Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 306: The ALCS Discussion Show

Episode Date: October 14, 2013

Ben and Sam discuss momentum, clutch, and other ALCS storylines.

We got momentum, baby! We got the big mo! Uh, well, I, I haven't made any recently because of scout school. Um, but we're home now. Both of us are back where we're supposed to be. Ben, you know, the best way to make new friends is to, to pickle things for them in your motel room. Yeah, I would have, but there, there's just nowhere in Arizona. If you don't have a car, you're out of luck as far as groceries are concerned. don't have a car you're out of luck as far as groceries are concerned so there was no pickling going on there um so the playoffs you didn't have a car huh nope if i had had a car i couldn't have driven it legally yeah so you don't have a driver's license i do not you've never driven a car i have driven in parking lots and and some roads, but that's as far as it goes. Is it on your bucket list? Would you like to someday?

Just not a big thing for you. Yeah, not particularly important as a Manhattanite. If I move someday, I'll probably make it a priority. But as it is, if I had a driver's license, I probably would drive like twice more a year than I do currently. So it's just never been worth the time. Yeah. So baseball. Yeah.

There's been some good baseball. Yeah, that was amazing. Yeah, I missed part of the game and I saw the end of the game. We're talking about the Red Sox-Tigers game. But really, all of the games have been good. Four games, four one-run games, and those are always exciting. So good championship series so far. Yeah. yeah it was it was close to uh we were very close to having two two to nothing serieses which uh

made me i don't dread that i don't you know like i think a tigers cardinals series would be just fine i mean i um i think the cardinals are the best organization in baseball and i think the tigers might be the best team in baseball uh although i think maybe the cardinals might be the best team in baseball so i'd be maybe the Cardinals might be the best team in baseball. So I'd be fine with that. But it does occur to me that there was this period in the 2000s where it was just constantly new teams in the World Series.

There was a 10-year period, I think, where only two teams appeared in the World Series more than once. The Cardinals were in it twice, and the Red Sox won it twice and otherwise that there were no from 2002 to 2010 there were no repeats um and now we have a situation where if it is the cardinals and the tigers the last four years including this year will have had only only four teams yeah um and yet we've we've talked about parity right and how and how it seems to be there's less of an advantage than ever for the the rich teams or at least they're not winning more

in particular so and i i think it's still i mean there's nothing there's nothing about the giants that screams like dynastic you know team with an unfair advantage over everybody else. And really there's nothing about the Rangers that says that. And there's really nothing about the Cardinals that says that. I mean, the Tigers are the only big market team of those four, I would, I would say. And, you know, even the Tigers aren't, they're not, they're not the Yankees. It's interesting because if, if they make it, then people will start talking about how, oh, you know,

that's a terrible matchup for ratings because it's stale and nobody wants to see these teams again. And if some other team makes it, they talk about how it's a terrible matchup because they're unfamiliar and they're not, you know, big market. So, I mean, basically, it's the only – unless the Yankees are in it or the Dodgers are in it, everybody complains about how bad it is for baseball.

But nobody is actually rooting for the Yankees or the Dodgers. Yeah, right. It's weird. A lot of concern out there for baseball. Yes, every year, as we talked about with Brian Kenney. Yeah. Yes, every year, as we talked about with Brian Kenney. Yeah.

So do you have any observations or thoughts that you want to get to about either of these series? I had a couple things I wanted to talk about briefly with the Red Sox-Tigers game. And they might seem outdated. They made more sense 40 minutes ago, but I don't think they're outdated in fact uh you saw game one right with sanchez uh no i was flying home from phoenix yesterday and then when i got home from phoenix i had to watch nlcs game two which i had dvr'd because i was writing about it so i was watching that during alcs game one, so I did not see it. I know what happened obviously, but no. Well, nevermind then I was, uh, just gonna, uh, I was, I was going to ask your opinion on who, who was better Sanchez or Scherzer. Um, but you can't help me. So if anybody wants to, to let me know, uh, you can, I'm genuinely curious which one looked better. It was interesting because sometimes you accidentally stumble upon a conversation that somebody is having with somebody else Sanchez was way better than Scherzer because

he can had command of all four pitches and Scherzer would never be able to match that and Verlander can't match that and we would all see and this is like a conversation between Passon and some guy who has like 30 followers so nobody saw this conversation but Passon was saying that Sanchez had control he had command of none of his pitches. You don't walk six guys if you have any command. He just had absolutely no command whatsoever. And so I wonder if that was the impression people had, that Sanchez was just out there wildly getting, I don't know, not lucky exactly. I guess that dovetails into my second question.

Paul Sporer tweeted us that sanchez was effectively wild oh is that what that was oh i wasn't sure what that was that's what that was yeah the tweet didn't make much sense to me uh all right um so anyway though the question that i have is um is do you think that – well, okay. So you can look at these two starts. I mean, ignore – you don't have to ignore. I mean, you can incorporate the Red Sox eighth inning into this, which was a big inning. But before that, they had been absolutely just completely, completely dominated by two pitchers.

Passon also had this incredible fun fact that the Red Sox didn't put a ball in play until the 40th pitch yesterday uh which is kind of incredible but I mean they had no chance they were just they were striking out at you know like absurdly almost boring rates uh two near no hitters and so you could look at that as you know great pitcher pitching great or you could look at it as the Red Sox offense slumping and i'm just curious particularly now that you're a scout school grad um how would you what would you look for to if you wanted to determine whether it was just if you wanted to figure out whether the red sox as a offensive unit are slumping and whether it might be a factor going forward um what would you look for uh

i guess statistically i would look for chases right out of zone swings i guess guys expanding their zone or i mean i guess you could say bad takes also people just taking strikes down the middle of the plate or something but probably one of one of those things would be the easiest to check just to see if their approach is off or if you know if they're just not getting results but they're going about it the right way um i don't know i guess from the the scout perspective, you'd kind of just look to see if guys look comfortable or if they're flinching all the time on breaking balls or something or they're late all the time, but I don't know. I guess I would just look at whether the approach is solid,

whether they're swinging at hittable pitches and letting unhittable pitches go by. Yeah, it's hard to know. I mean, it could just be that, like, they're looking for, I mean, if Scherzer's throwing, you know, three or four elite level pitches and, I mean, mixing them up, it's hard. I mean, maybe they're just completely beat by Scherzer, and so they're having to guess, which that might make sense. That might be the strategically sound decision to sit on a pitch

so that you might have a shot at one of them. And that's just, again, kind of a ripple of the guy being too hard to hit. I don't know. I don't expect you to have an answer. I just was walking around the neighborhood trying to think of how I would approach it. And I don't know. I don't expect you to have an answer. I just was walking around the neighborhood trying to think of how I would approach it. And I don't know. I don't have any idea. Yeah, I don't know, because that was kind of the case with the Yankees last year, where they just didn't hit at all.

And as I recall, it looked bad for a while, like in the Baltimore series. And early on in the ALCS. They just looked like they were swinging at everything and just kind of out of it. But then the last couple games, it seemed like they were not doing that, but they still weren't hitting. So it's kind of hard to tell the difference between one or the other but but yeah other than other than that i don't know how you'd tell i would just kind of look at at what pitches you're swinging at but you're right that maybe it's the optimal strategy that's just not working sometimes um so that was that was i guess the narrative of of the beginning of

this series was was that the red sox couldn't hit and the Tigers' pitching was unhittable. And then David Ortiz hit the home run and changed all that. And now I guess the narrative based on post-game interviews is that the Red Sox have the momentum now. They came back. They had a demoralizing comeback. And now the momentum has shifted. But doesn't the fact that David Ortiz hit that home run kind of take the air out of the momentum narrative at all?

I mean, if the Red Sox can't hit at all and they're getting no hit in both games, and then one swing swing they come back and they they win the game so anything could happen in the next game why even why even speculate about the momentum well so okay so i mean okay so you're saying like momentum is is is nonsense because uh you know if if momentum was so powerful ortiz wouldn't have been able to hit that home run you know but you know ortiz very nearly flied out to Torrey Hunter. I mean, Torrey Hunter missed it by an inch. So would that have actually changed what David Ortiz had done?

The perception of it certainly would have been different, I think. Yeah, but, I mean, if it had been six inches lower or two inches lower or whatever and hunter had caught it then you know i mean i guess what i'm saying is that not that i'm backing up the momentum narrative at all but i mean it's not like ortiz hit that home run and could not have done anything else it was it was you know very very easily ortiz could have flied out and I mean I guess the question is I mean the question is for the purposes of prediction if you're which is all really matters in this world of ours if you're trying to anticipate what's coming is do you think that the Red Sox are a better offense tomorrow than they would have been if Ortiz

had flied out and I don't think that's a that's I don't think that's an absurd question to raise at least it's not it's not an absurd question if I mean I don't think that's a, that's, I don't think that's an absurd question to raise. At least it's not, it's not an absurd question. If I, I mean, I wouldn't write an article about that and I wouldn't, if I were, I would, I would hope that I never have to be the columnist who files so often that I have to write a piece ascribing the, you know, the Red Sox future success or failures to that. But I might, as I walk around the neighborhood thinking these things, it would go through my head. I would probably in my head wonder about it you've been so you've done a lot of walking through the neighborhood i've been wandering lately i've been i've been walking a lot lately it's my new thing um so do you think the red sox are so do you think the red sox are

any better tomorrow not tomorrow tuesday day, Tuesday, than they would have been if Hunter had caught that ball? If I assign them a true talent, true average of 280, what are they now and what would they have been if Hunter caught that ball? I think the same. You think the same? You really think that they are the exact same team if they lose tonight on a three-hitter and go on the road down two games to none? Yeah, I kind of do.

I don't want to be like, you know, sabermetric boy who just sticks to the party line about there being no momentum or whatever but i i don't know i i could buy like a couple points i guess if you want to say there's something but how how high can you go for a it's just i don't know we've seen so many times teams just suddenly reverse things or come back. I know we're not saying it's the only thing. I'm just asking if it's 1%. I'm trying to remember where I heard this.

In the last two or three days, I heard about it might have been the Malcolm Gladwell book, the new Malcolm Gladwell book, and I think it might have been from that. So discount it as necessary but it was um as i recall it was a study where if you told they asked a bunch of people questions like some you know they gave them a quiz right they gave them some quiz to test their intelligence and if they told them they were going up against students from harvard they performed worse than if they told them they were going up against students from like, you know, San Diego State.

Right. So being like feeling like they were outmatched made them perform worse. So it seems to me a reasonable hypothesis that if you think that the team you're playing is better than you and after two days of striking out 30-plus times and getting four hits and really having no shot or feeling that way after the fact, that you might feel that way. So I'm willing to give – I would gladly concede 1% of performance. I wouldn't make a big stink about 1%. I think the people who talk about the momentum narrative probably think it's bigger than 1% or they wouldn't make such a big deal out of it. Who cares what people think about it, though? It's you and me here.

Well, okay. I would just say that I think the Red Sox perception of themselves, I can't imagine it changing that much because of two games. It's a veteran team. They've had success all season. They've had two bad losses in a row before. I feel like they're not suddenly going to be so down on themselves and fatalistic and thinking that the Tigers are better than they are because of two games.

I just, you know, you think like Dustin Pedroia is going to be like, oh, man, we're out of this one. The Tigers are just better than us. I don't really see it. Maybe. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I guess it sounds like. Plus, they have Johnny Gomes. So he's going to rally them and cheer them up in the clubhouse and everything.

Who starts game three for them? That's what he's for. I don't know. It was Lester and Buchholz, so... This is a thing we should know. Oh, it's Peavy. It's Peavy pv right it's got to be pv yeah yeah so pv no no lackey verlander like oh well okay so i don't know i i mean you it seems to me that you're trying to like ascribe me a position that is more extreme than it is i mean

i've only put i've only put my reputation on 1%, but, I mean, down 2-0, two particularly convincing losses. You've got Verlander lackey, which is not, you know, that's Verlander lackey. That's as though it were lackey against Verlander. That's what that is. And it's in Detroit. Yeah, I don't know.

I feel comfortable saying that there is actually – I actually will feel comfortable saying that there is a 1% shift in the Red Sox true chances of winning the next game. Yeah. 1%. No, I'm going to go half a percent because I'm giving them a 1% better performance. But they're only half of the equation in a sporting event. It's a good thing. It's a really good thing for them, I think,

other than the fact that they won. I mean, also they won. So that increases their chances spectacularly. Yeah, so they would have had probably what? I guess like a 25% chance of winning the series or a 20% chance of winning the series. What do the Dodgers have going? I don't know.

I don't know. Yeah. Going home now but facing Adam Wainwright. And, yeah, their chances aren't the greatest right now. Segway. Was that a segway? It would have been, but I'm not done with this other game yet. Okay. was that a segue uh it would have been but i'm not i'm not done with this other game yet um okay so this is it looks like just kind of skimming twitter as we've been talking it looks like this

has also been an occasion for people to argue about clutch have you yeah i'm watching it i'm watching it in real time it's kind of ugly out there yeah it's one of the it's one of the worst the least fun part of an incredible event is that more people are talking about it yes and i hate i basically hate hearing people talk so yeah well chota kerry tweeted uh probably a good tweet we just saw one of the greatest endings to a game in postseason history maybe argue clutch not clutch another day yeah which which i actually feel like like any i i stand behind jonah's jonah's sentiment because anything to keep people from from saying the same thing as everybody else for 45 minutes on my feed

but uh i actually think that there's a that i'm not sure that argument is is right um i guess if you are gonna if you are gonna raise that that argument and say that there's no clutch i guess the perfect time to do it is right when someone does something that's perceived as extremely clutch yeah whenever there's like a big if there's ever a big like news like a big tragedy and people start trying to talk about like public policy out of it and they go oh no now's not the time yeah but it's it's exactly the time people are paying attention but in this case uh yeah who cares uh yeah so so don't read keith keith law's twitter feed if you if you don't want to if you don't want to look at the clutch versus non-clutch um are you surprised that there haven't been more

attempts to bunt on cabrera i think there was just one yeah there was Josh Reddick tried to do it, and he kind of popped it up. Yeah, well, that wasn't even an attempt to bunt on Cabrera. That was the situation arguably called for. That was a situational bunt, right? I am surprised. Has it happened in this series at all? Because I've kind of figured with guys like Gelsberry or someone, someone would try it, you'd think, since he's kind of hobbling around out there um I've I've missed part of the games

as we've discussed so I don't know for sure but uh you would you would think that that that would be something that teams would try look given how he's moving right now I feel like that is close to unwritten law, unwritten rule territory, which is obviously that's stupid, but that's what unwritten rules generally are. So, yeah, I think that bunting on an injured player would probably – might actually get you beamed. you beamed. I would suspect that if they, if more than, like I think Ellsbury could certainly get away with it, and I think they could probably get away with it once a game without anybody noticing, but if three guys bunted on him in a game, I bet one would get a fastball in the back. Might be wrong. I might be wrong. I'm not a baseball player. I don't have access to the unwritten code book. We should ask Gabe Kapler. We should.

All right. Maybe we will. I'm going to email him. I'll email him. Maybe he'll answer before the end of the episode. I'm wondering about, you know the theory or the line of thought that goes, the more pitching changes you make or the more relievers you might want a certain guy to face a certain hitter but the more the more relievers you bring into a game the the higher the chance that one of them just won't have it that day yeah do you subscribe to that because i was i was thinking about it in in the eighth there when when leland made like four pitching changes, started the inning bringing in Veris to replace Scherzer, and then Smiley replaced Veris, and Albuquerque replaced Smiley,

and Benoit replaced Albuquerque, and then Benoit gave up the Grand Slam. It's something you hear people say, and I've always kind of been on the fence about whether I buy that. Well, the flip side to that is that you're getting them out much quicker much more quickly um so if you did it's not like you're then stuck with the guy for 10 batters it's it's sort of like uh it might not be like this but it's sort of like a single deck blackjack where sure it's easy to you know it's easy to get uh to count the cards and to get in a favorable betting position but as soon as you notice it they flip the deck over anyway and i i

like i mean it's it seems like a if if you believe that there's like a ton of variance in pitchers performance from day to day um then yes you would be worried about that i'm not sure how much variance there is in pitchers performance from day to day that that would be the first question and probably managers would have strong opinions on that um but i don't know that we have strong opinions on that and then uh you know even if that were the case i mean if you're only going to them for one batter at a time, you might get, to some degree, I don't know, you might be actually hedging a little bit and basically getting less total variance, right? Because if one guy doesn't have it,

you might be bringing in another guy. But yeah, I guess, hang on, I'm talking, I'm making no sense right now. It does seem like, it does seem like if you, if you had a guy who you could identify as having it or not having it, that you would, once you identified that having it guy, you would want, you would want to use him as long as you can. Yeah. But that doesn't really happen. I was surprised that...

Unless the expectation for the plate appearance, like, you know, if you're bringing in a lefty specialist to face a lefty, then maybe even if he doesn't have it, he's better off, he's the better matchup than a righty who has it. I mean, how big a difference is having it versus not having it? I mean, it's not...

If you don't have it, you automatically give up a home run, or is it just you're not quite as good that day? I don't know. So here's my – I don't know. Maybe I would want to look at this more before I said it for sure, but I think that Leland might have – I think Leland probably well okay I think that the uh that the way that we have demanded that managers bring in closers in the eighth inning now in the postseason while generally that's a thing I support and I like it I like to see it and I wish that managers would be willing to do it all the time um I wonder whether that um uh that drive to do that costs the Tigers tonight. Because I think that if this is another series, if this is like August,

Smiley comes in to face Ellsbury and then probably gets the whole eighth inning. And so then even if the rest of the inning had gone exactly as it was, you'd have Ortiz facing a lefty, which is a big difference with David Ortiz. And I was surprised that they put Smiley for Albuquerque. Although Ben was one of those guys who's really good against lefties too, right? It's true. He was this year, and maybe he is every year. So maybe that's not a factor.

But I would rather have Smiley facing a lefty, uh, sorry, I would rather have Smiley facing a righty than Albuquerque at this point. And I was surprised that they pulled Smiley for Albuquerque. And, um, one of the reasons that it makes sense is if you're Leland and you're thinking, well, I'm going to bring Ben Y in, uh, to face Ortiz regardless, and there's no reason to leave Smiley in there. But I think I would actually rather have Ortiz face Smiley than Benoit. I don't think that Smiley – I don't think that Benoit is necessarily the best pitcher in that situation.

Benoit was better against lefties this year than against righties. He wasn't the year before. The year before that, it was close. He was the year before. He wasn't the year before. The year before that, it was close. He was the year before. He wasn't the year before. He was the year before. So it's pretty close. In his career, he is better against lefties than righties.

So with 1,800 plate appearances. Yeah. And I guess Leland could have brought Koch in if he really wanted a lefty, but I'd much rather have Benoit. Yeah. Well, I'd much rather have Benoit than Koch, well, I'd much rather have Benoit than Koch, but I think I'd rather have Smiley than Benoit. Yeah, yeah, sure.

Okay, does it strike you as curious that the Tigers haven't gotten, at least that I've seen, more abuse for Johnny Peralta playing and playing well. Because of the steroids? Yeah. I mean, he was 1 for 4 tonight, but he hit very well. He went 3 for 4 in the first game of the series. He went 5 for 12 in the ALDS and hit a home run. And I kind of figured, because it seemed like a lot of people approved

of the Giants not playing Melke last year, even though I don't know whether the Giants motivation really had anything to do with that or whether they just didn't think he'd be ready. Peralta was back sooner. So it makes more sense from a baseball perspective to play him. But I guess I'm kind of surprised that they're not, at least that I've seen, have there been a lot of hot takes about Peralta playing? If there have, I guess I just haven't been reading them, but it seems like the sort of thing that would produce hot takes, doesn't it? No, not really. Everybody's got steroids users it's

pretty there's a very very small uh number of players who actually have this stuff stick to them um and it's you you basically you have to get so good that people think that you're unnaturally good for it to matter they don't care if you're peralta and you know incidentally i heard them talking on during the broadcast yesterday might have been today about peralta and and about how leland showed faith in him and and they started talking about how like oh well you know he they didn't know if he'd be back and he'd be able to come back at full speed he didn't get a chance to have a real rehab stand he got to play in you know in instructs or whatever but you don't know uh you know if that's going to be the same and um, um, you know, they were going on and on and, and then they go, and then not to

mention the fact that the steroids suspension, maybe that weighs on him mentally. And at no point did anybody go, plus he was doing steroids before and he can't do steroids now. So maybe he sucks. Like nobody, nobody said that because nobody actually believes that. Like, unless you're on a hall of Fame pace, or you're winning MVP awards, People believed it with Melky last year, I think. Or you're winning a batting title.

That's my mom. Yeah, or you're winning a batting title. If Melky had been third in the league in batting, nobody would have cared about Melky. There's a particular set of achievements you have to get before anybody starts crediting the steroids or the HGH with doing it. So, yeah, I mean, Peralta is just another guy who got caught. I mean, nobody cared about Bartolo Cologne in Oakland.

Nobody cared about David Ortiz in Boston. Every every team's got every team's got a guy right now. So does that should that tell us something about I don't know, should that prevent us from future hot takes? Because teams obviously don't care about this as much as columnists do. I mean, there's no team really that, other than Barry Bonds possibly, there's really no player who's been blackballed based on PDUs. If a player can play, teams will let him play. They want him to play for them. No one really has taken a moral stance about this and said we're just not going to, at least publicly,

no one has said we're just not going to sign this guy because he tested positive. And obviously there hasn't ever been a case where all 30 teams thought that privately, or we would have seen someone not get a job, except for possibly Bonds, who had lots of other baggage attached to him. Teams care mostly about whether you can play and not whether you were just suspended. And you can certainly say that a guy served his time and now he should be back out there. And that's that. He served his time and he's going to be getting tested. So it seems to me the only way it matters for a team is that if you think that a guy who got caught is more likely to keep using, then you're rolling the dice a little bit on him getting caught again. But presumably, if he keeps on passing tests and he's not using, you can play him in good conscience. I mean, as long as teams don't have any, you know, it's not like teams know when these

guys are using, probably. And so, as long as they can keep that sort of distance from the use, I think they're in fine moral ground. I wouldn't have any problem. If I owned a team, I certainly wouldn't have a problem playing a guy who had done steroids for another team. Or, you know, or my team, without my knowledge. Do you have, if you were a post game it would be more so like i

think i would i would i would probably i could see a situation where if i was an owner i wouldn't want peralta playing for me if he had been caught using while he was playing for me if he were if i were the owner so like if i were the owner of the Tigers right now, I could see a situation where I might not want him. But if I were the owner of the Cardinals, I would certainly snatch up Johnny Peralta. I don't even know. I haven't even thought about that that much. If you were a post-game sideline person, do you think you would ever ask an interesting question? No. I was just reading a quote from David Ort ortiz someone asked him you know the usual

question what what were you thinking when you went up there what were you trying to do or whatever and he said i wasn't trying to hit a grand slam i was just trying to put a good swing on the ball which is what every player who's ever been asked that question just once i'd like to hear someone said i have you ever heard someone say, I was just sitting dead red there. I was just trying to hit a home run. I was just, that was all I was trying to do there. I've never really heard that. It's just, if you're trying to hit a home run, you can't hit a home run. So you have to just try to hit it hard somewhere. And that's always the answer. You know, back in the day when the reporters would go interview the players after the game,

the first question they would always ask the hero of the game was, what'd you hit? What was that pitch? And now the camera work is so good and we know pitches so well and every game is televised all the time. And, you know, the highlights are up on MLB.com. And so you can just go see what the pitch was. So that has kind of killed that pitch. It would be so dumb to walk up to a batter usually and go, what did you hit?

I mean, it's like just look at the pitch effects and find out what it was. So I kind of feel bad for those guys. But no, there's no upside to asking an interesting question. The more interesting it is, the more likely you're just going to confuse the player, and he's going to question your motives uh-huh you could always ask how he felt though that's always a good one i'm not what would you ask what would you have asked david ortiz at that point uh i don't know i don't i don't think david ortiz do you believe in clutch uh that'd be more interesting at least a little bit, I guess.

Yeah, I don't know. There's probably nothing you could say. The best thing to do would probably be to say, I don't know, you might, the most likely, I don't know, maybe, no, I don't even know. Never mind. Forget it. Forget it. Forget it. It didn't work.

Okay. So we've pretty much just talked about the AL series. I've been writing about the NL series at Baseball Perspectives. We'll talk about it tomorrow. Yeah, we can talk about that. If you want to see my recaps from either of those games, you can go read them at BP. The first one is free. And, yeah, then we'll switch to that series tomorrow,

and there will be another game to talk about. So we will be back with another show. Send us emails at podcast at baseballprospectus.com.