Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1428: The Big Dombrowski

Episode Date: September 9, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about Michael Lorenzen, Shohei Ohtani, and two-way terminology, marvel at Eugenio Suárez and other surprises from the 2019 home run leaderboard, celebrate the AL wild card race, salute the improving A’s and Rays, and discuss teams that are reshaping their potential playoff rosters late in the regular season, respond […]

Don't think that I don't know what you're saying about me I hear it all through these thin lines And I just wanna walk away Won't you let me walk away this time? And I just wanna walk away Everybody was fired Everybody was oh, oh, oh, oh Everybody was fired, yeah Good morning and welcome to episode 1428 of Effectively Wild,

a baseball podcast from Fangraphs brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Sam Miller of ESPN, along with Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Hi, Ben. Hi. I just wanted to note that since Shohei Otani debuted in the majors, Mike Lorenzen has a lower ERA, a higher OPS, and more innings in the field. So that's a lorenzen fun fact for you i would say that's a mike lorenzen fun fact it doesn't cheapen what he's now okay yeah it is it is a mike lorenzen fun fact for you yeah well he's getting more of a shot to be a two-way or three-way if you count playing the field as a separate way guy these days do wait do it seems it feels like we should feels like we should count as a separate well then we would. Wait, do it seem, it feels like we should, it feels like we should count on as a separate.

Well, then we would have to call everybody a two way player though. Everybody who hits and isn't a DH. Yeah. It's a bummer because like you want to separate him from what Otani does. I think, do you, do you want to,

do you need to, does it matter? I don't know because I think otani is capable of doing what he is doing he's just not able to because of the way he's being used so it's not like he doesn't have the talent to play outfield occasionally the way lorenzen is but i do kind of want to recognize that lorenzen is actually doing it but yeah i don't know that we need a new term because really two-way player is hitting and pitching, but playing the field usually goes along with hitting. That's kind of part of being a hitter usually, not in Otani's case, but I don't be able to start. I think that was part of the thinking is that in order to be a two-way player as a starter would require him taking, basically

having the days in between off more or less, which means not playing the field every day. So if he were in the National League and he wanted to be a starter, he wouldn't be able to, like it would just be too taxing to stand in the field. And so that's why it would make sense for him to be in the american league so that you can be a starter but then if you're in the american league you can't really be a reliever because if you go into the game from your position then you lose the dh or once you were once you leave the game then they would lose the DH and so it's it's sort of hard to use a reliever as a two-way player in the American League and so you can kind I mean there are ways around this there are sacrifices that one could make and then there are certain inconveniences that you would put up with but basically if I remember the logic here correctly

if you want to be a starter, it favors going to the American League. And if you are in the National League, it favors being a reliever. And so the reason that Lorenzen plays the field and Otani doesn't is partly because that is how a team is able to maximize Otani more. Like the team that was able to use Otani as a pitcher the most as a starter was in the American League, which then prohibits him from playing the outfield. Yeah, there is an argument, a pretty strong argument that Otani might be more valuable in the National League just because as a hitter, he would be compared to the pitcher offensive baseline, which is very low. And assuming that he would hit as well as he does currently

as a starter in whatever at-bats he's able to get in that role in the National League, he would be way, way better than the typical pitcher he would be compared against. So war-wise, he might be more valuable in that role, but he would obviously get many fewer plate appearances. And if the point is that it's fun to have him do both these things and he likes to do both of these things, then the American League is probably the better place for him to be. Yeah, I think the fact that he quit playing the field in Japan for the last few years that he was there is pretty strong evidence that it is simply too hard to be a starter and also play the field. Yeah, right. So, yeah, he'd get many, many more, many, many fewer played appearances if he were in the National League for that reason, presumably. Anyway, anything you want to talk about? take. And Jorge Soler was that guy for both of us at that time. And for me today, I think it was Eugenio Suarez, which I think we may have even mentioned him the last time we talked about this. But now after he hit two homers on Sunday, he's up to 44 and he is one behind the leaders,

Trout and Alonso. And that's just a lot of homers for Eugenio Suarez. He hit 30-something last year, so it's not completely out of nowhere. In fact, if you era-adjusted his total from last season, it probably would be pretty close to where he is now. But it's still somewhat shocking to see him with 44 homers and that close to the Major League lead. And we've actually gotten a couple of questions from people who asked us if this year's home run race is fun. And they seem to suggest that it was and that they are into this race between the Titans, between Trout and Bellinger and Yelich and I guess also Alonzo. And that even though there are no records at stake and they're not chasing history in any real sense, that they have still derived some enjoyment from just seeing which one of them would win this race.

And I don't personally care very much about who wins this race. If one of them ends up with 50 and one of them ends up with 49 or something, I don't really feel much of a stake in that myself. But all of a sudden, it's not necessarily just Trout and Bellinger and Yela Chalanto. It's maybe a Juanjo Suarez is gonna creep up and steal this thing yeah Suarez hit I don't know five days ago

he hit a home run that in normal circumstances would have been the most impressive home run that I've seen like ever or in years but because it's not normal circumstances it was the like kind of like least credible home run that i've seen in years and i i feel like that's uh too bad because it was really an amazing home run it was a line drive a low line drive to right center he's of course a right-handed hitter so that's a low line drive the other way it was was 110 miles off his bat, 17 degree launch angle. And it just, it looked absurd no matter how many times you watched it. Everybody seemed to think it was absurd. The pitcher seemed to think it was absurd. The center fielder seemed to think it was absurd. The broadcaster seemed to think it was absurd and it was just a home run. So kind of a bummer.

I, I, yeah, I was thinking about the, I want to be into this home run race, but something, something, something in August just clicked in me or, or switched over where now I just, I'm somewhat repulsed by every home run. I have like three weeks to get out of this gloom, this home run gloom, because I need to be at like full baseball enjoyment for October. I don't want to like it's not I can't every every post game write up can't be see that home run. That was stupid. And so I need to get I'm working my way back to liking home runs. But right now, like anybody hits a home run. I'm like, yes, there's another home run like i feel like uh i feel bad for the pitchers i feel like uh the games are i don't know it feels like watching at this point

it feels like watching football in in like a blizzard where it's just this thing like that makes has such a huge impact in the game which like that i'm to make it more explicit like because in a blizzard i guess there's a lot of turnovers and turnovers are kind of chaotic and they are they they dramatically affect the outcome of the game and they're hard to predict and in some ways you sometimes don't even feel like like the difference between a turnover and not a turnover is like one percent skill sometimes you know and yet that 1% skill often affects the game. And the difference between a home run and not a home run right now, obviously better hitters hit more home runs and worse pitchers give up more home runs. But the difference between a home run and not a home run feels like it's always been kind of a fairly slim margin.

The difference between hitting one 370 and hitting one 410 is pretty, pretty slim, right? And so to see games turning on home runs, I guess that's always been a factor in baseball, but to see so many games turning on so many home runs, I've just kind of, I don't know, August did something to me. I was not, I didn't feel this way in July and I'm committed to not feeling this way in October, but I'm just being honest with you all i'm feeling that way right now i hope that's the case because you know we're gonna see some important pivotal playoff game that swings on a home run that doesn't look like it should be a home run at all i mean that's just almost inevitable so yeah yeah and emblematic of that is that suarez's season isn't even really that great.

Like, it's no better than his previous two seasons where he didn't hit nearly as many home runs. And that's for a few reasons. I mean, his on-base percentage is down because he's striking out more. And also, he's just having an abominable base-running season, if the stats are to be believed. Only Miguel Cabrera is having a worse base running season by Fangraff's base running metric and he's just barely barely ahead or behind of Suarez so I don't know what the story is there it's not like he gets caught stealing or or steals a whole lot so he must just not be having much success at advancing but between that and his just kind of you know steady

defense it's it's just a pretty good season so he's cut 44 home runs and it's like i don't know like a three and a half win year maybe so that's the strange statistical landscape we ourselves in now his ops plus is down quite a bit from last year so it's not just base running or or like the kind of war war component parts it's like his as a hitter he is yeah seemingly considerably worse this year and that is surprising yeah i did not expect that when i started this conversation about anyway i thought we were going to like talk about how great a juanio suarez is we're not yeah so i'm glaring i'm looking at the home run totals right now and i'm trying to decide who my current wow home run guy is and i guess uh it's still got gotta be mitch garver for me yeah 28 homers in exactly half a season 81 games 28 homers yeah yeah yeah mitch garver's whole season is pretty wild and it's like you know

i know he changed things and has different mechanics and he's like one of these guys who we talk about who change things and is suddenly way better but yeah mitch garver it's i don't know i don't know anymore yeah yeah yeah at this point danny santana i think we mentioned last time danny santana is still on renato nunez uh yeah is is one with 28 uh he came into the season with 9 I mean it's not like he'd been Playing a lot before that Yeah Renato Nunez who had been selected Off waivers twice

Last year Has 28 home runs Yep Another thing you wrote in your ESPN roundtable thing that you Did with a few other writers a week or so ago you I think picked the AL wildcard race as the best remaining race and I think that's right I think it's pretty exciting these days all the teams involved there or at least Cleveland and

Tampa Bay and Oakland and Oakland they all won on Sunday and so it is very tight right now and one of these things is happening that I really enjoy about September which is like teams getting healthy at the last minute and guys coming back and you have to figure out okay is this guy really gonna play a prominent role for this team he hasn't been there for so long like with the Yankees and Luis Severino for instance he hasn't pitched in the majors all season long. But he has, I think, one more rehab start to go. And then supposedly he's going to be back in the pick leagues. And if he were healthy, he'd be the Yankees' best starting pitcher.

And they sure need starting pitchers. But can you trust him? And what role do you use him in? That whole kind of conversation is a lot of fun. And at least a couple of these teams in the AL wildcard race, maybe all of them, are dealing with that right now, where the Rays just got Tyler Glasnow back. He started Sunday's game and pitched pretty well in a couple innings. Donny Chirinos may also be back in a week or so. And so suddenly, I mean, they've had probably the best pitching staff in baseball as it is up there with the Dodgers at least. And now they're about to get these guys back or have already gotten some of these guys back. And then Oakland got Sean Minaya back and he's made two starts and he's looked great in both of them, albeit one was against the Tigers, but still.

He's looked great in both of them, albeit one was against the Tigers, but still. And they also promoted A.J. Puck recently, and now Jesus Lizardo, their top prospect. Yeah, and Frankie Montas is eligible. Right. I guess not for the playoffs. Not for the playoffs. Yeah, not for the playoffs. But Puck and Lizardo are now up, and Lizardo is probably going to be in the bullpen and those guys are both in relief. So the bullpen has been kind of a weakness for the A's this year, at least certainly relative to the extraordinary strength it was last year. But now they're starting to promote these guys and get healthy.

And I don't know about Cleveland because Cleveland has lost guys and Jose Ramirez probably done for the year. And Corey Kluber, I don't know that they can expect anything out of him now and Danny Salazar is done for the year also so the guys that they were counting on to be healthy or come back not really panning out in their case and that kind of puts them behind these other two teams I guess both literally in the standings right now by a game or so but also in the sense that they are not getting reinforcements and these other teams are. So I love when the top pitching prospect comes up in September and you put the starter in the bullpen and that's the

first time we see him in the big leagues and you get the potential for like a David Price type rookie season where he goes from just being this top starting pitching prospect to lights out reliever in a playoff run and right now the Rays and the A's both look pretty scary and odds are it looks like they will be facing off against each other right now and so I don't know who starts that game for the A's because you could make a case that Minaya might be their best pitcher at this point, even though he just came back. Or maybe Lizardo is, even though he hasn't made a major league start. And I don't know whether they will use him to start because they've been going with a six-man

rotation. So there's that. And then the Rays are like, who even starts for them? Is it Glasnow, who just came back? Do they go with Snell? Probably not. They've been out too long. But I love that conversation of like, we get these guys back, but what are they exactly? Are they what we remember them being? Or are they some percentage of that? And then do you put someone who helped you get to this point off of the playoff roster to make room for these name brand guys? So I love that calculus that comes to the fore at this point in the year. Yeah, yeah, it's fantastic. I mean, especially because when you kind of know that they're coming back at some point and you're sort of like scuffling through July or you're just hanging in there in August and you just keep thinking, well, we're going to get them back. And in your mind, they loom so large. You just feel like the excuse for every loss

or for every two game losing streak or anything you always have this excuse like we're not at full strength and then you you fantasize about this roster that you have and then like making it stronger making it how it's supposed to be as it was designed to be putting it all back together and it's almost like adding it's almost better i think it probably is better it is a more satisfying feeling in a way well is it i don't know probably not maybe it is it's hard to know it's too abstract than adding a player of comparable value from like in the trade or something like that because you you just like you spend so much mental like if you trade for a player on july 31st like that

player enters your consciousness of maybe 48 hours before you you acquire him but the player who's been injured for four months is is in your consciousness for months you spend four months of energy thinking like wouldn't it be great when we get him back and so it really is exciting and or if you're calling them up because puck and lazardo were supposed to be in the plans or could have been in the plans in some visions of this season from a very very early in the season even i think in the spring there was some talk about both of them potentially being um on the opening day roster if things had not uh yeah had not gone wrong so right yeah and on the other, you get teams losing guys right at the last minute.

Like right now the Twins are dealing with that where obviously Michael Pineda just was suspended and they lost him. He's been their best starter in the second half. And then Max Kepler is dealing with shoulder issues it seems like and he's getting an MRI. And so sometimes teams kind of limp into the playoffs like that without their full strength. And then the question is, can they patch that over? Can other guys step up or are they just compromised for the playoff run? So

I do like when rosters sort of change at this point in the year and teams have to adjust and figure out how are we going to get through this and this is the most important time of the year but suddenly our roster looks different from how it has looked up to this point we got an email the other day from maddie who brought up the possibility that mike talkman might not make the yankees postseason roster when healthy players are all coming back talkman is a three and a half war player this year. It's been really fantastic for them. And he might have made the roster or he might have missed the roster is kind of there was some speculation for both him being left off or Cameron may have been being left off. But maybe it has also been fantastic for the Yankees this year. if uh talkman's injury this evening is the sort of thing that is going to make that unpleasantly moot or not i have not seen what the update on that injury was but of course the yankees are are also bringing back players they're just bringing them back for october because they're

not in a pennant race right now yeah mark canna by the way is another name that is on the home run leaderboard that i am always recently, especially being shocked by. He only has 23 home runs, but Mark Hanna is like a star now. He has become a star at the age of 30. And Mark Hanna has been, you know, he's been fine for a few years. But, I mean, I was shocked that he was fine, that he turned out to be fine. And now here's this guy who's just a star. he turned out to be fine and now here's here's this guy who's just a star and brett gardner so brett gardner has 21 homers which is you know like 95th or something the actually it is literally

86th i tried to exaggerate and in fact it is tied no 93rd it is tied for as low as 93rd brett gardner has 21 home runs he also had 21 home runs in the 2017 juice ball season but he did it in more than 200 extra plate appearances that year so he has uh he already has a career high in home runs and he's 200 plate appearances behind the previous home run career high season but more than that brett gardner has now set a career high in slugging percentage eight different times in his career. Wow. That is a wow, right? Yeah.

Okay. Well, there is one other thing that I wanted to bring up, but there's a bit of breaking news we could discuss from your colleague, Jeff Passan. Just broke the news that Dave Dombrowski is out as president of the Boston Red Sox. He's been fired, and assistant GM Eddie Romero will take over as the head of baseball operations. This is something that had been sort of rumored. It had been in the air whether Dombrowski would be back or not. And now we know he's not. They have not waited for the end of the season, much like they did not wait to bring him on at the end

of a previous season. Now they're not waiting to let him go. So this is interesting in the wake of the book that we both just recently read, Alex Spears' Homegrown, which went all over the decision to bring in Dabrowski and how Ben Charrington felt that he had to move on, even though he had put the foundation in place for what would be a World Series winning team and held on to all those top prospects. And then as Alex portrayed it, I think Dombrowski was brought in to do what he does, what he has a track record of doing, which is sort of, I guess, putting the finishing touches on a team. Or, I mean, Dombrowski's done a little bit of everything during his very long tenure in baseball.

He's built up teams and brought along prospects. But these days, it seems like he is kind of the closer among baseball executives. You bring him in to polish off a roster, to trade away prospects, to add those final pieces that you need to put a team over the hump. And he did that. He made the Chris Sale trade and he made other moves and he held on to some top guys, but he also was willing to part with some. And his mandate was to do whatever it took to win a World Series. And he did, but he has not continued to do that every year. I guess. He's not going to do it this year.

And that was that. And you never know about what's going on behind the scenes, of course. But I wonder how things change so quickly because the Red Sox just went from one of the most successful seasons of all time, which obviously Charrington, even though he was gone by then, deserved a lot of credit for. But also Dombrowski did to some extent, and it's not like the Red Sox have been terrible this year. They're, what, 10 games over.500 or something, and yet he is gone. So I don't know if it's surprising or not, but it's a quick turnaround from best season ever to gone. from best season ever to gone. It's weird because the Red Sox right now are a pretty good team that needs some help getting over the hump and could really use a closer to finish off this roster and make them a World Series contender.

That's, I don't know. We'll find out more and maybe have stronger opinions about it. But I've been thinking about the Red Sox a lot because last year was such an incredible season and I thought that it could when we talked about things that 2018 might be remembered for for instance one of the things that i suggested is that the red sox had one of the most successful seasons in history and sometimes teams become remembered for 100 years and sometimes they like comparable teams really don't. We talked about the 1929 to

1931 A's, who are probably a, I would say definitely a better team than like the Gas House gang was. And yet one got remembered. And most for the most part, the Philadelphia A's are not really remembered, except by like, really hardcore baseball fans. And the red sox last year were absolutely good enough to be the sort of team that you know gets a nickname and 60 years later they're listed on you know those lists and those arguments of who the best team ever was just because they were so dominant against such a great league and then they went through the postseason the hardest postseason schedule that any team has ever had and they went like i don't remember what they went what did they went like 14 and 3 or something right against these three incredible like team of the era type

teams and um they had they had future hall of famers playing at their peaks they had there in some ways because they it was their fourth World Series championship of the century. They are kind of, you know, playing for team of the era status all the time. And they, you know, I didn't think that that year on its own would necessarily be remembered. But if the Red Sox came back and had another really great season or, you know, 100 games or something, we might 70 years from now still talk about you know the 2018-2019 red sox and give them a name they need a name the key is that they have to have a name and a nickname right but then this year happens and it's like

i just feel like i don't know i kind of feel like uh it's like a lot of people feel about weezer where all the things that happened after kind of made the the thing that you thought was great sort of seem like flukier and less less lasting and so now i i don't know i feel like they kind of blew it in they blew it retroactively they like they they really have cut away at what i will remember the 2018 red sox as being. It will just feel more like, oh, yeah, they had that weird, fluke-ish year between pretty okay years. Because the year before, they won the division, but they also fired their manager afterwards. So it was kind of a failure.

And then this year, they're not very good. And so that's a failure. This is definitely a failure. And the year between is pretty much the same roster. I mean, Chris Sale was added after 2018 and Craig Kimbrell was gone after 2019. But basically, we're talking about the same roster for those, you know, for that period. I guess J.D. Martinez was also added. I mean, other players were added after 2018.

But the roster this year and last year is pretty much the same. But the roster this year and last year is pretty much the same. And so it's hard for me to take the 2018 team as seriously as an elite all-time team when the same team just collapsed so bad that their GM had to be fired. Their president of baseball operations had to be fired. Yeah. Well, I mean, he didn't have to be, but he has been. And I don't know what that means. Well, and we don't technically know if he's been fired yet either. Well, I think he has, yeah.

Okay. Yeah. But it's kind of like parts of the roster that are performing well right now, for the most part, are holdovers from the Charrington era, the homegrown parts of the roster. Their best players this year have been Betts and Devers and Bogarts and Eduardo Rodriguez even, and J.D. Martinez has been fine too. But Chris Sale obviously was signed to that big extension, and then he had a disappointing season, at least ERA-wise, and then he got hurt, and David Price got hurt, and some of the other guys who, you know, Nathan Evaldi didn't give the Red Sox much of anything this year after Dombrowski resigned him. So some of the big expenditures that he's made are not looking so great right now, even though some of them played really important parts in winning that World Series.

So it's kind of the flags fly forever question. Obviously, their flying didn't keep Dombrowski in his role. Obviously, their flying didn't keep Dombrowski in his role. So right now, if you look at the team, I can see why you would think, oh, well, this guy came in and he traded all these prospects and he handed out all these big contracts. And now those are the parts of the team that are not performing right now. And we're on the hook for all this money going forward. And meanwhile, it's the homegrown parts of the roster that are sustaining us. And we have no farm system left. The Red Sox farm system is among the worst in the game right now because of the many moves that have been made in the past few years.

And so you could see why maybe there would be a lack of confidence in him, but it seems like he did more or less what they wanted and asked him to do. seems like he did more or less what they wanted and asked him to do and he came in and did that and mission accomplished but then they moved on anyway because i guess less than a year later it just doesn't look so great and he had a year left on his contract but was approaching the point where you sort of either have to give the guy an extension or have him be in his lame duck phase and maybe they just thought that at this point he was suited to do what he did give them a championship but was not suited to be the architect of the next great red socks team or to keep the talent flowing because the red socks want to be the yankees and the dodgers and perennial winners and you only have to look as far as detroit to see the effects of dombrowski trying to contend year after year and And if you do decide to make a move, then maybe it makes sense to do it early to be the first mover so that you can attract the best candidates for

that GM job. Not that it looks like there'll be a ton of turnover with other teams, GMs, and president of baseball operations this winter, but you never know. It could be beneficial to begin that interview process early. It seems like Shadyz is doing great i mean that there's no there's nobody's against that deal right even even going forward and then chris sale got hurt yeah and craig kimbrell wasn't good like they let craig kimbrell go but he hasn't been good i guess evaldy has been but i mean what are you gonna do it feels really i don't know i i just uh i went through the why i'm feeling like retroactively glum about the 2018 red sox but the 2019 red sox the flip side of that is that they are basically the same team that won 108 games and walked through the postseason and the fact that they could drop to

what is probably going to be a 86 win team and no postseason this year just goes to show you how little you can judge a gm based on one season like the same the same it's not just that the same gm you know put the same parts of the teams together is that they were essentially the same team yeah it's like they're chris craig kimbrough is gone and technically everybody else is one year older but that doesn't really seem to be an issue with with most of these players it's the same team and they're going to drop from 108 wins to you know 85 and i don't know when you start judging the gm in that process as having like control over one but not over the other so i don't know it seems uh odd but maybe dave don't i don't

again you maybe you know more than i do but uh maybe dave dombrowski just didn't really want to put up a fight yeah i i don't know anything about relationships that may have played a part here that's the sort of thing that maybe will come out over the next day or two we'll see but i think you could say that that team that won so many games last year probably wasn't quite as good as the record seemed to indicate. I mean, we talked about that last year, whether they were actually the best team in baseball or not. They won the most games. But if you had had to bet on them to win a single game, would you have taken that team over the Astros, let's say, say or the dodgers i don't think

i would have at the time and i probably wouldn't in retrospect so maybe the fact that they did so well led to some overconfidence i don't know there was only only so much they could do because they had kind of spent so much and they were up against the luxury tax and everything and they had already triggered those penalties and there just wasn't that much flexibility in the roster really. I wrote something this spring about how little turnover they'd had and was piggybacking on something that you originally wrote about World Series winners and how they tend to stand pat. And I've updated that a couple of times and it still holds that the team that wins the World Series tends to bring back more of its players than the team that loses the World Series,

even though those are usually equivalent teams. But the one that wins just doesn't do as much, and in the year after it wins, it tends to regress more than the team that lost the World Series in the previous year, which might lead you to believe that there's just either a complacency that sets in when a team wins the World Series or a lack of urgency because you have that sort of grace period, or maybe you're just very overconfident. You feel like you put a great team together that won the World Series. So that was sort of the case with the Red Sox this year. Obviously, they didn't do anything at the trade deadline. But before that, they went into the year with this bullpen that didn't really have an established back-end person. And the bullpen hasn't really been their biggest issue, I suppose, this year. But it hasn't been

a strength, and maybe they could have done more and and you fall into this trap occasionally where it's like oh well we really need to bring back Nathan Evaldi because he was the hero of this playoff run or one of them and he got us here and so we should stick with him even though he has this long track record of getting hurt all the time and really nathan of all these 2019 is more reflective of his career on the whole than his 2018 was but it's like maybe we need to bring that guy back or steve pierce for instance who was this big world series hero and it's like well we've got to keep steve pierce around he was the world series mvp right and and then he goes back to being Steve Pearce, which he's been much worse than Steve Pearce has been before. Odd year Steve Pearce. Yes, odd year Steve Pearce, right. So I think there is a tendency to bring back the guys who got you there.

But I don't know that that makes the difference. It's not like Steve Pearce alone or Nathan Evaldi alone would really have made the difference here. If they had made some other move instead of those guys, they probably would not be in playoff position right now. It's just a lot of things go right in your World Series winning year and a lot of things go wrong in most other years. And so it was sort of an extraordinary convergence of everyone performing really well last season. Steve Pierce in his 13-year career is now a negative 0.3 war player in odd years and a 10 war player in even years. If you doubled either one of those, you would have a player who would not have made it through four seasons as a major leaguer. Or you would have a player who would basically be like garrett anderson yep for his career war is that right it's close it's pretty close yeah it's pretty close garrett anderson is close the flip side to they were not actually as good as they

appeared last year is that they are by the same, better this year than their record says. I mean, if you look at Fangraph's playoff odds, for instance, they would suggest that the, you know, their playoff odds, their projections going forward, they would suggest that the Red Sox today, even today, are, you know, maybe arguably the fifth best team in baseball. Their run differential is better than their record. So that's part of it. And their players are better players than they've played.

And so I think that if a bunch of players underperform their talent, then I know there's a debate about whether that's something that we can blame the manager for the coaching staff for, or whether like at a certain point, we just have to blame the players for it. But I don't think you can really blame the GM for it unless you just think that the GM is, is bad at putting together an organization that supports the players. Or if you think that the GM is really bad at forecasting talent and is just has a knack for finding the players that are going to underperform their projections because they're sliding. I don't think either one of those is the case here,

as demonstrated by the fact that the exact same group of players did the exact opposite last year. Yeah, right. Yeah, it is sort of just the vagaries and variants of baseball from season to season that things click one year. And this is like a stark example of it because it's almost an identical roster that won the World Series and had one of the best seasons of all time and then just went back to being kind of mediocre. And so one year Dombrowski gets celebrated and the next year Dombrowski gets fired. And who knows how much of a part he played really directly in either of those. I mean, obviously, he made some moves that really contributed to the World Series championship.

But yeah, I wonder whether he will catch on somewhere else because he's had this incredibly long accomplished career. I guess you could even make a Hall of Fame case for him because he's won in a number of places in a number of eras. And in a sense, he doesn't really fit into at least the stereotype of the modern GM that teams are not aggressive and they're just resting on their laurels and they're hoarding prospects. And that's the opposite of the Dombrowski MO, at least these days. And, you know, he's sort of a scouting-oriented executive in an age of analytics-oriented executives. He kind of downsized or at least didn't expand the Red Sox R&D department at a time when other teams were adding to theirs very quickly. I guess the cynical perspective would be that Boston wants to win without spending quite so much money because Dombrowski may deliver that title, but it's going

to cost you because he's going to sign some pig free agents and he's going to trade away your prospects who will be making nothing for years. So I wonder whether another team will bring him on and we'll see themselves as being in a place like the Red Sox were when they hired him four years ago and, oh, we've got this good foundation and we just got to put the finishing touches on or whether he won't get another chance like that and he'll just enter his special assistant

to the GM phase from now on. I don't know. If you double his... Oh, I can just name players forever. Raul Abanez. Uh-huh. There you go. Okay.

All right. Jermaine Dye. All right. Anything else about... Well, not about the Red Sox. I was going to bring up Edwin Diaz. Let's save him. Yeah.

Let's save him for a couple days. Okay. All right. We did get an email about him, so we can do it in the email show. All right. So, Ben, I don't know if this is going to work in the podcast format, but I want to give it a try. There's going to be...

Maybe we'll just adjust as we go if it turns out to be too numbery and too confusing, but I'm going to assign you a Cy Young vote and a Cy Young ballot, and then I'm going to uh assign you a cy young vote and a cy young ballot and i'm going to give you two candidates not from this year but two candidates two hypothetical candidates two imaginary candidates and you are going to i'll give you whatever information you want so you can if you want i can just tell you a bunch of stuff about these these two candidates

or if you want you can ask me you can ask me anything you want about them I can just tell you a bunch of stuff about these two candidates. Or if you want, you can ask me. You can ask me anything you want about them, and I'll tell you. I'll tell you their record, or I'll tell you their DRA, or I'll tell you their war at any site. You can list it. And then you tell me who you would vote for. So do you want me to give you information, or do you want to ask for certain categories of information? I guess give me information, do you want to ask for certain certain categories of information i guess give me information whatever seems relevant to you okay then i'll ask if i need more info

okay well so all right i'll try this so here's the first one you've got the first candidate is uh 17 and 8 and the second candidate is is 20 and 5 okay the first candidate has a 2.64 ERA, while the second candidate has a 2.56, so it's slightly lower. The pitcher with the better record has a slightly lower ERA, but we got ballpark factor in here. So if you were to look at ERA+,

the first candidate has a 160 ERA+, and the second candidate has a 150 ERA+. And if you prefer ERA-, the first candidate is 63, and the second candidate has a 150 ERA plus and if you prefer ERA minus the first candidate is 63 and the second candidate is 66 okay okay the first candidate threw 30 more innings so it's 240 innings to 210 first candidate has a lower whip 1.06 to 1.1 first candidate has more strikeouts and a better strikeout rate first candidate has a better fit is a better fit minus it's 70 to 75 on fit minus he's got a uh they actually have the same dra 2.75 and then i'll just round it off with the wars okay okay

candidate a 8.1 at reference 6.9 at fan graphs and 6.8 at baseball perspectives whereas the second candidate is 6.6 4.3 and 6 so it'll lower across the board and on average we're talking about the first candidate is about a 7 on average a little higher than 7 the second candidate is a little lower than six on average. All right. Okay. But anyway, I don't want to put my, yeah. So there you go.

You've got some better, some worse on all of them. Yeah. Although it sounded like the guy behind door number one, he was sounding pretty good to me. It seemed like he had the better rate stats on the whole, and he also had 30 more innings pitched. Like from what you said there wasn't a whole lot to suggest that number two would be better than number one really went

he had 20 wins yeah that's about it yeah i based on what you told me i've got to go with pitcher number one. All right. Okay. Test number two, test case number two. These are going to get a little more complicated, Ben. Okay. Do you want me to just do it exactly the same way? Yeah, that worked for me. All right. So in this one, candidate one went 22 and four, whereas candidate two went only 16 and nine.

Okay. Whereas candidate two went only 16 and nine. Okay. But candidate two had a better ERA, 3.04 to 3.15. However, those are close and the park factors are also close. So they have 71 and 72 ERA minuses. I remember a 22 and four pitcher from a few years ago. That record stands out.

All right. I thought about about i actually was going to disguise some of these numbers okay red sox fans may remember a 22 and 4 guy just a coincidence i'm sure candidate they so they both have almost identical eras they both have almost identical innings they both have almost identical whips we're talking like inconsequential differences here. But candidate two has 254 strikeouts, whereas candidate one only has 189, but also walked more. And in fact, their FIPS are almost exactly the same. Their DRA is almost exactly the same. Their FIP minus is exactly the same. And so that brings us to the wars candidate one has wars of 4.8 5.1 and 5.1

so that's about an average of five candidate b played in front of a much worse defense ben and so his wars are 7.2 5.4 and 5.1 the 7.2 is baseball reference, which, you know, has a, has that adjustment for the defenders. So his average wars, um, well, all three of them are, one is much higher. One is slightly higher and the other is the same. So his average wars are about six. So you've got a five average war and a six average war everything else the same basically except one has a much better record so you you basically have like they all all these things cancel out you've got the better record versus the better wars but it's basically one of the three wars that is driving the difference right yeah well definitely a tougher

call than the first couple candidates here but i think i'll take pitcher number two this time the non 22 and 4 pitcher all right test number three ben okay player a player, 16 and nine, whereas player two went 21 and five. Player one, 2.52 ERA, very good, but player two, 1.89 ERA. ERA plus, obviously, is going to be much better for player two. However, player one threw a lot more innings, threw 35 more innings. He had the better whip. He had way more strikeouts he led the league in strikeouts with 290 he also walked many fewer batters he had a better FIP he had a better DRA

he had better war on two of the three higher strikeout rate lower FIP minus, but higher ERA minus. So his wars are 6.2, 6.6, and 7.3, which is an average of like 6.7. The others' wars are 7.4, 4.8, and 6, which is an average of about 6.1. About 6.1. So 6.1 war to 6.7 war, but the lower war has the better ERA, the better record, but in far fewer innings. Yeah, that's a tough one. I don't have these guys as solidly defined in my head as I had the first couple guys. You're welcome to ask anything else if you want. I could quickly scramble and make up,

make up since these are hypotheticals, make up some more. So the first guy is the guy with the good record? No, the second guy has the good record. The first guy has a lot more innings and therefore higher war. Right. And also the better fit but lower but the

worse era sheesh boy this is a tough one all right i guess i'll take the guy with more innings okay and test number four okay first guy 20 and 5 second guy 18 and 5. Second guy, 18 and 5. Okay. Okay. First guy, 2.5 ERA. Second guy, 2.7 ERA. First guy, 180 ERA plus. Second guy, 170 ERA plus. All right. First guy, 220 innings. Second guy, 200 innings. So, so far, just to be clear, the first guy has been the better one on all of these thus far first guy 0.77 whip second guy 0.93 whip first guy so now but now it's going to turn around a little bit okay okay first guy has the higher strikeout rate he has the better FIP 3.3 to 2.5. He has the lower fit minus, 64 to 74. However, he has the higher ERA minus, 64 to 57. And the wars. Finally, the wars. We have 7.8, 6.1, and 7.6 for the first guy, which, let's see, eyeballing it, that's about like 7.3, I think,

or something like that, 7.2, I think. The second guy, his wars are 5.9, 6.6, and 7.1, which is like 6.7. So to reiterate, first guy, more wins, better ERA, more innings, higher war. Second guy, more strikeouts, better FIP, better DRA. I'll take first guy. All right. So in all four cases, well, in the first three cases, Ben, these are years where Justin Verlander finished second in Cy Young voting.

And in all three cases, you picked Justin Verlander finished second in Cy Young voting. And in all three cases, you picked Justin Verlander over the player he lost to. Not surprised. And in the fourth one, it was Verlander against Cole, although I gave each of their stats about 10% extra counting stats to get them to the end of the year. And you picked Verlander. So I don't know who's going to win the Cy Young this year. Your pick was Verlander.

I think it'll be Verlander, but I really cannot tell. I thought it was definitely going to be Verlander after the no-hitter. And then, I mean, Garrett Cole's just on a tear right now. after the no hitter. And then, I mean, Garrett Cole's just on a tear right now and his start today, Sunday was almost as good as the no hitter was. And he's going to set an all time record for strikeout rate.

And I don't, yeah, it's going to be close. And so I think probably Verlander will win, but if he finished his second again, let's say, then that will be four years where he finished second, where he could very easily have won, where you could have made the case that he should have won, where in fact, I did make the case, not even that he should have won. I just made the case that he's in the conversation and you picked him.

Yes. And that would get him to five Cy Youngs, which would be the second most in history. Only Roger Clemens has won more. I think that would tie in with Randy Johnson. And would, I don't know that Justin Verlander needs anything else to define him, but I think certainly he would be, you know, his legacy would be a little different if he had won those Cy Youngs than finishing second it's hard for a starting pitcher I didn't read Michael Bauman's piece about Justin Verlander's hall of fame case or whatever that was I saw kind references to it on the internet so I don't know if I'm going to be either repeating something or saying something that looks like really dumb and simple compared to what Michael wrote. But in this day and age, it's very hard for a starting pitcher to do the things that, you know,

like the greats did. Like you can pretty much, you can pretty much have a career like Willie Mays, if you're as good as Willie Mays, and you can pretty much have a career like Joe Morgan, if you're as good as Joe Morgan, but you can't really have a career like Walter Johnson, no matter how good you are. And really the crazy thing is that that's true for pretty much any great pitcher, like up to at least the seventies and maybe arguably through the nineties, just because even Greg Maddox and even Roger Clemens had more starts and more

innings, more chances to go deep into games. And we're able to just get so many more wins than a pitcher could ever get today and throw so many more innings really than a pitcher is likely to throw in a career today. And so it's very hard to put players alongside the greats who proceeded then. And one of the great things that we have is Bold Inc. And another great thing we have is awards voting. And Justin Verlander is making it, I don't know. I mean, if this were about to be his fifth Cy Young,

I think that he would be making a case for being one of the all-time greats. And I don't know how much it matters. I don't know how much it matters that he's only going to retire with one or two. But I just wanted to acknowledge how incredible he has been against his peers compared to his peers. And, of course, as we talked about, as everybody is talking about right now, how incredible he is right now at this very moment and what fun this Cy Young race is in September and is going to be over the next few weeks.

Yeah, there was a 538 article last week about Verlander that pointed out that his Jaws score is actually below average for a Hall of Fame starting pitcher. Even though I think we all think of Justin Verlander now as a Hall of Famer. I don't know if he's a first ballot guy or not. I think that's such a silly distinction. But I don't know if he's a slam dunk case, but it seems like he probably is at this point. Maybe this is the year or in the last year or two he has vaulted into that territory, I think, where he kind of isn't just a borderline case anymore. I think it's everyone acknowledges that if Justin Verlander isn't a Hall borderline case anymore. I think everyone acknowledges that if Justin Verlander isn't a Hall of Famer, then who is or who could possibly be in this era?

But that was kind of the point of the 538 article, which is that for most positions, Jaws sort of works. It's just like the average Hall of Famer. That's the baseline. But for starting pitchers, you can't really use that because it's a different era and starting pitchers used to throw a whole lot more innings. And you have guys in the Hall of Fame who are raising that baseline a lot because they were from that era where guys were really workhorses. And Justin Verlander is known as a workhorse for this era, but obviously it's nothing like past eras. And so I think the author of that piece was asking, well, do we need to adjust the baseline? Do we need to tinker with the formula somehow and era adjust our standards for the Hall of Fame so that a guy like Justin Verlander is as clear a case as I think we all feel

that he should be? And then maybe what does that do to other guys who right now are below the baseline, but maybe if we make some adjustment, like is Johan Santana a Hall of Famer if we era adjust? And maybe he is. He's certainly got a case. But yeah, I think we all feel now that Justin Verlander is that guy, whether he has the hardware or not. And I think he probably should have more awards than he's gotten. But that doesn't really diminish my feelings about Justin Verlander, my appreciation for what he has been and still is. So it's been a lot of fun.

I don't know whether he'll win this year. He has a lot of competition. I guess Cole would be the main guy but it's not just Cole it's also Lance Lynn and Charlie Morton and Mike Miner and Shane Bieber a bunch of guys who are in that neighborhood depending on what war you look at or what stats you evaluate but I guess the Astros probably have the narrative case right now and I don't know whether there's any vote splitting or whether vote splitting is actually a real thing when players are on the same team I guess Miner and Lennar also but

whether or not he wins another award I think his place in history is pretty secure now do you think that anybody will get a first place vote besides Cole and Verlander? I wouldn't give one to them, but it wouldn't surprise me if someone did. Yeah. I think for much of the year, I think Lance Lynn was, I don't know if he was the leader in the clubhouse, but he was being discussed as maybe not a presumptive Cy Young winner, but kind of a likely the leading candidate perhaps. So I just don't know whether someone's going to give it to a texas ranger but i think those guys have have solid cases i wouldn't be surprised if if someone got a first place vote other than those two okay that's all i got all right yeah i think

probably we could say some of the same things about jess and verlander's season that we will say about edwin diaz's season next time because the question is like have they been unlucky or have they been deserving of the runs they've allowed obviously with diaz he's allowed runs at a much higher rate than justin verlander has but it's sort of the same statistical quandary with those guys where certain stats look more impressive than others. But I guess we will get into that next time. All right, just updating the passing report that we mentioned during the episode. It won't be assistant GM Eddie Romero running baseball operations by himself. It will be a group of executives, Romero, Brian O'Halloran, Zach Scott, Raquel Ferreira. They'll be taking over in the meantime while the Red Sox conduct a search for a full-time GM or president of baseball operations. So obviously a lot of

turnover for the Red Sox. I think that'll be four different people running their baseball operations department in the span of a decade, despite their winning multiple World Series during that time, and despite all of those executives being pretty respected people. It's not like Theo Epstein or Ben Charrington or Dave Dombrowski is incompetent in some obvious way. And Epstein, of course, had been there for quite some time, and Charrington was really groomed as his successor. So saying four within 10 years maybe makes it sound a bit more chaotic than it actually was. But you look at some teams that have had less success and also less turnover during that time, it's somewhat striking. And I wonder whether the next person hired will bring the Red Sox back

toward the more analytics-driven, keep-your-prospects-build-from-within model that so many other teams have adopted, and that Charrington kind of championed during his time in Boston. We were speaking in the episode about Steve Pierce and how he's had kind of a Jekyll and Hyde, odd-year, even-year career. The same has sort of been true for the Red Sox. Going back to 2011, I just did a little math and I added up the differences in team win total from season to

season and then took the absolute value of those differences and added them together to see which teams have had the most change from one year to the next in their annual win totals between 2011 and 2019. So for example, for the Red Sox, they won 90 games in 2011, then they won 69 games in 2012. That's a difference of 21 games. So I added up the differences each season, did the same thing for all teams, and the Red Sox are way on top of that list. So their cumulative change has been 144 games going back to 2011. The next closest team on the list is the Orioles at 109. Then it goes Mariners at 99, Diamondbacks at 97, Brewers at 94, A's at 92, Rangers at 90. Those are the only teams at 90 or above. The bottom of the list, by the way, Reds 56, Mets 51, Yankees 41, Dodgers

41, Padres 23. The Padres are just always sort of the same maybe not for that much longer but that's pretty fascinating because you would lump in the Red Sox with the Yankees and the Dodgers let's say in terms of teams that have had the most success over the past several years but the Yankees and the Dodgers have been extremely consistent in their win totals from year to year whereas the Red Sox have jumped around more than any other team they've won two World Series during that time but they've also finished last twice've won two World Series during that time, but they've also finished last twice. I think the World Series wins outweigh the last place finishes,

but still, it's been a very mercurial team. So we will see what comes next for the franchise, and we will discuss it when we know more. And you can ensure that we do that by supporting the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going mitchell dixon miles johnson jake devon andy morris and angus kellett thanks to all of you you can join our facebook group

at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild and you can rate review and subscribe to effectively wild on itunes and other platforms. Please keep your questions and comments for me and Meg and Sam coming via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you're a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. You can buy my book, The MVP Machine, How Baseball's New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players. Your reviews and ratings of the book are appreciated as well, and we will be back to talk to you a little later this week. Got a shot, got a shot, got a shot, got a shot, I got a shot, I got a shot, I got a shot, I got a shot, I got a shot, I got a shot, I got a shot.