Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 557: Ned Yost’s Mid-October Evolution

Episode Date: October 16, 2014

Ben and Sam discuss Ned Yost’s evolving tactics and Wednesday’s Game Fours.

Good morning and welcome to episode 557 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus, presented by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I am Ben Lindberg of Grantland.com, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Prospectus. Hello. Howdy. How are you? Okay. Can we do a quick Play Index?

Yeah, we should do a quick Play Index. Good. I have one. It's a quick one. play index? Yeah, we should do a quick play index. Good. I have one. It's a quick one. Yesterday, yesterday on Tuesday, Tuesday on Tuesday, yesterday on Wednesday, which is to say on Tuesday, the Royals played a game that took two hours and 53 minutes or something like that, two hours and 55 maybe. And I commented on this when it was happening. It seemed like a pretty big deal to me that there was a postseason game that finished in under three hours,

and I have not looked, but how... I think it was the second one this October, this postseason. I was going to ask you to guess. Oh, okay. Well, I knew the answer. So let's see here. Just for fun, then, because game length minutes, I'm'm gonna set 180 or fewer i guess i'll set 100 yeah 179 or fewer post-season games let's just do 2014 all right we have that is the

second one you're right that okay so that is true so let's try what was the first one because i don't remember i'll tell you in a second well i've changed that now i've changed to 2013 how many do you think there were in 2013 i'll say three there were eight wow so let's keep doing this let's do a few years uh pick a year all right let's go back to 2008 2008 how. How many are you going to guess? 10. I'll say 11. Oh, 5. Only 5. Okay.

So 2013 looks like maybe it was an outlier. Pick another year. 2003. All right. 2003, there were 10. Uh-huh. Okay. Let's do 1991.

Okay. You want to guess? Sure. Sure. 1991, I 1991 i'll say well there were fewer games yeah so there were only two series plus a world series so there were only like uh 20 games or 18 or whatever and games were shorter back then so that balances that out somewhat. I'll say seven. Six. All right, so let's go to 19... I don't know if 1952 will be in here. I don't know if times per game were recorded in 1952. But let's just try 1952.

We know that it was only a World Series, so at most seven games. How many do you think? How many games did the World Series go in 1952? Let me check. I have that right here. 1952 World Series went seven games. All right.

I will say. It was the Yankees, though. It was the Yankees. Hmm. I'll say seven. Six. Hmm. Okay.

Let me see if there were any extra innings games in this World Series. There was. Aha. Was that the one? Let me check. I'll check. I'm going to guess that it was. It went on five innings.

It was also six to five. Time of game, three hours on the dot! It was the only one that didn't make it. It was three hours on the dot. Wow. That's exciting. Shouldn't be. The other one this year was, I think it was the Giants and the Nationals. It was. It was game three. Oh, it was the giants and the nationals it was it was uh game three oh it's

the game i went to uh the bum garner doug fister game which makes sense yeah interesting so i wonder how much longer the commercial breaks in the postseason are do you think that's a factor are they longer well it's some part of a factor, sure. Although tonight's game was ridiculous. It was just about three hours through six. And then every pitcher in the bullpen was used except for... No, no, no. That was before. The seventh was the inning where four pitchers pitched for the Giants.

Yeah. So it was three hours through six. It was three hours and 20. I think I looked at the time because I was tracking this closely. It was three hours and 21 minutes through six and a half. Yeah, lots of pitching changes in that one.

We will talk about that game, I guess. I will just go back to what we were talking about yesterday with the Royals intimidation tactics and Jeremy Guthrie's t-shirt. He apologized for that t-shirt today, Wednesday, twice on Twitter and also in a press conference with the media. So what does that do to our theory about the Royals using intimidation tactics? It weakens it it doesn't necessarily preclude it um because uh for for one thing it might not it's like sort of like when you're in court and the lawyer asks a leading question that is obviously meant to sway the jury and the uh opposing counsel

says objection and the judge says ignore the fact that you heard those words we used that analogy very recently yeah so it's like yes did we yeah i used that for something i don't remember what it's like that so the fact that he wore the shirt is not undone, and apologizing for it doesn't undo it. But the other thing is just that once things get into the kabuki of media baseball coverage, you sort of lose control of your message. You lose control of your strategy. And so it's conceivable that this was, in fact, their strategy,

but that they just sort of got overpowered by the machine. But I think that's unlikely. I think that, what, did Guthrie forget? Is the leading theory right now that Guthrie forgot that he was wearing the shirt? That could be, because it's, I mean, it's hard to see the shirt as anything but a statement about the Orioles.

So, I mean, it literally is a statement about the Orioles. So it literally is a statement about the Orioles. So I don't know how he could not think that he was saying something about them. So yeah, I don't know. Maybe he was just caught up in the moment or something. Anyway, the apology did not lead to an Orioles comeback. There was another Royals victory, another Royals sweep, and another Royals one-run victory. Again, another 2-1 victory. And which is kind of

interesting because the Royals, you'd think they'd be a good one-run team to the extent that any team is a good team in one-run games. The only real edge that teams seem to have in those games is a good bullpen and of course the royals have that good bullpen but they were 22 and 25 in one run games this regular season they were a losing team in one run games so you can't even say that they are winning all these one run games because they are so well built for one run games or at least if they are it didn't work out that way during the regular season. Can I just say I hate the one-run game as a metric for closeness? Why? I hate it.

Because if you're up by four in the ninth and you give up three because your bullpen sucks, you won a one-run game. That doesn't mean it was necessarily close. What it should be is one run through seven. That's what we should do. We need to come up with a better closeness measure. Yeah, or you could just maybe just use average leverage index or something for the game. Anyway, you know what I was thinking?

I tried to tweet this, but I couldn't fit it into a tweet, and I didn't know what my thoughts were, to be honest. There's going to be columns written about how all teams should be built like the royals and we're gonna hate those columns right yes but if the column simply said all teams should be built to play like the royals or that all teams should play like the royals or something like that as the royals have done in the last eight games, that would be legit. The fact is that the Royals have played extraordinarily, and they have played a style of play that seems like sort of idiot-proof,

if you could do it. It's not. Having a bullpen that pitches this well is extremely hard to predict. And having home runs and speed, which is what they've done, is hard to predict. And having all your starting pitchers pitch well for five innings is easier than having them pitch well for seven innings. But it's still expensive to put together. So it's not easy.

It's not as though Dayton Moore cracked the code for team building. But the style of play is kind of the platonic ideal for a postseason team. Wouldn't you kind of agree with that? I mean, it is the exact execution that everybody wants from their team in October. The question is, is there anything you can do beyond what teams are already trying to do to execute like that? And the answer is probably no, and so your column's probably pointless. But it's sort of true. Yeah, sure. probably pointless but it's sort of true yeah sure and i mean the way that it has worked out everyone coming into this series thought that there was a managerial mismatch that buck show

walter oh yeah let's talk about that right had an edge over ned yost that this was the biggest gap between managers probably that any two playoff teams could have in a series. And as it turned out, you wrote a bit about it, and I've thought a bit about it. And not only did Ned Yost's mistakes not really backfire, but he also didn't really make any or didn't make many obvious mistakes. He seemed to adjust, not as a result of any criticism, I'm sure, or maybe someone in the front office spoke to him at some point. I know that in the regular season, the day after he made that comment

about how he couldn't pitch, I don't know, Davis in the seventh or whatever it was, because he's not a seventh inning guy. The day after that, he switched. He did something different. He brought in a guy in an inning when he doesn't normally bring in a guy. And that seemed to suggest, or I listened to Jonah Carey's podcast with Sam Mellinger, and they talked about that. and Mellinger said that his impression was that maybe Yost had gotten a talking to of some sort from from the front office that that hadn't come from him but that he went along with it that he adjusted and used a couple relievers differently a little bit in the tail end of the season. And that is what happened in this series too.

Herrera was used in the sixth twice. He has used those guys for two innings at times, Davis and Herrera. So that is what seems like a clear change. So that is, I don't know whether it is his own initiative or whether someone talked to him about it but either way he didn't put his foot down no oh it doesn't matter whether someone talked to him about it i mean i guess if i guess if somebody issued an ultimatum i guess it would take some of his agency away but it doesn't really matter i mean the fact is and we talked

earlier this year about his optimized batting lineup experiment, right? And he didn't stay with it. But he did go to his stat heads and say, fine, screw it. Give me the optimized lineup. And he did try it. And so, you know, it does seem like he has some, you know, it seems like he has some productive communication with that part of the organization, which is a really good thing. And it does, I is a really good thing. It does, I mean really it's striking. I think it's fair to say in the last two games, there

weren't that many managerial moves to compare these two guys against. As you alluded to, I wrote about every move that Yost made in the third game and trying to figure out why hasn't this gap uh benefactor in this series and there were a few reasons one is that there aren't that many moves that move the needle one is that you can make the wrong move and have it work out perfectly anyway um and one is that even guys who we think of as making the wrong move make the right move a lot and guys who we think of as making the right move make the right move a lot. And guys who we think of as making the right move, make the wrong move a lot. And in game three, for instance, Yost, by my tally, made seven moves. Two of them were, in my estimation, wrong. Two of them were, in my estimation, great, inspired. Two of them were kind of obvious and predictable,

but he made them anyway. And one of them was too complicated for me to assess. And all seven of them worked out, which implies or which is a lot of, you know, that's kind of fortunate. A lot of times good moves won't work out, and a lot of times bad moves won't work out. They all did, so that's one reason. But, you know, he did make, you know, five out of seven were really solid. And on the other side, Buck Showalter made the move that we've taken to kind of, I think it's the signature managerial, I don't want to say screw up, what's the word? It's like the signature manager, like kind of third rail or something in this particular postseason, the third time through the order thing, where he left Wei and Chen in to go through the order the third time, and that's when the winning run came in.

And I went back after just to kind of review what people were saying at the time, and some people were saying, guy, get him out, get him out, get him out, and they didn't. But that seems to be something that he has, I don't know if he's changed his mind permanently Or if he has changed his mind temporarily Or if just circumstances happen to lead him to that decision But yesterday he pulled Guthrie Basically before the third time through the order And today he pulled Vargas

One batter into the third time through the order and today he pulled vargas uh one batter into the third time through the order and also i should note that chen uh even though he he went what turned out to be slightly too long uh he was left in basically only to face the two lefties at the top of the order and then he was pulled immediately for the third time through the order it sort of feels like the third time through the order has midway through this postseason become a kind of move that is accepted like we're seeing a lot more managers it happened tonight uh no it didn't happen tonight did it let me think tonight i mean tonight everybody sucked right guys got removed in the fourth both of the starters in the giants cardinals game yeah but even that one, let me think.

When did Shelby Miller get pulled? Shelby Miller got pulled. Didn't Shelby Miller get pulled immediately? He pitched to the 18th batter, didn't he? And then he got pulled immediately. So he was allowed. Yeah, he went three and two-thirds, I think. I think he actually went to the end of the second time through the order.

Matheny let him go there. he actually went to the end of the second time through the order Matheny let him go there and then the third time when uh when Blanco came up he went out and pulled pulled him and brought in Choate so again exactly twice through the order exactly twice through the order so basically we're looking at it's only a sample of four but the last four managers that I've observed have essentially pulled their pitcher exactly two times through the order, plus or minus a platoon advantage. So I wonder if that's just a thing that now is going to be postseason routine, which would kind of be nice. I like it.

I don't think necessarily that I'm dogmatic about it, but I do like it, and I think it does seem to make sense. We've been talking about it. This is our third postseason, Ben, if you can believe it. We've been talking about this exact move for three postseasons. So I'd like to know how well that would work if everyone did it, because it worked out great for the Royals in this series. They have Herrera, Davis, Holland, and those guys, during the regular season,

those guys threw fewer than half of the Royals' relief innings. The Royals bullpen threw 460 innings in the regular season, and those guys threw about 200, a little over 200. In the postseason, the Royals bullpen has pitched 35 innings. Those three guys have pitched 25 and two-thirds. So they've gone from pitching less than a from pitching less than half to about three-quarters of the Royals' relief innings. And I wonder how long that's sustainable, because if you use that sort of usage during the regular season, you'd have all those guys pitching, I don't know, 110 innings or something. That would be the sort of pace that

they would be on. And I wonder whether you can do that with guys, especially at the end of a six month season or seven, if you count spring training, can you suddenly start using them like Mariano Rivera in 1996 and have them pitch as well as they did during the regular season. Obviously, it worked for these three guys in this series, but I wonder whether that would work always, whether it would work sometimes, and whether just as often they would be less effective. You're talking about just in the postseason? Yes.

I think you can get away with it. I mean, sure, for some team it would backfire, but for the most part, you're talking about, there's two factors here. One, tons of off days. There's just so many off days. And, I mean, there's one three-game stretch you have to get through in the NLCS,

but otherwise you're never pitching more than two days in a row. And second thing, which is sort of related to that, is that we are watching the extreme freak show postseason. Most of the time, you have a blowout every third game, or you have a 5-0 game, or a 7-2 game every third game. This is really as stressed. What we have seen is as stressed as bullpens can get, and they've been pretty fine. So I would guess that it's okay. It's obviously not sustainable in the regular season.

There are too many high-leverage innings for the number of high-leverage pitchers you have. So you're forced to go with your slightly less effective options because it's a marathon. But I don't think that it would generally be a problem. I mean, we haven't seen it be a problem for any team yet, have we? Have we seen a team run out of pitchers once? Not run out of pitchers.

I guess you could argue that pitchers have been fatigued. Maybe some of the Cardinals guys who got hit today, I mean, I don't know whether they were or not on the broadcast. Harold Reynolds was saying that he thought that guys like Marco Gonzalez and Seth Maness were tired, were fatigued. And Maness was, you know, leaving his sinker up and Gonzalez didn't have great control. And who knows whether that is fatigue related or not. But maybe that's what that would look like, I guess. Can I take one parting shot?

This is a very subtle one. It's not a big one. But I actually didn't like bringing in Herrera today. Why is that? So he brought him in in the sixth, and so he knew Herrera was going to have to pitch more than one inning. And, you know, he's trying to lock down the series. He figures, eh, I've got to lead.

End it now. Don't let the Orioles drag this series out. But I think when you're up three games to nothing, one of the advantages that you have is that you don't have to act desperate in any way. And the problem with bringing in Herrera in the sixth is that, sure, if it works, it's great. You win the series. That's good. But if I were up 3-0, what I would mainly be thinking about in these situations is what happens if things go wrong?

And if things go wrong in that situation, Herrera might throw 30-some pitches. And you might have to go to Wade Davis in the seventh because Herrera might be in a jam. And then Wade Davis might throw 30 pitches and you've still got a game tomorrow and it'll be the third day in a row they've pitched and you figure in that scenario, Davis and Herrera are unavailable or certainly tired. And I just felt like that was a situation

where Ned Yost put himself in a position, if things didn't go as planned, which you should always be planning on things not going as planned, if things didn't go as planned, he could cost himself two games. And that's, if I'm up three games to nothing, all I'm thinking is, okay, can this move cost me two games? Because the odds are overwhelming that the Royals are going to win this series. You don't have to do anything radical at that point. They're going to win. And whether you win in four or five, four is nicer than five.

But at the end of the day, it's the same. What you really, really, really don't want is to go back to Baltimore because you did something in game four that cost you severely in game five. So I thought that that was a situation. Now, so the situation specifically was that he had just pulled Vargas. I think there was a runner on. It was a one-run game. The righties were coming up in the middle of the order. And that's a great time to bring in Herrera.

It was Pierce, Jones, Cruz coming up. Exactly. So if you told me Herrera pitches the next four batters because the fifth was young, or the fourth was young. If you told me that Herrera comes in in the sixth, pitches in the next four batters because the fifth was young or the fourth was young if you tell me that her air comes in in the sixth pitches in the next four batters but then basically finnegan or fraser gets the seventh yeah or maybe the eighth against the soft part of the lineup that's fine i'm just saying i don't want to put myself in a position where herrera or davis is going to be called on to pitch 30 plus pitches in that inningplus pitches in that outing.

And this is sort of how I feel when teams bring in their closer for work in a four- or five-run lead. What always scares me, what terrifies me, and what seems to sometimes happen is that if the closer doesn't have his best stuff that day, well, he's your closer. You're not relieving him until the lead is blown. Because what happens if he gives up two runs? Well, now it's a save situation. You've got to keep your closer. You're not relieving him until the lead is blown. Because what happens if he gives up two runs? Well, now it's a save situation.

You've got to keep your closer in. And that's how you end up with Eric Gagné pitching 49 pitches and he can't pitch for the next three days. And so, very old reference. So anyway, that's what I... Now, like I said, I that bringing in herrera in that situation with the understanding that fraser's gonna bridge to davis or that finnegan's gonna bridge to davis would be great i just don't think that yost had that in mind and i don't think

most managers do or would yeah or even the day before when he brought in fraser for the sixth that was the heart of the order and then herrera got sixth, that was the heart of the order. And then Herrera got the seventh, which was the bottom of the order. And maybe it would have been better to flip them. Maybe it would have been better to use Herrera first against the tougher hitters and then Fraser in the seventh against the weaker hitters. But that's not really something you see anyone do ever. And there was a bad bunt in game four but it was not one that yost called according to him it was in the the first inning when the first couple guys got on and then lorenzo kane sacrificed right away of course that led to the two runs or at least it

didn't preclude the two runs from scoring. Who knows? Maybe more than two runs would have scored. But Yost said that Kane did that on his own. Didn't totally hate that, by the way. Why? Because the shadows? No, but I will now incorporate that into my math. I wouldn't say I liked it, but I didn't totally hate it. I think that first and second with nobody out is a, if there's a good bunt, it's usually that one.

Because, as you know, my opinion of small ball techniques is that if they make it so that you don't need a hit to score a run, they're much more justified to me than if they simply require you to still need a hit. Because if you bunt a guy to score a run, they're much more justified to me than if they simply require you to still need a hit. Because if you bunt a guy to second, well, it still takes a hit to bring him in. And if you get a hit, the odds are that that guy was going to score in the inning anyway. So you've probably accomplished nothing. But it's hard to get a hit. And the three bases, once a guy gets on first, you generally have three outs and three bases. And if you're

just going one base per out, you're not going to get there in time. However, in this situation, you make it so that you don't need a hit to score a run. You also make it so that another guy is in scoring position. You're advancing two guys for the cost of one out instead of one guy for the cost of one out, which makes it obviously twice as valuable in a sense. In a sense, I know it makes it not twice as valuable in another sense. Kane is a guy who could conceivably bunt for a hit because he's very fast. And so for all those reasons, it doesn't strike me as absurd. I mean, he did a push bunt. A lot of times, to me, a push bunt is almost like a safety sacrifice.

You might get a hit out of it. It's not implausible that you end up with a much better situation. And, you know, Kane was batting against a righty, so he was not as good a hitter as his overall line might suggest in that situation. In the shadows. In the shadows. And, you know, I don't know how much truth there is this but you have to have you have to sort of feel like the royals have a feeling that if they

get too early then it's just the clock ticks and they're gonna probably be able to outweigh you which is exactly what they did yeah and they made a bunch of good defensive plays, as usual. A bunch of impressive catches, and then they won again. So I looked up some numbers, and I got some numbers from ESPN Stats and Info about the percentage of innings pitched by relievers in the postseason this year and in the past many years compared to the regular season. in the past many years compared to the regular season. So if I told you that the average percentage of innings pitched by relievers in the regular season, in the wildcard era, and this actually hasn't changed much at all since the beginning of the wildcard era,

it was almost the same this year as it has been overall, partially probably because pitchers are facing fewer batters to get those innings pitched now that offense is down. But anyway, if I told you that the average percentage of innings pitched in the regular season by relievers is 33.7, and I will tell you that because it's true, what would you guess the postseason percentage has been over the same span? The percentage of innings pitched during the postseason that have been pitched by relievers. Yes, relative to 33.7 in the regular season. I would guess not much higher. I would guess like 37%.

Yeah, it's 36.2 over the entire wildcard era. It hasn't actually increased all that much. If you look at just the last 10 years, it's 37%. And it fluctuates from year to year. There hasn't really seemed to be any clear trend. Like 2011 was the Tony La Russa year when he did it a lot. That year, the percentage was 40.7. a year when he did it a lot. That year, the percentage was 40.7. In 2007, I don't remember why that year was high, but that was 41.2. 2004 actually was the highest ever at 43.1.

So this year, after today's games and in the Cardinals-Giants game, relievers pitched the majority of that game, so that raised it a bit this year's percentage is 39.9 and i wonder what the optimal rate would be i guess i mean if if you took a starter out after five every time then you'd you'd have relievers pitching 44 of the time or or more i guess you'd have the occasional extra inning game so that'd be 45 or, I guess. You'd have the occasional extra inning game. So that'd be 45% or something. Or less because you'd have the occasional not playing in the bottom of the ninth.

But yes. Yes, true. So that would be higher than it has been in any individual postseason, significantly higher than it has been overall. I wonder what the optimal rate is. So it's basically 40% this postseason, and there have been a bunch of extra inning games,

and of course there was an 18-inning game, and that'll skew things slightly. But would you guess that the optimal rate is higher than the 36.2% it's been over the wildcard era, or the 37% it's been over the last 10 years or so? Well, I don't know what the number would be i think this falls under you know i know when i see it kind of um but it seems like relievers have been somewhat underutilized um so something more than that but yeah i don't know 42 and it depends somewhat on the makeup of the teams in the postseason every year maybe you have

particularly strong rotations or something or weak bullpens but but yes i would guess that it is a little higher than it has been but maybe not much higher than it is right now um okay so royals are in the world series who knew anything? Anything on Giants Cardinals? Two things, two quick things. One, I hope you haven't read this yet. Matt Trueblood, Matthew Trueblood, suggested it or asked me a question. I took that question to Zachary Levine. Zachary Levine took the challenge and wrote about it.

I have read that. Ah, sorry. Well, and wrote about it. I have read that. Ah, I just can't guess. Well, you can tease it. Well, it's on BP right now. It's a free article. It's up. Go read it. But the question is, if Yadier Molina is incapable of swinging a bat, if he swings a bat, it

just might kill him. But he can be Yadier Molina behind the dish. He can do everything that Yadier Molina does that's non-bat related. And the alternative is A.J. Perzinski or Tony Cruz should the Cardinals start him. It would seem more valuable. And I think Zachary handled it extremely well. Detailed, insightful, interesting. Twists and turns.

And a good surprising answer. Surprising. Depends if you're expecting the answer that it was. So that's a good piece. Were you surprised by the answer? Yeah, a little bit, or at least how clear it seemed to be. I agree. Secondly, with Adam Wainwright starting on Thursday, I just have, for the last three or so days, I've just kept on thinking about this question. And I tried to ask Doug, but I phrased it so poorly, and he kind of answered it, but I just didn't ask it well enough to really get a good answer. The question that I just keep thinking is, is there any symptom of bad mechanics that couldn't just as easily be a symptom of injury? And is there any symptom of injury that couldn't just as easily be a symptom

of bad mechanics? Because it seems to me that a huge question for Wainwright, for us in knowing what to expect from Wainwright, is, is it indeed just mechanics or is it injury? If it's injury, then there's no hope. If it's bad mechanics, heck, that's like two second fix a lot of times. It's just about getting that mechanics back. And so I've been trying to figure out whether there's anything, and I don't know the answer. But Mike Kruger said something very interesting on the Giants broadcast during Wainwright's performance that John Miller recalled tonight,

and I think that it does sort of answer this, or it might sort of answer this. And what Kruger said, and Kruger had elbow injuries in his career, so he knows elbow injuries. He said that it is, when you have a bad elbow, it's very, very hard to snap off, to throw a lot of curveballs, throw a lot of sliders. It's just painful. It's not what you would choose to do. If you were injured, that's probably not what you would do. And Wainwright has been doing that. They've been bad, sort of, and his fastballs have been bad. He's been doing that more, hasn't he, I think? He's been doing that more, exactly. Yeah. That's been one of the defining things about

his performance, is that his fastballs have been up and terrible, but he's been throwing more breaking balls, maybe because the fastballs have been up and terrible. And so if he were hurt, then you might think that he would avoid those. And if it were mechanics that were making his command be off, then you might think that he would go to those. And so that's not conclusive. That doesn't rule out the possibility, as you and I think, that he's going to have this horrible moment where his Tommy John ligament explodes out of his arm.

But it is a clue. It is an interesting clue. And it does kind of make me think that Wainwright, it makes me trust Wainwright a little more when he says it's mechanics and not injury. Yeah, that seems reasonable. Although, yeah, well, he also, I think, said that it was mechanics before the first or one of his previous postseason starts and that he had straightened them out or he thought he had during a bullpen session. And that didn't seem to be the case in the game. And then he has now had another encouraging bullpen session. So who knows whether that will translate? He said that he is very confident going forward, was his quote. Of course, I guess you would probably say that regardless, or you wouldn't want to say that you weren't confident.

Yeah, bad mechanics, it's not like bad mechanics are automatically going to get fixed. It's just that they're going to get fixed more often than a devastatedly injured arm is going to get fixed. Yes, and I looked at the Pakoda odds for this game, and even though Pakoda doesn't know that Wainwright is possibly dealing with something that could really make him much worse than the stats say he is, the Giants are still a 60-40 favorite in this game with Bumgarner going at home.

No Molina, no Molina, home field, and yeah, Bumgarner. Yeah. By the way, speaking of Pocot odds, we've been running daily per game Pocot odds. I finally got around to running the series Pocot odds today. You know how we thought that the Orioles and the Royals series was really close, and it seemed sort of hard, and we used things like Buck Showalter to decide who to pick. In fact, as we said, Pakoda had it 50.5 to 49.5 in the Royals' favor. But really, if you thought this is a coin flip, this was a coin flip. Yeah, wow.

Like if you thought this is a coin flip, this was a coin flip. Yeah, wow. I mean, I saw other sources simulating the series that said different things. I know that Fangraphs had the Royals heavily favored in the series, I believe. And then Dan Simborski at ESPN had the Orioles like 57% to win or something like that. So I guess it depends on your methods and your projection systems. But yeah, I thought

it was very close and it kind of was in a way or it seemed like it was. Not the final results but the games themselves. Okay, so watch the Giants and the Cardinals

today. Hope that if you're not rooting for either team in particular, hope that they win just so that we don't have four full days without baseball before the World Series starts. I will be flying to Kansas City for the World Series for a couple games, so I'm looking forward to that.

What an absurd use of money you don't think that my writing will be much better because I'll be sitting in the post game press conference getting the quotes that every other writer who's there gets can't wait to read your tweets about barbecue

just dying to find out if the barbecue is any good I will not be one of those people okay so that's it for today. Please support our sponsor, the Baseball Reference Play Index by going to baseballreference.com using the coupon code BP

to get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. We will maybe have a day or two without baseball here at the end of the week, so send us some questions at podcastat at baseballperspectives.com. Maybe we will get to those. Join the Facebook group at facebook.com slash effectively wild, where a lot of listeners who are also Photoshop artists are making Photoshop's

of how sweep it is or Photoshopping rooms into pictures of the royals or yoast into pictures of things so that's fun and you know what goes well with Kansas City barbecue a nice cup of sweep tea alright we will end on that note we'll be back tomorrow