Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 551: Debating Postseason Unpredictability and Decisive Game Fours

Episode Date: October 8, 2014

Ben, Sam, and Zachary Levine discuss whether the postseason is too unpredictable and then break down the managerial decisions from two decisive NLDS games.

There's nothing I can say to make you go away. Oh, true love ain't too hard to see. Don't cry, no tears around me. Good morning and welcome to episode 551 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, Around me for a hot takeoff, kind of. Not really. I think Ben has claimed that he has a hot take. Zachary has a... Well, Zachary doesn't probably consider it a hot take, but it could be spun as a hot take, and I'm willing to take all the hotness.

I mean, the original idea was that we would fake hot takes, but I feel like the hot takes that we were going to fake are legitimate takes. Mine's absolutely a real hot take. Yeah, even hotter real takes surfaced after we discussed doing fake hot takes. All right, well, good. So I can't wait to hear these takes

and gauge their hotness. Zachary, you look at this postseason, which Ben, just a couple seconds ago, a couple days ago, I guess, wrote about the gloriousness of it and how amazing and fun and competitive and exciting it was. You think that it is actually Bud Selig's most damning legacy, that it represents his wasted final decade

essentially stripping the postseason of any particular meaning and turning it into a what, a race for bad teams to get lucky and prevail. Sort of like the Chris Moneymaker effect in poker, I guess.

Is that a fair summary of your problem with this postseason? I knew I would get some kind of a gambling reference right off the bat, both of you, with the gambling this week. Yeah, why didn't you just tell me? Why didn't you just tell me what you believe? I don't know why I was summarizing it. So I wrote, we had that lineup card about what our epitaphs for Bud selig's reign as commissioner would be and i clearly misunderstood what an epitaph is and i wrote several paragraphs they used to be like the greeks used to write thousands of words oh okay well i'm i'm uh honorary then uh but what i

wrote is that his legacy is a series of decisions for really the entirety of his tenure, where he was faced with a decision where one side would have been to do something that would presumably increase fun or increase revenue or increase the number of teams that felt like they were in it. And the other side would be sort of toward the legitimacy of a champion. And for good or for bad, pretty much every major decision he's made, with the wild card and interleague play and the return to short series, the best of five format, and the unbalanced schedule, which gives teams a chance to win lesser divisions and get in.

Every one of the things that have happened, and you can sort of go either way on the second wildcard, but have been sort of tilted to one side of that. They have been away from the legitimacy of a champion. And you can argue that it's a bad thing or a good thing. What I said in the piece is that there is an argument to be made that if the best teams always win, then what you're doing is you're having a general manager contest. And it's just playing out over you know six or seven months uh but uh to see

the uh number one seeds uh in each league uh teams that finished uh i think eight games and nine games above the wild card teams that they played uh bounced in three games and four games uh was uh games and four games was certainly, I don't know about disappointing, but really cemented that after a year where we had Boston and St. Louis last year and they were the best teams, this was sort of a fitting goodbye for Bud Selig because this is the system that he created. Well, I mean, I imagine that there is some compromise that you would find interesting. But I mean, if the point is to simply determine who the best team is, why would there be a postseason? Why wouldn't we just look at the standings? Right. We would look at the standings

or we would, you know, have the old system of American League and National League. And when the World Series was I mean, when it, when postseason baseball was invented, the idea was they probably legitimately didn't know. Like you had the American League playing the American League, you had the National League playing the National League, and one of them would claim they were the best team in the whole country and the other one would claim they were the best team in the whole country, and why don't we play to determine it?

I have no idea if that's how it started, but that seems like a reasonable enough origin story of it. But, I mean, at this point, I don't think that 10 teams have a claim to it. I mean, I've always thought that it's so weird looking at the sports landscape, that the sport that needs a playoff the most, which was college football,

because you're playing 10 or 12 games in your region. Nobody's playing against anyone from each other's regions. I mean, you really need this playoff. This is the sport where only two or now four teams make the playoffs. The whole thing seems totally flipped. Sports like baseball and the NBA and the NHL, they don't have this many teams with a claim to being the best. So the playoffs have sort of become something else. They've become just a race to get in it. And then that's the contest is that month or those two months. I'm kind of conflicted about this. I've seen that sentiment expressed elsewhere tonight on Twitter. There's a thread in the Facebook group,

the Effectively Wild Facebook group, that is now 94 comments long that starts with someone saying, I strongly dislike baseball right now. All the good teams are being eliminated and the crap teams, relatively speaking, are advancing. And it's true. I mean, all of the betting favorites, the teams that I picked, that seemingly everyone picked, judging by how many people were lamenting their playoff previews on Twitter during the game, have been eliminated. And there is sort of a sense of loss that goes with that. It feels unjust in some sense. I want to see teams rewarded for the last six months of play that they went through to get to this point. And it's kind of not a very intellectual argument in favor of this, but this is great baseball. Is it not? At least the games, and that's not

purely a product of the system the fact that the games have been incredible and that there's been just a extraordinary percentage of one run games and lead changes and games that were totally up in the air until the late innings this postseason that's not necessarily a product of the system that's just something that is happening and it's wonderful that it's happening but But you do kind of have to separate postseason and regular season, I think, and just acknowledge that the regular season champion is a different thing, that the postseason, that the World Series winner is not necessarily the best team, and just kind of go with it and enjoy the completely

different nature of postseason baseball and can i interrupt before that before you reply zachary if if if i may uh because i want to wrap my question in into bent the the it seems to me that the point of the sport the point of the pursuit the point of this entire enterprise is to entertain us with baseball games. And the point of it is not to decide who is the best team. The illusion that that is what we're doing has long been a powerful draw to sports. But it is ultimately not the point. There is just no scenario where the universe will care or remember who the best team was out of this collection of collections. It only matters in as much as we create this illusion that it matters. And so if you lose even the illusion, then it becomes problematic.

But the point is not to have the illusion. The point is to entertain people and make them forget that we're all dying right in front of each other. That this is just this horrible, rotten slog to rigor mortis that we are going to lose everybody we know. We're going to lose everything we have. And the only way to distract ourselves is by, you know, separating our day into distractions. And so in the sense that one might counter-argue and say, oh, well, why not just flip coins? And you can convince yourself that that's all that matters. And in a sense, that's what baseball is.

I mean, baseball is the most luck-driven sport conceivable, and we still accept it. But, I mean, obviously we do need to believe that the better team is uh is somehow being rewarded um a significant enough amount of time now maybe this postseason uh given the way that that it that it happened the way that it is developed maybe the consensus is that it has reached that point where we don't feel that there is enough of a of a connection between um skill and rewards but i certainly don't feel that way i mean i certainly think that all the teams

that are remaining have been very good and deserve uh to be on a national stage even if one of them frankly i don't even know that you can say conclusively that one of the uh four remaining teams isn't the best team in baseball. But even if it's true that they aren't, they've all got certain charms that I'm happy to see play out against each other on a national stage. Yeah, I mean, that turned dark for a while. But yeah, a couple things there. But, yeah, a couple things there.

Definitely there is, to what Ben said, the point is, you know, to what both of you said, the point is for entertainment. And I don't know, if we're talking about who's advancing, if I showed you a clip from this year's World Series with no faces and no nothing, there would be no chance you would be able to tell me if this was the one seed in each league or the second wildcard in each league. There's just baseball looks the same no matter who's playing it. So I don't want to sound like I'm making the argument that because I've heard this argument made, too, that we would get a better World Series if it's the two best teams. We have no idea what would give us the better world series uh but the other thing is that i i sort of have a sense that what's happened

you know the this this randomness would is fun for for the fans and but the thing you don't know is at what point does it start affecting people's jobs like at what point are owners able to have this conversation that we're having and talk about coin flips and talk about luck and uh did you know the if the Braves had uh not given up a Juan Uribe home run of last year if that had been a foul ball would frank ren still have a job and and things like that and that's where where i think it gets a little bit dicey and goes to the the question of what are we what are we rewarding yeah i feel like that's not something you can blame baseball for i feel like that's maybe something that owners have to adjust their expectations to understand so that they realize

that being eliminated is not necessarily a referendum on how your season went or how your planning was, but might just be random. You might have built a great team that happened to lose. So it does require more of the decision maker, I think, to look past the results. Yeah, Ben's latest crusade has been to, I guess, get us to all quit thinking like GMs all the time. And now you want us to think like owners? Yeah. Yeah, the commissioner part will be next.

That's when, I guess, we design our own playoff system. So what do you want? What would you have done? How do you fix this? And are you having fun? Are you not entertained? Yeah, you know, it's funny because I'm going to say what I would do, and what I would do is cut or add two teams, go to 28 or 32, two divisions of seven or eight in each league,

the winner of a little bit unbalanced schedule, the winner of seven or eight in each league. The winner, a little bit unbalanced schedule. The winner of each division plays the winner of the other division. The winners play in the World Series. You get four teams in, you get no one who didn't win their group that they were playing most of their games in. But then if I think about it from the standpoint of some, I mean, that's me as a fan and maybe and i'm sure that i'm unusual because i i want less baseball and and i want i value a more legitimate champion but that's probably just me and and i know that if i were the one negotiating these network tv contracts and and had fox wondering where my my first couple weeks of programming are in October and everything,

I'm not sure I would have much to say to that. So I guess what disappoints me as a fan, that these top teams who were the top teams in each league for 162 games are now out of it, is in some ways something that we could never go back to. So then I guess it's just, are there incentives? Could it be instead of a 2-2-1, could it be a 2-1-2? The team gets four home games. Could it be, you know, just, I would like to see the end of best of fives.

I would like to see no series shorter than seven. And I know we went through the math a little bit and it's not a huge difference, but there's something feels a little different losing in three and going home and having to lose four every I think every step up there there helps out. and having to lose four, I think every step up there helps out. And I know the NBA was playing best of fives in the first round. They were 5-7-7-7, and they went within the last, I don't know, maybe 10 years to 7-7-7-7. And I don't like that the one series where we know that the best team in the league is playing the worst remaining playoff team in that league

is the one where they want to put the most randomness, where they want to make it best of five. That doesn't seem right to me. I would almost rather go 7-7-5 than 5-7-7. Yeah, if you only had those two choices, yeah, that makes sense. So, there might be exceptions I haven't thought of, but it seems to me that in every sport, the tendency has always been to add levels of playoffs, to add teams that make the playoffs. And I assume that that's mostly because of market reasons.

They want to have more ads to sell, more big events to promote. And I assume that maybe part of it is that people like it, that the average fan likes playoffs, and people are happy that their leagues have more playoff games. But looking at the first reason, probably the stronger reason, the commercial reason, is the fact that the Major League Baseball playoffs don't seem to have much national appeal in these early rounds, that they're

on TBS, which is barely a station, that they're on Fox Sports and MLB Network, which some people don't even get. Is this a sign? And of course, the persistent bleeding of the baseball is dying crowd is there is there any chance that that uh baseball is sort of in a position where they have maxed out and that we don't have to worry about them adding more or uh does the sea league um does the sea league drive uh persist do you think, in any commissioner in any sport? Yeah, I'm not so sure that the money is in October as much as if you're putting 10 teams in the playoffs,

it means that 20 go into September 1st with a shot at making the playoffs. I think it's as much of that as it is what actually happens in the playoffs. But yeah, I mean, if you put 16 teams in, like a lot of the other sports have, then you lose the playoff races at the top. I mean, at some point there's a balance where you have to keep teams in it, but you can't have teams clinching in early August if you want the really good theater. So, yeah, I do think baseball is sort of maxed out as far as what drama it can bring and what sort of more eyeballs it can get to the sport. more eyeballs it can get to the sport. I've sort of been amused by the baseball is dying thing just because everything I read,

and I mentioned this on Twitter today, I might be reading the wrong people because I feel like I have bad reactions to a lot of this stuff. It seems like we're fighting each other on this. It's 10 backlashes to baseball is dying for every one thing that's written that baseball is dying and it's it's 10 defenses of yassiel puig to every person who's actually saying something bad about it just one thing one thing i've noticed this october is that we are anticipating the terrible hot takes that I have never actually seen happen.

There have been, like, every time Mike Trout made an out, we worried that there would be a column the next day about how Mike Trout is a choker, and we said the same thing on the podcast. And that article, was that article written? I never saw that article. Or, you know, when Bryce Harper was hitting well, I saw people saying, now someone's going to write a column about how Bryce Harper

is clutch and Mike Trout is a choker. And we're conditioned to expect these things by these columns that we've seen in the past. But I think now we are expecting them to be even worse than they are. And our worst fears worst fears are not even necessarily becoming reality or maybe by invoking them before they even happen we somehow diffuse their power and and someone who would have written them otherwise decides not to but it seems like we have maybe an even worse conception of the the reality than than there actually is or we just like to fight. I don't know.

If there's no one to fight, we're going to come up with somebody. And Ben, I assume you're going to talk about the number one reason why I'm not having that much fun, but that's probably the number two reason why I'm not having that much fun. is uh is it's sort of i i just get to this point during games and after games where i'm just sort of melting down like i just the whole thing has become sort of a competitive sport of of in the moment analysis and it uh it has not been i have not enjoyed it that's that's that's actually just the awareness of your own death coming back to you. You've watched a lot of Josh Hamilton at that.

Yeah, that just, I mean, that might be an inside baseball thing. Yeah, it could be a little. The three of us who are on Twitter all day and having to come up with article ideas are tired of these things, whereas other people are just watching really exciting baseball. And it has been really exciting. And I mean,

it's, you know, the closest baseball comes to other sports where there aren't as many games in the season. And so every game takes on added importance. And during the regular season, much as I love baseball, it's pretty rare that I will sit down and watch an entire game from first pitch to last pitch. I will flip between games. I will watch highlight shows. I will read about baseball all day, but rarely do I sit down and take in a full game from start to finish because I don't have a rooting interest. I'm kind of trying to keep track of every team. In the playoffs, I have been glued to just about every pitch of every game. And that's partially because there aren't as many games.

And so it is actually possible to watch all of them, which is not something that you can do during the regular season. But it's largely the stakes and how much more exciting all of these one-run games have been because they are elimination games or they're one-game series or five-game series. It's been great. So I would expect that if baseball does add in the future, that they will add in the area of shorter games and shorter series because that seems to be something that the audience has responded to. And just the contrast to the regular season is so strong that it's almost unnerving, but it's kind of intoxicating too.

So Ben, I like this topic, but I can't wait to hear what your hot take is. What is your take? Well, we should talk about actual baseball. There were two really exciting baseball games that we just watched. So what is your take? Well, we should talk about actual baseball. There were two really exciting baseball games that we just watched, and my thoughts are still scattered. My blood is still up from watching these games. But two super exciting elimination games, game fours,

both ended with scores of 3-2. And the story, at least right now, and who knows what will be revealed. We're recording this right after the last out of the Nationals-Giants game, so maybe some information will come out that we don't have right now. But it seemed like the story of both these games, I mean, the first game was just kind of, you know,

sad Clayton Kershaw lost again and was great for the first six innings and then had the seventh inning where everything went wrong again. And we talked about Kershaw yesterday. We talked about how we don't think the Cardinals can read his pitches or have any ownership of him. And that, I think, was certainly borne out by the first six innings.

And then he tired and there wasn't a reliever that Don Mattingly seemed to trust at that point. He wasn't going to put in Kenley Jansen in the seventh inning and no one else has been very reliable. And so Kershaw stayed out there and Matt Adams hit a huge home run and was a cool comeback and a devastating loss and sort of sad to see someone who's been so great have that loss hung on him in part because of that fear which we were just talking about that there would be this narrative attached to Clayton Kershaw

as some kind of choker or person who couldn't pitch in the postseason whereas in reality he was kind of giving it his all on short rest with a team that has no reliable bullpen. So that was the story of that one. But so was Yasiel Puig not starting because he's been slumping and then not pinch hitting when there was a pinch hitting opportunity for him. And Justin Turner pinch hitting instead of Yasiel Puig and Puig pinch running for him, which was kind of crazy to see.

And then in the second game, which was also insane and filled with things that we rarely see in baseball games, although in accordance with the rule that all strange events that we talk about on Effectively Wild seem to happen immediately after that, there was an intentional ball wild pitch that nearly resulted in a run scoring. So the story there seemed to be that the Nationals lost or the losing pitcher was Aaron Barrett. And the Nationals lost their one-run game, elimination game,

without Tyler Klippard pitching, without Drew Storen pitching, without Steven Strasburg pitching. There were lots of people in the pen that you would think would have been better options than Aaron Barrett. And Matt Williams didn't use them. And so in both of these games, but particularly that game, there was a loss. There was an elimination game where theoretically all hands should be on deck. In the Dodgers game kenley jansen never pitched he not only didn't come in in that case but he didn't come in after that when the the dodgers were trying to keep the margin to one run and in the long run hopefully the story will be bryce harper's

hits and hunter pence's catch and matt adams homer and not all these managerial moves that may or may not have made a difference but we had had two managers who, with everything at stake, with nothing to wait for, no reason to hold back anyone for a subsequent game that, as it turns out, will not be played, did not use those pitchers. And it was sort of amazing to see. And my mind is still reeling and wondering why. Yeah, I don't want this to be misconstrued as a support for Matt Williams in this in this it's not it's just a fun thing i would like to note i think that there is a very very strong case to be made uh that aaron barrett uh who again not not better than not better than stevens rosberg

uh not certainly not better than clippard who has to be hurt he just has to be but anyway not better than clippard uh i don't know better than storm i don't who knows how good storm is storm was demoted last year wasn't he anyway who knows but aaron barrett i think is probably better than santiago casilla who is the giants closer and who nobody freaks out about coming into a baseball game i mean this this goes to show this I guess goes to the point of how, of all the things we overanalyze, I think the decision to go to or not go to a pitcher is the most important thing that a manager does in the postseason. And you can't not overanalyze it, even recognizing the limitations of your knowledge. You have to do it. That's

the ballgame. It's undeniable. But in terms of analyzing the strength and weaknesses of individual teams' bullpens and of individual relievers, it feels way overanalyzed. The Giants have probably the worst closer in this post postseason i think so you're you're not buying the santiago sub sub santiago cassia sub two eras or no no really good eras for five straight seasons i'm not but even if i i'm not but even if i were prone to um i checked pakoda before i said this and cassia has a three hundredths of a run edge over aaron barrett according to pakoda and i'm guessing that park factor cancels out slightly more than that so i think pakoda agrees with me that barrett is a better pitcher than cassia anyway it's just it's not as though aaron barrett can't get outs i mean it's not as though in one inning a reliever who has a 2.65 era which is good enough to close on most teams

isn't good enough to get out it's he wasn't the best case so i'm not defending it but uh it's like this as with the tigers as with the dodgers here as here and with the nationals where drew storin and uh and aaron barrett will go down as having cost them the series. These guys are really good relievers. They are certainly qualified to get outs. So I don't know. I mean, these were the key games, but there was nothing inevitable about this.

That's all I'm saying. But yeah, Klippard. I love Klippard. How is Kliippard not pitching three innings every game like clippard should be the the the koji of this year he should just be pitching from the fourth inning on and and i just let me say something else about bullpen since you brought it up that was also i was on an email thread earlier tonight where someone smart was breaking down how he... Humble brag.

I know someone smart. That he was breaking down what percentage he attributes to winning various aspects of team construction that matter in October. And he was saying that he thinks 50% is your seventh, eighth and ninth inning guys that that's, it's that important to winning in the post season.

And I saw lots of, of tweets to that effect, maybe not quite as strong as that, but the idea that not having a strong bullpen is a fatal weakness that, that we should have known that the, the Tigers would lose because they had a bad bullpen that the Dodgers would lose because they had a bad bullpen is a fatal weakness that we should have known, that the Tigers would lose because they had a bad bullpen, that the Dodgers would lose because they had a bad bullpen, that this is suddenly the most important thing now.

It's the way to win in the postseason is to have a strong bullpen. And that seems to me to be overstated somewhat. I think a lot of the relievers who were bad in the postseason were not bad during the regular season. That this might just be a small sample thing. That it's really hard to build a bullpen when you look at what people were saying about the Dodgers bullpen in March, including us when we nicknamed them. And how good they seemed like they would be. He nicknamed them and how good they seemed like they would be. And then Chris Withrow having Tommy John and with the Tigers, Ron Doan having Tommy John and Soria not being good after they traded for him.

All of these things that were difficult to anticipate. And the fact that scoring still matters. If you score a lot, it's OK if you don't have the best bullpen. If you have really good starters, it's OK if you don't have the best bullpen. So having a good bullpen is a way to win. it's okay if you don't have the best bullpen. So having a good bullpen is a way to win. It's a thing that helps you win.

But I'm not sure if I'm buying this new narrative that is the way to win or the way to lose. Aaron Barrett had the best FIP on the Nationals this year. Uh-huh. I have to disclaimer. I am not. This is a stupid move. It was not a good move. But Aaron Barrett had the best F fit on the Nationals this year.

How come nobody was freaking out about how the Giants used Hunter Strickland every game, even though they have a home run every fourth pitch? And he's less experienced than Barrett and, you know, was pitching in double-A this year. How come nobody's freaking out about that? I don't know. He throws really hard, and he was good in September, I guess. He seems to throw really straight also a lot of the time. All right, Zachary.

Yeah, and Ben, where do these teams go from here? It's going to be on Dombrowski now to address the bullpen situation, and it's going to be on Colletti assuming that he's back. The Dodgers have to fix this bullpen. But what does fix me? Go spend on the guy who was the best reliever this year? I mean, there's – I mean, they've done that. And just the year-to-year predictability is – like, even, you know, everyone should have gone and gotten Andrew Miller this year.

Well, of course they should because he ended up being good in the second half and in the playoffs. So I don't know where these teams go from here. I think the thing I wrote earlier this year, if the problem is a bad bullpen, then the solution is get better at other things. Anybody want to defend Mattingly for benching Quigg? anybody want to defend manningly for benching queeg well he hadn't been hitting and what what did he strike out nine times in the series something like that um i mean it's the kind of decision where people will say that the manager might know more than we do that the manager might know his mental state that he might know that his mechanics are

screwed up in some way that that we can't tell just from looking or looking at the stats or something it's i mean statistically speaking it's it's a difficult move to defend to to bench really your your best hitter all year in a decisive game. So. Yeah. I mean, I think that there's, I'm willing to give managers a bit of leeway when it comes to anything having to do with kind of managing their players, psychologies and essentially acting. I mean, you know, Mattingly and his staff are able to scout their players certainly better than

we are. And the giving a guy who strikes out, what, eight out of nine plate appearances, seven in a row, giving that guy a day off to get his head straight is like a common tradition in baseball. Now, in the postseason, it's maybe not quite so common. But, I mean, what it seems to come down to is that you just never really got the sense that the Dodgers appreciated that Yasiel Puig is their best player. He's not a good player. He's not one of their good players. He's not their fourth best player.

He's their best player. He's their superstar. And you just sort of, I guess that's what the backlash to all the Puig stuff is, is that there's always this idea that Puig is not as good as he is, and we get defensive of any player who doesn't seem to be seen as good as he is. So, I mean, if this had happened, let's say that the Orioles had done this with Nelson Cruz, there would have been a freakout, or a little bit of one. If the Giants had done it with Hunter Pence, there would have been a little bit of a freak out uh if the angels had done it with uh i i don't the

angels really only have one good great player uh but the but the thing is that it's not you know it's it's not the the third or fourth best player it's the the best player and i think in that case you just have to stick with him you just you have to do it he strikes out 15 times in a row you have to do it you you only get five games and then it's over you just have to hope he gets out of it so the fact that he pinch ran instead of pinch hit too was was really the moment where you realize there was no plan here there was there was there was this was not well yes but especially when the talk before the game was, okay, maybe fine, maybe it was an ankle or something like that. Yeah.

Yeah, it kind of had the feeling of Joe Torre hitting A-Rod 8th in 2006 just because it's A-Rod and there's off-the-field baggage or there's personality stuff and someone had been slumping. It sort of had that same feel to me. So who, let's see, Mattingly and Matt Williams, either one of them wobbly chair right now? I would think so. Both or just the one?

Well, Mattingly wobblier. Oh, yeah, yeah, Mattingly. Yeah, they're both named Matt. So, sorry, Mattingly Wobblier. Oh, oh yeah, yeah, Mattingly. Yeah, they're both named Matt. Mattingly has been on a wobbly chair in the past, and he solidified his chair. He put some newspaper under the short leg or something. And having escaped from the fire before, maybe that makes him a little more vulnerable, but just being the manager of the most expensive team in baseball and having some questionable tactical moves seems like it would put him back on the wobbly chair

and possibly Ned Coletti would be there with him. How about Matt Williams versus Osmus and the new among the new guys uh neither one neither one wobbly right now but who gets fired first is that they're both going to be their opening day yeah yeah i can't imagine yeah i would think so too yeah you get you get one certainly you get one season particularly if you if you make the playoffs and you win your division it's not a complete disaster. I think Ausmus came out of this much better than Matt Williams did. I mean, Ausmus, Dombrowski comes out of this, it seems like,

getting criticized a lot more than Brad Ausmus because it's year after year of this bullpen. And Ben and I have talked about how it's really weird and hard to know why and hard to necessarily blame Dombrowski for that. But this happens every time. And so Ausmus is just this poor guy who basically did a pretty good job, it seemed like, and didn't have the bullets. Whereas Matt Williams came in. There was a strong narrative about Matt Williams as being a smart manager

who was willing to go against the book and a new breed of manager and just burned it, burned the reputation. I mean, he comes out of this as a manager who will be punchlined for a while. So certainly I think worse for Matt Williams. All right. So are we finished? Have we gotten it all off of our chests? Yeah. Okay.

No, but that's what my nightly Twitter meltdowns are for. At Zachary Levine. Thank you, Zachary. Thank you. So now we have a couple days without baseball, which means that we will. I keep saying this, but I think we will get to some listener emails. So send us some at podcast at baseball perspectives dot com.

Obviously, we'll be talking about the ALCS and the NLCS also. And please support our sponsor, the baseball reference dot com play index by going to baseball reference dot com, subscribing to the play index using the coupon code BP to get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. I strongly encourage you to join the Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. It is filling up. It is very busy and there are tons of playoff threads with people watching and reacting to games and arranging meetups with other listeners In Toronto and Atlanta And other cities around the country

So join the group And rate and review us on iTunes Send us emails We will be back tomorrow Good morning and welcome to episode 451 Of Effectively Wild Nope, off by 100 Good morning and welcome to episode 551

Is that right? That's right, yeah