Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 566: Game 6 Analysis and Game 7 Game Plans

Episode Date: October 29, 2014

Ben and Sam discuss the breaks that went the Royals’ way in Game 6, then preview the final game of the 2014 season.

Lothan is the runner at first base running for McRae. He's important too because a force play, there he is, a force at second would be a big play. And that's a looper hitting the right field for a base hit. The 50-yard score. Here comes Sundberg. Here's the throw. He scores. We go to a seven. Here's the throw! He scores! We go to a seven! Good morning and welcome to episode 566 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus, presented by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I am Ben Lindberg of Grantland, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectus. Hello. Hello. Hello. I'm coming to you again from Kansas City where I saw the

Royals even the series last night at 3-3 with a 10-0 victory that got out of hand pretty quickly and for once we probably don't really have any managerial moves to discuss or critique so those of you who are sick of how october has turned into the month where we talk about managers will be happy to learn that we probably won't be doing that today at least as far as their game six decisions go i'm surprised that you say that because there was talk. First of all, there was talk about whether PV should have started in the first place. And then once they pulled him in the second, I saw a lot of, if you're willing to replace him with Petit in the second, why aren't you willing to just start Petit? So that was a thing that people talked about, not one that I think holds up to scrutiny, but people say. Yeah, I don't know.

Maybe I'll amend that to say managerial moves. I am interested in discussing or critiquing. I don't know. People have been talking about why Petit hasn't started since earlier in the postseason. But this was a wrinkle. This was the, if you're willing to get him up, you know, three batters into the second. It was a twist. It was a twist on the argument.

Again, I don't think one that holds up to logic, but it was a twist. Let's move on. Okay. Yeah, so this was a game where luck played a role. If managerial moves didn't, luck did, but not one that really determined the outcome, perhaps the final score. But everything sort of happened in the second inning, or the game was more or less decided in the second inning, where the Royals had eight hits, and at least five of them were weird. There were weird hits in that inning. A lot of bad luck, soft contact, weak contact hits.

And not only did they have those hits, but they clustered them together, which is kind of lucky in a different way. It started with Alex Gordon's broken bat leadoff single, and then a couple batters later, Mike Moustakis hit a double that was kind of a jam shot that he pulled just inside first base, not very hard. Brandon Belt almost got to it, and after that there was the Escobar infield single, where Belt fielded it and looked home, perhaps not thinking that Sal Perez was on third, or thinking that someone faster was there, or that whoever was there would be going on contact, and Perez was not, and by the time Belt focused his attention on first base, Escobar was close enough that he could slide in under the tag.

And then there was kind of a weekly hit Lorenzo Cain single, and then finally there was that just weird Eric Hosmer-Hopper double where before the game, Ned Yost had talked about how hard the Royals infield is relative to the Giants infield. And there were some conspiracy theories about the Giants watering down their infield more than usual to slow down the Royals runners, and I don't know whether that was true. It seems as if their infield is just slower as the norm throughout the regular season. is just slower as the norm throughout the regular season. And we saw how hard the Royals infield is last night when Hosmer bounced a ball in front of the plate and it turned into a double somehow. It bounced over the infield and into left center. And so I asked Inside Edge about these hits

because, as you know, they rate the hardness of every hit, and that is sort of a, or every batted ball, and that is a subjective rating. They're not using exit velocity or anything, but hopefully it's a somewhat consistent subjective rating. And so I have some numbers from them on what the Royals did last night. So during the regular season, 42% of hits were well hit as deemed by Inside Edge. And on Tuesday last night, only four of the Royals' 15 hits were well hit. That's 27%. During the regular season, 23% of hits were weak contact, according to Inside Edge.

In Game 6, six of the Royals' 15 hits were weak. So that's 40%. And typically, 14% of batted balls overall that are weak contact become hits. But six of the Royals' 19 weak batted balls in Game 6 did, so that's 32%. And maybe the Royals aren't the typical team in that they're fast and they can beat out more weakly hit balls than the typical team. Still, this was some weird stuff, some unpredictable stuff. And Bocce said as much after the game. Someone asked him how he thought Peavy had looked, and Bocce said if Peavy had had a little luck,

he probably gets out of that inning. They just hit the ball where we couldn't get to it. And that was true for Peavy, and that was also true for Petit, who came in, as as you mentioned in an unusual spot for him in that Bochy prefers to use him to start innings because of his past as a starter this time he came in with inherited runners for the first time since August and didn't go that well but again a couple of the hits he gave up were sort of weak and fluky. So that's what happened. And the Royals also had plenty of hard hits too.

The Giants didn't really hit your Donovan tour all that well. And that was it. They tacked on a few runs in the later innings. But by the time the second inning was over, the Giants' win expectancy was down to 3% or so. I can confirm that. So I have summarized the game. And the other, I mean, once the outcome of that game was clear, which was pretty early,

and Ventura, you know, pitching far beyond his previous single season's high in innings, far beyond his previous single season's high in innings. Didn't really show any ill effects from that or nothing too significant. I mean, he was still throwing hard. He was kind of wild, I think you could say effectively wild. He was, I think he threw 58 strikes in 100 pitches, and he walked five guys and allowed only three hits in his seven innings but and he didn't really vary his approach all that much it didn't seem like like he wasn't throwing a lot more breaking balls or change-ups he was throwing fewer curveballs and change-ups and and more

four seamers and cutters he was just sort of sticking with his fastball approach and and it worked just fine it suited him okay and he got through seven which was important because the other storyline from this game was how the managers would set themselves up for game seven and i think they both did a fine job of that can you confirm that too? That seems right. I can keep talking. Do you have a question for me? No.

I'll give you a press conference question. Talk about how the managers set themselves up for game seven. I don't know what to say. Well, by getting Petit Out after two thirds of an inning I mean Bochy could have

Stretched him for much Longer if he had wanted to Instead he used Gene Machi for three innings which I think Was Machi's longest outing since April of 2013. It was kind of lucky that maybe it was almost kind of. OK, so you've been talking about the weak hits and the bad luck and bad cluster luck.

And it's very true that you're right. That inning in particular, where the tenor of the World Series just completely shifted in an 11-minute stretch. Had a ton of bad luck for the Giants and some good luck for the Royals. And also, that double by Hosmer was super fluky, but also happened because they had forced the Giants to play the infield in. The Escobar hit was super unusual, but clearly Escobar's speed was a big factor. If Eric Hosmer hits that ball or somebody else hits that ball,

Belt probably gets there in time. And the Giants did make a misplay there. Although that was a weird play because Peavy did two things that he was criticized for. One is he pointed home, which was dumb that was just too too eager he it was not his i mean you know belt could see the play and pv couldn't see the play and it would just sort of felt like this happens in slow pitch softball all the time so i you know i'm i'm impatient with pv but you know ball goes up in the air, and eight guys are all yelling instructions at you, and four of them are yelling back.

It's going to be over your head, and it's not. And you're like, don't yell. And then three people are telling you what bass to throw out, but it's three different basses. So PV just got a little ahead of himself and screamed out a base like like probably a lot of people did who forgot that they could be heard or who couldn't be heard and maybe pv forgot he could be heard anyway so that was a problem and then the other thing is he didn't cover first base but that seems like a non-issue right he he couldn't cover first base he he would have run

right through belts throwing lane so he stopped because he didn't want to disrupt the throw home that he expected was coming. And even if he had, there's no way I don't think that Belt can feed him from that position, right? Yeah, I don't think so. Okay, anyway, that's a small, very small side. But the luck, we were talking about luck. So it seemed like it seemed really unlucky that that double went over

Crawford's head after Hosmer chopped it. But I think that actually was the best possible luck that they could get. If that ball doesn't go over Crawford's head, then Petit probably keeps pitching. Like if that's a ground ball double play, then Petit stays in the game. It's

5-0 or whatever. 4-0. And the Giants probably lose anyway. It's, you know, maybe they hold on. But, you know, they were going to lose that game once they were down 4-0. Probably. Not certainly. And so it's not certain that it was bad luck.

Of course, if they'd come from behind and won, that would have been optimal. But there was kind of a nice way that it did all fall apart at once. I guess if you start with the supposition that it was going to all fall apart as we saw it happen, that it was best that it fell apart in exactly that way. Because then Petit got out of that game really fast. And Bochy could just go exclusively to the guys he doesn't care about. I'm almost surprised that he brought Vogelsang in. I guess he didn't really have anybody else to throw that inning.

There was much talk about a potential first position player pitching in World Series history, which was a question that we were asked in an email some time ago, and the answer was just so boring that there was none. There had never been any that we didn't talk about it. But I guess Vogelsang doesn't figure into Bochy's plans, and he probably

has enough of a bullpen with the fully rested Linscombe, semi-available Bumgarner, and now mostly rested Petit. So, you know, it was kind of interesting to watch this game that from the third inning on, all you were thinking is how does this affect tomorrow's game?

And there's just not that much you can even do to affect tomorrow's game. They got Posey a couple of innings of rest. I'm surprised they didn't get him more because he looks exhausted, as catchers do. I'm surprised that Perez didn't get some rest because he ought to be exhausted. As you've pointed out, he's been catching more than anybody. Has he broken the record yet?

Will he break it tomorrow, tonight? Yeah, he will. He'll break the record for most innings ever caught in a single season. How many does he need? I have to add it up, but I think he only needs two or something like that, so he'll break it early. I will tweet it when it happens. I will tweet that you jinxed it if it doesn't happen.

Yeah, it would have been nice, you know, get Eric Kratz some World Series innings. Yeah, Kratz hasn't even appeared in the postseason yet, has he? No. That's actually... Andrew Susak got his World Series on, so yeah. I sort of feel bad. That actually is maybe Yost's worst mistake this postseason.

How do you not get your 34-year-old backup catcher in a postseason game? In a single postseason game? Yeah. Yeah. It's a shame. That is a shame. They had a 10-0 lead and a bone-tired, bone-tired, bones don't get tired, a bone-tired catcher playing it out.

That seems crazy. I feel, boy, Yost was such a feel-good story, and now I just think he's another jerk. Yeah, I started this podcast saying that there weren't many managerial moves to critique, but now we found one. That's a bad one, yeah. But anyway, what I was saying is that you really, when you're watching a 10-0 game play out

and thinking about the game that's going to start tomorrow, you really see how little you can actually do. There's just not that much you can do. You have to just basically play out the game like you would and then you play tomorrow's game like you would. Baseball is a very, very hard sport to try anything with, to play that differently in a game seven. And the one thing we always talk about is riding your bullpen so hard that it basically becomes a bullpen game. And that would make sense for the Royals in particular. But even that, you're putting guys in positions

where you don't know what to get out of them. You're increasing the volatility of Herrera and Davis and Holland if you go to them for two innings. and Holland if you go to them for two innings. And particularly if you go to them with two innings and they know it's two innings like that, you wonder, okay, so do they start... Does any part of them start pacing themselves a little bit? And are they less effective in the first inning?

Are they more tired in the second inning? Holland hasn't done it in a very long time. Holland probably won't do it, right? I doubt it, yeah. It seems like between, well, I guess he could if it was a safe situation. He couldn't do it if it wasn't a safe situation. It wouldn't be allowed. No.

He'd get zapped as he ran out of the bullpen. Zapped like a wasp. So, yeah, so I guess tonight they're going to play a game, and in light of what I just said about how difficult it is to do anything particularly different, is it going to basically just look like a regular baseball game? When we look back at this game, do do you expect it will mostly be you know starter comes out and tries to muscle you know tries to tries to gut his way to the fifth and then the relievers come in but you know it's going to be mostly mostly the the order that we expect i mean do you expect to see herrera in the

fifth do you expect to see davis in the sixth or anything crazy like that do you expect to see Herrera in the fifth? Do you expect to see Davis in the sixth or anything crazy like that? Do you expect to see any, you know, I don't even know what else there would be. Is there going to be anything notable? Eric Kratz appearance? Yeah, I don't know. I would guess that there would be more aggressiveness than the typical game. Both managers sort of seem to be talking that way after the game. I mean, Bochy is saying what you were saying that he said, you hate to have a game

go like this, but no question it does allow you to do some things you probably normally wouldn't. It's not that you ever say uncle, but at the same time, if you get down that far, it does allow you to use some other guys and maybe stretch them out like we did. if you get down that far it does allow you to use some other guys and maybe stretch them out like we did and then he said so we're loaded tomorrow i feel and they are too and he said the only guy who is not available is machi and yost i think said everyone is save for ventura of course and so i would expect that i mean i wrote in my recap recap, if I had to give some unsolicited advice to managers, it would be to just sort of always have someone warming. I wish that we did, but we don't. But since they all have so many guys available, I mean, it's not just every reliever or every good reliever, but also every starter who is rested who you might want to use also available. Obviously, Madison Bumgarner, I think, is almost certainly going to pitch in this game for a couple innings, unless the Giants are

down early, or even if they are down early, I would expect to see him. The Royals could use shields if they wanted to. They can rely heavily on Herrera, Davis, and Holland, though as you mentioned, that is somewhat risky. But yeah, I would think, I mean, with Jeremy Guthrie starting for the Royals, who's maybe the worst pitcher on their staff, and Tim Hudson going for the Giants, who is not as bad as Jeremy Guthrie, but has, you know, sort of struggled over the last couple months of the season, I would expect to see relievers early and often, or at least to have them ready early and often at the first sign of serious trouble. relievers that you could hand over two-thirds of those innings probably to the bullpen and not not really suffer that much in quality I mean you could you could go with Bumgarner for a couple innings you could push Affelt for a couple innings if you wanted to you could use Casilla you could bring back Petit for an inning or two so I mean you could piece together those last several innings very easily

just totally with bullpen guys so i would expect it to look something like a bullpen game of course if if one of the starters is just cruising then then certainly someone could go five or six just i i wouldn't necessarily expect them to be aggressive in the way that we keep wanting managers to be aggressive and pulling starters who are pitching really well just because it's the third time through the order or something. I don't know whether I'd expect to see that, but any sign of trouble, I would think someone will be in and there will be matchups and there will be good bullpen guys the whole way. will be in and there will be matchups and there will be good bullpen guys the whole way so maybe

getting the early lead is particularly important in this game i was disappointed last night because if the giants had had gone ahead by four runs at any point in the game i was going to get to to tweet that the royals had been outscored in the postseason and now it didn't happen and and now it would happen again. Yeah, now there's no chance. Now there's a chance, but it would be a disappointing game if that were the case. So there's been six games in this postseason. One of them was close.

World Series. In this World Series. One of them was close. A couple of them were sort of close to a point and then got out of hand. The final outcomes though, six run, victory, five run, one run, seven,

five, and ten. But, we get a game seven. So, which is better? What we have seen in this World Series or what we saw in all the many sweeps and near sweeps of the postseason series before this yeah i don't think i would say that this has been a classic series uh i probably won't remember it being a great series on its own merits i will probably remember it being a great series just

of a piece with the rest of the postseason, which has been fantastic. And now this going to game seven and just the Royals being a good story and the Giants also being a good story in a different way. I think it's exciting, but the individual games have not measured up to what we saw in the previous rounds, certainly. But it's fitting that it goes to Game 7 and it gives us a little bit more baseball because a lot of those previous series were wrapped up quickly. And now we get at least one more day of baseball. Well, no, exactly one more day of baseball.

This is it. But it is appropriate, I think, that this October end in this way. And I'm really looking forward to this game. I was kind of on the fence about coming back to Kansas City for these games because, as we have discussed, covering World Series games in person is in some ways worse, at least the game experience or following the game is worse than watching it at home in that when you watch at home, there's no row of writers in front of you that you have to crane your head over from the left field line to try

to see home plate. And so I decided to come back and I'm glad that I did because I'm really looking forward to this game as much as any game I've attended in quite some time. It should be really exciting. So if Bumgarner is going to pitch tonight, let's say he's going to pitch two innings. Let's say that's what he's got in it, and he's definitely going to, if he's in any way useful, because he is, in the Giants' minds, probably definitely their best or one of their three best pitchers tonight. He is certainly better than almost everybody else on their staff. So if you're going to use him in any situation that merits it for two innings,

why don't you just start him? Why wouldn't he just start and go two innings? I don't know. Maybe, I mean, because he don't want to. I guess the same for Shields. Presumably the Royals would use Shields because they think he's really good. They think he's probably better than everybody but the big three. So if they're already intending to try to use him, why not use him?

And then maybe you don't even have to go to Guthrie, or maybe you see how far Shields takes you, and then you only have to go to Guthrie for two innings instead of that weird telling Guthrie, oh, pitch through four, but leave it all out there, but you've got to make it through four kind of thing. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's not really a situation where you're... I guess the risk is that they do only have two innings in them,

and then you have to just get through the game somehow. But you're already only planning on getting two innings out of them. You're already having to get through the game. You still can go to Hudson after those two innings. Right. It's just that you have more certainty about what you need. Because what if Bumgarner, I mean, I don't know. What if you, well, I don't know.

It just feels like you start with the things, if possible, you start with the things you're certain about. And you make sure that those play out as you wanted and then you figure out what you have left that you're uncertain about and it's a little harder to tell wade davis because i mean i theoretically in a world where these guys were machines wade davis would start and he would throw his two innings in front and you just would get those two innings out of the way and banked and you'd have a certainty about them because those two innings are going to be just as important as the two

innings that Davis might actually pitch. But you know you don't for Davis that would be a huge change right. It would be like something that he's just not prepared to do this year that mentally it might throw him out of whack and all that. So that would be weird. But with Bumgarner, it doesn't seem like that's an issue. You're asking Hudson to relieve now, which is a little different. But as it is, you're asking Bumgarner to relieve, which is a little different. And I don't know. If I had two starters, one of them was going to relieve,

and I wanted to make sure that one of them had the advantage of getting to warm up a lot on his regular schedule so he's really loose, I probably would choose the guy who's coming back from short rest and might need extra help getting loose. I don't know. Yeah. If they had decided to do that i wouldn't really be opposed maybe it's that since both of these guys are tired they've pitched a ton of innings thrown a ton of pitches this year and they're on short rest maybe you don't want them coming in you don't want them in that starting role because if they're starting the game like they normally would, then they would be in that same starting mindset and they'll be something, then they will be leaving it all out there, as they say,

and throwing in that bullpen mentality, perhaps. Maybe they think that that's a way to kind of counteract the fatigue by forcing them into a short relief roll where they will be airing it out more. I don't know. That's my explanation, but I don't know in practice whether it makes all that much difference. Because, yeah, I mean, Bumgarner has not pitched out of the bullpen since 2010 when he did it in the NLCS. And so it's not as if he has much experience in this role either.

You're asking someone to do something they're not accustomed to. So I don't know why it makes that much difference, but that's my answer. And there have been a bunch of facts that you probably have not found fun about Game 7s and Game 6s on the road. game sevens and game sixes on the road so the the popular one or one of the popular ones is that there has not been a game seven world series victory by a road team since 1979 and that sounds in the world series yes yeah which sounds super super daunting it does it sounds like man i mean 1979 is a long time ago that's like 35 world series wow wow but of course that is a subset of a subset of a subset it is world series games they only play one world series a year, and it's Game 7s. Most World Series don't go to Game 7s. And it's road Game 7s.

So really, it is a streak of nine straight Game 7 World Series victories by home teams. And nine victories over 35 years, whether or not they're consecutive, is probably not as impressive as it sounds. And Jeff Sullivan looked into this. I'm going to say, I'm going to stand up for this fun fact. Because if it were nine, if you just said that road teams have lost the last nine game sevens, which is really saying nine of ten. But if you just said they lost the last 9 game 7's that would be interesting that's somewhat interesting

right and so then it's almost the same as the fun facts you hated at the beginning of the series right when it was like the team that won game 1 has won 9 of the last 11 or 14 of the last 17 or 22 of the last 26 no no no it's only

almost like it. This is a fun fact. If they had lost 9 of 11, that would not be interesting. And the ones earlier in the week were used as an attempt to sort of be an analysis. It was like, well, how likely are the Royals to win now? Well, let's go look at the last 14 years. Kind of an idea. This is different.

This is 9 out of 9. It has nice clean lines. It is a pure stat. 9 is 9 out of 9. It works, okay? So that's fine. To me, that is a legitimate thing to note. And then changing it from 0 and 9 to 1979 is just classic fun fact boundary shifting. It's perfect. It's way more impressive sounding.

It's the same fact, but it's way more impressive sounding. And in fact, when I heard it, I thought, ah, that's probably like 0 and 6. And that wouldn't be a fun fact. But 0 and 9 qualifies. wouldn't be a fun fact but oh and nine qualifies so you prove the fact but but do you think it's significant in any way uh no no not at all not even a little bit right yeah so jeff sullivan wrote about it yesterday and he looked for any sign that there is a really high leverage extra home field advantage boost and he looked at i don't know elimination games and game sevens in every series and any sort of series where you would think that if there were some sort of special significance to having home field advantage in a must-win game uh that it show up, and he found nothing.

It's basically the typical home field advantage. And we've talked about that too in the postseason as well. Just generally speaking, the postseason has the same winning percentage, home field winning percentage as the regular season, which is counterintuitive and hard to explain, and we've tried to explain it. Which is counterintuitive and hard to explain, and we've tried to explain it. But, yeah, it doesn't seem like anything that has to do with crowd size or crowd volume, things that would play up in the postseason. None of those things have caused a higher winning percentage, home winning percentage in the postseason.

So, that's it. I guess we've talked about game six. We've previewed game seven. So our job here is done. So this is the last day of baseball in the 2014 season. We hope that you savor the last game. We will be.

And we will be back to talk about it tomorrow morning most likely and we hope that you support our sponsor at baseballreference.com by going there and subscribing to the play index using the coupon code bp to get the discounted price of 30 on a one-year subscription