The Musical Innertube - Volume 2, Number 159 - Nick Roman talks Baseball Playoffs 2024

JOHN

Today, The Musical Innertube welcomes back a great friend of the podcast, Mr. Nick Roman, a 44-year veteran of California Public Radio - and that ain't hay. For years he was the host of NPR's All Things considered on KPCC, the public radio station based in Pasadena. And before, Roman served as a producer, anchor and news director for KLON/KKJZ in Long Beach for 20 years. And he's taught broadcast journalism at Cal State universities at Fullerton, and also at Long Beach. And we hear he's been invited back at Long Beach - is that the one, Nick?

NICK

Yes, it is. I loved it there. It's a great school.

JOHN

He is an alumnus of KUCI, the student radio station at the University of California at Irvine.

NICK

That was another great place!

JOHN

That was a really great place, and we all were there at one time or other. Weren't we, Don?

DON

Yes. We were.

JOHN

Don was usually there at the other time. Nick was a really good football and basketball player, on top of everything else he did well. So welcome, Mr. Nick Roman, welcome back. And we are talking baseball because there's a lot of baseball to be discussed and some of the best baseball I've ever seen. I don't know if you think so, Nick, but I think that the playoff scheme in Major League Baseball has produced probably the greatest baseball in the history of the sport. I mean, some of the most amazing games. You know, just the greatest tension, what do you think?

NICK

You don't even have to go to the playoffs. I mean, because that system is in place, the Braves and the Mets played that double header on the Monday after most teams ended their season. And I don't know what you were doing, but I was sitting there watching the two games. In the first game, it was crazy, just, I mean, it was nuts and I was texting friends of mine and looking at this game and coming out and telling my wife and I go, oh, the Braves have this one. No, the Mets have this one. No, no, no, now the Braves have went away. And then the Mets won the game. That was nuts. It's one of the most historic games, and it's only because that game meant something, because they’re the playoffs.

DON

Exactly, exactly. I was present at the second Wild Card game that the Orioles played against Kansas City, and the elimination is so swift, that wild card round is 3 games, so it's you win 2 and you're in, and you lose the first one, and now, oh my God, you've only got two more. So, it really it puts everybody on the brink right away. You have to play excellent baseball. And the Kansas City Royals in that second game against the Orioles played excellent baseball. They hit. They didn't hit for power. They hit for singles, they hit a couple of doubles, they moved runners on base. They played excellent defense, and the scores were like 3-2 and 2-1, you know, it wasn't high scoring, but it was excellent baseball, and the Orioles, unfortunately, were swinging for the fences most of the time, and that cost them the game and I think teams that are built to slug don't do well in this playoff format.

NICK

You have to be really good at fielding, ‘cause you make an error and it's going to cost you. And I've been watching the Dodgers and the Padres, the error that Manny Machado made in game one made a difference. I mean runs came in as a result of that. And yesterday, because the Padres caught the baseball, I mean, you know, Jurickson Profar going into the stands and snatching a Mookie Betts home run away, a drive into the alley that Fernando Tatis ran down and caught, in a line drive that Luis Arraez snagged, any of those go through? It's a totally different game. The final score was 10-2. But if any of those go through, the score is not 10-2. It's a completely different ball game.

DON

And the way that the Dodgers won the first game, when their superstar Ohtani went out there and just slugged his way through the game and made a difference. But that's the same thing, when the Phillies came to their second game against the Mets, Bryce Harper stepped up. He was 6 innings in, but he finally hit a home run, almost a second home run in the ninth to seal it, and then right behind him, Castellanos hit another home run, and then hit that single at the end to win it. But again, the Mets are the zombie team, I want to say, they keep coming back and coming back and coming back. You score a couple on them, they score a couple next inning.

NICK

I mean, we all thought that the Mets, they were finished midway through the season, and they looked finished. And you know, they weren't playing well at all. They, you know, Lindor was having a terrible season, and Brandon Nimmo wasn't hitting at all, either. And then all of a sudden, the whole thing turns around on you, and life is great, at least for the Mets. And they've been, you know, the other thing is they talk about home field advantage, what home field advantage? Mets haven't been home in about a month and a half, it seems like. They must be carrying around giant foot lockers of clothing, you know, for these road trips that they're making.

JOHN

But that brings up another thing, which is that, it turns out that the team on the road, the team at the greatest disadvantage, wins most of the time in the Division and League series. They beat the better teams. You know, the wild card hangers-on tend to win the three and five game series. They were over 500 in that way. So, you know, we've been talking several years running now about how the Atlanta Braves are always favored. Don't do well, they get beat right? You know, and a lot of teams, like the Dodgers, were expected to go a long way last year and again this year - and they may still this year, we're in the early days yet - but last year they flamed out. The Phillies got clocked by the Dbacks, it's interesting, isn't it, that something about this setup lets the desperate hangers-on you know, it doesn't let them win, they tend to win.

NICK

Yeah, I don't know what it is. Sometimes I wonder, for those of us who have the experiences of kids who played, you know, travel athletics, whether it was soccer or basketball or, my daughter, softball, and you would go off somewhere - like we spent like a week in Denver playing softball games. If it's camaraderie, if it's focus, if it's, like, you got nothing else to think about except baseball and that game tonight. And it's the one time, you know, in the in the day where you just sort of feel alive, I don't know. But it doesn't seem to determine who's the winner. If you're playing in your home field at all, you know, you get to stay home and rest and everything is fine. And I don't know. It it's hard to say.

DON

I look at it too, from the standpoint of going to home games in Baltimore and in Philly this year, and everybody's worried because the Braves stayed home the last two seasons and the Phillies beat them. And one of the things Brian Snitker, the manager, said was, well maybe we got a little too complacent. We had some time off and we weren't, you know playing, and sure enough, the Phillies came out against the Mets in that first game and couldn't hit a thing. Couldn't hit. You know, if the if the Mets walked up and held the baseball and said, here, hit this, they'd still strike out. So, there's some validity, I think, to these teams that have to keep playing. That have to play through the Wild Card and they sort of, you know, keep that energy going. And there's something to be said for that.

NICK

There are million theories. If you look back in the history of the World Series, for the longest time, you know, the home team wasn't winning that final game. And then for a long time, it was the home team, you know, it made a big difference. I think, in terms of baseball, all that stuff kind of goes out the window. I don't think that being on the road is a disadvantage to you - and you know what is a disadvantage is, if you're if you're rested and you're healthy, certainly if your pitchers are healthy, and the Dodgers have gone through that, the Rays have gone through that, all of that makes a difference, and at what point in the season did everything sort of fall into place for your team? Which seems to be happening now with the Mets, had been happening for the Tigers until they ran into the Cleveland Guardians, a very very good team, you know, same with the Royals. Nobody thought, I certainly didn't think the Royals were going to make the playoffs this year.  And then injuries, just tear you apart. And that certainly was the fate of the Braves. They just got totally beat up.

DON

Yeah. And again, going back to what you said earlier, the Tigers and the Royals played like hell for the last couple of weeks of the season, in order to get into - because again, you know, in a normal year, in a normal situation without, you know as many wild card teams now, as they let in, they wouldn't have had a chance to get in, but they snuck in at the last minute, and it's only because they got healthy at the right time and had all their players back, and maybe some of the teams they played were kind of worn out by the end of the of the season. 162 games winds up being an awful lot to play.

NICK

It's enormous. And, you know, if you add into that, like, specialized games like, hey, we're going to fly you guys to London to play. Dodgers and Padres, you're going to start the season in, in Korea, you know. It's like, wait, wait, what we're doing? But that's the kind of thing that happens.

DON

And you know what's weird? In London, it was Phillies and Mets. Now they're playing in the playoffs. And in Korea, it was Dodgers and Padres. Now they're playing in the playoffs.

NICK

Yeah, well, maybe  it's not so bad, yeah.

JOHN

“I take that back!”  One of the things we're hearing from local fans for all of the teams, are that some folks are complaining - I'm not saying this, I'm just throwing it out there - some folks are complaining about like 4:00 start times. That you know, it's tough for batters. And there is some evidence that this is the case because in many of these games the first half of the game is all zeroes and then some somewhere around the middle half of the game you start seeing the scoring and suddenly crooked numbers for the rest of the time. And that's because the sun has now gotten lower where you don't get a bright background, but behind the pitcher, and you can see it better. I don't know. You know, to me, I feel a couple of ways about that. First of all, baseball used to be a sunshine sport. It was never played at night.

NICK

Yeah. Right. It certainly wasn't.

JOHN

The World Series was on in the daytime, and you know until - what was the last World Series game played during the day?  Was it 2004, something like that? It's been 20 years. Yeah, something like that.

NICK

The first the first night game was in 1971. I know that.  The Pirates and the Orioles. And slowly but surely, they added on. But good luck convincing the owners to, you know, or the TV networks to give up the prime-time audience because they won't do it. It's just really not going to happen. There is some, you know, obviously there's Sunday baseball during the early rounds of play.

JOHN

Yeah, that's right.

NICK

But that's exactly because somebody says, well, do you want to have the Dodgers or the Yankees in the prime time, or do you want to have the Cleveland Guardians in prime time? And so the Cleveland-Detroit game started on a sunshiny day. Nice day in Cleveland. So yeah, I lament that too. I lament the fact that it's tough for little kids to stay up and watch some of these games. I went to Catholic school when I was a kid, and the nuns would turn on the World Series ball games in class.

JOHN

I remember in 4th grade. Oh, man, this was Dodgers-Yankees, when the Dodgers swept the Yankees in ’63.

NICK

Right.

JOHN

And you had to go up to Sister Mary Antonio at Immaculate Heart of Mary school and say I'm gonna be wearing my ear plug, you know, my earphone. And I had my, you know, transistor.

DON

Transistor radio..

JOHN

And as long as you told her, she wouldn't send you to the principal's office.  And there were about 20 of us. I mean, I'm exaggerating, but there were a bunch of us not paying attention to anything. “Mr. Timpa conjugate esera.” Excuse me, it's 4th inning. Sister, come on now. Yeah, but about starting times. I mean, isn't there's some evidence that they've heard that complaint, because starting times got earlier by, like, half an hour this year, you know, 6:00 instead of 6:30 and games are shorter. Isn't there an effort to say, OK, none of this midnight baseball in October, which we were getting to have in the 90s.

NICK

Well, of course, the one rule that that got dropped, that gets dropped in the in the playoffs when you get to postseason is the tiebreaker rule about putting a ghost runner at second base in extra innings. That one's gone, you back to regular baseball, but the pitch clock is still in effect. You know the pick off limits are still in effect. The bases are still as big as they were when they increased the size. I think what they didn't want is to have a game, you know, like that one some years back, Dodgers and Boston Red Sox at Dodger Stadium, where I was on air when that game started and I was home at like, midnight, watching it. When it ended it was like a seven-and-a-half hour game, you know? And yeah, they don't want that obviously. But, you know, the earlier start times, yeah, you're going to mess with the sun. It also depends on how the field might be oriented. Remember the famous line by Yogi Berra about Yankee Stadium in October? He says “it gets late early there” and it's true.

DON

There was some noise made about shadows In a couple of the games because they were in the afternoon and yeah, the pitcher was in the sunlight and the batter was in the dark and it was harder to keep the ball going. But you know, John was right. He made a point about pitchers. You know, again, I go back to Mets and Phillies. Those Met pitchers are not aces, and the Phillies weren't getting any hits off them at all. Now the Phillies bats have kind of gone hot and cold, mostly cold over the last half of the season..

JOHN

Yeah. God, I'll say.

NICK

I feel for Alec Bohm.

DON

Yeah, the poor guy hurt his hand and hasn't come back. And you know, and he was a doubles machine for a while there and can't do anything now, but still, I would probably say that that might have something to do with it too that you can't get a good look at the ball when it comes out of the pitcher's hands to figure out what to do with it.

NICK

You know, it's all money. It's all TV times and it's all money. It's all, you know, can we avoid the NFL, which is one reason why the American League is playing today and didn't play yesterday. To avoid any conflicts with NFL games. It's all money. I remember some years ago a friend of mine was complaining about the outfield walls at Dodger Stadium, “I remember when there weren't any ads on it,” and then I go, yeah, I remember that too, but welcome to the 21st century. One interesting thing, I don't know if you guys noticed this, there's an ad now on batting helmets that popped up in the playoffs. And I'm looking at this and I'm going, Strauss, what is Strauss? I've never seen this before, and I looked at, and then when I saw that it was on the helmets in every ball game, didn't make it make any difference who was playing. Well, they just run another thing to sell.

DON

And they all now have patches on their sleeves that they've sold to individual sponsors. And I think the one that was on the Atlanta Braves’ sleeves was a concrete company. I don't know whether that was bad luck because they didn't make it through the playoffs, but, yeah, you know, whatever.

JOHN

Well, so this is really the monetization of space, isn't it? For many years, there were rules in in the major leagues that you couldn't have ad space. For a while, you had ad space everywhere. The Big Green Monster in Boston used to have nothing but ads plastered over it back in, like, the 1920s. Must have looked God-awful. And I've noticed, and everyone's noticed, that they're using computer-generated ads where we can have a little add on the pitcher's mound while he's warming. "Joe’s bar,” you know, and then, you know, people have asked me this - we've been watching a baseball game and there's animated ads behind the catcher and umpire. And I have to explain no one seeing those ads. They're not existing in the real world. Those are in the studio. Those have been paid for. And, you know, you see the batter get up with the bat and they've got a flickering alias on the edges of them, right, because they're in front of the ads. It's become, well, as you say, it's money. It's big, big, big business.  I became aware of it, not in this sport, but in tennis, where every single possible square inch of people's bodies and their uniforms and the walls are just plastered, plastered with ads.

NICK

Well, you know, in the in the broadcasts years ago, it would show up in an audio kind of way, I mean, Mel Allen, who did the games for the Yankees, a home run for the Yankees, was a “Ballantine blast.” Ballantine's beer was the sponsor, And, I mean, I can remember Vin Scully on during Dodger games, saying at some point in the middle of the game, “Hope you're holding hands with a cold Oly.” Olympia Beer was the broadcast sponsor for the Dodgers. One of the interesting things about the Dodgers is for many years, there were no ads inside the stadium, save for that 76 ball that was up above the two scoreboards, right? And the reason for that was that the Chairman of Union Oil had floated a loan to O Malley, to help him build the ballpark. And the deal was for 20 years....

JOHN

Walter O'Malley.

NICK

Yeah, for 20 years, “I get the only in stadium ad,” and so he did. That was a long time ago and now everything as you say is covered. I'm surprised that well, I was going to say I'm surprised you're not slapping ads on us as we walk into the stands. But in fact, they are! “Here, John. Take this Phillies towel, sponsored by somebody, and wave it around.”

DON

Liscio’s Bakery!

JOHN

Right, right, right. Liscio’s Bakery, right? Yeah, yeah. Or Tony Luke’s Cheesesteaks, right? Yeah. You know it.

DON

Yeah, I'm trying to remember, the rally towels, John and I went to a playoff game last year, and I'm trying to remember who the sponsors were on the rally towels, but yeah, and the same thing when I went to that Orioles game couple days ago. They had rally towels that were sponsored, and they thanked the sponsors on the scoreboard, you know, or on the Jumbotron. It's not a scoreboard. It's a Jumbotron.

JOHN

Now the big A at Anaheim, before they had stands behind the outfield walls, the big A had a huge - was that a 76? What? What was the big?

NICK

Huge. I thought it was Chevron, but I'm not sure.

JOHN

Maybe it was Chevron. So, the oil companies had a hand in both of those teams. Because yeah, that ad on the big A was permanente, you know, it would have taken millions of dollars to take it down. You know, I think it persisted long after the contract went away. I just not sure, but it was always there.

NICK

Well, they're not Shea Stadium, and they're not Connie Mack Stadium. It's Citi Field and Citizens Bank Park. You know, it's Petco Park in San Diego, it's Progressive Field, Comerica Park in Detroit. Everybody! The few that don't have that, because my guess is there would be riots, would be Dodger Stadium and Yankee Stadium. And Fenway Park, I suppose you really couldn't change that name either. But you know, if it's if it's stays in place for a little while, somebody's going to sell it. So don't stand around too long.

JOHN

It's interesting that we bring this up because in Philly, you never say Citizens Bank Park. It's always, “I'm going to the bank,” we've got a nickname for it because nobody actually wants to give the bank the ad. Except that when you are on the radio or television, the announcers always have to say Citizens Bank Park. Occasionally if it’s “Bedlam at the Bank,” that's a wonderful call by our great announcers. And that one's going to stick, I think, you know, people talk about that.

DON

Let's talk about some of the heroes of these games. Because it wasn't exactly Bedlam at the Bank, but in the second game between the Mets and the Phillies, it was Bryce Harper that got rolling with the home run. In the first game between the Dodgers and the Padres, it was Shohei Ohtani, who lit up the ballpark. And it actually wasn't Judge and Soto, in that first win by the Yankees, it was Volpe who came in and suddenly was hitting the ball all over the park, and he couldn't touch anything through most of the season. So, there are some regular heroes and some surprise heroes that come out of postseason play.

NICK

It's always been that way, you know, I mean, the Ted Williams got to play in one World Series and didn't hit a lick. And  then you have some others like Reggie Jackson, who went crazy and famous as all get-out and went crazy in one World Series. You know, Bryce Harper, to me, it's just amazing. It's sort of like you go to the ballpark - as a Dodger fan, I would go to the ballpark, and it was much like when I used to watch the Dodgers playing the Phillies when the Phillies had Mike Schmidt. Well, OK, Schmidt's going to hit a home run, so you just mark that down, I'll just save it for whatever inning it occurs because it's going to happen, you know, And I was watching during that at bat, and you just kind of think, he can't actually - I mean, it's so predictable that he's gonna hit this home run, but it's not really gonna happen. I'm not looking at reality.

JOHN

Everybody was saying so. Everybody on television was saying, oh boy, it's time for Bryce, or, don't you think Bryce is due for a home run?

NICK

Right, exactly.

JOHN

Well, let's see, no pressure here, Bryce, you know and, so that is that. As you say, Nick, 99 miles an hour, that pitch was right down Broadway. Not a very well thrown pitch by Severino. You know what? The fact that it ended up 431 feet away, hitting the batter's eye, that brick wall in back of center field. Prodigious. I mean, what do you say about something like that?

NICK

Yeah, I heard some discussion today that you know that is good as Severino was in that ball game that when he gave up the single to Trey Turner, which preceded Harper's home run, that that was the moment where the Mets manager should have said, well, I've got a lefty down in the bullpen. Maybe I should bring that guy in, and he didn't. And, you know, then the baseball went flying and Castellanos followed with another one, which, you know, that was the real sort of like, nail. Although it actually turned out to be not the nail.

DON

Yeah, that was the first nail, before the zombies came back.

NICK

You hit those moments where there is a choice to be made and you don't make it. And it's defensible for managers, but they just get lit for all that kind of stuff over time.

DON

The managers also tend to acquiesce to the pitchers. I wanna say if a pitcher has been pitching - Severino isn't a great pitcher, wasn't a great pitcher, but he was doing really well in that game and he moved the ball around enough to fool them. And got a couple of strikeouts and was, you know, chugging along. And it's the 6th inning and that's always the inning where you sit back and say how much does this guy have left in the tank? And can I trust him for two more outs in this inning and then bring him the relief of the 7th or do I drop him now? And normally in playoff games, they drop, they go to the bullpen really quickly. But I think what they did here was they just said, well, let's give him two more outs. As a matter of fact, I think there was a conference on the mound before Harper came up. And I thought at that point, they're gonna pitch around Harper to get to Castellanos, cause Castellanos is a free swinger, and they can probably - I mean, he had been booed a couple innings earlier by the Phillies faithful, for swinging in a couple of pitches that were pretty much outside and.....

NICK

Wait, Philly fans booed somebody?

DON

Yeah, they booed their own guy.

NICK

Can you believe it?

DON

It's amazing. And it's funny because he swung at a couple of bad pitches, and then there was a third that went in the dirt, and he didn't swing at it and they applauded. They actually probably did Castellanos a favor because I think he got a little pissed and I think he locked in after that. And after that he started getting hit after hit after hit but. But yeah, I I think they were on the mound trying to figure, well, should we pitch around Harper, and I guess they said no, I think I can get him. And, I think it was an 0-2 pitch that he had cause he I think he took one and then he swung in a couple of bad ones and then this one was right over the plate.

NICK

He's amazing to me. I mean, he's amazing in a lot of ways that, for one, there are not many ballplayers that come into Major League Baseball as celebrated as he was. He was supposed to be a star. And it turned out that he is. And then he switches teams for a gigantic contract, and we've all seen those kind of contracts just sort of fizzle out and go the wrong way. Not this time. And then he suffers, you know, a number of pretty bad injuries that forces him out of the outfield and onto first base, and all he does is become a really good first baseman, a guy you can really depend on when you need to have a home run. He hits them. Yeah, you know, he just does.

JOHN

He doesn't need any more praise from here, but he did a lot of things in that game that show up but are not much discussed. I mean, he made 3 or 4 stellar plays at first as you said.  Also, he takes that extra base. His base running is amazing. He gets into scoring position because he knows that's his job and he runs that way. And he scored two runs in the game, which was, of course, amazing. He was he the one - who scored the winning run?

DON

It was it was Turner. Turner was on second.

JOHN

So I just think he plays the game within the game amazingly well. And then he's a showman on top of it, like Profar is, right? And there's a lot of showmen on the Mets, right. You know, Pete Alonzo is. It's great to watch him play because he enjoys it so much, you know, and Lindor, who is splendid. They all are more than players. These guys, it's spectacular to watch.

DON

Where did Vientos come from? All of a sudden, he's hitting home runs and again, here's a guy who didn't make a lot of difference during the regular season and now, he's stepping up.

NICK

We're lucky that we've seen, when we all came up as kids, we got to see the greatest players, you know, Aaron, Clemente and Mickey Mantle, and then succeeding generations of tremendous ballplayers who followed them, and now another whole group that's tons of fun to watch. And because of the playoffs, you get to see many more of these guys. I hope people get to see Jose Ramirez in Cleveland and see how good he is because he's very, very good ballplayer. And then, there are new stars and new heroes that come out all the time, like, for the Padres, Jackson Merrill, the center fielder who, you know, we knew the kid was good. We didn't think he was going to be a centerfielder, and we certainly didn't think he was going to be a such a great clutch ballplayer in critical games, but he sure is, so it helps the sport, it helps the league and allays a lot of concerns that baseball is too boring and baseball is not what it once was. I'll say this, and this is what I've really been thinking about for a couple of days. Here's my one great concern, and that is they're killing pitchers, and I don't know what to do. Pitchers are dropping like flies, and we saw that a lot with the Dodgers. I haven't followed the Phillies so closely to know if it's been happening to the Phillies. Certainly, it happened to the Braves, but so many pitchers - I mean, even for the Padres, we get into the playoffs, and then Joe Musgrove goes down because he's got to have Tommy John surgery, because something snapped in his elbow.

DON

And the Texas Rangers, who are the defending champions, aren't even in the playoffs because they didn't have a pitcher that could hold up all the way through. They were depending on a lot of recycled pitchers like Verlander and...

NICK

Jacob DeGrom.

DON

DeGrom! And DeGrom didn't come up until halfway through the season.

NICK

And 10 years ago, we were talking a lot about how the New York Mets had this amazing pitching staff that had Jacob DeGrom, that had Matt Harvey, that had Noah Syndergaard that, sort of, like, harkened back to the old Nolan Ryan, Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman days, right? Who were durable pitchers who pitched all the way into their 40s. You know, Harvey, Syndergaard and DeGrom have just, you know - Harvey's gone, Syndergaard is probably gone...

JOHN

Yeah, he, yes.

NICK

I think he's thinking about maybe coming back next year if he can. We saw him with the Dodgers, and you saw him with the with the Phillies. There was nothing there. And DeGrom, you know, if his arm can hold up, but he's not going to be a 20 game-winner ever again. That's just not going to happen. So it's a shame. And I don't know, whoever figures out how to help pitchers not get hurt in a162 game season, that that person is going to be worth gold. It's just happening way too much.

DON

I've heard a couple of situations where it's been blamed on the fact that pitchers are throwing in the 90s now. If you get down in the 80s, they're worried about your velocity. The second thing is, I heard some rumblings toward the end of the season that the pitch clock was rushing pitchers into throwing before they were ready. But I don't think that pitch clock is going anywhere, because it's set up games to the point where people are now happy with two and a half hour games as opposed to the 6 1/2 hour games we were talking about earlier. So, I don't know if that's going to, you know, change anything.

NICK

For me personally, I mean, I  wonder if there is something in the analytics where you get almost  too much information that that causes you to do something that you're physically not capable of. You have like, well, you know Don and John, your spin rates are not quite what they ought to be. So, you ought to snap that elbow a lot harder out to get a little bit more on your curveball, or on your slider, or on your fastball. And I'm just wondering if that plays a role in it. And there's a part of me that thinks that.

DON

Yeah.

NICK

Is sort of like specialization of kids from the time that they're very young where it's you play travel ball year-round, you're a solo sport person instead of, you know, hey, OK, well, baseball season's over. Let's play football. OK, well, that's over. Let's play basketball now. Let's play volleyball, let's do something else. I don't know if that's a part of it, but certainly nobody seems to have the answer, and for all the money that's being made in Major League Baseball, you think that somebody would come up with something.

JOHN

By now, well, we have this new sport which we didn't have even 10 years ago, where very large people, very strong people, hit a lot of home runs and pitch the ball at 105 miles an hour. Yeah, and you're quite right that there's a question about whether this actually can be done with any regularity for more than a couple of years. Who was the kid who used to pitch for the San Francisco Giants just about 6-7 years ago? When he won a couple of Cy Youngs?

NICK

Tim Lincecum?

JOHN

Tim Lincecum! And he did get hurt and he faded away. I mean, he was bound for a Hall of Fame career, they said, and for a while it seemed like it. But then...

NICK

You know, the interesting thing about Tim Lincecum is that he wasn't a big guy. And, physically, when he threw the baseball, I mean, it was a contortion, and he was able to do it for a handful of years. Those two Cy Youngs got the Giants to at least 2 World Series, there was one that he wasn't a part of, the third one. And then toward the end of his career when he was still trying to hang on, he was with the Angels. And I remember watching one of his games and, like, you're just praying, please survive this, survive this, survive this. And he just, he couldn't do it. He just couldn't do it.

DON

Well, there were pitchers that came back from injuries and they were - I'm trying to remember the name of the pitcher that broke his arm while he was throwing a pitch.

NICK

Dravecky.

DON

Yeah, Dave Dravecky.

NICK

Dave Dravecky. Yeah, he had hurt himself - well, he was also fighting cancer, and eventually lost that arm. Yeah. How he even got to the point where he could throw the baseball again was sort of amazing.

JOHN

I mean, this is the thing about baseball. Like any other sport, just about everybody on the field is hurting in some way. After 162 games, it's just about everybody. I mean, I think I think it's very, very fair to say that Bryce Harper is playing with pretty much only one arm. He's got one arm and wrist that have been killing him since the All-Star break, you know? But he still goes out and does it. But, then we have Suarez, right Don? He's got something wrong with his back or something because he was unbeatable....

DON

Oh, yeah yeah. Ranger Suarez was like the pitcher of the hour for the first half of the season, and then he hurt his back, and he came back, and he’s scheduled to pitch game four and nobody is expecting him to do well. The Phillies went from having a top five, including Suarez as the fourth pitcher, and then Taijuan Walker was the fifth. Taijuan Walker was fading, but it was OK because he was the fifth starter, but now they don't have a fifth starter. Everybody they tried, including bringing up rookies from A ball, got slammed in the fifth starter position, so they really only have three pitchers, and the fourth pitcher is iffy with Suarez, and then they don't have a fifth, which they don't need for the playoffs, but still next year, now you're going to have to go pitcher shopping in order to fill out your rotation.

NICK

The Dodgers went into this season thinking that they had solved this problem that they had with losing pitchers through the season. Ten pitchers that they could have selected to be their starters, they traded for Tyler Glasnow, they signed James Paxton, Kershaw was going to come back, he wasn't back yet. Walker Buehler was coming back. They had Bobby Miller, who had pitched really well the year before. They were going to get back, who else, Gavin Stone he had been roughed up. They had a whole number of pitchers that they were gonna bring in. And one by one, you know it was, it was - they had Yamamoto too. Yamamoto gets hurt middle of the season, misses a couple of months. Tyler Glasnow doesn't finish out the season, which a lot of people thought might happen because he'd never finished out a full season. James Paxton, who was winning games but not pitching well, got released. You know, went to Boston, then got hurt and then decided to retire. Gavin Stone, who was fabulous throughout the season, gets hurt toward the end. Kershaw tries to come back, and new problem crops up. So that, you know, and now you're down to, you know, Jack Flaherty, Yamamoto's back, but not sharp. Buehler’s back. He's going to pitch on Tuesday. And he's not, hasn't been sharp. And Bobby Miller, they sent him down to the minor leagues. And you're wondering what's happening. The same thing happened with the Braves, they had Spencer Strider and Chris Sale and they're both gone. Sale, we thought for sure was going to pitch against the Mets. Didn't happen.

DON

Yeah, he's done. They didn't start Sale - I think the last game he pitched was September 19th. They didn't start him in the last couple weeks of the season because something was wrong with him. But they wouldn't say, but. Yeah.

NICK

Yeah. Yeah.

JOHN

Right. It was much worse than they were giving out.

DON

And I think it's the same thing with Ranger Suarez. I think whatever was wrong with his back is really wrong because he's not able to get up anymore. And I know for a little while in the beginning of the season, the Phillies had Spencer Turnbull, who they got from Detroit, and he pitched a lot of good games. And when he was pitching good and Taijuan Walker was going down, they said well, switch the two. And then Turnbull, ironically pitching in Detroit, hurt himself. He said it was a tweak in his arm, but he hasn't pitched since, so the tweak is a little worse. So, I think there there's a lot of situations too where someone's hurt, and to gain a competitive advantage or whatever the clubs don't come clean on how badly they are.

NICK

Yeah. I mean, if you if you want to have longevity in baseball, I think the thing to be is either a backup catcher or a left-handed reliever who can throw for one inning. And if you are either of those two, you won't get a gigantic contract, but you'll get a contract and you'll be around, you know, late into your, into your 30s and have a nice career as a baseball player. You know, if you don't have a bullpen that's got - well, with most teams, what are they carrying now in the playoff roster? 13 pitchers?

DON

Yeah, 12 or 13.

JOHN

Because they're all they're all planning to have at least one, probably two, bullpen games. That's the new strategy, you know, that we're going to have a bullpen game, and I wish there was a law against bullpen games. Because they’re usually awful, you know, the balls flying out of the ballpark and it's almost like saying, well, we'll lose this game, but we'll win in two days.  Whoever heard of on purpose bullpen games in the old days it's...

DON

Or that that lovely gift to baseball from the Tampa Bay Rays, the opener.  Where a bullpen guy will come out and pitch the first inning and then go home.

NICK

I'm having trouble accurately keeping statistics because I can't tell how good the earned run average is, which is a stat that's been around for over a day. It’s based on 9 innings. Well, that's pointless now. Nobody's pitching 9. So, do we have an earned run average per inning? Is that what we're looking at now?

DON

Oh, they love pitchers now that have an ERA under 4. You used to be proud of something that was under 2 or under 2 1/2 so.

JOHN

That's a good point because we're you're working fewer innings, but during those innings, if you let up one or two runs, that could add a whole run to your ERA. If you did that two or three times, suddenly, the ERA has gotten - yeah, you're quite right, Nick. It doesn't really mean anything now.

NICK

I don't know what the stat is, you know, they don't show you things like inherited runners scored. Or maybe there should just be a stat of how many times did you come into game and screw it up?

DON

Or how many times did you come on and the guy before you left three men on base and you let them all score, which doesn't affect you, but kills the guy that just walked off the mound.

NICK

Yeah, the other guy gets it.

DON

Let's talk about your favorite in this whole rigamarole here, and that's the Cleveland Guardians. They played small ball to a great advantage in that first game to beat the Tigers. And they did. They did a lot of things right. And that that's something you've been saying all season long.

NICK

They're such an interesting team because I think that they have sort of embraced baseball reality. They have a tremendous bullpen. And they just say, OK, well, look, if we're going to win, this is what we've got to have. And so, they have a, you know, they have the menu. Clase is just a fabulous relief pitcher. And then, Cleveland has a history that goes back all the way to, I don't know, Chico Carrasquel, or, you know, back to the 50s where they were pretty, they were very good at scouting and signing players out of Latin America and they've done a very good job of it. And then they sign players that nobody else really knows anything about.  Steven Kwan, who is finally coming out of a long slump, I mean he was hitting like .390, .380 for a good part of the season. They just know, and they sort of embrace the fact that a lot of their guys will probably leave after a little bit of time. But they're very versatile, they're very good team, they're smart, the organization has done quite well. And I would like to see them go, you know, a little bit further if they could. I mean, I like watching the Tigers too. It's just amazing because you could see what the Tigers were doing. They're built through the draft, but the Guardians are good year after year after year with not a lot of attention ever paid to them.

DON

It was interesting too, like I said, I was watching that last game between the Orioles and the Kansas City Royals. It was just interesting to watch how the Royals took a bunch of guys - Who's that guy? Who's that guy? Who's this guy coming up? Who? What has he done yet? And yet they were playing good ball. Bobby Witt Junior is the only one that you know, because he's something on the superstar level, but everybody else was doing their part, playing what they needed to play, doing what they needed to do and getting it done, and I guess that's a good way to advance, especially in the short series. If you play good, solid baseball, you're going to make it through.

JOHN

We could go forever, Nick, talking to you about baseball, because all three of us love it so much. We all played it when we were kids. We grew up in a state where you can play baseball 365, which is California, and this season, these playoffs have had some of the best baseball I've ever seen. And we're just going to have to do it again. Maybe at the end of it all, once there’s a World Series victor, we can look back and try to make sense of it. I know you can do it because you're so good at it. Thank you for being on the Musical Innertube.

NICK

Oh, I love this. This is what I do with friends, you're sitting with in the stands of the ballpark, this is what you do throughout a ball game. I'm so glad you guys call. I appreciate it. I'll even do this in December. Okay, wait, trades?

DON

Hey, do we want to make predictions, do we want to say who we think we're going to be in the World Series?

NICK

I'll do it.  I have no problem being wrong.  I am intrigued by the Cleveland Guardians. I really am. I think that, as good as the as the Yankees are, I think Cleveland just is a smart baseball team. And I would sort of like to see them. I know maybe the TV networks don’t really dig on that, but I would, I would like to see it. And in the National League, of course, my heart’s with the Dodgers, because I'm such a big Dodger fan. But, you know, look, you couldn't see as many Padre games as I've seen and not go, these guys are scary, and they're playing really, really well. And personally, I would hope that that the Phillies can straighten this out and be the Phillies that we saw, you know, early on in the season with everybody healthy and everybody playing well. I'm not sure I can pick amongst those three. I know that people are saying, oh, the Mets, the Mets magic. I don't really buy too much into the magic. I sort of think if you're a good team, eventually that's going to show. So, I would like to see the Guardians. Of course, I'd like to see the Dodgers, but I would not be surprised at all to see the Phillies or the Padres. None of that would surprise me. And I would, you know, enjoy the World Series no matter what it is. And I know that like, you know, the TV networks, well, they're going to be sad because it would be, you know, if it was the Guardians and the Padres. Too bad! I don't care! I'm still going to watch the games.

JOHN

Thank you very much, Nick. Thanks for coming on. We'll talk soon.

NICK

Alright, thank you.