Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2542: C U in the CS

Episode Date: October 10, 2026

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, please visit our Patreon. Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Game 4 of the White Sox-Guardians ALDS, playoff pitching chaos, and “rest vs. rust” revisited, then preview the Dodgers-Brewers NLCS rematch, react to MLB’s proposed changes to the regular season and postseason, […] Source

More than 2,000 episodes retrospectively filed. And at each new one, we still collectively smile. That's effectively wild. That's effectively wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2542 of Effectively Wild. A Fangrafs Baseball podcast brought you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraffs, and I'm joined by Ben Lindberg of the ringer. Ben, how are you?

Doing all right. and here to remind people for the final time that they can join us on Sunday for our first Patreon playoff live stream if they are so inclined. NLCS, game one. Game one. We know who will be playing. We do not know who will be playing in ALCS game one, but that is not a problem for our Patreon live stream. So we'll do one on Sunday and we'll do one probably during the World Series. So sign up now.

You can join us for those. and you can hear this whole episode and won't that be fun. And it's going to be holidays on Monday in the U.S. and Canada. Just Sunday night, spend your Sunday evening with Effectively Wild with all Ben and Meg and many of your fellow Effectively Wild listeners.

So we thought today we might be able to preview both championship series. No, no, not the case because the Guardians won game four and forced a game five. So we will, do some NLCS discussion and we can do some other stuff too. We can catch up on a few other things. We could talk about MLB's latest CBA proposals, et cetera. But we can also catch up with the

Soul Division series still standing here and game four, which was sometimes exciting and sometimes a slog, an exciting slog, an occasionally exciting slog. It was a long one. Yeah. It was a lot of pitchers. It was a lot. There was a lot of pitchers. I think the most important part of that game for me is that I finally figured out who my visual comp for Eric Fetty is. Are you ready for this?

Are you ready for my very relatable example? Okay. You remember in the first X-Men movie, like the OG X-Men movie with Patrick Stewart and Hugh Jackman and. Anna Pac-A-Pakwin? Anna-Pakwin. Anna. Anna. Okay, so you remember how there's the, like, anti-mutant senator?

Right. Isn't there always? Yeah. Yeah. Bad sort we're to understand him to be. And for those who don't remember the 2000 film X-Men, one of the plot points is that Magneto, played by Sir Ian McKellen, has a device that's going to turn everyone into a mutant. Right? He's going to mutant the whole planet. And then, like, they won't be persecuted because everyone will be a mutant. And his test subject for this first, for the mutant machine is this, this racist senator. And he gets over his skis, though, is the problem, Magneto, because it just sort of makes you dissolve and die. It doesn't stick. It's too much for your body to have this genetic mutation affected in real time. And so the senator becomes like a,

He becomes like a water man. And then he becomes like an actual water man. Like he dissolves into water after he is rescued. And there's a moment mid blob transformation when he goes from like kind of vaguely leaking to dissolving. And in the midst of that transformation, he looks like Eric Betty. So specifically at that moment. Specifically at that moment. Not just in general because this is Senator Robert Kelly played.

by Bruce Davison. Bruce Davidson. And I ran this, I ran this cop by Michael Bowman and he was like, you're crazy. And then I specified, no, this is like mid, mid blob. And then he was like, okay, you're right. Like I just sent you. I just sent you a photo from the internet. That's Eric Fetty, you know, like a more translucent version of him to be clear.

But like that's Eric Fetty. It's not a very flattering cop the picture you sent me at this moment, which I will share on the show page. But this is like a blobby modeled skin monstrosity is you're saying the closest pop you could come up with for Eric Fetty. Yeah. Okay. It's been bothering me. You know, it's been it's been bugging me like what who does this man look like? You know?

And to be clear, he doesn't look like Bruce Davidson. Davidson. Davidson. Davidson. Yeah. Anna Pacquin. Bruce Davidson. Yeah. Grumkin.

Wow. Grumkin. Yeah. Well, I never would have come up with this comp, but, uh, I think it's pretty relatable, you know, like, that film started like the superhero movie. Sure. And that end up and Spider-Man, you know, like we were kind of out of that business for a long time after. Yeah. And don't forget, Blade, the Blade movies. Shout out to the Blade movies. You never forget the Blade movies. Yeah. But they're having some trouble making more Blade movies. They are, of course, making many more X-Men movies soon.

Yeah. Everything old is new again. And many of those original X-Men are coming back in Avengers Dumes Day for better or worse. So we will see. They're going to be in Avengers? No. Anyway. Yeah.

Anyway. We should probably. Yeah. But, wow. Okay. Well, I'm sure Eric Fetty would be thrilled to hear that. He doesn't listen to the podcast. No, I'm sure he doesn't.

But I guess I see sort of. You see what I mean. It's in the chin maybe or something. Yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot about the chin, if we're being honest. Yeah. I could see something with Bruce Davison non-mid mutant transformation also just maybe with the hair color in that era at least. Yeah.

Okay. Well, I'm glad that you got that out of your mind. Yeah. Well, you know how it's like when you can't come up with the comp, It's like your brain is itching. Yes. It's like you have an itchy brain. I'm just surprised that this is what scratched it.

It's like, oh, no, no. Eureka. Right. Yeah, I feel satisfied now. Thank you. So that was my main takeaway from the parade of pitchers. The perhaps more relevant takeaway from a baseball perspective is just a continuation of what we talked about last time, which is, hey, the white sex don't really have pitching.

So that's going to be a problem at some point. And also, it's nice when. So it's nice when, so there's that, and we can talk about that in greater detail. And then also just nice to be reminded, like, you know who's good at baseball? Jose Ramirez. I know. That has been pretty good. That has been a pleasure because after the rough season he had, injury plagued, power outage, and then hitless in his first couple games of the series.

And then back to back, multi-hit games, multi-RBI games, games with extra base hits. Obviously, he hit a big homer in this game. He had the triple in the previous game and a double. So, yeah, if he's coming alive, of course, the Guardians might have one more game left in their season. But if they have more than one game left in their season, then that bodes quite well. If they could get him hot and back to his usual self, because they got to this point with a decent by Guardian standards offense, despite Jose Ramirez, who's usually the foundation of that line of being kind of a drag on. on it. And so, boy, if he could click now, that would be huge. Yeah. And then, and then I guess tangentially to all of this is the thought, I don't know

if you saw that legendary bears head coach, Mike Dica died. And here's a sentence that remains strange. Wow. I wonder how the Pope's doing today, you know? Like, it's so weird for Chicago sports to potentially have the Pope on tilt, you know, his holiness. I wonder what he would think of my Eric Fetty comp. He'd probably be like, that's not very generous of you, like, that's not, that's not extolling. I don't mean it to be mean to Eric Fetty. Sometimes that's what you look like, you know, your face is your face. Even if you didn't mean it that way, I think it's hard to avoid that, but I get that it wasn't done with ill will. This is the association that came to your mind. This is his face. You couldn't help it. Yeah. So 50 pitchers,

Fetty was the only one who got more than seven outs. He was the Ironman of this game. So it was just pitching change after pitching change, mid-inning pitching change in many cases. It was three hours and 39 minutes, which is long in this era. Josian noted 10th longest ninth inning game regular season or postseason in the pitch clock era. And I think the third longest postseason nine-inning game in the pitch clock era. So it did kind of drag, but it also had three lead changes. And that back and four.

in the middle there. That was fun. That was exciting. And yes, the soft underbelly of the White Sox staff was exposed because it turns out that Grant Taylor can't actually go four innings every time. In fact, he might not even be able to go a third of an inning in this case. He faced six hitters, but he didn't get any of them out. And he came in and was lined up pretty much to finish that game. I mean, given his usage patterns. they arguably, I guess they could have put him in to start that inning instead of waiting for him to be in trouble. But either way, I guess they were trying not to push him quite as long as they had pushed him before. But boy, he didn't give him a single out.

And good job by the Guardians, of course, that rally, which just kept going and going and going. It was a very non-playoff-like rally because it was long-sequence offense. It was just stringing together hits and, hit by pitches and walks and just lots of station to station or first to third. It was not just blooping a blast or anything like that that you associated with this time of year. Typically, it's hard to string together that many hits because the pitchers are good and the defense is good. And the White Tux pitchers are not that good, though. And they got away with that to this point. And yeah, then they sort of imploded. So maybe they'll claim game five and move on. And that'll just

be a blip, but that certainly exposed a pre-existing weakness that they had managed to paper over to that point. Yeah. And, you know, everyone will get a little rest. They have easy travel today before they, you know, mount a game five attempt. But it does seem like it isn't the best group. And, you know, it's not like the Guardians didn't throw out a bunch of guys either, right? Oh, yeah. They had to send a sort of parade of relievers. They brought their presumptive game five starter in it. I know. It's just, yeah.

You know, so I think that both of these teams are in a spot where they, well, I mean, apart from anything else, probably wish they had been able to take care of business much earlier because they will go in without that much rest to the CS. And they're sitting there about to take on a race team that's like, we are quite rested, actually, you know, I'm not sure that's the way that's the way that. they're thinking about it. So I don't know, man. It's going to be interesting. And they were going for their first home playoff clincher in 120 years, which would have been nice for Chicago, but they didn't get that then. And so, yeah, the Cleveland pitching plan, both of these teams were

managing pretty sweatly and just tap dancing and spinning plates. And I don't know. The whole white approach, it's pitching chaos, although as Josian noted, it's nice when you have pitching chaos if you at least have some sort of bedrock when the tigers were doing pitching chaos. They had Terrick Scoopal to build around. And the White Sox don't really have that guy. They had Davis Martin as that guy earlier in the year, and then he kind of fell apart. And then they have Sean Burke. And Burke has been effective when he's coming in in relief in that long relief bulk role, but they just have not gone with any traditional starting pitcher, really, and they just don't have any that makes you super confident. And Cleveland does, and they have a couple of them.

And yeah, they use Gavin Williams to close out this game, and they have to have him start Saturday, which I'm sure he's probably not quite as fragile as Chris Sale, let's say. Sure. I guess you can be more confident that this is not going to do. rail his start on Saturday. But then again, he's never done this. He's never done this before. He's never pitched in relief.

And so you can't forecast that with complete confidence. So it did seem to me, I guess this comes back to what we've been talking about, where teams were trying to push their leverage guys longer and longer. And it was working in some cases and backfiring in others. And it seemed like teams were already backing off that a bit that the Padre said, well, maybe we'll just use Mason Miller for one inning before the paternity leave pre-paternity. And then in this game, Cade Smith was set up to go multiple innings again. And he looked fine in the first inning.

But then the second inning, he just, he seemed sort of gassed all of a sudden. And he lost a couple ticks and just didn't seem as sharp. And I guess they could have stuck with him and pushed him with the off day ahead. but it seemed like Fote had lost a little confidence in him and then to have to break glass and bring in Williams, which I know they had talked about it.

It wasn't just a spur of the moment decision. And there was enough of a cushion there that I thought it was debatable. Did you really need to do that? There were other guys. I get that you don't want to risk anything, but maybe like let it get a run or two closer and see if you can get away with a lower leverage guy

who's not your ace or, or starting your next must-win game potentially. And I guess it all removing Messick as early as he did, which I like the urgency because it is an elimination game for Cleveland. And he was not at his sharpest. But then again, when you start that parade of relievers, how many of those guys do you really have more confidence in than you do in Parker Messick?

So, yeah, once they gave him the quick hook, then they had to just keep them coming. and that's how you end up with Williams out there. Yeah, I don't know what I necessarily would have done there. The fact, I wonder if the sequencing had been a little bit different. Like if, I mean, it probably would have because you would have had an out in hand. But I do wonder about the psychological toll of Vargas leading off that inning with a home run. And then you going, oh, uh-oh.

And then, you know, Murakami walks. If that's even, you know, it's just if you had had one out in hand, do we see Williams at all? does he just let Smith kind of try to like white knuckle his way through? And, you know, you're compromising Smith too in that circumstance, presumably, right? If you leave him out there and he has to throw a bunch of innings. But like, he comes at the end of game five and you have to figure out the first couple of things. Yeah. So it's just like, what are your, what's the plan here?

And he threw what, like 18 in 18 pitches, Williams did? So, you know, it's not nothing. it's not nothing, you know, and he had to go through the whole rule of warring up and who knows what that did there. So I don't know. It's, I don't know if it's the sort of thing that one day off sort of washes away. Yeah. Well, I have no idea how to predict what the pitching plan will be in any game between

these two teams and especially one featuring the White Sox. But, yeah, the Guardians have done a good job to claw their way back into the series. And they've put the ball in play. They've also drawn a bunch of walks, and so they're not hitting for a ton of power, but they're getting on base, and that has been enough. And obviously, White Sox offenses sort of feast and famine, at least with the strikeouts and the homers and everything. And so with Burke going again, he is a pretty decent control guy, usually, and so maybe that plays in the White Sox favor. Maybe he doesn't issue quite as many free passes. Maybe he can give them a little length, and maybe by that point, Taylor is back in form.

So I don't know whether that was just not his day and good job by the Guardians and maybe a little luck with where some of the batted balls went or whether it was some sort of delayed response to his usage earlier and that taking its toll after the fact. Who knows? But of course, he is a candidate to be stretched out and start next season. so he's not totally miscast in that role. But yeah, it's been pretty unpredictable from start to start from game to game. I mean, Tanner Bybee got into this game too. Right. It's all hands on deck, which it should be when your backs against the wall.

And again, I enjoy that about playoff baseball. I don't so much enjoy not getting to see good starting pitching matchups, but I do enjoy that we then get to see those starters come in. You never know when they're going to come in. I might not even be expecting them to come. in and then there they are suddenly. But these are two pretty good managers seemingly. So it seems like they should know what they're doing. But boy, they were busy. I don't know whether it was managing or overmanaging or just dealing with the hand that you've been dealt or the lack

of arms you've been dealt in Venables case. But yeah, that was wild. And I don't know what we have in store on Saturday. Yeah. I don't know, man. It's going to be wild. It's going to be wild. Yes. And so I was thinking about the rest versus rest conversation that we were having a few years ago. That has subsided mercifully. Has it? I think so, because the results have flipped at least. And I don't know if the results we've had lately are any more telling than the results we had early on. But Neil Payne noted coming into this postseason that by teams now, if you look over the history, of this latest playoff format going back to 2022. It's now they've both played about two expectations, according to his calculations, using ELO ratings, and trying to assess the strengths of the teams coming in,

because over the first two playoffs with that format, the by teams won a couple times fewer than they should have, according to the projections and underlying strength and everything. And then over the last couple post seasons, they won a couple more times than you would have figured that they would. And so it has equalized. And on the whole, the by teams have now, or coming into this year, I think, were expected to win about nine and one nine. They went nine and seven. And that was basically bang on what you would have expected. It's just you had two years where it went against that and two years where it was even more extreme in that direction. And this year, it's been 3 and 0 in favor of the buy teams so far.

And Cleveland now that still hangs in the balance, but the buy teams will have gotten the better of the division series round. So I would guess that the buy teams on the whole, they should win more often just because they are usually better or often better than that's why they got the buy. It's not always the case, as we have discussed, with the seating and the awards for division winners who might not be the best teams. But you'd expect them to win a little more often than not.

And now they have or even a little more often than that. So I think it's just a lesson in wait for there to be a bigger sample because, yeah. Yeah, anyone long October is not going to tell you whether, oh, actually, there is a huge penalty to taking those days off and getting rested and healthy, but also rusty. I would rather have the buy on the whole. But I don't think that teams, you know, having those results go heavily in their favor in recent years really tells us the true talent level of rest versus rust any more than those teams losing more often than expected did. Yes, I think that I think that's a good way to put it. I don't want to say that there's nothing to the notion, right, or that we couldn't find out that there was something to the notion. I'm just skeptical that the question of rust versus rest isn't just going to be swamped by other stuff that is particular to the teams in question, right?

That, yeah, I just, I don't know. I remain skeptical. My default answer is you want to be able to rest your guys. Because everyone is banged up this time of year, even if you're not banged up in a way that requires an aisle stint or that has curbed your use in the final month of the season or whatever. you just want to, although, you know, as I'm aging, I'm realizing that like sometimes when left to your own devices and the, and able to sort of like feel your body over an extended stretch, it's worse, you know. Yeah. She's like, oh, I'm very aware of all the like I, you know, when I was on vacation, I went hiking one of the days. And I think my knee is just permanently different now.

I think my left knee is just different than it was before. Is it better? No, Ben, you know. And it never goes in that direction, right? That's the thing about it. That's the humbling condition that is aging that we all experience where it's like, oh, other than like, well, I suppose you become, in theory, wiser as you age, right? Because you have a, you have experience, you have perspective.

But in terms of the body, it's like only moving in the one. It's just different now. I don't know. Nothing. I didn't fall, you know. Well, there is that idea after a certain point. of use it or lose it and skills and attributes degrade and an atrophy. And so you want to sort of, and that's why it's important to get exercise as you age and stave off osteoporosis or muscle loss or whatever.

And being active helps. But of course, it only helps so much. And, yeah, the trend line does tend to trend in one direction over a long enough time frame. But I'm with you. I would rather have the rest. and also be the team that got the buy because maybe I was the better team to begin with. But yes, those results have equalized at least a little bit, if not more than equalized. Shall we discuss the NLCS?

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