Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1: Gong

Episode Date: July 18, 2012

The first episode of BP’s new daily podcast is ready for your ears, if your ears are ready for it. After months of deliberation and well-intentioned procrastination, we’ve gotten the Effectively Wild podcast off the ground. Between Up and In and Tower of Power, BP is already well stocked with weekly podcasts, so we’re trying […]

And welcome to the first episode of what we hope will be more than one episode of Effectively Wild, the Baseball Perspectives podcast. I almost said many episodes, but I want to keep expectations low. In Manhattan, New York, just a short stroll from the beautiful banks of the Hudson River, I am Ben Lindberg. short stroll from the beautiful banks of the Hudson River. I am Ben Lindbergh in Long Beach, California, from his garage, I assume, in which he is sitting in his Honda, Sam Miller. Hi, Ben. How do you think it's going so far? We haven't made any obvious mistakes yet. I don't know that we've really hooked anyone yet either, but people are still probably reserving judgment at this point.

Probably. I feel like we do have a long future ahead of us, though, so this is a good start. I hope so. We'll look back at these last few minutes very fondly. And we'll always remember the day because it's your birthday. Happy birthday. Great. Yeah, great. Now just tell everybody how to steal my identity. Thank you. Yeah. Sorry if I overstepped my bounds there, but I just wanted to celebrate since we're celebrating by starting this podcast, which has been several months in the making or in the not making more accurately. I guess, should we explain why you're in a car right now? I don't think so.

No, okay. Well, Sam's in a car, and I'm seated at a desk with a microphone and a computer, which is how most podcasters probably record their podcasts. So I guess we should maybe talk a bit about why we're doing this or what it is we're doing, which not that we have a clear sense of that ourselves. No, I think mainly we're doing this because we've now met each other in person. And so the shame of having this project on the back burner and not doing anything about it is a little bit harder to deal with now that we know each other personally and not just as online avatars. Right. I think, yes, that was a big development because I raised the idea of doing a podcast before Sam was even in his current role at BP, sort of to either to lure him or to warn him before he actually accepted that position.

So we've been discussing it ever since and finding convenient excuse after convenient excuse to delay this actual recording. I had some job stuff going on, and then Sam had a trip, and there was always some reason not to do it. Like that we didn't want to. Yes, right. And so this past weekend, Sam was in New York and we met up a couple times and we looked

each other in the eye and we sized each other up and said, yeah, I could do a podcast with that guy. And I don't want to say we didn't want to. I mean, there are always reasons that you fear it, but it always seemed enticing. And so now we're doing it. Yeah. And it's good. I think it's going really well, in fact. So far, we're surpassing my expectations, which we're...

We're about a third of the way done with the first episode, which is nice. Yeah. And speaking of that, the point of this podcast is that we're not trying to compete with the other Baseball Perspectives podcasts for a good reason. We probably couldn't, for one thing, but we're trying to offer something a little different. Instead of your weekly two-hour long show, We're going to try to make this a daily show and keep it to 10 minutes or so. Just sort of a quick thing that you can listen to on your way to work or at work or lying in bed if you're unemployed or however you listen to these things.

if you're unemployed or however you listen to these things. And so the idea is that we would each come in with one compelling topic, a timely topic from maybe the previous night's games or something in the news, and then we will decide live on the air which one to talk about. And we will talk about it and then we will be finished great idea it was your idea so yeah it's a good one um and i don't know how we're exactly going to decide whose topic to talk about i feel like we're probably both the type who would be inclined to defer to the other person's idea. And maybe we'll just do that for 10 minutes and not actually talk about the topic.

Yeah, I think that would capture our personalities pretty well. Yeah. A lot of deferring. Yes. Okay, so I don't know who goes first. How do we – we didn't work that out. No, well, you want to – shall we defer for a couple minutes about who will go first? We have five minutes, so I'll just start quick because we got to go quick.

But the Orioles lost a close game today. They entered today tied for one of the wild card spots, but our odds have them at only 6% likely to make the playoffs. And so I think that comes into play around this time of year because you have to decide whether you are a buyer or a seller, and the Orioles are somewhat in no-man's land where they don't seem particularly likely to make the playoffs because they're bad, but they also seem likely to make it in the sense that they are very close. And so I thought we could talk about Baltimore Orioles, whether teams should play to win when they suck. Okay. I had a few ideas, none of them particularly good, but I turned on MLB tonight before and and Aroldis Chapman was

was striking out someone and it seems like every time I turn on baseball on a TV lately I see Aroldis Chapman striking out someone goodness gracious yeah he's interesting yeah it's an interesting one so I thought we could talk about the run he's been on for the last couple weeks and whether we can really enjoy it given all the baggage surrounding his role or whether it's so unfair that someone who's potentially a starter is pitching one inning at a time, that it's something we can enjoy without thinking about the fact that he should be doing something else or, you know, uh, but, uh, I don't know. He's a topic that we've, we've both written about and talked about, uh, plenty in the past. So,

um, I guess this is the moment where we're supposed to come to some consensus. Goodness, we have three minutes. Did you actually start a clock? No, but I have a clock in my eye. I know how to subtract 10. Either of those would be fine with me. I don't have a whole lot to say about Chapman, I guess. I guess I'm not that upset about his role,

but maybe that's just because I don't follow him and the Reds closely enough. I might also have an antiquated idea that Dusty Baker is just going to ruin him if given seven innings of Chapman at a time. So maybe I'm just grateful. I don't know. I think there's a point. I mean, you know, there's obviously there's two places to come at this. One is whether it makes competitive sense for the Reds to keep him limited.

And that's probably I mean, who was it? And that's probably, I mean, who was it? Was it Jason who wrote about the value of leverage and figuring out where the math makes sense to trade the leveraged innings for the quantity of innings? So I guess maybe I would want to reread that before we have this conversation. But from a fan's perspective, I mean, I just really don't think that Chapman is likely to do anything as a starter that is going to sear itself into my memory the way that he has seared himself into my memory this year doing what he's doing. Right. So the background. So the last time he allowed a run was June 24th. Since then, here's what his game log looks like.

One inning, three strikeouts. One inning, two strikeouts. One inning, three strikeouts. One inning, two strikeouts. One inning, three strikeouts. One inning, two strikeouts. One inning, three strikeouts. And a third of an inning, one strikeout.

Which comes to, I think, 19 strikeouts and 26 batters faced, which is almost three quarters he's striking out right now. That's 19 strikeouts in seven and a third. Yes, and not really walking anyone. And so in spring training, obviously, he was stretched out to be a starter. He pitched very well as a starter and then was shifted to the bullpen. Sort of a few injuries came up around opening day, and Dusty Baker made the decision. And I guess I didn't really have a problem with it if it was an area of need, but I can't help, you know, he's dominating to such an extent that I feel like it's almost unfair and that I feel like I'm watching, I don't know, Justin Verlander converted into a closer at this point, which would probably be fun to watch but also somehow underwhelming in that maybe he could be doing something more.

Yeah, you know what I think we need to see is we actually need to see a team convert Justin Verlander to closer so that we actually know what the outer limits of what a reliever can do. Because when I see Chapman do this, you know, I actually don't know how impressive an achievement it is. I mean, I know that it blows my mind and it's fun to watch and it just feels like the batters have no chance. But like Ernie Freire did something fairly similar for a long stretch of time and I don't think Ernie Freire would make lights out of the order. So it's hard to look at these numbers and know just exactly how much to project him as a starter. I know that various people at BP have done translations for reliever to starter.

But if Verlander were to become a closer for a year, and then we could kind of see what the outer limits of how good a pitcher could actually do, then we would be able to put Chapman's performance into perspective. And if what he ended up doing is pitching 42 innings and striking out 79 and walking 13 and having a 1.7 ERA like Chapman, then I would say, okay, yes, Chapman has reached the outer limits of relief work. He should probably be a starter. But as it is now, I don't really know. It's hard to know. I mean, what do you think Chapman would do as a starter?

Before the season, I was not particularly optimistic. I guess you edited something I wrote about all the guys who were converting from the bullpen to the starting rotation and sort of ranking them based on which i thought would succeed which was mostly guesswork but chapman i thought uh just sort of based on on last year and and before that i i didn't really think he would have the ability to repeat his delivery and and walk everyone in longer outings. But the fact that he really isn't walking anyone at all these days and didn't really walk anyone in the spring has sort of made me come around a bit to the idea

that he would hold up in that role. And I don't know how developed his his secondary stuff is or what the exact status of that is because he doesn't really need to use it right now um because you know his one or two pitches are so overpowering uh that i don't know how it would hold up after a second or third or fourth trip through a lineup. But I would definitely like to see the Verlander as closer to establish that baseline. Although I guess we don't know that Verlander has the closer mentality. So he might just fall apart in that role.

He might. That'd be a beautiful thing to see. Yeah, well, I think until we've seen Verlander as a closer, we have to leave this as an open question, unfortunately. Yeah, and the Reds are in first place, so putting him where he is has not sabotaged their season or anything. They don't have any gaping holes in the rotation, I guess, though. Well, I don't know. Maybe an Arroyo is a gaping hole. I'm not sure.

I think gaping hole should actually be a modern euphemism for general douchebaggery, in which case we could say they have a gaping hole in their rotation. Well, I guess we just sort of drifted into talking about one of the one of the topics yeah which is probably a good way to do it because I don't want to ever hurt your feelings or or have my feelings hurt by you I would have liked to talk about Chris Britton's six walk performance tonight which you know we could do the line. We could throw both topics on Twitter and then have people decide by vote, but since it's such a short show, basically the first vote would win. We could do that. I don't think that's a good idea, actually.

I think we did it right tonight. Yeah, okay. I think they'll look back at this generations from now and say they got it right the first time. Yeah. generations from now and say they got it right the first time yeah uh so i guess now we're going to hit stop recording and then we will have an audio file which is our podcast and we will upload it to the bp website and it'll it'll be there when when you wake up which you've already done if you're listening to this and i guess if if the reviews are positive and we listen to this and don't think it's awful, we will be back at the same time tomorrow to talk about something else.

We're going to have to work on cutting back, though. 14 minutes. Too long. Yeah. Okay. Well, this was special because we had all that intro. The intro, you're right. The happy birthday and all that.

All right. Okay. All right, Ben. It's nice talking to you. But thanks for joining us, and nice talking to you, Sam. And we'll talk again tomorrow.