Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 561: What the Royals Look Like When They’re Losing

Episode Date: October 22, 2014

Ben and Sam discuss James Shields, Madison Bumgarner, and what World Series Game 1 reminded us about the Royals.

Now light the field for the big game tonight. Mark Twain to Thomas Jefferson. Strike. Loop the drifter to Zimmerman. Line drive to keep the team alive Good morning and welcome to episode 561 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. Yo, how are you? Okay. Good. I probably should have said good afternoon, because most of you will not be listening in the morning. We are recording in the morning in our time zones after game one of the World Series,

and it was not the most entertaining World Series game. It was probably... The most entertaining World Series game. It was probably... The least entertaining World Series game? Well, by default, but it was probably one of the least entertaining games, period, this postseason in a month when we've been spoiled by lots of one-run games and nail-biters in extra inning games. This one was decided fairly early Or seemed to be decided fairly early

And was as it turned out So I was at the game And wrote about that a little bit And you watched the game and wrote about that A little bit and we talked about Some similar points I guess the takeaway Other than

James Shields being bad and Madison Bumgarner being great again Wait I have a business Just a few things The Bruce Bochy American League double switch Has been found By Groog legendary

McCovey chronicler Groog Who sent me a box score. And it's interesting because it is kind of a double switch. He replaced, okay, so in the eighth, he brought in a new pitcher. He was leading by three. And he replaced the first baseman, who was John Bowker, with Rich Aurelia, who was the DH,

who had been the DH. So Aurelia was batting seventh, sixth, and Bowker had been batting eighth. So Bowker makes the last out of the inning, and so they move Aurelia from DH to first base which then burns the DH and so now they don't have a DH and so the pitcher's spot so now the DH spot becomes the pitcher so Brian Wilson I think is now batting or maybe Tyler Walker is now batting eighth and so in the sense that they did replace the last man who made an out with a pitcher so that he wouldn't have to bat a long time around, that was a double switch.

But the Giants were up 4-1. It was the bottom of the eighth. There was practically no way that that spot would bat again in a significant way. And so I can't decide whether this was the silliest move ever, which is what it was portrayed as at the time, and whether we should still laugh at Bruce Bochy in retrospect, even though now we all love him, because it's so silly and so unnecessary. And as anybody would rightly acknowledge, Rich Aurelia in 2008 was like, you know,

it's not like you were putting a gold glove there. Yes, he had played shortstop earlier in his career, but he was an old man. And so it's not, you know, it was a very, very minimal, probably, upgrade at first. The other thing is that Aurelia was, well, no, I guess it wouldn't matter.

Let's see. Yeah, yeah anyway forget the last whatever thing i said uh so or if i think that it's brilliant because he found a way to make a double switch that actually did make sense even in an al park uh because i think it might i think maybe it did make sense i think it makes sense yeah. Upgrade your defense for the last two innings. Down by three. Or up by three. And almost certainly never come to regret burning your DH. Why not?

Probably should be done more. Although I guess it's not that often that your DH is qualified to be a defensive replacement. But it's not that rare. I mean, teams use be a defensive replacement, but it's not that rare. I mean, teams use everybody at DH these days. So it's common enough. I mean, if you were getting Hosmer a day off from the field, for instance, and Butler was playing at first, you could do this, and you could burn your DH, and it probably would be okay if you timed it right.

So I'm actually going to say Trailblazer. I'm going to say that this is a move that has potential. He won the game. Well, he won the game, but he was going to win the game. And yet it didn't catch on, this tactic. It might if he did it now. He didn't have quite the pull in baseball consciousness. All right, so that's one thing.

He should do it tonight maybe on the big stage. He should. Well, but Morse's is DH. So I think that would be Muff. Yes, probably. All right. I have an update on the commercial about the 3 out of 10. Batting 300 gets a hit 1 out of 3 times.

Long-time listeners will remember this. Short-time listeners, too, will remember this. listeners uh short time listeners too will remember this uh i heard the i heard the sequel to it and the the uh lawyer dad does indeed say yes i i got it wrong it's not it's not one and three it's three and ten but he says it in the snidest most passive aggressive way possible that i come out of it hating him more but what i really hate about him is that he then has his daughter say, after he says, well, you don't actually get hit every three times. You get a hit three out of ten times. And his poor daughter has to say, what's that mean?

I'm confused, which is just the most girls-can't-do-math goal ever. And I know that if he had a son, he would have had his son do it. I get it. But, you know, I care about the messages we send to our girls. And I'm pretty sure that she can understand the numbers 3 and 10 and what it means to get a hit 3 out of 10 times. I don't appreciate

what he did to her. It's a pretty despicable commercial. We will not be playing it because I don't want his name to be repeated. And lastly, this is not my least favorite stat ever, but it is a pretty disingenuous stat. Everybody has heard this a lot lately.

The team that has won the first game in the World Series has won 11 of the past 10. Right. 22 of the past 26 or 15 of the past 17. Exactly. There's no reason to limit it to the last 17.

There's just no reason. There is nothing that changed 17 years ago unless I can think of something. Can you think of anything that changed at some point recently that would have changed the ratios? Because otherwise, it is explicitly cherry-picking for no reason. It is incredibly disingenuous. We have 100 years of seven-game series, basically. And unless you can tell me why 1940 numbers worked differently than 2010 numbers work,

I just don't know why I wouldn't go with the Sample of 100 instead of your Idiot sample of 12 Now can you think Of anything that changed it's conceivable something has Changed is there anything that has changed Is the fact that They don't go 147 With their starters anymore

Maybe but probably not but maybe Something like that Players got less gritty players got less gritty they got less gritty they quit gritting back right once they go down they can no longer they're done they want to just get their offseason started yeah it's true i i i have it on i have it on good authority that greg holland left in the fourth inning yesterday and is not coming back. I don't know. I mean, it does go, I mean, I don't know. I've seen it in various formulations. I've seen 22 out of 26 was the largest sample I saw, which is fairly large. But i don't know what what could have changed other than yeah i don't know the less ability to bring back your ace or something or uh on short rest or or pitchers not pitching

as well on short rest because they're not conditioned to do it maybe the way they once were um i i don't I don't know. Something about bullpen usage. I mean, I guess that would benefit both teams. So I don't know. Yeah, I mean, it is true that the game is different in ways both subtle and less subtle. So if there is a compelling reason to think

that I should care about the last 12 years more than... Has the format changed? I mean, the 2-3-2? That's been my whole life, certainly. Yeah. I mean, I guess I don't know. These guys have all played an extra

series or two, and so maybe there's a fatigue element to it. I mean, I could be swayed. My suspicion, though, is that people who are citing this don't have that strong, cohesive argument in mind. I've also seen the, for the people that want to show how the series is still wide open, I've seen the, well, eight out of the past 11 teams that won game one at home won the series but only four out of nine that

won it on the road won the series meaningless you know utter utter meaningless means nothing i mean the very like just logically it makes no sense so if because obviously a team that well at the end of the first game you have three three home and three road, no matter whether you're at home or whether you're on the road. So if there is no logical reason why those two numbers should be different, you have to show me why they should be different, I think. Anyway.

Yeah, okay. All right. So the game itself, I think we both sort of focused on the fact that the Royals seemed weaker when they don't have a lead, which seems like an obvious thing to say that every team probably seems weaker when it's losing. But the Royals were not able to deploy all the weapons that we have talked about in the postseason the the extremely high percentage of innings that were devoted to Herrera Davis and Holland in the ALCS and before that in retrospect I mean it's it's obvious that that was in part I mean yes it was it was Ned

Yost learning to manage differently in the postseason, but it was also the fact that the Royals were almost always winning in all of the previous rounds, and so they were in a position to use those guys in all those games. And Yost being aggressive with Dyson and putting him in when the team had a lead or was tied late was also something they don't do when losing. Dyson sat on the bench and he did his celebration dance from the wildcard game in the pregame introductions but was not seen again after that and there was no need for Terrence Gore. You didn't need to pinch hit with or pinch run with Terrence Gore when you're behind by seven six

runs so all of those weapons all of those things that we've talked about maybe the Royals being a better postseason team than world than regular season team because they can go heavily they can leverage all of these assets we're not assets when they're behind and when they're behind by that many runs the goal is to come back and to get guys on base and to hit home runs and those are not the things that they are good at of course no one is really very good at those things against Madison Bumgarner who was great again but you in your recap looked at whether that perception was true was backed up by stats from this season whether the royals really are a weaker team when they are behind or when if they are a stronger team when they are ahead what did you find yeah and of course this sort of thing is always going

to be prone to data limitations but this year when they were behind, baseball references play index has this little feature where you can see how often a team won if they were ahead in the first versus how often they won if they were behind in the first, at the end of the first. And you can do that for every inning, and you can look at it league-wide. And they were slightly better than average if they were trailing. They were like, I'm going to look at it league wide and they were slightly better than average if they were trailing they were like uh i'm gonna i'm gonna look at it uh so that i can make sure that i'm not saying things that

are incorrect um but they were you know like for instance at the end of the um you know at the end of the seven uh if they were trailing uh they had they won like they won like basically 16 more games out of 1,000 than the average team that finished the seventh inning trailing. So they came back slightly more often than an average team, but 16 out of 1,000, it's pretty small when you compare it to if they were winning, in which case if they were winning at the end of the seventh, they won 69 more games out of 1,000 than the average team, and it's pretty consistent.

There's a little bit of a data weirdness around the third and fourth inning because basically the third and fourth innings were the worst of theirs by far for their pitching, which kind of makes sense. They had the kind of starting rotation that wasn't that distinguished, and you had guys like Guthrie and Vargas who maybe are prone to get hit a little bit. So in the third and the fourth, it gets a little funky. But basically, if they get out to a lead at any point in the game from that point on, they're significantly more likely than the average team with a lead to win that game.

And it's less true when they're trailing. So, I mean, you know, who knows if that's necessarily, I mean, it's only one season's worth of data. We only have one season with this team. But it fits the hypothesis. And, you know, I think that the hypothesis, you know, makes a lot of sense on its face just because we sometimes think, I think it's fair to say that the default expectation for players, the default is to assume that barring really good, really convincing information, we should assume that they will perform more or less the same regardless of context. So whether it's a clutch situation or not, you know, not everybody's going to be the

same, but given the limited information we have and our limited understanding of it, the default should be to assume that, you know, Tim Collins is going to pitch just as well in a high leverage situation as a low leverage situation, or that, you know, Wade Davis is going to pitch just as well in June as he will in July. And that James Shields or, I don't know, I'll pick James Shields as starter. But that Eric Hosmer will hit just as well when his team is ahead as when it's behind. And so this idea that they would be a particularly good team when they're ahead or behind, if you make it seem like a character thing or that they just aren't,

they can't come back or that they never let another team, you know, burrow into their advantage and that they're just so tough when they're ahead or anything like that, it's probably going to be silly and nonsense. But there is a real difference, a very real difference,

in the personnel that they use in these situations. They are two separate teams operating on two different tracks. And one of the tracks is a very good team and the other team is an okay team. It's a less good team. But the people themselves are actually literally different. And the other thing is just that when you have a game, as the game proceeds and it gets close to the end stages and one team has a lead, volatility is going to favor the team that is trailing. Because the team that's trailing basically needs something to shake up the situation in a big way. trailing basically needs something to shake up the situation in a big way. Otherwise,

you know, if it's a 6-4 game, no matter what two teams are playing, the odds are that the 6-4 team, that the team with six is going to win because the odds are that, you know, in baseball, the most persistent outcome of an inning is no-run score. And so if the state just stays as it is, the team that's ahead is going to win. And so if you're trailing, you really want volatility. And if you're leading, you really don't want volatility. And this is a team that is low-scoring. They don't score a lot of runs. They don't allow a lot of runs. And so the lack of volatility really plays up when they're ahead and really plays down when they're behind you, So the lack of volatility really plays up when they're ahead and really plays down when they're behind. As I think most people probably felt when they were down 5-0 in the fourth inning,

it was like you looked at the lineup and you thought, well, where is the three-run inning in this lineup? And of course, the wild card game showed that they can do it. And not only can they do it, but they can do it playing something like Royals baseball, stealing third down by four and doing all sorts of crazy things. But, you know, this is not the six-run inning lineup, basically. Yeah, and the speed aspect was also sort of negated in that they just couldn't get anyone on base, so there was no way to steal i mean once you get down by that many runs against bum garner it it's not going to go well

for any team most of the time um but but yeah the the speed didn't help a lot the defense inability to draw walks doesn't help uh-huh and the defense wasn't great there was uh norioki taking a a weird and humorous route to a ball that in this case did not work out well kane catches that right uh if he's in right yeah i would think so and yeah if not catches it at least stops it at a single instead of playing it into a two-run triple or whatever it was. And it was the Giants making good defensive plays. Gregor Blanco making a really great catch on Eric Hosmer with, I guess, Kane on first in the first inning to end that inning. That was kind of the catch that people have become accustomed to seeing from Kane over

the last few weeks. So the Giants were good and the Giants are good defensively. Ned Yost, after the game, said that defensively he thinks these teams are evenly matched, and it's probably not as big a gap as it seemed to be in the last couple weeks, at least looking at the flashy Royals catches and their ultimate outfield and everything. So the defensive efficiency were better than the Royals this year, and defensive efficiency just means that they turned more balls that were hit into the field into outs.

A higher percentage of those balls became outs than when they were hit into the Royals. And you were wondering about that. Did you ever find a compelling reason for why the Royals, who we know have a good defense, their players all rate individually excellently, and by other metrics, they are much higher. Why do they simply not turn that many balls into outs? Do you know? I think it's just the ballpark, mostly. And AT&T Park is also large, but Kauffman has the biggest outfield in baseball. And if you look at the splits, the Royals' home road BABIP splits,

they have the largest in baseball. So when they are on the road, I think they had the second lowest road BABIP of any team, and their road BABIP would have been tied for the best full-season BABIP if they had had the same BABIP at home on on the road and I think that's a I don't know if the gap is always as big as it was I think it was something like 35 points this year but that is a pretty consistent thing from year to year because Kaufman is is big and takes away homers but but helps you hit all other kinds of hits.

So I think that's part of it. If you look at just the late inning ultimate outfield, the numbers suddenly change and suddenly the Royals with that alignment have one of the best bad ups in baseball. Of course, that is also a point in the game when Herrera, Davis, and Holland are often pitching and not allowing a ton of weak or a lot of strong contact probably. So that is also a factor.

And we should just be very clear that the Royals did not lose this game because Tim Collins pitched. I mean, they lost because the Giants had a slightly better pitcher who pitched extremely well, and the Royals had a slightly better pitcher who pitched extremely well, and the Royals had a slightly worse pitcher who pitched extremely poorly, and that's the game. That's 99% of the win probability is in those two guys. We're talking about details that were interesting to us, but not that really swayed the game. The only time that you could really say that the game pivoted you know besides just shields

getting shelled like other than shields getting shelled the only time that the game really pivoted was in that uh was it the third or the fourth the third inning rally i think yeah the bottom of the third when they put two on they were down by three they put two in scoring position with nobody out and bum garner strikes out Escobar, strikes out Aoki, walks Kane and then gets Hosmer to ground out and they get nothing and then like four minutes later the Giants had another two runs.

But even without that that was really the situation where any article that you read today, including ours, that presupposes that the Royals couldn't have won this game for any reason can just go to that moment. And, of course, Eric Hosmer could have very easily doubled there,

and it's a totally different game. Or Nori Aoki could have singled instead of striking out, and it's a very different game, and maybe the Royals win. So clearly, as bad as the Royals looked, there was nothing definitive about it, just as there's never anything definitive about one game, no matter how lopsided. You made a Jeff Lynn joke in your article that I did not appreciate. compared the Royals' run before this game to, what, the 2007 Rockies and to Jeff Lynn when he's looking at this run as looking at Jeff Lynn when he's surrounded by Wilburys.

I did say that. And not the 2007 Rockies. I was thinking more like the late 90s Rockies, where they would, in my recollection, they would win like 72% of their games at home and like 35% of their games on the road. But yeah. Awful, awful analogy.

Yeah, sorry. What else? There was Danny Duffy reappearing and pitching. But not Lincecum. Were you totally interested in the fact that they went to, that Bochy used his one mop-up bullet? I guess he had two. He could have gone, well, he had a number.

He could have pulled, I thought, I mean, you know, he definitely could have pulled Bumgarner after the fifth. Felt very confident in his team's chances of winning and done whatever he needed to do as maintenance from that point on, especially considering that Bumgarner's going to be pushing 45 or 50 innings by the time this is all done in the postseason. But using the ninth inning for his mop-up inning, he went with Strickland in an attempt to get Strickland back on track and to get Strick confidence again, and to get Strickland to find his slider.

And that's not a bad goal, because he would like Strickland to be a right-handed, high-leverage weapon, as he was able to use him for, in a couple games in the Division Series, and right now he couldn't do that. And so now I think he thinks he can, that Strickland looked really good, faced the heart of the order, had the slider really popping. And so I'm sure he feels like that was an inning very productively used. And I'm sure that Tim Lincecum thinks it was an inning very unproductively used.

Tim Lincecum didn't even show up for the pregame introductions, right? He didn't even come out on the line. Someone asked Bochy about that after the game, and Bochy said he hadn't noticed, but he has truly disappeared. Yeah, I mean, he was very visible, though, in the bullpen, looking grumpy. So I wonder what that means. I guess it doesn't matter. Look, I don't think that Tim Linscomum should be pitching in any situation, and it has nothing

to do with his being rusty. He's not nearly the Giants' best option in short relief in any sort of leverage situation, and he's not nearly their best option in long relief in any sort of multi-inning situation. As long as they have Yusmero Petit and that they haven't used Petit in the previous two days there's no real reason to be carrying Lincecum I guess you carry him as

like super super duper extra insurance but I mean I'd rather see I guess I'd rather see Gary Brown on the roster than him but so this is like the least important issue in this entire series but it is sort of surprising that given that Mike Matheny is going to lose his job for using Michael Waka without getting him a mop-up inning first,

that Bochy didn't at least throw Linscombe out there for one inning and see what he's got and at least keep his arm somewhat familiar yeah and and so the only other question i guess there was a lot of in-game advocating going on for yost pulling duffy after he had looked so good and keeping him in line for a game five start now there's no no way and i don't think anyone thought there was a way that that Shields wouldn't pitch that game in what would be his last start in a Royals uniform, most likely, unless he is actually hurt. Even if he is hurt, there is a possibility that he would start that game. Yost said after the game that Shields would start that game. you if you were managing this team would you do things any differently would you even consider going from shields given how lousy he looked or

would you just start him because he's shields and he's your team leader and he's your best pitcher during the regular season and be ready to hook him early if he looks as off as he did uh first of all i think to answer the question i would i would start shields but i think that in defending the decision to start shields you used nothing but strawman that i disagree with like i i don't think he was their best starter during the regular season i don't care that he is their leader. I would start him because he's better than Guthrie and better than Vargas. And I don't have any particular fear of using James Shields in a big game situation. I did think that it was maybe the most enjoyable, and at the poor guy's expense, but maybe the most enjoyable part of the postseason so far has

been seeing how incredibly quickly we can change our narrative about a player. Like yesterday, literally yesterday, James Shields was seen as not just a typical pitcher, but an exceptional pitcher with extraordinary abilities to pitch in big games uh columns were being written about how he is the big game pitcher and just just like an hour after that like an hour and 20 minutes after that he is the the narrative is not just that he is now a typical pitcher but that he is so bad in big game situations that he can't pitch in the postseason again, and should the Royals replace him.

And his nickname has become mocked, and it's incredible. I mean, he's, I don't know, he never probably deserved a particularly high reputation for this. And he probably, I don't know, I mean, my guess is that the nickname was never, you know, in his mind was never intended to be anything, like, extraordinary. We all have weird nicknames. Like, for instance, when I was a kid, Ben, my nickname was Slammin' Sammy. Really? Did I slam? Not really. One of the least slammy players they didn't

they didn't call you bam bam did that that's a good callback uh i i in fact i never did slam i never did hit a slam never slammed in my entire life uh and and it would have been a shame if like if i had been nicknamed slamming sammy and for the first six years everybody accepted it and treated it as though it were um uh prophetic and then one day woke up and went hey he's not slamming i hate that guy it's just a nickname you guys it's nothing it doesn't mean anything and i bet in james shield's mind it meant next to nothing i'm sure that in his mind it was what i mean, didn't he name himself? Isn't that the story in the minors? Coffee's ready.

Isn't it the story that in the minors he named himself? I might be totally botched on this. I always thought that it was that he named himself and it was sort of just a one-off thing. It's the minors, so there are no big games. I thought it was something that came from his high school teammates. They called him that. I don't know.

Maybe it's hard to establish the origin story of something like that. Maybe you get it a few different times. I don't think he's ever particularly embraced the nickname. And you're right. I don't know that he would have that nickname if his name didn't happen to rhyme with game. He has pitched well in some big games, but he hasn't really stood out in that respect. But yeah, anyway, your question was, should he start?

And I guess, I mean... You wouldn't consider Duffy? Yeah, well, no, the thing is that it's not about him or Duffy. It's about him or Guthrie, right? I mean, you could start Duffy over Guthrie if you wanted to. If you're interested in starting Duffy, that's easy. I guess it's slightly harder now because, let's see, two, space, three. I mean, he'd have to do it on three days rest after coming back.

But, so I guess now it's slightly harder. Maybe that rules it out, but he only threw three plus innings and I would say he had come into that game rested. So anyway, the point is that they didn't... Even if it is now Duffy versus Shields, even if that has to be the decision because of the rest, we already have established a certain truth, a certain kind of physical property of this universe that we're talking about. And that physical property is that in the Royals' mind,

Guthrie is better than Duffy. So if you're saying that Duffy should start over Shields, then you would also have to concede by the Royals' logic that Guthrie should start over Shields. And so I'm perfectly contentious to by the Royals' logic that Guthrie should start over Shields. And so I'm perfectly contentious to say that Shields should start over Guthrie. And of course, you know, Shields, Guthrie's going to pitch. So I'm not literally saying he should start over Guthrie. They're both going to start. But I wouldn't bump Shields from it.

Now, I will say that I haven't, he looked terrible yesterday. I, I will say that he looked terrible yesterday. I haven't really looked at why he looked terrible. I looked a little bit at his previous starts, which weren't that great. He was getting hit hard and fairly hard and getting hit hard in the air, which is not really... And he was getting hit hard in the air on his cutter, which is not really a pitch that gets hit hard in the air a lot. And so maybe there is something there.

Maybe it's mechanical. Maybe he's exhausted. Maybe there are reasons to think that he is not as good as the pitcher that we've come to know and expect. But if I found a reason not to start him, it would have nothing to do with the big gaminess of it. And frankly, I think that at this point in the season, you go with the guy anyway. If he's gassed and he's barely getting by on fumes, well, you don't have much you can do.

It's October. You throw him out there and you hope it works. I mean, I saw the Giants go through this in 2012 where their entire rotation seemed to be gassed or broken or irredeemable at certain points in the last couple weeks and in October and they just kept throwing them out there and they would get bombed sometimes I mean you you remember that team they were down two games nothing against Cincinnati they were down three to one against St. Louis that wasn't because they were unlucky it was because their starters were getting bombed.

That had happened to a few of them in September too. But then when they threw them out there and lo and behold, Ryan Vogelsang comes up with a spectacular start and Barry Zito comes up with a great start and Madison Bumgarner comes up. You just sort of have to hold your breath. It's not going to go perfectly and you're not going to win all the World Series

that you get to. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So that's that. We will watch Game 2 tonight. And you and I were chatting about this last night, but the experience of watching a World Series game in person is not quite all it's cracked up to be.

I mean, it's cool to be at a World Series. It's cool to be in Kansas City, which I've never been before because the city kind of redecorated for the World Series in a way that I'm not used to coming from New York where a World Series happens or a Super Bowl happens and you wouldn't ever know it from looking around. There are just too many people many people too many teams too many titles that is not the case here the entire city is sort of in world series mode but when you go to

a world series game uh the there's just so much more press than there is during the regular season that they have to stick most of the people who would not normally be covering the team in the auxiliary press box, which is often somewhere very far away. I know in Yankee Stadium, it's like way out in the outfield. In Kauffman, it's by the left field foul pole, basically. At AT&T, it's a conference room that doesn't overlook the park. Really, you watch it on TV. Right, yeah.

They kind of had that in even the people who were in the press box many of them were set up at these tables with no view of the field whatsoever so um you're sitting in this place or i was sitting in this place an enclosed area so that you you kind of hear the crowd but as if from a great distance um and you're you know craning your head to look over some other guy's head so that you can see part of home plate and it's still you know great to to be there but you kind of feel more connected to the game almost when you're sitting at home on your couch and of course then every every media opportunity is a group press conference, which not only are you getting the same quotes that everyone else is getting, but you don't even have to be there physically because they will put transcripts of those press conferences on the Internet and print them out for you.

What are you telling me for, Ben? I've been making fun of you publicly for the last week yeah it's it's well it's cool to cover a world series i've been to world series but i have not covered one but the the actual process of doing so is uh not quite what it would be during most other games or even in some respects what it would be from covering it from thousands of miles away. Did you see Andy? I did see Andy. See, I envision Andy as being a celebrity at this thing.

See? I did not see him shaking a whole lot of hands or kissing babies or anything, but he did have a spot in the actual press box, so in that sense he is a VIP. Yeah. All right. So we'll watch game two again tonight.

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