Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 317: How World Series Game Five Was Won (and Lost)

Episode Date: October 29, 2013

Ben and Sam discuss David Ortiz, Jon Lester and Adam Wainwright, and the latest questionable moves by Mike Matheny and John Farrell.

You hear it said a lot in football when close teams meet. Head coaches will tell you, well, this game could come down to turnovers. We've seen so far through four games that mistakes have cost the losing team. You think about the mistakes by the Cardinals in game one defensively? Turnover. Mistakes by the Red Sox in game two? Turnover. The obstruction in game three, say it, turnover. Last night the game ended on a kickoff at first base,

turnover. Good morning and welcome to episode, you just told me. I did. 317. Not only did I tell you, but since we're on multiple of fives, you should just know. Not only did I tell you, but since we're on multiple of fives, you should just know. Yeah. There's always the problem, though, it's Monday. Like, when I think about it, I think, well, it's Monday, so that means it's 3.16, but then we're recording for day. So, you know, 3.17 of Effectively Wild, a daily podcast from BaseballPerspectives.com.

I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg. Ben, how are you? Okay. So my favorite question from the press conference, the managerial press conference after this game, was the guy who asked John Farrell whether David Ortiz had already locked up series MVP, whether they win or lose, which there's just absolutely no way you're going gonna get sean farrell to answer that question on his parents but then but then what really drove it home was when he asked mike metheny that also

uh which is like same guy i assume same guy but i'm not sure i i didn't see it um but i mean my my guess is it was the same. It sort of seemed like the same guy to me. Uh, I mean, yeah, I, someone like on Twitter during the game. Well, asking you that is legitimate. Asking anybody in the world who's not like a participant in the game and whose answers aren't completely predictable and like dodge you know always dodging uh is is an exception uh but i mean also asking matheny like like like hey you know like is it is the guy on the other side so good that like there's nothing you can do to be better than him

at this point in time is probably not yeah uh an answer he would a question he would appreciate but is there do you happen to know if there's precedent for that for uh yeah sure yeah kevin uh jeffrey leonard in the uh 87 nlcs uh won the mvp in a losing effort um it's uh it i think it used to be i think it used to be some i don't know how common it used to be but i think it used to be, I don't know how common it used to be, but I think it used to be semi-common. But I don't think you used to have to be on a winning team to win the league MVP either. I think that has become a stricter rule in recent years.

It's tough to think of who the Cardinals' choice would even be at this point. I mean, we have a couple, one or two games left, but I guess Matt Holliday, if he hits more homers or something. But they haven't really had the individual performances that Boston has. Yeah, they lost game two, right, which was the game that Waka pitched. Yeah. Because Waka's pitched well enough that he could he could win it except you don't get it as a pitcher if you only win one game uh rosenthal now rosenthal

blew a game the cardinals cardinals won game two oh they won game two okay so yeah that's right so yeah so waka yeah if he wins game six, then sure. Right, which he would have to do, basically. So yeah, I'll put my money on Waka if they win. I should do a quick corrections segment, maybe, about my little rant from the end of the podcast yesterday about how I was exasperated with people who were declaring this series a coin flip but then Picking one team

In six games and I felt like if it was That even then you'd expect It to go seven I sort of had an inkling that maybe I was missing something there A couple people Emailed me, emailed us to note That If a series is a coin flip

If the two teams are evenly matched Then it's no more likely to go seven than six, because all six and seven game series must be 3-2 after five games, or else one team would have won already. So to choose between six and seven, all that matters is what happens in game six. All that matters is what happens in game six. And if the two teams are even, then both outcomes are equally likely. The leading team wins and the series ends in six or the losing team wins and the series ends in seven. So a couple of people emailed us about that. One person did some simulations about that to see if home field advantage made any difference. And it didn't really. So I retract my exasperation with people who picked someone in six.

Well, so now I've been thinking a lot about this, and I'm just as exasperated. I mean, we all acknowledge that there's a random factor to the postseason that makes predicting hard, but at least it's reasonable to ask people to try to predict a thing. It's not totally random, but here we're actually, people are predicting a thing that is completely random, that is 100% random. They are putting a prediction, whether they put six or seven, they're actually predicting a random thing. That actually, to me, is much more exasperating. The other thing is that it's actually not, I've been trying to wrap my head around this.

It is true that if they're perfectly evenly matched that the chances of a six-game series or a seven-game series are equal. However, if you're a better team, then the chances of a six-game series are more likely than a seven-game series. And so when a person says six, I haven't been able to get my head around it, but more six-game series should be won by the better team because the good teams will win six-game series as well as the evenly matched teams will win six-game series as well as the evenly matched teams will win six-game series. So if you predict six, you are actually, in a way, you are allowing that the team that wins is more likely to be better than if you predict seven. Yeah, that seems right.

Yeah, I guess. I haven't been able to figure out a way to express this. I've been thinking about this for six hours, and I've given up, but I tried. If you disagree with what Tim said, then email us and tell us why that was wrong, and we can talk about that tomorrow. All right, so we'll talk about this game now. I'm curious, having watched David Ortiz, you know, be David Ortiz over the last five games, but also knowing, you know, what you know about the illusion of hotness,

would you be doing things differently right now if you were the Cardinals? And, you know, one, I mean, in the most obvious way, there was a lot of talk about whether they should have intentionally walked him in the first inning with Pedroia on second and one out. But, you know, even like watching Wainwright, where he kind of started, he moved over to the other side of the pitching mound, which is an admission

that Wainwright thinks that Ortiz is actually genuinely a different hitter than typical David Ortiz, and that this is not simply a random grouping of positive events from a guy who puts together a lot of positive events. There was the way that he kind of altered his delivery slightly, and just generally he's so hot that maybe there's different – you could think about pitching him slightly differently or being a little more aggressive in using your lefty relievers against him, all those sorts of things. Would you change anything?

It sort of seems like almost like they've gone in the opposite direction where like we don't even need to bring in a lefty because it won't make any difference because he's going to get a hit anyway it seemed to be the case in game four uh when when choate was warmed up and he didn't come in and whether it was because of the four for ten lifetime history of ortiz off of choate at that point or whether it was because Ortiz, uh, just looked so locked in, um, it almost seemed like they were just, the Cardinals were just kind of resigned to it. Like, I guess if you, if you really do feel that way, like at a certain

point, if you're that convinced that he's going to get a hit then i guess it would make sense to walk him right i wouldn't i wouldn't be that convinced by it but you know if they think that the expectation of him getting a hit like if they think he's a 500 hitter or something right now uh then then they almost should put him on right well yeah but i'm asking you i would not i would not think that i would i would you would you change anything though would you have if you had a scouting report on him going into the series and i mean it's david ortiz the scouting report is going to be pretty comprehensive you've you know the league has faced him 10 billion times um would you change anything at this point what was wainwright i guess was wainwright wrong to start tweaking the things he was doing should wainwright have just treated him exactly like he treated him in the first inning of uh of game one i would second inning i can't

remember i would think that once you start tweaking you're just decreasing your own effectiveness probably i i mean i could be wrong about that but if I were Adam Wainwright and I had really good stuff like I did, like he did that night, I probably wouldn't do anything differently. If you start doing things differently, then he's kind of in your head and you're letting him affect your own approach. And it seems like that's as likely to backfire as it is to do anything else. Like if there were some special tweak you could make to get Ortiz out, you would just always pitch like that. Wouldn't you to, to lefties at least? I mean, Yeah, I guess you would, but I mean,

I guess the thinking is that everything that they've tried, the scouting report that they had, they've tried it, and it either didn't work, and so they might talk themselves into thinking it won't work, or it might work against David Ortiz generally, but David Ortiz might be better than David Ortiz generally. I mean, Ortiz himself, okay? And just to be clear, for the record, I think I'm with you.

I don't think I would change anything. And I think I would just treat him like he's the same. But Ortiz himself said they've been making good pitches. These are pitches that when my swing gets a little longer, I roll over. And that's where the scouting report comes from. The scouting report comes from the idea that David Ortiz is going to roll over X number of pitches in certain locations, and that's the best way to get him out. If he's not rolling over any, and if it's because, as he says, his swing is not long, it's quick, it's short, it's on everything,

then you're basically talking about a different hitter right now. Yeah, the question is just whether it will be like that on his next swing, which who knows? I mean, it seems to me like he's a really good hitter who has happened to have some good games here at a really opportune time. And I wouldn't really be confident that it will be the case in Game 6 or Game 7 that he'll be better than he usually is, which is really good. But no, I probably wouldn't do anything differently. The crazy thing is that his insane slash line right now as mark norman pointed

out uh includes the fly out that he hit in game one that was uh would have been a home run but took it back yeah they hadn't thought of that yeah uh all right so next fitting, John Lester hitting in the top of the seventh. I think he'd thrown like 14 pitches at that point. I mean, he was extremely efficient up to that point. He was cruising. He looked great. I mean, he looked really super good, but it was a one-run game. There were nine outs to go. So certainly the whole bullpen is going to be able to handle the labor factor at least.

And runners second and third won out. A very easy run there to get home with a major league hitter. And, you know, practically no chance that Lester gets him home. I mean, Lester is a very league hitter. And, you know, practically no chance that Lester gets him home. I mean, Lester's a very poor hitter. And so they ended up getting five outs out of Lester. What did you think about that decision? I mean, I guess it's a two-part question, I guess. One is, was that the right call?

And the other is, is it realistic to think that any manager would have pulled him? I thought it was pretty terrible. I think it might have been my least favorite move by either manager in this series. And there have been... Willie Workman, the brand new... Well, okay. Okay. All right.

It was one of the two worst moves involving letting a really terrible pitcher hit. Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like we dwell on managerial moves maybe too much. And it's true that it's rare that the game actually comes down to the managerial move. Like this move we're talking about didn't come back to bite the Red Sox. It worked out fine. Even when a move does backfire, often it isn't fatal. But we talk about these managerial moves so much because I guess it's kind of an easy thing to analyze compared to...

I mean, we can talk about who the good players were in the game we can talk about how lester was really effective and efficient and how wainwright was really good too and there were lots of strikeouts and everything but there's there's only so much you can say about that so we end up talking about managers because i don't know it like there was a a commenter i came across on jeff sullivan's story yesterday uh about some of matheny's moves who describe managerial mistakes as like an unforced error that's exactly yeah that's exactly what i was thinking it's like the difference between uh it's like a mental error right yeah it's when you go oh you know we can handle it if you make a mistake but we can't handle mentally yeah in in my article i i said

it's like a premeditated mistake it's a it's a mistake that you you consider all the factors and you have some time to to think about it and and weigh your options and then you you make the wrong move and so and there's no one forcing you to make the wrong move. It's not like you, you were just beaten by a better pitch or whatever. You just, you made a bad decision. Um, and you can kind of quantify sort of how,

how bad a decision it is sometimes. Um, so that's why we ended up talking about this so much. It doesn't mean that we think it's the most important thing in the game or the most enjoyable part of watching the game to nitpick managerial moves. It's just something that it's, it's kind of an easier target and a legitimate target. Uh, so yeah. Who are you defending yourself against right now? Have you been getting emails or? Uh, I don't know. I I'm on the defensive here. I don't know who's on the offensive. But, yeah, I kind of feel self-conscious about it because we're on Twitter every night.

And, like, night after night, it seems like we're making the same complaints about the same managers. Like, okay, if he left his starter in too long last night and every previous night. Probably he's going to do it tonight also. But we still trot out the same complaints. And this is, yeah, I thought this was a particularly bad one. Lester had been great. He had been efficient. But, yeah, I just, I mean, at that point he's only going to go an inning or two more at most. And even if you knew in advance, the thing that Mitchell Lichman said, and I think as we record this, he's in the middle of writing a rant about how awful this move was. in advance that Lester was going to pitch two scoreless innings, he said it probably still would have been a bad move, just given the difference from those two scoreless innings

to what you'd expect from whatever reliever you'd put in, and the difference between Lester and a pinch hitter in that situation. So yeah, I thought that was a bad one. That's interesting, because I think this is a particular kind of move that does not feel repetitive to harp on because the variety of situations

feel quite broad. You have different leads, different offensive opportunities, different pitch counts, different pitcher effectivenesses, different bullpens in different states of the game. And so to me, it feels like each one of these is its own little snowflake. And I love them all. But maybe the mistake I'm making is thinking that the managers are really wrestling with each of these. And in fact, maybe none of these is even close to making

them think hard about it. And so they're like, they're all, they're all five, you know, five miles from the line. And so I should just think of them all as being clumped together. Uh, uh, but, uh, what about to the question of whether it's realistic? Do you think that Matheny thought hard about this? Uh, not Matheny, uh, the other Sean Farrell. Do I think he thought, I think it crossed his mind at least. And I don't know some of the other situations like this. I don't know whether it even would have crossed the manager's mind. In this case, I would think yes. Like even if the bases had been empty at that point,

I probably still would have pinch hit for him. With two outs or with one out? Yeah. You think so? I think so. Yeah, maybe I would have. That's a little harder for me. Yeah, it's harder, certainly.

I probably still would have done it, and if that had been the situation, then I think it probably wouldn't have even crossed his line or he wouldn't have considered it seriously. probably wouldn't have even crossed this line or he wouldn't have considered it seriously. But the fact that there were runners on and it was a rally and everything, he must have wrestled with it a little bit, I would think. But I don't know how many managers would have made a move there. Probably very few. I think there probably is a manager who would make that move, but probably very few. I think there probably is a manager who would make that move, but

probably very few. Just, you know, because it's the World Series. He's been pitching so well. He hasn't thrown a lot of pitches. He's, you know, the de facto ace of the team. Yeah. Most would not have

made that move, but I think it really should have been made. Well, so the Dodgers had almost this exact scenario against the Cardinals and pulled Kershaw. It was the top of the seventh, same, and Kershaw had thrown 72 pitches and was, well, I guess it was slightly different because they were trailing by one as opposed to being up by one, which is significant. Although I'm not sure which direction that's significant in.

Actually, now that I think about it, you're more likely to want your – I would think you're less concerned about having your best pitcher in when you're down one than up one. Although I guess Farrell's thinking is that Lester was his best pitcher. So, yeah. Lester was his best pitcher. So, yeah. But also, Kershaw was pinch hit for with one runner on and two outs as opposed to, you know, two men in scoring position and one out. So, and anyway, Mattingly pulled Kershaw and was criticized for it.

Now, Kershaw also had, I think, just started on short rest the previous start. And so, again, each of these is slightly different, which makes them fun. But, yeah, in thinking about it, I agree with you. I would have pulled him even if it had been two outs or one out and nobody on. The other thing that's interesting is that, as we've talked about, and as I think I talk about a lot more than probably is necessary, in the postseason, what is a scarce resource shifts and becomes opposite. And your bullpen is no longer scarce.

You no longer need to preserve it in any way. Whereas the one resource that is scarce in this postseason is Jon Lester. And so you might conceivably argue that by letting him throw 25 or 30 more pitches, argue that by letting him throw 25 or 30 more pitches, you keep him from coming back in game seven in any sort of significant two to four inning role. Whereas if you pull him after 60 pitches or whatever he had thrown, it's conceivable that he's got 40 pitches in him, 40 high quality pitches in him on two days rest on Wednesday or on Thursday. And so that's another thing that's worth thinking about. And I don't know if Farrell did think about it. Yeah. Yeah. I guess the other thing we could talk about it, it seems like we talked earlier in

the series and we talked after game one, after Wainwright pitched, about the Red Sox making pitchers work and the impact of that. And sort of seems like that you could make the case at least that that was the difference in this game. I think Lester and Wainwright both, I mean, they both pitched extremely well, but there was a difference in how hard they had to work. And I don't know whether you want to attribute that entirely to the lineups they were facing or just their own command and stuff and everything. But there was a difference in that I think Wainwright entered the seventh with 86 pitches and Lester was at like 69. So fairly significant difference there in how hard they had to work to get to that point. And then the seventh turned out to be sort of the pivotal inning where Wainwright gave up a couple runs and Lester didn't.

So if you want to make that case you can make the case that that it was the red sox patience and taking pitches and making wainwright work that maybe cost him a little bit of stuff or something by that point in the game and that they were able to to get to him then in part because of that um And you could, applying the same argument that we've been talking about, you can say that Adam Wainwright shouldn't have been in the game, right? I mean, he pitched six innings. It was his third time through the order. To Ellsbury, yeah.

Clearly it seems to me that he shouldn't have been there for Ellsbury. Yeah, right. And you could even say he shouldn't have pitched at all in that inning, that Carlos Martinez had had a day off. They could have done... Shelby Miller, I believe, had had a day off. Yes. But yeah, that's how they ended the WACA game,

was just going straight from WACA to Martinez for two to Rosenthal. That worked pretty well. They could have tried to do the same thing here with Martinez having had a day off. They didn't. They stuck with Wainwright. And again, it's the same thing. You've got an ace who's, you know, your top guy.

He's the guy you want in there in a high leverage situation in the World Series. And he's gotten you this far and he's striking out everyone and I don't know how many managers make that movie. There are probably not many. But you could say

that that was the difference here too. Alright. Last thing I want to ask you about Game 6 is obviously a must win situation for the Cardinals. And maybe Chris Singleton, I don't remember, somebody on ESPN, mentioned this idea that the Red Sox might consider it something,

if not a must-win, a game seven type situation, then more than typical because their game seven starter is kind of like going to be something they're not happy with. You know, like it's probably going to be Jake Peavy. Jake Peavy has arguably never had a good season start. He had a bad September for the Red Sox. He had a bad first start in the series. He had a bad first start in the series, and that's really kind of their only option.

They could go to Dubront, they could go to Dempster. Buchholz is obviously nothing like an option at all at this point. He's available out of the bullpen for whatever that's worth. Yeah, so it's not like the Cardinals have Wainwright coming back for game seven or anything like that they've got joe kelly um and in all hands on deck other than that uh approach um so i mean it's not as though they're going to be at a huge disadvantage or maybe any disadvantage at all but um on the other hand they're they're probably kind of internally thinking you know what what do we get from pb we can't expect much from him at this point um and we don't have much else so do you think that they manage this game or they approach this game uh any differently

because of that or is this do they have the luxury of getting to to play conservatively? Well, I think they would certainly manage Game 7 differently. I mean, I can imagine that if PV gets in any trouble at all, he'll be gone. I mean, I don't know that the options that they have to replace PV or to relieve PV in spite of... No, I'm talking about games. I know, I know, I know. Yeah, okay.

Right. So once you get to seven, then you have all of these guys who can come out. I see. And so that affects how you manage that game. In six, I don't know. I mean, at this point in Game 6 in the World Series, I feel like you're pretty much pulling out all the stops under any circumstances. No matter who's starting Game 7,

you're not going to just kind of let Game 6 slip away because you feel confident about your Game 7 starter. No, but you know, like remember when the Rays had a Helix in pitching and they pulled them after one inning, like one plus inning earlier in this postseason. That's like the sort of thing you do when you're, you know, it seems like the sort of thing you do when you're behind in the series, but not ahead in the series. And it's certainly not the sort of thing you do in the regular season. The more it becomes a must win uh the more likely you are to pull a guy super early and say you know we'll figure out the next day's bullpen the next day

we've got to win this game so like let's say lackey comes out uh and gives up you know three in the first uh you know inning and a half and there's two guys on uh and and two out uh is dubron hot at that point is dempster uh has dempster already thrown 25 warm-up pitches at that point or do they have the luxury of just sort of letting that game play out and then uh saving dempster and dubron for the next day and treating that day as the everybody goes day uh I feel like they can kind of do both. I mean, they have tomorrow off today, if you're listening to this, on Tuesday. And so I feel like they have enough arms at this point that they can,

if Lackey is struggling, they could go to Dupont. And then if Peavy is struggling in game seven, they would still have Dempster to throw in there if they needed to. They would still have Buchholz to throw in there if they needed to. So I feel like, I don't know, there's just so much time off at this point that I think they could afford to be aggressive in game six and not compromise their ability to be aggressive in game seven completely. Maybe they save Dubrant for game seven because I guess I would have more confidence in him than I would probably in Dempster or certainly Buchholz. So maybe if you're already losing the game,

then you go with one of those shakier options. But I think they can afford to be pretty aggressive both nights. All right. We'll end it. As we end it, I want to note that Lana of Twitter tweeted at Shelby Miller, blink once if you're okay, blink twice if you need someone to break into the clubhouse and rescue you. And while we were talking, Shelby Miller replied to her, blinking once. I like that.

All right, so we'll be back tomorrow with the email show, podcast at baseballperspectives.com. We could use some questions and we'll be back for that.