iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

If your personal decisions at the job you voluntary sought and for which my tax dollars pay your salary make the world a worse place, you do not have a right to be insulated from that. Seems like a basic tenet of public service

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 13h

If John Roberts (or any elected official or civic leader whose decisions have direct consequences on the lives of the people they serve) wants to live a normal, quiet life outside of work, he should resign and let someone who understands the gravity of his responsibility take the job in his place.

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 13h

"Analytics" is not a monolith. You and I do not know what a given team's model output was or how well a manager adhered to it. It's fully valid to disagree. You may be right! But I can guarantee that someone working for the team has also made/argued the point you think the manager didn't think of

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 13h

A crucial reminder as the discourse hones in on a given managerial decision:

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 01/10/2026

What an absolutely bananas combination of speakers

Social media flier advertising the Brown Political Union speaker series, with pictures of the featured guests: Francesca Hong, David Morales, and Curtis Sliwa

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 18h

Make that 14 sweeps out of 20 since the new format was introduced. The proportion actually went UP this year! Here's the math explaining why:

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 01/10/2026

Still a heck of a jumpscare-inducing poster!

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 01/10/2026

I guess the theme of the speaker series is "nightmare blunt rotation for an establishment machine Democrat"

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 01/10/2026

(Morales is the presumptive mayor-elect of the state-capital city where Brown is located so that one makes sense)

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 01/10/2026

Why is Curtis Sliwa's hat bigger than David Morales' entire head

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 01/10/2026

What an absolutely bananas combination of speakers

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 30/09/2026

"Is Alec Bohm Good" - the greatest thread in the history of forums, locked by a moderator after 12,239 pages of heated debate,

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 22/11/2024

Pretty gross to see people treating Jameis Winston, who has twice been accused of sexual assault, as having folksy charm

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 30/09/2026

I wrote this passage a few months before the more-in-depth study in the QT. It's where the seeds of the later analysis were planted:

Which brings us to the third and most-interesting option. If teams want to avoid stretching their bullpens too thin in October, the obvious solution would be to leave their starters in longer. To plan on letting their aces pitch deep into games, to tolerate their mid-rotation arms going a third time through the order, to not pull their Game 4 starter at the first sign of trouble. It would mean seeing durability in the postseason as a priority, not just an incidental luxury. Keeping the pitch count low, turning over a lineup multiple times, and pacing yourself through the middle innings may be seen as more-valuable skills than dominating for three innings at a time.

If Spahn and Sain and a bullpen game were no longer enough for a playoff rotation, teams with championship aspirations would have to develop or acquire some legitimate old-school starters. The ability to pitch deep into games is not something that most players can just pick up at the end of September.4 So as teams placed renewed importance on being able to throw six or seven innings each time out, the pitching approach you’d expect from such innings-eaters would make a comeback during the regular season, too: lower velocities, more pitches in the zone, and most importantly, fewer strikeouts. Baseball could start to turn back the clock.

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 30/09/2026

I had forgotten about this research I did! My findings a couple years ago may be relevant for all these playoff bullpen games: "After controlling for quality of talent, a postseason-wide shift of one inning per game from starters to relievers is associated with a 47-point increase in ERA."

thelewsletter.lewispoll.is

Is This How the Strikeout Era Ends?

How the 2024 playoffs could change modern pitching philosophy

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 30/09/2026

…and here are this week’s batches

Two trays of lasagna cooling on the counter

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 30/09/2026

I left a disappointed but polite comment and they deleted it!

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 29/09/2026

His dulcet tones make the Browns’ constant three-and-outs less unpleasant

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 29/09/2026

Very strange to hear T-Mac calling a non-Phillies baseball game

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Erika Hall @erikahall.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I know people in every industry saying "I need to get out of this industry".

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Jacob Pomrenke @buckweaver.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Reminder: The Braves can stop playing this anytime they choose.

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 28/09/2026

...and here is your reminder that letting the starter pitch deep into a game (or at least deeper than most modern managers' leashes) is not just more aesthetically satisfying, but also smart strategy. There is tangible, quantifiable value in minimizing the number of ours your bullpen has to cover!

thelewsletter.lewispoll.is

The Case for Leaving the Starter In

Quantifying the hidden costs of bullpen overexposure

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 29/09/2026

His first run for governor was inspired by looking at a field that included both a Blue Dog Democrat and a Rockefeller Republican running as an independent and thinking "You know who's not represented here? Centrists!" So he ran as a protest candidate on the Moderate Party (which he founded) ticket

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 29/09/2026

For non-Rhode Islanders, Ken Block is one of the funniest figures in modern American politics. I can't believe he's still around and kicking

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 29/09/2026

They didn’t even bother to use their own logo. How am I supposed to recognize the storefront on *squints* Grabhub?

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 29/09/2026

Our favorite Thai place just announced they were under new management and immediately started posting stuff like this. Come on man

A very sloppy GenAI flier advertising deals for a Thai restaurant

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 26/09/2026

This was legitimately one of the proudest moments of my life

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 29/09/2026

Nah, just garlic, salt, and pepper. That way I can plausibly tell myself it's healthful-ish. (But sometimes I sprinkle some Romano on top...)

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 29/09/2026

Orzo with broccoli (the recipe is pretty much exactly what it sounds like) and roasted chicken

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 29/09/2026

2022 NLDS Game 3 vs. Strider notwithstanding

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 28/09/2026

I am deferring my lasagna-baking to tomorrow due to jetlag and vaccine side effects. But I have enough energy to ask you to get involved with bringing hot meals to neighbors in need wherever you are: lasagnalove.org/volunteer

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 28/09/2026

This is mostly correct but playoff baseball specifically is meant to be played at night. There's something uncanny about a do-or-die game in daylight

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 28/09/2026

College Lewie who was legitimately starstruck to meet Voros at a conference would have truly melted to read such kind words. Now that I know him, I take it as an insu— I mean, as a very high compliment still

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 28/09/2026

And to jump ahead a few weeks: This is also an argument for why Cristopher Sánchez has more than a devil's-advocate case to beat Misiorowski for the Cy Young

The trend is noisy, as some of the samples are tiny (only five games went to extras after a starter threw nine full innings) and this measurement definitionally favors mid-inning pitching changes (the more outs there are when a reliever enters, the fewer opportunities for them to be charged with runs). Nevertheless, the results validate this theory. The three longest durations in the data also have the lowest ERAs. Every start length of 5.2 innings or more leads to an aggregate 3.80 ERA or better from the bullpen; all but one duration of 16 outs or fewer yields a reliever ERA over 3.90. If you regress the bullpen’s performance on when they were called into duty across every game in the dataset, each additional out a starter records is associated with a four-point improvement in bullpen ERA. Which equates to 12 points of ERA improvement per inning.

To pick out the two most-common start lengths, 41 percent of MLB starts over the last three years lasted either 15 or 18 outs. The league-wide bullpen ERA when the first reliever enters after five innings is 4.04. After six innings, it drops 33 points, to 3.71. The concept isn’t rocket science. It’s almost too tautological to be interesting. But people usually conceptualize saving the relievers’ bullets as an abstract aspiration, not as a managerial decision with a tangible impact. The freshness and flexibility of the bullpen is not a side effect of optimizing pitching strategy. It is a key component of it.

The second is that conventional value metrics underrate innings-eaters. Wins Above Replacement is a function of playing time: every inning pitched by a big-league-caliber player is an inning not delegated to an emergency call-up. But while dipping into the eponymous replacement-level pool is frictionless in theory, actual players take up roster spots. Shuttling in a fresh arm to help out a tired staff means sending another reliever down for two weeks, and you can’t make a waiver claim in the fourth inning because your starter got shelled in the third. If there is tangible second-order value in lightening the bullpen’s workload, then starters deserve credit not just for the innings they pitch but for the innings their teammates don’t have to pitch.

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 28/09/2026

thelewsletter.lewispoll.is

The Case for Leaving the Starter In

Quantifying the hidden costs of bullpen overexposure

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 28/09/2026

Sort of! That raises trickier questions about just how much the odds swing with each matchup, though. I've also been chewing on @enosarris.bsky.social's comment today that the G1 winner has more flexibility in managing their staff for the next game(s), which I would guess is a much bigger edge

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 28/09/2026

This specific combination is a known Chicago thing! I had it when I was there a few years ago and it was fantastic. These are Emparogis: www.instagram.com/p/CbczcaKOST...

A dish of pierogi-empanada fusion dumplings

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 28/09/2026

For those who heard it mentioned on Rates & Barrels (thanks @dvr.bsky.social!), here's the math explaining why so few Wild Card series go to a do-or-die Game 3. Though I like @enosarris.bsky.social's theory about Game 1 winners setting themselves up well for the next game too

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 28/09/2026

Since the MLB playoffs expanded, we haven't seen nearly as many climactic Game 3s in the Wild Card round as fans have hoped — 11 out of 16 series ended in 2-0 sweeps. A couple years ago I broke down the math to explain why sweeps are, in fact, mathematically more likely than going three games.

thelewsletter.lewispoll.is

Why Do Most Wild Card Series End in Sweeps?

A simple mathematical explanation for why we don't see more Game Threes

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 27/09/2026

I always thought it was funny that they made A-Rod so mid

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 27/09/2026

I watched Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri for the first time on the plane last night, and goodness gracious. I found myself checking the time lapse every few minutes because I didn't want it to end and was afraid it was about to. What a masterpiece

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 27/09/2026

I was up for a full 24 hours straight while we traveled home yesterday, and just woke up at 5:30pm Paris time. It may be a couple weeks before I'm confident in what year it is

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 26/09/2026

The kicker — besides all the questions being filtered through my wife’s cousin, for whom neither French nor English is his first language — is that half of it was about Star Trek, which I know very little about. Most of our score on that section was pity points for funny answers the trivia guy liked

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 26/09/2026

This was legitimately one of the proudest moments of my life

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 26/09/2026

You can say what you want about the French, but they are innovators in the field of “letting you walk around the airport with a reasonably priced 7% beer”

A can of beer with a yellow label reading la Goudale

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 24/09/2026

Technically yes in that she was sitting at the table

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 24/09/2026

Guess who just won Star Wars bar trivia in a language I don’t even speak

A man with a huge smile takes a selfie in a bar with a Star Wars Lego set

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Lewie Pollis @lewispoll.is · 24/09/2026

“Fantasies Come True” from the Avenue Q soundtrack

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