Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 740: NLDS Deep Thoughts

Episode Date: October 9, 2015

Ben and Sam review the first games of the American League Division Series, then discuss the Cubs-Cardinals and Dodgers-Mets matchups.

This could be our night Like I'm just playing right Tonight Going downtown Spring feel alright But tonight Good morning and welcome to episode 740 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, presented by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com.

I am Ben Lindberg of Grantland, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectives. Hello. Hello. Ending the week on a good old-fashioned multiple of five, just the way I like it. It's going to be a good old-fashioned multiple of five just the way i like it it's gonna be a good weekend ben it is it's not one of those multiple fives from this summer when we were doing one show a week and it didn't feel like we'd earned it this is legitimate yeah we only did what did we do we did four this week i mean we didn't catch up to the fives by doing six no we we got up to the fives by doing six. No, that's true. We caught up to the fives by doing less than five. I think I did a six once just so I could do that.

I think you did with Russell, right? Yeah. Or maybe you just did a... Or maybe I did a five when you couldn't do it. You did a holiday. Yeah, you did some holiday that otherwise no sane person would have recorded on. Right, right. Okay.

So today we'll talk a little bit about the nlds's we can talk about any thoughts we might have from early alds's if we have any esky magic didn't work out so well but that's the thing about magic is you don't think it's going to come together until the reveal you know right so game five esky will come up with man on scoring position oh no no no no no esky will not be the one who gets the hit that's the other thing about the esky magic it's all about misdirection esky's magic is like at some point like i don't don't know, Luis Coleman is going to have to rejoin the roster for an injury, and he's the one who's going to do something. Luis? Why did I call him Luis? Luis. Luis Coleman is going to have to join the roster for some reason,

and then he's going to be the hero. And that's going to be, like, you won't know it, but that's it. And Eske's going to just, like, he's going to jump out on the field and go, the prestige! And then we'll all be like, wow! That's Esky magic. The worst things get. Really, I won't even be worried if they lose their third game. Because that will just make the trick more amazing.

Just be waiting. I'll be on my deathbed being like come on show me so the games went the opposite of the way that we thought we would go it's funny how quickly my brain adjusts to the outcome of one of these games like before the game i was, I was feeling bad about myself for not picking the Blue Jays to sweep since you mocked me for not doing that, for taking the Cowards way out and going for the in four, which is not really,

I was thinking about it afterwards. And really, if you're picking in four, you're just kind of splitting down the middle. Like you think it's going to be three, four or five and you just go with four to be three four or five and you just go with four yeah no four is probably no more likely than five or three as an individual outcome that's the thing about the thing i thought about it too and in fact three is not the most likely outcome four if you assume all games are roughly 50 percent uh then four and five are each about, it's about, if you know that a team

is going to win the thing, then you would bet, then you would figure the chances that they sweep are 12.5%. The chances that they win in four are 18.75%. And the chances they win in five are 18.75%. So, which is to say two things. One, it is not best to bet on a sweep, in fact, unless you think that the team is really a favorite in more than 50%, a clear favorite, and then it might make sense. But two, in fact, four is the only logical answer. Five is the one that makes no sense because to get to the only way that four and five are equal

is if you think the two teams are of exactly equal quality. Otherwise, it is more likely that the better team will win that fourth game than lose that fourth game. In other words, it is not a 50-50 chance anymore. will win that fourth game than lose that fourth game. In other words, it is not a 50-50 chance anymore. So you pretty much have to always pick four. If it's a seven-game series, it's a little trickier, but between six and seven, you always have to pick six.

There's no... I think this is what we discovered last year, too. I think we're just going through the same mental process to get to the right answer. But the seven is the statement pick. Oh, it's going to be so close. It's going to be seven. Seven means nothing. Seven is completely illogical. There is no reason, no logical reason that you would think a series that goes to six would go seven because the teams are evenly matched. It means nothing. You're saying nothing. You are literally saying that it is going to get to 3-2

and then the worst team will win for no reason and then the better team will win. Like, that's what you're saying. You're predicting that. Like, we can't predict anything about baseball. Like, look at our predictions for a full season. We can't predict anything. And you're saying, no, I'm pretty sure that in game six,

the worst team is going to win, and then in game seven, the better team will win because it's that close or whatever. Don't do it. You got to always go four, and you got to always go either six or fewer. Okay, well, I feel good about picking the Wood Jason four then. But the second...

Did you know... Wait, wait. Yeah. One more thing. Just, I was good about picking the Wood Jason 4 then. But the second... Did you know... Wait, wait. Yeah. One more thing. Just, I was also, while doing this math, I also discovered that there is, unfortunately, there's only about an 11% chance that we will see Kershaw and Arrieta match up one-on-one. That's too bad. I know.

Now, it's much better. It's like almost, it's like much better than that. It's like 25% that we'll see Arrieta and Granke. And so there's like a 36% chance or whatever that, or it's not that. It's less than that. But there's a pretty good chance we'll see Arrieta against one of them. Actually, it's about equal. Now that I think about it.

It's about a, well, it's a 25% chance we'll see Arrieta against one of them. So it's like 14% that it'll be Granke and 11% that it'll be Kershaw. But it, it's about a 25% chance we'll see Ariadne against one of them. So it's like 14% that it'll be Granke and 11% that it'll be Kershaw. But anyway, that's all. We're only still 1-9 to see the matchup we all want to see. Okay, well, I hope that happens. So, yeah, so as soon as the Blue Jays looked vulnerable at all, I immediately just realized how overconfident I was, I think, in the Blue Jays. I don't know.

I'm still, I mean, fairly confident in the Blue Jays, but we were talking about them as if they were so much better than the Rangers, and they are better than the Rangers. But as soon as you see the Rangers take an early lead and David Price not look so good for one inning and you start to see the Rangers winning game one, and then it's only a five-game series, so they only have to win two of the next four,

and it's so easy to do for any team, let alone one of the better teams in baseball. So it's very much not assured. And now the Rangers have to play without Adrian Beltre, which hurts a lot, while the Blue Jays got their injured stars from Game 1 back at presumably close to full strength. So that makes it more likely that the Blue Jays will win from now on,

but obviously less likely than we thought it was yesterday. Any other observations from Game ones games one did the rain delay help or hurt the royals uh yeah that was interesting to see one team stick with the starter and one team not well yeah yeah that it was interesting i. They both had, really it came down to, I mean, these are not rules that either team has to, by law, stick to. But it basically came down to the Royals went into that rain delay saying 50 minutes and the Astros go into rain delays saying 60 minutes. And it turned out to be with not, so the rain delay was, I think, 49 or something,

but then you also have the extra half inning that the guy has to wait before he pitches. And so that's why it becomes 60. It basically becomes 60 minutes. And the Astros, it just so happened to be that 10-minute window. If it had been 10 minutes fewer, Ventura goes back out there. And if it had been—I don't know if it had been 10 minutes more, if the Astros would have, because, you know, McHugh is old. And that seems to matter in these decisions a lot of the time. But the Astros also had two legitimate long man options

that they could have gone to. And I guess the other thing is that for the Astros, there's much less upside in bringing mccue back yeah short rest for the royals they're looking at and going well we got 40 pitches out of him he's not he's not a plus today anyway we want to bring him back now is a good time to stop him and you could almost have justified pulling him right there anyway right yeah because you have strikeout machine chris young waiting in the bullpen. Well, no, but you do have Chris Young in the bullpen, and that is the park.

This is where you want Chris Young to pitch. Chris Young, fly ball pitcher against fly ball team, as we talked about, is good. And fly ball pitcher in Kansas City instead of Houston is obviously preferred. And, you know, you're going to get, you might get an extra 40 pitches out of Ventura before he comes back on short rest. But A, it's not clear that there's a huge improvement in those 40 pitches, especially because part of the reason you think Ventura is so good is that you believed his last 10 starts.

And if you believe his last 10 starts, well, I don't know. Why not believe his last 40 pitches? He didn't have it that day, or he didn't look like he had it that day, which is often a fallacy, but sometimes maybe it's not. And now you basically have Ventura going in game four essentially not on short rest. He'll be, I mean, it's technically short rest, but he'll be full strength strength fully rested by game four yeah so it i i you know i think that your

first reaction when you see that is oh bad break for the royals but uh in fact it might matt trueblood called it a good break and i hadn't really thought about it like that but i i think he's maybe right and they also got in addition to this swap which was arguably favorable for them they also had the chance that mccue would come out and the hour layoff would have done something to him it doesn't seem to have other than the fact that he only struck out one batter so maybe it did uh and uh if the royals had not had a four like a 140 babbitt then maybe we're having a completely different discussion about post rain delay mccue but it was a possibility yeah i don't know whether the fly ball facing fly ball turns you into a strikeout pitcher or whether it just

manifests itself in pop-ups or weaker batted balls if you're not facing George Springer, who hit a home run off Young. But that was an impressive five or six batter stretch from Young. And I guess just facing the Astros turns people into strikeout pitchers, but it was still impressive to watch for a few minutes there i like chris young chris young is fun anyone who's weird or does something no one else does is fun and he is like that in a number of ways he's taller than everyone else and he has the low babbitt and weird era fit gap over many hundreds of innings more than anyone else. Deception, whatever it is. He also has, he's a terrible matchup for the Astros, or he's, I guess, a great matchup for the Astros from their perspective as far as the running game, because the Astros love to steal

bases. I didn't watch the game. I will say I listened to the game. And so I will just preface everything I say for the rest of the division series with, if the announcers talked about this ad nauseum, I apologize. I didn't, I don't know what the announcers are saying. I know what local announcers on the radio are saying. And sometimes I know what Chris Singleton is saying. So apologies. But I mean, the Astros led the American League in steals. Ventura and Cueto might be one and two in terms of stopping the running game in all of baseball. They're just impossible to run off. They're the best there are.

And it undercuts a huge part of the Astros' game and offense. I don't know if it's the most valuable part of their game. It might just be a consequence, a correlative of them having a young athletic team. And maybe the steals are just a part of all the good that comes out of that and maybe not actually that relevant to their offense, but maybe they are. Anyway, they led the American League in steals. They essentially can't steal up into or Chris Young, I mean, or Johnny Cueto. young i mean uh or johnny cueto but chris young is like an all-time bad uh holder honor of runners he had my i my i just rediscovered recently he had like the my favorite year ever when runners went 44 for 44 off, a couple years later,

they went 20 for 20. And this year, with the Royals, he was much improved. And maybe that's Salvador Perez. Maybe they coached him. Maybe he just decided, hey, enough is enough. I'm going to do something about this. But he had a high.

Runners leave a lot. They take off a lot against him. But it wasn't an absurd success rate or anything like that. But still, very easy to run on. A guy that you can run on. And they tried. And the American League stolen base leader got thrown out, which was kind of a fun story within the game.

I listened to most of the first game Sam style on the radio. I like the Rangers broadcast Sam style on the radio. I like the Rangers broadcast crew. Eric. Yeah. Yeah. They have a good one. The conclusion I drew from that was that like the ads are just nonstop food on those broadcasts.

Texans are really hungry. There is like a Denny's ad every break. There was sausage ads every break. There Denny's ad every break. There was sausage ads every break. There was Chili's ads every break. And the weird thing was that I kept hearing the ad for like Earl Campbell's Chili, which is pretty big there, I guess. And strange thing is like they have Willie Nelson as a spokesman. You'd think Eric Campbell would just be his own spokesman. Like, a great football player, played for the Oilers, probably pretty popular in Texas. It's named after him, and they have Willie Nelson.

There's got to be a dilution of the Earl Campbell name, though. I mean, not in general, but if if the name you're already getting the Earl Campbell boost by his name that's true like do you really it's like it's like right it's like with your presidential candidate you need to get somebody who has all the opposite strengths of you so that now people go well you know that one's strong on national defense and then that one's good on the economy like you don't get the sports star and you get the stoner together right it's right it's like do you you either right you either eat this chili after a hard workout or you eat this chili when you get the munchies at night that's two ways to eat chili uh i listen to the blue jays and the royals broadcasts. And the Blue Jays broadcast is pretty good too. The Royals one

is not. But the commercial, they had the same ad. One of the ads was the same. And so I heard it pretty much every break for both games. I probably heard it 15 to 25 times, somewhere in there. I'll give you a wide range so that I don't exaggerate. 15 to 25 times, and it was for some car parts company, and it was really sexist. And I just heard it over and over and over, and I find that I no longer respect women. It's weird. It worked really well, wow.

After my whole life. Advertising is very powerful. I did hear one plumbers and pipe fitters ad yeah so i checked that off my october bucket list uh anything else from those games yeah okay so division series which are about to get started I guess we'll start with Cubs and Cardinals and start there. So I guess, I mean, this is on paper pretty even, at least win total wise, but it just seems to me that the full season stats overrate the Cardinals in a few ways and underrate the Cubs maybe. The Cubs are better than they used to be. The Cardubs are better than they used to be.

The Cardinals are worse than they used to be in that they don't have Carlos Martinez, and no one knows what Yadier Molina is right now, and Matt Adams is heard, and there are other guys who are banged up, Gritchuk and Piscotty, and no one really knows what they're going to get out of those guys. And Waka seemed to have some fatigue issues down the stretch

and was pretty bad in September. So they just seem somewhat diminished now, whereas the Cubs just kind of kept getting better throughout the year as their young players came up and matured or got experience or whatever. And it seems to me that the cubs are the better team and the cubs had the better underlying record anyway throughout the regular season if you discount the cardinals because of all the the cluster luck and the clutchness or whatever you call it that their pitchers had this year if you take that out of the equation and maybe it's not

fair to take it out entirely but if you even take it out of the equation and maybe it's not fair to take it out entirely but if you even take it out partially the Cubs look better relative to the Cardinals so I could see Arrieta only goes one game and Lester goes two and that's still maybe better than what the Cardinals have there are advantages there are games where the Cardinals will have the pitching advantage, like when Hendricks is pitching game two or Hamels in game four, if he's pitching game four, maybe the Cardinals have the advantages in those, but I still think the Cubs would have a slight edge and I would pick them in five if I didn't know how crazy it was to pick teams in five. and I would pick them in five if I didn't know how crazy it was to pick teams in five.

Yeah, I mean, let me ask you a question. We know that players get better as they age. So if I told you a guy was 23 and these are his numbers, and then I told you he's perfectly healthy in his age 24 season and told you to guess his numbers, you would guess improvement, right? Yes. Like if you knew he was healthy. If you didn't know whether or not he was healthy, then you might not predict a huge improvement

because you've got to factor in that, well, maybe he'll get hurt. But if I told you that he is definitely healthy, then his numbers would get better. 24-year-olds are better than 23-year-olds. It would be more impressive if you had those same numbers at 23 for the same reason. And what we are essentially, I don't know how much this matters, but I never really think about it,

but the Cubs players are all older than they were in April. They're six months older. They're five months older than they were in May. They're four months older than they were in June. They're three months older than they were in July. And I think that we never really think about that, but it's gotta be an improvement, right? I mean, we generally, for young players, we tend to think, oh, well, the league will adjust

to them. And that's probably true too. But, uh, they're also stronger. They're older. They're, they also might plausibly in the post amphetamines game where old players struggle more. They might also have an advantage the later the season goes as the toll of the season on players' bodies affects older players disproportionately.

And so you could argue that not only are the rosters better because the Cubs were able to bring up these excellent players as the season went on, although the Cardinals also brought up an excellent player in Steven Piscotty and are now relying on an excellent player in Randall Gritchuk. But you could also argue that they are literally better players and that the Cardinals, who have some young players but also have some old players, older players who were in theoretically the decline years of their career, are presumably somewhat worse than they were in April.

I never think about it that way, but it makes sense, doesn't it? I think so, yeah. I once tried to figure that out, or I wanted to write an article about in-season declines because we talk about it over the off-season that a player from the previous year is a year older now, and he's half a year older in october than he was in april so yeah you would think now how much older is he then in may ben

almost half a year yeah so and it turns out to be a hard thing to figure out or at least it was when i tried to do it but uh but it makes sense and you would think like it depends how much of the improvement for a young player comes from just physical and mental maturation like actual changes in his body or the experience and you would think that probably I mean once you're in the major leagues probably most of it comes from the experience. I'm not sure about that, but you would think that most guys are pretty mature by the time they get to the majors or if anything, they're slowing down possibly. Maybe they're still getting stronger. I don't know. advantage or a lot of the difference between a guy who just came up and is pretty good and a guy who's in his prime and is great is the experience of just having a couple more years of seeing major league pitching and so you would expect most of the improvement to come in season if that were the case as opposed to the six months of offseason when maybe you're getting stronger but you're not

seeing why pitching and so you're not improving in that way. So you would think that the bulk of the improvement would come from April to October as opposed to November to April, but I don't know. But yes, I think that's true. And Holiday is another guy I mentioned, too. That's a good point. It's not just that they're half a year older. Yeah, it's the important part of the year.

You could hypothesize that it's the important part of the year you could hypothesize that it's the important part of the year you could also hypothesize that it's not that most of this is physical strength at this point you could i don't you could hypothesize that i'm not sure which would be true but i think you're right i think that you're correct that it is the most like this six months which by the way most of the season was not six months ago only a game was six months ago or a couple games. But you could argue that, in fact, the six months is equivalent to, I don't know, eight and a half months or nine and a half months or something like that. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

And, right, so Matt Holiday, another guy who started out well and then missed a lot of time with injuries and didn't hit in the short time after he returned. So almost everyone in the Cardinals, like almost all the important Cardinals are missing or have some sort of asterisk at this point. So that makes me think that they are slightly worse than the Cubs. The Cubs aren't really missing anyone. And the Cardinals did get Wainwright back and maybe that will help but he's probably an inning at a time guy right now so there's a limit to how much he can do so that's about it and if you want to say that there's a managerial mismatch I guess you could argue that

there is with Madden and Matheny at least as far as tactical stuff goes the Cubs seem to be the better defensive team now than the Cardinals are I'm going with Cubs The biggest advantage that the Cardinals have is that they don't have the wild card penalty And like you say, you could make a case I think that you could make a case It's Lackey against Lester today? Yeah

I think you could make a case for Lackey over Lester Yeah, it's not yeah it's not a big difference so uh so you could argue perhaps that the cardinals have the rotation advantage in four games or at least two of the three where there's a real difference and that the cardinals have i think a clearly better bullpen is it clearly better uh maybe it's not now that rodney's good again yeah how did that happen it always happens um yeah i don't i don't think it's huge i i don't know rosenthal's really good seagrist is really good broxton's good yeah manis other guys i can keep naming pitchers Who are good Yeah

Okay so maybe But I would give At least Some edge I might be wrong I would give some edge To the Cardinals there So

So there's that But I mean yeah The Cubs are a better team Like the only way That you pick the Cardinals here Is if you're giving A

A big A big boost To the experience factor, to the been there before factor, to the been successful at this stage factor. And if you do, you look at baseball a little differently than I do. I think that, I mean, if there is such a fear in the hearts of ballplayers, frankly, I think that by the second game of the postseason, it's gone.

And all these Cubs, every single Cub now has postseason experience in an elimination game, no less, against an ace, no less. And they did very well. And it wasn't just that Jake Arrieta threw a shutout. They played a good game. They made good plays. They knocked the sixth best pitcher in the National League

out in whatever innings. So they're a good team that played well, and I would consider the Cardinals' experience advantage, if it existed, to be wiped out. I also would pick the Cubs. I have Pocota game by game, or at least

for some games. Hang on. I should, before I have a Pocota game by game, or at least for some games. Okay. And hang on. I should, before I read a bunch of bad ones like I did yesterday, let me just make sure. I left Randall Gritchuk off my list of walking wounded Cardinals. Oh, what is he? I didn't know he was walking wounded. That's too bad. Yeah, he's got elbow stuff. It's not really clear whether he

can throw baseball oh yeah he still can't throw huh yeah maybe not bummer yeah he can hit yeah we have the cardinals as uh the cubs has very slight favorites in game one and the cardinals as reasonable clear but not overwhelming favorites in game two. We don't have three and beyond, but I think presumably we know who the favorite is in game three. So Gritchuk brings up a decent point. So Gritchuk is a really good hitter, right? He is a guy who can start for a championship level team in a corner outfield spot. That's how good he is. And now he'll be a pinch hitter that you can leverage off the bench and that's pretty great to have and there are very few of these guys out there who you could get to be a wanted bat awesome hitter off the bench and so it's not like there's just

like like all a team has to do to have this is open their eyes and get someone but do you think that in within at some point in the next, I don't know, 10 years or something, we'll start to see more August acquisitions that mimic the August pinch runner acquisitions where teams are taking, you know, like, I don't know, some really good hitter who is playing for a bad team and deserves to start and could start every

day but is wasted on a good team on a bad team and the teams will just have him and use him as strictly a leveraged pinch hitter will we ever see the highly leveraged pinch hitter i guess i don't think so i don't i think i mean the thing about the pinch runner that everyone has is that there are a lot of those guys, even within... And they're essentially worthless otherwise. Yeah, they're worthless otherwise. A lot of teams just have them in their system. Like the Yankees call up Rico Noel or whoever just because he's fast.

And yeah, they're not really in much demand. And you don't really have to... Yeah, they're not really in much demand, and you don't really have to. I mean, there's been a decline in pinch hitter usage in general just because benches are smaller and bullpens are bigger, and I guess that's still the case in the postseason. Maybe there are fewer opportunities to pinch hit than there once were, or there are fewer managers who are willing to pinch hit than there once were, like Ned Yost. So probably not, because you'd still have to, like, you'd be paying for a guy

who is going to get one plate appearance every two or three games for you, and you'd be acquiring him from a team that uses him every day as a starter. And even if he's not as valuable to that team because that team's not going anywhere, I still don't know whether it would be worth it. So basically the Cardinals lucked into. One of their better players is injured, so that's not luck. But it's just a fluke that the Cardinals have this opportunity. Now, if I asked you to put a value on Randall Gritchuk as a leveraged pinch hitter in this series relative to his normal value as a starting outfielder where one is full value 120 is 20 percent more value 80 is 20 percent

less value what is Randall Gritchuk's value in this series 60 okay I don't see any way in which 60. Okay. I don't see any way in which... I mean, it's an advantage, I guess, in that you can decide when you want to use him, so you can save him for the important spot, whereas if he was in the starting lineup, you wouldn't be able to control when he comes up. But he would still come up four times a game. He would.

Yeah, he would, but who knows which four times. Who knows. Although it's not, yeah, it's not quite the same as a reliever because you can use them all four times without having to worry about burning him tomorrow or anything like that. So yeah, in those four times it is almost certain that his, like one of the reasons that it's nice to save a reliever is, oh, if it's a blowout, it turns out you didn't really need the guy, so you don't burn him.

But you don't burn your hitters in any meaningful way. So he'd get those four plate appearances, they wouldn't mean anything in a blowout, but whatever. It's the same. So yeah, you're right. 60 seems even, maybe a little high. Plus the pinch hit penalty, if that's a thing. Yeah.

All right. So Dodgers-Mets. I'm looking forward to this one. This is like the ultimate starting pitching series. Just all the good starting pitching is in this series. I think I'm leaning Dodgers just because you have the potential for four Kershaw-Granke games. If the Dodgers are down 2-1, they would probably bring back Kershaw in Game 4 and then have Granke in Game 5. So that's pretty tough to beat.

I mean, that leaves you with, unless you think there's some kind of thing about Kershaw that he's not as good as in October, which he definitely hasn't been, but I would assume this is a case like every other great player who's supposed to not be as good in October, and then you just give them a few more series, and eventually they are as good as they usually are. I would expect that to happen in the series. I sort of hope that happens in the series, just so the last black mark against Kershaw can be erased. And it's hard to beat a team that starts two of the best pitchers in baseball four out of five times and starts Brett Anderson in the middle, which is not terrible. But the Mets obviously are the probably team best

equipped to match up with that starting pitching wise. And that they'd be going with de grom and harvey and cinder card and maybe matt's in game four and the difference between those guys and kershaw and granky is smaller than it would be for most teams but just the kershaw granky factor combined with the fact that a lot of the mets best hitters are left-handed, and Kershaw and Anderson are left-handed, that would seem to neutralize them a little bit. And Terry Collins seems to not be interested in platooning or using pinch hitters a lot for those guys. So if that's the case, then that sort of hurts them. then that sort of hurts them. Then they have guys like Conforto or I don't know who else,

Duda and guys who are not as good. Granderson. Granderson, yeah. So Murphy, Daniel Murphy is worse. So that's possibly a pretty big disadvantage for them. Kershaw's career platoon split, by the way, is basically zero. Have we talked about the... We have talked about

whether the pitchers' platoon split or the hitters' platoon split matters more. Way back, I guess, around episode 200, it was like a multi-episode storyline. Really? Eventually, I think, eventually the writers wrote that off the show.

But the pitcher's platoon split means more. Like, I think that probably Tango can tell you exactly how much more. But as I recall, the pitcher's platoon split is the kind of uh determinant factor and the dodgers have home field advantage or whatever that matters so and they might sign a bunch of free agents in the middle of the series yeah sure any other important factors uh X factors? Well, and I don't know.

Does it matter? It doesn't matter, right? But does it matter that the Mets have a losing record against everybody who's not in the NL East? I mean, it's not just that they have a losing record against good teams. They have a losing record against, like, the world. If you take away the Marlins, Phillies, and Braves, I guess probably most teams have a losing record

if you take away the Marlins, Phillies, and the Braves, but the Dodgers don't. So I don't know how much it matters that we have some question about how seriously to take the Mets in their competition. Jeff Sullivan wrote about it just as I was about to start writing about it, which was a frustrating moment, but one that happens often. And he just kind of looked at record against below 500 and above 500 teams, which, as he acknowledged, is not the most precise way to do it.

But he found that there is no difference in postseason performance from teams that had just beaten up on bad teams and you know versus the alternative and it sort of makes sense that there wouldn't be because if you were bad against really good teams then you must have been really extra good against bad teams and that's still if you're if you're a playoff team because you had to win enough games to get there and so if you were really really good against bad teams and that's still if you're if you're a playoff team because you had to win enough games to get there and so if you were really really good against bad teams that probably still tells you something about your ability to beat good teams it still tells you something about

the team's talent yeah that it's not that's not really my point uh though it's more that they played a lot of really bad teams. They did. It's not so much, oh, well, can they only beat... Yeah, like, it's not well, they beat up on bad teams and did poorly against good teams. It's that they played a lot of bad teams. Like, we know that half their schedule

was against a division that got destroyed by every other baseball team. Yeah. That's all. yeah i i think it's a legitimate thing to factor in you would you would adjust their numbers slightly like if you if you were to give the mets the dodgers schedule then you would probably say that the mets would have won fewer games right i mean they would have scored fewer runs Mets would have won fewer games, right? I mean, they would have scored fewer runs, and they would have allowed more runs, probably.

That is the premise. So that sounds reasonable to me. Plus Corey Seager. Yeah, Corey Seager starting in place of Jimmy Rollins, which is something that everyone wondered whether that was going to happen or whether it was going to be a thing that we would talk about it not happening. So it's not. And Yasiel Puig is probably on the bench.

I guess he's a guy, if you want to look for another Grichuk type who's just on the bench for various reasons but could be a weapon off of there. Puig against left-handers would be a useful guy to have. Yeah, although has not been the hitter. No. I mean, he's good. We presume he's still good, but has not been the hitter that makes you go, whoa, this year.

Yes. And I don't know whether Jack Peterson will be benched or not, but maybe it doesn't matter all that much. So I would say that the Dodgers have the edge here. Again, I don't think it's huge. I thought the only real series that there was a clear edge in this postseason was Blue Jays-Rangers, and that's not going the way that I expected it to yet. But other than that, they're all series where you wouldn't really even bat an eye about any outcome. It'll be fun. Yeah. Cubs, Dodgers seems right. And there's probably a 30%,

maybe 40% chance that in 11 days we're previewing a Cardinals-Mets LCS and don't think anything of it. Sure. And the Dodgers have a bullpen now. It's not like it was last year when it was just Jansen and no one else he really wanted to see. Not 30%, by the way. That would imply that those teams are the favorites. Yeah. 20%. Yeah.

So they have Jansen, who's still great, and they have Chris Hatcher, who's been good, and J.P. Howell's pretty good, and Pedro Baez is, you know, they have a bunch of decent guys. And even Joe Peralta has been great for the last month or so. So there's still no one who's, like, a setup man on Jansen's level. And maybe the Mets have an advantage there in that I mean Familia is really good and then after that it still seems like sort of the same thing to me where they have Clippard and he's been a little less good this year and they have Addison Reed who's been very good for them but there's a clear drop off from the closer to the setup guy. So they both seem sort of similar to me in that respect.

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Enjoy the baseball weekend, and we'll be back on Monday. Nothing too very scientific Just thinking of a series of dreams Thank you have a series of dreams