Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 16: Sonar

Episode Date: August 8, 2012

Ben and Sam discuss the significance of Mike Trout’s 21st birthday and Mets manager Terry Collin’s comments about injured reliever Tim Byrdak’s workload.

Good evening, good morning. This is Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives. We are coming to you just after midnight Eastern time, having just celebrated the Houston Astros' ability to complete one entire baseball game without three or more infielders colliding on a simple sacrifice bunt attempt. Ben Lindbergh is two floors from the top of his New York apartment building, and as always, I'm sitting under the shadow of our spare refrigerator. Ben, how are you this evening?

I watched the newsroom, so that was a mistake. Oh, I watched the hour, the hour, which is the British version. I watched the hour. Did you enjoy it? It was better is the British version. I watched The Hour. Did you enjoy it? It was better than The Newsroom. I'm not totally feeling it. We're halfway through the season. I never got very enthusiastic, but I finished it.

Okay. So that's our TV segment. All right. Do you have a baseball-related topic? I do. I'd like to talk about Tim Burdack. Oh, wow. It's just all over the news these days.

Googling furiously. And I will be talking about Mike Trout because I think that we're obligated to. Okay. And we will probably have a lot more to say about that. So let's start with Tim Burdack. Oh, wait, wait, wait. One's a bird and one's a bird and one no never mind um so I just came across this article while we were furiously searching for topics or while I was you were much more prepared uh and it's called Collins acknowledges

overuse of Burdack that is Terry Collins and Tim Burdack so So Metro Lever Tim Burdack has a torn anterior capsule in his pitching shoulder, which is a very bad injury to have. It is what Johan Santana had and what Chris Young had. His season is certainly over. His career may possibly be over. And Collins was very frank, I think surprisingly frank, about whether his usage might have played a role in the injury. So, I mean, Tim Brodak is leading the major leagues in games. He has pitched in 56 games.

He is a lefty specialist type, so in his 56 games he has only thrown 30 and two-thirds innings. So in his 56 games, he has only thrown 30 and two thirds innings. So in terms of innings, he has not been overworked in terms is not a controversial statement but then he said it's just the fact that he was in that role that he was where he had or it's just the fact that he was in that role that that he was where he had to go out there a lot there's no question we probably used him more than we should have um which i think it surprised me that he was so frank about that. Um, I mean, maybe he's being a little too hard on himself in that it could be just a convenient coincidence that the guy who's leading the majors in, in games pitch now has a serious shoulder injury.

Obviously people who were not leading the major leagues in games pitched have had the same injury. But I wonder, I guess, does it surprise you that he acknowledged that they just may have flat out been responsible for that? And do you think that's something where, I mean, is that something you only realize after the fact when a guy gets hurt? Hey, we might have been using him too much. Or is that sort of a calculated risk that you just are entitled to take if you've signed a guy and you've paid for the privilege of using him however you'd like to use him and he's under contract and he's not objecting? I mean, are you obligated to hold to some standard of usage so as not to endanger someone, or is it just kind of let's get the most out of this guy? Well, that is a surprising quote, and it's a lot easier to imagine you or I saying it without any information and then having Collins say that we're idiots. information and then having Collins say that we're idiots. I would guess that if he's saying that without having any information on this, I would guess that if he's saying that, that he probably

did know that there was some sort of issue throughout the process and that maybe Burdak had pain that he was pitching through and that maybe they were aware of that. Because otherwise, it really does seem like an extremely bold statement to say about a not clear-cut case. I mean, like you say, he warms up a lot because he comes into a lot of games, but he's faced 125 batters this year. He's certainly not pushing any records or anything like that.

And he's, you know, 56 games. So that puts him on pace to do like maybe 80. What is that? Like 80 to 83 or something like that. And he's thrown. Yeah, he threw 76. He pitched in 76 games three years ago. He faced far more batters than and, you know and 76 games is almost as many as he would have.

So my guess is that they wouldn't be saying anything quite this bold if it weren't an issue that they were kind of monitoring and aware of. And I'd like to think that Burdak wanted to go out in one last blaze of mediocrity. Yeah, I mean, maybe it must've been with his consent. I would think if they're being that frank about it, that he was just sort of like, Hey, I'm Tim Burdack. A lot of sentences start with I'm Tim Burdack. I bet. I bet he's like walking into the clubhouse and the clubhouse guy says, who are you? And he says, I'm Tim Burdack. But I mean, he's a 38 year old reliever. And maybe he just kind of figured, let's, let's see what happens if if if it costs me, it won't cost me all that much. But it is, I guess, I mean, the article draws the comparison to Pedro Feliciano, whom the Yankees signed after he was with the Mets for a while and just immediately exploded. And Brian Cashman kind of blamed the Mets for abusing him.

So I wonder, I mean, it's probably not a case where you can draw any kind of conclusion or pattern. It's just, I mean, one of those things. He's only, he's thrown one more game than the number two guy. He's thrown two more games than the number three and four guys. And he's thrown three more games than, um, at least four other guys. So, um, I mean, it really is not the case that, that his, um, his workload jumps out at you. He should really though, do a screen grab of his baseball reference

page because today might be the first and last day he has black ink. Well, it was worth it, I'm sure. Oh, yeah. No, I'm sure. As Collins would say, there can be no question that it was worth it for Tim Burdack to have a black ink. But we're talking about Tim Burdack. There's no way we would have been talking about Tim Burdack if he hadn't made this sacrifice. Oh, yeah, and in such reverential tones. So Mike Trout.

Mike Trout turned 21 today. The thing about Mike Trout that is interesting is how hard it is to be interested by anything that anybody says about him right now. I mean, uh, today everybody seemed to do their, um,

their 20, 21st birthday appreciation of Mike Trout. And I mean, bless all their hearts. They're all great people who write about him, but, uh, I didn't really find anything that excited me because he has been,

um, greater than almost any factoid or word can describe this year. And, you know, it's the interesting thing about him is trying to figure out how, I don't know, I guess how certain greatness is. Are we looking at a guy, are we certain, are we almost virtually certain that we are watching a Hall of Fame career from almost the first at bat? Or is there still room for him to fail? Is there a scenario where we or you or I can imagine him failing that doesn't involve a tractor accident?

I think I can imagine almost any baseball player failing at this point, having seen some of them fail. Despite being so good and starting out so well, it wouldn't shock me. But no, it would shock me. It would shock me, but no, it would shock me. It would shock me. But it would, I mean, it would shock me more than any other, I guess, well, you can't really draw a comparison. I was trying to think of a comparison to someone who has done this well at this age, and it's very, very hard to come up with any at this level of experience.

Yeah, let me give you a hand. There are essentially 10 players in history who have been what you would call stars at age 20 before Mike Trout. And of the 10, six are in the Hall of Fame. of the 10, six are in the Hall of Fame. They're Mickey Mantle, Ty Cobb, Frank Robinson, Al Kaline, a couple others. Two of them are certainly going to be in A-Rod and Griffey. One is Jason Hayward. It's far too early to say what he will be. And the 10th one is, not the 10th, but one of the 10 is Veda Pinson, whose name I hope I'm pronouncing correctly, and who is actually a pretty interesting comparison to Trout because he also was extremely fast.

He led the league in triples a bunch of times, stole a bunch of bases, very fast guy, good power, and was really elite at age 20 and at age 21 and at age 22, and had a nice career. And if that's the downside of Mike Trout, I mean, he's basically a 40 or 50 win career right there, and that's like Bernie Williams. He basically, the worst case scenario was Bernie Williams. So, yeah, I mean, I know that there's always

there's always unpredictability in baseball. And it is notable that Mike Trout was the number three prospect in Baseball America's list this year. And five years ago, Brandon Wood was the number three prospect in Baseball America's list. So there's always routes to failure but very uh it has never happened at at this level that a player has succeeded in the majors this young and uh not at least maintained a very high level of play improvement i think might be optimistic the idea that he's a 10 win player now so he's going to be a 14 win player in his prime is probably more than i'm willing to go. But, you know, of those 10, if you remove Hayward, of the nine, I think six or seven or so, I looked this up, but I don't remember exactly,

had at least one year that was better than their age 20 season. And so it might have even been eight. And so, yeah, anyway, Mike Trout, everybody. Yeah, when a guy comes up this young and is this good this early, And so, yeah, anyway, Mike Trout, everybody. you may peak a little earlier than that just because you've developed so quickly um and maybe you won't follow that same trajectory that the average player does because you are not the average player yep yep i think that's right we're done i'm done are you done yeah i have no more to add about tim burdack. All right. Well, then we'll wrap it up at a reasonable hour tonight.

Thank you for talking to me and thanks everybody for listening and we'll be back with another episode tomorrow.