Effectively Wild Episode 2391: It’s the World Series, Baby

Summary

Effectively Wild Episode 2391: “It’s the World Series, Baby” FanGraphs Baseball Podcast (October 23, 2025) Hosts: Meg Rowley (A), Ben Clemens (B, guesting for Ben Lindbergh)

Overview

This episode delivers an in-depth, stats-forward breakdown of the just-concluded ALCS Game 7 between the Mariners and Blue Jays, the quirky decision-making of managers, and, most prominently, a rich, nerdy, and lively preview of the 2025 World Series: Dodgers vs. Blue Jays. Meg and Ben dissect roster makeup, pitching approaches, bullpen vulnerabilities, matchup tactics, lineups, defensive wrinkles, and managerial skillsets, all with a heavy dose of Effectively Wild’s trademark wit, insight, and analytical rigor.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

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1. Dissecting the Mariners' ALCS Game 7 Loss

• Opening Reactions & Mariners' Heartbreak

  • Meg processes the end of the Mariners’ playoff run, expressing disappointment but highlighting the thrill of Game 7: “It was a thriller. Can say that about Game 7.” (00:53)

• The Bizardo Decision

  • Questioned Choice: Meg and Ben critique Mariners manager Dan Wilson’s choice to bring in Edward Bizardo (a lower-leverage reliever) rather than top arms (e.g., Matt Brash or Andres Muñoz) at a crucial moment:
    • “I feel like you and I both first guessed it rather than second guessed it because it just didn't make a lot of sense to me...in a game where the Mariners were really focused on having their best pitchers pitch a lot and important moments to have definitely the worst pitcher who pitched for the Mariners all night face the J's best hitter in the biggest spot.” – Ben (03:03)
    • “You shouldn't put yourself in a situation where that can happen...you should put yourself in a situation where Andres Muñoz is there. And Andres Muñoz has probably never said that sentence: ‘I threw my best fastball and he hit a home run.’” – Ben (06:25)
  • Managerial Rigidity: They criticize the too-rigid bullpen roles, suggesting other playoff managers adjust for matchup, not inning. Meg wonders if some of Wilson's moves are front-office directed rather than pure managerial instinct.

• JP Crawford’s Bunt

  • Examined as a “catastrophic decision” by the analyst side of Meg’s brain, but the fan side is merely grateful, “at least he didn't ground into a double play.” (15:17)

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2. National TV Announcing: Aesthetic Gripes

• Meg and Ben riff on John Smoltz’s insistence on “contact” and “small ball” despite copious evidence (and live broadcasting of) home runs:
  • “...you should engage with the game that you're calling. And he would be making that point as various players on both teams would be hitting these tanks...I've said this on the pod before. If you have an aesthetic preference for contact, that's fine...But being a grump about it...is where Smoltz really runs into trouble.” – Meg (11:20 & 13:12)
• “Announcers are just obsessed with small ball...It's like some mind virus that gets into you when you switch to the booth.” – Ben (11:52)

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3. World Series Preview: Dodgers vs. Blue Jays

A. Pitching Rotations: Contrasts and Questions

• Dodgers: The Juggernaut Rotation

  • Snell, Yamamoto, Glasnow, Ohtani: All dominant, delivering length and stuff. “So it's like Snell is amazing. Yamamoto, great. Glasnow has been pretty steady...Ohtani is Ohtani” – Meg (20:25)
  • Ben marvels at the new, efficient, deep-in-games Snell and the overwhelming top-to-bottom strength.

• Blue Jays: Gausman, Trey Savage, Bieber, Scherzer

  • Gausman/Savage: Both righties with devastating splitters and reverse platoon splits, making it less effective to simply stack lefties against them.
  • Pitcher Usage & Matchups:
    • “Both those guys have big reverse splits. Gausman has it over 10 year career...Savage is a similar kind of pitcher.” – Ben (21:43)
    • Dodgers’ challenge: Value in patience, but both Gausman and Savage are specifically tough on lefties; the standard platoon approach may not pay off.
  • Bieber & Scherzer: Seen as question marks due to recent inconsistency/injury.

B. Defensive and Lineup Intrigue

• Dodgers’ Infield Dilemma with Muncie
  • Max Muncie is an offensive asset but is exposed at 3B against a righty/ball-in-play team like Toronto.
  • Meg and Ben discuss possible defensive tweaks: shifting Hernandez to 3B for D, benching Muncie at times, but likely “they’ll stick with Muncie.” (28:29)
• Blue Jays Lineup Flexibility
  • Return of Bichette: Likely to DH due to knee injury, shuffle infield/outfield, modest drop in D but crucial to offense: “I think I would take like 95% Bichette, honestly, and play DH.” – Ben (45:56)
• Both Teams’ Benches
  • Dodgers: “There are some bad bats on that bench...Not going to start Justin Dean in a World Series game.” – Meg (27:13)
  • Jays: Limited pinch-hitting options; much rests on stars’ health and output.

C. Bullpens: Strengths & Weaknesses

• Toronto’s “Persistent Weakness”
  • “The bullpen is really awful. And so I think that lots of times John Schneider is going to be looking down at his lineup card and it's like, okay, do you want to let Shane Bieber face Shohei Ohtani for a third time? Like, no. Okay, cool. What are my alternatives?” – Ben (34:56)
  • Blue Jays pen has struggled badly: “Through two rounds [they have] a 5.52 ERA, 5.70 FIP...and is walking five batters per nine.” – Ben (34:25)
• Dodgers: Heavily reliant on starters and lone dominant reliever Roki Sasaki, who is better as a reliever than a starter at this point (“I think he's the best pitcher on the Dodgers other than them [the starters]” – Ben (36:41)) due to fastball shape and control, but thriving on his splitter in short stints.

D. Offensive/Philosophical Matchups

• Blue Jays’ Aggression
  • “They were one of the most aggressive teams on in zone swing rate. And I think that this strategy makes a lot of sense. It's basically if you get the two strikes, you're going to have a bad time.” – Ben (40:33)
  • Potential Catch-22: Aggressive approach can keep contact high, but sacrifices opportunity to run up pitch counts on the Dodgers’ aces and get to weak middle relief.
• Dodgers: Simply Elite
  • Dodgers’ lineup and rotation are so strong, “it's tough to find new things [to write]; they're incredible.” – Ben (29:09)
  • But if Jays can “do a great job of shutting down the Dodgers, I bet you they will have done pretty well against the so-so guys [bottom of order].” – Ben (31:25)
  • Key indicator: “If we're hearing about postseason Enrique Hernandez...they're in a bad way.” – Meg (31:39)

E. Running Game & Small Ball

• Both teams not poised to exploit run game weaknesses: Blue Jays rarely run; Dodgers’ Will Smith can be run on but it’s not Toronto’s style. “That feels like kind of a lost opportunity for them to put some pressure on the Dodgers.” – Ben (63:39)

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4. Managerial Matchup: Dave Roberts vs. John Schneider

• Roberts gets credit for tactical flexibility, adapting to strengths and weaknesses of his roster:

  • “He is just pretty good at saying, ‘I want my best guys to have the ball more often’...He’s good at using his tools.” – Ben (55:44)
  • “I’m very impressed by his ability to kind of switch up the way that he's managed to fit his teams...Some of that is experience...” – Ben (57:08)

• Schneider: Less sample, fewer moving parts, but hasn't impressed (nor erred egregiously). May be at a disadvantage in terms of roster chess.

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5. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Mariners’ Managerial Choices

  • “At the time, I was like, how does this make sense?” – Ben on Bizardo (09:35)

• On Playoff Small Ball Announcers

  • “It’s like some mind virus that gets into you when you switch to the booth.” – Ben on broadcasters' obsession with contact (11:52)

• On the Blue Jays Being Underdogs

  • “I feel like they’re getting this...lovable kind of vibes. But yeah, that...sells them really short...these are both big market teams who play like big market teams and do big market things.” – Ben (70:30)

• On Enjoying Alejandro Kirk Again

  • “He is...such a great athlete to point to when you’re trying to get people to understand the different bodies and shapes that athleticism can manifest in.” – Meg (66:40)

• On Bad Baseball Commercials

  • “Who are these ads for? Who is writing them?...They are trying to have fun, but they are also not admitting to the imprecision of the thing that they're measuring.” – Meg (50:29)
  • “I’m in the tank for Google. My wife works there...But I’m just like, every time, I’m like, oh...” – Ben (51:10)

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6. Series Prediction & Final Thoughts

• Both see Dodgers as reasonable favorites, roughly 60/40, but the Blue Jays are no Cinderella — they're a balanced, big-market club with stars and depth.
• The series will likely be fun and competitive, especially given the balance in the Blue Jays lineup and internal vulnerabilities of both teams’ bullpens.
  • “This will be a series. I don’t think this is gonna be Dodgers in four or anything like that.” – Meg (69:18)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• 00:53–09:35: Mariners Game 7 tactics, focus on the Bizardo bullpen decision
• 10:19–13:12: TV booth “small ball” commentary gripes (Smoltz et al)
• 14:19–17:18: The JP Crawford bunt and bottom-of-lineup woes
• 19:15–28:29: World Series pitching preview, matchups, rotation breakdowns
• 31:39–34:42: Offense depth, importance of shutting down bottom of lineup, bullpen strengths/weaknesses
• 36:03–41:21: Roki Sasaki’s emerging role, Blue Jays’ approach at the plate, series pitching/lineup strategy
• 45:20–46:49: Injury/return implications for Bichette and Springer
• 50:06–53:33: Rant: Google/MLB ads and what makes for good baseball commercials
• 54:24–59:06: Managerial style, Dave Roberts’ evolution and advantage over Schneider

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Conclusion

This episode offers the most comprehensive, up-to-the-minute tactical and narrative preview for the Dodgers–Blue Jays World Series, with thoughtful analysis on bullpen dangers, starting pitching leverage, lineup construction, defensive liabilities, and managing under playoff pressure. Meg and Ben’s banter is animated, thoughtful, sometimes self-deprecating, and always rooted in a deep, nuanced understanding of modern baseball — laser-targeted to the statistically minded fan.

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[Listen to this episode for the most considered World Series discussion in the podcast-o-sphere — and maybe just skip the Google Cloud commercials.]

Transcript

[A]

How can you not be pedantic? A stat blast will keep you distracted. It's a long slog to death, but they're short. It'll make you smile. This is effectively wild. This is effectively wild. This is effectively wild. Hello, and welcome to episode 23391 of Effectively Wild, a Fan Graphs Baseball Podcast, brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of fangraphs, and today I am joined by Ben Clemens, also of fangraphs, Other Ben, who is kindly filling in for Other Ben, who's gonna be other Ben for this episode while he is traveling. Ben, how are you?

[B]

I'm doing well. How are you?

[A]

I'm doing okay. I've reached a place of peace. We have not podcasted since my Seattle Mariners were defeated by the Toronto Blue Jays, who will now advance to the World Series where they will meet the Dodgers. We do not have to linger over long on that. But the people demand their answer about that game, which I was disappointed by. I, I, I'm not hesitant to say, although I do like this Blue Jays team quite a bit, and I'm excited for them and their players, their fans. It was a thriller. Can say that about game seven. We could talk about any number of things. The advisability of wearing a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey when you're arriving at the ballpark, given that franchise's playoff legacy struggle.

[B]

Wait, who did that?

[A]

Vladdy Vladi wore a maple leaf jersey to the ballpark that day.

[B]

I didn't see.

[A]

Very bold.

[B]

Bold. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah, very bold. Although I saw someone joke on Blue sky that the Mariners countered by wearing Mariners jerseys to the ballpark. So I don't know how you want to weigh the various vibes.

[B]

I don't know. I assume the Leafs are fine in October.

[A]

Yeah, October doesn't tend to be their, their difficult month. It is a, it is just a lovely jersey.

[B]

You know, it really is just the problems that they're historically cursed.

[A]

Yeah, it's really, it's really beautiful, though. We could talk about how the starters performed. We'll talk about Shane Bieber within the context of the World Series. But I think that game, for having been played over several hours, really came down to just a couple of seconds. You will be continuing your storied tradition of grading the ALCS manager losing manager Dan Wilson. So you don't have to give the whole game away here. But what were your impressions of the decision to when he had to relieve Brian Wu, bring in Edward Bizzardo rather than some of his other high Leverage options. What did you think of that choice?

[B]

Well, I feel like you and I both first guessed it rather than second guessed it because it just didn't make a lot of sense to me. Yeah, I make this joke a lot, but the idea of the playoffs is to just make the whole plane out of the black box.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Or like, come as close to that as you can. And every manager is basically just trying to have as many of the important at bats in the playoffs, have their best pitchers on the mound as possible. At the end of the day, it's much more complicated than that. But that's. The goal is simple.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And you know, the Mariners had mostly their best pitchers pitch this game. You know, they came pretty close to doing that. So they got. I'm just pulling it up now, four from Kirby, two and a third from Wu, one from Bunoz. And you know, that is. That is seven and a third innings. Given that. It seems very strange in a game where the Mariners were really focused on having their best pitchers pitch a lot and important moments to have definitely the worst pitcher who pitched for the Mariners all night face the J's best hitter in the biggest spot.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. That's bad, basically, is what I have to say about it. I wouldn't have done that. I. I know that, like, there's routines and everything, but I don't know. Matt Brash, right?

[A]

Yeah. Well, the first thing I want to say, because I feel very bad for Edward Bizardo, who really was something of a revelation this year. There were times in 2024 where he was like, unplayable, where if we were going to transpose his performance from that season into this one, he would have been finished filling like the Carlos Vargas role on a postseason roster where it's like, this is the guy you bring in to mop up when you're either really ahead or really behind.

[B]

Yeah. Where he. He was good this playoff. I mean, he wasn't outrageously good.

[A]

Right.

[B]

450 FIP. You know, he walked 2% of batteries he faced. That's pretty impressive.

[A]

But he was a good arm for them over the regular season. He, you know, was.

[B]

Yeah. He's just not like, you just can't do that. You have to have the best players pitch then. And I feel like. So I haven't gotten through all of the Mariners games, like, line by line yet.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But I did feel like Wilson really loved going Bizardo, Brash. Munoz.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Like, not mixing it up much. Not really varying it a ton based on game situation. I mean, he wasn't doing it when he was getting blown out.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But it really seemed like he wanted. He was locking them to innings.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It almost felt like. And I feel like a lot of the other managers in the playoffs, and I would. I would opine that I like what they're doing better than what Wilson did. Would target their guys for matchups they liked.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Or they would say they would target their guys to avoid overtaxing the same matchups.

[A]

Right.

[B]

More than they had to. Basically, I would like to be solving for a few equations at once, and I felt like Wilson was not in that situation, so I didn't like it. I mean, that's not what determined the game. But I do think that I read all of Bizarre's quotes after the game, and I feel like it actually put things in pretty good perspective where he was like, you know, I threw a really good sinker, which is what I do, and then he had a home run. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. So, like, you shouldn't put yourself in a situation where that can happen.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Like, you should put yourself in a situation where Andres Munoz is there. And Andres Munoz has probably never said that sentence. I threw my best fastball and he hit a home run.

[A]

Right. And. And I think that, like, I don't know what their internal math looks like on various matchups. And I. I have had a hard time this postseason. I had a hard time with Wilson discerning which moves were definitely him and which came with more of a, like, front office seasoning, because there did seem like there were times where he was, like, maybe listening to a directive and other times where he was like, no, these are. These are the roles that these guys play, and those roles correspond with innings. And absent, you know, getting blown out in wonder or. Or blowing the other team out, we're going to stick to those. So I don't know if they had a sense that, like, for whatever reason, maybe Munoz doesn't match up well against Springer and Vladdy. Maybe they didn't like that matchup or something. But even if that's the case, like, first of all, Bizarro threw the night before, so he wasn't a fresh arm. And you have Matt Brash, and maybe in that moment, you're worried about Brash. Like, you know, there are times when Brash will. You know, he'll put a slider in the dirt and it skitters away, and then it advances a runner, but you have two runs to play with there.

[B]

Right?

[A]

So, like, even if. Even if that's true, even if you're Worried about Brash, you know, mislocating and, and Cal Raleigh not being able to corral and, you know, then Barger comes in from third. Well, so what? Like, I mean, not so what. It's not a good outcome, but it's a better outcome than a George Springer three round shot. Right?

[B]

So I just, I'm also a little confused. Like, could Brian Wu have just faced him?

[A]

Right. This is the other thing. I'm like, I get that you have, you know, you have two guys on and Wu has been. Been hurt and he had thrown two winnings and maybe you think he's fatiguing, but is it really worse? You know, I saw Joe Posnaski kind of lay out their options and it just felt like Wilson picked the worst possible one. Right? They could have left Wu in. They could have maybe intentionally walked Springer. I wouldn't have loved that decision. It would have been low on my hierarchy of choices.

[B]

But like, it's like last on mine.

[A]

But yeah, it's like, is an option there. They could have brought in Brash, they could have brought in Munoz, and instead they brought in Bizardo. And then they are sitting at home now.

[B]

So, yeah, it's absolutely no knock on Bizardo. It's just, just. It's weird. Like, I, I really think that it, it is truly like a weighted random outcome generator. It's not like they were fated to lose because they brought him in, but they just didn't give themselves the best chance to win. Like there were better options. It's not, that's not to say they would have won if they chose something different. Just the point of managing is to give yourself the best chance to win the game and let your play. The players are going to win or lose the game. But this didn't feel like a spot where the manager put his guys in the spot where they were most likely to succeed. So, yeah, that's basically what I'd say. I'll probably have more detailed thoughts on it when I write it. But yeah, I really disliked it. And that's not second guessing at the time. I was like, how does this make sense?

[A]

I. Well, I didn't have the Fox booth on in that moment. I had the, the Mariners radio broadcast on instead. But I did see on social media that like, even in that moment, Joe Davis was like, so, hey, what are you, what are you doing? You don't want to go to Munoz here? And that's a. You know, I think Joe Davis is a reasonably analytically inclined broadcaster. He's not at the Very least not antagonistic to the notion of it. He's called a lot of postseason games, but also, like, he's a national broadcaster and he's got Smoltz in there as an anchor. So when. When that guy is saying, hey, yeah, don't you want to go to your leverage arm here or your higher leverage arm here? You've probably made a bad choice.

[B]

I don't know if you caught the clip of Joe Davis mentioning how powerful the Blue Jays were and how many home runs they'd hit. No, it was pretty amazing because, you know, the. One of the big through lines the playoffs has been that the Blue Jays are the scrappy, contacted, oriented team who hits 75 infield singles a game.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And you know, that was going on. You don't need to name any names, but you can guess who was saying it. And Davis was like, you know, that's a great point. They have hit 17 home runs in their six victories.

[A]

Right.

[B]

It's like, wait, what?

[A]

That was one of the things about Smoltz that I found. So just confounding was that. Sure. You can. I've said this on the pod before. If you have an aesthetic preference for contact, that's fine. I do think you need to, like, engage with the game broadly where it's at, and you also should engage with the game that you're calling. And he would be making that point as various players on both teams would be hitting these tanks. Yeah. And it's like, so. But. So, John, you notice how the. The score did go up? Even though it was a home run.

[B]

There was a great one where Naylor hit a home run.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

While Smoltz is talking about how much he loves to shorten up and go the other way, he just hits a home run and he's like, great approach there.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

Okay. Yeah, I actually. I feel like I'm coming back around a little on Smoltz specifically when it comes to talking about what pitchers are trying to do.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Because he. I feel like the broadcast has done a good job. Joe Davis specifically has done a good job of asking him, like, hey, John, like, if you were pitching, what would you do here?

[A]

Right.

[B]

And I think that's pretty cool. But, yeah, I mean, look, announcers are just obsessed with small ball. I. I don't think it's a small, specific thing like a rod. A rod loves bunts, and a rod never bunted. It's just a. Yeah. It's like some mind virus that gets into you when you switch to the booth.

[A]

Yeah. And I think that if you, again, like, if you I, it is fun when you have a varied offensive approach, which I think is, is actually the story of this Blue Jays team. We can talk about this, I guess in the context of the World Series, but I think that they are like admirably balanced, right? They do make a lot of contact. They, you know, they are prone to contact over a strikeout. They don't strike out a ton. Like they've lowered their strikeout rate in a way that's frankly incredible relative to last year. But they also marry that with power, right? Like they can hit big home runs. They have guys who do, they have guys who are super aggressive early in the count. I still don't understand why George Springer ever sees a first pitch fastball, like at this stage in the game, you know, he's going to swing in that, like, what are we. So anyway, I, I, I think that if you want to see a, a team that has like a varied approach and is sort of responsive to game state, I get why that's appealing, that's appealing to me. But being a grump about it, I think is where Smoltz really runs into trouble.

[B]

Well, I am excited to preview that in the context of the World Series because I'm actually, I've done a lot of research on to the Chase approach, as it turns out.

[A]

Allow me to say just 1, 2 ish quick things about the Mariners and then we can move on to the World Series. So as a final point on the Wilson decision in that inning, I think you're right that, you know, ultimately it comes down to guys executing. I think one of the things that you do very well in your writeups of these managers is to be clear eyed about the role that process plays and not, you know, credit a manager for something good happening when bad process preceded it and not dinging them when like their thinking was sound, their approach was, was sound, but the player just didn't execute. I, I do think the combination of bad process and, and bad results just feels, it just feels so much worse. I, I would still be very disappointed to be sitting here prepping for a Blue Jays Dodgers World Series if, you know, Munoz had come in and he had given up that home run for sure.

[B]

But you'd feel less bad.

[A]

I'd feel less bad because it's worse.

[B]

About that or the Crawford bunt.

[A]

Okay, so the Crawford bunt is a fasc was a fascinating moment for me in terms of how the analyst part of my br and the pessimistic Mariners fan part of my Brain interact with one another. Right. Because the analyst part of my brain knows that that is, like, kind of a catastrophic decision. He at least got the bunt down, so it's not the worst outcome he could have had there. But, like, you have to know who is coming up behind you and the. The limited ability that that part of the lineup has to do anything at all. Right. So you just. You can't give an out away there. That's the analyst part of my brain, the pessimistic fan part of my brain that is having to come to terms with the day getting kind of long for JP Crawford as a player was like, well, at least he didn't ground into a double play.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Which was my baseline expectation of JP Crawford in that moment. Now, that is perhaps overly pessimistic, even for Crawford as he is now, which is still, you know, a useful guy. His. His main decline is coming on the defensive end of things, I think, more than it is at the plate. And he did double later in that game, so shame on me. But I did have to have a moment of like, yeah, that was bad. And he wasn't guaranteed a. A double play there.

[B]

Meg, so do you. I have a question that is maybe too unkind to the Mariners. Oh, no. Do you think they just forgot Crawford wasn't batting ninth?

[A]

No, I. I don't either.

[B]

But he bunted a decent amount this year.

[A]

He did.

[B]

And it usually makes sense because usually, like, the good hitters are coming up next, right? Leo Rivas.

[A]

Right. Yeah. And, God, and this is. This is an unkind thing to say about the Mariners, at least in a backhanded way. The funny thing is that, like, Leo Rivas isn't even the worst part of that little stretch of the lineup. Right? Because, like, Leo Rivas has no power to speak of. Like, I don't think that Leo Rivas could have gotten a sac fly even if he had made contact just because of how limited his power is. He does have a good eye, right? Like, that is a. That is a hitter who will draw a walk. He drew some in this. In this series, even, Right. I think he is discerning at the plate. But the fact that, like, that's the best you can hope for with the rest of that stretch of the lineup doesn't speak well of the bench that they came into this series with.

[B]

I would basically say that Crawford fails to make an out, like, 30% of the time. Like, he reaches base, sure, fairly often. And you just can't be throwing away outs when the bottom third of your lineup is Crawford, Revis, Robless. Yeah, like, I, I, I really disliked that. I think I might have disliked that more than bringing in Bizardo. It's close. I just thought both were like, what, what are we doing here?

[A]

It's close. It's pretty close. I think, I still think the Bizardo one is worse just because you're available. Alternatives are so much better.

[B]

That's true. That's a good point. Like, the Crawford thing was picking between a variety of bad options.

[A]

Yeah, but it was pretty bad, though. It was pretty confounding. And I do wonder I'd have to go back and look because I'm sure he was asked afterward. I imagine that that decision came from the dugout, that that wasn't Crawford on his own.

[B]

I was not immediately able to find out despite doing a lot of looking at it, but I kind of assume it was some blend.

[A]

Yeah. Okay.

[B]

I think that, that, that was actually a good way of putting it. Like, when the available alternatives are meaningfully different, that makes it feel worse. Whereas, like I will say, though, if I were trying to imagine a matchup that is going to go really poorly for me, Shane Bieber needing a strikeout against Leo Rivas is like, really up there. Really up there. Yeah. Just like a terrible guy to have pitching in this situation.

[A]

Well, let's maybe use this as a way to transition to talking about the World Series, because Bieber is one of a couple of guys on that Jays team who I am really unsure what to, to make of as it pertains to the World Series, because Bieber, you know, he had his first start, his start in Seattle, other than the home run, was very good. Secondaries were working. He was mixing pitches really well, able to certainly exploit a Mariners lineup that has a fair amount of swing and miss in it. And then his second start was, well, almost not good enough for them to advance. Right. We have this fiery, passionate, gritty Scherzer performance where, again, like, the, the secondary stuff is working really quite well, but who knows what you're going to get out of Max Scherzer.

[B]

Totally.

[A]

So let's start. So let's start with the pitching. Let's talk about maybe put the pitching for both of these teams in conversation. And I almost feel like we don't have to talk about the Dodgers starting pitching because, like, yeah, have you heard?

[B]

They're good.

[A]

They're really good. I said this on the last episode. I enjoyed watching Blake Snell start. That never happened.

[B]

First time ever. Yeah, I don't know that I can prove this, but these are his three longest starts in his entire life. Right.

[A]

I. I don't know about entire.

[B]

Do you think Blake Snell knew the seventh inning existed before this year? He's like, whoa. It's kind of amazing how, how he's turned into a guy who gives you length as well as rate. Because I always thought the joke with him was like, it's going to be the best five innings you've ever seen.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

You know, I went to a ton of Blake Snell starts last year when he was on the Giants. Right. And they were like, honestly, at the ballpark. They're kind of nice because I had time to walk around. Right.

[A]

You do have. You do have time to get a beer when Snell is in.

[B]

You used to the new Snell is. He's just too fast. But yeah, I used to kind of enjoy him in person and dislike him on TV because he just tried to go to three, two counts on everyone. And I am loving his new. His new approach.

[A]

Yeah. So it's like Snell is amazing. Yamamoto, great. Glasnow has been pretty steady. They, you know, aren't getting the kind of length out of him that they're getting out of Snell and Yamamoto right now, but it's not bad. And then Ohtani is Ohtani, you know, and his starts are complicated by the fact that he has to go out there and hit three home runs, but it's not like he's only going three innings or anything like that. So. So their rotation is quite stacked. And then you have the Blue Jays and you got Gaussman, who is very good and also looks like he just walked off the set of the Three Musketeers. Trey Savage, we should talk about him in greater depth in a second here. And then you have these question marks with Beeper and Scherzer. So advantage Dodgers. But let's talk about those Blue Jays guys. So talk to me about your impressions of Trey is Savage.

[B]

I think that it's too early to come to a long term conclusion about him, but one thing that I feel really comfortable in saying about saying about him in the short term is he has a really smart approach of just. He has two great pitches and he's just. He just throws them a lot.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I feel like one thing that has worked to his advantage is that teams really load up on lefties against him.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So far, at least in these playoffs. But he's like so good against lefties because, you know, his best pitch is a splitter. That is, he throws let's see, 35% splitters against lefties and that is just like a pitch that good. And 50% fastballs. He's not really giving them any breaking balls to look at. It's been working really well. Gaussman's very similar, right. So both those guys have big reverse splits. Gossman has it over 10 year career. So he just. Lefties don't hit Gossman well. Same deal, good splitter. I think Savage is a similar kind of pitcher. I think that one thing that is going to be a good thing to watch in this matchup is that the Dodgers are a relatively patient team or at least they have a lot of patient hitters on their team. They've got some very aggressive hitters too. But to, you know, get through the Dodgers clean, you got to pitch to Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman. And while Freddie Freeman likes to swing, both of those guys have a really good sense of the strike zone. Max Muncie, in any case, like the Dodgers definitely have some guys who you need to like attack diligently in the strike zone. Savage walked a ton of guys. He's walking a ton of guys in the playoffs even. Even as he performs well. And I think that that is going to be kind of the weakness there. I do think that generally speaking, having these righties with big splitters does line up well for the Blue Jays. I think it puts the Dodgers in a bit of a bind on like how do you attack this lineup? Because the Jays don't really have any left handed relieving to speak of.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So you would think, great, I can just like, you know, fill my lineup with lefties, like don't let Tommy Edmond get in there, that kind of thing because you know, he's much, he's at a big disadvantage swinging lefty against righties with good off speed stuff. So yeah, you can, you could imagine like really tilting your team that way. The problem is that that doesn't work that well against these two. Against, yes, Savage and Gaussian just because of their particular pitch mix. And if you're using your worst hitters to try to get a platoon advantage against a guy who doesn't surrender platoon advantages, you end up in kind of an awkward spot. So I think that's going to be an interesting thing for the Dodgers to decide what to do is like, you know, Alex Call has gotten some of these starts historically.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Like in the, against the Phillies who have a ton of lefty starters. Call was kind of in and out and he played a ton he played both games, the Red series, I believe. But he's kind of there like against righty's guy of choice. Except that then they went away from him for the cs.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I'm just very curious to see how they approach the fact that. That it's all righty starters. But it's not really all righty starters in the way you'd think about it from Toronto.

[A]

Yeah. And they're, you know, you're right that they're like, they're bullpen tips hard on, on righties. And like the guys they have who are lefties aren't, you know, they're not. They're high leverage guys. Right. It's Little and Flu Hardy and Eric Lauer and I mean I think Brendan.

[B]

Little is interesting and like he's got some nasty stuff. But yeah, he's not really a high leverage reliever. He had a 15% walk rate this year so it feels. Feels a little dangerous to put him in there. Yeah. I mean normally speaking you'd be like, this is fine. Like this team can't really attack our lefty weakness. So I don't mind starting some lefties. It's just that. And like against Bieber and Scherzer I'd be, I'd be in for that plan. But I don't feel so good about it against Gaussman.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Where like it's just like a, not, not a great move for the Dodgers. One thing I'm very interested in as it relates to this is so Max Muncie is a left handed hitter.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And he plays third base now just because of that. That's how the Dodgers line up. So he'd be someone who would normally like definitely get all the starts in this series. But. And maybe this is getting into talking about the Blue Jays offense, but the Blue Jays put a lot of balls in play.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And they're extremely right handed.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so Muncie is going to be basically front and center. He's going to be one of the two defenders who's busiest in this series. And he's not good at third base. He's not awful.

[A]

No.

[B]

Like it's very impressive. It's very impressive how good he is there, honestly. Because I thought he was. I thought they would try this two years ago and be like, nah, okay. Yeah, he's playable. But that's a lot of stress to put on, you know, a bad defender as it were. A defender who's playing a position above his normal ceiling.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And they're asking him to do that because they know that the trade off is worth it and it has been. But when you combine the fact that he's not that great of an option against Gausman and yes Savage and the fact that he's not a great defender against a team that has a bunch of righties who put the ball in play. I think that's actually an interesting point for the Dodgers. They could move Enrique Hernandez to third.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I don't know, rejigger the outfield around a little bit in matchups where they don't think that Muncie's lefty bat will be as useful and then just rotate as soon as the splitter pitchers are out of the game. I think that's an interesting option. I think that there's a lot of interesting things to think about in terms of given that Blue Jays pitchers particular vulnerabilities and strengths. How should we change our lineup around even though they're all righties.

[A]

Yeah. Well and it's interesting because you know, you're right that they could, they could bring K in and I guess play call. They could play call in the outfield.

[B]

That's kind of the problem.

[A]

Right. I mean this is, it's, it's funny because like hey, Sinkum is, is a pretty nifty little player. But there's a, there's a lot of, there are a lot of bad bats on that bench. I mean there are a lot of bad bats on most, most benches. If the bats are good than they're typically in the lineup. But there are some bat, there are some bad bats on that, that judgers bench. You're not going to start Justin Dean in a World Series game.

[B]

I know that Call is theoretically not your choice against like take Max Muncie out of the lineup for Alex Call against the righty Seems weird. Yeah, but what if you just did Miguel Rojas? Like what if you just amped up the defense? I don't know. Call's a good defender. I think that there's going to be. I think that that's a really interesting access point basically. And honestly I think they're probably mostly just going to stick with Muncie and be like eh, he's a good playoff performer. But I think that it is a place where if there were no ego in the consideration if literally the most important thing was just to win the game and it was all robots. I think you'd really want to consider what to do with Muncie here in a spot where his advantages are neutralized and his disadvantages are tightened like they'll probably just play them anyway. But I think it's an interesting spot where something could be done.

[A]

Or maybe they should just bring Michael Conforto back and give themselves. I'm kidding. Sort of remarkable that they stuck with Conforto as long as.

[B]

So long. Yeah.

[A]

So long. I think they were trying to kill Craig Goldstein. I think they were just motivated to. To kill him. I'm curious again, like, the Dodgers, you talk about their lineup. I think you've highlighted some of the matchup concerns. But, like, did you know the show? Ohtani is good.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What we say about. About this group, they're pretty. They're pretty great.

[B]

I'm actually, I'm writing the preview for the World Series now, and it's like, really hard to write about the Dodgers lineup.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Or the Dodgers rotation. Yeah. There's been so much written about every guy. Yeah. That it's tough to find new things. Yeah. They're incredible. I do think that they're a really good matchup against the Blue Jays. Just.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

In general, the Blue don't really have a lot of kind of high octane or weird relievers.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And I feel like that's a good way to put some stress on you is basically to have just an ever varying, like, raise style. Like what are we even facing? Right. That seems like a good way to attack the Dodgers.

[A]

They're not set up for that. Yeah.

[B]

Giving Ohtani and Bets a ton of new looks or, I mean, look. Yeah. You could have Tarek Scubal, too. I mean, the Jays don't. Sure. Yeah. I think that for a normal team, like, without any of the very, very best players in the game, a good way to attack the Dodgers is by presenting them a ton of different matchups.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The Jays are not really capable of doing that. I do like that they have the. The two similar archetype starters and then kind of different relievers.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But, yeah, it's just going to be really tough for them because they don't really have a lot that they can do other than just like throw our guys out there and see if your guys can hit them. And the Dodgers have been hitting them like all year, so I think that that is going to be a bad trade off for Toronto. They don't have any way around it.

[A]

So they just kind of have to.

[B]

Live with it, try to limit the damage. I would basically say it's not like you should treat the bottom of the lineup as high leverage, but getting those guys out matters a lot.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like, that's what they did to the Mariners in the alcs. I have this stat for you just as a quick callback. The Mariners 7, 8, 9 hitters batted.114. 205, 143 in the ALCS. And if you do that, it's much easier to attack these offenses with great home run hitters in the top third.

[A]

Right. You're at least optimized to limit the damage if they get into one if there's no one ahead of them on base. Which.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Now the Dodgers bottom three is a lot better than the Mariners bottom three. That's. That's what the money's for. But it's still the same principle applies that. Right. I do think that if the Blue Jays do a great job of shutting down the Dodgers, I bet you will look back and we won't point to this as the key, but I bet you they will have done pretty well against the so. So guys.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like if the second tier people are beating you up, it's just. You're not gonna have a good time.

[A]

Yeah. I feel like one indicator of Dodgers performance will be like if we're hearing about postseason Enrique Hernandez.

[B]

Oh, yeah, it's over.

[A]

They're in. They're in a bad way. And I don't mean this as a slate against Kike because I think that he's a fun little player and he clearly plays very well in October. But like, you should be able to neutralize Kike Hernandez at this point in his career. And if they're not able to do that, you know, if Andy Buyes is hitting a home run, baseball is one.

[B]

Of those classic things where like, like weird stuff can happen.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It's not like it. It's not like he couldn't have a great series in the Dodgers blues, but you don't want that. Like, you do not want to sign up for. Let Kike do well and see what happens from there. No.

[A]

Right. If he's adding to the legend, you're probably in rough shape because that means he's either hitting a home run or on base ahead of Ohtani, Bets and Freeman. And that's. That's not the business you want to be in if you're Toronto. I think maybe we should just talk about these bullpens a little bit more. You're right to say that, like, Toronto's has been, I think, a more persistent weakness for them than. Than Los Angeles's. That's hard to say. Has been. Although we can. We should dive in on. On their guys also. But yeah, you're really counting on Jeff Hoffman.

[B]

I don't even feel that bad about counting on Jeff Hoffman. Look, relievers go in and out of effectiveness, but he's been a very effective closer level reliever in the majors before. But then it's like. And that's it. Like, Jeff Hoffman is the good part of the bullpen by Louis Varland is good. Yeah, they pitch him two times a day, so I don't really know how long that can go. He also has a six FIP in the playoffs that is very home run driven. He's just been getting rocked. Like the contact has been very loud.

[A]

When it has happened.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. He has a lot of strikeouts and he's not walking too many, so those things are working out okay. But the contact has been incredibly loud. I don't think that that's the kind of pitcher you want a ton of against the Dodgers who don't strike out a lot for how much power they have. Like, you can kind of get like o' Neill Cruz types. Yeah. Louis Verland's probably good against them Dodgers types. Less so because I feel like he can hide his homer proneness by just having more at bats where it's not competitive, where there's no balls in the strike zone and people are swinging at bad stuff. And the Dodgers don't do that a lot. So I think the Toronto bullpen is going to be like a big problem. I mean, it has been. It's definitely been the worst part of their team by a lot in the playoffs and they've been able to overcome it. And so that's, you know, that's their blueprint here is just overcome it. Like, Right. Just play well enough that the fact that our bullpen through. Through two rounds of play us has a 552er.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

570 FIP and is walking five batters per nine. Those are bad. That's real bad. It's not even like an outlier Babip either. They've allowed a 289 Babip and still they're just getting, you know, they're getting hit hard. If that continues, it's going to be bad for them. If it gets worse, I don't think they're winning.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Yeah. The bullpen is really awful. And so I think that lots of times John Schneider is going to be looking down at his lineup card and it's like, okay, do you want to let Shane Bieber face Shohei Ohtani for a third time? Like, no. Okay, cool. What are my alternatives?

[A]

Yeah, but also that's gonna be a.

[B]

Really interesting spot is the two lesser pitchers, Scherzer and Bieber of the rotation. I like Bieber a lot. I just think he's still injury compromised or still getting back into the swing of things. Yeah, they're gonna have to in bad spots for them, face good Dodgers hitters. There's just no way around it. And those matchups are going to favor the Dodgers, but they're not deterministic, so.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Yeah. Like if Shane Bieber strikes out Mookie Betts and Shohei Ohtani with, you know, runners on and in the sixth inning or something, that's good. That's a good sign if he's not even facing them. It's hard for me to wrap my head around how the Blue Jays make this work.

[A]

And then on the Dodgers end of things, what do you think of Rookie? You were very enthusiastic about Roki in one of the pieces you wrote. I can't even remember now. You've written so many in the last month and I had to be like, hey, you're right. But also it's been two. I think it was maybe, maybe the series preview against the Reds. Did you rate that? Was that yours? Okay.

[B]

Yeah. So before the postseason started.

[A]

Yeah. And I said, hey, he's thrown twice in relief. And then Rookie made me look dumb in some ways and smart in others because he's been at times completely dominant and at other times has clearly not really had a good sense of where the ball is going. So having had a couple of rounds of playoff, Rookie, now, what is your current assessment of Rookie Sasaki?

[B]

I would prefer the starters to him still, but I think he's the best pitcher on the Dodgers other than them. Yeah. I actually think that maybe he's just a reliever, right? Yeah, he's a really good reliever.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I think that letting him just basically throw his fastball and his splitter looks pretty good.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And having them all kind of like amped up with the adrenaline of going shorter bursts. It's not like he's striking out that many guys. And you know, the fastball shape thing, it's not fixed by him being a reliever. It's still a bad shape. It's still not what you want out of your like a hundred mile an hour throwing starter is a hittable fastball. But I think that amping up the miles per hour a little bit and getting to throw more of the split has just worked out pretty well.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I also, I feel like it's good for his health. Yeah, it seems like it seems like it's agreeing with him in many ways. I mean he stretched out the three innings like just fine by pitching this way, which also really surprised me because he, he's been working more frequently than he ever has before.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Obviously much shorter bursts.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But his ability to kind of maintain the, the reasonably high octane stuff even for a three inning stretch, kind of like on demand was very impressive to me. Yeah. Yeah. I, I think I was probably too sure that he was going to hit like that he was going to work out.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But he has. And the rest of the Dodgers bullpen has not.

[A]

No.

[B]

And so that, that basically means that yeah, I think that Dave Roberts preferred playing every game is eight innings of my starter.

[A]

And then Sasaki, I agree with everything that you've just said and I think like an underrated part. We all, we had a lot of conversation as an industry about Roki's fastball shape when he was struggling as a starter, as well we should because it was bad. I think a thing that was underrated was just like how badly things were going for him with the slider and now he barely has to throw it. Right. Like he can just completely de. Emphasize that pitch. You know, maybe it's. You show it to show something different every now and again or as like a get me over. But you know, he hasn't really had to rely on it at all. And so I think as much as anything, just being able to, to sideline that offering has been, has been good for him. I, I am going to be so fascinated to watch Roki having to locate with a disciplined, not strikeout prone Blue Jays lineup. And that particular matchup I'm very excited for because I feel like I'm sounding like I'm like a Roki truther or something. And I don't mean it like that. This is obviously working and the splitter is unbelievable and he's doing quite well. I do think that there is some location related vulnerability with him and we saw some of that, I guess in the Brewer Series. It didn't end up mattering. Clearly didn't matter. But I do think that like if you have a team like the Blue Jays that have a lot of very discerning guys, they are going to be able to say I'm not swinging at that. And how that battle gets won I think is going to might end up mattering like in a big way, in a big spot.

[B]

I agree with that.

[A]

So I'm very curious to see how that kind of shakes out for him when you have what he has both from a velocity perspective now he doesn't have to save anything. And with that splitter might not matter anyway. It still might not matter. But I do think that like if you're the Blue Jays, that's the sliver of. Okay, I can, I can sort this out with, with this guy that you have to kind of grab hold of or try to.

[B]

Well, the funny thing is like the Dodgers would like, they only really want to throw him. I'm looking at this right now and he has thrown as many innings as the next two relievers in the Dodgers bullpen combined.

[A]

Oh yeah.

[B]

Like they're just. That's basically their plan.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

To me, one of the really interesting subplots of kind of Dodgers bullpen against Jays offense is the Jays don't strike out. And they also hit for a lot of power. Yeah. And the way that you do that is by swinging early.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Basically. Right. They're, they're a very early swinging team. I think they had, they saw like the third fewest pitches for plate appearance this year in the majors. They were in two strike counts. Like the third least often. They were one of the most aggressive teams on in zone swing rate. And I think that this strategy makes a lot of sense. It's basically if you get the two strikes, you're going to have a bad time.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

They're going to throw one of 18 absurd secondary pitches that they learned in a lab. Like don't do that, just swing early. It's basically, it's more complicated than that. But it's not that much more complicated than that. The. You don't strike out a lot if you don't get laid in the counts. And it's like the Blue Jays walk a ton despite being discerning.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

They're. They're just like trying to put the ball in play. Yeah. But like with power.

[A]

Right.

[B]

They're basically taking their big cuts at fastballs early.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

Great plan. Kind of confusing when what you're trying to do is get their starters out of the game.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

So on the one hand, the Dodgers starters best skill is missing bats. And the J's don't swing and miss very often.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

But on the other hand, the Jays do swing a lot.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And you could imagine like Snell or Glass now has a 1, 2, 3 inning on six pitches and you're just like, oh, like that's bad. Yeah, that's an extra inning for them later. Face that guy. And so I, I do wonder if the, like how the Jays are going to square this circle. Like, how they're going to figure this out? Like, what do we do here? Because the way that I'm thinking of it is, like, pitches per plate appearance. Some teams try to operate on the per plate appearance part. Like, try to get more pitches per plate appearance. The JS try to get more plate appearances.

[A]

Yes. Yes.

[B]

Yeah, they're just, like, it improves our OBP to have the at bats be shorter because we're not striking out. And so that's fine, and we'll see more pitches that way. And so you could imagine, like, in the games where the hits are falling, that this looks really bad for the Dodgers.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That their pitchers aren't striking anybody out. And Max Muncie is, like, flailing around at these ground balls because they're, you know, they're hit 110 miles an hour by Vladi. Like, it's, like, not a fun place to play defense. Boba Shet's back, and he, like, that's basically what he does, is, like, hit really, really, really hard. Lowish contact.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

I could imagine the way that this works out well for the Blue Jays. But on the other hand, like, you can definitely see the way it doesn't work out well is that you start swinging early to try to put the ball in play. You make outs by doing that, and then you're just facing the same guy for longer. It's an interesting kind of bind. The correct thing to do might be, theoretically, wait, the Dodgers out, but no one can do that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Look at the Brewers. They didn't even come close, and they are the most patient team in baseball.

[A]

Right.

[B]

You just can't get to the bullpen if you can't get the starters out. So I think that the Jays basically need to approach that by swinging more. But that feels strange.

[A]

It does feel strange. But, you know, maybe George Spring will be like, okay, fine. I don't know that I can physically swing more. Uh, but I. I will endeavor to try if I'm a Blue Jays fan. You know, obviously, he hit the big tank, but even just. Sorry to. To have a quick digression on George Springer. The. The difference that a day made in terms of. Or I guess, was it just one day? I guess it was just one day. He looked like he was not going to be able to play after that. In that first game where he came back from cracking his kneecap. He didn't actually do that, or he wouldn't have been able to play at all. But he looked incredibly compromised in game six in a way where I was like, if they advance, I don't know what good it's going to do him if he can't go. And then he looked fine after that. Ben was the thing. And then in game seven, he looked fine.

[B]

You know what's really incredible? He's definitely playing right field in the World Series. Right. I can't imagine making up the lineup otherwise.

[A]

Well, I guess part of it's going to depend on Bichette and.

[B]

Oh, yeah, sorry. I'm saying if Bichette is back.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Then, like, there's no. Bichette is definitely not playing the field.

[A]

No, you have to do. Right.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I think you have to DH him, at least initially. Right. Like, I can't imagine.

[B]

I would be absolutely shocked if he plays the field at all.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Series. There's just the kind of injury that he had, like a knee sprain, a leg ligament sprain, your knee. I don't see him.

[A]

You want a quick change position.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You want to minimize the. The move there. And you know, Jimenez has been respectable. They have ikf, like, they have. They have some options to like, you know, rejigger stuff. But yeah, you would think that Bichette will DH and then. Yeah, I guess bring her to the outfield and Parker to the bench.

[B]

So the way that I have it in my preview is that I think they're gonna probably put him to third against righties and bench ikf.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

By moving Clement. Clement to second, but then against lefties. Yeah, to the bench.

[A]

To the bench. Yeah.

[B]

With IKF in at second.

[A]

Yeah, that makes sense.

[B]

Like, none of these are good, right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But all of them are a lot better than not getting to have Boba Shed like.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I think it's all worth it. Assuming Bichette is like some reasonable approximation of himself, I think I would take like 95 bichette, honestly, and play DH.

[A]

I. Oh, yeah.

[B]

I have a very strong feeling that whatever George Springer's injuries and whatever his advanced defensive metrics play, that he is quite capable of playing a capable right field for six World Series games.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Clutch may not exist, but players who get themselves into their best shape for the playoffs absolutely do exist. And George Springer feels like he's one of those guys where the regular season is. Sure. Partially about the stats that you accumulate to get into the hall of Fame one day and get paid and all that, but also partially about getting ready for October.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

I'm very interested to watch that because like you said, he looked like. Yeah, I was very confused about how in the world they thought this was going to work to let him keep playing, and instead he had the biggest hit of his career. You know what? Maybe not. He's had too many big ones, but one of the biggest hits of his career.

[A]

It ranks, though. It ranks. And I would offer that on an org adjusted basis. Certainly the biggest. Right, because he had huge hits for Houston. But after a while it's like, oh, secure another World Series trip for us. Whereas you know that they're going to be playing that highlight in Toronto for the rest of our lives. Regardless of whether or not they win the the World Series. We're going to see that forever. You're going to see that. And you know what? The Mariners are going to see it every time they go to Rogers center for the foreseeable Future. They are 100% going to play that before every game. When the Mariners come through, I'm sure.

[B]

That they play the Batista one before every Rangers game, so.

[A]

Oh yeah, I would. I mean, the thing is about Canadians, they are nice, but they are human. And human beings, you know, they engage in pettiness on occasion, even when their maybe baseline disposition is one of politeness.

[B]

It requires some ellipses. But the thing about Canadians is they are human. I really enjoy it.

[A]

They are. They are. I do wonder how many times we're going to see the tariff ad during the World Series. You don't have to hand it to Ronald Reagan, but he was right about terrorists in that clip. I didn't see the ad live because I was maybe watching on MLB TV and it didn't break through. I'm not going to miss the MLB TV ads. Ben. I'm ready for a new. I'm ready for a new crop of those.

[B]

Can I bring this in a potentially controversial direction, just briefly? I don't understand who they hired to do those Google cloud ads. Oh my God, fire them.

[A]

Oh, yeah. No, this is not controversial. This is a tremendous take. Very, very, I think, down the middle, down the middle.

[B]

I understand. Like, obviously the people who are doing Google AI work with baseball are very good at math and science and also baseball.

[A]

Right?

[B]

Like, they definitely are. They're working with Tom Tango. They're coming up with new stuff. They're understanding how to use the terabytes of data they get every day to make statcast better for us. And honestly, statcast rocks. Like, the amount of data we get out of that stuff is incredible. Yeah, let's go make an ad about it. It'd be really cool to talk about like stolen based takeoff rates or how much your Extra step makes you more likely to go. What if we made it about tapping the plate with our bad?

[A]

Yeah, I had a lot of issues with this. Patrick Dubuque wrote a great piece about those ads for bp and you know, he really honed in on like the math needs to. Math, like the science needs to mean something and the way they're doing, doing it doesn't. And the other objection I have to those ads is that I think that you can have a lot of fun with admitted false precision. Right. Like I, I love to operate in that space as a writer. I think that if you want to come up with like a goofy metric and you are upfront about the fact that you are mostly just having some good fun and that this is not meant to, you know, it'll tell us something about baseball, but not in an analytically rigorous way. Great, great conceit for many an article. A ton of fun to be had. I could imagine a version of a piece I would write where I would like obsessively watch plate taps and whether they jump over the foul line.

[B]

As an aside, like an incredible Sam Miller article. Yeah.

[A]

Yes, exactly. And as an aside, I'm very skeptical of the notion that only 50% of players are doing that, which is the stated stat line.

[B]

No way. Yeah, yeah. None of these stats are real.

[A]

But it's also just like that isn't. That betrays like a lack of good baseball sense? I think the number is way, way higher. Most players, Most players do that. Most players do that. What are we? What are we?

[B]

Anyway, I would be surprised if it is below 99%.

[A]

I agree. And so I'm like, who to your point, who are these ads for? Who is writing them? Yeah, because they aren't. They, they are trying to have fun, fun. But they are also not admitting to the imprecision of the thing that they're measuring.

[B]

The thing that bothers me the most is that if you're gonna waste the time to do all this, like do it on something useful or tell me a joke like. Yeah, yeah, I like Geico ads. Like, I don't know. There's a lot of ways to have a good advertisement. This is just like this one feels annoying because it's not for the non stat heads.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But it's not for the stats. The fact that those ads get played so much on MLB TV and the fact that they loop and you hear that same, same audio stinger over and over again. I'm in the tank for Google. My wife works there. Like I'm of Course I am. But I'm just like, every time I'm.

[A]

Like, oh, yeah, they're rough.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You got to have a. I like, I really like the way that the actress in the one GEICO ad does the. Oh, he does look like Daryl. I think her line read is so perfect in that, in that ad. And I, I tend to not want to remember insurance ads at all. Although I do like the progressive backup quarterback ones.

[B]

I think there's a big one, especially.

[A]

The Teddy Bridgewater one where he's a backup listener. I, you know, you got me. That one's good. That one's good. He's funny. That's funny. That's a good conceit. I like that they have a new round of them. So I'm not sick of.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Sick of the ones we had. I feel like they're more creative than they were the first go around. Like a backup, like emotional support friend.

[B]

That backup family portrait taker.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Tommy DeVito way up there for me too. Yeah.

[A]

I wish they'd found a way to work his agent into the ad though, because that guy.

[B]

Yeah, I guess that's my point. There are so many creative ways that you can take sports advertising. Yes. And the company that in my experience, like advertises the most to me because of their deal with the league around Data is advertising in the worst way.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

I wouldn't rather see a Blue Chew ad, but it's closer than you'd like.

[A]

Yeah. I've, I'm sure bored our listeners enough with some of the weird, like geographic specific ads that we get in Arizona. There's some, there's some dark stuff that they clearly think Arizonans like, but it is, it is rough. Although since I've been trying to listen on the radio, we're just getting a lot of Mike Piazza great moments defining an oppo. Taco advertising.

[B]

I've heard that a lot too. Yeah. Because whenever I'm driving around, I just put on playoff radio.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And the Mike Piazza, like, I thought both teams played a great game. One is like, yeah, they must. The pseudo random algorithm isn't working because it just picks the same one every time.

[A]

Yeah. And it's frustrating because as we've said before, like they just have access to every clip, you know, all of them. They don't have to clear anything. They just have it. It's just, it's theirs. They could pick any random assortment of things. Okay, here's a question for you about the, the World Series because I feel like we've talked about both of These teams, rotations, we have a sense of their lineups, their bullpens. I do think that the Bichette of it all is, like, an interesting potential wrinkle. I can't wait to see what shape he's in. I hope that he is, you know, a good version of himself, because it's more fun when guys play well in the World Series than when they don't. Do you feel like there's any appreciable difference, as these guys are, as tacticians between the managers? Do you think that there's any advantage or disadvantage to be gained there for these guys?

[B]

So I am going to go see Craig Goldstein at Christmas, and I don't want him to kill me.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

But I think Dave Roberts is a pretty good tactical manager, so he is fine. Yeah, I. I think Craig will be very upset to hear me say that, but I think he's gotten pretty good, and I think it's pretty impressive that last year, the thing that. So, again, the whole point of the game is to make as many of your plate appearances on the pitching side out of good pitchers as possible. And so last year, he did that by just being like, this rotation has got to go.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I'm just going to use my relievers in, like, ridiculous spots. You're going to be like, why do you have a reliever in there? Yep. And it was definitely the right choice because that rotation was awful. And he was just like, the right way to do this is to. I thought he was really clever about using the bad relievers in blowouts. Either way, he understood, like, the limits of his bullpen and got the guys that he wanted to get the outs in most frequently. So this year, they gave him a totally different team. All starters. Worst bullpen in the league, seems like. And he's like, okay, I can do that. Like, great. I'll just lean on my starters, like, way more than I ever have and do the opposite. Like, let Yoshino Yamamoto pitch a complete game in the playoffs. That's very un. Dave Roberts, like. But I think he is just pretty good at saying, like, I want my good. My best guys to have the ball more often.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like, why would I be the Dodgers manager if I weren't trying to lean on the fact that I have the better guys than them? And he's done a really good job of that. So I'm very confident that he's going to do a good job managing. Look, the little tactical stuff that sometimes we all get very obsessive about when it's a quarter of a percent difference here or there. Yeah. I'm not confident he has that all down. That stuff's hard, and I'm not confident that I'm measuring it right even.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

But I used to think that he was just trying to get Clayton Kershaw's playoff moment all the time and not managing to win, and now I think that he's basically managing to win really well, on average. I. I'm very impressed by his ability to kind of switch up the way that he's managed to fit his teams. And I think that some of that is experience, and some of that is probably that maybe these past teams, like, he was set up to where it was kind of no win situation in terms of, like, looking good, managing because he didn't have starters who could go deep, and he also didn't have good bullpens. But now he seems to be pretty good at using his tools. I'm less sure about Schneider. It's hard to tell. He hasn't done a lot of things that have made me gasp. Yeah. And I also think that he has a lot less moving parts. The Dodgers have this interesting dichotomy where it's like, they have the best rotation of all time. No, they don't. But they have the best rotation on a relative basis that they've had in a very long time and a terrible bullpen. And, see, Roberts's thing is to lean really hard one way, and he's good at that. Schneider's thing is, like, we got an okay rotation and a bad bullpen.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And, like, how do you balance this? And also, no lefties to leverage, like, so much. What he's doing is being like, well, all right, like, yeah, these are my.

[A]

These are my options.

[B]

And the pinch hitters aren't that varied either. There's a lot of, like, let's out hit them, and, like, let's use Miles Straw for defense. It's good, Good plan. But Roberts has harder decisions to make.

[A]

I'd basically say, yeah, and to your point, more of them. And I do think that, you know, there have been. There have been times in the past where I have felt like Dave has been perhaps not, like, the best tactician or he's. He's made pitching decisions that I found a little bit confounding. But I also think that part. Part of it is just that, like, he's there all the time, and they're. They're just a lot more decisions to nitpick, which doesn't mean that when he makes a bad one, we have to be like, oh, Dave, you know, like he's capable of making bad choices, but Dave. Yeah, oh, Dave, he'll get you. But I also think that a lot of the time it's just, hey, you know how these guys are always playing October baseball. You got a lot more grist for the mill to find something you don't like.

[B]

But also, like, that probably has made him better.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I would say for sure. Experience makes people better at things. And no one has more experience managing in the playoffs with the weight of expectations on your shoulders and good players on your team. If you made Dave Roberts run an upstart team, maybe he wouldn't be good at it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because like, he doesn't really know how to handle it when you have like one starter that you need to make. Like, like the Terex Kubo problem where it's like, our run convention is not good, but we've got this one guy.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Roberts has never really been in that position.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So maybe he wouldn't be good at that. But I would lean things his way. And it's funny because I feel like a lot of casual baseball fans and even Dodgers fans don't feel that way because he just has a. He's got a lot of tape of not doing his good stuff, but he's improved over time.

[A]

Yeah, I think that that's right. And I do think that one of the things I've come to appreciate about him is that I think he. Snitker, did a really good job of this when the Braves won the World Series. And you just mentioned with Roberts, he has a really good sense of no. 1 when to hold him and no. 1 when to fold him. And he doesn't. He doesn't misplay the leverage very much anymore.

[B]

Yeah. Snicker's a very good call on that, by the way. He was awesome at it.

[A]

Yeah, he was really. He was. You know, he only had a couple of guys he really trusted and they never pitched in games when the. The Braves were going to lose. In a way that was obvious.

[B]

I thought he did a really good job. And Roberts has done a really good job of this too. Is being willing to switch in game.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Is like, oh, yeah, we gave up and then our mop up guy held them to no runs for four innings and we scored three. And now it's the high leverage guys, Right?

[A]

Yes. Yes.

[B]

Yeah. I think that that skill of knowing when to use your bad guys is very important and very underrated. And I think that a lot of managers just really spend so much time looking at these packets of understanding how to maximize every single matchup that they miss the meta matchup, which is that like, like it's your guys against fatigue also, right?

[A]

Yeah. It's a seven game series. You do have to, you know, and I don't know if I've always been in like in the Mariners postseason run, for instance, completely logically consistent on this score, but you have to walk this fine line because you don't, I think you don't ever want to punt a winnable playoff game. That's a wild thing to, to want to do or to allow yourself to do. But you do have to know when like you just don't have it and make decisions accordingly. And you know, you're not always going to be able to make a perfectly good one. You might just have, you know, a bunch of less bad options to choose from.

[B]

I think a thing that is hard to wrap your head around, and I've spent a long time trying to wrap my head around it, is when we say punt, which is just the way to describe it. Right. Is like if you're not using your best guys, you're punting.

[A]

Right.

[B]

What you might actually be saying is like, by not using my best guys in this situation, I'm 20% to win instead of 23%. Whereas I know that I'm going to have some future situations where I can go from 60% to 80% by using my best guys. And what you're really doing is saying, well, the advantage I'm getting from fewer runs in this game is less. It's not that the game's over because, hey, if my guy hits his top end outcome, I can still win. Sometimes you put in Jack Dreyer and just no one can score on Jack Dreyer. That, that has happened a lot this year, in fact, and similar deal with some of the guys in the Jays bullpen. It's just hard to say like I'm not playing my best guy.

[A]

Right.

[B]

At any point. Like, you know, we'll yell at you for putting in Eduard Bizardo.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

If you do that too much. But it is important to know when you're not getting the kind of leverage multiplier that you need on your good arm because they can only throw so often, right.

[A]

They can't, they can't go every day unless they're Louis Varlin, in which case they might pitch in multiple games, games we don't even see.

[B]

Yeah. Now, like I'll. Let's see if Schneider does this. I have no reason to think that he's not going to be able to like particularly. But I am confident that Rogers can weigh these trade offs correctly because he has shown that he can do it over multiple years now.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I, I will be interested to see if Schneider can match him. It is definitely a skill to know when you're beat or know when you're likely beat and try not to throw too much after that narrow chance of coming back.

[A]

Is there anything else about this particular World Series matchup that strikes you as noteworthy or are we sufficiently previewed at least for now?

[B]

I'd say one small thing I will be watching is what will the running game look like for the Blue Jays? Will Smith. Not like a bad thrower necessarily, but not a good thrower.

[A]

And currently compromised a little bit still.

[B]

Currently compromised a little bit still. Now we don't know how that's going to affect his, his pop time or anything, but certainly not Patrick Bailey or like Luis Teren. Like he's not a run game shutdown guy. The Blue Jays don't run that. They have one stolen base in the playoffs.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So that feels like kind of a. A lost opportunity for them to put some pressure on the Dodgers. And pressure is going to be important because like there are definitely going to be a lot of like multiple dry games where the Blue Jays just. The balls aren't falling.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And when that happens against the Dodgers, it's going to be the eighth inning and like Yoda's going to be in there. It's going to feel really bad. Those games can be really important to like create a little offense. Yeah, I would expect that to come from stealing, but it'll be really interesting because it's just against tendency.

[A]

Yeah. Their fastest guy who was on the CS roster was probably a sub. It's probably Joey Lo Profito, who I don't imagine is going to make the World Series roster with them bringing Bichette back.

[B]

Yeah, he's probably the cut for Bichette, right?

[A]

Yeah, I would think so. I mean, he was only added because Anton Derek couldn't go anymore and they had to, they had to remove him. So I don't imagine that Lo Profito will make it, but he's definitely. Even some of their. This is like very simplistic way of looking at it. Even some of their like littler guys aren't like, aren't fast, super speedy. Right. Like.

[B]

Well, do you know who led them in stolen bases this year? I had to look it up.

[A]

Oh gosh. Was it Varsho Springer? No way was it really steals that's fantastic. Well, he's not stealing now. That kneecap is barely attached.

[B]

Well, it's really interesting. Like, I feel like their best chance in the series is going to have. It's going to be having Springer be like a, you know, an all around right fielder. Yeah, how about that peak Jason Hayward or something. But he's like hanging on by a thread. It's very interesting. Varsho had two steals.

[A]

Yeah. And some of that is that he only played in 71 games. But some of it is just that he's like, not that he's not, he's reasonably fast, but like in a I'm good straight line in the outfield kind of way.

[B]

Like he's not okay base runner.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

But it's not steals.

[A]

It's not steals. He's good at double play avoidance. Like he is good at taking the next base. He has some speed, but it's not like blazing, you know.

[B]

So I think that'll be like really the only guy who, if they get on, I'm going to be like, yeah, he should go is Andres Menez. And yeah, he's not like getting on is the problem for him, not what happens after that.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, I think that'll be probably advantage Dodgers. Probably the Jays just won't try to steal. And yeah, that'll be great because it's a place where the Dodgers have struggled at times and it does seem like a way you could, you could trouble them. But I just don't, I don't see how Toronto is actually going to access that weakness.

[A]

Take care of it. Yeah, that's not there.

[B]

And vice versa. Like the Dodgers don't need to screw around with doing that here. Like that seems like a good way to shorten some innings in a way you don't want to. And like Alejandra Kirk is just very capable across the board. I don't want to be like testing him in a way I don't have to when it feels like the weak spots in their team are elsewhere.

[A]

I will say that one of the things I am most looking forward to about this World Series is getting to just like unambiguously enjoy Alejandro Kirk again. Because, you know, like, because you're so.

[B]

Mad when he beats you, but you're happy too.

[A]

Yeah, I just, I love him so much as a player. He is. I might have said this on the pod before, like, he's such a great athlete. To point to when you're trying to get people to understand the different bodies and shapes that athleticism can manifest in. Right. Cause you, like, you look at him, and I will say they were. They were hitting this point a little hard on the broadcast this last round. I was like, you. You've talked about Kirk's body maybe enough. You guys, you can kind of slow your roll with this a little bit, but here I am about to do the same thing. Like, he. He. He looks the way he does, and he's like, not an Adonis or anything like that, but, like, he moves back there really well. He's got a tremendous amount of flexibility in his hips and his lower half.

[B]

Like, he is literally the best blocker in the major league. Right.

[A]

It's, like, amazing.

[B]

Kind of amazing. I. I think that the descriptions of Alejandro Kirk are certainly furthered by the fact that he has, like, a. Create a player beard. I think if he had a different beard, it would be less like, look at this guy. But he just looks like. Yeah, the beard is like the thing that you would see on one of those randomly generated player pictures for a fictional player in an old baseball video game.

[A]

Yeah. And, you know, it's clear that he is just, like, such an important, like, glue guy on that roster. I mean, being really good at baseball will help with that. But also, he's just like a really important.

[B]

The, like, it's sad, but happy, too, is I can't really talk about Alejandro Kirk as, like, this underrated player no one knows about anymore.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Because he's like a Gold Glove catcher who hits clean off for cleanup for team in the World Series. It's like, yeah, he's just good.

[A]

Yeah, we can't. We can't be calling him underappreciated. Like, he has a 116 WRC plus as a catcher, playing really good defense, and, yeah, his team's about to go to the world. And I. I always love. I love any player, particularly a catcher who has precisely one stolen base. Yeah, a precisely one stolen base guy is. That's one of my favorite kinds of guys. You know, that is a beautiful kind of guy. So I'm excited to be able to enjoy Kirk again. I'm really excited about this matchup. Like, I think this. I. I know that the Dodgers are, you know, they've rounded into form. They look like this, you know, unstoppable force. But I. I don't think that they have encountered a lineup of the caliber that they're about to. They certainly have the pitching advantage, certainly among the starters, and they do have a lockdown guy. But, you know, I. I think that this will be a series. I don't think that, you know, this isn't going to be Dodgers in four or anything like that. So I hope we get a good, a good one because you know, especially for a team, when you have a team that hasn't been there in a long time, you want those guys to have a good series even if they don't win. Like, it's just like, yeah, don't have getting there be the accomplishment. Like go, go take it to these guys. You know. And I don't dislike the Dodgers. This is an anti Dodgers take. But you want it to be a good show for everybody. So.

[B]

Yeah. You know how people look short standing next to tall people.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I feel like that's kind of gone on with the Blue Jays standing next to the Red Sox and Yankees. Yeah, like, like they're a big market team. I was writing about this in my preview. They're a model franchise. Like, this is what you want to happen. This is how you want your teams to be run. They have, yeah. Like they draft well, they develop well, they sign big free agents to come there. They spend a lot of money to do so. They extend their guys by paying them a ton and they score a lot of runs and prevent a lot of runs. Like, yeah, they have the best record in the AL and they did so by beating up on the AL East. They, I feel like they're getting this, like basically these are these big underdogs and they're lovable kind of vibes. But yeah, that I feel like sells them really short. I called them and the Dodgers, both model franchises in my World Series preview. And like I actually, I do mean that, like this is what you should want your team to do.

[A]

Yeah, I, I think that like, if I can, if I can offer a preemptive edit to your, to your preview which I haven't looked at yet. I mean, I do think that there are places where the Dodgers have an obvious advantage as a pertain. Like they are a much better player dev organization. Their farm is in better shape. And I think you, you know, you, Savage aside, like, you definitely see it on the pitching side of things, but the ways in which they are better don't really matter right now. Like they, they mattered to getting here. But yeah, Toronto did that. Right. Like it doesn't, it doesn't really matter whether they have a better farm or not or more top 100 guys, like, who cares? Their best guy is in the World Series preparing to pitch against the Dodgers. Right. Like their top prospect is Trey Savage. So I do think that there are.

[B]

Differences but perhaps the trajectory is not the same. But.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Let me put it this way. I would love to be a fan of either of these two teams.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

Both seem like. Like not everyone can always have it. Not everyone can be the best. Only one team can. But I. The Jays are like, they're good.

[A]

Go to work.

[B]

Yeah. I think that it is doing them a disservice to treat them as a Cinderella here.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It is reasonable to favor the Dodgers.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Because they're a better team.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

That's basically why I would favor them. But I think, like, zips, odds are 60, 40. Yeah, I think that that sounds pretty right.

[A]

Yeah. That strikes me as about right.

[B]

That's better chance than the brewers had. I guess I haven't looked yet, but surely. Yeah, no, actually, we thought the brewers had a better chance. That's interesting. But I guess my point is, like, the brewers were an underdog. Right? Like, they're right. That's. That's the kind of underdog that people mean when they say underdog. Not the Blue Jays. The Blue Jays have a top five payroll and, you know, a bunch of stars and big TV market. I don't know, like, yeah, that. That's the main point I'm trying to make is that, yes, these are both big market teams who play like big market teams and do big market things to make their teams better.

[A]

Yeah. I think that when it is reasonable to note the gap in resourcing on a payroll basis between the Dodgers and Toronto and it's like, it's a not small gap gap in absolute terms. But that doesn't mean that Toronto is under resourced. Right. Those are not. Those are not the same statement. Like, yeah, the. The Dodgers payroll is almost $400 million, but the. The Blue Jays are running a $260 million payroll and it's higher than that from a luxury tax perspective. This is not like, you know, they aren't the Pirates, they're not the Brewers. Like, this is a big market team. They have resource behind them. And when they were facing down a roster that was maybe going to be kind of shamblesy, they. They invested money in that. In that team, and they have so far been rewarded for that. So, you know, I concur.

[B]

I think that they. They're a lot more like the Yankees than people give them credit for.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

In like a good way. I mean that as in, like, when you have a hole in your team, like, one thing you could do is say, I've got a seven year plan to eventually replace this. Right. Or you could just be like, hey George Springer, come play for us.

[A]

Right, Right.

[B]

Anthony Santander. I mean that one didn't work out yet, but like come play for us. I greatly appreciate that about the Jays that they, they seem to understand what the money's for and I feel like a lot of teams don't necessarily. They operate in a lot of ways like a club that is trying to accrue small advantages, as many teams do.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But they don't then let that must accrue small advantages mindset confuse them out of like using the fact that they have money to like pay players for their services and get better. I really appreciate that about them and I think that that's going to be one thing that I really like about this World Series is this Toronto team is awesome and has been fun for years, I think, and has kind of gotten like short shrift and I'm glad that I'll get to see a little bit more of them on a national stage. I mean I've watched a lot of them, but I'm glad that everyone will get to watch a lot more of them.

[A]

Yeah, I think that it's a good matchup. I think that if I am able to disengage the fan part of my brain, the matchup that was likely to give us a much more interesting series than if Seattle had advanced and I can't wait for it to start. Ben, thank you so much for filling in for other Ben. You're prime Ben. When you're the co host, folks should check out. You've had a ton of stuff up on the site. Your Fielding Bible Awards balloting breakdowns are coming out. You obviously have the World Series Preview, the top 50 free agent ranking looms. But is there anything else that you want to plug or tell people to check out while you're here?

[B]

I'm very proud that I got to vote for the Fielding Bible Awards. Those are an award that I've cared about more than almost any other award since I've been following baseball. So yeah, I would just say if you like defense, if you like reading my five Things columns and stuff. One of the big advantages of that is I watch so much baseball to write those that I get to vote on these year end awards and feel both like I'm doing a service by doing a good job of this and feel like I'm not having to stress too much about making the wrong choice. I really enjoyed those I spent. I mean it would not shock me if I spent more aggregate hours thinking through my votes than like most of the rest of the panel combined. I really care a lot about those. I cared a lot about my write up for them and if you like that you should check them out because yeah, I put a lot into this.

[A]

Awesome. Well thank you so much for subbing for other Ben and we will see everyone in the World Series. Yeah, that'll do it for today. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com effectivelywild the following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, keep us ad free and get access to special perks. Christopher Zania, Alex D. Campbell, Greg Anglia. I hope I say I'm saying your name right, Greg, Alex Medina, and Kevin Edzant. Thanks to all of you. As a reminder, perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord Group, monthly bonus episodes, potential podcast appearances, prioritized email answers, ad free fangraphs memberships, and much more. They also include, depending on your level of support, access to our playoff live streams, next of which will take place this Friday during Game one of the World Series. We hope to see, or at least hear you there. Again. You can check out all the [e-mail] effectivelywild, you can join our Facebook group at facebook.com group effectivelywild and you can rate, review and subscribe to the podcast on itunes and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for us coming via [e-mail] or via the Patreon messaging system. If you're a supporter. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing assistance. We'll be back later this week with more episodes. Until then, have a great day Day.

[B]

What'S the greatest podcast of all? If you love a game of bas, it's effectively wild. It's effectively wild Wetland bike in back Rally.