baseball that a play like that can be overturned. That that call can be corrected. We got a message from Patreon supporter Eric, who said, the following occurred to me when watching the fan in the Yankees' race game, who thought or acted as though he had caught a home run ball only for the reason. replay reviewers to declare fan interference. In that circumstance, does the interferer still get to keep the ball, or is it confiscated from him by security because of his wrongdoing?

In the law, we have a doctrine, and I have not taken Latin in low these many years. So apologies for my mispronunciations here. If anyone even knows how Latin was really pronounced. X. Torpi causa non-orritur actio, which sometimes forbids those who have themselves acted wrongly from invoking the law in their favor. This is more commonly known as the doctrine of unclean hands. Confiscating a ball from a fan interferer would be an especially apt use of that maxim. And yes, I believe the ball was confiscated from this fan.

The fan was ejected, and there was video of the fan being escorted out of the stadium, and the fan did not have a ball in his hand, so unless he had put it somewhere on his person, I assume it was taken from him, much as he was taken from that game. And that is only appropriate. You should not get to keep your trophy when you claim it unjustly. So, yeah, rest assured, I don't think he will be putting that ball on eBay or anything. But it would have been a nice moment for Anthony Volpe. I know.

And it still was, but it would have been a better moment. It would have helped him get back in the fans' good graces, I guess, if that ball had gone out, especially if the Yankees had gone on to win. Yeah, it's just, you know, again, I understand that we are all the main. characters in our story, right? And we might be the main, a main character in a number of other people's stories. But you as a fan are never the main character in a playoff game, or you shouldn't be, right? You should be trying to avoid that at all times. I saw someone post on Blue Sky. If the Yankees lose, which, then every fan should be banned from calling in to WFAN and only Anthony

Volpe should be allowed to call in and complain about the fans. all off season that should be the rule and I agree you know this poor guy has been through so much and you're right this was like a potentially convenient moment of redemption and he you know he did play well in that moment but you could just tell him being like I can't catch a freaking break here at least they fielded the ball mostly cleanly that game they did yeah they looked pretty sharp in that game yeah going on you know yeah so yeah game two was ugly. Just the three first inning errors,

which weren't all that costly. It was just one run, right? But then four errors overall and could have been five. It's in the eye of the beholder, the official score. And that conjured memories of 2024 World Series Game five when they spectacularly

imploded against the Dodgers. So yeah, they looked a lot sharper in game three. Not that it did them any good ultimately. But this, in addition, to the Austin Wells base running error in game one. This just reinforced the perception that the Yankees struggle when it comes to the fundamentals. And I think there's some truth to that.

And I would not absolve Aaron Boone or anyone entirely of the blame for that because if it is a pattern, if it is repeated, well, the players are responsible for their play. but if a pattern of poor play is repeated and they're not held accountable or they're not improved, then that is ultimately going to be on the people who employ and instruct the players. Now, I think Aaron Boone does a lot of things well as a manager and his track record overall, at least by most organization standards, quite successful in his nine years with the Yankees. Sure. They have a 583 overall regular season winning percentage. They have made the playoffs in eight of those nine years. They won a pennant a couple years ago. But it's the Yankees.

They expect more. They are always in the postseason. You start from a high enough baseline that just making it is not really enough to keep your job in perpetuity. Or it wouldn't be maybe for most managers, I think, because you're sort of expected. And things can go wrong. there's something to be said for a manager who just keeps a team from having an unexpected bad year or does what he can to just have a steady hand at the tiller and get them to October as intended. But when you have a lot of early exits or even late exits that are as ugly as 2024 was ultimately, then I think it's fair to question. Now, I think you might, if you got your way and some other manager came in, you might find that that was not a,

panacea. Right. And that either the rot goes deeper or it's just, well, it's a particular collection of players or this is how a lot of teams play these days and they don't emphasize the fundamentals as much. And maybe from a cost-benefit standpoint, there's even some sense to that if you're focusing your training time on things that have more of an impact. If you're giving the little things short-shift in favor of the big things, maybe that makes sense. Ideally, you'd do all the things. Well, though. And so is that out of the realm of possibility? And I think what frustrate Yankees fans is that it seems like there's not enough urgency. And even if Aaron Boone says, and he did, that this is unacceptable and we have to be better and we have to play cleaner and all the rest of it. If nothing really changes, if he's not just benching guys left and right, as you sometimes see Pat Murphy do. And sometimes I feel like Pat Murphy takes that a little too far and it's almost eye-washy. It's like there was a time late in the season when he benched William Contreras or, you know, pulled him because he hadn't run that hard, I think, on a ground ball or something, which is something he does fairly regularly with other players.

And I was just thinking, like, this is your catcher. Like, not much is at stake for you here. You're a 103 win team. This guy's an iron man. He's durable. Like, he's in there most games. And do you really have to have everyone running full tilt on every point? play when your postseason spot is assured and you want to make a deep run and maybe this guy just

needs a little rest and you want to keep him healthy. But maybe there's something to be said just for the theater of it and just making a show of this is not acceptable for anyone. And if you hold one guy to that standard, then everyone feels like they have to be held to that standard and you're not sort of doing it, you know, just to young guys or something. So maybe to show that there's no favoritism, it makes some sense. But on the whole, I don't. mind a guy, you know, taking it a little easy on a ground ball every now and then just to stay healthy and in there. But, but yeah, maybe it's gone too far with the Yankees. And certainly after nine years of Aaron Boone, the Yankees would be well within their rights, I think,

to say, okay, time for a change, time for a different voice. We haven't quite gotten the result that we wanted, even if we still think Aaron Boone is a decent manager. A lot of managers who are as good or better have gotten their walking papers just because that's what happens to managers when you need to do something to either appease the fans or broadcast some signal that, hey, we have to be better. Yeah. I think the notion that it is entirely Boone's doing, which seems to be a popular fan theory, is like just obviously ridiculous.

But I don't say that to absolve him from responsibility either, right? Like he's clearly, there's something going on there. This is such a persistent problem. Now, I think a lot of it is just like, this is the roster they put together, right? And not all of the guys who they have on that roster are plus fielders or like consistently plus fielders, right? They have guys who flash and are really good and then just make like boneheaded decisions. I don't know what was going on with jazz. Yeah.

Game like, jazz. Lock in, buddy. Like, come on. That was ill advised. And even after the game, he said he didn't regret trying to make that throw. He just wished he had made a better throw. But it's tough because Boone started Ryan McMahon in game two for his glove, for his defense. And then his defense was lousy.

Lousy. Damned if you do, damned if you don't, because if he had put Volpe in there in that game and Volpe had had defensive miscus. Everyone would have gotten on Boone. Instead, he keeps McMahon in there. And it's not great if you're in there for your glove, which McMahon is not in there for his bat at this point. If you're in there for your glove and you're a glove,

lets the team down, then, well, that's how you end up not starting the next game, I guess. Right. Yeah, but Boone at least tried to prioritize defense with that decision and even that backfired. And this is where it's like, it's not, it's clearly not entirely Boone, right? Because it's not like he is consistently making like bad process decisions. He will often make the right process decision and then be undone by just like poor decision making from his players or miscues, whatever. Like decision making implies there's like an intentionality to it and sometimes there is. But sometimes they just make a mistake.

They flub the ball, you know. So there's that part of it. And that like extends to the fact that it sometimes extends to the base running. And I don't want to make too much of the Austin Wells thing. But like it's just like what is the, what is this everyone's understanding of what they're trying to do here? And it does stand in sharp contrast to Pat Merck. There are times where you're like, oh yeah, Pat Murphy, you were like really a college coach. there are times where his

like you will be punished for what I perceive to be you know inexcusable miscues has a very like hey buddy you're not at ASU anymore kind of a thing which is funny because he hasn't been an as soon for a minute but there are times with Pat where I'm like they are pros

we should just remember that but in general it seems to be a group that like coheres when it needs to and is loose like well first of all I was just like very impressed with Garrett Mitchell in that post game he did with Virucci but I was like yeah you seem like you've threaded the needle here in a way that is like not making guys tight is allowing them to play loose but still has accountability built into the thing and is like trying to have guys think about

the team more than just themselves. And I do wonder like how much of the situation in the Yankee circumstance is just like institutional memory for lack of a better way of putting it. Like how much of this is just like you are a Yankee, you will be exceptional And how much does that lead to sort of like an atomized view of play? I don't know. That's probably putting too much on, like, them having a four-air game. And like, the spirit of George has made them all feel they should be stars who can carry the team on their own. And so they make flashy decisions when they shouldn't.

I don't know. But it's going to be a long offseason of discourse for that group. And it will be, you know, they are going to have departments. purchase in free agency. And I think that they will find themselves facing largely the same set of problems that they did last off season and how they decide to address them will be interesting to see. Now, I say that and they have gotten like in a way that makes maybe some things a little easier to bear better production from some of their young guys than they maybe have in other years. Now, what version of Spencer Jones will we get with?

people having time to respond to him and people are like, what, you thought he'd be, he had a 106 WRC plus and I thought he would be worse than that. You know, what formed is George Lombard Jr. round into. He looked really good in the postseason, some of the fielding aside, but at the plate he looked good, you know, but you look at it and you're like, oh, you had a 93 WRC plus. Okay. What is it going to look like when you've had time? And this is another place where I wonder what effect the lockout will have on rosters because

it's like that year two. adjustment is really important for a lot of young players, like having a normal offseason and then a normal camp to make adjustments and lock in on the notion of being a starter every day. Like, I think that's an important developmental stretch for a lot of guys and it's going to be disrupted for some of their most important young players. So it'll just be, I don't know. Also, like, Spencer Jones, you couldn't have wrapped that one home run. Like, you couldn't wear your ups, buddy.

Yeah. It was close, but yeah. But then to your earlier point on the flip side, the race just played a really good series, man. Like they played a good series. They got contributions from guys you were expecting, but also we're getting to enjoy the Victor Mesa Jr. Like coming out party. And it's just, you know, that's a solid club. And we thought that the Yankees pitching might be too overpowering for them.

And that didn't prove to be true. So I would favor the raise against whichever of the white. or Guardians advances. Yeah. Certainly the White Sox just because, like, the pitching, I think the pitching is going to be a problem for them. That's not like a novel observation, but we were allowed to sort of forget the thin nature of the staff against Houston because they were just dominant in that series. But, yeah, like, this most recent game three was like, oh, yeah, this can fall apart for you. This can go badly.

and eventually the guardians will figure out how to score. And they did. Yep. And much was made of the Ray's small ball approach versus the Yankees more long ball reliant approach. And he just bopped. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I think the race had a better offense in the regular season too. Yes. And yes, they were different stylistically. Also, they were just on the whole more productive. It's not that you can't have a good offense in the style of the Yankees offense. It's just that there's. without Aaron Judge was not very good.

It was pretty lackluster, and everyone expected that coming in. It's not like the race raked in this series, by the way. I mean, they hit 208, 255, 344. That's a 599 OPS. It's just that the Yankees hit 130, 192, 239. That's a 431 OPS, which, as Katie Sharp noted, was, those were all lows for the Yankees in franchise history in a multi-game postseason series. Now, I don't think we should forget the fact that they destroyed the Red Sox also along the way.

And so if you expand to their five postseason games instead of their last three, then they actually played pretty much as you would have expected or better. The Yankees during the regular season scored 4.59 runs per game. In the postseason, all five games, they scored 4.60, so dead on. Yeah. During the regular season, they allowed 3.73 runs per game. in the postseason, they allowed 2.4. So if anything, they played the way that they had played en route. It's just that, well, they should have distributed those runs a bit better.

If they could have spread out some of the runs for the Red Sox series, sprinkled them into the Rays series, then they might have gotten better outcomes. But you can't quite do that. But I don't think we should ignore that the overall postseason performance wasn't too terrible. If you zoom out a little bit, it's just, well, ultimately they had to win some against the race, too, and they did not. But, you know, they did make a change.

They had a new coach this year, Dan Fiorito, who had been in their minor league organization, but was a first year first base slash infield slash base running coach at the major league level. So they did bring someone in to try to address that deficiency. And actually, they were not a bad defensive or base running team during the regular season. They weren't great, but they were decent at both. it wasn't an obvious weakness. And also, I thought the fact that they, now the raise were the better team over the course of the season, or at least they won the division and they also won the division series,

going by some of the underlying numbers, you could make the case that the Yankees were actually a stronger team. And I don't think Boone did a bad job on the whole because the Yankees, if not for game 162 being rained out, they might have ended up with the same records that they had had in the preceding two seasons. They went 94 and 68, 94 and 68, 93 and 68. And to do that mostly without Aaron Judge, I mean, that was not bad, I think. It's just that those three games did not go great, and the raise out played them, and they beat themselves to a certain extent.

And so if not for all the baggage and the history and now the by Yankee standards extended title drought, people would probably not make that much of this loss. But there is all of that. So we'll see whether Ryan Cashman takes action or whether he continues to maintain his composure and refuse the calls for firings, some of which are for his own firing, of course. But, you know, will he stay the course? Because clearly he likes working with Boone and sees Boone as a valuable partner or as many Yankees Feds charge that he thinks Boone will just follow his orders or whatever or implement the front office's designs. And I'm sure that's true to some extent, though Boone has his own mind as well. It's funny because people will both blame Boone for everything, but also suggest that Boone is just a puppet of the front office, which I guess you can have it both ways if you're also blaming the front office, which generally the people who are blaming Boone are doing also. So, yeah, it's kind of consistent on that point.

Anyway, I did want to note just a couple other things. One is that Justin Verlander popped up on the FS1 postgame show, as if they did not have enough combined career war on that panel with Kevin Burckhard. They've already got Arod, David Ortiz, and Derek Jeter on there. And then just like, let's add Justin Verlander. And of course, they have Dantra Willis doing pitching segments. He's just not at that table, too. But they crammed Verlander in there. And it was kind of funny because when Verlander was doing postgame interviews and he was talking to Manny Machado.

and Machado was like, didn't you just retire? What are you doing here? It's like he didn't have much of a break. Ferlender was good, by the way. I thought he seemed polished and practiced and would have a future doing studio stuff if he wants to. But it's just that Fox strategy, which I guess has been a strategy for a while for them in broadcast booths across sports. But let's just collect legends. It's interesting because that doesn't always correlate to being a good TV presence.

I think Jeter has got. a bit better since his early days and maybe Arod has gotten a bit worse since his early days as a broadcaster. But there's some chemistry. There's a kind of fun dynamic among those guys. Not maybe as much as like the Frank Thomas era kind of cutting it up on postgame shows. But this has not been bad. But boy, just like let's go get all the absolute legends and Hall of Famers and would be Hall of Famers, if not for steroid suspensions, et cetera. So that's their strategy. Don't get the best broadcaster, but get the best player and hope that they're also a pretty good broadcaster.

I also saw that Pedro Martinez on Twitter, he was giving his keys to the game before that game. And he said, about the stats, the main one that really worries me is the Yankees. What? Is that a stat? It's not a stat, although a lot of people are like, yeah, you're right. That does worry me that the Yankees are playing. in this postseason game about the stats. The main one that really worries me is the Yankees.

The Yankees and the Reyes, because the Reyes, they just execute their game as consistent as anybody wants to think about. I don't want to mock the man for using English as his second language, but I did quite enjoy about the stats. The main one that really worries me is the Yankees. That's not exactly a stat. It's the universal concern, as it were. Yeah, but maybe he was right to be worried. They did indeed lose. And, of course, he was concerned about the Yankees when.

He called them his daddy as well. But that was years ago. All right. So is that it for our playoff talk today? I guess, you know, we will talk more about the championship series next time. Yes. We do know that, I guess, regardless of how White Sox Guardians goes, there are going to be three somewhat sympathetic teams and then the Dodgers. Sure.

I mean, sorry Dodgers fans. Everyone's against you, which that comes with the territory of being. a dynastic team. Yeah. And, you know, putting aside anything about salaries and payrolls and Mark Walter and all the rest, it's when you are a postseason staple and you win a whole lot, people are sick of you. And that's the part that you play. Yeah, exactly. And it's not even that these individual Dodgers are all that unlikable for the most part or not fun to watch or whatever.

It's just they've had their day. They've had many days. And meanwhile, you have the Rays who've never won one, the Brewers who. You've never won one. Either the Guardians who haven't won one since 1948 or the White Sox who won one this century, but it got instantly overshadowed and just over the sweep of their whole history, they're more than due. Plus, they have the compelling story of they were terrible two years ago.

And somehow they have turned it around and they have a bunch of fun guys doing excellent clubhouse interviews and stuff. So you could bandwagon pretty much any one of those teams. And, I mean, there are tons of reasons to root for them and support them. And then there are the Dodgers playing the role of the heel and the villain. And we'll see how that goes. The Brewers get another crack at them. Yeah.

I don't want to overstate the case, right? And I think that they, they being the Dodgers, still have likable players. And it's obviously still a very good team. It does strike me that, like, in a year where it doesn't feel like we are getting the very best version of their lineup. up, although, like, I don't know, I was encouraged by the way Freeman hit it in that last game in O'Don. Like, it does kind of feel like we're getting in a rounding into the form sort of a thing. And Maxx, he just keeps hitting home runs, you know? So.

Yeah. Pa has got a big hit. And then there are some signs of life from Hernandez and Tucker late in the season and Mookiee as well. And then there's right. And so, yeah, it's maybe it's not the best lineup by Dodger's standards. But it's not punchless. it's not punchless but because it isn't like necessarily the best we've ever seen it does feel like okay like let someone else win it though right they do feel beatable hard to beat but beatable now i don't know that i would say exactly the same thing on the pitching side obviously like you know snow looked god awful and glasnell looks fine but vulnerable okay but like you still have scoble and you still have yamamoto and you still have yamamoto and And the shakiness of Edwin Diaz aside, like, that's a good bullpen group.

So it's tricky, tricky bit of business. But yeah. Yeah. Okay. Last thing then, fan grass broke some news. Eric Long & Hagan's own reported that MLB is testing some outfield positioning restrictions in the Arizona Fall League. Have you had a chance to witness this yet? Or you've probably been busy fielding copy.

But I'm sure you will when you get out there. Yes. Yeah. But, yeah, Eric's been at games and reported and talked to various sources who spoke to him on background. So would you care to describe how this is functioning or seems to be functioning with their testing out there? Yeah. So our listeners will be familiar with obviously the infield shift restrictions that the league put in place for the 2020s season, which, you know, as with many of their rule changes in the past couple of years, got, you know, some. piloting and testing in the fall league.

And as many people have noted, including Russell Carlton, despite those changes, the league-wide ball and play environment has not, like, improved in the way that I think the league was hoping, in part because, as Russell noted, there was sort of a, maybe an emphasis on the wrong syllable, as it were. The quality of outfield defense is so strong. The positioning is so precise that there are a lot of potential balls in play that are are just getting gobbled up in the outfield because of where fielders are positioned, both in terms of the precision and especially like how deep they are playing relative to past

eras. So what it seems, and Eric took pains to note that this is like very early days. This is the league trying to engage in some maybe proof of concept, but they are experimenting with restrictions for where outfielders can be positioned when a pitch is delivered. Now, they don't have to like, some of the people reacting to this may it sound like they're not going to be allowed to move around after the pitch has been delivered or something. Like, they are not stuck forever. But they will have to be within a particular number of strides from a spot that the league is marking on the field with like green paint, which is funny.

Because remember, there have been times where teams have like gotten in trouble for putting markings on the field. And they are, you know, they're used. using Hawkeye. This is taking place at Salt River Field. So if you're coming for Fall League and you want to see this in person, get you to a game in Salt River. But basically, what the fielders see is an LED board that is positioned below the press box that is tracking their movement. And when they are in compliance with the positioning restrictions, it shows green. When they are moving close to whatever the boundary of that is, it goes orange. And then if they are out of compliance, it goes red.

So the fielders are getting feedback in real time. And that LED board is obviously visible to the non-home plate umpire as well. So they're in a position to sort of call if a player is in violation. The player not being in compliance with those positioning rules only matters if they are the player who then fields the ball in play, right? And at that point, the umpires have discretion for where they can place the runner it seems like very often that will be putting the runner at first base, but they have discretion sort of like with fan interference

about where the runner would have been, had the fielder been in compliance with those rules. And Eric's sources were kind of vague about exactly how many strides, how many places, it seems like the center fielder will have greater latitude for movement and sort of margin for error than the corners will. But it seems like they're going to be trying a bunch of different iterations of this in fall league.

And so this is not like something you're going to see in the majors next year. You might never see it in the majors, right? At this point, I think what they are trying to determine is, is there proof of concept here to then try some sort of restriction in the minors and see how it goes in a normal affiliated ball setting? But yeah, it's, I'm very excited to see it. You know, you should definitely read Eric's piece to get the full breakdown. And, you know, he like went out on the field and kind of tested it out a little bit. So you'll see some of that and took photos from the press box so you can see what the alignments looked like in a couple of games. The fall league season is very new.

Opening day was this past Saturday. So like there's very little data on this. I'm sure there hasn't been a ton of feedback from players yet, which is obviously going to be part of this process. But, you know, it's clear that the league has a particular aesthetic in mind. And a number of smart folks, including Russell, have pointed out over the years like, where, the balls in player disappearing to. And once the infield shift was removed as a potential culprit, I think it became clear that the outfield was really where we were losing those potential opportunities. Eric kind of liked it in his initial viewing of it. Like, the way that it made

outfielders play, particularly in the corners, was exciting to him. But, you know, he cautioned everyone. Like, we should see what this looks like over the course of a full fall league slate and then see where that leaves us in terms of a desire for further testing. But yeah, potential outfield positioning restrictions coming not at all soon to a major league ballpark near you. Yep. Lots of experiments like this that have happened in the minors or in the AFL have been previews of something that would come to the majors in some form. And others have just been entirely abandoned. So this might mean something.

It might mean nothing. Technically, I do think MLB did a similar experiment before because Jason Stark and Enosaris reported in a 2024 at, athletic piece, and I'm quoting here, MLB did experiment with outfield depth limits a couple of years ago in the Florida Complex League. It went as far as drawing circles in the outfield to place boundaries on where the rookie ball outfielders could stand before the ball was hit. So I don't know exactly which year that was or how long it went on, but that's some precedent for this. And we've talked about how there's precedent for this going back more than a century, the concept, most famously, there was a player named Bob unglob.

know for sure that that's how you pronounce it, but I like saying it like that because unglop rhymes with Bob. And in 1907, he made a proposal that has become known as the unglob arc for just like lines in the outfield and limits. And it was for the same reason. It's whenever offense is at a low ebb and batting average is low and you want more offense and you want more hits and more action, someone says, well, what if you made life harder for the fielders? And we talked about that old idea at some length on episode 2174, I believe. And yes, Russell has written about this. Other people have written about this. I've written about this.

And there are various proposals. I wrote about, well, maybe you widen the foul lines slightly. Maybe the lines flare out a little bit beyond the bases. And even that has precedent because, as I wrote in a piece a couple of years ago, MLB tested that in the Gulf Coast League briefly in 1970. Cindy. So almost everything has been suggested and tried before. Maybe this time they're more serious about it. I'm torn because philosophically, I don't like it. I don't like the idea of telling fielders where they can and can't stand. Didn't like it when we were doing this

with infielders and restricting the shift. Don't like it now either. The difference is that I do think this would work, whereas I was very skeptical about the infielders. field positioning restrictions, and I think that's been borne out. That hasn't had a huge impact. But this, I do think, would have the desired effect. And so then it becomes a question of, well, is engineering the result worth the philosophical discomfort of the very heavy-handed approach of just saying, you have to stand there? Because I don't like that. I like the idea that fielders, and yes, often it's not fielders. It's more teams and coaches. front offices, but that teams have some latitude and some leeway and that they can get an edge

in standing in a particular place. And I like seeing variety and different approaches to play. And so I don't like a kind of uniformity being mandated. And obviously, if you mandate that uniformity, you're still preserving the distinctions in defensive skill. And maybe they'd be even more apparent because if everyone has to stand in more or less the same place, then maybe that puts even more of an emphasis on you actually having to get good jumps and take good roots and all the rest because you can't just position yourself more efficiently. That won't be enough. But I don't know.

I do think this is a real problem and that it's been well documented and that the same balls in play are just not falling for hits as often anymore. And you can see it in the outfield positioning, just the stat cast year by year, the outfielders stand deeper than they used to. It's just once we got that data, teams realized, and this is one of those fascinating things where, wait, where teams just standing in the wrong place all those years?

I mean, yeah, kind of, to some extent. The game has changed. Players are hitting more fly balls, and maybe they're hitting deeper fly balls, and so maybe optimal positioning today is not the same as it would have been back then. But much as in the infield, I think there was kind of an adherence to,

well, maybe we'll shade a little bit here or there, but we're not going to do anything too dramatic. and it turns out that they should have been doing something more dramatic or at least something different. They should have been standing deeper and you reach more balls and you cut off more potentially damaging deep balls that way. And so I do think that this would rewind. This would take us back to a time when teams didn't do that. It's just that now they couldn't and you would see higher batting averages and I would like to see that. And so it's just, is that worth, did the ends justify the means, I guess?

And maybe they do. I wish there were a little less subtrusive way to come up with that result. And there might be, again, I have advocated for removing the positioning cards, both because aesthetically I don't love seeing guys consult their cards mid-game and mid-inning, but also because maybe it would help. I don't know if that would help enough. I think maybe the players would just memorize where they're supposed to stand instead of, which is all I want.

That's what I want them to do. But maybe if you take their cards away, they will have the same information. It'll just be committed to memory instead of in their back pocket. Or they will just be more vigilant about looking at coaches gesticulating in the dugouts. And so that might not actually have an effect or enough of an effect. But I'd like to see just as a first measure, a really just modest intervention. It's not changing any rules dramatically. let's just see if it helps or produces any difference.

And if not, we can rule that out, at least before we do something more. So, yeah, I'm very conflicted about this. But I agree with MLB's goal or presumed goal in doing this. And I also agree that this method would work. But is there some other way? And maybe that other way is things that don't have to do with defensive positioning. It's things to say restrict pitchers and lower the limit. on active pitchers on the roster, and then hitters get an edge because they're seeing pitchers

more often at the same game, and they're, you know, facing less nasty stuff. And so that might produce the offensive improvement you're looking for with some other good knock-on effects, such as fewer pitching changes and more stable rosters and pitchers going deeper into games and maybe even fewer injuries if pitchers are pacing themselves and not going max effort all the time. So that still remains my preferred solution, but it seems like, A lot of teams just don't want that and that maybe MLB thinks this is the path of less resistance. So that makes me sort of sad, but also at least I think they're on the right track this time when it comes to, okay, this might actually produce the goal, the result that they're looking for. Yeah.

I think that they have at least landed on the correct lever. I don't yet have an opinion of whether or not I think they should pull it. And I know that advocates for reduce it, I do sometimes wonder how impactful reducing the number of available pitchers would actually be, I got to tell you. In any given game, he's still going to have a good guy out there, you know what I mean? So I'm just, which isn't to say that they shouldn't do it, but I do think this is maybe a more direct way of accessing the perceived benefit. So I wonder, I just wonder. I wonder where we'll end up with it. I still think that would work if you really committed to it.

I'm still a believer. I understand some of the downsides with implementing it. But I do applaud at least because it does seem like MLB in recent years, even if they want the result that I want, they go about it in a weird way. And maybe it's because they think something will work that I don't think will work as well. Or they just think this is what we can sell. And so let's do it and not tackle the problem head on because that would be too challenging. And this at least feels a little closer to the target.

But we're probably a ways away from seeing this implemented if it is implemented at all. OK, more soon. Well, we're going to game five in the last division series standing. Guards win game four. Glad we won't have a hole in our postseason spectating schedule, even if it makes things more complicated from a podcasting perspective. More on that series next time and the championship series. Plus, MLB's latest CBA proposal. And remember, get thyself to Patreon if you are interested in joining our live stream this Sunday during NLCS game one.

One little PSA here. We've mentioned this issue before, but never hurts to refresh people's memories. Got an email from Graham Goldbeck who does data stuff at MLB. And he said, been catching up on some effectively wild and was listening to your podcast with Mike Petriello, episode 2532, when you were talking about Junior Camerro's home run trot. Remember, he had a record length home run trot late in the season. I noticed your timing was a little quicker than mics, and I think I may have some idea of a good chunk of the difference, besides just the general differences between using statcast data versus broadcast. Assuming you did your timing from the Twitter link of the broadcast clip in the podcast notes, you will miss 200 to 250 milliseconds of time in your calculation. This is due to the pitchcast graphic on the broadcasts.

To show that graphic, we first need to know where the ball crossed the plate. That information isn't available from Hawkeye for about 150 to 200 milliseconds after plate, crossing, then there are a few additional frames needed to process that data and draw the circle on the screen. So when the camera cuts from the behind the pitcher view to another camera, high home, side view, etc., 200 plus milliseconds just disappear into the ether. I've seen this happen a lot over the years when people time things off broadcast, catcher pop times, hang time, anything where you have a camera cut from the standard cam4 broadcast view with pitchcast to another camera. So just thought it would be better to get that info out there, as I'm not sure it's common

knowledge. To be honest, it's hard to tell most of the time because usually the ball is out of frame from the behind the pitcher can and then the cut happens. So you're not necessarily able to track the ball between cuts to see that it looks like some of its trajectory didn't happen on the broadcast. I know this has come up on effectively wild before. I believe we covered this on episode 27 about directing baseball broadcasts. But yes, we do often lose a little time, which, speaking of fielder positioning, sometimes makes it tough to tell where fielders were standing, because by the time we cut to them, especially in the infield, the ball's already on them. I was hoping that this problem, if it qualifies as a problem, would be eradicated or reduced this year

because initially it seemed like ABS or the challenge system might spell the end of K-Zone-style pitch-cast graphics, but then that didn't really happen. Another thing that hasn't really happened, which I was worried about primarily with full ABS, more so than the challenge system, but could have had an effect with the challenge system only. I thought that results in 0-2 and 3-0 counts might get more extreme because in the past you had the 3-0-O-O-stroke, the zone in effect got larger, and then on 0-2, the zone in practice shrank. And even though that was maybe maddeningly inconsistent to Sun, I thought it might actually be beneficial from an entertainment standpoint because it helped keep played appearances competitive. You were certainly in a hole if you were down 02, but you were just down, not out. And if a pitcher fell behind 3-0, well, maybe they could fight their way back.

There were a lot of theories as to why umpires changed their zones in this way, possibly even subconsciously. Maybe it was that they didn't want to decide the plate appearance. They didn't want to be the ones to ring someone up or award the free pass. Though, I think a lot of umpires probably did kind of enjoy that. Another theory was that umpires were compassionate. They just wanted to extend a helping hand to whichever party was disadvantaged in the plate appearance. Maybe the best theory was that umpires were behaving in a basian way, that on 3-0, pitchers were more likely to throw strikes or throw pitches in the strike zone. And on 02, they were more likely to be trying to induce a chase and wasting a pitch.

And so if there was sort of a 50-50 call, if you were on the fence, then you would lean towards, well, what was the pitcher probably trying to do on that count? And that maybe that actually made umpires more accurate. Anyway, whatever the reason, the effect was that it would balance the scales a bit. it was harder to strike someone out once they were down 02, and it was easier not to walk someone once they were ahead 3-0. So I thought if we went to full ABS, those advantages for the disadvantaged party would be removed, and suddenly you'd be super screwed if you were behind 0-2 or 3-0. And that even if that were fairer, it might be a little less entertaining, just because

as a viewer, you would almost give up once the plate appearance got to that point. Well, what we've seen, actually, is that the 3-0 auto-strike has not really gone away. Hitters haven't challenged that as often as they probably should. And as we've speculated, that could be because batters like to be at the plate when they have a 3-1 advantage. They might actually prefer to swing away rather than take a crack at the walk. Sam has speculated that that explains the whole effect that it's not compassionate umpires or Bayesian umpires. It's that the umpire doesn't want to get yelled at. And on 3-0, the pitcher really wants the strike. The batter may not want the ball quite as much. I think there has maybe been a bit more

of a change on O and 2, but it hasn't made things much more extreme seemingly. So in 2024 and 2025, the T OPS figures league-wide after 3 and O were 255 and 252. This year, 256. So essentially unchanged, even a little bit better. That's OPS relative to overall OPS. So much better after 3-0 and still much better after 3-0. Now for O and 2, the T-OPS plus beyond that point has gone from 26 in 2024 to 26 last year to 24 this year. So slight change, maybe, but that fluctuates from year to year, so not really a pronounced difference, which is a relief to me, but that is still a cause for slight concern if and when we shift to full ABS. But for now, the status quo mostly preserved, and yes, we are still losing small slivers of time when we watch baseball broadcasts,

whether we notice that or not. So we're stuck with that sacrifice, but yes, you can win friends and influence people by telling them all about those missing milliseconds on baseball broadcasts. And of course, you can also tell them, as we often tell you, that you can support Effectively Wild on Patreon 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, Scott F, Mason, Russell Tess, Stephen Dutus, and David Purcell. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include.

Well, a couple of playoff live streams. Plus a regular season live stream. We did that one already. But still two coming your way if you sign up now. You also get access to a third unrestricted episode each week, monthly bonus episodes, membership in our Discord group for patrons only, personalized messages, prioritized email answers, shoutouts at the end of episodes, potential podcast appearances, fan graphs, memberships, 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 and outro themes to podcast at Fangraphs.com. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, music, and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at Facebook.com slash. You can find the Effectively Wild sub-eddit at our slash Effectively Wild. And you can check the show notes in the podcast posts of Fangraphs or Patreon or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today. Thanks to Isabel Robertson filling in for Shane McKeon for her editing and production assistance. We will be back with another episode before the end of the week, which means we will talk to you soon. Take me to the diamond.

Lead me through the turnstile. Shower me with data that I never thought to compile. Now we freely now a scorecard. With a cracker jacket with a smile