Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 752: Hey, the World Series is Starting

Episode Date: October 27, 2015

Ben and Sam preview the 2015 World Series.

Good morning and welcome to episode 752 of Effectively Wild, a daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives brought to you by the Play Index at baseballreference.com. I'm Sam Miller along with Ben Lindberg of Grandland. Hi, Ben. How are you? Not great, Bob. You want to hear something that I've been thinking about? Yep. All right. I'm afraid that it's going to sound like I'm making a point. I'm not making a point. It's just amusing and interesting to me. But, you know, much was made about Lorenzo Cain scoring from first on the single because Jose Bautista threw the ball into second

and in Tom Verducci's much shared piece because of the preparation that the Royals and Mike Churchill had done. They were prepared for that because they noticed that Jose Bautista often threw into second base in that in hits to that particular location. And by doing so, sure, he kept the runner on second on first, but the, you know, the winning run in the LCS scored. And, and again, just to be clear, I'm not trying to make a point here. But it is sort of amusing in retrospect that there was a base hit right after. And that if you ignore the fallacy of the predetermined outcome, you could actually say that there was a base hit right after and that if you ignore the fallacy of the predetermined outcome uh you could actually say that uh he saved a run because if he hadn't

thrown to second if he'd thrown you know in like he was trying to cut off the run from home uh i mean that ball is in a place where maybe it is a double maybe eric cosmer gets a double uh and if he's on second then maybe he scores on kend Kendri's Morales single or on the next batter. And so I looked at the run expectancy matrix. And in fact, runner on second and third with nobody out has a higher run expectancy than runner on first with nobody out and a run in if if uh you hold if you have the choice between holding the runner uh and giving up the run or not holding the runner uh and not giving up the run it actually makes sense to hold the runner at first and give up the run it's a 1.853 runs expected by keeping Hosmer at first and at 1.967 if you allow him to get to second while keeping Kane.

Now, that doesn't obviously take into account that the winning run in the LCS scored. You care more about the win expectancy than the run expectancy. Exactly. And in the bottom of the eighth inning of a tie game, one run is essentially a nail and so uh again not making a point that uh jose batista is a plus excellence or anything like that uh but in general jose batista's tendency seems to be fairly wise and uh not in this case but i don't think it was a mistake it wasn't like he threw to the wrong base exactly i think it was just the royals did something smart and unanticipated and unanticipatable i mean yeah there was an inside edge tweet about how that was the first run that had scored all year on a single from a runner from

first on a single with the runner not in motion. So that's just not something that happens. And I think Joe Sheehan put it in his newsletter that it was one of those plays where there is a hero, but there is not a goat. It wasn't like Batista made a mental mistake or something. It was more like the Royals made a mental success. You know, I've talked about on this show that the runner scoring from first on a single is my favorite play in baseball and goes back to my childhood.

It's always been from age seven on my favorite play in baseball. It is like the one godlike thing you can do in sports in my world. And so I am always looking for opportunities. And when Bautista fielded it that way, I did immediately think, send him, send him, send him. And as he was charging around third, I went, or toward third, I went, oh my gosh, they're actually sending him.

And I was very excited. And I don't, you know, it's not that that makes me better than the rest of you, but it does make me probably more satisfied with myself and the sport in general than at least you, Ben. Yeah, sure. No, it was great and awesome and I want to relive it every night forever. Yeah, it was really fun. God, I love scoring for a person on that single. I just love it. It's so exciting. Mm-hmm.

It's so exciting. Yeah, it's pretty good. All right. So, let's see see i wanted to talk about the world series and uh my framing device for this is that we're going to talk about whether this is a good world series and we can answer that you can answer that in any particular set of criteria that you would have for a world series my only recommendation is that you don't say all your thoughts in the first sentence because it's um we've still got about a half hour to go yeah so break them up into uh into thematic topics but uh you can you can ask me questions or i can ask you questions i don't really care how we do it but uh it i want to know whether you think that this is a good world series

for i don't know for the game or for you specifically or for you as a writer or for the moral universe or what i want to know what you look for in a world series what you're interested in in a world series what you care about in a matchup and whether you think this one will i mean obviously you don't know how it's going to play out maybe it'll be a sweep all four games not close but do you expect it to be a satisfying world series so first of all let me ask you that do you expect this to be a competitive world series i do i would expect almost any world series to be competitive but i think this is more competitive than most World Series. What would it take?

Is there any matchup that you could have imagined in this year's playoffs that would have been uncompetitive? If it had been the Rangers and the Cubs, for instance, would you have thought that would be competitive? Yeah, I mean mean i wouldn't have predicted a sweep i pretty much never predict a sweep the mets are probably three weeks ago you would have probably said the mets are the worst team in the nl right uh not in the nl but in the nl playoffs yeah i'm open to the idea that they're not necessarily the worst playoff team

Yeah, I'm open to the idea that they're not necessarily the worst playoff team, but worst regular season team. Yeah. Oh, why? Wait, you're going with the strength of starting pitching? Yeah. But Ben! You've written about this multiple times. We've been doing this podcast for three and a half years.

And this has come up repeatedly and you've never wavered yeah i never i never considered it settled i don't think there's any great evidence for it but i also think it's hard to disprove so i'm i'm open to the idea that this team because it always seemed like it should make sense that a team with really good starting pitchers who don't have to start their sixth starter or whatever and just can use the same three, four guys over and over again. If those guys happen to be really, really good, then that should make them a better playoff team than a regular season team. I mean, that's hard to deny. mean that's hard to deny that it is impossible to deny that it makes sense which is why we talk about it so much because it is a great mystery why it wouldn't make sense right but and so i think even if the statistical evidence that it doesn't make sense is not strong at all i think you come into it with the assumption that it has to be true and then if you can't find the stats to support it

then maybe you're a little less confident but you can't rule it out entirely yeah i geez i mean you can't rule it out entirely but i i believe it more than i believe other playoff you know things people say about the playoffs like it's not on the level of momentum or they're experienced and therefore they're going to be good or they're inexperienced and therefore they're hungry or they don't know enough. They don't know to be afraid. Whatever, whatever those things that people say, I think it's a cut above those things. Okay. Well, and there's also the fact that the Mets got better, I think, as the season went on.

So they are not as bad as they were in the first half. No, that's true. But I mean, even three weeks ago, you probably would have said if pushed. And the reason I mean, the reason I bring this up is because I was looking for I was trying to find a mismatch where you would say that's where this whole thing started. And so we've kind of gotten off. I probably still would say that if we could restart the playoffs over again and if the Cardinals were healthy, which they weren't.

So now the Mets, yes, the Mets do get to ride their starting rotation a lot. Although it's not as though the Mets had – they're better now than they were earlier in the season without Matz and Conforto and Cespedes and some of the guys in the bullpen and Kelly Johnson that's Kelly Johnson I can't remember you didn't mention him no I know it's I did mention him but he's not bad I was just trying to remember whether he was actually a mid-season addition and he was right yeah yeah okay I mean it's he's played for someone he's played for every team in the East multiple times,

so it's hard to keep the years straight. So that's legitimate. Now, the aspect of their rotation, of them getting to ride a limited part of their rotation, though it seems like, in fact, with the Mets specifically, you could probably argue that the opposite is true because they actually had a very good fifth starter and even a good sixth starter this year.

Pretty good sixth starter relative. And they're less likely to use their starters deeper into games. The starters will probably pitch fewer innings this series than they would in random seven games during the regular season. And so they're actually arguably getting a smaller percentage of innings from their starters than they would. Now, a higher percentage from their big four, but not a higher percentage necessarily from their starters overall. Meanwhile, they face a Royals team that, A, has a great back end of their bullpen and will be able to leverage that to an even greater degree and in a way that the Mets

bullpen doesn't really compare. And secondly, a Royals team that has a terrible bench and has, to some degree, you would think if the bench serves a purpose in baseball, keeping players fresh and so on and getting them through the grind of the long season, that that would actually be a disadvantage for the Royals throughout the regular season, but much less of one now in the regular season when your bench is essentially a non-factor anyway. So, arguably, the seven-game format benefits the Mets least of all. Yeah. Well, I do think the Royals are more likely to win the series.

All right. But competitive. Yeah. You're saying in seven. of all yeah well i do think the royals are more likely to win the series all right but competitive yeah you're saying in seven i said in six actually i wasn't forced to predict but if i had been i would have said six all right okay so that is settled we think it is a well what what is your in in a random game you don't know home field, you don't know the starters, what percentage favorites are the Royals in your mind? Like 55. 55, okay. All right. So it's not super even.

It's like typical AL team against typical NL team in interleague play. Yes, right. Okay. All right. all right all right so then what about the players involved on these two teams given the choice for instance between the uh actual players on the royals the uh the people as well as the playing styles of the royals or those of the blue jays who would you have chosen blue jays and where do the royals or those of the Blue Jays, who would you have chosen? Blue Jays. And where do the Royals rank? Are they a median team or better? If you had to pick a random game

among all 30 teams, where would the Royals rank just in terms of interest to you? All 30 teams, I think they'd be quite high. They'd definitely be top 10. They'd possibly be top 5. I think they're a fun team to watch. I think the playoff teams this year were almost all potentially very entertaining, and I don't think this is the best matchup of two teams that could have resulted from the 10 teams that started this postseason. But I think it's a good one. It's not a bad one.

A bad one would have been Cardinals-Yankees, I guess, would have been the worst-case scenario for intrigue and the best-case scenario maybe for ratings. I don't know, but almost the best case. But we didn't end up with that, and we didn't end up with, say, I don't know, Cubs-Astros maybe would have been the the most fun matchup and this is somewhere in the middle of the possible matchups that we could have gotten this postseason and uh where what do you think of the mets as a team to watch very fun like the mets lot. Like watching their pitchers.

And both of these teams have some suffering in the recent past. I think you could say that the Royals has been more severe and more prolonged. But both have had indignities visited upon them.

Both of them have kind of had suffering fan bases to some extent or things that the fan base could be upset about. So neither of them has won a World Series in quite some time. So either way, I think it's an interesting story. Do you feel any remorse for wrong predictions regarding either of these teams that requires you to root against them. No. Yeah, me neither. There was definitely a feeling probably up through the start

of last year's division series that just didn't want to acknowledge that the James Shields trade was, at worst, broke well for the Royals and at best might have been smart. And I got over that then. And I don't think there's anything else. I mean, sometime mid-LCS last year, I grew to just completely love Ned Yost. And so, in fact, there's an embracing. Like, I'm a convert in a way.

And there's, I forget what the saying is, but there's nobody more on fire than a brand new convert. So there's something nice about that. And then the Mets, of course, have not only, I mean, there's a lot of reason to like the Mets. I mean, Bartolo Colon is beloved is beloved and, uh, Juan Uribe is beloved. So in that sense, there are these two old guys who are just fun to watch, but, um, you know, I, I have a, just a ton of, uh, admiration for Sandy Alderson and just read the book about him. And so have even more intrigue or interest in his success. And yeah, there's a lot and yeah there's a lot of there's a lot of good stories of people who you didn't really think a year ago were going to be in a position where they'd get to uh be on top of the baseball world so that's fun too do you have

a when you turn on a game this series will there be uh and i'm not going to ask you who it will be for but will you have any rooting interest any even like two percent you're kind of hoping for one team or the other i don't think so sometimes when the series starts i catch myself wanting one team to win slightly more but as of right now no i don't think i do yeah i uh i don't either and that's very unusual i think i probably have in almost every series i've ever watched um and at at the very least my default is usually the team that i think is smarter and um the definition of smart has broadened so much um i think since you and I started doing this podcast, in my mind,

that I don't really think either one is dumb. I guess I generally think that, well, I guess the Mets owners are unlikable. I don't really have a feeling about the Royals owners. No. And yeah, otherwise, though, I mean, both teams have been knocked around somewhat unfairly. Both teams have been probably knocked around a little bit fairly, but they both have done things really well and in somewhat unintuitive ways.

And yeah, it's hard to have a smart leader in here. And also, I've somewhat stopped liking smart teams. leader in here and also i've somewhat stopped liking smart teams i yeah i admire dayton moore's commitment to the crew cut uh-huh i haven't like seen a person walking around with dayton moore's haircut not wearing a military uniform in ever he's really very committed to it yeah yeah he is it has a real shape to it. Yeah. It looks like when you go to a barber store in New York and they have the pictures up from 1992 of the model that you're supposed to point to. I want that one.

Right. It's a charcoal drawing. It's not even a picture. It's a charcoal drawing, a charcoal sketch of it. And it's a comb ad. Yeah. It's not even a picture it's a charcoal drawing a charcoal sketch yeah of it and it's not even and it's like a there's it's a comb ad yeah it's not even a picture it's a comb ad he's just been going to the same barbershop and pointing at the same image from 1991 every time do you think he has a comb that has like a that fastens around the back of his palm and he sort of palms the... Yes, I think he does. Wow.

It's good. It looks like it gets better with color too. The more he ages, the color has become its own character. Yeah. And it really is more and more like 80s action movie bad guy. Yeah, I really like it. All right. Well, so now I'm rooting for them.

But that was all it took to move you from one side to another So you didn't have much of a rooting interest Yeah it's true Okay what else What else could we judge this As good or bad I mean everybody will always talk about Whether it's good or bad for ratings

Which I've never Cared about at all And I don't know It's got a New York team whether it's good or bad for ratings, which I've never cared about at all. And I don't know. It's got a New York team. Yeah, should do fine. Should do fine. I think the Royals had pretty good ratings last year because they were an exciting team and there was a story surrounding them.

I don't know. I hope people watch baseball. I generally want ratings to be good. I think people maybe misinterpret the ratings sometimes, but I'm all for baseballs being popular. Man, that is a strong jaw, too. Yeah. All right, what else?

Well, interesting players. There are interesting players in this series. There are some young players that we're getting to experience for the first time, like guys like Cinderguard and guys who haven't been around that long. And there are like, you know, guys who are

the old soldier who are getting back to this point like David Wright. There are players I like. Ben Zobrist is an interesting player. I like watching Ben Zobrist. Or Alex Gordon is a fun player. Or suddenly Alcides Escobar is a really fun player

and a mystifying player. And Daniel Murphy is interesting all of a sudden. And the Mets pitchers are all interesting. And Yohannes Cespedes is fun to watch. So if you just rated every player on a scale of one to ten as far as how interesting they were you would have two teams that were above the median if you were to rate a style of play based on how interesting it is the royals would be the most interesting style of play. Definitely, yes. Without a doubt. I mean,

for all the things that drive stat heads crazy at times, it is simply more interesting to watch three discrete actions produce a run and require cheering for all three than to wait for a home run. It's not necessarily better. It's not necessarily optimal. It's not necessarily something that teams should 100% build around. Maybe it is, maybe it's not necessarily better it's not necessarily optimal it's not necessarily something that teams should 100 build around maybe it is maybe it's not but it is undeniably more interesting to see the ball uh put in play and to see base runners to have the split screen where you're seeing whether the base runner is going to take off when the pitcher goes and to see uh diving plays and to see all that sort of stuff. So they're a good team for viewing. They are playing against a team that will strike a lot of them out anyway. And I'm very intrigued by that matchup and what it means.

I'm intrigued by the matchup between the Mets fly ball hitters and the Royals defense. Uh-huh. And right, yes. And the Royals fly ball pitchers. And the Royals fly ball hitters and the Royals defense uh-huh and right yes and the Royals fly ball pitchers and the Royals fly ball pitchers yeah I wrote about that in the World Series preview I did with Jonah I think the Mets fastballs versus Royals fastball hitters obviously everyone has talked about it it's not really an overlooked thing but I think it's pretty interesting I'm curious to see how that works out Not that we will actually learn that much about it

In the course of a few games But I think it's I think it's the rare case Of a time when you can actually Point to a thing that a team does well That might counteract A thing that the other team does well And that's pretty rare in baseball

Yeah I do buy it i think just even though last year we made a big deal about the absurd narrative about the giants hitting fastballs remember yeah giants uh batting average on 95 plus fastballs and we thoroughly deconstructed that argument and i think maybe didn't rob arthur too uh rob wrote about it and sort of supported it actually all right but yeah it was people always cite the batting average against you know fastballs of a certain speed or something and it can be deceptive because you're just looking at the results on at bats that ended with that pitch so you don't really know maybe you swung and missed at that pitch a whole lot and if you're

just looking at batting average then it's not telling you how much you're hitting it for power and that sort of thing but any way that you look at the royals they seem to be a really good fastball hitting team they're like a over the course of the season they were a slightly above average offensive team but against fastballs they were better than anyone else against the blue jays and the faster the fastball the greater the gap between them and everyone else so that like by the point that you get to whatever cutoff, 94 miles an hour and above or something. The Royals were best or second best and a big gap between them and the league. And same thing if you look at their whiff percentage, they barely struck out any more often against really fast fastballs than all fastballs,

and most people strike out much more often. So all the numbers are in my grantland article and i won't bore people by reciting them on the air but they are pretty convincing to me i want more numbers i'll send you a link and the mets do not have that ability the mets don't hit very well on really fast fastballs which is the norm but the royals do and the royals also throw a lot of really fast fastballs almost as many as the mets do they really they do i mean i know they have i can think of two starters and two relievers who throw really fast fastballs which is is a fair number but with the mets i can think of none who don't yeah pretty, pretty much everyone except Bartolo Colon throws really fast fastball.

Yeah, and even Bartolo can get up to, I don't know if he's still game, but as of like a year ago, he could still pump up to 93. Yeah. Which is not a really fast fastball. No, not anymore, but he's around 91 average, I think, so he probably still gets up there. Yeah. Good defensive team, the Royals, obviously,

and that's another thing that you think team, the Royals, obviously, and that's another thing that you think would favor the Royals in this series. Not just that they are a better defensive team, which obviously favors them, but the fact that the Royals put a ton of balls in play and the Mets aren't that great at catching them. Mets outfield is good, but the Mets infield, at least by defensive run saved, was tied for the second worst this season, and Royals obviously put lots of balls in play. So you would think that would benefit them here too. The Mets outfield is good? Yeah, Mets outfield is pretty good.

Do you think that you have enough to say that the Royals are good at advanced scouting? Would you count it as a factor in their favor? So we have basically, that we know of, we have four extreme examples. The David Price's changeup, Jose Bautista throwing to second. David Price not, by the way, David Price not picking up guys off not throwing pickoff moves which we didn't even mention from the verducci article yeah but what are the odds that two years in a row the royals would discover an ace starter who essentially has the yips and can't throw it first now price isn't quite so bad but what he threw over five times all

year and when he does it's sort of like a weird throw that doesn't look right and somehow he still didn't allow a stolen base all year and just it's like it's like the royals like i don't know it's it's like they won the lottery i it's not quite but it's like they won the lottery and then the next year they went back and bought another lottery ticket and they're like well those were good numbers and so they bought new numbers that were exactly the same and they just worked again like what are the odds that they they just be like i don't know check if he makes pickoff throws and they're like oh he doesn't he's another guy who doesn't make pickoff throws. That's really crazy.

You'd think David Price might have picked up on the Royals doing it. Like, David Price is really bad at advanced scouting. Like, you know the Royals are going to figure this out about you. It's what they do. Yeah. They totally crack John Lester, dude. You're not getting it past him. The Mets have thrown the fewest pickoff attempts of any team,

any NL team this year. Yeah, but are they afraid to or is it? I don't know. I mean, yeah, that's just completely mind-blowing that that worked again. Not that it worked, but that they just bumped into this exact same problem. What are the odds that they would bump into this exact, like almost the same thing two years in a row? It's weird.

It's crazy. And nobody stole against him all year. Yeah. Five pickoff throws, Ben. I know. And the dude didn't give him a stolen base once. Crazy. Baseball is so hard.

Or easy. Yeah, I don't know what the lesson to draw from that is really anyway so then there's that and then there's the john lester of the same so we can definitely conclude that rusty kunz is good at his job okay i'll give i'll give that with no problem at all the change up and then the jose batista throw that's that is a pretty good one jose batista throwing to second is pretty good like that's not something i would have noticed in my stompers advanced scouting and it's not something i would never have shared it with the team because i would have thought i don't want to clutter them up and um not likely to arise it seems like yeah like the

i don't know if it's that they're great advanced scouts or not the i don't know if it's that they're great advanced scouts or not and i don't know if it's that they're great at somehow packaging this in a way that the players hear it and remember it or not but to your question do we have enough to say that they have great advanced scouts uh we know enough to say that they have great advanced scouts i don't know enough to say whether all 29 other teams have have great advanced scouts. I don't know enough to say whether all 29 other teams have equally great advanced scouts. What their advanced scouts did impressed me as an observer of baseball and as a person who attempts to watch the game in an intelligent way and would never in a million years pick up on any of this stuff right i i don't know whether every team could put

together a clip roll like this uh or not but yeah it's impressive other teams haven't had these signature moments that hinged on these advanced scouting moments it might just be that they happen to have these moments that they were able to take advantage of this stuff and other teams haven't but i mean it's conceivable that the reds do i mean are they singing like with the david price change-ups it maybe the reds did this in in june against you know chris heston yeah and tom verducci wasn't there to write about it because it's a game in june against chris heston uh now kane scoring from first is pretty good and you probably would notice that But you do notice a lot of things in baseball

A lot of weird things happen A lot of impressive things, cool things happen And nobody's there You also have to have Lorenzo Kane running in that spot If you have some other runner Like almost any other runner on the team probably Running in that same situation You can know exactly what Jose B batista is going to do and

you probably still can't score and if it's the if it's the sixth inning of a game in august he probably doesn't even try it there's nobody out he's probably not even he's you don't even push it in that situation and also the part of the reason that the royals advanced scouts picked up on this stuff according to the public story is that they've basically had guys on this team for a month right more than a month and so you you would maybe every team that put a guy on a team for more than a month or watched every play on video i don't you know however they do it maybe they would have some stories like this. I don't know. It's hard to say. But I will say that I'm impressed by what they do,

and I do lean toward slightly above average. I mean, look, the guys themselves who are doing this, I bet they're really good at their jobs. I bet everybody in baseball is really good at their jobs, though. I have a hard time thinking that they've found the four geniuses in the world of advanced scouting. I don't even know what you would look for to hire the – I mean most – I don't know. I don't even know how much –

I'm not sure how much thought process even goes into hiring advanced scouts. Yeah, I don't know. Well, there's been a lot of talk about advanced scouting and certain teams having tons of guys on the road and other teams not. And I believe that there's some value to, I mean, there's clearly a lot of value to advanced scouting potentially. And I believe that there's potentially some value to having a person in the ballpark as opposed to remote. in the ballpark as opposed to remote. But none of the thing, none of these famous examples is something that you necessarily needed to be there to spot, right? I mean, you could have any of these Royals examples is something that you could have picked up either from video or from

a printout of the number of times that a pitcher throws the first right i mean i'm sure that there is some value to seeing it but i you know when i was with the yankees which was like five six years ago it was very easy to just call up all of an outfielder's throws and watch them in quick succession and have an intern rate the strength and accuracy of the throws. So, and like before a series, you would do that and just watch and like see how a guy threw. And that was several years ago. And it's even easier to do that stuff now. So you could watch all of Jose Bautista's throws from the year and spot that.

And probably most people still would not spot it and even if they did spot it they might not communicate it effectively or whoever the target was might not listen to it might not take it into account so there are a whole bunch of ways that it could break down along the way but at least in theory it's not something that you couldn't do from afar. That's true. Okay. Just wanted to mention that. Yeah.

I do think that there's a tone to a lot of articles about the Royals advanced scouting or about advanced scouts in general that try to turn the teams that send somebody out into the good guys and the teams that rely on video into the bad guys. And there's not really any reason to do that. I mean, everybody's essentially trying to do the same thing. Like this isn't even really a, an ideological split. This is essentially, they're trying, they're all trying to do the same thing. They're all trying to get as much good information as they can using the eyes and expertise of scouts and which which medium you choose to use or how you choose to invest your dollars is not like a political thing right and yet there is that sort of political tone in a lot of these articles just like is unnecessary yeah like one of them plays into the stereotype of stat heads not watching baseball or whatever. And so you can just, you know, look up the number of times that a guy has made a pickoff attempt, or you can look at pitch effects,

or you can look at video or something, and it maybe plays into that idea. But at the core, it's the same thing, really. Has anybody ever blended into the background better than paul de podesta yeah he's had a pretty low profile lately yeah i mean there were a few years where like if paul de podesta like gave a speech you heard about it or if he you know like he had the blog and whatever he was he was almost impossible to avoid. And then he goes to New York and just very quietly, just very quietly becomes a background part of this front office. And in a lot of ways, an extremely important, like, I mean,

what we're talking about is essentially the Mets player development department, which is what he is the AGM of. And you never hear his name. I haven't heard his name once this postseason. Yeah, neither have I, until now. Huh. The cover is blown. Yeah.

You don't really hear about the Mets front office. Nope, you don't. You don't. It's like everybody just appeared. It's like all the players just showed up. Wanted to play. Yeah. It's like they were

just the neighborhood team yeah i've heard more about how omar mania put much of this team together than i have about the actual people who are still there yeah i guess he's not the agm he's the vice president just for the record i think we'll hear will you hear paul de podesta's name in this World Series? On a broadcast? No. Okay. Will you hear Omar Minaya's? Yes. Hmm.

Okay. Now there's some stakes. Now I'm excited for this series. Will you hear Andy McCullough's? On the broadcast? Yeah. No. What about Joe Posnanski?

No. I agree. Okay. No. What about Joe Posnanski? No. I agree. Okay. Okay. What do you think Johnny Cueto will do? Start game two, which is kind of surprising when you think about it. Yeah. Well, I guess they have a couple extra starters, really, or they could, I mean, if he comes out and he's bad, like he was in his last start in Toronto,

then they could just put Chris Young in there. It seems kind of crazy that we're talking about Johnny Cueto being a guy that you would just get out of there and put Chris Young or Medlin in. But I guess he's kind of at that point. But Ventura could start game two on normal rest. Yep. And so it's somewhat surprising that they wouldn't do that. I guess maybe if you did that,

then you're probably not gaining anything out of it since Ventura's probably starting games two and six and isn't really very likely to come on short rest for game five anyway. And if he starts game six, he's probably not really a bullpen option in game seven anyway and if you do it then there's maybe like a one or two percent chance that you'll end up getting something extra out of ventura in one of those scenarios that i just said was improbable but in doing so you further humiliate johnny cueto and get in his head and have him now further demoted and so maybe that's why you don't do it.

Or maybe, in fact, maybe they answered this in a question to some reporter and we just missed it. But, you know, maybe they just figured, ah, Ventura could use a blow. He's been pitching a lot, and a couple extra days of rest will help him. That's sort of what the Mets were thinking with DeGrom, giving him extra rest. All right, well, I'm looking forward to to this series i'll be at the games in new york i think it's very close i think the royals have a few advantages the fastball hitting stuff that we've mentioned i think they're really good at restricting the running game in all of its

forms and the mets have been pretty aggressive on the base pass so far this postseason so I don't know whether that will be able to continue the way it has and Royals have the fly ball versus fly ball effect in their favor and the better defense better bullpen home field advantage so I'm going Royals okay well good now you've got a root for them now you've got a rooting interest. Yeah I don't know I felt I've had a vague negativity about the Mets all year because I feel like I missed an opportunity because I had to pick a surprise team everyone at Grantland had to pick a surprise team for our preview in April and people will just have to take my word for this or not but I passed on the Mets as a surprise team because I thought they were too good to be a surprise team

I'm very strict about my surprises and breakouts like yeah one time there was a right one time wasn't there one time when you had to write a surprise piece for ESPN Insider or something? No, you were on MLB and they wanted a breakout. And you called me and you're like, I need a breakout. Who can I do for a breakout? And I suggested somebody who was, I don't know, like Steven Sousa. And you're like, I don't know. Isn't he already broken out?

No. No. And then you got, what was, I'm trying to remember this whole story. But then the producer is like like uh what about what about prince fielder i don't know i always feel that way i always feel like half the breakout picks are people who are really good already right and like if if they were going to break out they'd have to be the mvp or something because they were already good so yeah i'm strict about my breakouts and

I'm strict about my surprise teams. And I felt like the Mets were like a, you know, dark horse wildcard team. Like I, I'm not surprised that they made the playoffs. I'm surprised that they're in the world series. I'm surprised that they were better than the nationals. I can't claim that I saw this coming, but I'm not shocked i picked the race because i thought that'd be pretty surprising if they were good interesting i almost feel like the raise would be less surprising i think people wrote off the race uh maybe not for a good reason but the mets had the like we knew they were going to have this really good rotation at some point in the year. And once you have that, you can maybe kind of piece together the rest of a team that's good enough.

And that's what they did. Yeah. So you're mad because you could have had, the thing about it, Ben, though, is if you're going to have any integrity, you can never, ever hold up one of your own predictions having been right yes you just can't do it because you're just throwing dice and going this one this one worked and then and then every other one that didn't work you're like ah whatever you can't predict baseball so it's it's really shameful i'm not even tempted it really is shameful that you're holding on to this you're you're trying to get credit for a prediction you didn't make yeah after spending most of your career wisely decrying the prediction game yeah it's pretty bad it is pretty bad i jumped the show so royals and six you say

all right i'll hold you to it okay my uh my boss made me predict something like to him like we were on the phone and he's like uh this was at the beginning of the postseason he's like so what do you think about the uh the playoffs what do you see who do you see like and i'm like i don't yeah i don't do that he's like come on you gotta i'm like no i mean no i don't don't. I don't have any feelings. And he's like, I insist. And I said, all right, I don't think the Royals are going to win at all. Or the Rangers. I said, I don't think the Rangers are going to win at all. And he's like, come on.

That's not enough. And so then I actually, while I'm on the phone with him, I opened up a random number generator and then did a random number generator for the 10 teams and then looked alphabetically and said Cubs. And he's like – and that's all I said. I just said Cubs. And he goes, yeah, no, I see where you're going. Totally get it. And we talked about the Cubs for a while and it was okay

i didn't uh i mean sure the cubs why not the cubs yeah but it's good to pick as any i just don't like doing it no i hate doing it i don't like i don't like it i don't like feeling like i have to be in a position where i have to convince somebody of anything. That's the main thing. If you have an opinion, I just don't really feel like, I'm kind of happy to just say a thing and leave it there. And maybe I'll convince you by peer pressure. Maybe you'll see it and be like, okay, sure, as good as anything else.

But I don't want to engage in that prediction because i just don't feel like arguing is fun and like i don't want to i don't want to have to lay out like six points and then have you rebut them and then eventually we're like 17 degrees away from the original argument because we're debating like the the meaning of run differential or something like that. So I don't know. Just try to avoid it. Did you know our book is available for preorder? I did. I saw it just now.

I just saw that now. Who's that editor? I don't know. I don't know either. Man, we really have to write this thing. It says exactly how many pages it is. We're not even finished yet. Someone already knows.

It's 304 pages. Alright. That's what we're aiming for then. Okay. Okay. Alright. Good luck. Watch the World Series.

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