Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 968: So You Suffered a Playoff Loss

Episode Date: October 24, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about the two Indians teams and perceptions of postseason Kershaw, then discuss whether the eight eliminated postseason teams had successful seasons.

Yo! Caught in the process of elimination Until your fortress is vacant, losses are taken Mind states are shaken, until our forces awaken Caught in the process of elimination Until your fortress is vacant, losses are taken Mind states are shaken, till our forces awaken Good morning and welcome to episode 968 of Effectively Wild, a daily podcast from baseball prospectus brought to you by the Playindex at baseballreference.com. I'm Sam Miller of ESPN along with Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Hello, Ben. Hello.

How are you? Okay. All right. First off, anything you need to talk about? I don't think there is. All right. Second off, I saw that you just published an article about Andrew Miller Sort of

About beating Andrew Miller Do you want to give a summary? Sure, people can go read the whole thing if they want And see the exact numbers But the thesis of the piece is similar to something we talked about in 2014, and you wrote about in 2014, which at the time, the idea was that there were two different Royals teams. There was the Royals team when they were winning and the Royals team when they were losing. And these were different teams because the Royals had this great late-game defense. They could put in defensive replacements and have that incredible outfield.

They could go with Kelvin Herrera and Wade Davis and Greg Holland. And so the idea was that the Royals were better at holding leads than they were at regaining leads when they were already trailing. And you looked at the numbers, of course, with some help from Baseball Reference Play Index, and they supported the idea And for the Indians, the numbers support the idea even better, I think I compared the Indians' winning percentages when they were winning after each inning to the league average And then also when the Indians were losing after each inning to the league average And the Indians are obviously a good team no matter what,

but they are way better when they are winning relative to the league than they are when they are losing. And that makes sense because they have this great bullpen in the second half. Once they had Andrew Miller, it was the best bullpen in baseball by adjusted FIP and XFIP, and it was just barely worse than the Orioles And win probability added You know you've seen it this October And obviously Terry Francona is Riding it even harder than he did during the regular season So that is the thesis

That to beat Andrew Miller And Cody Allen You should try to take a lead early Which is obviously not something that The Indians opponents weren't trying to do. They were trying to do that in the first two rounds, but it didn't happen because the Indians rotation was really good and the opponents rotations were not really good, or maybe just the Indians hitters were really good.

Whatever it was, there was a big gap in the performance of the starters, and that seems unlikely to persist because we all thought the Indians' rotation was their weakness coming into the playoffs, and the Cubs have a great rotation, great defense, etc. So it seems right now like Miller and Allen are just this unbeatable October weapon, but all it takes is a few games in which the Cubs get out to an early lead, and Miller and Allen either can't be used or can only be used to keep the game close for that not to seem so much like the case as happened in the 2014 World Series to

the Royals who were only able to use those three relievers in three of the seven games. Yeah, I thought that was a really good observation on my part two years ago. It was, yeah. Kind of disappointed that I let it drop. Didn't recycle it. Yeah. Although the Indians aren't quite as, like the thing about the Royals that made that observation fun was that it wasn't just a way of getting to their bullpen, but it was a way of getting to their greatest outfield defense in history. Right. and also to some degree to bring Ned Yost's style,

to not just laud Ned Yost's style, which at the time I was doing a lot of, including with that observation, but to also point out sort of the flaw to it too. Anyway, good. I wrote a piece today that is about the fact that this is the first year ever in which all four LCS teams are what we might call true saber, like there is really sort of no ambivalence or ambiguity about how committed they are to analytics, which, again, that distinction means less every year and means very little, I would say, compared to like the median team in 2016.

But all the same, it is interesting to see that all four of these teams are basically descended from the Sabre stalwarts of the mid and late 2000s. And all are extreme. I mean, all of them could almost be the epitome of a Sabre team if you wanted to make the case for them. And so I looked at how that manifested itself on the field and whether, in fact, if you went back to 2006 and showed these playoffs to a Sabre fanatic, if he would see these playoffs as utopian, and if you showed them to a 2006 traditionalist, if he would see them as a nightmare, or if, in fact, this was just exciting baseball, played like baseball. So that's what I wrote about. Anything else? No, I don't think so. When does the World Series start? Tomorrow? Tomorrow, Tuesday. We could talk about it, but I think I'd rather talk about the teams that have been eliminated. We talked about the teams that didn't make the playoffs and whether they could still claim success for their season.

because that is, in a lot of ways, a different way of measuring the ambitions of a franchise. And I think there's a wide variety of teams that made the playoffs and are no longer active. Shall we try it? Sure. All right. Before we do that, well, actually, let's roll into the first one, the Clayton Kershaw discussion. So the Dodgers were the last team eliminated before the World Series. And before we answer the question of whether they would consider this season successful, The Dodgers were the last team eliminated before the World Series. Before we answer the question of whether they would consider this season successful,

I'm curious to know how you will talk to somebody next October when Kershaw's going to make a start in the LDS and your friend or neighbor or taxi driver or pastry chef says, Kershaw, he can't pitch in the postseason. He's a choker. It does seem like you have a certain amount of, as a small sample skeptic, you have a certain amount of time where you can go, ah, it's a small sample. And then add 100 innings on that and you can still say, ah, that's a small sample. And then, you know, add 100 innings on that, and you can still say, ah, that's a small sample. Like, you can believe it.

It is probably true. It is probably very accurate to say that. And yet your words have less power, especially if you've already said them and then, you know, had to continually watch them be kind of, look, not that convincing. And Kershaw really genuinely did have a very poor start. I think that that one, maybe more than any postseason start he's had since the, what, 2013 LDS,

when I think he got roughed up really early. This one was probably the most convincing start where you were actually like, oh, wow, he's not very good right now. Like he's not that good in this game. Yeah. And so if you have to defend him, I assume you will still want to defend him next October. He is the greatest pitcher of our generation. But if you want to defend him of his generation, not of my generation, but of his generation, if you want to defend him, what tact would you take? Yeah, right. So before we could say, and I did say, and we did say that, you know,

he actually did pitch well, and it was his bullpen that let him down or his manager who let him down in making bullpen decisions. And then in his most recent start, yeah, I mean, I guess you could argue that he had been used on short rest so much that maybe he was fatigued now or something like that. But, you know, he pitched poorly, so there's no way around that. But I think all you can really say is he has pitched really well in the postseason. Like, his previous start was brilliant, and his previous relief appearance was great at wait can i let i'm i'm your rude pastry chef okay so i'm gonna have to interrupt you ben okay sure i'm a i'm your rude pastry chef who uh doesn't understand sample sizes and regression but does understand fairly uh

specific uh pitch data he had six he had six swinging strikes in that game. He, he was great, but he was also different. That would, that would be a season low for him. It would be a season low for him, like in almost any season. And so while he was great in that game, and while I loved watching him do it, you could also argue that it wasn't exactly vintage Kershaw. And he was great in the relief appearance, but you know, he, he faced two batters. So it's not as though that's a, you know, 23 dominant innings or anything like that. Yeah. Right. But it was about the highest pressure moment you can imagine. And he did what he was supposed to do. So you can point to, I think, enough starts. I mean, I don't know, have we seen any starts that you would describe as classic vintage Clayton Kershaw in the postseason?

Like, has he done it once where he just doesn't walk anyone and strikes out double digits and is amazing? He has, he has actually only one playoff start. What's his best game score in a playoff start? Yeah, it's kind of crazy. So he only has one outing in his playoff career where he has struck out five or more, which isn't even that many, five or more and walked nobody. And in that game, he struck out 10, walked nobody, and gave up eight runs. So that was that game that we all remember. He was up until the seventh, that version of Kershaw.

His best game score to date is, actually it was 78, and it was in the start that we were just talking about, his first start against the Cubs in this series. So 78, and to put that in perspective, that's his very best start. To put that in perspective, his median game score this year was 70. So that's better. I guess I didn't put it into perspective that much. I was sort of hoping for a better fun factor.

Yeah, so it's not easy to make this case because, I mean, you can start talking about how he came back from the back injury and how he's worked on short rest more than anyone else and how the playoffs are hard and, you know, the hitters are good and all that sort of thing. And it's just not all that convincing because then someone can say, well, John Lester or Madison Baumgartner, why hasn't he been as good as these guys? And indisputably, he has not been as good as these guys. And so then you fall back on, well, he's been the best pitcher in baseball for eight years or whatever it is. So I'm just going to assume that that is the more predictive, more telling sample.

And this is a much smaller sample. And based on everything we know and everything everyone says about Clayton Kershaw, he is just the most iron-willed, mentally prepared pitcher there is. So he doesn't seem like a choker. No one is saying he's a coward out there. So, you know, I'd have to just start throwing like dozens of justifications. And to me, they would be convincing, but to anyone who was not already convinced, they would not be convincing. Yeah. By the way, the answer to the vintage Kershaw is actually probably game four of this year's LDS up until the seventh inning. Right. When, you know, he, yeah, I wrote about that game. Yeah, exactly. So he had, I mean mean that was a great game he had 11 strikeouts in two walks overall he had 21 swinging strikes which is an absurd number of swinging strikes and so that

was probably it but then again you know the seventh inning game and pedro baez was there for him yeah uh yeah i uh confirmation bias is a very powerful thing and it's almost like, so he had a 4.44 ERA this postseason. Three of those runs, of course, were let in by bias. But he had, and what, how many of the starts were on short rest? Two, three, two, two, probably two? This postseason? Yeah. And so I think normally if Kershaw had a 4.44 ERA over 24 innings, we wouldn't notice it.

Nobody would have considered this a problematic postseason for him. But the fact that people have already dug in and have a way of looking at Kershaw one way or the other, it becomes very hard to continue to make the same arguments, to make the same case, because people keep seeing themselves proven right. Every time you tell them, ah, it's a small sample, and then it goes out, they go, ah, see, I'm righter than I even realized. So it is tricky. I guess probably the only thing to do is hope he pitches well.

But, yeah, I don't know. I will feel somewhat more bashful. Bashful might not be the right word, but somewhat more bashful about making that argument next year just because I'll feel like I'm retreading an argument that didn't work once, didn't work twice, didn't work three times. But I still do believe that Clayton Kershaw is the best pick in baseball for a single game. Do you? Yes.

So Dodgers, successful season or not successful? I mean, yeah, if you make it to NLCS game six, I think most people would consider that a success. Of course, they have every advantage. They spent the most money, so when you spend the most money, then you're supposed to win, and I don't know how satisfied you can feel about it.

But, yeah, I mean, I think successful season. They made it as far as you can make it through skill and talent over a long sample. And then they did okay once they got to the playoffs and they lost to the best team in baseball. So I don't think you can be too upset about that. I do.

I don't think you can necessarily allow your... If you're the Dodgers front office, I don't think that you should allow yourself to start second-guessing everything you did or blaming yourself too much. Although there are points here and there that you could pick at, and there are certainly weaknesses on the team, and some of those weaknesses were exposed. But I don't think you can necessarily say, well, we didn't win, therefore I did a bad job. But this is a team that has spent a billion dollars over the last four years that has been by far the highest payroll team each of those years. I believe they ended 2012 with the highest payroll as well after that Adrian Gonzalez trade, which was also followed by a sort of lackluster pennant chase in which they missed the playoffs. But I mean, there's a team that has spent an obscene amount

of money to win a World Series. And I think that if you get to year four and you haven't won one, then you do have a standard. I don't know that there's much that you could say was added to I don't know that there's much that you could say was added to Dodger folklore and history this year. I mean, it's another non-World Series. And if this were a team that didn't have a long drought, I guess, of its sort, if they'd won the 2005 World Series or something, then maybe it's not that big a deal. But they haven't been to one in a very long time. I think the nice thing is that they've managed to do this, to have this four-year run without doing anything to hurt their future. They really haven't front-loaded the investments.

None of this has really come at the expense of their exceptional youth. and their next four years are probably as bright as their you know last four years looked at the time probably brighter and so the fact that they as a franchise they keep on improving their outlook for next year is is good and i think that you can say that that's successful but i don't think that if you gave them if you you know if if you i don't think that if you gave them If you, you know, if you I don't exactly know how to set this hypothetical up But if, you know, if you gave them the choice Of having this outcome at the beginning of the year

Or rolling the dice I don't think there's any doubt that they would consider This to be a sub, you know, an unsatisfactory result More than any other team in baseball. Yeah, that's probably true. I think less so than the not winning a World Series. I think that is maybe a failure, but I, you know, I'd kind of give any team a pass on just not making it through the playoffs. But I think the fact that they haven't really built a powerhouse team with all of the advantages that they have.

I mean, they've built teams that have been good enough to get there. But I wrote something last spring about how the Dodgers just seemed unstoppable and how could the Dodgers possibly be stopped. They've got the most money. They've got the smartest people. They have the best farm system. They have all this stuff. And they have won the division now for, what, four consecutive years? Yeah.

Or, yeah, four. So, I mean, that's good. But without winning 95. Right. Ever. And they won 91 this year. And they'd probably be your favorite to win the division again next year. So, in a sense, that's kind of almost all you can ask for, but not quite.

If you're the Dodgers, they may be the one team that you should hold to a higher standard and say if you're going to spend all this money, then you should build at least one juggernaut team and maybe it'll lose in the playoffs anyway because that's how the playoffs work. But at least you gave yourself the best chance to win by building just this real unstoppable team, and they haven't done that. They've just kind of, you know, squeaked by the Giants every year with a respectable margin of victory, but they've been in races every year.

They haven't run away with it. So, yeah, I think maybe a slight disappointment. I don't know that I would be losing a ton of sleep over it, but if I were the Dodgers, I'd certainly like to see one team that became like a Cubs-type force if I'm spending all that money. But as you said, of course, they are still set up well for the future. They seem to be a self-sustaining enterprise now. There's no end in sight for the Dodgers. And that's pretty good too.

I would lose a lot of sleep over it. And again, not because I think that history is going to judge me poorly for the job I did or anything like that. And that's pretty good, too. And I think you're right about the lack of a powerhouse. It'd be easy. Would it be easier? I don't know. Maybe it'd be easier to lose in the LCS if you had a team that had really maxed out. Do you think it's intentional that they have had 91 to 94 win teams four years in a row? Do you think that they are building 91 to 94 win teams on purpose as opposed to maybe, say, the Cubs, on purpose, as opposed to maybe, say, the Cubs, who it seems like opted not to have a 91 to 94 win perpetual motion machine when they traded for Aroldis Chapman this year and basically said, you know, forget it. We have a 100 win team and we want to be 105 win team because we want to win this right now. Yeah, I'm not sure. It does seem as if the Dodgers have gone with the depth strategy at times when they could assign the best player available.

And maybe that is oriented towards building something that will last a long time but won't reach as high a peak. I mean, the Cubs reached this high a peak and they're still set up to last a long time. So they've kind of done both, it seems like. But, yeah, if you're the Dodgers, you could look at your rotation strategy and your pitching staff strategy and definitely question whether that made sense. I think just, I mean, we all wondered at the time, why are the Dodgers signing every injury-prone pitcher? And I wouldn't say that they have demonstrated that that was smart, I think. A lot of those guys just got hurt again.

And they managed to transcend that because they're the Dodgers and they could afford to spend a season paying Brandon McCarthy and Brett Anderson and all these people without getting anything out of them. But I wouldn't say it benefited them. I mean, I don't know. We've done a podcast about this in the past, I think. them. I mean, I don't know. We've done a podcast about this in the past, I think. But if that was kind of the cornerstone of your team building strategy, I wouldn't say it's proven to be a great success. If you had to pick a World Series champion in the next five years, not counting this year, would the Cubs and the Dodgers be your first two picks? And how close, I guess more fun to say, how far separated are they? Well, when Michael Bellwin and I did a draft last week of teams from this year's playoffs

we thought would be back in next year's playoffs, I did take the Dodgers with the second overall pick. It was clearly the Cubs were the number one pick, and then there were other teams you could make arguments for. I did take the Dodgers, though. So yeah, I probably would take the Dodgers second if I were choosing World Series winners in the next X years, but it would definitely, like, I wouldn't have to think about them for the number one pick. So it would be a big difference. You know, even with

an extra $50 million to spend every year than the Cubs, probably. Yeah, I think so. Just because of the core the Cubs have right now. All right. All right. Well, that one took... I'm glad that one took quite a bit of time because that was actually the one I was interested in talking about. But we have seven others that we can do a little bit more quickly. So the Cubs beat the Giants.

Giants? Giants. Yeah, I mean, the Giants built, well, for a while at least, it looked like they had built the best team of any of these good Giants teams, and then the second half happened. But, yeah, I don't know. There's nothing about it that makes me say failure, really. They made some sort of risky free agent signings, and those free agent signings

paid off well enough, at least, for them to make it. And they were the best team in baseball in the first half, or at least by record. And they came into the playoffs as a strong contender based on their rotation. And so I'd say success, not overwhelming success, but same sort of success they've been having for several years now. Yeah, it is an odd season to process because of the near collapse and because of just how bad they looked at the end and how good they looked at the beginning. You could very easily look at the first half and go, wow, 87 wins and getting bounced from the LDS.

That's kind of on the cusp of unacceptable. But when you see their second half, you realize this was just not that good a team. And you could say that by getting there and by getting a full series out of it, they overperformed. But by getting there and by getting a full series out of it, they overperformed. I mean, at the end of the day, 87 wins is just about what a projection system would have said at the beginning of the year. They didn't have to give up that much to the trade deadline push as far as their future. dynastic aspect of their present in which they need to win World Series every other year to have historians regard them as special. I think this is just about what you would expect from them.

I think it's a successful year. The Giants beat the Mets. The Mets, just relative to recent Mets teams, just being good seems like a success. But I don't think the year worked out the way they were hoping it would work out.

Obviously, they were hoping that they would have this incredible dominant starting rotation from top to bottom all year long. And that didn't happen. Harvey got hurt and DeGrom got hurt and Matz got hurt. And it was just a litany of injuries all year long. So in that sense, it was not the year they had been hoping for, but on the other hand, pitcher injuries are not necessarily something I would blame the team for, and I think Sandy Alderson is well aware that this was a possible outcome of kind of building a team around young pitching.

So I don't know. They regard it as a disappointment, I think, but I don't know if it would be a failure of planning. I think the outcome seems okay. You know, they made the fake playoffs. They came close and, you know, they were a competitive team that got to play interesting games until the end. So I don't think there's anything about it that you could call a failure. I don't think that they were the favorites to go back to the World Series or anything like that, by any means. So probably expectations that they would go much further than that would have been low. If there's a reason to think of it as a failure, it's that, and I'm not saying that it is because you can make the opposite case, but Michael Conforto had a weird year where he was

bouncing up and down. His managers seemed to have no faith in him. He didn't make any progress at the big league level. And so this guy who seemed like he was going to be maybe a perennial all-star last year, now you're just not sure what he is or how they'll use him. Matt Harvey had a fairly disastrous year, and I don't know that there were five pitchers that you would have picked ahead of him for the next three or four years going into the season. And his season was kind of a disaster on the field as well as with his health. So that's clearly they're going into next year weaker at that spot than they did this year. Zach Wheeler is now, it's hard to say whether he's a completely lost case or not, but there was certainly no good progress made as far as him. And so the vision that you had of a really good 2017 Mets team took some hits with those three pieces. On the other hand, it's just as easy to say that Syndergaard is

the best case scenario of what a pitcher can become. And he might be the second guy you would pick next year. And then Matt's had some real successes, and DeGrom continues to be not a fluke. And Bartolo, three or four more years of him. So I would say that that's generally probably close to a push. So I would call it more or less a success. All right, and then the Cubs beat the Nationals, who were the second best team in the regular season in the National League. Yeah, well, they were really good again. And I mean, it would, I guess, be a disappointment if they're really good for a long stretch of years and they just never go deep into the playoffs.

Right, they haven't even made an LCS yet, have they? No, they keep getting eliminated early. So that's disappointing. Again, I don't know if it's something you could point to and say, well, they didn't build teams that were built for the playoffs or something like that. They just keep losing early in the playoffs. So it's definitely a disappointment. On the other hand, they built a really good regular season team.

And a lot of things went right. And they were a fairly strong contender coming into the series, except for the fact that Strasburg was hurt and Wilson Ramos was hurt. So they had some lousy timing and luck there. But hard for me to say failure. I mean, I guess at some point it becomes a failure if you just build a good team every year and you never advance. But I don't know if you could say that they haven't advanced because of the team that they built. They built a really good team. So it seems okay. I edited a piece a few years ago about the Nationals being in a window that would close. And I remember being not sure whether I bought the idea that the Nationals were in a window that would close. And I remember being not sure whether I bought the idea that the Nationals were in a window. Like, like it was like, oh, well, you know, Bryce Harper's going

to hit free agency and Strasburg will hit free agency, but it felt like a ways off. And Strasburg, of course, would end up signing the extension and Bryce Harper is still two years away from free agency. And, and Max Scherzer, who was signed at, you know, as all starting pitchers signed to long-term deals are, is, you know, signed to be really good at the beginning of the contract. But Scherzer right now looks like he might just be really good forever. And Trey Turner has developed into, you know, something special probably. So do you feel like the Nationals are in any sort of window or are they well, you know, are they well above the median as far as sort of like future outlook going beyond two, three, four years? I'd say above.

I don't know if I'd say well above. I mean, they did keep Strasburg, but now no one really knows what they'll get out of Strasburg. Right. Harper was worse this year than everyone expected him to be. So now it's not totally clear whether he will get back to that 2015 level and how long he'll stay there. So I think not really through any of their doing, but just through guys getting hurt or guys getting worse, their outlook isn't among the very top teams, but it's pretty

close. I mean, especially because of the division they're in with a bunch of weak teams who might be goodays should be rebuilding now, and I have not yet read it, but I know enough to know that when there are articles about surprising teams that need to be rebuilding, whether or not you are convinced, there is usually some truth to the fact that things look worse than they did. So do you feel like this was in any way, or I guess in a convincing way, the Blue Jays' last good chance? I don't think so.

I know Jeff wrote a the Blue Jays shouldn't rebuild counterpoint post, and I haven't read that yet either, but I know that they have some free agents, the Bautista and Encarnacion and Saunders and Cecil, those guys are free agents. Batista and Encarnacion and Saunders and Cecil, those guys are free agents. So maybe Dave was saying that they would be better off sort of letting those guys go and

starting over or something. But I think that they don't necessarily need to do that. If they wanted to keep a couple of those guys or bring other people in, they could still be good. It's a tough division, obviously, but they have lots of good young pitching and kind of kind of i mean hap and estrada are old yeah that's not to say that they are not good pitching though sanchez right they have two this year they have they have they have they have at least one young ace and at least one more young good pitcher.

So I'm not totally arguing, but that's all. Sorry. Yeah. So I wouldn't look at them and say they couldn't be back next year, I don't think. I didn't look at it as carefully as Dave did, but yeah. So they had the best rotation in baseball, sorry, in the American League this year in, you know, surprising development. If you had to guess where they will rank in the AL next year by whatever pitching metric you choose as a starting rotation, where would you put them? One to 15? Probably a little bit above average. Yeah, I think that's right. All right. The Blue Jays beat the Rangers. Yeah. Well, I mean, their season was, well, I mean, results-wise, it was a great success.

Yeah. I think we can stop there. I think the way that they did it was certainly unorthodox. And I mean, you could talk about whether they are actually in some trouble. There have been a couple articles written this year about how they don't project all that well for the future, and maybe the Astros are the real team to worry about in that division, et cetera, et cetera. But if you are the team that no one was expecting to win the division, and you win 95 games

and waltz into the playoffs, however weirdly you do it, I think you probably have to be pretty happy about that. Yeah, they don't project all that well, but they didn't project all that well either. Nothing about that changed, and I think unmitigated success. All right, the Blue Jays also beat the Orioles. Yeah, I mean, they're another team that people weren't expecting to be good, and they were good, not even in such a fluky Rangers way, but they actually should have won those games

or no one was really arguing that they shouldn't have. I guess people were expecting the bottom to fall out of the rotation all year, and it did, really, and somehow they won anyway. So I'd say probably success. The way it ended was traumatic for a lot of people, but the fact that they were there again and that they did it despite having that terrible rotation was impressive and surprising, and they did it with guys like Trumbo who other people had written off,

and they managed to kind of sort of establish Gossman and Bundy there at the end of the year. So I think qualified success. Yeah, I agree. I would really like to have the Orioles season or a version of it every year. I think that was a very successful season made all the more satisfying by the fact that going into the season, it was supposed to be, you know, the tightest race in the AL East, four teams really going for it. And the Orioles were on the outside, and it ended up being them beating, beating, you know, well, beating almost everybody. And that's probably very satisfying. I mean, they don't get quite as much attention for outperforming everybody's expectations. But I also think in a way, so like the Royals get all, had this run of beating expectations and then getting to go,

you know, ha ha, you guys were wrong about us. But I also sort of felt like most of the world actually did think the Royals were pretty good and just the projections didn't. Whereas the Orioles, I kind of get the feeling that most of the world never does think the Orioles are very good as well as the projections. Like it's sort of unanimous and they keep winning. I guess in that sense, they are different than the Pirates and the Royals who have generally had convinced the public and maybe more satisfying. It's a nice little run that franchise has been on considering. Yeah. Don Don't they have the most wins in baseball over the last five years or something like that? That's incredible. They might.

I should probably check that instead of just... I'll do it. Saying it because it sounds good. I'll do it, I'll do it, I'll do it. All right, so impromptu... Back to 2012. Yeah, impromptu play index. The Orioles lead the American League.

They have fewer wins than the Cardinals nationals and dodgers uh but more than any american league team you want to guess who's second probably still probably still the yankees right yeah yeah it is yeah and then the rangers and then the tigers and then the angels oh wow wow is right uh All right. And last team is the Red Sox. felt internally that they were, and then had a very quick exit from the playoffs. So not that satisfying a season. But on the other hand, I mean, they had the best case scenario for the Ortiz farewell. They had their young players making progress as expected. Nothing really went wrong, except I guess David Price was not what they were hoping for when they signed him. But for the most part, I think they built maybe the second best team in baseball and didn't get the outcome that you would want, but did most of the work to get it.

So I think decent success. Yeah, relative to most other teams, I would say that they don't really need a World Series to feel validated compared to a lot of teams. Everybody in that organization has a ring already or multiple rings. And of course, you want more. You want all of them. But I think the most probably the most important thing for a person in that organization is just to have a good team so that you don't feel like you've built a bad team.

And for the last few years, they've consistently, it seems like, had teams that looked good going into the season, didn't end up good, and it must have had a very disorienting effect at the end of the year when you go, really? We were bad? I thought we were good. How are we bad? And so now this year they got to say we were good. They were undeniably good. And if you're picking World Series teams for the next five years, I think probably the Red Sox would be your third pick. Yeah.

Maybe second. Yep. So success, yeah. All right. That's it. All right. So we'll probably talk about some World Series later in the week, but that'll be it for today. And if you are in the market for a straight up world series preview, Michael Bauman and I did one on the Ringer MLB show with a couple guests,

and that's up now. You can support this podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Five listeners who have already pledged their support, Tyler Igelski, Henchman21, Martin Friedenlund Flip Coleman And John Thank you You can buy our book The Only Rules It Has To Work Our wild experiment Building a new kind of baseball team Check out the website

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And subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes And you can get the discounted price Of $30 on a one year subscription To the Play Index Using the coupon code BP You can email and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes, and you can get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription to the Play Index using the coupon code BP. You can email me and Sam at podcast at baseballperspectives.com or by messaging us through Patreon. We will be back soon. Now what, what, what, what is success? Is it doing your one thing

or are you trying to rest Oh yeah Or if you truly believe, should you try over and over again again And living

hopes that someday you'll be in And living hopes That someday you'll be in with the wind up