Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 119: Chris Sale’s Scary Mechanics/The Tigers and Justin Upton/AL Breakout Players/Trading Ryan Braun/Edwin Encarnacion’s Future

Episode Date: January 15, 2013

Ben and Sam answer several questions submitted but not answered during Ben’s Monday chat.

Our relationship has been a series of misadventures from beginning to end. Good morning and welcome to episode 119 of Effectively Wild, the Baseball Perspectives Daily Podcast. In New York, New York, I am Ben Lindberg and in Long Beach, California, my Long Beach crew. That's the first and last time I've made a rap reference on this podcast. Sam Miller, how are you? Good. Good. How are you, Ben?

Okay. We have tons to talk about today. The Dodgers have looked into Rafael Soriano. The Diamondbacks are unlikely to land Rick Porcello. Things, I can't even keep track of all the things that are happening. Do you know I've been pronouncing it Porcello my entire life? I used to be a Porcello pronouncer. You know what would be useful?

Actually, somebody should create this blog. I don't imagine it would be that hard to get the information from all the teams because it's in all the media guides. But why isn't there a league-wide pronunciation guide for baseball players? I don't know. That's a pretty easy blog to put together. I don't know. Maybe only I would look at it. So maybe that's why it doesn't exist. And it would instantly be dated because prospects are a lot of times the ones that I don't know how to pronounce.

But I'm looking at this list of questions that we might talk about today. And there are a number of names I don't know how to say. And so I'm not going to answer those questions. I think most people don't particularly care. They just kind of plow right ahead. However they feel like it should be said, they just say it. And probably they don't have a podcast, so no one is listening. So it doesn't matter if they get it wrong.

And no one will email them to tell them they got it wrong. You're telling me there are people without a podcast. There's a few, I guess, left probably. So what we thought we would do today, I had a chat at Baseball Prospectus yesterday, Monday. You can go read the transcript. I chatted with people for a few hours and there were lots of great questions and okay answers. And I didn't get to every question that was asked. There were quite a few questions I didn't have time or the knowledge to answer.

So I avoided them until the chat was over. Do you like chatting? I don't like it before I do it and then once I start and kind of get in the rhythm it's okay I kind of enjoy it. Before it starts I kind of dread it. Anyway we have a bunch of questions left and we're both looking at all the questions that were asked but not answered, and I guess we're going to just kind of pick one out and just alternate and answer them or try to. Okay. All right. Shall I go first?

Yeah, sure. All right. go first yeah sure all right uh somebody whose name i can't pronounce says do you think the white socks should sell high on chris sale given injury concerns even though he is a potential ace and is under control for a whole bunch of years what do you think they could get in return can you think of any comparable trades yeah that's an interesting question. There was another question about sale in my chat where I think it was a fantasy question. And the person was asking me if he should draft sale in a keeper league or trade for sale. And I just am very wary of sale, not for performance reasons at all, because he is excellent at pitching, but he scares me.

all because he is excellent at pitching but he scares me and i don't and yet i don't know whether his uh his mechanics scaring me means anything because i am not doug thorburn i am not a mechanics expert and yet when i look at him i cringe there is there is definitely a an anti-sale vibe out there i i feel like which surprises me i I mean, the guy's 23 and was a legitimate Cy Young contender in his first year as a starter, and yet I don't really pick up much excitement about him. There's this sort of sense of holding breath. I mean, at best, it's holding breath. At worst, it's... I think it's doom.

Yeah, yeah. I don't know why, though. I mean, why him and why not every other young pitcher i mean look at him yeah it's true i actually remember i i had him in um i i had him in there's one fantasy league that i take seriously still and it's a two-person league me and one other person and i um i drafted him league how does that work it's very complicated there's like uh eliminations it takes like eight hours to do the draft there's almost no managing it's the most fun league in the world but it is not describable okay anyway i i don't

think i'd ever seen chris sale pitch I drafted him just based on his pedigree and probably based on what you had written about his prospects for converting to starting and all that. So anyway, I draft him, and then I watch his first inning of the year, and I just panic. Because, I mean, he fell behind 2-0 to like the second batter and I was like he's never gonna throw another strike how how would that man ever throw a strike

how would he stay healthy I mean he looks very awkward I mean there's certainly an awkwardness about him but who cares it's not it's not it's the White Sox too if any team's gonna keep him healthy yeah there is that um I don't know it's not just awkward it's like pain it causes me pain to watch it yeah if you i mean if you go frame by frame though like i uh i did this for a pitcher recently i mentioned that if you go frame by frame it's galling to see his his mechanics and that that i don't know if you and i both i think actually do go frame by frame on a lot of these things when we're putting together gifs and they all have at least one moment where when you pause it you yeah you vomit in your mouth where their elbow is like sticking out of their flesh and it's all white and just protruding and off yeah and their veins everywhere

yeah no and an alien is actually emerging from their chest and yeah they're bleeding from their anus i mean it's there's just so many things going wrong with pictures all the time yeah so first first first time we've had that on the podcast. I don't know. If it were just me, I would discount that. But I've heard it from people who presumably know what they're talking about when it comes to pitcher mechanics. I mean, I've heard, say,

Keith Law, who talks to scouts all the time and can scout himself, basically saying that sale is going to break, that it's only a matter of time i'm paraphrasing um yeah i i think yeah keith keith is i think uh to a large degree responsible for the general pessimism about him because he wasn't real high on him uh as a prospect i mean i think he would probably taken him on his team to some degree but he wasn't real high on him and he's still kind of wary of him and

keith has 350 000 followers and so that that probably has where i've gotten this sort of vibe so yeah other than that i wouldn't say that they should sell high because it's not like the chris sale bubble is about to burst performance wise i don, I don't think he is that good. He is really good. So if they could find a team that would just give up everything for him and is not at all concerned about his elbow, and you have to figure that the White Sox are kind of worried about him because they went through that whole he's starting, he's relieving,

he's starting again thing. So that makes you kind of think that maybe they had some concerns. So I don't know. I guess if they could find a team that would give them back the return that a young ace brings back and is not at all worried about his arm and would give you a return like he's just a player with no red flags or no warning signs or anything. I mean, I guess you could think about it. It's, I don't know. It's not like they have to go out of their way to do it. And can you think of any comparable?

I mean, there's a really easy one, right? Mike Panetta for his tarot is almost perfect. Yeah, that's a good one. Was there even that much – there wasn't really that much concern that he was going to break, right? No, there was no concern about his health. There was concern about his not having a changeup and whether he'd be able to sort of – I mean, there's an idea that he needs to learn one to really be uh a great pitcher for the next five years yeah i don't really believe i don't think i anytime i see the the the the question phrase as should they sell high or sell low or buy high or

buy low i just disregard it because i think that that's not really a concept that works. I mean, it presumes that every other team is just, I mean, gullible or not aware of the same issues that the selling team is, I guess. Yeah. Which I guess is true sometimes. The question is, should they trade him if there are other teams that like him more than they do? And that's true of Chris Sale. I think it's also true of every other player that they have, and it's true of every player that they might conceivably buy. If you like a player more than another team, there's probably an inefficiency there that you might be able to take advantage of.

The problem is that your opinions aren't necessarily going to be any better than the other teams. And so, yeah, you should probably be a little humble. I don't know why they would think that they... I mean, the White Sox, if the White Sox have good reason to think that he's injured, then sure, try to move him. But, I mean, the fact that they let him pitch until the end of the year, they had him start the last week of the year, they didn't really seem to be too cautious with him.

He topped 115 pitches at least once in every month after April. So basically they were treating him like a normal starter with a normal arm, even though it was his first year starting after that year of relief. And so my guess is that the White Sox aren't in a position where they think less of him than any other team would. So I doubt he'd get moved. Okay. I just broke news. Right.

Okay. I just broke news. Right. Okay, let's do Jake O'Brien, North Dakota. I was wondering if you would offer your top breakout predictions for the AL at pitcher and position player. Chris Sale. I think he is broken out. He could break still, but he has broken out. Have you put any thought into this? Just briefly. I feel like I'm never prepared when someone asks me this question,

and someone always asks me this question. And when I'm not thinking about this question, I come up with answers. But I guess I would say for a pitcher, I might bring up a guy that we already talked about, Porcello. I think maybe he could take a step forward just because he does have that kind of top prospect pass that he hasn't fully capitalized on. And he threw a lot harder last year. And he kind of set some career highs in a few categories, but he had a super high BABIP, which you kind of expect because the Tigers couldn't field balls. But his was high even for a Detroit pitcher. Although I guess as a ground baller, maybe he was more susceptible to that than others i think also that i think that uh if i'm

not mistaken from when i did that piece about um the petco infield and how it uh steals so many singles yeah i believe detroit has the highest uh ground ball uh single or highest ground ball hit rate. So maybe didn't win more will help him. Yeah, so I don't know how much better he will get. I don't think he's going to turn into an ace or anything, but maybe his results will look better at least. And if there are trade rumors for him, and there have been, maybe he will land somewhere that is better suited to a pitcher like him.

And I guess for a hitter, I would go with maybe Eric Hosmer, if he's a candidate, he had a good rookie year in a sophomore slump sort of thing, and I guess he'll be my guy. sophomore slump sort of thing and i guess he'll be my guy um okay well i also uh like porcello uh that's a good one i could see uh oh jeez i don't know i mean i i kind of have i i always have this feeling that mitch moreland is going to start hitting. You love Mitch Moreland. I do love Mitch Moreland. But I wish that I had thought about this a little more. Actually, I wish I had gone through all the rosters because nothing really jumps out at me. I mean, I don't know.

I always think that Peter Borges is going to be good. But, I mean, those are like, I don't know. Is he a guy I think is going to break out? I don't really know what break out, what the minimum is. It suggests some level of quasi-stardom or something to me. Yeah, so like who is going to get MVP votes basically this year that hasn't gotten MVP votes in the past is the question, right? Yeah, I guess so.

So, I don't know. I'm going to sort of... You can think about it while we... Okay. You want to pick one now? Yeah, sure. I heard the Tigers are going after Justin Upton now. Can they swing a good enough package?

No. Please don't make me talk about Justin Upton. No. Okay, I'm going to go to another. Well, first off, just real quick, do you think the Tigers can swing a good enough package? I mean, based on what you saw, Seattle almost give up. How many teams in baseball have that kind of package without trading from their major?

Yeah, not a lot. Someone else asked me in the chat if the Yankees could do it, and I don't know if they could do it. Maybe. I mean, I don't think the Angels could do it without trading from their major league roster, for instance. I don't think there's any combination. I don't think their entire farm system would get it done. Well, I guess you could.

I mean, it's okay to trade major leaguers. The Mariners were going to trade Charlie Furbush. Yeah. Not that he was the centerpiece. Yeah, I don't know. The Royals could. Could the Indians? Yeah, I mean I guess they could if they traded.

Tigers, I guess I'll say no. Yeah, I think the Tigers are a no. My sense is that the Tigers are probably a no. I would say that the Tigers cannot swing a deal to get Justin Upton. Unless they were, yeah, I guess a prospect package. Yeah. Yeah, okay.

All right, was that your question? Yeah, I'm going to take that one. Okay. All right. Was that your question? Yeah. I'm going to take that one. Okay. Steve in Milwaukee. The Brewers are about to enter a Ryan Braun purgatory period where he's the guy making the money, and there won't be any elite talent to fill in around him. Should teams like the Brewers, who have a star player signed to a team-friendly but overly long contract, be willing to trade that player for better long-term talent?

Ryan Braun isn't going to keep hitting like this in his age 33 to 37 seasons. The discussion started when a friend said that the Brewers should package Braun and Gallardo for something ridiculous like Profar Alt. That's a good question because I find that for the most part, there's an agreed upon value to most players. We've talked about before how generally prospects are pretty well valued by the market. It seems like we sort of have an idea idea based on uh work by the blogosphere as well as the history of these trades we sort of have an idea of what a prospect is worth and you know you know what um a player like uh you know i don't like josh reddick if you if

somebody says what what would you what what would the a's expect back from josh reddick you'd be able to put together a pretty good package but But then there's this group of elite players at the top. I feel like they just don't fit into that math at all because you can't really put together a package commensurate to Ryan Braun's surplus value over the next eight years and expect to get him. I mean, that is not probably all that great. It's probably like $30 million or something like that.

And yet I think the Brewers wouldn't trade him for like $80 million of surplus value. It seems like there's a scarcity of the elite player that makes them extremely difficult to get. And so teams don't really trade them and they don't treat them like other players get treated. And so the only reason this matters is because we generally evaluate these signings still based on the standard $5 or $6 million a win math. But I don't think teams really treat those guys. I think that teams are willing to pay more per win for the elite guys. Or at least once they have them, they don't want to give them up.

Yeah, and I guess if you are a team, I guess the thinner the rest of the roster is, the more important that Lone Star's marquee value becomes or his off the field value. I don't know how to quantify that. Other people have made attempts at quantifying that. But the fewer people on the team whose jerseys you want to buy, I guess the more indispensable the one person whose jersey you do want to buy becomes. I don't know if Ryan Braun really draws people by himself to the park, but you don't want a completely dead roster. So when you have that one guy,

dead roster so when you have that one guy it's different i guess uh than having no guys so maybe you hold out for more than he would be worth otherwise or or statistically so i'm gonna say uh brandon morrow gets cy young votes and hitter gets mvp votes wow okay those are my breakouts yeah those are good ones and mitch moreland wins wins everything sweeps the awards season do you think darren oliver's gonna come back would he be in your scion votes this isn't it's not on the list but i'm looking at the blue jays player page and i just wonder i hope so so. I like Darren Oliver's late career. Yeah. It doesn't make any sense.

You wrote about that. Yeah, I hope he pitches so long that we have to reckon with him as a Hall of Fame candidate. Your turn. Okay, let's say this will probably be the last one. Okay. All right. Is Edwin Encarnacion, speaking of breakout MVP candidates,

going to go on a Jose Bautista-lite type of run over the next couple years, or is 2011 more realistic? I've liked Encarnacion for a really long time, and I've been thinking that he would do something, not like he did last season, but when I used to play fantasy, I would draft Edwin Encarnacion. either a DH or a guy who should have been a DH. He wasn't a particularly valuable player because he wasn't above average enough as a hitter to make up for that really. But I don't know. I don't, I mean, there was nothing particularly fluky about it statistically. So it was just a case of a guy who's never done anything like that before doing something like that. And a projection system will always expect that guy not to do it again. And it's probably foolish to bet against the

projection system most of the time. So I think he could, I certainly don't think he's going to turn right back into pre-2012. I think he did things differently. It wasn't purely random. He was hitting the opposite way with power a lot more than he had ever done before, I think. And there were differences in his approach. So that makes me believe in it more. And yeah, I guess if that was a sort of a Batista-like breakout, then I guess I would expect a Batista-like, I don't know, sustain of that breakout. So that's interesting because Batista, when Batista had his breakout in Toronto,

the explanation was, well, I don't know if it was the explanation, but the way he was doing it was that he was basically the most dead pole hitter in baseball. And that's a good park for dead pole right-handed hitters. But you're saying Encarnacion actually succeeded by moving away from that. Yeah, I think so. Interesting. So, okay. He had a 941 OPS and 42 homers. Over-unders were 933. I guess I will take the under, but barely. Yeah, I'd take the under. I mean, I don't even know if I would say barely. I mean, I think he could very easily match the 2012 season,

but if I were betting on it I'd bet lower alright good so I answered some questions we answered some questions that I didn't answer before and we got ourselves through another empty news day and to another questions day tomorrow will be a

listener email show instead of a reader chatter email show. So some of you have sent us questions. We would like more questions. Please send them to us at podcast at baseball prospectus dot com.