Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 744: The Texas-Toronto Seventh-Inning Insanity Draft

Episode Date: October 15, 2015

Ben and Sam draft their favorite moments from the unbelievable seventh inning of Blue Jays-Rangers Game Five.

I could have rapped about my hard times in this song, but heaven knows I wouldn't have been wrong. I wouldn't have been right. It wouldn't have been love. It wouldn't have been life. It wouldn't have been us. This can't be life. This can't be life. This can't be love. This can't be right. This gotta be more. This can't be us Good morning and welcome to episode 744 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 Yo So I'm gonna level with you

Okay I did not watch that Royals game for one second oh well neither did i went back and i re-watched the seventh inning i see blue jays game start to finish not even the condensed version i wanted the broadcast version i wanted every crowd shot yeah and every broadcaster comment well i'm glad you did because that's the game we're going to be talking about and i didn't watch a second of that game either but i was listening to it the whole time and i was following it and tweeting things about it and uh implying that i was watching it maybe if you didn't know me but if you knew me there was no such implication and um and i have since seen a

couple highlights but uh i imagine that you'll uh you'll wallet me like if we were to do a draft for instance on moments from that game i think you i think from that inning i think you would crush me let's find out all right we're gonna do a draft of moments from not even from that game i think just from that just from that inning that inning contained more than enough moments and uh congratulations to the Royals. And congratulations to the Astros on having a really nice season. That's great, but this was not your night. This was the seventh inning of the Blue Jays-Rangers games night.

It was a pretty good game for the Royals, too. I mean, that's pretty much the perfect game for the winning team. How so? A few things about it. One is, anytime you come from behind, I mean, you don't ever want to be down because you'll probably lose when you are. But in retrospect,

games where you come from behind are so much better. Yeah. And if you could somehow do this to yourself, you would love to have every win be a come from behind win. So they came from behind wind a win so they came from behind uh they went ahead relatively deep into the game uh but not not you know not so deep that you didn't have the uh kind of tense yet comfortable once you get to the sixth or seventh i think that's when you want to be ahead you want don't want to be too stressed out, but you do want to still be engaged.

And so like a 3-2 lead in the seventh, I think, is ideal. Whereas I think a 2-0 lead in the fourth, a 2-0 deficit in the fourth, or maybe a 1-0 deficit in the fourth is ideal. And so they took the lead, I think, in the sixth. is ideal. And so they took the lead and I think in the sixth and then they had a nice narrow lead that made every batter high stakes. And then they had a starting pitcher who was just got completely locked in, which is nice. You always love to have your starting pitcher completely locked in. And so they got to watch a pitcher dominate and then they got the uh the exultant climactic or um kind of um i don't know what you would call it but the the put away

piece yeah um with the home run in the eighth where then they got to take a victory lap kind of yeah and and really scored on dallas keitel yeah they. And so then for like the last 15 minutes, then they got to really enjoy the obviousness of what was happening and celebrate before they even had to celebrate. So I don't know. It's just a perfect little rhythm. Yeah, that's right. Because playoff games are not fun. If you're rooting for one of the teams, if you're rooting for the losing team, the playoff game is really not fun. I guess it's made up for if you do come back to win or else we wouldn't watch playoff games.

None of us would watch them because they'd be too painful. But yeah, you don't want to go too deep into it with too big a deficit. Just enough to make the comeback sweet. Yeah, you want every single to feel like a huge deal on either side and you want to win that's basically what you're looking for right okay so seventh inning moments i where does this inning i don't know if it was the same on the radio as it was watching was it i don't know if you can say if it was equally enjoyable because you didn't watch it live on tv but i'm sure it was it was just as fun listening to which broadcast were

you listening to i was listening to the blue jays broadcast and my favorite part i don't know am i gonna draft this i might draft this okay well you can save it if you don't want to draft it okay but the overall experience of watching that inning which went on forever it was i think it was like i timed it like 51 minutes and 40 seconds from first pitch to last out i think it was more like 53 or 54 if you count the whole broadcast but that was one of the best baseball things i've seen ever yeah definitely yeah okay i don't know where it ranks like it probably it's up there with like childhood championships and last day of the 2011 regular season and it, to me it was not, to me it was below game 162. Uh-huh.

But it was above the infield fly. Oh, yeah. And let's see, was it better? I think it was worse than Rangers-Astros from two days ago or three days ago. I don't. Yeah, that's fair. it's fair that you don't yeah yeah this was great this was uh no you're right you're right you're right you're right you're at no you're now that i think about it you're absolutely right yeah i did like that that was really funny that was great yeah but the amount of insanity was not comparable. No, you're right. You're absolutely right that it was not comparable.

It wasn't even close. Yeah, you can compare any two things, but it was not a close comparison. It's hard to separate personal feeling when you're rooting for a team. I don't know how you feel about J Jeter flip play or, um, you know, July 1st of 2004. Uh, and you don't know how I feel about Barry Zito, uh, knocking out Justin Verlander with an RBI hit in game one of the world series and all that. But, um, so it's hard to say, but, uh, yeah. But yeah, this was, you know what I meant

to say? I did not, sorry, I misspoke because I was thinking about this question earlier and I got confused in my head. It was not obviously better than Royals Astros a couple days ago. What I meant to say, or worse, it was not worse than that. What I meant to say is that it was, to me, worse than Wild Card 2014. Okay, yeah. I think Wild Card 2014 is the single greatest postseason game of our lives. Yeah, that had so much. It went on longer. It took longer to develop. I mean, this game was good throughout. It was an exciting game up to the seventh inning and a close game, but it didn't quite have as many twists and turns. were all contained within that one inning which went on forever but still i think you're probably right especially given the royals history and past and then the lester angle and the stolen bases and

everything else in andy mccullough's story about it so i think i think that's a defensible position i'm watching it right now whole inning yeah i mean i'm watching the condensed okay all right so we're just gonna draft moments we haven't discussed this we have no ground rules we're just gonna go for it who goes first i go first okay and and i think uh probably i should get the obvious ones like you should probably go a little easy on me. Okay. All right. So I will say, for my first pick, I will say Sam Dyson yelling at Edwin Encarnacion for trying to keep fans from throwing cans of beer at Sam Dyson.

Yep. That was, that was up there. Uh, and I know that he just misunderstood. Right. And you can appreciate from Sam Dyson's perspective that like he's, he's watching a sport.

Like he spent this entire year where like a guy sneezes and the third baseman doesn't say bless you and it's a benches clearing brawl and four rounds of uh of hit batsmen and then all of a sudden edwin incarnacion is to his mind doing the titanic to the crowd after this incredible moment in franchise history like he is actually doing like like this like king has is summoning his people or something yeah like like he's the guy uh at the top of the water in mad max you know like and and nobody's saying anything and sam dyson's gotta just think am i losing my mind how come everybody's letting him do this? But instead of thinking, um, that probably there's a good explanation for it. Uh,

he thought, um, that he had to say something and that was cute. Uh, but also really misguided. Uh, so that was great. All right.

Well, if you're going to take that bench clearing incident that Sam Dyson caused, I'm going to take the other bench clearing incident that Sam Dyson caused. Yeah, also a good one. The great thing about the second one was that the inning was over, and on the broadcast they had already started showing the replay package, leading into the end of the inning, into the commercial break, where they show all the important moments and there was music playing.

And it was a commercial break as far as the broadcast was concerned. And the inning was amazing and we were all just savoring how great this inning was. And then it wasn't quite over. Just when you thought we were about to go to commercial, just as you thought it was over, there was another bench-clearing incident, like, minutes after the last one. And for almost as strange a reason, I think, probably not quite, but very close, just Sam Dyson walking by home plate where Troy Tulewitzki, who had just popped out,

was still standing, and Dyson gave him a little butt pat. He said something. I assume he said something nice. I don't know. Maybe that will come out. Maybe it has come out and I haven't seen it. But I assume it was just a friendly butt pat and words of some sort.

And Tulewitzki took exception to it and was very unfriendly and dyson just sort of kept walking off the field but then the benches cleared again and everyone milled around again so it was a combination of how weird it was and the timing just as you thought the inning was over it had one more gift to give but definitely the two strangest bench clearing incident incitements i can well and also the strangest fans throwing things on the field instant the first one totally natural hang on i'm watching right now what do you think what do you think he's saying i don't know. It's weird because Tulo has no right to be unhappy, right? That is the best time to go breach protocol and pat the opponent on the butt. Yeah, they just beat you.

Congratulations. You're going to the ALCS. Boy, I was a mess today, and I handed it to you. Good luck. And Tulewitzki's like, we got rules here. And the rules say that I got to start being mad again. I'm like, sorry, guy, but you know how it goes. I got to be mad now.

sorry, guy, but you know how it goes. I got to be mad now. And it's a shame because Tulo could have had a perfectly nice evening, and now he's going to spend the whole time thinking about what he should have said to Sam Dyson. He's already thought of, like, the perfect comeback, and he didn't get to say it. I mean, we had, like, two brand new entries in the book of unwritten rules really like don't i didn't know that these were unwritten rules and now they are don't don't gesture toward the fans in an in an attempt to save other fans and players from getting hit by beer bottles thrown from the upper deck when such an action could be misconstrued as a

celebration and don't give an opposing player a sportsman-like pat on the butt after that player's team has just ended your season do you did you see sam dyson's little hand flip as he walked away yeah it's like whatever man yeah and he was he was already mad about the batista bat flip yes so i don't know what he's i mean it's possible that he said something unfriendly oh it's totally possible combined it with a butt pat like a passive aggressive butt pat he might have said get your under control, or you guys sure have a lousy way of winning, or well, I guess karma's going to come back and get you. He might have said something like that, right? I mean, if you think about how baseball players operate, pretty much everything that they do is in reaction to some imagined slight that they saw recently.

And so probably for the next few weeks, everything Sam Dyson does is probably going to be bat flip related. So it is probably best to assume that, or it's probably most likely that he's still saying something about the bat flip or has something to say about the bat flip. That the Edward Encarnacion thing was about the bat flip. That it was all bat flip related. But he looks like a nice guy.

And it's more fun to imagine that he actually said congratulations. Yeah. All right. All right. So, but by the way, the fans throwing things on the field the second time, you called that, right? Wait, was that, did one of us pick that? No. I'm going to pick that.

I'm going to pick that. Go ahead. All right. I'm going to pick the fans throwing things on the field the second time because it reminds me of my all-time favorite McSweeney's. You know, McSweeney's. Mm-hmm. McSweeney's. And the strange thing is that I mentioned this exact thing in, no, no, no, I didn't. I mentioned this in my piece about the F word, baseball and the F word. Remember that one?

Yep. And I read that like yesterday because Jason Wojcicki mentioned it in a tweet and I referred to this thing. But anyway, this reminded me of my favorite McSweeney's thing which was like, it was like letters from, oh here it was, okay. Kids letters from terrorist summer camp. And so one of them was, yesterday at automatic weapon practice, I won the marksmanship medal. Afterwards, I was so happy i kept firing my gun into the air then today my stupid kalashnikov jammed and i wound up losing

i was so mad i kept firing my gun up into the air and that's what this reminded me of it was like like we're so mad and we have beer cans to throw and then they're like oh we're so happy yeah do the same thing yeah well i liked the first throwing stuff on the field not that not that i condone such behavior but it was just they were playing against type like these were canadians i the first thing i searched i started searching canada nice yeah on twitter it was great it was like an entire country turned heel like a bunch of baby faces the entire national character changed in this one happening because if you had anticipated the reaction to this like if we had someone had told you that the rangers would have scored a really strange run and the stereotype would have been canadian fans saying okay we

accept that that's in the baseball rule book that's the way the game is played and instead they revolted and they were angry and they threw things and they chanted and these were canadians yeah i've never seen canadians behave like this before so this this ending really revealed the whole aspect of the national character that we didn't know was there uh whose pick was that your pick yeah that can be my pick i'm gonna pick uh the constant shots of cole hamels in the dugout even though cole hamill's face never changed and he was the least interesting person to look at he looked like he was meditating and like you sort of like when i looked at cole hamill's my thought was oh yeah that's right he's only been here two months and doesn't really care

that much about this franchise and he's just sort of chilling and they showed him over and over and over like he was you know in the owner's box or something like that like he was like socia face but he's just there i guess it was that they like i don't know why they kept showing him i guess because nobody knows what the manager looks like and so you can't do the manager face because normally you would do the manager face uh but they went with call him it was it was the they were hoping for a undone by my defense face i think but they went with Cole Hamels' face. They were hoping for an undone-by-my-defense face, I think, but they didn't really get it. Yeah, no, they didn't.

He was just calm. This could have been video of him three hours after winning the World Series in 2008 going back to the dugout to sit and stare into the outfield and think about how amazing everything was it was that shot over and over in the middle of everything and it was funny because nobody else had that face so everybody else was a house on fire yeah and they found the one guy who just didn't care that much it's just a game after all he's not in it what does he care okay i'm gonna pick the also frequent shots of the grounds crew picking up trash

because like imagine that you are a groundskeeper at rogers center like what do you do like it's the only there's a turf field there's a retractable roof so you never get to roll out the tarp when it rains you don't get to mow interesting patterns into the grass or anything you don't you don't get to do anything i mean i guess you get to fix up the mound maybe you spray paint the foul lines or something but definitely less screen time and less prestige than every other grounds crew in baseball and then here they are at the decisive moment of the season packed house national audience everyone's watching and the players are no longer the focus it's the grounds crew picking up trash on the field so this was their moment this was what they trained for all right i'm gonna

pick the i'm going to my radio one now my radio only pick um after the um the ball hitting the bat debacle um for a long time we had to wait for the umpires to finally get this call certain so first they they sent odore back to third and then they got an earful and then they talked it over and then they said oh yeah actually now they think about it you get to score and then they went and they talked to new york to get the rules right and then they came back out and said yes he does get to score and that was it it was settled and during this whole thing the blue jays radio broadcast color guy uh seemed to be consistent in saying well sure if you throw the ball back and it hits the batter or his bat it's a live ball like just happened but also that wouldn't be fair and they're going to overturn this and the the optimism that he had that an umpire would just freelance and just make the right call based on his own sense of justice uh was so heartening and that's how i kind of felt like i don't know like what was it there was another what was the other rules

uh disagreement recently in the playoffs wasn't there another one where there was a big dispute not over what had happened but over not only oh yeah yeah it was we've already forgotten about that late because this game was so crazy I think it was Utley but anyway I remember thinking um like an umpire could just do what he wants like he doesn't it technically does like if if if it's not a replay situation like if it's a replay situation then you have to go to New York and they tell you once you pick up the phone you are no longer in control you have no control but if it's not a replay situation and this wasn't even a replay situation, they just called New York to get a clarification on the rules, but they're still technically like they have to follow the rules, but they can kind of fudge things a little bit here and

there if it's a judgment call. And I didn't think they should have in this case but uh the toronto broadcaster didn't just think they should but seemed very confident that they would like when they picked up the phone like he's like oh this is a travesty i can't believe it this is awful it's gonna ruin the game and then when they go pick up the phone and call new york he's like oh good now they'll get this sorted out and the whole time he's like he's like yeah now they'll get it sorted out the rule is that he it's a live ball and he can advance but they'll get this sorted out. And the whole time he's like, yeah, now they'll get it sorted out. The rule is that it's a live ball and he can advance. But they'll get this sorted out now. At one point he said something like, I'm going to get close,

but this will be technically a paraphrase. He goes, yes, he can advance according to the rules, but it just wouldn't be fair. rules but it just wouldn't be fair well it it would have been a really probably bad way for a playoff game to end if it had actually happened that way yeah but it could have i will say and this is not one of my things but i will say and you can neither confirm nor deny this but i thought possible unpopular opinion that harold that Harold Reynolds did a great job during this inning. He was totally on top of it. As soon as that play happened, he called exactly what had happened. I was just sort of sitting there gaping, wondering what had just happened

and what it meant. And he identified immediately what had happened and what it meant and made the correct call that it was a live ball and that he was allowed to score. And he also just generally had a really good attitude throughout the whole thing. He was very aware of how insane it was and how fun it was and how memorable it was. And I thought he enhanced the experience. So I'm defending Harold Reynolds reynolds cool was that your draft pick because you just lost the draft that was not mine um hey by the way do you uh have you have you looked into this that i know that uh my my sherpa in this the toronto radio broadcast booth uh seemed to think that and i heard uh repeated that there's a difference that uh the bat oh no no actually it was neither the toronto radio

nor anybody else it was dale scott the umpire who made the call who after the game explained to the pool reporter i think the pool reporter um that he reporter, that the rule is that if the batter's in the box and his bat is in the box, then it's okay. And whether his bat was in the box, he implied that whether his bat was in the box maybe would have been in dispute, but that is not a reviewable call. And so when he called it a live ball, it ball it couldn't be reviewed and the rule i'm

looking at says if the batter is standing in the batter's box and he or his bat is struck by the catcher's throw back to the pitcher and in the umpire's judgment there is no intent on the part of the batter to interfere with the throw the ball is alive and in play so whether the bat was quote in the box or not is um irrelevant right it doesn't matter where the bat is as long as chew his own body is in the batter's box and the bat's uh location is unintentional uh not deliberately blocking the throw uh then it doesn't really matter whether it's perpendicular or parallel to the ground or what. Yeah, one thing this October has taught me about baseball is that I don't really know

the rules. I don't know what's going on. I've got to look up all sorts of stuff. I don't know. And there are always like three different rules that apply to every situation and they all have different wording and it's not definitive. Not a hundred percent sure Dale Scott knows that rule. Maybe not. I mean, really like who, why? It's a crazy rule. It's a weird, so do you, will this rule change? Will, uh, will there be a rule that says that the catcher's throw cannot be obstructed

by a batter or his bat that is out of the batter's box uh well i don't think it was out of the batter's box it's not clear that it was but it might have been maybe it looks like there was an overhead shot and it was borderline yeah so i i guess it makes sense. It would make sense for that to be the rule. Okay. So, all right. My next one, I think my next one is going to be Alfonso Marquez's mouth because he had an enormous, I don't know, it looked like he had a baseball in his mouth the entire inning. And so it looked like he had picked up the baseball and just put it in his mouth the entire inning and so it looked like it looked like he had picked

up the baseball and just put it in his mouth for safekeeping or something because they until they figured out what to do because he had just like i guess it was gum or chew or something but it was just a huge wad it looked like a like a fatal tumor or something. And he kept being in these serious conferences behind whole plate, like with banister and with Gibbons and deciding the fate of these two team seasons with his lip, just like protruding several inches away from his face with some kind of cartoonish wad in his mouth. And it lent an air of whimsy to the whole uh very serious proceedings

all right i'll take the third air okay so the throwing error at yeah or the catching error at third yeah because what was that i don't know what that was. It was a perfect fielding attempt and a perfect throw. I mean, I'm watching it right now. There's just... Like, this is... That's the one that really is mind-blowing. Because you just don't see that. No.

You just don't really ever see a shortstop drop a throw right at him. No, he... An accurate throw. His glove was, was like caught in like he had his glove pointing down when maybe it should have been pointing up to like in a scooping position but he had it pointing down and he just didn't close the glove on it but i there was no no real reason for him not to make that play this is i picked that but it's also kind of my least favorite moment not because um that um of its effect on who won but because beltray and and elvis andrews are like one of

america's great lovable comedic duos and they're always goofing and they're always you know together and having having fun and to just see after that so many sad andrews sad beltray shots you know it just felt like just felt like those two will never be the same again like yeah it's only a couple weeks since the last pop-up deke out that they had i have an extremely dark analogy that i'm not going to okay but just so you know i've got one and it's good and i'm not going to use it okay so anyway that was uh that felt like a shift in the sport it felt like a a corner had been turned yeah in the sport yeah wait wait wait wait wait yeah instead of the extremely dark analogy i have a i have a less dark one so i

mean it to me it's like you have this couple this happily married couple that everybody loves and like they're the life of the party and then the husband loses his job and they start snipping at each other all the time and he's always like sitting on the couch and she's like how come you're not looking for work and he's like i am looking for work this is what i do i'm creative and they're just they hate each other after that and like you never felt like the job was what mattered in their relationship it's not like they were together because of his job it's not like she loved him because of his job the job was an afterthought he didn't even care about that job it's like he didn't go to school to get that job he was an engineering major and now he's working in sales.

I mean it wasn't even relevant to their being. And yet you take that job away and everything changes. And before you realize it, they're splitting up. And it's just awful. Nobody knows what happened and the friends don't know who to go with. Some of them go with her and some of them go with him. You just have to watch it. For a long time you just have to watch these two things

just coexist in a miserable way that you're just not prepared to watch them coexist. That was the non-dark analogy? You'll have to tell me later what the dark analogy was. It's the same thing except their kid dies. Oh, okay. Okay. oh okay okay all right my next pick is the blue jays not knowing who was ejected i always enjoy this when a player is ejected but no one knows which player it was yeah because they're all standing

on the top step yelling at an umpire And an umpire points in their general direction And makes the ejection motion But it could apply to anyone Because everyone was saying something ejection worthy And then there were just like Four different Blue Jays making the Who me? symbol And I still don't know who was actually ejected

Because Brett Cecil Went into the tunnel And it looked like maybe he had been ejected or maybe like they were just pretending that he was ejected because he's injured and he can't play anyway but then he was back shortly after that so I don't know who was actually ejected but no one knew at the time so I enjoyed that one of my great regrets during Stomper's summer was that we didn't have one of those situations where somebody got ejected and me being easily the least important person in the dugout.

I was going to be the hero and go, all right, then I guess I'm out. And it didn't get to happen. I thought that Michael Saunders is a good person to lose on that team. But it probably should have been David Price. Yeah. Well, yeah, I was already writing my tweet about how Gibbons knew that that was going to happen, and that's why he used him in the previous game.

But then I had to delete it because it wasn't clear who was actually ejected. This game made me tweet. It's a lot. There was a flurry uh all right i am i think i'm running out of picks okay uh so you can just keep going all right build your lead um okay i'm well there was another ejection moment where jeff Bannister got a fan ejected. And I don't know what the fan did. It looked like a businessman, like he had a suit and a baseball cap, which is never a great look.

I feel like if you have a suit and a baseball cap, I don't know. It just looks like you're there because you had to take a client or something. And he was gesturing from the dugout to get this fan ejected and this was like right after his season had ended this was right after the rangers just you know went behind and were going to lose and jeff bannister was super concerned about getting this fan ejected and the fan was on his cell phone and he's arguing with security and he was just like an older older guy businessman looking guy and it was funny that Bannister was so concerned with getting the fan ejected at this moment when so many other things

were going wrong for the Rangers there was also a Rangers fan there was a crowd shot of a Rangers fan, New York Rangers fan, which was really good. It was just this sea of like Blue Jays jerseys and Texas Rangers fan. And there was a Rangers fan with a New York Rangers jersey as if he had gotten lost on the way to the Rangers game that he was trying to go to. gotten lost on the way to the Rangers game that he was trying to go to. And neither of us mentioned the actual pivotal moment, the weirdest moment of this whole thing. Is neither of us going to draft the Russell Martin throw and the Chu deflection? Not really like us. It's too obvious. It is too obvious.

What do you think are the... don't i don't quite know how to even pose this question but let's say that jose batista gets a thousand at bats in that situation okay okay and let's further say that he gets a thousand at bats in a situation where odore catches the little bloop pop-up that he should have caught. Okay, so in one case, the Rangers are completely on tilt. Yeah. And in the other, there's two outs and the bases are loaded, and one more out and the Rangers have the lead.

Give me slash lines for both of those. Let me just give you home run rates so his at bat per home run in one situation and the other so at bats per home run when there's the bloop well i don't know what it is but i I would say it's higher. I think it's higher following the bloop than if the bloop had been caught. And I'll say it's 20% higher. Yeah, I know that I'm probably overanalyzing this or underanalyzing it, I guess. I'm vastly underanalyzing it but like i sort of feel like in the on tilt scenario batista is like a 480 610 1350 slugging percentage hitter um and in the other one he's probably slightly worse than normal jose batista so like the difference between um like batista playing in A ball and Batista playing in an all-star game.

Yeah. And we've talked about bat flips before. We're down on bat flips. Yeah, yeah. That was a good one, though. That was a good one. We're down on bat flips because Anytime there's any bat flip whatsoever Everyone goes crazy

That was a legitimate bat flip I'll tell you what Because I don't It's a slippery slope Because I don't want to open the door To bat flip spammers I don't want to give my Name and address to the bat flip crowd

So I'm not going to talk about the bat flip But I will say that Everything leading address to the bat flip crowd so i'm not going to talk about the bat flip but i will say that everything leading up to the bat flip that batista did was also epic like the whole crowd is nuts and he just stands there staring at sam dyson like he's gonna eat his children and and he just sort of stands there and like for about a i don't know a second and a half just lets the whole world go on except him like he's like saying i am no longer of this world and i move at my own speed and it was uh it was one of the most uh kind of like uh psychologically violent things i've ever seen in the sport so i will say that it was a it was an all-time great if nothing else it was an all-time great um stare down or um pimping of one's home run uh no matter what happened to the piece of lumber

that he used to hit it i'm gonna watch it right now first i gotta watch odor do this six times what was that i don't know they made four e i mean only one the only three counted as heirs but he made four unthinkable heirs in a row yeah and the first two of those happen oh my gosh jose batista oh my goodness yeah the first two of those happen. Oh, my gosh. Jose Bautista. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, the first play was not a notable error. It was a shortstop trying to rush a play, and he was in motion, and it wasn't egregious. And the second one...

He makes it 97% of the time. Mm-hmm. Probably. And the second one, the throw from the first baseman when there's a runner between first and second that's always tough because you've probably 92 percent of the time maybe yeah and then the andrus catch is a 99.9 percent of the time i mean the the beltre play maybe is not but if the beltre is made, if he gets to the ball that quickly and throws that perfectly, then the catch would be made that many times. And then Odor?

Yeah, the Odor catch, I mean, that was, when it was hit, I thought immediately it was an out. I think somewhere between 96 and 99.5. Yeah. So let's call it 98. So then the odds of those four plays all getting missed are about 1 in 500,000. Yeah. Possibly 1 in 5 million. I always have trouble with scientific notation.

Yeah, so extremely unlikely. All right. where am i i've got too many open here i'm gonna watch it again this might be yeah that it's like the most rewatchable inning i i really would rather re-watch that inning than watch the rest of the playoff games it's too it's it's almost too bad this is a division series because if this were a world series that home run is top five all time yeah yeah definitely carter level yeah like so like gibson's home run is the number one home run of all time even even though you know it was game one of a

world series like it wasn't game seven it wasn't a walk-off um and and yet something about it all the stories about it all the factors that go into it the people involved in the circumstances make it a clear number one ahead of mazrowski and bobby th Bobby Thompson but uh after that I don't think there is a clear number four and I Joe Carter is probably number four but it's a it's a tear down I think in my opinion um and if this took place in any World Series game I think I would put it yeah at Carter level it could be it could have been number four all the time. But it's only a Division Series, so I don't know. It's probably like 12.

Yeah, great game. Probably the best game we'll see. Sorry that it came so soon, but I can rewatch that like freaks and geeks. I could just put it on on anytime and watch from the start post seasons are getting better aren't they they've been really good lately i don't know why they would be getting better but they've been really good lately well we have twice as many games for one thing and we have much better cameras for another. And we have Twitter, which, oh my gosh, Jose Bautista.

That was a big swing. All right. I don't know. Twitter, I don't want to give Twitter any credit for anything. Never mind. All right. So everyone listening probably has their own moments i have more moments but you kind of have to see them to appreciate them so i'm glad we got to experience that and we will be back tomorrow will we you're traveling will we be back not totally it's not

totally clear we may be back you may be back pretty It's not totally clear. We may be back. We may be back. Pretty good chance. We might have to do an email show. Okay. Well, we could use some emails. We haven't gotten as many lately. So send us some at podcast at baseballperspectives.com.

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