Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 547: The ALDS Discussion Show

Episode Date: October 2, 2014

Ben and Sam discuss the NL wild card game, Adam Dunn, and the suffering of Oakland fans, then preview the ALDS.

I'd like to ruffle the spring, but I'm falling more of your Ooh, messed around with that big guy till he sings no wings Good morning and welcome to episode 547 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus presented by The Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I am Ben Lindberg of Grantland.com, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Prospectus. Howdy. Hi. So we're recording a little late.

You had NL Wildcard game recapping duties last night when we would normally record so we were planning to talk about the NL wildcard game a little bit and maybe we will very briefly but there is not nearly as much to say about that game as there was about the game the night before no it must have been a challenging game to recap

because there was really Madison Bumgarner and yeah that was about it good pitcher pitches well not so good pitcher pitches poorly yes game largely boring yeah Bumgarner was great ESPN stats and info pointed out that there have been six shutouts with at least 10 strikeouts by pitchers since August 1st and And Bumgarner has three of those. So he is pitching very well and he pitched very well last night. And it's not even that much fun to talk about the Volquez versus Cole decision in retrospect, because if we're

going to play hypotheticals, then we have to, assuming that Bumgarner's performance was not affected by the Pirates' choice of starting pitcher, then unless Cole had matched him shutout inning for shutout inning, it wouldn't have made much of a difference anyway. So that's not even that intriguing a storyline to me. Hmm. Well, hmm. Now I question my decision to write some words last night. Well, you've got to say something about it because otherwise there's not much to say about the game. It was fun. It was a fun game for about three innings, three plus innings. And it was loud in Pittsburgh.

And just like last year, they were really into it. And then Brendan Crawford hit a grand slam and they were not into it anymore. And neither were we, really. So, Ben, I'm just curious about this. So Volquez, and my recap, like you said, there wasn't that much to write about. I wrote about how Volquez is exactly who we should have,

well, I don't know what I write about. I wrote about how Volquez is exactly who we should have always, and how, well, I don't know what I wrote about. It was late. But Volquez, nobody six months ago would have considered him a playoff caliber starter. He was almost freely available in the way that a player who gets $5 million in a one-year deal is essentially free talent. And he was on a postseason team last year and didn't pitch. I mean, Edison Volquez was not considered anything like a postseason caliber pitcher

until like three months ago, correct? Yes. So his fit, his ex-fit, his Sierra, his Fra, all essentially identical. Sierra over the last four years, 4-2-4, 4-4-4, 4-2-0, 4-2-0. Totally identical almost. Ex-fit, 4-0-8, 4-2-0, 4-0-7, 4-2-0. Would you guess that Edmondson Volquez is any better than he was 12 months ago? Or was this year completely a blip?

And I say that because I think that probably five years ago, we would have said with, like you and I, if we were having this conversation, and we were a bit more kind of dogmatic, we probably would have said, oh, nothing has changed. He is exactly the same pitcher he always was, and the ERA is completely misleading. Maybe I'm misrepresenting what you would have said five years ago, but I probably would have. And now our relationship to these numbers is a bit more complicated. We know that neither the peripherals nor the runs prevented

stats totally capture everything and it it's often something in the middle it's sometimes not something in the middle sometimes it's totally uh on one side or the other just based on volquez's year uh volquez's history volquez's pitching coach uh the pirates own confidence in vol I mean, they didn't throw him out there without obviously having some idea about his peripherals and his history. All that taken together, what would you say, like if there was a sliding scale between the ex-fit Volquez and the ERA Volquez, how much would you weight each one in kind of projecting who he actually is?

Yeah, I think he was clearly a different pitcher, but I'm not sure he was a better pitcher in a sustainable way. I mean, he was very wild in the past. He threw more strikes, but he also struck fewer people out. He threw more sinkers, and I, did he get more ground balls? But if you just kind of put it all, add it all up, it doesn't seem like necessarily a better pitcher. I mean, he had the low BABIP and he had a lot of unearned runs allowed

and just lots of things that made his run prevention look better than it was. And maybe the Pirates and their shifting and their defense helped. And so, yeah, I don't know. I think you're right. There has been sort of this backlash against the idea that FIP or whatever, fielding independent pitching stat, is gospel. And there should be it's not always but i think the the burden of proof is sort of on you if you want to suggest that that's misleading in a certain pitcher's case and i think it takes a bigger sample than we normally say to to prove or strongly suggest that a pitcher has that ability, because not many pitchers do in the long run. And that was something that Louis Paulus wrote about for BP earlier this year, that outperforming your FIP can be random, and that can happen for a couple seasons and

not beyond that. So I think you're right. I don't think it's really clear that Volquez is significantly better than he was before. So Volquez is, I don't know if there was an option. I'm going to assume there wasn't an option and that Volquez is now a free agent. So what does he get this year? I mean, he made $5 million this year coming off last year when he was pretty awful.

So double that? I mean, I don't know. I can't really imagine him being a guy who gets like a four-year deal or something at this point. Has he nosed his way into the Jeremy Guthrie 333 bucket? Yeah, maybe. Maybe he gets there. Seems high. It does.

And there are better pitchers available, the top-tier guys, but maybe I haven't looked at who else might be available in the Volquez range. All right. Okay. So before we talk about AL series, I just wanted to point out a fun fact. I think it's a fun fact about Adam Dunn, who is retiring. And this is something that was pointed out at Tom Tango's site a year ago or maybe longer by a reader there and a commenter

there. And Joe Posnanski wrote about it at the time, having seen that. And it's a fun stat and it holds true today. The comparison between Juan Pierre and Adam Dunn, who seem like complete opposite players or players who arrived at their value in completely different ways, have almost exactly the same career stats in almost every category. In games, Pierre played 1994, Dunn played 2001. In plate appearances appearances Dunn had about 50 more plate appearances and in war if you you know baseball prospectus warp kind

of screws it up because it thinks that Dunn is better than Pierre if you go by either of the other wars though it is almost exactly the same baseball reference war 16.6 for Pierre 16.7 for Dunn and Fangraphraphs war is is almost exactly the same too and dunn has almost double the career earnings which is interesting he is

113 million dollars in career earnings pierre at 57 even though in in all other sorts of stats, value stats, surface stats, traditional stats, well, not RBI, but most of them, they are equals. They are twins. It is especially interesting because Juan Pierre feels like for much of our lifetimes was a Sabre punchline, and Adam Dunn was a Sabre standard bearer. And I think that was based on the idea that people had that Dunn was underrated and Pierre was overrated. And that's what it was.

I mean, there was always a sense that some team was overpaying Juan Pierre and giving him too many plate appearances to bunt and get thrown out stealing. But in fact, yeah, I mean, Dunn got MVP votes one, two, three times. Pierre only twice. Dunn was an MVP twice. Pierre never was. Did I say an MVP twice? You did, yeah.

An all-star twice, an all-star twice. And Pierre never was. And then, like you say, the earnings. So, in fact, fact Juan Pierre dramatically underrated for much of his career maybe Dunn was overrated okay oh and I like the

I like the stat about the Giants and the A's in do or die games or yeah elimination games you wrote about it Will Leach wrote about it some other people did. The A's are 0-7 in their last postseason elimination games, and the Giants are 7-0.

And then I saw Ken Arneson, our friend Ken Arneson, who is an A's fan, writes about the A's, pointed out that in Billy Beane's tenure, the A's have played 14 games in which a victory would advance them to the next round of the playoffs, and they have lost all but one of those games, which is difficult to do and probably pretty painful for A's fans, which is something that Will Leach wrote about on Wednesday when everyone was writing about the Royals. Will zagged and wrote about the A's and the pain of their losing.

And it does seem like in net fan pain, the Royals never making the playoffs and being bad all year, and the A's making the playoffs often but almost never advancing is kind of an interesting discussion. I don't know which is more painful. I think probably the equally painful know which is more painful. I think probably the equally painful or A's more painful. I don't know that you would trade if you were an A's fan. I don't think you would trade to be a Royals fan and never make the playoffs. But once you're an

A's fan, you adjust. It's like how people are the same amount of happy in all different walks of life even if it seems like seems like one person is in a class or in a position that they should be happier everyone's the same amount of happy so if you're an ace fan and you are used to making the playoffs every year then your pain is now probably as painful as the Royals fan pain. It's just a different kind of pain. I would dispute that. Go ahead. Well, I don't think that we... I don't think our happiness is set by the...

We don't judge our life's happiness based on how happy we were on the day we die. It's a long process and there is happiness and lack of happiness that is running through the storyline the entire way. Last year when Dan Brooks made that graph showing how much This is gonna be hard to explain in words It was a chart showing how much each team's playoff odds had changed from day to day in kind of like an absolute sense So if your playoff odds went up 5% one day and then dropped 8% the next day and then went up 8% next day That would be over those days. It would have been you 21 points of total change. And if you were the Marlins, the playoff odds started at zero. Over the

course of the year, the playoff odds would have changed like eight points the entire year. There was no movement. There was no suspense. And I kind of wondered whether the Indians missed the playoffs last year. But they were like number two on this chart, which to me suggested that they, you could maybe make the case that the Indians fan had. Indians made the wild card game. Yeah, so they missed the playoffs. Okay.

Yeah. So the, God, there's like, there's like eight people right now who are just clenching their fists in fury at me. So you could make the case that the Indians fan had a more satisfying experience than, say, the – who ran away with it last year? Who was the team that ran away with it? Well, we could talk about this year since Dan and I just redid that. Sure.

I wrote about it for Grantland. The most exciting team by that measure shows up as the Seattle Mariners. Exactly. There you go. So that's a perfect case. You could make the case that once we have kind of separated ourselves from today and, you know, this week and the emotions that people are feeling this week, you know, this week and the emotions that people are feeling this week, you might conclude, assuming that, say, the Nationals don't win the World Series, that the Mariners fan had a more engaging experience than the Nationals fan.

Or certainly, I mean, by a huge, huge margin, even though they are in the exact same place right now and played the exact same number of games, by a huge, huge margin had a more satisfying season than the Twins had, right? Just because there was this general engagement. And so I don't think that the A's and the Royals are anywhere close to comparable, is what I'm saying. Yeah, maybe not. The Royals fan's pain is distributed over a longer period, and it's not ever as acute,

probably. period and it's not ever as acute probably there's no one day that it is as painful for a royals fan as the the aftermath of an ace postseason loss because their expectations are so low the whole time so it's sort of a different kind of different sort of suffering and hard to compare them, but yes, maybe you're right. Okay, so Division Series start today. I previewed both of them. You previewed Angels and did you preview Angels?

Yes, you previewed Angels and Royals and RJ Anderson did Orioles and Tigers for Baseball Perspectives, so you can go find those previews now. Since we both wrote about Angels-Royals, I guess we can start there. Break down this series, Sam Miller.

What would you guess that Pakoda, what kind of odds would you guess that Pakoda gives the Angels in game one or percentage chance? Okay, so this is Weaver versus Vargas. That seems like, although Pocota doesn't really like Weaver, right? Historically has never, or Warp has never really liked Weaver. Yeah, Warp has historically not liked Weaver, that is true.

Okay, I will say it's an Angels home game. Angels had the better record and run differential and everything. I'll say 65%. 73%. Yeah.

Wow. Huge, right? Yeah, very. I think it's... I haven't looked at every series, but I would guess that Pocota and I would guess that probably most people would consider this the most lopsided series on paper. Yeah. Which is kind of incredible because the Angels have, I mean, Shoemaker, assuming Shoemaker is healthy, helps. I mean Shoemaker, assuming Shoemaker is healthy, helps. But they have a worse rotation than the Orioles. And RJ wrote recently about how the Orioles have the worst postseason rotation in whatever decades-long time frame he looked at.

And you can make the case that the Angels' rotation is actually worse, and you can make the case that it got even worse by their decision to go with a three-man. I don't know. I'm not sure if I would make this case or not. But their decision to go with a three-man rotation instead of having Hector Santiago pitch, which means that Jared Weaver will be pitching on three days rest. Santiago, nobody likes Santiago.

That's fair. But had he had he was pretty good like he was probably there he was better than weaver and better than wilson certainly since his june demotion uh all yeah you could imagine a some combination of santiago and cory rasmus being better than a short rest jared we? I would say that it's hard to imagine a short rest Jared Weaver being better than that, but I don't know. Weaver threw, there was that one game in September where his fastball averaged 90 all of a sudden. It's so strange because he throws 87,

and if you look at his brooks baseball game by game philo chart it just spikes on like september 14th he had this start where he was just throwing harder than jared weaver has in years and everyone got excited and he said it was like something he had been working on like you can just kind of work on throwing much harder than you ever throw and then his two starts after that it went away again it's just yes strange he's been working on having his best start of the year by like ed like by like three and a half miles yeah like that was not i mean three and a half miles in terms of uh of goodness not not even miles per hour like yeah he struck out 12 it was the only time all year he struck out double digits. Yeah, how does that happen? It's strange.

There's a lot of worrisome things about Jared Weaver. I don't know. It just seems like a huge amount of this decision is that it's Jared Weaver who has a sort of place in that franchise's lore and clubhouse and a history of success. But, I mean, it feels kind of like, it feels dangerous that, I mean, you almost wish that he weren't Jared Weaver. You almost wonder whether it's better to have worse players so that you don't over... It's like the hot hand, right?

The hot hand theory where you actually are pretty... When you're hot, you might be pretty good, but it leads you to overestimate your own abilities and do things that counteract your hotness, that theory. It's like with jared weaver yeah he's you know he's a pretty good pitcher but there it feels like a huge overextension of him based on his jared weaverness i mean he had one start this year uh one full start this year where he didn't allow runs which is a an incredible thing like he just is not a dominant pitcher anymore so the idea that he's the guy that you go to on three days rest uh just puts a lot of faith in his kind of career mythology

so that's seems anyway that that's the it feels like you you start with the angels rotation and you go wow this is real this could really ugly, this is a really bad rotation it's shocking that they could win 98 games with a rotation like this and yet they won 98 games, they're the best team in baseball probably and so you get that out of the way and then you go oh and they're still huge favorites

and they are, they're still huge favorites they can win if their pitcher gives up four runs in six innings because they're really good. And there are probably some Orioles fans listening and angry at us for just writing off the entire Orioles rotation like that. We'll get to that series, and I'll talk a bit more about that.

But you're right. The Angels, since they don't have Richards and they don't have Skaggs to a lesser extent, they are maybe not quite the team that their regular season performance and record suggests, but they still have a lot going for them. And they have this lineup that maybe the fact that it's so deep and well-balanced

leads to a little bit of overrating in that other than Trout, there isn't really another star in the lineup. an actual bottom of the order with bad hitters, which the Angels do not have, but they also have the best middle of the lineup. In Martinez and Cabrera, the two Martinez's and Cabrera, they have three of the best hitters and three of the top 10 hitters in the American League this year. And the Angels have pretty much everyone above average, but no one other than Trout way above average. Which do you prefer? On the one hand, it's good when you can clump your good hitters together

because it's more likely that when one does damage, another one will be on base for the damage to be multiplied, right? So that's a good thing. If you can clump guys together, it's obviously good. But there is something that seems particularly intimidating about a team, if you're a pitcher, about facing a team where there is no let-up. There is no period where you can kind of cruise for four batters without extending yourself, without having to be really high octane, where you're not in the stretch,

where you're not worried about the long ball, where you can kind of leave on Hernandez your way through that part of the lineup and preserve your strength for those few high amplitude moments against the Stars. And with the Angels, you just can't do that. Every single batter in the lineup is basically a threat to Homer or Steele if they get on. And you're never really far from a rally. So that feels like it would be kind of exhausting in a way that, you know, we don't think about the Angels being the team that takes a lot of pitches

and wears a pitcher out that way. But just sort of having a pitcher have to always be on might be kind of a different kind of exhausting. Yeah, could be. It would probably be hard to show that, but it sounds right. It sounds compelling. And then, so this seems like the Angels are the best team to kind of do the postseason all bullpen thing that we're always advocating that a team do. Because they're only going with three starters because those starters aren't really even that good uh and because they've been stockpiling and building this

impressive bullpen over over the course of the season and and really since they since they signed joe smith i guess last offseason they have added a ton of guys to this bullpen and trading for Houston Street and Jason Grilly and Joe Thatcher and Vinny Pistano and employing Mike Morin and promoting him and Kevin Jepsen is still around. So it's a very deep and very good bullpen. Guys who are effective against lefties and righties and just do everything pretty well. And so this seems like it would be the team,

if there's any team in the postseason that's going to be aggressive about taking its starters out early and riding the bullpen hard, it would seem to be this one. And there's the story about the saber-savvy Mike Socha now who pays attention to stats and is receptive to new ideas and Jerry DiPoto complimenting him for that. And maybe this is another area where that comes into play.

Maybe the times-through-the- order effect is something that Mike Socha is thinking about these days. So that'll be interesting to see. And so, yeah, so I guess the Angels' route to success is the same as the 2002 Angels' route to success, which was pretty lousy pitching. I guess the 2002 Angels had Jared Washburn as their best starting pitcher. They probably had a better, deeper rotation than the 2014 Angels do, but those guys did not pitch well in the postseason.

I think it was Alden Gonzalez pointed out that they got two quality starts in the entire postseason that year, and their rotation averaged about five innings pitch per start. And they won the World Series because they scored over six runs a game, and they had a good bullpen. Scott Shields and Brendan Donnelly and Francisco Rodriguez and all those guys. Troy Percival. So the blueprint to success for this team is maybe the same as that once was.

Yeah, kind of. I mean, their rotation in 2002, like you say, was on paper much better. I mean, they won even though their pitchers pitched badly. So I guess what you're saying is that they will try to win even though there is a good chance that their pitchers will pitch badly. Right. But that was, I mean, they had a bunch of above average starters in their race. This team had, I mean, Weaver's ERA plus is, I think, 100. Wilson's is well below. Shoemaker's good.

Obviously, Shoemaker has been very good. He's the exception. But then you have the three days rest factor on Weaver, too. So you go in with much lower expectations. But, yeah, I get what you're saying. So yeah, so I picked the Angels. The Royals are fun. And maybe we should talk about the Royals running in this series

since that was such a story in the wild card game. And the Angels are kind of like the Royals' light in a lot of areas. Like the strengths that the Royals have are less pronounced compared to the Angels than they would be compared to most teams because the Royals have a good bullpen, the Angels have a good bullpen, the Royals are good at running, the Angels are the second best team in running even though it's a distant second. The Royals are a good defensive team, The Angels are a pretty good defensive team. So they do the same things well.

The Royals do some of those things better. And the Angels have allowed the fourth highest or fifth highest base running runs total to their opponents, but not really because of stolen bases. Stolen base-wise, they're kind of average. Both of their catchers are kind of average. So it doesn't seem like this is a series where the Royals will be stealing seven bases per game. I'm sure they'll continue to be very aggressive,

but that was kind of a strange confluence of circumstances, and Leicester not throwing over and a catcher being replaced in the middle of the game and everything. So it will be a factor, as it was for the Royals all season, but probably in not quite such a dramatic way. And so, yeah, so I picked the Angels to win just because, as you said, there's no way to get a bigger mismatch in terms of record or run differential or any underlying statistic that you want to look at in the current playoff field than Angels versus Royals.

And in certain ways, it's best versus worst. So I said Angels and four because I'm allergic to saying anyone will sweep anything. Oh, I didn't predict. But you suggested. You insinuated. I said the Angels should be heavier favorites than any postseason team with a series this month is what i said i did not i did not say how many games it

would take for one team to be another very diplomatic so if the angels sweep then you'll you'll admit that you were wrong. Yeah, sure. All right. And if they win in five? I'm totally wrong. Yeah. And you'll be not right or wrong either way. Nope. Very smart.

Just be over here. Just be over here and enjoying life. Okay, so the other series, as I was saying, the Orioles rotation is a point of contention here because in terms of name value, name recognition, obviously there's a big mismatch here. The Tigers have three Cy Young winners starting in this series. The Orioles have no one with a Cy Young vote starting in this series. And by ERA, the Orioles rotation is better than the Tigers rotation. In the second half of the season, the Orioles rotation had a 2.98 ERA,

the third best in baseball behind the Indians and the Nationals. And all of the surface stats look fine for pretty much all of these guys. All of them from Tillman to Chen, Gonzalez, Norris, all of these guys have ERAs between like 3.2 and 3.6 or so. They all look respectable. And yet, if you look at all the peripherals, not so pretty. The Orioles' rotation on the season had the eighth lowest strikeout rate, the sixth highest walk rate, the second lowest ground ball rate, the sixth highest home run rate. And of course, some of that is Zubaldo Jimenez, who's not starting in this series.

But some of that is Kevin Gossman, who was better in most of those categories than the actual Orioles starters are. And he's not starting in this series. So this is a FIP versus ERA debate also. And the Orioles have the second biggest fit versus era gap in the big leagues this season and you can explain that you can try to explain that by saying that the orioles have a good defense which is which is true and even without many machado they've actually been better overall defensively without Manny Machado, not on ground balls, but on fly balls and line drives because of other changes they made in their outfield that coincided with Machado's absence. So they're still a good defensive team, even without him.

And so that's part of it. And part of it is Caleb Joseph being a good catcher and getting some extra strikes. But a big part of it seems to be just the sequencing and the fact that the Orioles pitched really, really well with runners in scoring position. And if you look at their cluster luck, as I talked about recently and wrote about, they were the largest over-performers pitching-wise this season as comparing the actual runs allowed to how many runs they should have allowed.

So this seems to be a lucky staff and a lucky rotation, and Orioles fans are probably sick of hearing that because in 2012 and 2014, the Orioles were lucky in certain ways or seemed to be, and they outperformed a lot of expectations. And the fact that they've done it twice in three years seems to make it more solid, more real. All the people who said these things in 2012, Orioles fans are probably thinking, yeah, you said that in 2012, and then they made the playoffs in 2012. And now they're back there again with one of the best records in the league.

So this disproves the idea that they're just flukes. But they didn't do it in 2013 either. that allowed them to have a good record in one-run games or be clutch or whatever you want to call it, that seems like a quality that you would have every year, right? Well, let's presume that the things that you've identified, which are kind of different things from year to year. Yes. We have found something lucky about them every year, it seems like. Yes. Let's presume that those things really were lucky. In this case, the Orioles' starting rotation probably got

some good fortune and is not as good as their ERA and is not a particularly good rotation. I think you can accept that without it being an indictment of the Orioles. The Orioles, as a team, were not that lucky. I mean, they were a little, but they were a really good team. They have the third-best third-order winning percentage in the American League. They're considerably better by third-order winning percentage than the Tigers are. And it seems like there's probably, I mean, there's something in every team that you could find and say, well, this deviates from statistical expectations.

But I feel like probably we look for it a little bit more with the Orioles because they defied expectations overall. And so we're probably focusing on that one aspect of the club which got a little lucky, but there are probably other aspects, just as with any other club, that got a little unlucky. And the overall performance of the team is certainly not any less than a playoff team should be. They're a good team all around.

They probably will have probably two of their starters will get knocked out in the third inning this week. And they will probably give the Tigers a really good matchup and they might win the World Series. There's no reason to think they won't win the World Series with this kind of lousy pitching staff. It's not the best necessarily comparison, but the rotation doesn't feel that again. It's like it's a little bit of a stretch to say this, but not a huge stretch to say it

kind of reminds me of the 2005 White Sox where there wasn't a clear superstar ace in the White Sox rotation. It was like a lot of guys who were sort of 2-3 pitchers, and they had a good ERA as a staff, and they all outperformed their FIP, it seemed like, and they probably were somewhat lucky during the season. And it might have seemed like a weak spot going into the postseason. And then, of course, we know that there's no reason that some two and three pitchers can't pitch really well for three weeks, and the White Sox rotation ended up being like a strength and carried them to the World Series. So it's not like the Orioles pitchers don't clear some minimum bar for Major League pitching.

It's just that they're worse than the Tigers. It's fair to say that. I don't think we need to be afraid to say that. Sure. Yeah. Yes, you're right. And that is maybe the big difference between 2014 Orioles and 2012 Orioles is that when people were pointing out the luck of the 2012 Orioles, they were saying that this was basically a 500 team that won 93 games. And this year, no, this is clearly a good team. Maybe some things went right for them. They almost have to to win 96 games. Something has to go well.

You have to have some sort of good fortune. And they are still good, even so. And yes, like the 2005 White Sox, they also have a lineup that is powerful and hits a lot of home runs and is reliant on home runs. This is the second most reliant on homers playoff team in the division or in the wildcard era after the 2012 Yankees, I believe, who beat the Orioles that year. 12 Yankees, I believe, who beat the Orioles that year. And that doesn't seem to mean a whole lot based on the history of home run reliant teams. Doesn't really suggest that they are more likely to struggle in the playoffs. It's a good lineup.

It's probably not as good as the Tigers lineup because, again, the Tigers have a really, really, really scary middle of the order. The Orioles are the team that is, you know, one of the more likely to chase and one of the least likely to walk and hits lots of homers. And that makes up for a lot of that. And overall, they're pretty good still. But that seems to be the thing, right? The pitching is okay, but the Tigers pitching is probably better, even though they are going to have Justin Verlander start instead of Anibal Sanchez, because Sanchez was out for most of the last couple months and did not have time to build up his arm. So he's going to be in the bullpen. And even so, with Scherzer and Price and Porcello, it seems like pretty strong starters,

and you figure that Sanchez will be kind of the caddy for Verlander. So even if the good Verlander does not show up, you will have Sanchez for some innings there. And the bullpen is maybe the biggest advantage for the Orioles. The Tigers' bullpen is still pretty shaky. Joe Nathan has been shaky all year. Jabesh Hamerlin has been very, very shaky in the second half. And they do have Soria back now, and they have Sanchez there,

who could be, I mean, Sanchez could be the best reliever in any bullpen right now in that he is one of the best starting pitchers in baseball. I mean, this is the guy with the second best FIP among starters in the last couple of years after Clayton Kershaw. And he is now in the bullpen full time, not just making a cameo like certain starters do in the playoffs, but a full time reliever. And Asimov says that he will not be afraid to use him at any do in the playoffs but a full-time reliever and awesomest says that he will not be afraid to use him at any point in the game you figure that even if he's not stretched out enough to be a starter he is more stretched out than your typical one inning reliever so he could be a big weapon there it's not often that a team takes one of the best starting pitchers in baseball and just puts him in the bullpen full time. So that will be interesting to see how he does there.

And the Orioles kind of did that almost in a sense with Gossman, who should also be an excellent reliever. But they have Britton and they have O'Day and they have Miller and Mattis and Hunter and just tons and tons of guys that the Tigers would probably love to have. But it seems like maybe a situation where the Tigers' lineup is a little better and their rotation is a little better and maybe they're a little bit better. Did you make a prediction? I did. I said Tigers in five.

I'll say, I'm going to make a prediction. I'll say Orioles. I'm not saying games. Orioles win. I'm going to say that I like the, well, geez, it's hard to say. It's really hard to predict. It is. That's why you try not to do it.

I'm going to take back my prediction. I don't have a prediction. I think either team could win. Oh, uh-huh. It's true. Anything can happen. Short series. Hey, I have a question for you, going back to the Angels, real quick.

Mike Trout, there is no criticism of Mike Trout. And when I wrote about Mike Trout a couple years ago for ESPN the magazine, I wrote about how we sort of get part of the theme of the piece kind of was that we kind of get complacent with our stars and eventually we sort of get, I don't know, a little bored of their

success and we find reasons to hate them. And very few people make it through their career without something that we devise to criticize, hate, diminish what they do. And Trout does not have that. Trout has been, so far, completely immune. There hasn't even been a whiff of something to not like about him. a whiff of something to not like about him.

Even in the annoying MVP debates of 2012 and 2013, nobody was denying that he was great. In fact, a lot of people would vote for Cabrera and say, sure, Trout's the best player in baseball, but then vote for Cabrera. And I mean, if anything, the closest thing to something that is tarnished trout is simply being you know being associated with this thing that we all got annoyed uh about the discussion itself but yeah nobody dislikes

trout nobody dislikes him personally there isn't any controversy or scandal about his personality or his style of play or anything like that he has been immune so is this if he goes say 1 4 16 in this series and he strikes out i don't know five times and hits three line drives right at the shortstop and and puts up a you know a bad overall hitting line and the angels get knocked out is this the moment that might try that a anti-trout narrative develops that he is and and does he does he have the sort of Barry Bonds, the Bagwell-Bigio kind of taint that he can't handle the postseason? I'd like to think that it would take more than one series

for him to get that reputation. I mean, maybe. Maybe. Maybe if Cabrera is over there going 10 for 20 or something and Trout is not, then maybe someone will point that out. But I don't think one series is enough to do that. Good, good. Yeah.

The stats are high enough. I don't want to have to be worried about Trout's reputation along with it. There are detractors of the way that he was valuable this year, right? It's like he was still maybe the best player in the league, but not quite as good as he was the last couple of years, or he struck out more and he wasn't as good on defense or on the bases. I don't know whether they criticized him but they were unnerved by it a little bit by his seeming to become a different

kind of player in one year someone in the facebook group compared it to like martin scorsese winning best picture for the departed yeah and not winning for you, other really great movies that were snubbed in the past. So maybe there's a little bit of a feel of that. But I don't know that that really comes back on Trout himself. No one dislikes Trout. Right. He hasn't said anything that would make anyone like him or dislike him other than his stats and performance, really. Nothing he has ever said has moved the needle one way

or the other. So that is it. We'll watch some baseball and we'll talk about it later. So please support our sponsor the Baseball Reference Play Index by going to baseballreference.com, subscribing to the Play Index using the coupon code BP to get the discounted price

of $30 on a one year subscription and we'll be back with another show tomorrow.