Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 318: Playoff Listener Emails and a Fix for the Draft

Episode Date: October 30, 2013

Ben and Sam answer listener emails about the playoffs, then discuss how MLB could disincentivize tanking for higher draft picks.

I was supposed to get a wake-up call that did not come. Should have checked into a hotel. Yeah, or never had a child. That goes without saying. Good morning and welcome to episode 318 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus. I'm Ben Lindberg, joined by Sam Miller. We're doing a morning recording on this Wednesday, and it's an email show. So we've picked out a few emails. You sent some good emails this week. Where do we want to

start? Do you want to start somewhere in particular um well i guess uh for continuity's sake we might as well start with the john lester ones because we got a bunch a bunch of emails about john lester uh and whether he should have stayed in in the sixth inning or i guess it was the top of the seventh um and uh in particular the, the claim that he should have been pinch hit for, even if there was nobody on base, um, which in which case, you know, sort of the offensive advantage of getting a pinch hitter in would be pretty low. And in that case, you would be more making a choice about your pitcher. And people didn't think that John Lester, uh, you know, in the seventh inning is a worse

bet than a Boston bullpen that's been kind of shaky. And so do you have any more in defense of that? Or do we just basically have the same old idea that pitchers are starting pitchers are kind of overrated the third time through the order. And in particular, the things that you expect from a starting pitcher are bulk innings at a fairly high level and not necessarily one inning at a super high level. And so in a lot of cases, if given the choice between having a reliever for one inning, I mean, there's a reason that relievers have much smaller ERAs than starters,

I guess is the point, right? Yeah, right. And it's not that they areas than starters i guess is the point right yeah right and it's not that they are more talented uh the opposite is the case so yeah um somehow those eras end up higher and it has to do with the fact that you're facing more batters and seeing them more times and yeah i don't know i i don't want to just restate what we said or what I wrote about it. I guess a couple of the emails we got were sort of tailored specifically to this situation, Boston's bullpen, the idea that the Red Sox relief options right now are really shaky, that Uehara and Tozawa have both said that they're tired.

And Breslow, you know, in his first couple appearances in the series, looked like he couldn't throw a strike or like he couldn't do anything right all of a sudden. And then Dubrant had pitched a couple innings a couple days earlier, and you might need him for a later game. And so then you're kind of looking at, like, Franklin Morales and Ryan Dempster and people that you don't really want in a high-leverage spot. I guess Workman is also an option. But I don't know. I think we're maybe underrating even those relief options,

which I would agree are not the most reassuring. I think even so, I think we're kind of overestimating the amount that or overestimating the efficiency with which a pitcher who, even one who's been pitching really well, continues to pitch late in a game. And I think if you kind of run the numbers behind it, talking specifically about the actual situation that occurred, because we got a couple emails that disagreed with our take on even even the actual situation not the hypothetical one where no one was on base um i i just think you know what what do you what do you if you disagree with that what do you think the true talent is of the best relief option in that next inning. Like, you know, it seems like people are maybe thinking

that the best relief option that Boston had there was like, I don't know, like a 5ERA or something. And I don't think it's quite that bad. So even if you just picked one of those people who were tired or not so great, I think the expected runs, if you kind of run the numbers as we laid out the first time, supports the idea of having a pinch hitter there. of John Lester and maybe this is maybe this is completely crucial information or maybe it's not I don't know but in his career Lester has actually not seen the traditional drop-off in performance in his second third and fourth times through the order now uh to some degree there's well I was going to say to some degree there's like a little bit of a um of a sample skewing there because he's

more likely to make it deeper into the game when he's pitching well, but he was pitching well in this case. So if you believe that that's the case, then that would be the case here too. So in his first trip through the order, hitters have a 689 OPS against him. Second time, 722. So you see a bump there, but third time is 703 and in the the few times he's gone a fourth time at 667 so that's basically the same uh throughout it's a little tiny bit of a bump so yeah um i i don't know my my suspicion and i don't know that i would have the guts to pull this off and i don't know that it's even right and i don't know that farrell should have but my suspicion is that the best option is probably ryan dempster in that situation and that Dempster would get the reliever bump, and would probably be,

you know, pretty awesome in an inning, but I could be totally wrong about that. Yeah, and I think there was a comment maybe on the article I wrote in part about this that said that that person thought that pitching Lackey the previous day in the eighth was a worse move, and I don't think that was a terrible move. I don't know that I would have made that move because there seems to be a lot of uncertainty if you use someone in a role that he hasn't really been used in a decade or so. I would want to kind of do a trial run at a non-World Series opportunity if I were thinking about doing that. But Lackey's a good starting pitcher, and starting pitchers working in relief are even better.

And so I didn't hate that move, really. I did notice that about Lester, and I asked Mitchell Lichman basically whether we should trust that, whether if an individual pitcher doesn't seem to have had that decrease the third time through the order, it means that somehow he's able to resist that or it means that it's just a small sample or something. I highly doubt that a pitcher's own times through the order numbers, even for several seasons, would have much skill associated with it. In other words, we would want to regress it almost 100% toward league average. Again, even if we have several seasons, 500 innings pitch worth of data, these type of things almost never have much skill component, true variation from pitcher to pitcher to them uh and he's he just thinks that the uh he says the batter and his teammates have recently seen the pitcher so they do better about him the more against him the more they see him the more pitches they do the more pitches they see the better they do i don't think a pitcher can really do anything about it um so i i don't

know that there's been it would be hard to to try to figure out if an individual pitcher were somehow immune to that just by changing pitches better than other pitchers or better pitch selection or something that he does differently. It's possible, but I don't know if I would buy it. All right. So this question is from Wes, who writes, I've always thought it would be fascinating if teams were allowed to claim one player off of the team that they eliminate from the playoffs for the next rounds. It's somewhat along the lines of a temporary rental proposal,

but without consent. Let's also assume you aren't allowed to take starting pitchers because usage has a real cost at this stage of the season and because the choices are too easy. So for this purpose, it is interesting, by the way. I agree, Wes. That is an interesting – that's a fascinating idea. So for the purposes of this exercise, let's change Ben's last name to Charrington and allow him to pick a Tiger.

Sam can be John Mozelek and pick a Dodger. Who do you guys take? An injured Miguel, a healthy Puig. mizellic and pick a dodger who do you guys take an injured miguel a healthy puig do you take the best player and plug him into the lineup or is the chemistry problem caused by sitting an existing guy who helped reach the world series too damaging to risk this would be exciting right even if your team loses you've got a guy to root for in the next round and you'll get him back at the end of the season what do you think do you first off yeah uh before you pick, before you pick a name, does the chemistry thing bother you? I mean, you wouldn't want to, for obvious reasons,

hopefully you would try to get the guy who replaces your worst player, and it would be sort of, I don't think Pete Cosma is going to be all like, ah! Yeah, I don't think the team will rebel about the idea of benching your worst player. At that point, I don't know, they're probably pretty interested in getting a ring and a World Series share and all that. And if this is institutionalized as a rule in baseball, then it will be expected. Well, I mean, in very few cases does even a benching in the postseason lead to a big deal, right? Like the A-Rod thing was a huge deal. This is A-Rod batting eighth.

That one time was a huge deal. But that's because it was A-Rod. I was in my head imagining if I replaced or if you replace Steven Drew would that be an issue chemistry wise but you know people are already talking about like oh well should you know should Steven Drew be playing and should he have been you know should Bogarts have replaced him if Middlebrooks have been hitting and so I mean they already have this conversation it's a little different when you're bringing in a uh you know a ringer but uh I think it would go okay. So, alright. So who do you take? So I'm supposed to take a Tiger. Do we want to pick a World Series team each? Because it'll change depending on the Red Sox.

It's really hard not to take Cabrera even with a groin that needs surgery. But, man, I don't know. I guess their weak point right now, I don't really count Steven Drew as a weak point even though he's not hitting because I think he's a pretty good player. So I guess I would take – I kind of want to take Avila. Uh-huh. I like him.

And I like Ross too though. We were just talking – I don't know. Maybe this would be saver heresy, but we were just talking about their bullpen. You could always take Benoit. Could do that. Could take Drew Smiley. Drew Smiley would be a pretty good pick for this series. You could take Prince Fielder and play him at third.

I wouldn't do that. Yeah, Drew Smiley, if you actually used him as a two-inning guy and a lefty against the Cardinals, that would be a pretty valuable weapon in this series. Maybe I'd pick Drew Smiley. I guess choosing Hunter over Nava against right-handers doesn't make me that hot, but choosing Hunter over Gomes actually kind of does. I mean, the defensive boost that you would get, and I think that Hunter's a better hitter, particularly probably against right-handers.

And so I might consider that. I mean, with Victorino, with Victorino's status kind of up in the air, I could certainly see a Hunter pick, although you wouldn't know that Victorino was going to hurt himself. Yes, I'll tell you. Before the series started. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I can see the case for a bullpen guy because they don't really need a position player so much

unless you really think that steven drew is not steven drew right now and i still think he's probably just a pretty good player who's having a bad month uh maybe they could could use a bullpen guy more maybe benoit or smiley is the is the right call so you can pitch it for john lester. And you can be confident. Yeah. So I was, you know, without knowing his health, I mean, the easy answer for the Cardinals would be to take Hanley Ramirez and, you know, put him at short. Or third, frankly. Either way. Those are probably the two weakest spots on the club right now.

But you don't know his health. and so that makes it a little tricky i would not take one a rebate for the same role although rebate's fine i might no i wouldn't uh and the other issue with the cardinals is center field and or the closest thing to an issue is center field and that was the dodgers issue too so unless you want to do the exact same thing they did and put a ethier in center field to give back a bunch of base hits, then you don't really have a solution there. Just put Puig in center field. Were you surprised that ethier instead of Puig went to center? I don't know. Not particularly.

I just sort of accepted that that's what would happen, having not seen Puig before. So I don't want – I don't think I want Puig particularly over – I mean I would rather have him, but I wouldn't want him particularly over Holiday or Beltran on a corner. I don't think Crawford can play center. So I think I probably would just go with the injured Hanley Ramirez. I mean, it's been some days. He's probably okay now. If he could play with the ribs, I don't know. I don't know what ribs do.

I'd probably take Hanley Ramirez and get nothing. I'd probably take Hanley Ramirez and he'd be on the bench the whole series and I'd be an idiot. So go one round further. You also beat the Tampa Bay Rays. Who do you take from the Rays? Tampa Bay Rays. That's the team with Ben Zobris, Nevin Longoria, and Desmond Jennings.

Jose Molina. That team. Oh, yeah, yeah, Jose Molina. So you have heard of them. I have, yeah. I've written about him a few times. Well, again, I guess I would probably take Longoria and play Bogarts at short. Yeah, that seems like the right answer.

That doesn't seem like there's any possible answer besides that uh unless you want unless you really want Zobrist's utility um and of course McCutcheon is like the I mean unless Mike Trout were somehow available McCutcheon would be the perfect player for the Cardinals so would be nice yeah yeah all right um and so now i have to get another question uh how much is game one worth would you rather win game one in a seven game series or be down game one but have a team that is 20 wins better so you're you get you get to either be equal to your opponent but you get game one or you get to be down a game, but you're 20 games better. You are a 105-win team, and they're an 85-win 2006 Cardinals.

Well, one could do the math on this and figure out which is better. My instinct would be to take game one and be the worst team. My instinct would be two as well. And I would guess that if it's a true 20 wins, that that would be the wrong call. Well, maybe. We could probably figure that out ourselves possibly later not what we're recording no we could pause and do it and then come back into the magic of science and have the

answer immediately we could i guess you're your daughter you don't sound like you're gonna do that either yeah probably not all right well we'll move on to the next one. And then if we have time at the end, then we'll pause, we'll do the math, and then we'll give an answer. I feel pretty confident that it's actually going to – well, I don't know. Am I confident? Pretty confident that your answer was incorrect, but you chose it anyway. All right. Let's see. One more kind of World Series-themed one, and then we'll, we'll go

to the one I want to get to. But, uh, Dustin writes, I'm going to present you with a comment from a St. Louis fan. I read today on the discussion board. I feel like it's exasperatingly misguided, but I'm not even sure where to start with a rebuttal. Take three minutes to rip it apart. I don't know if I'm going to be able to rip it apart, to be honest. Uh, sorry.

Um, then I will regurgitate your words as if I know something. Quote, right now, Koji Ohara is working with magic, in my opinion. He's the Edward Mojica of July and August. And I actually thought about writing something along these lines and never got to it. And I actually don't have anything to say about it because I never got to it. But, I mean, Mujica was basically Uehara for a large part of the year in style. And he was extremely effective doing it. But when I was doing that Uehara piece in, I guess, September, there was only one pitcher who threw a higher percentage of splitters or change-ups in baseball than Uehara, and it was Mujica. There was only one pitcher who threw a higher

percentage of strikes in baseball, and it was Mujica. And Mujica, I think, if I'm not mistaken, had the highest strike rate in history this year. And through the end of August. So not just in September and August, or I mean July and August, which was the sample that they chose, but through August, through August 26th, he had a 1.73 ERA. He had 43 strikeouts and he had three walks. So that's basically O'Hara. And then he walked two in September. He allowed runs in six of his outings.

His strike rate dropped to 66%, and he was not very good. But in the sample that the guy cited, which I'm going to cherry pick for him because he is cherry picking and wants to cherry pick, 23 innings, one run,.39 ERA. Although actually really otherwise no different than the rest of the year the rest of the season before that 13 strike that's one walk so

I guess I just I wanted to read that because I feel like it's worth bringing up that that Mujica essentially could have been our Uehara-esque hero and he completely fell apart and that's what i kind of was was was treading would i mean people don't have faith in guys like mojica

and frankly that i don't think they had faith in guys like uhara until he just kept doing it and so um the narrative for either one could have gone the other way probably fairly easily. Do you have any idea why Mojica sucks now? From what I've heard, he's just tired. He just got really fatigued at the end of the year. I haven't looked to see what that did to his stuff, whether he started throwing less hard or anything, but it's sort of the same story as Shelby Miller. his stuff, whether he started throwing less hard or anything, but that was, that was certain. It's

sort of the, the same story as Shelby Miller. It's just guy who was really effective all season and then ran out of gas down the stretch and had some not so good outings. And now, now the Cardinals won't, won't use him under any circumstances. Um, but yeah, I mean, you can, you could do this with a lot of relievers. I'm sure you could, you could find a stretch that's similar. I mean, I mean, Mujica is not a strikeout guy like Guajar is. So if you want to say that he's, he's less dominant in that sense and he relies more on his defense and everything. You could say that. But in terms of who was actually more effective in the actual results, pretty equivalent, yeah.

Do you have any theories on why the Cardinals are basically playing with a 23-man roster? It's strange. As opposed to having two guys they actually have faith in for those spots or are conceivably used. Yeah, and I don't know who those guys would be necessarily, but assuming that Mujica and Miller are on the roster for mop-up innings, I guess, right? I mean, that seems to be their only

purpose they're certainly not being used in any high leverage spots they're at this point not being used in any spots so you figure maybe they're there to just soak up an inning if if there's a blowout or something and you and you don't want to but i mean yeah it's not uncommon it's every team has a couple of guys that they don't use. Right. I mean, I think the Tigers last year, I forget. There were a couple of guys the Tigers had that they never used. I remember seeing that they use like something like 21 players in the World Series or something like that.

And if they weren't, if Mujica and Miller were, let's say, Keith Butler and John Gast, nobody would be like, wow, why are those guys on the roster if they're not going to use them? The strangeness is that their mop-up guys are guys who were formerly good, so we kind of focus on them and think that surely he's a better option. And Miller in particular, when we talked about how the red socks against strike throwers basically turn into a league average offense shelby miller somebody pointed out in the comments shelby miller was the the preeminent strike zone starting

pitcher in baseball this year he he completely pounded the strike zone and so you would imagine that he that that if he has anything left like this is the assignment that was just made for him, like it was built for him. And so he – I mean it's hard for us to imagine that he can really just have nothing whatsoever left. And I guess you assume – I mean the Cardinals know a lot more than we do. They get to see him throw every day or every couple days. They might know if there's actually an injury there that hasn't been revealed, which would be not the least bit surprising to us at this point. If there is an injury, then it would surprise me that he's on the roster

because at that point you're not going to pitch him under any circumstances. So you might as well just get your best mediocre reliever who spent the season in AAA or was an up-and-down guy or whatever just for those mop-up innings, because you're not going to risk Miller hurting himself worse. Yeah, it depends on what the injury is. I mean, if it's dead arm, then you might have him pitch through that,

even though that might be something that in the regular season, you would have him take two turns through the rotation off. I mean, Buckhold seems pretty obviously physically compromised and they pitched him. Um, if it were blisters, you might keep him on the roster. Uh, so we don't know.

I mean, it's quite possible. I guess all I'm saying is that it's quite possible that in a world where the Cardinals could tell us the truth no matter what, it's quite possible that in one sentence they could completely quiet any questions we have. It might be as simple as one sentence that they know that we don't know it's hard to know um all right so uh all right so then last question uh is from mark um who wrote about a link that matt myers of espn insider um tweeted out yesterday out yesterday. It's an old link. It's a year and a half old. But it's about a solution for fixing the draft so that teams don't have an incentive to take. And so this was a solution that was presented at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in March 2012.

And it's by a researcher named Adam gold and gold's idea is that, uh, instead of giving the, the, the first pick to the team with the worst record, you give the first pick to the team that wins the most games after being eliminated. So if, uh, for instance, the, well, I don't, I, I probably should have looked this up. But let's say the Astros got eliminated on August 1st, and let's say the Marlins got eliminated on August 16th, and the Astros won 26 games after that, and the Marlins won 22 games after that. Then the Astros would get the first pick still.

The Marlins would get the second pick still. But it wouldn't necessarily just go down to their final record. That all makes sense, right? It would both skew toward the worst teams but also give teams incentive to keep winning until the last day of the season and so this gets to a kind of I think a fundamental problem that economists point out about the draft that it incentivizes losing and you kind of, I think, a fundamental problem that economists point out about the draft, that it incentivizes losing, and you always want to incentivize winning. And so the kind of holy grail is to find a draft solution that both incentivizes winning while also rewarding the

worst teams, because the ultimate goal, i guess the ultimate goal is to incentivize winning but the intermediate goal for the league is to have some sort of competitive balance so that bad teams are not horribly bad forever so um first off what do you think of this solution for baseball is does it apply to baseball uh i think so i like the i'd like to know what the numbers are in baseball and maybe one of us will will research that at some point uh this adam gold guy said that that in basketball uh in the last seven seasons or so teams that missed the playoffs won 32 percent of their games after they were mathematically eliminated compared to 37.5% beforehand. So not an enormous difference, but probably a significant difference, I would guess, in that sort of sample.

Yeah, unless those teams have just all traded away. And I don't get the feeling that basketball teams trade like baseball teams trade in July. So unless they're trading a lot of significant parts away, that is a big difference. 32% and 37% is kind of a huge difference over a big sample. So I'd like to know what the numbers are in baseball just to see how big a problem this is. But yeah, I think it's generally a good idea as I was running it I wondered I wondered whether there was any potential for the tanking to be just time shifted a little bit yeah whether whether you would then tank in order to become eliminated earlier I guess that's more problematic, probably, because you wouldn't want

to look like you're losing intentionally ever, really, but especially when you're still theoretically in it. Although, I mean, if you're a team like the Astros, I don't know that it makes any difference. It's not like anyone ever thought that they were still in it at any point on opening day. So I guess if you tank and lose more early in the season, maybe you lose more revenue. Maybe fewer people come to the park down the stretch. Maybe fewer people watch you on TV. That could be a concern. concerned, but I could still see a team like the Astros or, or the Marlins or, you know, doing whatever they would do after being eliminated before they were eliminated just

to get eliminated sooner. Um, so that's possible. And then you'd have people, you don't want people rooting for their teams to lose after they've been eliminated you don't want them to root for elimination either um i guess is there is there potential for not the worst team to be eliminated earlier because of the division they're in or i guess yeah that so that is tricky with baseball yeah um although i guess if it's if it's the wild card, then you'd still kind of, everyone is still on the same, well, even so, yeah, there's some potential there for teams that are in certain divisions to be eliminated sooner and not actually be the worst team,

and so that kind of complicates things. And then I guess you could kind of make the case that tanking could be productive in the long term if the result is that you you play rookies in September or, you know, you like. right now but are going to be the the future of your franchise and you call them up when rosters expand and you play them above some some impending free agent veteran because you don't need to win right now and and it's it's tanking in the short term but it's possibly beneficial in the long term to get those guys summit bats and maybe you'd have you'd have some disincentive to do that because you're trying to win in the current season yeah i actually i think that uh one of the big problems is that it would discourage trading of veterans in july and besides the fact that that

is a long term that that does more to provide competitive balance long term than even the draft, maybe. I think that's something that wants to be encouraged. But also I think it's sort of nice, the idea that baseball funnels its best players into October so that you have better October teams and better pennant race teams and theoretically fewer teams playing you know bad players or or injured players in in September and October so I actually would want those players to continue to be traded and if if the Astros season quote-unquote season doesn't really even start until they get eliminated and they want to actually be bad at the beginning and good after that then they wouldn't

have as much incentive to trade those players so that that would bother me. Um, and also, yeah, I think that it's, it is probably worth asking whether this is an issue at all in baseball. Um, I think that, um, so I have two ideas for, for, for how to, to, to maybe, uh, handle this. One is very simple, and I haven't really thought it through, but it's very simple. And it's simply if you get the first pick in the draft, that the next year you can't have higher than the fifth pick. And so, I mean, the first pick is an outrageously lopsided advantage. The rest of the picks are all just sort of, you know, they're fairly well distributed, and, you know, it's better to have the second than the 20th and all that. But, I mean, the first pick is a completely whole different thing.

And it does seem like incentivizing a team to get a whole generation of number one picks creates situations like the Astros that I personally like, but most people don't seem to like. So, uh, and also, I don't know, it, it just, it feels like a shortcut, right? It, it, I ironically, considering it takes many years of, of suffering, but it does feel like a little bit of a shortcut to get three number one picks in a row. Um, so that's one idea. And maybe it's even more than that. Maybe it's, uh, if you get the number one pick, you can't draft in the top 15 the next year. Or maybe if you get the number one pick, you can't draft in the top five. And if you get the second pick, you can't draft in the top six.

And I don't know. You have some sort of like year-to-year limits in how much draft talent you can actually pilot. Because you can still – if you're but trying then and you're doing a somewhat competent job then you're you shouldn't be probably getting top three picks year after year if you're bad and not trying and doing a competent job then you will and if you're bad and trying but doing an incompetent job then you probably will and i don't feel like rewarding you either if you're just bad and so your team sucks that bad every year, I don't feel like you're a good steward for these high draft picks. So some sort of a multi-year draft max, draft cap, basically, in any three-year

period or something like that. The second one I have, and I think that this handles the incentives issue more directly than the first idea, is simply this. The worst team in baseball gets the 30th pick. The second worst team gets the first pick. And so in this way, you are accomplishing exactly what you want to accomplish. You're providing the worst teams with the highest picks and the best teams with the lowest picks for competitive balance. But you are also making it extremely dangerous to be that bad. And I don't think any team that is conceivably thinking about tanking to get a higher draft pick would want to risk the scenario where they go 4-26 in September and get the 30th pick instead of the first. So every team that could conceivably be tanking would have an incentive to play for at least, you know, to be, well, you just couldn't play for that last pick.

It would be too close. If there was some scenario where a team like – even the Astros, it wasn't obvious until the last – it wasn't totally obvious until the last two weeks when they lost 15 in a row that they would necessarily get that pick. I mean you'd have to have a season where a team was – like the 2003 Tigers probably ran away with that pick so badly that you could see – you could maybe see a race for 29 uh between like the 29 28th and 27th teams but really it would be it would be it would be unknown it would be too hard to to call so i'm going with that i'm standing behind that as the as the way to fix the draft if it's a problem which it probably isn't uh Yeah, I like that. I tend to think that, I don't know if it's a big problem, but I tend to think there's something to it, but we should find out. We should do some research on that. Okay. Okay. So we're done. What was the other thing we were going to, oh, we were going to find out if it, yes. So let's pause. I have time. I'll do it and I'll come back.

Okay, so we're back and we have figured out that a team with a 20-win edge on another team will win a one-game head-to-head matchup 62.5% of the time. So in exchange for giving up one game in the series, you get basically a 62 to 38 edge in the other games. Now, I don't actually know how to do math, and so there might be a huge flaw with what I'm going to do next. But it seems to me that if you have what is essentially a 24-point lead, 24 percentage point advantage in six games, 24 percentage point advantage in six games, then that adds up to 144 points of probability advantage, which you're getting in exchange for a 100 point disadvantage in a single game. So over the course of seven games, you would have the edge if you were the 20 win team. The problem is that the World Series doesn't go seven games. It only can go seven games. So if you were going to play all seven, I would feel confident that over enough simulations, you would

win more games. But a lot of those games might be in series that you lose three to four. So I'm not sure that it actually holds up for the likelihood of winning an individual series. And so for that, an individual series um and so for that uh because you know if the series only goes five games then you know you would only have the edge in four of those games uh so uh so i i'm gonna have zachary levine tell me the answer to that and we'll we'll get back tomorrow with that but it does seem like most series are going to go uh in this. Most series would go probably long enough that I would think the 20-20 win team has an edge. So the original question was how many wins is one game worth? until you get basically an equivalent, it would be something like 99 wins to 85 wins would be about worth giving up the one game

or not worth giving it. It's right where it could go either way. So basically the one game is worth about 15 or 14 wins of true talent. So that's the answer if my math is anywhere close to correct. Enjoy game six, everyone.