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Cubs Insider | Jeff Burdick: Even though Alex Cora and Dave Roberts relied on the third-time-through ideology throughout the postseason and especially in the postseason, there’s a “faced multiple times” penalty for relievers, too, and their increased use also decreases effectiveness as their workload and fatigue builds.
FanGraphs | Jeff Sullivan: The Red Sox are one of the better teams in the modern era, but one of the best ever? Probably not, just because in the past, the standard deviation of winning percentage was so much higher, so the field was much more wide open for very dominant teams. That doesn’t reduce how great the team is, and they are still in the upper quartile of World Series winners of all time.
The Ringer | Michael Baumann: Will Manny Machado’s free agency changes be hurt by his antics in the postseason? Maybe not because of the “hustling” controversy, but maybe because he played dirty. Even so, there’s little doubt in anyone’s minds that he’s getting less than $250 million.
The Athletic | Eno Sarris ($): No team was adversely affected by an “over-reliance” on analytics, whatever that actually means. The Dodgers, Red Sox, and Astros are some of the most sabermetrically-inclined teams in all of baseball, and two of those teams won it all the last two seasons.