Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. As in other recent offseasons, FanGraphs is once again facilitating this offseason a contract-crowdsourcing project, the idea being to harness the wisdom of the crowds to the end of better understanding the 2018-19 free-agent market.
Who we choose to be when we know someone else is watching is very revealing. It isn’t necessarily who we actually are; researchers have long fretted over the corrupting influence of observed observation. People pick their noses in their cars alone; they remember Kleenex when Grandma is near. But who we decide to be when we can feel another person’s gaze does tell us something about who we think we should be, or perhaps who we wish we were. Someone who sat up straighter, or who knew the right, snappy thing to say. Someone who was kinder. Someone like ourselves, only different. A not-a-nose-picker.
Most people go through life without inspiring much sustained notice, save for the odd grocery-store lurker. But a funny thing happens during October baseball, when the stakes are high and we all find ourselves watching the same games. The drama in front of us serves to make us aware of strangers’ keen notice.
And so I thought we might look back on a few moments from the playoffs thus far, when we saw people seeing us, so as to learn who it is they are when they know we’re watching.
It’s a small moment. With Travis Shaw up to bat in the third inning of Game One of the NLDS, the broadcast pans over the Brewers dugout. Ryan Braun is putting away his batting helmet and gloves (he has just struck out), and makes ever-so-brief eye contact with the camera. He notices us noticing him and shouts, “GO TRAV!”
| 7:52 |
: Welcome everyone. We’ll get things going in a moment, so keep the questions coming, but first a poll.
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| 7:52 |
:
Who wins tonight?
Dodgers (46.1% | 36 votes)
Red Sox (53.8% | 42 votes)
Total Votes: 78
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| 7:57 |
: GRAVY FRIES
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| 7:57 |
: I like opening with a non sequitur.
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| 7:58 |
: We are hear for the base ball match. Thank you all for joining us on your telematronic typescribers.
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| 7:58 |
: How many “The Price is Wrong” headlines if Price scuffles?
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The worst I was ever fooled was in Game 2 of last year’s World Series. Before all the madness in extra innings — before all the madness in the following five games — there was Cody Bellinger, batting against Ken Giles with two out and none on in the bottom of the ninth of a 3-3 contest. Giles fell behind 1-and-0, and then he wanted to go away with a fastball. What he did instead was throw a fastball over the middle of the plate, just above the knees. Bellinger took one of his mighty rips, and he made what looked to be perfect contact. As the ball rocketed off the barrel, the fans in the background all rose to their feet. The camera showed much of the black night sky. At one point, the screen cut off part of the right fielder’s lower body, cementing the expectation that the ball would land several rows deep. Bellinger had hit a walk-off home run. Except that he hadn’t — Josh Reddick caught the ball on the track. The inning was over, and some time after that, the Dodgers would lose.
Bellinger is not the only guy to ever trick a viewer. Anyone who’s followed even a handful of games on TV or radio knows that even the professionals get fooled. It can be hard to read a fly ball, after all, so for the first few split seconds, you’re trying to read the swing. Sometimes a good-looking swing just gets under the ball. Sometimes a good-looking swing hits the ball off the end of the bat. Batted balls can be deceptive. I’m not telling you anything you didn’t know.
What seems to be true about Bellinger is that he’s deceptive unusually often. I don’t even watch the Dodgers on a regular basis until the playoffs get started, and I can recall multiple times that Bellinger has tricked me. He got me again yesterday, if only for a moment. Cody Bellinger seems to have a knack for hitting apparent home runs that aren’t home runs. Mostly, they’re outs. The opposite of a home run. Each one is an emotional roller-coaster, concentrated within a matter of seconds.
In honor of this weird Cody Bellinger quirk, then, I will present to you a whole bunch of videos. This isn’t even exhaustive or complete. A man has only so much time in the day. But, below, you’ll find 13 video clips of Bellinger not hitting a home run. They’re not all equally deceptive, but they’re all some degree of deceptive, each and every one. Let’s watch Cody Bellinger almost get all of it, together.
Neither the Red Sox’ four-run margin of victory, nor the ease with which Craig Kimbrel finished off the ninth, really do justice to the intensity of Game One of the World Series. Despite the final score, only 10 of the game’s 80 plays took place with a run differential greater than two runs. There were 11 high-leverage plays overall, and the average leverage index was 1.14, which is higher than normal. It was a game with important, exciting moments — and none were more important than certain moments of the seventh inning.
In terms purely of win expectancy, Eduardo Nunez’s three-run homer in the bottom of the seventh off Alex Wood was the game’s top play. When Nunez stepped to the plate with runners on first and second, two outs, and a one-run lead, the Red Sox’ chances of winning the game were 77% — which is to say, good but far from from certain. After his three-run homer — which came off the bat with a launch angle just under 20 degrees but managed to clear the Green Monster, anyway — Boston’s win probability increased to 96%. The game was pretty much over.
Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. As in other recent offseasons, FanGraphs is once again facilitating this offseason a contract-crowdsourcing project, the idea being to harness the wisdom of the crowds to the end of better understanding the 2018-19 free-agent market.
| 1:28 |
: Kiley is here. Some quick plugging of things I’ve done lately |
| 1:29 |
: Podcast with |
| 1:29 |
: The even orgs most likely to win the next 5 world series: https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/heres-who-will-win-the-next-five-world… |
| 1:30 |
: I tweeted this morning that it sounds like Doug Melvin is the favorite for the Mets job (though it obviously isn’t a done deal yet): Heard from multiple sources last night that Doug Melvin is now the clear favorite for the Mets GM job
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| 1:30 |
: Lastly, I just bought a house and am currently dealing with contractors. May not recommend that one, but it’s what I’ve been doing |
| 1:30 |
: Do you think the Reds will eventually trade Eugenio Suarez with Nick Senzel and Jonathan India waiting in the background? |
Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. As in other recent offseasons, FanGraphs is once again facilitating this offseason a contract-crowdsourcing project, the idea being to harness the wisdom of the crowds to the end of better understanding the 2018-19 free-agent market.
| 8:06 |
: Hey folks, it looks like I’m throwing out first pitch here! Welcome to our World Series Game 1 chat.
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| 8:06 |
: As writers, do you prefer this kind of matchup of big money teams with lots of stars, or is it better to have an underdog?
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| 8:07 |
: Yah, boo.
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| 8:07 |
: I just wanted to say thank you for the wonderful work you all do. Looking forward to your coverage of the World Series! Hope it’s a good one!
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| 8:07 |
: It isn’t all wonderful
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| 8:07 |
: Would Yasiel Puig benefit spiritually from growing out a moustache in homage to that sported by Bill “The Butcher” Cutting from Gangs of New York?
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The World Series begins later this very evening, and I don’t know who’s going to win. Nobody knows who’s going to win. It is impossible to know who’s going to win. It’s even almost impossible to know which team ought to be favored. Yeah, the Red Sox finished with baseball’s best record. But the Dodgers added Manny Machado in the middle of the year. The Dodgers finished with baseball’s second-best BaseRuns record. The Red Sox finished in third. Each team deserves to be where it is, and each team would make a deserving champion. Whatever happens over the next four to seven games will mean both everything and nothing.
Given that this is literally the World Series, though, everyone’s looking for edges. We’re all just looking for edges. Potential x-factors, if you will, that could conceivably give one team a leg up. And there’s one statistical area I’ve seen discussed in plenty of spaces — the Red Sox’s seeming vulnerability against left-handed pitching. It’s a good lineup, but it’s a lineup that had a big platoon split. Perhaps that could be enough to put the Dodgers over the top. Handedness could effectively neuter Boston’s bats.
But it seems to me there’s not anything there. The headline already gave this post away. You don’t need to keep reading in case you’re in a rush. For those of you still sticking around, I’ll take a few minutes to explain myself.
