Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen.

Good morning and welcome to the 69th episode of Effectively Wild, the Daily Podcast from Baseball Perspectus.

I'm Sam Miller in Long Beach, California. In New York, New York is Ben Lindbergh.

Ben, how are you?

Feeling pretty good about myself.

Because you predicted, as I recall, you sent me a note yesterday that predicted almost to the pitch.

Everything that was going to happen yesterday.

I don't know if I sent you a note, but I concluded yesterday's episode by saying that we would be back today

to talk about how Sido dominated the Tigers and Berlinder was kind of a mess.

Well, no, come on. You can't use ironic predictions.

Just to fight against the world.

That's all I have.

When we hung up yesterday, I certainly felt, I don't know if you felt, but I certainly felt like that was the worst podcast that had ever been recorded.

It was the worst podcast because we refused to take the idea of predictions or really even analysis seriously, which is our job to do.

We work for a company of baseball analysts who have made our name with a prediction system.

We should probably be more open to predictions and analysis.

But this is exactly why we probably weren't.

I think that certainly you could have said with no doubt or shame that the Tigers should have won last night's game.

The Justin Berlinder was the better pitcher, etc., etc.

But I don't know what good that does anybody, and as we saw yesterday, not only does that not necessarily turn into anything real,

but you could not possibly come up with a matchup more unbalanced than Berri Sido hitter versus Justin Berlinder pitcher, and even there, there was a surprising outcome.

I don't know if I noted it in my recap or not.

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