I'd like to gruff full spruine, I'm about to fall to more of you.

Master out with a big heart, till the same shoot please.

Good morning and welcome to episode 547 of Effectively Wild, the Daily Podcast from Baseball Perspectus,

presented by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com.

I am Ben Lindbergh of Grantland.com, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectus.

Hello.

Hi.

So we're recording a little late.

You had N.O. Wild card game recapping duties last night when we would normally record.

So we were planning to talk about the N.O. Wild card game a little bit and maybe we will very briefly,

but there is not nearly as much to say about that game as there was about the game the night before.

No, not challenging game to recap because there was really Madison Bumgarner and that was about it.

Good pitcher pitches well, not so good pitcher pitches poorly.

Yes.

Game largely boring.

Yeah, Bumgarner was great.

The ESPN stats and info pointed out that there have been six shutouts with at least 10 strikeouts by pitchers since August 1st.

And Bumgarner has three of those.

So he is pitching very well and he pitched very well last night.

And it's not even that much fun to talk about the Volkhez versus cold decision in retrospect

because if we're going to play hypotheticals then we have to assuming that Bumgarner's performance was not affected by the pirate's choice of starting pitcher,

then unless Cole had matched him shut out inning for shut out inning, it wouldn't have made much of a difference anyway.

...