Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 729: How (Not) to Wager on the World Series

Episode Date: September 22, 2015

Ben and Sam banter about a Sandy Alderson story, then compare what PECOTA and the sportsbooks say about the likely winners of the World Series.

And we all lie to the corncrate crows We wrap the weight of our summer clothes And I wager all The right way to love The hazards of love Good morning and welcome to episode 729 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus, brought to you by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I'm Sam Miller, along with Ben Lindberg of Grantland.

Hi, Ben. Hello. How are you? All right. So do you remember a couple of days ago we talked about how bad a guy's ERA would be before we would take him from the rotation if he had a perfect record? Yes. And I had a fairly nonsensical answer of saying that even though I know that I should,

I wouldn't for mystical reasons that I couldn't quite explain. And you were going to think about it further? Yeah, I didn't. Yeah, and I did not. But I was reading Baseball Maverick, which is the book that Steve Kettman wrote about Sandy Alderson recently. And there is actually an anecdote that I feel like, I don't know if it validates my position or if it just sort of shows that me and Sandy Alderson maybe have the same mental blocks or what. But back in 2013, I want to say, there was basically the Mets were having trouble with Ike Davis and Ruben Tejada. And both of them were struggling and both of them were just really doing nothing and the Mets thought long and hard and decided finally

that yes they would send them down they didn't even have anybody really to replace them with there were no like great options they were going to call up they just as a as a as a rights Alderson felt so strongly about the need to make the move, he was ready to go. So he talked about it with his manager. Let's get this over with. Collins adamantly agreed. Everything was good.

They're going to do it after the game. The game starts. The game is nearly over. They're about to lose to the Yankees. Alderson goes down to the coach's office so that he can be there and have this conversation. And while he's down there, the Mets stage this miraculous comeback against Mariano Rivera, who was 18 for 18 at that point in the season-saving games.

And they came back. They beat him. They got three straight hits and one. Tejada was not one of the people who got a hit. Ike Davis was not one of the people that got a hit. Ike Davis was not one of the people that got a hit. And yet, just then, in those two minutes, I'm going to read, it all happened within two or three minutes, Alderson said. Murphy got the double down the line, right singled him in,

and went to second on the throw, and then Duda on the second pitch hit that dunker behind second base, and it was all over. Boom. Alderson was elated. He watched for Collins walking in from behind the dugout and flashed him the safe sign, meaning, not tonight. He totally agreed, Alderson said. We didn't even have to discuss it. We didn't want to screw with what was going on in the clubhouse. The Yankees hadn't lost a game they'd led after six innings until that night.

It was the first time in Rivera's career he had not got a single out in a save situation. It's incredible. Biggest win given Rivera's history. Davis and Tejada gained a reprieve at the 11th hour. That didn't mean they avoided a talking to, just that it had no plane ticket attached to it this time. Both players were informed that if not for the amazing comeback against Rivera, they'd have been sent out. So kind of the same thing, right?

There was no reason. Nothing changed about davis or tahada uh it's not like really as though the like the decision two minutes earlier had been made with tons and tons of thought and then for totally unrelated uh good vibes winning related reasons they just immediately knew like not now can't do it now it now, can't do it, we just won. And I sort of like, that's kind of how I feel. I think that when you tell guys that you're rejecting them or that you're demoting them, you want them to kind of understand. I think it's healthy for the relationship and for their long-term health

or whatever for them to understand, for them to sort of feel like, yep, okay, these guys, it's not totally arbitrary and it's not totally stupid. And I think of a guy, I think what they were kind of thinking was that it's harder to get them to buy into your decision or to see your decision when two minutes earlier, you're all celebrating and you feel like you're part of this great team. And it's the same with the pitcher who's 10-0 with the 9.8 ERA. He's just going to be like, yeah, but I'm 10-0. And you do kind of want to wait for him to lose so that you can bring him in after that loss and go, well, you sure did lose. I agree that it makes it a little easier.

I agree that it makes it a little easier It still seems to me like you could You could probably convey what you want to convey If it's obvious I mean, if it's a miraculous comeback kind of thing Like that, that those players played no role in They would have to think that they were Gani Jones Turned on a dunk, by the way Just a little dunk

Yeah, so they'd have to think that they were Gani Jones. Turned on a dunk, by the way. Just a little dunk. Yeah. So they'd have to think that they were Gani Jones and had some mystical ability to make the team win while sitting on the bench in order to be aggrieved about that, really. But I see what you're saying. Yeah. I mean, I don't think that anybody was saying or that they thought that Tejada and Davis would misunderstand and think that they had been like the key factors in that win. Right. I mean, I don't think it makes any more sense in this situation as it does when I did. And yet I feel somewhat validated because Sandy Alderson is really super smart. He is.

All right. You're a baseball maverick. All right. You got a baseball maverick. All right. You got anything to talk about? Nope. Okay. All right. So I wanted to go over some World Series odds.

And sometimes when I say World Series odds, I mean our odds over at Baseball Prospectus, which are calculated by simulations of the season based on our best estimates of the true talent of each team. And sometimes when I talk about odds, I mean the odds that you can get betting on a team at Las Vegas. And today I want to talk about them both in coordination with each other. So I've looked at the current line for every team. I'm watching Shelby Miller just get dunked to death.

There was a swinging bunt that very nearly was a hit with the bases loaded. I just couldn't believe it. All right. What was I talking about? Talking about World Series odds. All right. I have the current lines for the World Series that you can get in Vegas for each team that is still alive. And I also have the baseball prospectus odds for the World Series.

And I want to look at where they differ and talk to you about why they differ. The first thing that I'll note is that these odds in Las Vegas are designed to make money off people who are not good at math. And so they add up to more than one team winning the World Series, basically. And so you have to kind of adjust them to, I think, the phrases, the implied odds. And that basically means that, wow, what a weird play that was. That was a weird play. I should turn this off.

I got to turn this off. It's too weird of a baseball thing happening in front of me all right the ways in which shelby miller continues not to win so basically stranger and stranger so basically you adjust all of these odds so that they exist in a world where only one team wins the world series and so i'll just note that every team in vegas has is given better chances to win than they actually have because they're designed to or worse chances i guess to win than they actually because it's designed to take your money but i'm going to be looking at the implied odds which is adjusted to kind of reflect reality as uh as like a ratio right you know what i'm saying yeah all right okay so there are currently uh 20 teams

that still have world series odds because they're not totally eliminated so if you want ben you could still go out and bet on the white socks red socks and mariners at 500 to 1 i'll pass all right and uh you're probably right too although our World Series odds have the Red Sox and the Mariners still at about 1 in 1,000. And so, you know, I don't know what the rounding is, but it's probably a bad bet. It is a bad bet. I thought they'd make the playoffs before the season,

so I should stick to my guns. The White Sox have zero chance. Not the White Sox. They were your team. I did pick them to win the division. Yeah. That's true. All right.

The Orioles, Rays, Giants, and Nationals. If you want, you could bet at 300 to 1. You want to take any of them? Eh. I've never made a bet on baseball in my life, so I'm probably not going to start now. No. Even if I did, probably not. I'm probably not going to start now, but even if I did, probably not.

Of those, our odds give the Nationals about 1 in 500. The others are about 1 in 1,000. Not a good bet. All right, so we're going to get now to the teams with actual odds. The Indians at 100 to 1 in Vegas, which is implied odds of about 1 in 130, or like 7 tenths of 1%. Baseball prospectus odds are about 6 tenths of 1%, so that's pretty close. The Angels, Vegas odds have them at 2% to win the World Series. And baseball prospectus has them at 0.4%.

So that's about five times the chances, according to Vegas, that we give them. Why do you think the Angels continue to have, or you can pick which side you want, but do you think that the Vegas odds are high or the BP odds are low? Where do you think is the gap here? Well, there are only four back in the West, which is a lot at this point, but not totally insurmountable. And they're, what, two and a half back of the... I mean, they're tied with the Twins. We're recording this before most of Monday's game, so we might be slightly out of date here by the time you hear this.

But the Angels are only two and a half back of the Astros in that second wild card slot two in the last column so that doesn't seem like it would be way less than a two percent chance of course we're talking about making the world series and so just making the wild card game you've got like a 50 shot to make the division series and then they're all the subsequent rounds and so it's it's pretty hard to do the math in my head between two percent and point four percent or whatever it is yeah i i think that there's uh when you have the wild card math is always kind of hard to to do because there's like a bunch of teams. It seems like two and a half is not that far back, but you not only have to come back against that team,

but then there are other teams who have to not be better than you during that time. And so I think there's always a possibility to take advantage of people with wildcard math because it always looks better than it is. It's like, oh, wow, they're only four and a half back. Yeah, but there are like 30 teams between them and them. So the Angels I will note, and this between them and them. So the Angels, I will note, and this is the reason that I mentioned the Angels. The Angels at this point have,

and this is why they're low, incidentally. This is why they're so low in baseball perspective. The Angels currently have the lowest expected winning percentage of any AL West team. Pocota now thinks that the Angels have become the worst team in the AL West. And I think, if I'm not mistaken, I'm pretty sure I'm not, at the beginning of the year they were favored. They had the highest expected winning percentage. And Pocota doesn't change his mind a ton as seasons go on because a lot of the projections are going to stay fairly steady. And I'm trying to think, I mean, the Angels obviously lost or gave away Josh Hamilton, but they haven't been crushed by injuries. Basically, their starting team is still starting.

And yet, they basically dropped in Pakoda's mind from like an 88 true talent team to like a 77 true talent team just by being bad this year, which is a pretty big reevaluation. And partly that is this also reflects their schedule. And they have a tough schedule, which in one way of looking at it, you could say, oh, well, that really helps them. They get to play the Rangers and the Astros. They can make up a lot of ground. Another way of looking at it is, wow, they have to play the Rangers and the Astros, the two teams ahead of them. Good teams, yeah.

Yeah, good teams. At least one good team. Okay, so the Twins, same odds as the Angels, same standings as the Angels in the wild card, although they don't have the shot at the division. It's basically impossible for the Angels to win the division and not be good enough to win the wild card. But they have the same odds in Vegas, half the odds that the Angels do according to Pakoda. By Pakoda, the Twins are actually a horrible, horrible horrible bet here and that's presumably because

the twins are projected to be even worse than the angels their expected winning percentage is worse than any team in the al central so right now the two teams challenging the astros for that second wild card spot are by pakoda's measure the worst team in the AL West and the worst team in the AL Central. And now that I actually look at it, they would be the worst team in the AL East. So essentially the two worst teams, it's not quite this because the Angels are projected to be better than the White Sox and the Tigers, but like the two worst teams in the American League are the Astros competition right now. Do you find that objectionable? Well, when we talked to Brandon Warren last week about the Twins, he covers the

Twins closely and he thought they were not a 500 team today as currently constituted. So it doesn't seem insane that it would be that way. I guess maybe it surprises me a little bit that the White Sox have a higher expected winning percentage than the Twins. That seems a little far-fetched, or maybe the post-deadline depleted Tigers, but it doesn't shock me that it would take longer for their projection to change. But yeah, it seems a little surprising to me that the Twins would be worse than all of those teams. Okay, I'm going to look at the next two in tandem, the Astros and the Rangers.

So this is actually what got me looking at this in the first place. The Rangers are right now favored to win the division. They are 60% to 37% over the Astros according to our playoff odds. And yet, they have much, much, much lower World Series odds. And at first, this seems like it has to be a mistake because the Astros are likely going to have to basically win one extra coin flip just to get to where the Rangers are likely to be if they win the division. And so it seems like almost, well, it kind of seems almost impossible that a team could be favored to win the division and yet be 4% to win the World Series while the Astros are 10% to win the World Series.

And, in fact, Vegas agrees with that, not with Pocota, but with the objection. The Rangers are, you can bet 10- 1 on them to win the World Series. The Astros, 18 to 1 to win the World Series. Converting those to the implied odds, basically Vegas thinks the Astros have a 4% chance to win it, and the Rangers have a 7% chance. So, in fact, it's 10% for the Astros, 4% for the Rangers. And I've talked to a couple people about this who think that's weird.

Is there something wrong? Do you have a— Fangrass has it the same way, by the way, if you're wondering if it's just a quirk of projection of Pocota or something. Well, I'm not. I'm not. If someone listening was, the Astros have a higher World Series percentage and a lower division winning percentage.

So it seems to be every possible way of handicapping this race seems to come to that conclusion. Yeah, and the reason for this is that we sometimes refer to postseason series as being coin flips. They're short series. They're not nearly enough time for true talent to truly emerge. And yet they actually are long enough for true talent to really

have a big advantage. And I wrote about this last year when the Royals made the World Series and how unexpected it was. It's not like they won three coin flips in a row. It's that they had they were like at one point, like I think when they played the Angels, it was like 73% likely that the Angels would win that series

if you believe our true talent levels for them. So right now we have the Astros as the second best team in the American League. And you and I have talked about how we didn't think they were all that real in April, and then sure enough they've been playing at sub-500 since then, and yet that disguises the fact that they've become a very good team. They added a very good pitcher in Scott Casimir. They added an extremely good player in Carlos Gomez. They added an extremely good player in Carlos Correa.

They added a very good pitcher in Lance McCullers. I mean, they are a much better team, and they have one of the best run differentials in baseball this year. So, Pocota has adjusted its expectations upward based on that. They have one of the best third-order winning percentages in baseball this year. And at this point, Pocota thinks that they are the second-best team in the American League, behind only the Blue Jays. And they think that the Rangers are the fourth best team in the AL Central. And so, like if you put them in a head-to-head matchup in a postseason series, the Astros would probably be like 65% or 70% favored depending on home field

and depending on whether it was a five- or seven-game series. And so, while the Astros are at a huge disadvantage because they would have to win a wildcard spot, or sorry, would have to win a wildcard game, they have basically the same chances of making the playoffs in some capacity. And once they get there, the Astros will be, we think, heavily favored. And so in fact, this is, I think,

this is a rare case. It is a rare case where if Pakoda is correct, then they would actually be a good bet. Not just with implied odds, but with actual odds. You basically get 18 to 1 on a team that we think is 10 to 1 to win the World Series. You should, if you believe us, if you want to put your money where your podcast earbuds are,

you could take your money and go to Vegas. Life savings, all of it. Not just your life savings. Mortgage, you should take out a loan. People around you's life savings. Don't hoard this opportunity. Your grandmother should not be deprived of this chance. Don't do that. No, don't do that.

But maybe you should. But the point remains that this is like a rare case where somebody who believed in this and liked to bet money could perhaps do it. So how much do you regress these positions that Pocota has? It's definitely not intuitive as, I mean, this is what inspired this episode because you saw these numbers and at first they didn't seem to make sense, right? So it's not what I would have thought if you had posed this question to me. Without laying out the numbers, I would not have guessed that the Astros had significantly worst division chances and significantly better World Series chances. So what is there to regress? Isn't Pocota regressing itself? Well, I don't know i mean one thing you could you could object to is you

could say well i don't i don't think that third order winning percentage by itself is the best way to measure a team that i think that some combination of third order and actual winning percentage is better because i think that there are certain perhaps skills and ways of winning baseball games that third order winning percentage can't capture. That's one objection that I know some people might say, might have. You could say that these winning percentages might not necessarily capture the October rosters perfectly. If, for instance, the Astros have a better bottom of their roster than the Rangers do, the Astros have a better bottom of their roster than the Rangers do, that would matter more for these expected winning percentages than it would in the postseason when you can kind of lop seven

spots off of your roster. That's one thing. I don't know. You could just say the whole thing's nonsense. Yeah. Well, it doesn't sound totally unreasonable to me. I don't know. Does it seem unreasonable to you that the Astros are, even though they have, you know, basically played 130 games now in a row at a sub 500 level, does it seem unreasonable to you that they're the second best team in the American League? Well, when you told me that, I started looking down the list of American League teams, and there aren't really a whole lot of enticing alternatives i would i would so what is it the blue jays the royals yeah the blue jays and in fact only the dodgers uh have a higher expected winning percentage in the uh in the national league seems a little bullish to me

but there aren't really any they're a really good team though like they are yeah that's a really good team, though. That's a really good roster. It looks good. It looks when you look at it. It's a nice, satisfying death chart these days. Could you argue that it's not a postseason roster? I mean, I know that too many dingers is a much mocked position when describing teams. But, I mean, they're they're very very very much not the royals of last year right they don't have the uh incredible bullpen they don't have the put the ball in play kind of uh roster that some hypothesize is important in low scoring games and

against top competition top pitchers. I don't know if either of those objections has any merit. Generally speaking, I'll take the best team and not worry too much about style, not worry maybe at all about style. But we did talk an awful lot about the Royals last year. And it seems like having the anti Royals. Yeah, they've, they've got a good bullpen, though. It's a pretty good bullpen. And I good bullpen though it's a pretty good bullpen and i it's a good bullpen but it's not a it's not a it's not a notable bullpen no it's not it's not a problem it was it's not a problem but it was notable looking in april and maybe it's no longer notable looking the contact versus power or the home run dependent offense thing there are some like postseason beliefs that

i'm not totally convinced by that i'm still willing to be persuaded by but the like we've talked about the starting rotations and the top heavy pitching staffs and how it seems like that should help a team to be able to lop off the worst pitchers on its staff if it has a top-heavy staff, but it's hard to find statistical support for that. I still can buy that that's the case, and maybe it's just hard to tease out of the numbers because it seems intuitive. contact over just sort of strikeouts and power thing everything i've ever looked at myself or that anyone else has ever looked at can't find any real reason why that would be the case or that it is the case i that one i'm just not really just not really buying so i wouldn't discount them based on that and i don't know their uh i guess their rotation is is it's pretty strong top to bottom like it's yeah i mean keitel is maybe a cut above the rest of their starters but it's not like

colin mchugh or casimir fires or whoever the fifth starter is is like someone that you'd be happy not to have to use they're all pretty close to each other in terms of talent. So they don't seem like a team that's necessarily built for the postseason, but I wouldn't say that they're built for the regular season either. I still would have a hard time probably taking them over the Royals at this point. And I mean, there really isn't anyone else in the american league that i feel good about other than the blue jays so i might take the royals like maybe like the indians have probably been better than the astros since april but they're not gonna make it and it's

it's not like they're obviously better so i would buy them as the third best team. Okay. The Yankees are the other team that has a good chance and that you could theoretically, again, if you bought these entirely, make a tiny bit of money. We have them at essentially 6.8% and Vegas has them at 5.3%. And even if you don't adjust, they have them at 6.7%. So there's a tiny little margin there. But the Yankees, long way of saying, the Yankees are also overrated by Pakoda or underrated by Vegas, which is kind of funny because anytime you hear people complain about Vegas odds, they talk about how, oh, it's just these big markets.

They get bad odds because everybody bets on them and skews up the betting line. And in fact, the Yankees are undervalued by Vegas. Is there any reason to think that the Yankees are a better bet than public perception? I don't know. The public perception, like remember when we talked over the offseason about the Vegas odds for the Cubs and how they seemed completely crazy and it was like what they were like the fifth best odds or something to win the world series and we kind of thought that was going crazy based on signing john lester or whatever they did over the offseason and yeah as it turned

out you know it hasn't been completely crazy in retrospect they're they current they have the best teams yeah they have a sick they have the sixth best odds at the moment yeah so by picota they're seven yeah so i was thinking maybe it was something similar with the astros where it looked like the astros were collapsing and they just got swept by the rangers and maybe it was sort of the opposite of the cubs offseason effect where it was just hysteria and the sky is falling and maybe there's a little bit of that with the Yankees too and that I don't know Tanaka has a hamstring thing and Sabathia has a new career threatening ailment every day and Tashara is out for the year and maybe most people haven't heard of Greg Bird. And so, you know, maybe there's

sort of a panic about this old team that was somehow keeping it together and being less injured than everyone expected. And suddenly the wheels are kind of coming off toward the end of the year and Evaldi is out and all these ailments are piling up all of a sudden. So I don't know, they don't really strike me. I guess you could say that they're the team that if they could just ride andrew miller and delon batances ridiculously hard in october maybe that's part of why they've done this well thus far that they've been able to use those guys at high leverage times and maybe they could just really overwork those guys a lot in october and maybe that would help them.

I guess that would be a reason why they'd be better than the odds say they are. I should also note that these Vegas odds are not necessarily rational, and they don't always have to be rational. Yesterday, since yesterday, the Astros' odds got worse. They got from 16-1 to 18-1, and the Rangers' odds got better from 12-1 to 10-1, even though the Rangers lost and the Astros won. So there's not any rule that says these have to make sense. Yeah.

And then the Royals, we have them at 9%. Vegas has them adjusted. Vegas has them at 12%. It is the least surprising thing in the world that Pakoda has a lower estimate of the Royals. You should write an article about why that is. The typical person does. And then the Blue Jays are the favorites by a lot. Vegas has them at 17% likely to win. We have them at 19% likely to win. You cannot make money on that, though, because Vegas' actual odds have them at 21%. So anyway, Blue Jays, clear favorites, and always a good reminder that just making the postseason,

in my head, for years and years, I would just use a shorthand that once you made it to the postseason, to a full series, your odds were 12% and 12.5% because they were one in eight. And in fact, true talent does separate you and the Blue Jays, for instance, are one in five to win, even though there are eight teams of which they are one. All right. To the National League, the Cubs and the Pirates are both right around where they're supposed to be. The Mets are overbet or over-favored. Vegas has them at 11%. We have them at 9.6%.

It's actually pretty close. Cardinals, Vegas has it at 11%. We have them at 8.8%. It's relatively close, but low. All these are low. The Cardinals are low. The Mets are low. The Pirates are low. The Cardinals are low. The Mets are low. The Pirates are low.

Cubs are low. And that's all because, or I should say high by Vegas's odds high, low by Pocotas. And that's all because there's a big gap between the Dodgers and Vegas. Vegas has the Dodgers at 11% to win. We have them at 19% to win. And they are another team that theoretically you could even make money betting against the actual odds that are given to you which are 14 so why would anybody be overlooking the dodgers at this point i mean isn't it isn't it just sort of common knowledge that the dodgers are like a powerhouse and that they i mean also that they have if there is a myth probably a myth about the postseason it is that you get to the team with the best aces is going to win and the dodgers have the two best pitchers in baseball and they're just i mean they're they are a team that's played very well that is running

away with the division that has good that is probably going to have home field advantage in their first series that has kind of air of dominance i think to some degree because they've been able to sign whoever they want for the last few years even if they're not going to win 110 games i still feel like most of the world thinks the dodgers are a really great team and yet strangely you can get pretty good odds on them at this point so why would that be well it was a close race for a while you said they're running away with the division but that's a pretty recent lead it was closer than everyone expected for much of the year and the Giants made it close and there was a perception that the Dodgers were disappointing there for a while right that they had all the money in the world and they were the clear favorites and

they still had a you know two two game lead a month ago or whenever it was so maybe there's some of that and they've kind of opened it up lately and now it's not really a race and they've been better in the second half so maybe it's partially that maybe it's some lingering like relic of Clayton Kershaw and the bullpen imploding last offseason and Joshian recently wrote a newsletter entry about the Dodgers bullpen and about how he thinks it's better than people are giving it credit for that everyone is remembering last year when there was no bullpen and that's why Kershaw had to keep pitching when he was tired and he says now the bullpen could be a strength certainly not a weakness so maybe it's

just a lingering kind of artifact of last postseason or the fact that they are spending much more than anyone else is and yet it was still a race for much of the year yeah so let me ask you about the dodgers one of the things since um you know since andrew friedman at all took over is that um they are smart and they have money and so they can kind of put their uh how do i put this? They can put their analytics into so many different parts of the organization because they have money to experiment on a lot of things. They can do the, you know, pinch running school, for instance. They have a lot of GMs. They can hire a lot of people to be brainy around there. And so I feel like we've seen them demonstrate uh their analytical mindset

in more areas of the organization than we're used to even from smart analytical teams so do you the tommy john thing was another example of that do you think that i don't know how you would know this but is there any sign to you or do you think that they have specifically built this team in a way that will succeed in the postseason? Do you think that they went into this year thinking anything other than let's win as many regular season games as possible? Or do you think that they've built this with an idea of being as strong as possible in October specifically? with an idea of being as strong as possible in October specifically? Are there ways that they've used their roster or prepared their roster or built as the season went on or anything like that that shows a team that is more poised to win in October

than a normal 95-win team is? Well, they've made a ton of roster moves, and I wrote something sometime last month about how there's no correlation this season between winning percentage and roster turnover. Usually the teams that have a lot of players on them are bad because they're trying to replace bad players or they have a lot of injuries or something. And this year that hasn't been the case, and you can look at a team like the Dodgers as a successful team that is maybe doing that intentionally. And then RJ Anderson wrote something for BP not long ago about that also and how the Dodgers have kind of been just getting fresh bullpen arms all the time, which is something that people said about Dan Duquette and the Orioles a

few years ago, about how they just always want to make sure they have a full bullpen. So they'll just call a guy up and they'll kind of rotate the last people in the bullpen between AAA and the majors. And maybe you could say that's an effort to keep their important bullpen people fresh and not have to overwork them so that when it does get to the playoffs, you can use them for a higher percentage of your innings. You could also say that they think it helps them win in the regular season. So it doesn't necessarily have to be an October only strategy. Or I guess if you're maybe more of a intangibles type person, you could say they've traded for veterans. They've traded for people

with postseason experience, like Jimmy Rollins and Chase Utley, World Series winners, people with rings. So you could make that argument if you want. I don't know what else you could say. They have two aces at the top of the rotation and that is something that everyone wants in October but that's something everyone wants always so I don't know what else you could pinpoint so what's their postseason rotation it's Kershaw, Granke, Anderson and um and Wood is that it yeah or I don't know maybe they would use Wood as a long man swing man type depending on the series if it's a five game series i'm not sure what they would do or or they would use anderson and wood together in tandem something like that uh anderson by the way that's another guy that we were wrong about

who brad anderson yes we were surprised about the what10 million one-year deal that he got from the Dodgers, given how many innings, and we must have predicted the number of innings that he would pitch at some point. That's definitely something we did. And he has pitched 164 innings, which is almost as many as he pitched in the last four combined yep extremely wrong although uh if you lump him and beachy and mccarthy together as the three heads of the by risky project yeah they've got basically one pitcher yeah he's been good i don't know that they regret it but two-thirds broke down or two-thirds contributed right very little there was there was someone else too another member of that group that got hurt oh well eric bedard was on the team at one point right

he was signed by them but he never pitched for them because he got hurt he's also he sucks yeah like i wouldn't lump him with those because he's like he's not a hurt or good guy he was at one point but i guess he isn't anymore yeah okay well you could i don't know i sort of you could sort of make the case that the hurt or good scott baker oh yeah scott baker although long time since he was yeah you could sort of make the case that the hurt or good strategy i don't know that any of the guys that they signed are like the dominant like when i think of the hurt or good strategy i think of guys who are super good like ben sheets or richard back that day yeah richard none of those guys are so good that you're like heck yeah he's healthy we have our postseason ace

but there is you know that helps there's something to that strategy for the postseason, I would think. But I don't know that it applies here. All right, anyway, that's all. Go bet all your money. On the Astros? I don't know. Just do what makes you happy. Yeah, okay.

Bet on yourself. Invest in college, for instance. See if you can get Phanteks to invest in your future yeah so anyway dodgers and and astros are the two big the two big differences and then the the rangers on the other side and then the rangers and the angels on the other side you hear heard it here first from the podcast sharps given look i don't don't know that I consider – I mean, these aren't equal, but I would bet on the Dodgers and the Astros being really good than the Angels and the Rangers being really good.

So I guess I'll take – would you bet on – so you would take the Royals over the Astros, though, right now? Yes. And the Dodgers – okay, so then I guess the other one would take the Royals over the Astros, though, right now? Yes. And the Dodgers... Okay, so then I guess the other one would be the Dodgers and the Cardinals. Who would you take between the Dodgers and the Cardinals? Dodgers. Yeah, I would take the Dodgers and the Royals as well.

So I guess that's a way of saying that we're split. Because the Cardinals are also undervalued by Pocota, or overvalued, whatever. that we're split because the cardinals are also under valued by pakoda or overvalued whatever so we're split we think vegas is right on a couple of them and that pakoda is right on a couple of them in our in our hearts in our guts yeah okay done all right by the way didn't we once in an early episode of this show talk about a long-term discussion of whether delvin young would be out of baseball by age 30 i don't recall i'm almost sure that we did and i meant to bring that up earlier this month when he turned 30 and is out of baseball although he has a shot to be back in it i suppose but if we said that at some point, then good for us. Would you bet that Delman Young will play Indie Ball next year?

Next year? No. I think he'll get, he'll be still a spring training invite candidate, I think. Yeah, but that doesn't mean he's going to be on a team. That's true. Do you think that Delman Young will play for the Long Island Ducks next or the sugarland skaters i say he will at some point you think you it just depends whether he wants to keep playing next year yeah yeah okay okay all right that's it you can we should draft we should draft sometime we should draft players that we think will be in IndieBall next year. Okay.

All right, let's do that. All right. Yeah, pretty soon we'll be able to tabulate the results of our minor league free agents draft. I've been looking forward to that. All right, so that's it. You can send us emails for podcasts at baseballperspectives.com, Facebook groups at facebook.com slash groups slash effectivelywild. And you can rate and review and subscribe to the show on iTunes. Support our sponsor, the Play Index, at baseballreference.com.

Use the coupon code BP. Get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription, and we will be back tomorrow.