Jomboy is breaking down what he would change about the MLB playoff bracket format, what's wrong with Edwin Diaz, and the bad calls we've seen this postseason.
Watch this episode of Jimmy's Three Things on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Krbjjj6PspQ
0:00 Intro
0:47 My new playoff format
7:54 What’s wrong with Edwin Diaz?
22:42 Worst calls of the postseason
#dpshow
Hello, and welcome to Jimmy's Three Things. My name is Jimmy, and there are three things I want to talk about in the world of Major League Baseball. One Wildcard formats done? Do we like it? Do you like it? Do I like it? No? I have a better idea. Maybe you guys can help me out too. Someone sent in, Can I look at Edwin Diaz's slider? What's going on there? And three worst calls of the postseason as far as balls and strikes go, supposed to be the best of the best, but still getting some wrong. Those are three things. If you enjoy this show, please subscribe like all that good stuff. Jimmy's Three Things the production of Dan Patrick Productions, John Boy Media and Workhouse Media. Quick sip of my water and then we will begin, all right, First thing, the wild Card round came and went. The Brewers and the Mets provided great drama. I went to a Game three. We had great games. It was awesome. But every team that won game won won the series. And for three years now, in this new format, every team that has one game one has won the series twelve for twelve, So basically, so far it's been a one game series. You just got to win game one, and we went from a one game wild card, which was nerve wracking if your team was involved and you were the players playing, but electric if you were a third party fan that would not have tuned in. Otherwise you tuned in because that was crazy. Even our stuff covering our numbers were insane. So I always liked it for that reason, because what do you want the playoffs to be? You want people that will not tune in otherwise to tune in. I remember when the Cubs were in the elimination game, the one game wildcard playoff my neighborhood. My friends had a watch party. They didn't watch a single game that year, and they invited me and I was like, whoa, okay, yeah, this format really drives people to the seats. I loved it. Now we've basically got the same results. If you win game one, you win the series. But instead of high drama, nighttime premiere games, we are starting the wild Card with day game on a Tuesday, two o'clock on a Tuesday, and the stadiums can't sell out because they don't know when the games are gonna be, so they can't get off work ahead of time, like Baltimore is a great crowd and great energy, and they have for the last couple of years. There was no one in the third deck for their wild card game because it's three o'clock on a Wednesday. So what we've done is we have the same results. If you win the one game, you're going to move on, but we're dragging it out for less drama. Sure there's more TV views and TV advertisers, but I do believe there's less people watching that have never watched baseball before when the one game playoff does so. If you want more teams in the wild Card, here's my suggestion. You make it four teams. The same in the wild Card the top team. Top team has to win one game. That means it is an elimination game. If you are the lower wild card seed, you lose one game, you're done. The top seed has to get beat twice. So at max you're looking at two game series. It's not going to drag onto three. That saves you time and worry about the division winners getting cold and rusty because it goes so along without playing, and then you have high drama because all the first games are elimination games. You're gonna be clenched, and then if it goes game two, well, now both teams can get eliminated. Better drama. They do this system elseworth. That's my suggestion. If you agree with it, let me know. If you don't, let me know. If you have something better, let me know, because I haven't like thought this this. You guys are my test audience. Like I send ideas your way that are just in my head and sometimes people respond and they're like, that doesn't make any sense. Jimmy forgot to think about this, and I'm like, yeah, you're right, I did forget to think about this. We're just workshopping stuff here, but we gotta fix it. Man, it doesn't even feel like the postseason. Postseason is supposed to start with a bang, primetime games at night, air pack stadiums loud. We keep starting with two o'clock, four o'clock starts on a Tuesday and Wednesday, when not only can fans not get there, they have to watch it on a second screen at work and sneak around. It's just so silly to me. It makes no sense. Postseason is when you're supposed to be like boom. If you haven't tuned in our regular season but you want to tune in because you just like sports and you want to see what's going on. Here you go, and we're not doing that as a sport. Where just that's happening. The next round and the divisional series have been amazing. The first time in a long time there was a tweet out there. Forget I think we tweeted even first time in X amount of years. Let me see if talking baseball, is it first time in X amount of years that every game, every series is tied one to one. We got Alonzo's rally pumpkin. That's pretty awesome. Just Karen, isn't a fake pumpkin? Looks fake, but I don't think it is. Where's that stat? Where's that stat? See if I can find it on the old Twitter machine. Oh, computer's going slow. I don't like that. For the rest of this show, Jazz Chishom said the Royals got lucky. I don't like that at all at all. For my Yankees, Come on, Jazz, be cool. This is the first time in MLB history that all four division series are tied one to one. So I went searching for the year. I could have just been hyperbolic from the start. So that's awesome. And I'm not knocking the divisional series of the Championship Series, and I'm not knocking expanding it to get more teams involved. I'm fine with all of that. I just think there's better ways to make it exciting and not not exciting in the first round before on a thing Number two, here are some stats my guy Dalt put together. Game one winners have won all twelve games in the series yep, ten of them sweeps. And then when the Mets are involved, it goes to three games. They went three games with the Padres, three games with the Brewers. The National League sixth seed has made the World Series both times, and that's the Mets this year. So maybe that rally pumpkin will make that three for three every season two plus lower seeds advanced to the divisional series. The one in two seeds have made the Championship Series three out of eight of the three out of eight of the time. From okay, so the one and two seeds are the they get the buye. They've only made the Championship Series three out of eight times. That is bizarre. They're supposed to like, they're supposed to be the locks for the CS, right, Yeah, huh, so there might be detriment or it's just the playoffs and a little bit of a crapshoot. Wild Card teams four, five, and six seeds have made the Championship Series five out of eight, so the wildcard round has produced more Championship Series teams than the one in two. Yeah, that's weird, but I don't know. You don't really want You don't want to build a format that just like rocks chalcol the whole way and the top teams move on. You want it to be kind of a crapshoot. These are adults, pros and cons. Let's see more teams in top two teams of five days. Not playing my situation gets them in earlier because you have one less day. So the big questions. Isn't advantage that the top seeds gets the rest for five days? Definitely not an advantage maybe for the bullpen, but not for the hitters. Does a regular season matter if top team gets knocked out by wildcard teams? Yes, maybe you want to host the I think hosting the wildcard game is more important, but I think a lot of the way teams win anyway. All right, now, I will move on to topic number two. I got a DM on Reddit, I believe from k Diggy for two eight. Hey John Boy, love you work. I don't have Twitter or I try there, wondering if you've done any work or would be up for a breakdown. Looking at Diaz's slider this year compared to twenty twenty two, it seemed pretty terrible during most of his appearances. Tons of spinners without nearly as much break. It obviously showed again last night. I'm not really sure he can be trusted at this point. Thanks Kyle, and I said, yeah, I'll look into it. Sounds a good thing for Jimmy's Three Things. So I haven't done this yet, so we might have to chop this up, and there might be times where I'm silent. I'm just searching for things. But I'll show you if I were to do this on my own time, what I would go look at. First. First, I would go to Baseball Savant, Edwin Diaz and Diaz slider. It's always been more of a bullet slider, not a crazy break. It's like I've always thought of his slider more as a change up without crazy break. But maybe in twenty twenty two it had it, and this chart right here is gonna show you all types of stuff and it's gonna be a graft throughout the year. So if I want to go to look at j his slider, we'll toggle just slider, okay, And this is looking at usage. So he threw it fifty eight percent of the time in twenty twenty two, and then you go here to twenty twenty four and it's down to forty seven, which is still higher than all the seasons before. But if you want to look at break, then you look at all this stuff. We can look at average pitch velocity and it's way slower. It's eighty nine miles per hour on average this year and in twenty twenty two is ninety point eight, so mile per hour down. On average spin rate it went up a little. That should be helpful. Well, actually in twenty two two it went down a lot because it didn't he stopped spinning it so much. I'll find footage to go with this. I'm just trying to show you this is what I would look at. So the spin rate was two thousand, two hundred and seventy four and twenty twenty two two thousand, two hundred and ninety six In twenty twenty four, and then we can look at average horizontal break, which would be left to right, and his has never had a lot of that. It's just one inch, so it's always been more vertical break. And this is with gravity and negative twenty nine. I think it's inches and oh it's the same. So on average throughout the year it's been the exact same. So with then what I can also do is I can also just look at this season twenty twenty four and then look month by month to see if there's any change, and it went down to twenty nine, which I think you want more, and it was It's fluctuated pretty decently there. If you do without gravity, I don't know, this should be the same graph, right, just different numbers. Yeah, five inches of heart vertical, so I don't see many differences here at all. The other thing you can do is do average release point, and this is what they check a lot to see if when guys get tired. When they get tired, their release points gonna be lower or closer to the mound, not as much extension. And so this looks let's see, okay, so his extension is getting farther and farther closer to home plate throughout the years. Look at this this every so every year it starts lower and then he gets higher. That just means he's getting tired. Besides twenty twenty two, where he got stronger as he went, that's the only year where it dips down. And like I told you, this is a metric they they do like kind of use to see fatigue. So I'm interested in if I go to his numbers in twenty twenty two, pitching splits in twenty twenty two, and we're gonna look at by month, and did he get better as it went? Yes, well, July through September, I mean June through September. He was absolutely nasty in twenty twenty two, zero nine three year in June zero zero, in July zero eight four, zero nine three. So let's go look at that chart. May was the worst and that was twenty twenty two, and that doesn't fully correlate. So maybe there's nothing there. But it is interesting that every year he gets he starts reaching more and more. I don't know what that means, to be honest with you, but some people do know what that means. I just don't. All right, let's get out of the grass and go look at some videos. Let's go, you would go Edwin Diaz, okay, and then let's find playoffs pitch type slider and find some footage. I want to be able to compare the footage. So what I'm gonna do is he hasn't pitched at home in the playoffs yet, and I want to You can toggle the included stats and we're gonna see what exactly was The question was about break right uh sliders this year. It seems pretty terrible. Tons of spinners, not nearly as much break. So let's go. You can when you search this, you can toggle on to give pitch movement, so pitch downwards movement, armside, glove side. We're gonna toggle all those on and we're gonna look at player and event. Then I got tackles on again because it changed, and we'll find some of the pitches he threw this year that is the most break so downward movement with gravity. So this pitch here that he threw was a slider with the least amount of downward movement, and then this one here had the most amount of downward movement. So let's take a look at those two and see the difference, So that was the least that's the slider that I kind of think of. It's just more of like a cutter almost and change up. It's ninety miles per hour and you can see it spinning, but it doesn't do a crazy amount of break, which is why this is the least break. So let's go look at now this one for comparison. It's slower, it's outside, but you can see it does dip. I want, I want only from the same stadium. So this one has thirty. This is a Philly I missed a spot. Okay, hold on, how do I do this? The top one that we got does no break, so sometimes you can do location. Well, that's downward movement. That is where his thing moves right, vertical movement with gravity armside, glove side. So this one, see this is weird. How could you have how could you throw a slider a lefty? Maybe no, it's him. Okay, So this had the most glove side movement, which doesn't make sense to me because he's a righty and his slider should not have glove side movement. It should go towards his So if anyone doesn't know that term, he wears his glove on his left hand. It should have glove side movement, so the ball glove side movement means it runs towards his glove. The picture glove from the picture's point of view. Crookeett does this from the batter's point of view, they would say, like offside of the batter, but we do from the picture, so it's going to go right to left from this view. But that didn't really do that at all. His slider doesn't move at all. It's just a change up. I think what I'll do is because that's supposed to have four inches of glove side movement. And then it looks like they've got him throwing this slider which has one inch of arm side movement, which would not be a slider. Like see what they're saying, And I think, you know, it's metrics like a human being doing it, so just naturally being aimed that way, and it does break that way. Let's go look at twenty twenty two and some of his nastiest sliders in those metrics, so and I can compare them. I also want to try and get the same venue twenty twenty two slider regular season. And then he had to throw some nasty ones venue. We're gonna go Phillies. That way, I can make a I can make an overlay and we can see what we're looking at. So his downward movement in twenty twenty two in Philly, So same mound, same place, the highest was thirty five inches and the lowest was twenty three. And this year in the playoffs, the highest was thirty four and the lowest was twenty three. So that's very similar. That's very similar. And then all the other metrics are kind of the same. So I don't know, I no, I don't. It seems like he's the same to me. Let's find one that's like in the zone, so I can compare it pitches in the zone and okay, in the zone that's over there, that's in the All right, this one's dead center. But it's a triple. That won't work for the overlay. So I gotta go find pitch result ball or called strike. Well, we want called strikers in the zone. Three of them this year. And then I'm gonna take this search and I'm gonna copy and paste it, but we're gonna change it to twenty twenty two, not twenty twenty four instead of the playoffs we do regular season, and venue we're gonna do Philly. We gotta get at least one. Okay, options, These are the options here, and I'm gonna go like that, and then I'm gonna make this a new window, and these are the options here. So let's see how let's find the most similar one downward movement. We got twenty eight, twenty eight, twenty nine. This is twenty five, twenty four, thirty three. So okay, one inch of glove and six inches gravity and I'm gonna do this. Okay, We're gonna sync these up. The only thing I'm realizing is because it's a National League broadcast, we might have different camera angles. So I'm gonna put a green or blue marker right the first time the ball is out of his hands, and then over here, i'm gonna market the first time balls out of his hands, and then what we do is we take that. I'll get rid of the audio and I stack them and then I changed this effect to lighter color. But see, they're wildly different sizes, so that's not good because they're two different TV networks covering them. So I'm gonna try and see if I can if they're the same camera angle, I should be able to sink. I'm looking at the home plate right now, and then what I'll do a lot of times is look at that the citizens Bank sign right here, and I'm gonna try and make it the same exact size. And if the same camera angle, then this should make it so they're on top of each other. But they're a little different because home plate is like that. See how that looks well? And then we found the same pitch. It's kind of cool. I don't know if it's going to give us an answer, but in its own way, that is kind of cool. So you see two balls. Yeah, So for K Diggy whatever, what's his name, I'll be respectful. I'll make sure I know your name. K Diggy, I had it. I think his slider's the same. My conclusion is no conclusion. His slider has always had no break. In my opinion, it's always acted more of a change up to me that he throws hard or like a how like a cutter and a fastball can affect people. That's what his slider and fastball do, all right. Third thing we're gonna look at, which is fun because everyone likes shitting on umpires, even though it's one of the hardest jobs in the world, and you or I could not do it, and they trained for years and are the best at what they do, and it's still just so hard. So what I did was I did playoffs only, and then I found pitches that were in the strike zone. So you got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, toggled all that. These pitches are in the strike zone, but they were called a ball. Okay, So these pitchers put the ball where they wanted, but it was called the ball. And then I have metric range, plate Z and plate X that's where it crosses the plate. And we're gonna find the most egregious misses of the year. And I think you actually want to find like dead center here because this is gonna be like very inside. Let's take a look. This one should be This one should be like on the edge, but called the ball. Yeah, so they are saying that clip the zone, but it's on the edge, so that if we go to the middle here where we get we want to get to zero. So like this pitch unless it's higher low, but it should be pretty dead center. So it's low. They have that as a strike, all right, So let's find now the on the on the flip side, on the higher low. We want one that's kind of in the middle two that is like, so this is this is the highest pitch that was a strike but was called a ball. And sometimes you know, we're gonna see these and be like, nah, that's a ball. Like I think that's a ball. I don't think that's a strike. And then if I do it the other way and we find this is the lowest pitch that they are saying is a strike but was called a ball, I also think that that's probably ball. So we got to find a number in the middle here, So that's one, two, nine, and the highest was three something. Let's find something that's like two to two and then like this might be our best because that's close to zero on the other metric. This one and this one. Okay, so this pitch by Dazebol Hernandez, I don't know that name, and this pitch by Savvy have to be some of the more egregious misses based on the metrics. Yeah, that's a strike. Okay, So that's center cut right over the heart of the plate and that's at his knees. Well, he kind of stands up still and the help's really low, so maybe that hurts him. I got that as a strike. And then this was the other one, my guy Luis Severino, Cody Clemens. Oh how is that not a strike? Same thing? See, these batters are kind of stealing strikes. She aw he straightens his knees and stands up real tall and he's not in a hitting position. I bet if he went down in a hitting position, the yump might call that because that that's a strike. Okay, So those are the most egregious that way. Now the more fun ones that everyone likes to see is this page where I did. These pitches were not in the zone, but they were called a strike, and we have the plate X and plate Z toggled. So this is going to be the lowest pitch that was called a strike, and this is gonna be or the most inside, most outside. This is going to be the lowest, and this is going to be the highest pitch that were called strikes that were not strikes that is a such. This is Andy Fletcher. He had a terrible game called a lot of bad pictures that is inside, and he's doing a good job as a batter. Maybe he over sold it, so they got mad at him. Nah, he was missing on that side the whole time. All right, Eli Morgan called strike on Colt Keith, Eli Morgan and Colt Keith. That sounds like some outlaw names from like the West, Like they could have been in the same group that robbed banks with Jesse James, Eli Morgan and Colt Keith. I guess Eli Morgan would probably be the banker that got robbed by Colt Keith. Oh look at look at Keith turned to the armp and just be like what, let's watch out again? Look at look at his the batter. Whoa dude, that is a quick turn when he hears strike. Yeah, that's not a strike. How in the shit is that called the strike? And that's the most off the plate to the left pitch that's called the strike. And this is the most off the plate to the right from the pitcher's point of view, that's been called a strike. And now we have this is gonna be the highest or lowest, to forget the lowest. Oh that stinks, dude, that is so low you know what. I'm gonna pause on this one because I want to see the side angle of it. So let's remember it, and then let's go watch this one. This is the highest pitch called a strike. Oh, another great reaction from the batter gunner Henderson. This doesn't seem that egregious, but watch after them called strike that turn it's like almost a robot turn of just like the bottom half. Huh. All right? The Royals have the most as a team. Where's the one? I want to remember this one? Going to place that over here, as this is fun. Royals fans, you'll find this really fun. You'll enjoy this a ton. In this postseason, most pitches that have been outside the zone but called a strike for the pitcher. So this is the picture is getting the benefit. The Royals are number one. They've gotten the most. Their pitching staff has gotten the most help per Baseball Savant this postseason. They've played more games because they were in the wild card Detroit and the Mets are right behind. Those are the pitchers that got the most help. Now, the other way we look at it, this is pitches that were in the zone. They were in the zone but called a ball. So these are the pitchers that got the least help and sorted by team, and you're like this, Royals, You're top again. So you have just had the most incorrect calls called as a team. You're like lapping the field. You had sixteen that hurt you and eleven that helped you, So you're negative five on the umscore. But twenty seven pitches have been called incorrectly for the Royals this postseason. The next highest is probably the Mets with twenty three, and then the Tigers with nineteen. So that Andy Fletcher game for the Mets was brutal. I think that's the whole show. That's everything. Thanks for watching.