Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 165: The Worst Team to Work For/Baseball Without Outfield Fences/When to Give Up on Top Draft Picks/Would Mariano Rivera Make an All-Time Team?

Episode Date: March 22, 2013

Ben and Sam answer listener emails about the worst team to work for, what baseball would look like without outfield fences, when it’s okay to give up on high draft picks, and how Mariano Rivera compares to top starting pitchers.

I have so many questions to ask you. Good morning and welcome to episode 165 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus. You know what, I'm not even going to say where I am anymore because you didn't say yesterday and I liked how that sounded. I am Ben Lindberg. With me as always is Sam Miller. Thanks, Ben. It's great to be here. In Aroldis Chapman news, Aroldis Chapman is a closer. In Kyle Loesch news, Kyle Loesch is still unsigned, but we know how much money he wanted. He was asking for a three-year, $45 million deal one week into spring training,

and now he's hoping to match the two-year $26.5 million deal that Ryan Dempster signed. So those are two people that we have talked about a lot this winter. That is the latest with them. We are going to answer your emails and tweets today, which we have put off for a couple days so we could have some good guests on. So let's get to it. I'll start with one that we just received because it's related to yesterday's Dan Evans interview. Michael Shive tweeted, if the phone rang and it was the Marlins, do you take the job? Do you take the job?

Yeah, of course. I do not take, well, I mean, I'd take the job if they were offering to make me their general manager perhaps. I would not take the job if it were an entry-level position because I don't really want one. But if I did want one, then absolutely. Yeah, I mean I presume – I mean the question sort of assumes that it is a job that you want and that the only determining factor is the team. And considering that you and I have no skills that would be relevant to a team

and have absolutely no chance of getting hired by a team, we probably wouldn't be all that choosy. Yeah, well, yeah, I guess. I mean, obviously that's a disastrous franchise i think if i had um if i were if i were um you know one of these guys who is you know like always mentioned as next in line to be a gm and the marlins wanted to interview me i could certainly see uh rejecting that interview uh which actually sort of always surprised me when GM candidates would do that, because it seems like, you know, as confident as you are in your future,

there's really only so many opportunities you get in your life. We talked to Dan Evans yesterday, and he sort of talked about the serendipity that is required to get into any job in life. that is required to get into any job in life. And so I probably wouldn't have been all that picky, but it makes sense. And the Marlins are backwards and awful, and I would be kind of ashamed to work for them.

They are essentially the bleacher report of Major League Baseball teams. But as a person who has no leverage whatsoever and would certainly be happy to have a position of great power in a Major League Baseball franchise, sure. But I feel like if I mean, I feel like the the baseball operations department of the Marlins is fairly well respected, I would say, or at least people don't kind of paint them with the Jeffrey Luria brush entirely. I mean, you could presumably carve out a reputation as a competent front office person while you were with the Marlins and people are aware of all the limitations that you're working with. And then eventually you could get a job somewhere else. I would think it wouldn't be like a black mark on your resume that you had worked for the Marlins, I don't think. It wouldn't be, I don't think it would be a fatally black mark,

but I mean, results matter, and it's not an organization that's in a position to have any sort of good results, I don't think, probably for eternity. And so I don't think that that's irrelevant. And, you know, I think maybe one of the sort of secrets that we're learning is that baseball ops is not the dominant department in an organization. The business side controls an awful lot of what goes on. And in a way, I mean, I worked in a newsroom for a newspaper for 10 years. And when you get hired in the newsroom, you think that, you know, it's a newspaper, news is in the name, and you're in the newsroom and you feel like you're the, you know, you're the center of it. And in a sense, you're the only one who's actually creating a product. So in a sense, you are the center of it. You realize that advertising comes first and, you're the only one who's actually creating a product. So in a sense, you are the center of it. Except you realize that advertising comes first and, you know, business comes first and circulation

comes first and all these other things come first because the goal is to make money. And every year you sort of realize that you're actually in a position of no power whatsoever in the larger scheme of things. So, yeah, I mean, if you're entirely looking at it as a step to the next job yeah it's probably better i mean you could be a player development guy or something and and the marlins produce good young players and then they trade them away but they they have produced them so that's something you can point to and say yeah you could i i think of the 30 teams though the 30th team you'd want to work for do you think that's fair to say uh even even in even in that department yeah in any in any job that you

can name the marlins would be the 30th team you would probably yes yeah so i think that's true now i would um if any marlins are listening uh i will say much nicer things about you if you hire me so uh i am available and this is starting tomorrow we've never said anything this nasty about the reds i don't think i know i love them i love the reds all right all right you have a question sure i actually just want to slip to slip in this one from Steve, who wanted to talk about rule variations. And one of them actually interested me, which is to retain a live ball and basically play with no outfield fences. He says this would enhance the value of speed, devalue fly balls, might be a more athletic

game. You could still have stands in the outfield, but they would have to be elevated high enough not to interfere with most batted balls. I don't know how that would work, the stands, because, well, I just can't imagine how you would have stands. I mean, the stands would have to be like a pier with pillars or something, but even then a fly ball could land on it. But the thing that – the reason I read this without telling you that I was going to read it and the reason that it appeals to me, one is that I think everybody secretly – not secretly. Everybody loves speed in baseball.

And one of the kind of – I don't know if you would call it a flaw, but one of the things that makes baseball slightly less aesthetically pleasing is that there's not a lot of places for speed to go. It's a compact field. And so the premium for winning is almost always going to be on things that aren't speed related. But speed is an absolutely beautiful thing. And it's great when the rare occasions when speed has a chance to play. And I think that one of the things that when people talk about baseball and how it's great because there's no clock it could theoretically go on infinitely um and yet it is a closed field and it would be fascinating to see baseball without a closedness to it, where theoretically the field itself were infinite. I think that this is going to be horribly nerdy of me to say,

but I think one of the things that made Quidditch really appealing is that there were no limits to where the field could extend. And I don't know that this is necessarily the answer to that, particularly because it's incredibly unrealistic and reminds people of Little League when you were too poor to put up a fence. But there is actually something kind of appealing about it, and I would like it. It would actually change strategy in significant ways. How deep do you think outfielders would play? I mean, it would vary by hitter, obviously, but you would have to pick a point.

You'd have to try to calculate the likelihood of a single as opposed to— because if Giancarlo Stanton is up and you are playing at current outfield depth, you will be running forever if he hits what would be a home run currently. Yeah. I think what you would see, you would see a lot more singles. More than you. You would probably see, you wouldn't see probably, well, I don't know if you would see as many home runs.

I mean, if you think about doubles as all rolling forever, there might be a lot of home runs. But you would see a lot of singles, right? Because you'd have to make that calculus of how much you want to give away. And I think that perhaps I find home runs to be fairly boring and highlight reels because you see the point of contact and that's it, right? As soon as you realize it's out, it's out. That's the end of the suspense. I kind of like seeing by how much it's out though only occasionally right don't you think yeah i mean there's maybe on most home runs it's not anything spectacular right there's a couple home runs a day that are interesting but i mean when they show on sports center the highlights are probably 60 of highlights on on a in a baseball game on sports center our home runs and you always know immediately it's a home run and you always know it's going to land in the stands and that's it uh and i think it would actually be pretty interesting to see

uh to see every ball have some suspense to it until the runner crosses home plate. Yeah, I agree. So I'm endorsing it. Well, you also endorse putting a pit on the field. I mean, given the choice, I would choose the pit first. So if I only get one move, the pit comes first. A lot of our questions on listener email shows are about changing the rules and doing strange things to baseball. If I changing changing the rules and doing strange things to baseball if if i could change the rules of this podcast all of our questions would be about that i i'm pretty uninterested in all the other ones so please send send more like this

okay you have another one all right uh no you go uh mine might be the longest though you have another one? All right. No, you go. Mine might be the longest, though. Don't you have the draft pick question? Okay, so draft picks, Luke Hochevar. Hochevar. I think it's Hochevar. I always pronounced it Hochevar. I always pronounced it Hochevar. It's one of those.

But then lately I heard it pronounced Hochechaver with its hard C-H. Ho-chaver. Yesterday, Royals manager Ned Yost, this is obviously written a few days ago, announced that Luke Ho-chaver was out of the running for the fifth starter spot and would be moving to the bullpen. It was an unpopular move by the Royals to offer him a contract. Most fans would have chosen to part ways. Now the Royals seem to be stuck.

How effective do you think coach haver we could be out of the pen which is a question we're not going to answer but more importantly when is the right time to give up on the first pick dayton moore seems to be paralyzed by the fear of releasing him and him going on to have success with another franchise. Thanks, DP. Well, I don't know how much of Dayton Moore's motivation is not wanting to get burned by having him go to another team and succeed. We were just looking at a list of 1-1 draft picks, and it's very difficult to find an example of someone who didn't succeed with the team that drafted him, and then that team gave up on him and traded him, and then he went on to make them regret it, basically. And that could just be because every guy who's been drafted 1-1 has been held on to because the team was worried about that

happening. The closest example I could find was Phil Nevin, who was drafted first overall in 1992 and then was traded, I think, three times before his age 28 season, which is when he became a very good player for a few years. And he had makeup issues and things that caused teams to kind of give up on him. So that's an example. I guess, I don't know. I mean, certainly when you look at players in the minor leagues, I would value a player with the same stats much higher if he was a first overall draft pick than if he were drafted in some later round

because I would take that to mean that the scouts had seen some potential in him and that there was a higher chance that he would go on to do something good. I think by this point, though, I don't know if it's really something I would consider anymore. How old is he? How old is he? I think he's 29. Oh my gosh, you've got to be kidding me. Yeah, I think so. Jeez, Ben, we're on 29. Oh my gosh, you've got to be kidding me. Yeah, I think so.

Jeez, Ben, we're on the cusp of death, you and I. Yes, he is 29, and he has pitched 771 innings in the major leagues. So, I don't know. I mean, to trust the 1-1 draft position over the pretty large sample size that we've seen him pitch in the majors we we would basically have to be saying that the scout that saw him as an amateur and decided he was good had some sort of special insight that all of the the scouts that have seen him pitch for 800 innings in the majors have had i don't know that that's necessarily true i mean it could just be that he hasn't been playing as well as he could i mean there are all sorts of things that yeah well i mean that keep a player from reaching his potential

if he still shows the potential uh in some sense or if if you still see whatever made him get drafted that early and it's still i don't know know, he shows flashes of it or something, then sure. But if it's just, I mean, if he no longer looks like that guy, then there's no point in really factoring in the draft position. No, I mean, but giving up on him, the first step to giving up on him is moving him to the bullpen, right? I mean, there's very little. They've been very slow at getting 128 stars i know that any other team would have given him this this long a leash before trying that so um the first pick in the draft is really just a way of saying it's a specific type of top

prospect um and so this actually might be relevant. When Delman Young signed with the Phillies, I looked at whether elite prospects who haven't made it by age 26 are more likely to kind of turn into something than non-elite prospects. And I looked at just position players. So that's going to be different than Luke Hochaver. Uh, but I, there were 21 prospects, uh, who were in the top 10 in baseball America's, uh, rankings from 1990 through 2000. Um, if you remove catchers, cause catchers seem to be weird, then you're left with, I think 17 or 18. And these are all players who were worth four warp or fewer in their age 24, 25, and 26 seasons combined. So essentially, from 24 to 26, they were worthless.

Were they worth anything from 27 to 29? And there's like one and a half that were out of 17. Cliff Floyd became a star after that. And Royce Clayton became okay after that. And then the catchers are different. So basically, I found about, you know, one out of 17, or maybe if you're generous, two out of 17 turned into something. So it's not a very good success rate. Of course, position players are different than pitchers they're probably more predictable um on the other hand um i think maybe at this point a pitcher who's been bad for seven years is perhaps even less

there's even less reason for optimism because while a hitter might be slow to develop um a pitcher might be broken uh beyond repair and probably that's the case with Luke Hochheber whose name I've forgotten how to pronounce again well he's not good enough he hasn't he hasn't forced us to learn how to pronounce his name by being a good baseball player yeah I mean I think if he were to go to some other team and turn into a Cy Young winner I don't think anyone would fault Dayton Moore for giving up on him too early. If anything, he has been faulted for waiting this long. Yeah.

I wonder what his longest stretch of goodness has been. I wonder if he's had a good month ever. I feel like I remember him having one kind of sort of point where it felt like he was breaking out but he has not had he hasn't had a single season that was anywhere close to to lee average i'm actually looking at i'm looking at his monthly splits right now are you really he had a good september october of 2011 but that was only 20 henings. He's never had a good April. He has never had a good May. He's never had a good May.

I haven't, so that's, we're up to about 10 months. Oh, he had a good June 2009. He had a 2.94 ERA, but in five starts, but in 33 innings, he struck out 15 and walked 10. So we're now down to zero good months out of like 13. Julys, he has never had a good July. He's never had a July under five. August, he has never – well, he's had one August at 3.93.

So this is probably his best month was actually probably August of 2012. August at 3.93. So this is probably his best month was actually probably August of 2012. He had 34 innings, 27 strikeouts, 10 walks, six home runs, 3.93 ERA. And that's, I guess that's his best. Did you say September, 2011? Is that the one you said? Yeah. Yeah. That was a good month. So that was his best month. I bet you anything you can find people touting him as a fantasy sleeper last spring based on that month. He has had some good individual starts, I will say that. He went eight innings against the Rays last August. He struck out 10 guys. Didn't give up any runs.

So there's still hope. Kyle Davies, too, by the way. Oh, right. Kyle Davies had too, by the way. Oh, right. Oh, yes. Kyle Davies had a good start once. OK, are you out of questions? Yeah. OK, so my last remaining question, I don't think it was explicitly a podcast question, but it's about to be anyway.

It was from a BP reader named David Green. David Green, and he asked me a long question, but the relevant part was, I can't get my arms around the idea that 60 or so starting pitchers in the history of baseball are greater than Mariano Rivera, as career warp stats would say. So maybe the real answer to my question is how many relievers relative to starters ought to be included in any all-time team of 25 or 30 players is that a question for analysis or only for opinion that's a great question yeah uh so i am writing an article about this uh i have i have paused it to record the podcast and it should be up as you are heading to work on friday uh and my initial inclination when he, we went back and forth a little bit,

and I think I sort of persuaded him that it was fair to say that Rivera had not been as valuable in terms of career contribution as a starter who has pitched many, many, many more innings. Well, but if you do win probability added, then he's been more valuable than all but like four or five pitchers of his generation yeah i i don't know i i wouldn't though uh can i just can i just interrupt with one quick factoid mariano rivera's win probability added in the postseason is 12 wins and the second best pitcher in history is Kurt Schilling with four wins. That might be my second or third favorite factoid in the world. Yeah, that's a good one.

So my initial inclination, though, was to say that if you took those 60 or so starting pitchers in the history of baseball with higher warps than Rivera, and that might just be since 1950. I don't even know. I haven't looked. But if you took those and you converted them all to relievers, my initial suspicion or thought was that you would have some that were better than Mariano Rivera. era. Uh, and that if you were starting an all time team and say you say this all time team had a roster more or less laid out like a current roster. So you'd have a, you'd have a five man rotation and then seven or eight man bullpen or something. Uh, my thought was that you would just want all starters in your bullpen. Um, so you'd, you'd put your five best starters ever in the rotation,

and then you'd put your six through whatever, 14th starters in the bullpen. That was kind of my initial thought, and that they would probably be better than Mariano Rivera. But I think in the process of writing it, I changed my mind. I was looking at an article by Nate Silver from 2006, where he said, the typical pitcher will have an ERA about 25% higher when pitching in a starting role than when pitching in relief. That is, if you take a given reliever with a 300 ERA, your best guess, all else being equal, is that his his era as a starter would be 375 uh so if you do that for for mariano rivera uh and you are you i mean it's impossible to find a starter whose whose career era would translate to mariano rivera's careerRA if you did that that calculation that theoretical transition to the

bullpen because Mariano Rivera has a career 2.21 ERA and if you add in his his postseason innings it falls to like 2.06 or something and if you take Pedro Martinez and you do that that calculation to him and you assume that he would would make that typical transition to the bullpen, then basically Pedro Martinez in the bullpen would have the same career ERA as Mariano Rivera. So pretty much the best starter, if you did that typical translation, would be about as good as Mariano if you don't count Rivera's postseason innings.

So based on that, I would say that if I were starting an all-time team and I needed a bullpen full of guys who just went one or two innings, Mariano Rivera would definitely be one of the pitchers that I chose. Yeah, I think that we've talked before about uh i've talked before about how uh i want to see justin verlander in in the bullpen one just one year so that we can get a sense of what the uh the upper limit of reliever performance is and that way we'll know how to evaluate the best relievers because if justin verlander goes into the bullpen and has a 2.2 ERA um then we know that a guy who like Rivera who's consistently below that uh might theoretically be as good as Justin Verlander right and we don't have that specific example

do you hear me yeah at pitching one inning yeah at pitching one inning yeah um so we don't have that specific example um that we know of, but you have to figure that at least once in history there's been a guy who should have been in the rotation but instead ended up in a bullpen and never left. Like, I don't know, maybe Papelbon is that guy. Maybe Papelbon would have been an all-star starter if he had stayed in the rotation, he didn't um you know maybe a

raldus chapman will end up being that guy or something but throughout the history of baseball there's probably one guy who should have been a really good starter and instead ended up as a closer his entire life and so if you assume that at least one of those guys exists, none of them have been anywhere close to Mariano Rivera in terms of how good they've been. He has 11 seasons with an ERA below two. And since the dead ball era, there's only one pitcher with even half as many. And that's Hoyt Wilhelm with six. six. He's so far beyond every other reliever that you just have to assume that there's something virtually impossible about what he's doing and that it's not simply a matter of his role. He has a better OPS against lefties than Randy Johnson did. He has a better OPS against righties

than Pedro Martinez did. And he's done it for just, you know, 17 years or something like that. So I think that generally the instinct to disregard him is right. But, you know, I think that Rivera, though, is he breaks through that he disproves that instinct. I mean, people very rarely use the phrase, the exception that proves the rule accurately. But I think that in this case, it's true. Rivera is actually the exception that proves the rule. The fact that no bullpen, no reliever in history can come anywhere close to making this argument, I think, proves the instinct right. But the fact that Mariano Rivera is so far beyond all those relievers proves that Mariano Rivera is actually yeah I agree there I don't think I would I would not

put any other reliever in that all-time team bullpen I was I was trying to look at other guys I mean there was Wilhelm as you mentioned there's Trevor Hoffman there's Dan Quisenberry but all of those guys if you if you do that that, which is just a rule of thumb, you can find starters who would theoretically have been better relievers than those guys. Rivera is the only one who has been so good that that is not true. And I think that if you did have the 60 or so starters who had a higher career warp than Rivera, the 60 or so starters who had a higher career warp than Rivera, if you were to convert all of them to the bullpen, I would assume that,

that one of them would be better than Rivera. I would assume that there would be a guy, maybe nine of them would be, but I don't know which ones I would think that, that there would be some guy whose stuff would just play up so much or, or the one pitch that isn't quite as effective in in the rotation would be equally or more effective than Rivera's cutter and he would just be untouchable but you don't know which guy that will be unless you actually

do it so if I were just building this all-time team team full of guys who have not been relievers and just projecting them as relievers, then I would keep Rivera on that team. And he would be the only guy. Ben, I'm going to go watch elementary now. Oh, okay. Cool. All right. So long. We will be back next week.