Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the inaccessibility of playoff stats and the average length of this year’s playoff games, then discuss whether we’re really witnessing a revolution in postseason pitcher usage before breaking down each of the division series, analyzing the latest controversial managerial decisions, and bidding farewell to two more eliminated teams.

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I have to admit to a bias. I’ve been aware of Tanner Roark since he entered the major leagues a few years ago, but my evaluation failed to evolve. In my head, Roark was still the guy he was when he made his first impression, as a strike-throwing and hittable sort who seemed to pitch with the intent of beating his peripherals. It is my job to try to know as much as I can, and I concede that this is my own failing, but in my partial defense, Roark hasn’t been close to the most interesting member of the Nationals’ pitching staff. Why would I choose to concentrate on Roark, when I could focus instead on Max Scherzer or Stephen Strasburg?

I have to admit to another bias. I find it tempting to believe that the larger population perceives things in the same way that I do. I haven’t kept up with Roark; therefore, I bet no one has kept up with Roark. Sometimes this gut feeling is correct. Sometimes, I’m just out of the loop. In any case, I’m about to put you all to the test. This isn’t going to be about me anymore.

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Yesterday, the Nationals lost Game 3 of their division series to the Cubs 2-1, and now trail by the same margin in the series. Despite a brilliant outing from Max Scherzer, the Cubs managed to plate a couple of runs against the team’s bullpen, putting the team on the brink of elimination in the first round once again. And because the Cubs got their runs with Sammy Solis and Oliver Perez on the mound, with Max Scherzer, Ryan Madson and Sean Doolittle all watching, Dusty Baker has come under fire for his bullpen management once again.

But on this one, I have to say that the criticism feels a bit unfair. If we look at the circumstances and what actually happened, it seems like Baker mostly made reasonable decisions.

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The Indians are the last team of their kind standing, the last small-market club remaining in the playoff field, and it may not be all that surprising.

On Friday, this author wondered whether we might be entering an era of super teams. One reason to think that might be the case? This year, for the first time since 1999, six teams produced run differentials of 140 or greater (the equivalent of about 0.9 runs per game). Also: all eight teams that advanced to the divisional round of the playoffs posted run differentials of 100 or greater. Maybe it’s just an outlying season, maybe it’s nothing. On the other hand, it’s a rare event, fueled also in part by the quantity of non-competitive teams in the sport.

That a lot of those non-competitive teams also possess only modest spending power oughtn’t come as a surprise. In a post last month, Craig Edwards found that baseball’s age of parity was over, that the relationship between wins and payroll has grown stronger.

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This past Sunday’s Notes column led with Alex Bregman talking about how hitting the ball in the air became a priority once he’d signed with the Astros. That approach paid off in spades yesterday. With his team down a run, the 2015 draft pick took a Chris Sale pitch over Fenway Park’s Green Monster to tie the game in the eighth inning. Houston went on to win 5-4 and advance to the ALCS.

When I approached Bregman after the game, his first words were, “How was the launch angle on that?” (I hadn’t looked it up yet, but it was 32 degrees.) Asked if he liked whatever the launch angle was, he smiled and said that he loved it.

Needless to say, the youngster was in seventh heaven.

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In Monday’s pivotal Game 3, the Cubs beat the Nationals because Anthony Rizzo hit a stupid little doink. The inning before, the game was tied up when Albert Almora came off the bench to rip an RBI single. Almora hit for Kyle Schwarber, who had opened the door for the Nationals in the top of the sixth when two errors on the same play gave Daniel Murphy three bases. Almora hit for Schwarber because Dusty Baker relieved Max Scherzer with Sammy Solis for some reason. Scherzer was relieved immediately after allowing his first hit of his entire game, which was 19 outs old.

For a game that had only seven hits and three runs, there’s an awful lot there for people to talk about. The Cubs now find themselves in a commanding position, after coming uncomfortably close to getting shut out. There’s resiliency to discuss. Baseball luck. Managerial second-guessing. There’s almost everything you could possibly want. I’d like to discuss a called ball in the top of the fifth inning that didn’t matter for beans.

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In the wild and remote southeast corner of Oregon, tucked near to the eastern side of the Owyhee River, there’s a canyon that used to be known as Dugout Gulch. It was renamed Leslie Gulch in remembrance of Hiram E. Leslie, an area rancher who, in 1882, was struck by lightning. It wouldn’t be fair to say that getting struck by lightning was a habit of Leslie’s. He was no more likely to get struck than any other rancher in the region. Yet get struck by lightning, Leslie did. Well past a century later, it’s how we recall him today.

Josh Reddick has spent a career being unclutch. Greatly unclutch, incredibly unclutch, almost unfathomably unclutch. Ben Lindbergh wrote about it at the end of June. We have a win-expectancy-based Clutch metric on our leaderboards, and, since Reddick debuted, no hitter has a lower Clutch score. We actually have this stuff going back to 1974, and, since then, on a per-600-plate-appearance basis, Reddick currently stands as the least-clutch hitter out of everyone. He just edges out Ron Kittle and Richard Hidalgo. If you think that this is somehow misleading, it’s not. When Reddick has batted with the leverage low, he’s posted a 121 wRC+. When he’s batted with medium leverage, he’s posted a 99 wRC+. When he’s batted with the leverage high, his wRC+ has been 70. The history is all right there, inarguable. Josh Reddick has not exactly risen to the occasion.

This always seems to lead to the same conversation, about how clutch performance isn’t predictive. That’s true — it’s not. Or at least, it’s not easy to spot when it is. Possibly, or even probably, Reddick isn’t an unclutch hitter. But Hiram E. Leslie probably wasn’t lightning-prone. At some point, you’re just defined by what’s happened. It’s not easy for Reddick to erase his own record.

Yet days like Monday can help. Monday, in Boston, Reddick drove in the go-ahead run in the top of the eighth. The Astros went ahead by one, and the Astros finished ahead by one, having eliminated the Red Sox in four games. A number of different players all helped the cause, but in the eighth, with baseball’s most unhittable pitcher on the mound with two outs, the least-clutch hitter in decades knocked an RBI single the other way. The Astros found themselves on the verge of advance.

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Episode 774
There is, technically, such a thing as a pitching prospect; the presence of pitchers on draft boards and top-100 lists suggests as much. As the profile of the major-league pitcher evolves, however, so does the criteria by which minor leaguers and amateur talent have to be assessed. Should evaluators employ a “minimum acceptable velocity”? How ought the chance of injury be integrated into a Future Value grade? Guest Eric Longenhagen answers questions very similar to these, if not these questions exactly.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 56 min play time.)

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