FanGraphs Phillies vs. Padres NLCS Game 1 Chat

8:01	Ben Clemens: Hey everybody, welcome to our NLCS chat

8:01	Ben Clemens: The gang is all here — and by that I mean Kyle, Davy, and me

8:02	Ben Clemens: Let’s answer some questions and enjoy a fun game

8:02	Dalton Wilcox: Love that you can say neither of these two were built the one and only Right Way

8:02	Ben Clemens: Yeah I am very excited for that

8:02	Ben Clemens: “Build your team just like the Padres” is an impossible sentence

8:03	Tstats: Lets go phillies! 09 remake please!

8:03	South Philly Jawn: Tonight we root for the Phillies and prepare for an inevitable economic disaster.

8:03	South Philly Jawn: Just me or was that end of game mocking of the Guardians by the Yankees extremely petty and dumb (and something that’ll lead to some retaliation next season)?

8:03	Ben Clemens: I thought it was completely called for

8:03	Ben Clemens: That’s mocking Naylor in particular, and Naylor was asking for it

8:03	Ben Clemens: You don’t tell the other team you’re their daddy and not expect them to say something back

8:03	Ben Clemens: Particularly when you’re down a bunch of runs?

8:04	Ben Clemens: No blows were exchanged, no headhunting, just some enjoyable trash talk (and gestures)

8:04	Tstats: Last time they chanted whos your daddy wasn’t it at Pedro in 09?

8:04	Ben Clemens: Ha I think so, and I enjoyed that one too!

8:04	Kiermaier’s Piercing Green Eyes: A championship series with two teams high on fun and relatively low on evil! Glares at ALCS.

8:04	Ben Clemens: Yeah, I would say America will be rooting for the winner of this series but I guess some shocking amount of America roots for the Yankees

8:05	Dan Szymborski: And Szym for a hile!

8:05	Dan Szymborski: white

8:05	Dan Szymborski: while

8:05	Ben Clemens: Hey Dan, thanks for stopping by!

8:05	Dan Szymborski: Me exhausted, but I can’t resist coming to ruin a chat!

8:05	Erik: Which team got more bandwagon fans for this series? The Padres just by being not-Philadelphia?

8:06	Davy Andrews: I would agree, but I think Philly won over more people than you might guess. They’re awfully fun. (Also, hi everyone.)

8:06	Dan Szymborski: Yeah, this is a rather likable Phillies team

8:07	Ben Clemens: I think neutral fans will split, both of these teams are fun

8:07	Ben Clemens: Padres are more fun, to be fair. But they’re both fun

8:07	Tstats: Im here for Bryce and beating the Padres (disgruntled dodger fan)

8:08	Ben Clemens: Smoltz still thinks everyone is in the 90’s

8:08	Ben Clemens: Mentioning that in the playoffs, they watch video

8:08	Ben Clemens: Players watch lots of video about EVERYONE these days

8:08	Ben Clemens: “The playoffs are special, because you study your opponent” hasn’t been true in quite a while

8:09	Ben Clemens: Your advance team might do more, but players aren’t just rolling into town blind and spending their first two innings figuring out what the opposing pitcher throws

8:09	RTJ: Smoltz hasn’t turned his calendar over since 1999 (must be afraid of Y2K still)

8:09	Ben Clemens: Hey, it was scary!

8:10	Erik: Joe Davis adds more than Smoltz takes away I think

8:11	Ben Clemens: He’s excellent. Also he likes to reference FanGraphs, fingers crossed!

8:12	Tstats: Is it smoltz and Davis today (in class and only have live AB)

8:12	Ben Clemens: Yup

8:12	Ben Clemens: I’d love to see Randy Arozarena on third base against Darvish

8:12	Ben Clemens: I think he’d try to steal home on that leg hang

8:12	Guest: The AL teams are the worst and second worst. I’m an NL well wisher (in that I don’t wish them any specific harm)

8:13	Dan Szymborski: Of course, if the Padres win the World Series, you’ll have a lot of people on the bandwagon that called them chokers who would never win this time last year

8:14	Ben Clemens: Yeah, like Guest. Guest has all kinds of opinions in our chats!

8:13	Dan Szymborski: Cronenworthahelluvalot apparently

8:13	Ben Clemens: WOWOW

8:14	RTJ: well that was a decent play

8:14	Davy Andrews: Everyone here is at last 15 seconds ahead of me.

8:15	Erik: It’s fun when teams put defenders in places where guys are likely to hit it and then those defenders make cool plays. Hope nobody stops teams from doing that.

8:16	Ben Clemens: Don’t worry, the “shift ban” will still result in some pretty fun plays by defenders

8:16	Ben Clemens: Perhaps even better ones

8:16	Ben Clemens: I happen to love the 2b ranging over past second and Jetering it over to first play

8:16	Dan Szymborski: They’ll just be in slightly different places

8:16	Dan Szymborski: LIke when people act like 90 feet is best distance because a lot of close plays

8:16	Dan Szymborski: There will be a lot of close plays at any distance!

8:17	Dan Szymborski: It’s just they’re not close right now

8:17	Ben Clemens: Dan, it’s going to be three inches shorter next year. Baseball will be ruined forever

8:17	Dan Szymborski: You have 120 feet between bases and you’ll have bang bang plays that are ground balls to right

8:18	Electric guest: Tell me why I should like the Phillies. I have no opinion about them.

8:18	triumph: and it’s not actually 90 feet, anyway

8:18	Ben Clemens: Bryce Harper wears this amazing Philly Phanatic eyes headband. J.T. Realmuto is a catcher who hit an inside the park home run. Rhys Hoskins is underqualified to play first base which makes for some hilarious baseball. The pitching is really fun. David Robertson is a joy

8:19	Ben Clemens: Oh wow Harper isn’t wearing the Phanatic band today. Is it a home only thing?

8:19	Sean: I wonder if it takes Darvish longer to settle in than most guys. Harder to tell what’s working and what isn’t when you throw 40 different pitches

8:19	Davy Andrews: His ERA and FIP are indeed higher the first time through the order.

8:20	Dan Szymborski: Darvish doesn’t really have individual pitches. They’re all improvisations

8:20	That Guy: Is the argument of whether to use your best pitcher on three days rest one of those things that will be around forever?

8:21	Davy Andrews: Will starters be around forever?

8:21	MikeC: Nah always use Civale

8:21	Ben Clemens: The real travesty is that no one is yelling at them about the option to bullpen it

8:22	triumph: yes, because the dinosaurs will find their way into national booths

8:22	Dan Szymborski: Someday we’ll be the dinosaurs

8:22	Tstats: The three sliders is the best part of Darvish

8:22	Dan Szymborski: I wanna be 80 and going on about how the players of MY day weren’t disrespectful cyborgs

8:22	Ben Clemens: Three? I’m a buyer at three

8:23	Ben Clemens: I think my favorite Darvish anecdote was the time he saw Craig Kimbrel throwing a knuckle curve and just learned it

8:23	Ben Clemens: Like, oh you have a good curveball, I’m gonna take that

8:23	Kiermaier’s Piercing Green Eyes: The eight sliders is the best part of going to White Castle.

8:23	Kyle Kishimoto: Hello! I have arrived, excited to chat with everyone!

8:24	Dan Szymborski: Hey KK

8:24	Ben Clemens: Hey Kyle

8:24	That Guy: “In our day we didn’t have 12 pitchers pitching per game, we actually had one pitcher start and pitch half the game, and we liked it!”

8:24	Ben Clemens: We had a universal DH instead of three universal DH’s!

8:25	Tstats: Loopy, slider, slutter

8:25	Kyle Kishimoto: the fact that pitch com had to make more buttons just for Darvish is the greatest fact of all time

8:25	Fan: Darvish to Kimbrel

8:25	i read fangraphs: I’m pretty sure the Phillies already have 3 DHs

8:25	Ben Clemens: They’re a team ahead of their time

8:26	Electric guest: MULTIBALL! MULTIBALLL!

8:26	Ben Clemens: Where’s pinball enthusiast Dylan Higgins when you need him?

8:27	Ben Clemens: I’d be happy with a moat, of course

8:27	Ben Clemens: shout out to Sam Miller

8:28	That Guy: I still secretly hope that the real future of baseball is Super Baseball 2020 for the SNES

8:28	Dan Szymborski: ITS TOO LATE

8:28	Ben Clemens: Okay, so the graphic for Bell/Wheeler said ‘includes postseason’

8:28	Ben Clemens: Have they faced off against each other in the palyoffs? Certainly not right?

8:28	Lorraine: 5yr/200 offer to Judge. Full no trade, opt-out after each season. Mutual option 40M/20M buyout. Does he accept?

8:28	Ben Clemens: Like when has Bell made the playoffs?

8:28	Dan Szymborski: I don’t think he does

8:28	Dan Szymborski: Is 5/200 really THAT much different than 7/200?

8:28	Dan Szymborski: ANd he could have gotten that BEFORE the season

8:28	Ben Clemens: It’s like….. 30 million bucks different, but I’m with you Dan

8:29	Dan Szymborski: But I mean the expectation for the out years is so low anyway

8:29	Ben Clemens: you don’t think he could get 2/30 at 36? I bet he could

8:29	Ben Clemens: but yeah

8:29	Ben Clemens: it’s certainly not 80 million dollars different

8:30	i read fangraphs: Why did everyone get mad about upsets this playoffs when the Red Sox did this last year, Nationals 2019, or god forbid whatever the Cardinals did in 2006? It’s not like the Padres or Phillies aren’t super obscure out of the media’s focus teams

8:30	Ben Clemens: The Braves won literally last year after 88 wins

8:30	Kyle Kishimoto: I wonder what Twitter would have looked like after the Phillies won it all with 83 wins

8:30	Electric guest: Personally I’m mad that there weren’t more upsets on the AL side.

8:31	Davy Andrews: I too was rooting mainly for chaos.

8:31	Ben Clemens: Dan, if you were judge, would you accept 8/280?

8:31	Ben Clemens: I would

8:32	RTJ: We need to celebrate the regular season winner more. MLS has the Community Shield that is celebrated by players and fans alike.

8:32	Kyle Kishimoto: I would totally be in favor of a regular season trophy.

8:32	Davy Andrews: Me too, but I would want it to be comically small.

8:32	Tstats: Just a scrap of metal, literally

8:33	That Guy: Does anyone in the NHL, fan or player, care about the President’s Trophy?

8:33	Ben Clemens: No, but it helps that the Stanley Cup is the most iconic trophy in sports

8:33	Guest: Look at the 1991 World Series. The Braves & Twins went from the basement in 1990 to WS in 1991

8:33	Kyle Kishimoto: the Buffaloes and Swallows are about to face off in the Japan series for the second year in a row after both being last place in their leagues 2 years ago!

8:34	triumph: @That Guy–yes, because people dunk on the Presidents Trophy winner if they choke in the playoffs (see: 2019 Bolts)

8:34	Ben Clemens: The President’s Cup is actually super enjoyable. I love the superstition about not touching it, for example. Having a trophy that people hate getting is amazing.

8:34	Ben Clemens: Okay, I’d just like to point out that John Smoltz has a pronounced TTO split

8:35	svan: in the top of the first, did i hear smoltz correctly in saying something like: darvish tends to get himself into deep counts because the full-count strikeout is valorized in japan…? is…that a thing?

8:36	Ben Clemens: I missed that, but I can’t comment either way. Never heard of it

8:35	Davy Andrews: Not just as a pitcher. He also talks about golf a lot more in the late innings.

8:36	Electric guest: “He (Darvish) gets tougher as he stays in the game longer”. Fact check, please.

8:36	Ben Clemens: Inaccurate

8:36	Ben Clemens: He has very standard career TTO splits

8:36	Ben Clemens: it’s like…. .279/.283/.299 in wOBA, or something

8:36	Erik: Go Tetsuto Yamada

8:36	Kyle Kishimoto: nah sincerely, a buffaloes fan

8:37	Dan Szymborski: See, he just makes up breaking pitches as he goes along

8:37	Dan Szymborski: You know how a transmission has gears?

8:38	i read fangraphs: Davy said earlier that his ERA and FIP are higher consistently higher than normal in the first, so it’s kinda true

8:38	i read fangraphs: So it’s kinda true

8:38	Dan Szymborski: Darvish is a CVT (if CVTs didn’t suck)

8:38	Ben Clemens: Yeah… first inning is a high scoring inning though, etc

8:38	Ben Clemens: The concept of a non-sucky CVT doesn’t make sense to me

8:38	Dan Szymborski: That was the only thing I hated about my Subaru! That CVT

8:39	Davy Andrews: I should’ve looked at career, not just 2022. Career it’s actually not true for ERA.

8:39

Kyle Kishimoto: darvish’s breaking pitches are just a spectrum of movement, it’s insane

Tangotiger

@tangotiger

It would be logistically impossible to enforce.

These are all of Darvish’s pitches. As you can see, he has multiple variations of cutters and sliders. And it would be quite easy to say that he SHOULD have thrown a pitch to drop 30 inches, but instead it dropped 24 inches.

Now..

Joe Posnanski@JPosnanski

I offer a really stupid idea for discussion purposes. joeposnanski.substack.com/p/a-really-stu…

18 Oct 2022

8:39	Ben Clemens: Wow, Darvish is now taking curveballs from pitchers who aren’t even on his team

8:39	Ben Clemens: that’s wild!

8:40	i read fangraphs: First time through the order, I meant

8:40	Kyle Kishimoto: darvish splits through the order: .624/.651/.688 ops

8:40	Dan Szymborski: (I’m happy to have a normal transmission again)

8:41	Ben Clemens: I drove a stick shift as a teenager and swore by it, but as far as I can tell automatic transmissions are just great now

8:42	Electric guest: Sonny Gray works the same way, right? Just a bunch of different breaking ball shapes depending on what he’s feeling.

8:42	Tstats: One of my favorite quirks in pitching is the cutting splitter, I saw a few years back on Sharks pitch mix page his cut just as much as it ran

8:43	Ben Clemens: Sonny Gray will forever be a ‘bad slider’ guy to me even though his slider is great

8:43	Davy Andrews: Darvish inning splits here, by the way: https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/yu-darvish-506433?stats=s…

8:43	Ben Clemens: B/c of his rant about the Yankees’ philosophy

8:43	Ben Clemens: and because I am a company man, here are his career times through the order splits, available on FanGraphs!

8:43	Ben Clemens: https://www.fangraphs.com/players/yu-darvish/13074/splits?position=P&s…

8:44	bosoxforlife: Does the new 3 game WC format penalize the best teams? The first impression is that the rust really affected the Braves and Dodgers.

8:44	Dan Szymborski: I doubt it, but it’s hard to test

8:44	Ben Clemens: My prior is that it does not. Hard to say from 4 series, half of which the favorites won

8:45	Kyle Kishimoto: nah this is just reading too much into a sample size of 2 teams – each team was playing sim games to keep their hitters fresh and i guarantee every team would take a bye if offered

8:45	Ben Clemens: Basically whatever I thought before this postseason, I’d still think

8:45	Kyle Kishimoto: also like, even if rust was a factor it’s definitely not enough to make teams want to take a coin flip chance of winning their WC series

8:46	Ben Clemens: I guess the argument would be relative to the previous format. Obviously in the current format you’d always take the bye

8:46	Erik: Aren’t all pitches just a spectrum of movement or something

8:46

Kyle Kishimoto: yes, but darvish uniquely throws a ton of hybrid pitch shapes that most pitchers don’t do. he’s talked about how he does this before and it’s incredibly interesting!

Rob Friedman

@PitchingNinja

How does Yu Darvish change the speed and shape of his Cutter??

More amazing stuff from @faridyu, pitch grip genius. 🤯

If you’re a Pitcher, Coach or Fan of Pitching, you can’t miss this.

Watch the FULL 20 minute discussion!

YouTube Link–>youtu.be/850Ju8-JxZU

13 Mar 2021

8:47	Davy Andrews: I really loved this.

8:47	Ben Clemens: But I actually think the three games no off days nature is a pretty rough punishment for the non-bye teams. The Phillies only got to start Wheeler and Nola once each. The Braves just, uh, sucked

8:47	Ben Clemens: Did you guys know that Charlie Morton, Max Scherzer, and Justin Verlander each have 13.50 ERA’s this postseason? My dad gave me that stat and I loved it too much not to share it

8:48	i read fangraphs: How much does pitch sequencing matter? If every catcher held a random number generator weighted to what overall percentages of each pitch should be thrown (calibrated for handedness, etc. if you really want), would that be meaningfully different from the status quo?

8:48

Kyle Kishimoto: it’s something that’s quite hard to study but it’s been done before. i think there would be an explosion in that type of research if robo umps became a thing and now game calling would likely be the most important catcher defensive skill

https://baseballaheadinthecount.blogspot.com/2021/08/an-attempt-to-mea…

8:50	RTJ: The rust argument has been around forever in the NFL playoff format as well, but in reality playoff games/series are just about random when you have a .640 team playing a .590 team

8:50

Kyle Kishimoto: i’m gonna link this tweet for all the people who try to draw overall conclusions about teams from a 3/5/7 game sample

Tangotiger

@tangotiger

@Cubsfan_97 @EWPod Ok, well that sounds like my work. The number is 14 games for the NBA… that’s the number of games needed where half of what you see in the W/L record is real and half is random variation. Here are those (historical) numbers:
12 NFL
14 NBA
36 NHL
70 MLB

5 Oct 2021

8:50	Dan Szymborski: Yeah, Lopez/Baumer/Matthews got 75 for MLB

8:50	Erik: That’s a great clip. Feels like something more guys should experiment with.

8:51	Ben Clemens: It’s hard to be Yu Darvish, as it turns out. More people should experiment, but he’s probably a unicorn.

8:51	Dan Szymborski: Whatever it is, it would have to be a HUGE series

8:52	Kyle Kishimoto: @Dan, I’ve cited your Padres/Dodgers preview article about a thousand times in the past week, specifically the part about how you would need a 151 game series to give the Dodgers a 90/10 advantage

8:52	Ben Clemens: Darvish is so fun to watch

8:52	Ben Clemens: It’s nice of the teams to not get any baserunners so we can ramble on about playoff formats, but I just thought I’d interject that he’s great

8:52	Kyle Kishimoto: he’s gotta be on a very short list of pitchers who top out at over a foot of sweep and over 20 inches of fastball carry

8:52	Dan Szymborski: That was a fun thing to experiment with!

8:53	Ben Clemens: I like how he threw 94 past him, and then just came back with 97

8:53	Ben Clemens: like, that’s not cool!

8:54	Ben Clemens: The spin on that splitter was very aesthetically pleasing

8:54	Ben Clemens: Probably had a crazy amount of seam-shifted wake, too. It caught one seam more or less perfectly on the back of the ball

8:55	RTJ: I assume the AI has a nightmare of a time identifying categories of pitches that Darvish is throwing ?

8:55	Kyle Kishimoto: oh yeah, absolutely. pitchinfo thinks basically everything he throws is a slider, but hawkeye distinguishes between cutters and sliders pretty well.

8:56	Ben Clemens: Ah yes. Trying to hit a home run is doing the pitcher a favor

8:56	Ben Clemens: My least favorite ‘here’s how to hit’ argument

8:57	i read fangraphs: If he really wanted to mess with the pitcher, he’d go for a walk

8:57	Ben Clemens: Well, that’s only leading off an inning where you trail, obviously

8:57	Ben Clemens: But at that point you should definitely be trying to walk not hoer

8:57	Ben Clemens: homer*

8:58	bosoxforlife: How close to impossible is it for the Giants in 2021 and the Orioles in 2022 to both come to very, very close to touching their 99th percentile? One seems okay but back to back years tests the limits of probability.

8:58	Dan Szymborski: Long term, I don’t have more +99th percentiles than expected by random chance

9:01	Dan Szymborski: You should have a 99th percentile team in a quarter of seasons

9:01	Ben Clemens: Wait, uh, John Smoltz says he doesn’t like scoring runs early

9:01	Ben Clemens: Okay this is absurd

9:01	Davy Andrews: Oh man.

9:02	Ben Clemens: It’s just so frustrating to have this as the voice of the playoffs with no one saying “wait John this sounds weird”

9:02	Kyle Kishimoto: someone needs to make a john smoltz galaxy brain meme

9:02	Dan Szymborski: And in any case, the O’s were only 97th!@

9:03	Dan Szymborski: The playoff odds were near 0 because ZiPS didn’t expect that 83 would make the AL much

9:04	Ben Clemens: I understand that he’s a gruff old legend who calls it like he sees it and doesn’t take any crap from anybody, but I dunno, Aaron Goldsmith has asked him to elaborate when they do games together and it’s worked out well

9:05	Ben Clemens: I had someone ask me whether I’d consider our odds a sham if the Orioles got within 10 games of a playoff spot

9:05	Kyle Kishimoto: was that person Adam Wainwright?

9:05	Ben Clemens: And I think I said “No, wait, what?”

9:05	Ben Clemens: I still think Wainwright meant it a little tongue in cheek

9:06	Ben Clemens: But maybe that’s just b/c he’s my favorite

9:06	Kyle Kishimoto: i loved that article you wrote that was like “nah we’re right, x% of teams historically with x% playoff odds have made it”

9:07	Ben Clemens: I have no idea if we’re right! But we seem less wrong than the alternative of guessing randomly

9:07	Ben Clemens: “Both teams are waiting for a mistake to hit, but there haven’t been many”

9:07	Ben Clemens: these guys are both pumping middle middle fastballs lol

9:08	The 6ix: Congrats to Meg on her Mariners game three article. It was poetry; everyone should go read it (and then come back here).

9:08	Guest Slider: Even Haldabrand tried a walk with Galadriel before going for thehomer

9:08	Kyle Kishimoto: the philadephia philadelphias are on the board!

9:09	Ben Clemens: juuuuuuust enough

9:09	Dan Szymborski: The Philadelphiers

9:09	Ben Clemens: If I were facing Harper, I’d be feeding him fastballs

9:09	Ben Clemens: I know that doesn’t make much sense historically but he broke his thumb

9:10	Sharps: Does Darvish have a good shot at having the biggest mph difference between the average of his 20 slowest pitches of the season and 20 fastest?

9:10	Kyle Kishimoto: darvish’s difference is about 30 mph (68 to 97.7), unless greinke has thrown that many eephuses i would guess he’s the highest

9:11	Davy Andrews: Harper heard you, Ben.

9:12	Ben Clemens: He sure did!

9:12	Ben Clemens: I still like the approach though

9:12	MikeC: Verducci pulling out the axl rose comp for darvish..disavow

9:13	Kyle Kishimoto: as a pitcher i generally wouldn’t complain about an opposite field non barreled fly ball, but harper is just too strong

9:13	Ben Clemens: I was not expecting a Guns n Roses reference

9:13	Davy Andrews: And how is it not about Harper’s headbands?

9:13	Dan Szymborski: Bohm seemed mildly displeased

9:14	Ben Clemens: Dan the Mild

9:14	Tstats: Kyle, I did the Smoltz galaxy brain, how can I put the image here

9:14	Kyle Kishimoto: you could upload to imgur

9:14	Erik: If the typical starting pitcher could add a pitch that was pretty unexceptional but passable enough to throw 5% of the time, should he?

9:14	Ben Clemens: My guess: yes

9:14	Ben Clemens: My research on this: nonexistent

9:15	Ben Clemens: Unless it cut into training time for improving their other pitches, which seems totally believable

9:15	Kyle Kishimoto: I believe for 2 pitch guys adding a 3rd a small fraction of the time, even a below average pitch, is generally good

9:15	Davy Andrews: I imagine it would depend on the quality of his other offerings and how it played off them. Does it tunnel with something else and make it better?

9:16	Kyle Kishimoto: you can read more about tunneling (and how cutters are a great example of the pitch davy is talking about) here! https://www.prospectslive.com/prospects-live/2022/8/23/the-mystic-art-…

9:16	bosoxforlife: When Bohm took that third strike I was reminded of Ernie Harwell and his famous line “He stood there like a house by the side of the road and watched that go by.” Memories like this make me realize why baseball still means so much to me.

9:16	Ben Clemens: Great baseball announcers are so great

9:17	Ben Clemens: I have to say, Wheeler’s plan of pounding the strike zone against everyone other than Juan Soto is an interesting one

9:18	Dan Szymborski:

9:18	RTJ: interesting = good?

9:18	Dan Szymborski: It can be!

9:19	Ben Clemens: I don’t think it makes a ton of sense here, but I dunno, I suppose I can see it

9:19	Ben Clemens: Not so much if you’re going to try to get back into the count, though

9:19	Jeremy: Good job by the ump calling that second strike; Wheeler missed his spot by a fair bit.

9:19	Ben Clemens: Yeah excellent work there. Realmuto was fully cross-body

9:19	Guest Slider: “One will always corrupt. Two will divide,” she explains, to which Celebrimbor adds that “with three, there is balance.”

9:19	Dan Szymborski: So THAT’s where A-Rod got the idea

9:20	Ben Clemens: No, doesn’t A-Rod like the even ones?

9:20	Dan Szymborski: I mean, he messed it up a bit

9:20	Ben Clemens: That was an excellent pitch

9:20	Davy Andrews: I think we should take a moment to appreciate the city connect colors on Soto’s shinguard.

9:20	Ben Clemens: I mean, I think the umpire was going to ring him up on anything close after missing the last call, but it was also a strike

9:21	Dan: Oswaldo Cabrera hits well enough to start in outfield on a playoff team known for it’s offense and plays competent SS defense. Doesn’t this sound like someone who should have a full season major league role or was he simply not this good 6 months ago.

9:21	Ben Clemens: That’s a great question. I think he was more blocked than anything else

9:21	Ben Clemens: When you don’t nkow how a young player will perform in the majors, maybe it’s safer to run out low-variance veterans

9:22	Ben Clemens: I bet that if you asked the Yankees if they’d accept this year’s Oswaldo Cabrera line, they’d say yes and cut Hicks before the season

9:22	Kyle Kishimoto: is oswaldo the lightest player in the league, at least by the weights we list on the site? listed at 145

9:24	Ben Clemens: Probably. I don’t for a second believe that he’s lighter than McKenzie, though

9:24	Ben Clemens: (listed at 165)

9:24	Dan Szymborski: McKenzie will blow away in a small wind

9:24	Davy Andrews: But he’s seven inches taller.

9:25	Davy Andrews: I would love to write that article: Which MLB player would make the best sail for a pirate ship?

9:25	Dude: What should the Padres do at first base next year?

9:26	Ben Clemens: Mmmm…. I don’t think Eguy Rosario can actually play first, and I don’t really know of any other obvious in-system fixes

9:26	Ben Clemens: They could sign one of the various FA stopgaps, or maybe move Drury there?

9:28	Erik: They should go get a veteran leader type who’s won a World Series and makes a lot of contact.

9:28	Ben Clemens: The Red Sox have one they could part with, for the right price

9:28	bosoxforlife: Vogelbach would be the anchor.

9:29	RTJ: Who do you have as MVP of Wild Card + LDS combined? Yordan?

9:30	Kyle Kishimoto: maybe not the #1 MVP but Aaron Nola deserves some credit

9:29	Dan Szymborski:

9:30	RTJ: That makes him less aerodynamic though, so Dan is still correct

9:30	Ben Clemens: Hmmm…. I might go with Aaron Nola

9:30	Ben Clemens: 12 scoreless innings seems good

9:30	Ben Clemens: And big shout out to Trevor Stephan, who is definitely not the MVP but was maybe the best reliever in the postseason

9:30	Ben Clemens: By statline at least

9:30	Ben Clemens: jeez

9:31	Ben Clemens: Yeah Kyle! Agree on Nola

9:32	That Guy: Harper has had a pretty excellent postseason career up to this point, do you think this perception is hurt by his team getting bounced so early before this year?

9:32	bosoxforlife: I vote for Harper. It took me quite awhile before I appreciated him but his passion and the way he structured his contract with no buy outs has completely won me over

9:32	Davy Andrews: I might put Harper and Grisham in the conversation.

9:32	Tstats: https://ibb.co/r6Tq5z5

9:32	Ben Clemens: Both good calls. There have been a lot of standout performances, though none that have been Arozarenesque

9:33	Guest Slider: Can Harper hold a sail with a broken thumb?

9:33	Kyle Kishimoto: if you can hold a bat, you can hold a sail

9:33	Ben Clemens:

9:33	Davy Andrews: That got me.

9:34	Tstats: Playoffs into today .213/.289/.349 with like a 27%K rate is what I just hear Sciambi say on ESPN radio

9:35	Ben Clemens: That seems wrong. We have him at .263/.351/.596 before today, which you can see on his player page

9:34	Kyle Kishimoto:

9:35	Dan Szymborski: oh, right, the “hit” thing!

9:35	Dude: Dan are you using an AI image generator? Or good old photoshop? The quality is great

9:35	Dan Szymborski: Midvalley!

9:35	RTJ: Myers seemed annoyed that Fangraphs chat wants to replace him for next year

9:36	Ben Clemens: I’m a huge Wil Myers fan. But he’s a free agent

9:36	Mateo: what do you think the Padres plan to do with Luis Campusano moving forward?

9:37	Dan Szymborski: I don’t think even they no

9:37	Dan Szymborski: know

9:37	Dan Szymborski: The older I get, the worse my typing! lol

9:37	Ben Clemens: my Nats fan friend about Harper’s postseason career: “Yeah Bryce was not the problem. It was Drew Storen and Matt Williams and Max Scherzer giving up home runs”

9:37	Dan Szymborski: There’s this weird tendency of people to blame their best player for stuff instead of their worst

9:37	Davy Andrews: He also had the flu during the 2012 NLDS, which make up more than 20% of his PO ABs.

9:37	Davy Andrews: I am not over the 2012 NLDS>

9:38	Dan Szymborski: until the HR chase, there were a surprising number of Giants fans who thought Bonds held them back in the playoffs

9:38	Kyle Kishimoto: oh my god i literally saw a tweet today saying that bonds wasn’t a clutch hitter because he just got walked in high leverage situations

9:38	Ben Clemens: Davy I went to the 2012 NLDS G5

9:38	Ben Clemens: Wearing a David Freese jersey

9:38	Davy Andrews: I was at G4 and G5! Very definitely not wearing a David Freese jersey.

9:38	Ben Clemens: I quickly took it off after the Cards came back

9:39	Ben Clemens: I took the Amtrak down and went to the stadium with my stuff for the weekend, just couldn’t miss it

9:39	Davy Andrews: That’s awesome.

9:39	bosoxforlife: I have placed Williams replacing Zimmermann with Storen as the #1 worst managerial move of all time.

9:39	Ben Clemens: Yeah…. it was a pretty bad one

9:39	Ben Clemens: Leaving Kershaw in there in relief in 2019 is not great, and tehre’s Grady Little

9:39	bosoxforlife: That says something when you realize I am a Red Sox and Grady Little is only in 2ns place.

9:39	Ben Clemens: Indeed!

9:40	triumph: to be fair, Bonds getting walked wouldn’t mean he wasn’t a clutch hitter #howcanyounotbepedanticaboutbaseball

9:41	triumph: would* thank you, autocorrect

9:41	That Guy: I distinctly remember this very chat trying to defend taking out Zimmerman rather than letting him finish the game! Hypocrisy!!! /s

9:41	tamuaggiedude: Will Wheeler make it through seven? Will the Pads witchcraft show up again?

9:41	Ben Clemens: I think he’ll get through 7. This is not a great lineup aside from the studs at the top

9:42	Jeremy: SCHWARBER!

9:42	The 6ix: Wow

9:42	Ben Clemens: That’s some home run

9:42	Kyle Kishimoto: 119.7/25 488 FEET

9:43	Jeremy: Hardest ball Schwarber’s ever hit, right?

9:43	Ben Clemens: I believe so

9:43	Ben Clemens: jeeeeez

9:44	Tz: Matheny bringing Wacha in to pitch the 9th in a game 7….Matheny not bringing in Choate against Big Papi because…. Matheny

9:44	Dan Szymborski: OK all, I’m headed out for the night, enjoy the last three!

9:44	Dan Szymborski: well, last four!

9:44	Kyle Kishimoto:

9:44	Ben Clemens: Have a good one, Dan, thanks for hanging out

9:45	Davy Andrews: Yup. Previous high was 117.6 mph.

9:45	Jackson: guessing that is out in 30/30 ballparks

9:45	Davy Andrews: Bye, Dan!

9:45	Ben Clemens: Somehow 32/30

9:45	Ben Clemens: it would get out twice in Yankee Stadium

9:45	tamuaggiedude: Times like these that I love that my feed is a minute behind

9:46	Davy Andrews: Right there with you, dude.

9:46	bosoxforlife: The Schwarber.I watched for the Red Sox in 2021 was a great hitter, not just a TTO guy. I was surprised by his microscopic average this year and immense number of K’s

9:46	Ben Clemens: He’s been hurt a lot this year. I think he’s an excellent hitter, more than just a one-dimensional guy

9:47	The 6ix: Dugout interviews are a waste of time. Could Schwarber be more boring?

9:47	Ben Clemens: Yeah, I don’t think they’re a great idea in the playoffs

9:48	Ben Clemens: I generally love letting players talk more, and getting their faces on camera more often, but in the playoffs everyone is too locked in

9:48	Erik: If the dugout interviews brought real insights, having them right there and right after the fact would be amazing. But they don’t.

9:50	Ben Clemens: Castellanos’s catch is going to be like 50% catch probability

9:51	Ben Clemens: But he made that look hard

9:51	Kyle Kishimoto: my guess is 70% after watching the replay

9:51	Ben Clemens: I just… I’d mute the sound if I didn’t have to do this chat

9:51	Ben Clemens: This sucks

9:52	Jeremy: Wheeler is a really bad match up.for a team that likes to work the count.

9:52	Ben Clemens: Yeah also a bad matchup for teams that like scoring runs

9:52	Ben Clemens: He’s really good and also really aggressive

9:54	Davy Andrews: In case anybody’s curious, Schwarber’s home run is tied for the 23rd hardest hit ball in the statcast era. Stanton and Judge have 20 of the top 22.

9:54	Whiskers: how are MLB coaches compensated in the playoffs? Do they get a cut of the playoff revenue similar to players? I recognize head coaches would probably coach in the playoffs for free as winning impacts their next contract , but I’m thinking of the trainers, bench coaches, etc…

9:54	Ben Clemens: I have no idea! But I’m going to try to find out now.

9:56	The 6ix: What is the split of starter versus reliever innings so far this playoffs? It feels like there have been more dominant and long outings by starters this year. In the last few years relievers have pitched an increasing higher and higher proportion of innings.

9:56	Ben Clemens: This sounds like a thing I should write about, and so I will, but finding playoff stats is super annoying

9:57	Ben Clemens: Gotta scrape them, basically

9:59	Ben Clemens: Hey Davy, who are the other 2 batted balls in the top 22?

9:59	Ben Clemens: Oneil Cruz and….

9:59	Davy Andrews: Gary Sanchez.