Meg Rowley and guest co-host Eric Longenhagen discuss the conclusion of the World Series, including how Brian Snitker and Dusty Baker managed their depleted pitching staffs, the future of postseason pitching, Jorge Soler’s pyrotechnics, when they realized Atlanta was going to win the Series, and what’s next for the Astros and the Braves. Then they turn their attention to winter ball, including the balance of talent between pitchers and hitters in the Arizona Fall League, the challenges the AFL presents as an evaluation environment, the players who have impressed Eric so far, including Curtis Mead, and finally, the prospects and playing environment in Liga de Béisbol Profesional de la República Dominicana. Read the rest of this entry »
There will be no Game 7 this year. We’ve only had two in the last five World Series, so it’s far from a safe assumption. I attended a pair of them during my time with the Astros, including the last World Series (and Houston) game I went to, just over two years ago: Game 7 in 2019. It was a miserable experience at the time, and only exacerbated by the things to come, both publicly and privately. At the same time, the last two minutes of the game reinforced my love of baseball.
The World Series is incredibly stressful for teams, and that stress is magnified greatly by the time one reaches the finale. Between exhibition games, the regular season, and the playoffs, teams are approaching their 200th game of the year, and with all of that, it still comes down to nine innings. Win the game, and your team is part of history. Lose, and you are little more than the answer to a trivia question.
The stress of the day is overwhelming, and it feels like game time will never arrive. My wife, who had been traveling with me since Game 3, decided to drag me away from my nervous energy by finding an afternoon movie to help distract from the importance of the evening to come and pass the time before we headed to the ballpark. She suggested something popular on the indie film scene at the time: Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse.
If you know the film, you are likely already laughing at the thought of it serving as a stress reliever. While it is quite excellent, it’s a claustrophobic, incessant doomfest about a pair of lighthouse workers, isolated during a storm, as they spiral into insanity, or maybe just more into insanity, given that they arrived there already well on their way.
Beyond striking visuals and a pair of incredible performances from Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson, what stands out most about The Lighthouse is the sound design, which is among the most memorable I can think of. Sound plays a massive role in the film; the music and ambient noise are constant and always foreboding, but the most iconic sound from the film is a frequent foghorn (as heard in the beginning of that trailer) that acts as an indicator of things ramping up. That foghorn stays with you, and it still enters my headspace at times of high stress.
The Atlanta Braves ended the 2021 season with a bang on Tuesday night, crushing the Houston Astros in a seven-run rout that rarely felt even as close as the eventual score. Atlanta had failed to make the World Series in any of their last 12 playoff appearances since being swept by the Yankees in 1999. But as they always say, the 13th time’s the charm, and the Braves took home the big trophy in front of a disappointed Minute Maid crowd.
The post-Milwaukee period was a tough one for the Braves, as they spent most of the 1970s and 80s fighting with Cleveland and San Diego for the unofficial title of the league’s most moribund franchise. They were more or less a Ted Turner-driven sideshow that existed to fill up hours on TBS between reruns of Alice and The Andy Griffith Show. They hit it big in the worst-to-first 1991 season, and even with a lengthy rebuilding phase in the mid-2010s, they’ve won the second-most games in baseball since the start of that season, behind only the New York Yankees. Despite impressive feats like dominating the top of the NL East for over a decade, one thing always marred their legacy: the lack of World Series victories. For all their dominance — the Braves won 100 games on four occasions in the 1990s and had chances at two more if not for the 1994 strike — they only emerged with a single World Series win in 1995.
It’s not entirely fair to count World Series titles in light of baseball’s greatly expanded modern playoffs, but life is rarely known for playing fair. The team that won Game 6 in 2021 is a very different one from that which won Game 6 in 1995. These Braves were not a dominating team, but rather one that wasn’t a heavy favorite to win the division and lost their franchise player, Ronald Acuña Jr., halfway through the season with a torn ACL. The 1995 team had Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz in their primes. This one had to throw two consecutive bullpen games in the World Series because the broken leg Charlie Morton suffered in Game 1 reduced them to a two-man rotation. Read the rest of this entry »
Department: Professional Scouting Reports To: Director, Professional Scouting FLSA Status: Independent Contractor, Mar 1, 2022 – October 31, 2022
Role & Responsibilities
The Development Scout position is an entry-level role that resides within the Baseball Operations Professional Scouting department. The primary objective of the role is to scout professional baseball talent in a designated geographical area using fundamental scouting principals. Dev Scout is a seasonal position and interested candidates must be open to relocation.
Desired Qualifications
Excellent written and verbal communication
General understanding of fundamental scouting principals
Passion for talent evaluation, baseball operations, and analytics
To Apply
If interested, please apply using this link.
Response Expectations
Due to the overwhelming number of applications we receive, we unfortunately may not be able to respond in person to each applicant. However, we can assure you that you will receive an email confirmation when you apply as well as additional email notifications whether you are selected to move forward for the position or not. Please note, we keep all resumes on file and will contact you should we wish to schedule an interview with you.
The Chicago Cubs and its affiliates are an Equal Opportunity Employer committed to inclusion and employing a diverse workforce. All applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, veteran status, disability, or other legally protected characteristics.
The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the Chicago Cubs.
Department: Player Personnel Reports To: Director, Player Personnel Status: Exempt Dates: Must be available to start by January 1, 2022.
Primary Objective: Responsible for providing support and assistance to the Director of Player Personnel in all facets of player evaluation. Read the rest of this entry »
Meg Rowley and erstwhile Effectively Wild co-host and current Tampa Bay Rays employee Jeff Sullivan discuss World Series game start times, how Jeff’s job has changed compared to the 2020 season, Wander Franco, the Rays’ uniforms, what it is like to root (and work) for a team in the playoffs, the Rays’ ALDS against Boston, our emotional experience of momentum, and what it’s like to prepare for an uncertain offseason. Read the rest of this entry »
Last week, the Padres’ managerial search came to a surprising end when they signed Bob Melvin to a three-year deal. Even though the A’s had picked up his contract option for the 2022 season, the team allowed him to interview for the vacant position in San Diego, and he ended up moving on to greener (or browner) pastures. One of the most respected and successful managers in baseball, Padres general manager A.J. Preller got the man at the top of his list.
With Melvin at the helm, the Padres are hoping to take another step forward after an ugly late-season collapse caused them to miss the playoffs, which led to previous manager Jayce Tingler’s dismissal. His successor inherits a roster full of young talent, an organization committed to using its resources to build a winning franchise, and a front office that’s been aggressive in supplementing the homegrown core. But while San Diego still has some glaring questions on its roster even with Melvin in place, the A’s are facing a far murkier future.
Over the past decade, the A’s have won 806 games with Melvin as manager, fifth most in the American League over that period, and earlier this summer, he surpassed Tony La Russa to become the winningest manager in Oakland history. That also includes six trips to the postseason, tied with the Astros and trailing only the Yankees for most in the AL in the last 10 years. Even though Oakland hasn’t advanced past the divisional round in any of those appearances, it has been among the most successful organizations in baseball during the past decade.
Athletics executive vice president of baseball operations Billy Beane recognized the level of success Melvin enjoyed despite some difficult circumstances in Oakland.
“Bob, arguably, has been the most successful manager we’ve had here, especially when you consider the challenges that he’s had. He’s had a roster that has turned over multiple times since he’s been here. He has one of the lower payrolls to deal with. From a professional and personal relationship, his tenure speaks for itself.”
Melvin obviously had no control over the amount of payroll space the team was working with or the unsettled stadium situation in Oakland that has cast an air of uncertainty over the future of the franchise, but his success is impressive nonetheless. The six postseason appearances certainly stand out, but he also oversaw a three-year rebuild from 2015 to ’17, losing 274 games in those three seasons. Essentially, he guided two separate talent cores to two separate three-year postseason runs during his tenure as the A’s manager.
The flip side to the story of the Incredible Shrinking Postseason Starter — which, in fact, has only suffered more shrinkage since I published that piece about two weeks ago — is the expanded use of bullpens during this postseason. For the second year in a row, they’re throwing more than half of all innings this October, a situation that probably owes as much to the unique conditions of baseball in the time of the coronavirus pandemic as it does to analytically-inclined management.
Due to a combination of injuries and desperation, this past weekend’s three World Series games saw the six starters combine for just 17.2 innings, with only one lasting longer than four — and that one, Ian Anderson — was removed with a no-hitter in progress! Meanwhile, a total of 28 relievers came through the bullpen gates, an average of nearly five per team per game; they combined for 34.1 innings, nearly double the total of the starters but allowed just 10 runs to the shellshocked starters’ 24. Yes, the Braves’ use of the inexperiencedDylan Lee and Tucker Davidson to start Games 4 and 5 had something to do with it, but even Framber Valdez, the author of this postseason’s only eight-inning start, was chased after allowing five runs for the second straight turn. Valdez, in fact, has allowed 10 runs in this World Series, while the rest of his staffmates have yielded just eight.
Differentials like that, in which relievers have been much more effective than starters, help to explain what we’re seeing. While starting pitchers are often the stars who offer more name recognition to casual fans, given the urgency of October baseball there’s little sense in riding a starter who’s getting beaten up, regardless of the underlying reasons or the theoretical entertainment value. With the Astros carrying 13 pitchers on their 26-man World Series roster and the Braves 12, there are more than enough relievers to go around. Just one reliever pitched in Games 3, 4, and 5 — which is to say, made back-to-back appearances without a day off: the Astros’ Ryne Stanek, whose first appearance was just one batter and four pitches long. Only one other reliever in the entire postseason has pitched on three straight days, the Red Sox’s Martín Pérez. Read the rest of this entry »
“Doing the little things right” is an overused cliché in baseball. In its yearning for sacrifice bunts, productive outs, and pitching to contact, it’s one that doesn’t typically go well with the analytical thinking common to this website. But there’s still no better characterization for what Martín Maldonado did in the fifth inning of Game 5 than that very cliché. He did the little things right; in fact, what he did was rather ingenious.
In the early portion of Sunday night’s back-and-forth affair, the Astros erased a four-run deficit but found themselves behind yet again after Freddie Freeman went yard in the bottom of the third. Just two innings later, though, they would take the lead for good. Their half of the fifth went like this: A single by Carlos Correa, a strikeout of Yordan Alvarez, a single by Yuli Gurriel, and then a groundout by Kyle Tucker. With two outs, that left runners on second and third for Alex Bregman, who had been moved down in the order as a result of recent struggles. A.J. Minter and the Braves wanted no part of him nonetheless, not with Maldonado on deck; he seemed like the best matchup by far.
Even in retrospect, the Braves would clearly make the same move again. Maldonado is a career .212/.290/.348 hitter, and over 426 plate appearances with the Astros this season, all three legs of the slash were even worse than that: .172/.272/.300. This postseason, he’s been invisible offensively: .114/.184/.114. Put simply, he is not a threat at the plate. But in the highest-leverage moment of a World Series elimination game, he came through. With the bases now loaded after the intentional free pass, Maldonado walked. Read the rest of this entry »
Colt Keith exceeded even his own expectations this season. A fifth-round pick in the 2020 draft out of a Biloxi, Mississippi high school, the left-handed hitting Detroit Tigers prospect began his first professional campaign in the Florida Complex League, and he finished it in High-A with the West Michigan Whitecaps. Promoted to the higher-than-expected level less than three weeks after his 20th birthday, Keith had slashed a precocious .320/.436/.422 in 181 plate appearances with Low-A Lakeland.
His profile is compelling. When our 2021 Tigers Top Prospect list came out in March, Eric Longenhagen and Kevin Goldstein called Keith “one of the more intriguing two-way players in the 2020 draft,” adding that he was “seen by many teams as unsignable after the first three rounds.” Eight months after those words were written, the 6-foot-3, 215-pound infielder is no less intriguing, and more promising than ever.
Keith discussed his draft experience, and his eye-opening performance, shortly before the conclusion of the minor-league season.
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David Laurila: How did you end up signing with the Tigers rather than playing college ball at Arizona State?
Colt Keith: “I didn’t really want to go to school. That was my thing; it’s why I was willing to take less [money to sign]. After about the second or third round, I figured I wasn’t going to get picked, because teams thought I was going to go to school. But then the Tigers gave my agent a call and offered enough, so we decided to take it.”
Laurila: Why didn’t you want to go the college route?
Keith: “We looked at the positives of both sides, and the negatives of both sides, and I liked the opportunity to start my pro career at a young age. I felt like I was ready to go, that I could compete and didn’t need those three years of college to get prepared for it. On top of that, I’m not a big school guy. Getting a degree… I mean, going to school for three years just didn’t sound like a lot of fun to me.”
