Cool Hand Lucroy

I mean, I'm not holding my breath. Other people are different, that's fine, but the playoffs are random, so this has already been a successful year for me. But my post mostly meant the regular season, and the important thing is that none of these ABs will correlate to whether or not we win the WS.

Because we're going to get one seed anyway at this point, and the wins record is a pretty arbitrary emotional target. More importantly, with a week between now and the NLDS, what possible correlation could there be between these ABs and those? It's fine to care about those things, but we've already accomplished everything we could've hoped for this year.

These are basically preseason games, folks. Take the information you get from individual performances, make it one factor in your roster choices, and don't worry about the result. Plus, I'd kind of like to see the Reds in the playoffs. And we're going to hit a little bit today or tomorrow, I just know it.

That was obviously bad luck, but I have no idea why you're messing with breaking stuff on 0-2. If you can throw 103, you should do that in big spots.

Saw One Battle After Another today. I'm not a huge Paul Thomas Anderson fan (I like him fine), but Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood are both brilliant films. OBAA might be better than both. I think it tops Boogie Nights for sure. Not only is it an excellent adaptation of the spirit of Pynchon (my favorite writer), but it's a great film on its own.

With nearly a full week from the end of the regular season until the start of the playoffs, I don't think how we're playing right now matters at all. That said, it's a fact that we're not playing well.

Re: Murph the in-game manager: The guy makes some calls that look super-duper weird (even indefensible) to anyone used to thinking about platoon advantages and reliever rest. Like, I genuinely believe the guy manages with his gut. That's going to take a lot of flak in the stats era, and, full disclosure, it's not my preferred style. Sometimes, I am just confused as heck by what Pat is aiming for. But, like, maybe the guy's a psychological genius who understands the humans who play for him. I can't rule that out. And his success genuinely has me rethinking certain criticisms I have had for the last couple years. I mean, I don't know why Ashby pitches so much, but maybe the simple answer is that Murph just knows he can handle it.

I don't think any of this is unreasonable. There are good arguments for the consistency of the all-time ABS system. And, in tennis, it has certainly allowed for a very consistent flow in matches. Though I admit to being one of the tennis fans who longs for the "good old, challenge system days." Our basic philosophical disagreement, probably unresolvable, is just that I prefer to preserve a collaborative, agreed upon, limited uncertainty (which the challenge system represents, at least in terms of letting some close calls be decided by humans, on the assumption that it's not worth arguing over everything) to the false certainty of completely automated systems. I especially wince (maybe unfairly) at the argument that "let's just get calls right" because I think the kinds of calls that most need to be made by a non-human arbitrator are often not binary. For example, I worry about ABS having its own version of the "guy came off the bag by a mm, maybe forced by the tag, and is therefore out based on the letter of the law." For my money, that's the worst thing about baseball, and it exists because we made a fetish out of replay being certain and correct. I guess, in the end, I'd rather the tech be the universally acknowledged authority in limited circumstances than all the time. Though I agree with the idea that we've already privileged its perspective. It's a good point. It's good to disagree about this, and I appreciate the substantive conversation. I suspect you're right that we'll be fully ABS in the near future. At that point, I'll have lost the argument, and I'm genuinely okay with being in the minority. As long as the decision-making process properly grapples with these broader philosophical issues, it's part of the deal if my preferred outcome isn't the one that gets settled on.

I can see that. Before my time. I can see an argument for 2018 too, based on the final couple weeks and the 96-win total. I probably overstated things. It's certainly an all-time regular season.

Understood. From where I sit, we have had an incredible regular season. It's arguably the best in club history (and inarguably if we win twice more). Having to listen to all the media and fan narratives about Counsell making the right call by leaving, on top of all the usual "it doesn't work in October" takes, would really be unfair to this team. It always is. But especially so if it's an L to the Cubs, and I'm not sure the joy of winning would match that. Everyone's going to perform their own calculus differently. But the media narratives especially would be such a bummer when they should be about how much this team has done with this roster and these resources.

Yeah, yeah for sure. And it's why I'm not that worked about it. This feels mostly right to me. I'm 95 to 97 percent on board with this call. Having SLIGHTLY more challenges would be my perfectly imperfect solution.

I think "correct" is a hard word here. Correct according to the cameras? That's still a simulation of objective reality. Is it a closer approximation? Yeah. But I would worry about giving it ultimate authority and saying everything it does is perfectly right. No system does that. Which is why I am in favor of the move today.

Fair enough. It certainly sounds reasonable to me. I'm not going to get too worked up about it either way. I think I'd still prefer slightly more (I like the idea of having a limited set of lower-stakes challenges early in the game both to gain information about the zone and the setup of the cameras that particular day and to allow teams to have some leeway in challenging important calls early without risking what might be VERY precious challenges late), but this feels like a place where good arguments exist all around.

Yeah, playoff seeding is so difficult for this reason. I really don't want the Cubs just because of the emotional stakes involved, even though the players probably care zero about that. If I could choose TODAY, I'd make us the two seed because a) the Padres might catch the Dodgers and end up playing the Reds/Mets, in which case I'd FAR prefer the 2 than being the 1 and having to play Cubs/Dodgers and b) I find the chance of the Reds/Mets/DBacks beating the Dodgers to be more beneficial than having a guaranteed series against the Cubs/Padres. On the other hand, I'd sentimentally love to be able to wrack up wins and set a franchise record. I don't know. I guess it comes down there's no point in caring about the matchups. Or getting too worked up if we close 0-6. The results matter less than being full-strength however it shakes out.

I will agree that 2 does seem too limited. I think I'd like to see 2 "use it or lose it" for the first five innings and then 2 or 3 more for the final four.

So, having watched tennis for years and years, I have to say the the challenge system feels far superior to me than the full-on automated line calls. There are a few reasons for this (no particular order): 1) The system sometimes can crash, meaning the game cannot continue, and there are occasionally lengthy delays. 2) The challenges provide an element of strategy. You've got to know when to use them, and I think this is broadly a good thing. Plus, the Brewers are good at stuff like that. If there's an element of public feedback for umpires who miss a lot of calls, there is also one for players/managers who complain about borderline pitches, or pitches that are clearly strikes/balls, depending. EDIT: Since only the batter, pitcher, or catcher can challenge, this adds an even further element of strategy--how aggressive will players be, how will management communicate the data?) 3) The fully automated zone is going to have weird blind spots. The low strike, for example, that will be called a strike, even when the catcher catches it at the shoe tops. There are pitches that are technically strikes that don't feel like actual strikes, and I'm not sure we want that to become the default call. In tennis, this manifests as balls whose elongated bounces just clip the baseline on Hawkeye (even though there's a margin of error and they might well be out). It's better when these can be challenged as opposed to when they are always in. 4) I know people gripe about "the human element," but the fact is the technology isn't always "right." It isn't always even perfectly consistent. We just defer to it because its fast and easy. That's not always a good thing, even in the context of sport. It's good for umpires to have jobs. It's good to have a person understanding the ball not as a dot on the screen thrown by a dot on the screen to another dot on the screen, but as a baseball thrown by a human to another human. There is something important lost when we cede all power to robots, on the false promise of perfect accuracy (which doesn't exist). "Subject to Review" is a great 30 for 30 short documentary about this process. 5) There will ALWAYS be borderline pitches that are both balls and strikes. That is, from a physics perspective, it's impossible to tell sometimes where one object (or subatomic particle) ends and another begins. See the famous cat in the box. We should embrace that uncertainty and correct the most egregious or game-impactful misses. A challenge system does that. Fully automated does not. And when the challenge system is very fast and efficient, the biggest injustices are corrected without wasting time on silly stuff or always-going-to-be-impossible-to-define stuff. Here, if you lose on a coin-flip call, you'll either have challenges remaining (in which case we let the machines flip the coin), or you won't (because you didn't use them wisely enough). That's better than the machine always flipping the coin. Of course, all of the above depends on teams not trying to game the system too hard (by seeking the best data and then challenging every single close pitch they have a 51% chance of winning), and recent baseball history suggests the system will be gamed. Maybe we'll end up with fully automated anyway. I just think it's completely worth trying a challenge system first. You don't really lose anything. And I think it will be very difficult for teams to get so good at challenging that we effectively have an all-automated system anyway (EDIT: especially when challenges have to come from batters/pitchers/catchers). If you'll let me get philosophical: the strike zone is about justice. I think the best version of justice occurs when technological input is used by thoughtful humans to aid the decision-making process. Making the technology the all-time, default arbitrator is, in its way, as incomplete as letting the umpire decide everything on gut. You want both, and that's what this system gives you.

Yeah, this is the "rebuild him in the aggregate" situation. Obviously will take up some roster spaces and involve extra fatigue in the bullpen (less an NLDS problem). Between Miz, Patrick, Ashby, and Gasser, that's a good start. Then there are Henderson, Hall, and Q if healthy. We'll need the "out-getters" approach, but our best 2018 starter was....? Woody? Freddy? Chacin? This rotation, even minus Woodruff seems about as good.

Yeah, it's kind of like that time I went to Spain and had the best meal of my life and then sat out and had some cava with Rafa Nadal and then it rained, and we got soaked. Could've been so much better.

That was incredible. Mostly, it was the spectacular catch. Ours was the better all-around one, but Robles came from nowhere. Great individual play.

Sophia tweeted William gave a thumbs up about his wrist at the end of the game. FWIW.

Thought I saw Contreras sitting on the dugout rail. Better than being in the locker room, I guess.

Is Haase on the 40-man? I am not sure if injuries are an exception to the "must be on the 40-man" rule. If not, it has to be Quero, right?

I think Hoskins should be on the playoff roster, but...Murphy hasn't even really let him pinch-hit in big spots over the last week or so. Honestly, I'm getting nervous they might actually leave the guy off. Maybe they know more than me. Maybe they'd rather have Lockridge or an extra pitcher. I have no idea, and I'm not going to worry too much about it yet. But if we don't see Rhys getting some ABs here, I might get a little more serious about wanting to know the plan for him.

Some poetic justice in watching Perk do that to him specifically.

This does show the impact of the tiebreaker. It really feels like the Phillies are nipping at our heels, but our standing against them vs. the Cubs is basically a wash.