Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 183: How to Set Up a Rotation/The DH of the Future/Batting Stanton Leadoff/Pitchers and Handwarmers/Quad-A Hitters

Episode Date: April 17, 2013

Ben and Sam answer listener emails about the future of the DH role, whether teams rest starters in games they expect to lose, whether it makes sense to bat Giancarlo Stanton leadoff, and more.

Good morning and welcome to episode 183 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus. I am Ben Lindberg. Joining me is Sam Miller. It is Wednesday, so it's the listener email show. Sam is looking at emails as we speak, and we're just going to kind of pick some as we go. Haven't talked about them yet, but we're going to talk about them now. So what's up first? Actually, I want um start with a question

that um we didn't get to last week oh yeah there were a lot last week that we didn't get to yeah it might seem slightly dated but it might not because i might take it in a slightly different direction but this was from a fellow named alan who says pertaining to the rangers and nationals opening day was on the road versus the two worst teams in baseball. Considering they played on the road but had huge series following, why didn't each respective team start their rotations out with their number three? Today we would have had Darvish versus the Angels and Strasburg versus Cincinnati. Instead, well, okay. So the idea being don't burn your ace against a lousy team.

Save your ace for a good team when you really need an ace. And the reason that I want to talk about this is because while reading about Hector Sanchez and the Giants rotation, Andrew Baggerly of Comcast, I think, said that his theory is that Sanchez caught Zito last year primarily because Bochy figured Zito is the worst pitcher already. And if you're already unlikely to win the game, you might as well choose that day to give Posey a rest. I mean, if you're going to give Posey a rest sometime, you might as well do it when you figure you're already going to lose. And that Sanchez is Lincecum's personal catcher now

because Lincecum has replaced Zito in Bochy's mind as the worst pitcher on the staff and therefore gives the Giants the least chance to win. And so in that theory, I don't actually believe that that's true, but in that explanation, you don't believe that that's why, why he's ordering it that way. You mean? Uh, right. I think that, I mean, I, I, you know, maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but I don't get the sense that Andrew Baggerly has inside information in this case. I think he was just sort of being speculative, but maybe he does. Who does who knows um so that's kind of the opposite

theory which is that uh you well i guess it's the same sort of principle but in the in the other side where you uh you bench your best players when you have the least chance of winning where instead of like alan is saying benjamin you have the best chance of winning. And so I wonder, though, whether either—I've always wondered this, whether teams should— That comes up in the playoffs sometimes. It does, like if Verlander's pitching game won. Like, you know, did it make sense for the Giants to start Zito against Verlander because they figured they were going to lose anyway? Of course, that happened to not come true in either direction. But, yeah, people will talk about that. Should you match up your ace against their ace? Or

is it better to match up your ace against their worst pitcher? And so first, I wanted to know if you have any thoughts about that. I've always wondered about it too. And I'm not sure. I guess, I don't know. I guess you kind of have to like project what the run differential between you and your opponent would be. I mean, I guess, I don't know if it's not like you are going to be projected to lose by five runs to the other team in any scenario. five runs to the other team in any scenario. So maybe if you're a little bit worse because of your starting pitcher, then you would really want Posey in there instead of Sanchez to kind of even out the deficits. Yeah, exactly. It seems like you could very easily make the case that Posey should be in specifically for those games when the Giants need him the most. I mean, the principle is you don't want to leave runs on the table.

You don't want to basically waste a lot of runs. Basically, you want to be the team that beats Pythagoras instead of does the opposite and wins a lot of blowouts and loses the close ones. So you don't want to win a lot of games 9-2 and lose a lot of games 3-2. you don't want to win a lot of games 9-2 and lose a lot of games 3-2. And so the idea is that you can somehow efficiently deploy your players in a way that you have them in there when they're likely to be needed the most. But I just don't think that it works that way. I don't think baseball is nearly predictable enough,

and I don't think the margins between the best and the worst are big enough. I mean, you watch the Astros beat a first-place team with some regularity, and you realize that it's very hard to time these things. So I did a quick experiment just before we did this with a random number generator, and I created a hypothetical team that had two pitchers. And I created a hypothetical team that had two pitchers. One of their pitchers has a 3.5 ERA and so gives up either two, three, four, or five runs every game. And then another one of their pitchers has a 4.5 ERA and gives up three, four, five, or six runs every game. And they're going up against an inferior team and that team has a pitcher with a 4-5 ERA and a 5-5 ERA.

And so I just matched them up, the different iterations, to see whether having your ace go against their worst pitcher is a waste of your ace. And it's basically identical. They have the same winning percentage in either scenario. I only ran about maybe 60 or 70 of these tests and I'm sure there's a actually pretty simple mathematical way of figuring this out that I don't know about. But it didn't seem like there was any obvious advantage to trying to take advantage of this. Yeah, I agree. I think I don't think that any manager is really raising the white flag like that in any particular game.

I don't know if a team thought its starter was that bad that they would just kind of throw the game almost or, I don't know, go part of the way towards that. I don't know that they would start that guy. They would find someone else if they thought he was if he was putting them in that deep a hole well the yeah the reason i don't think that andrew baggerly probably has inside information about this being true is that if this actually were bocce's thinking i think it would be the most closely kept secret in the world because think about how think about how disheartening that would be to sanchez to lincecum to Zito, to everybody involved if that in any way became

known. So I just can't imagine that even in the kind of off-the-record conversations that people have with reporters that that would ever get out. Just a guess. All right. Do you have any other questions that jump out at you that I should go to? No there's uh we could talk about the the dh question i guess all right let's talk about the yeah so timothy says i went to a mariners game and saw elvis andrews playing dh i asked myself a question and then he came back and asked us a question are the days of david ortiz and jim tommy over are the days of the latter stages of carl everett's career over is there no more professional dh is the dh slot now just a chance to sneak an extra position player on the roster and delegate the odd rest day from one player to the next by relieving them of the responsibility of playing

the field one day every two weeks? Well, the days of David Ortiz are not over. He's going to be back this week. And there's still Travis Hafner, designated hitter. He still exists. And there are a few guys like that around. I mean, I think we've talked about this on the podcast before. I think I remember citing some stat about maybe Billy Butler being the only really full-time DH last year. I mean, Ortiz got hurt, so he didn't qualify for whatever cutoff I was using, and same with Hafner. But I think it might have been 500 play appearances or something.

Butler was the only guy. And it does sort of seem like teams are just kind of rotating people in from other positions and giving them a rest day without being completely off. At least that is the sense I get. I haven't done any rigorous analysis of that, but that seems to be the case to me, that there is some trend toward that being the more typical situation than the one designated hitter? Yeah, I think every team would like to have as much roster flexibility as possible, and every team would also like to have a David Ortiz-type hitter on their team

at an affordable price. And I think there's a pretty good equilibrium that has developed, whereby there are only a few of those guys out there. And if they get too cheap, then a team will go sign them. So no team gives up on that option completely. But if they're not too cheap, then teams would generally prefer to have that as a flexible spot. I know some managers in particular really prefer to have no designated

hitter because they like the flexibility it gives them. I think of a team like the Rays, And I think of a team like the Rays, which puts a huge premium on roster flexibility, and it seems like a failing on their part. I think I can't remember where I had this conversation. Oh, I had this conversation with Adam Sobsey in our season preview. It seems like a failing on their part that they have had such weak hitters at such offensive premium positions. But I think that it's fairly consistent with what they're trying to do with their roster, which is to sort of not, to treat a roster spot as a commodity just as much as you treat home runs and strikeouts as commodities.

So I don't think it will ever go away as long as there are valuable hitters who can't play a position, they're going to have jobs. And I don't feel like there's a big market inefficiency one way or the other on those guys. They basically slot into the Warp model fairly well and they basically seem to get paid normally maybe there's some inefficiency for like older guys like the Bobby Abreu types who don't find teams until late in the offseason but not a not a big one although I do wonder why Jim Tomey is sort of not more loved by major league teams in the latter stage of his career. Yeah, I guess he's just too fragile. I don't know. At least right now, he seems to be incapable of staying healthy for very long. Okay, let's talk about this Stanton question from Ken R. I listened to your Stanton podcast today and it made me wonder,

would there be any benefit to batting Stanton in the leadoff position? There seems to be a particular emphasis placed on throwing strikes to a leadoff hitter, and this might be the spot to get the most out of Stanton the hitter, given the strength of the current lineup. It might mean more strikes to swing at, and it might also force him to be a bit more selective. What are your thoughts? force him to be a bit more selective. What are your thoughts? I actually started, I spent about an hour starting a piece about this topic today,

and then I realized that I didn't know how to get the more pertinent information that I was going to need down the line, so then I threw it away. But yeah, the obvious downside to that is that, well, basically, teams are going to pitch to Stanton when it's in their interest to. And what you kind of ideally want is to have it be in their interest to pitch to them because they have no other choice, which is to say the bases are loaded, sort of a situation. And you're not going to get that situation very often when he's batting leadoff because you know quarter of his at bats are by definition going to be with nobody on base and the rest of them are going to come just after the pitcher and the eight hitter and the seven hitter. So he's not going to have much ability to do damage even if he is getting pitched to.

He's going to get pitched to a lot more, but there are going to be situations where he can do less damage because there's nobody on base and there's one out or whatever. And so it's a balance, and you want to figure out a way to get him pitched to, but also where he can do something with that. The benefit to it that is indisputable is that he would get more plate appearances, and if they do continue to pitch around him, and I don't think they really would pitch around him the way that, like,

like Bonds in 2004, Bonds was intentionally walked with nobody on 19 times, which is kind of crazy because, like, Tomey, who is an, you know, Tomey's like an all-time great hitter and is also left-handed. Tomey has one season in his career where he was intentionally walked 19 times. In any situation. In any situation. Jim Rice's career high for intentional walks is 10 and Bonds was intentionally walked 19 times with nobody on base.

I don't think Stanton is ever going to quite get the Bonds treatment, though. So I think he would get a lot more at-bats and a lot fewer ribby opportunities. Yeah, I agree. I guess there could come a point at which you could try that if he's getting pitched around so much that he's never getting a pitch to hit anyway. I don't know. I don't know. I mostly agree with you. Probably better to leave him where he is, I think. know maybe if you uh i don't know you it might make sense i i'm not saying it would make sense but it might make sense if like you if you had the pitcher bat sixth or something like that um but i don't know if that would make sense either i don't know you're i mean you get to

a point where i mean like there's an optimal way to build your lineup and it and you know that that's a sort of a math question that's been answered and is a non-starter in the real world. And we could certainly point you to that work, to those studies. But as far as Stanton goes, it's probably – I don't know. It's not my favorite idea. That's a fair way to end it it would uh i don't know whatever whatever the the marlins optimal lineup is is so far from an optimal lineup that yes i don't know that it's worth even experimenting to that degree or maybe i don't know maybe it's the time that you do want

to experiment the most but uh yeah probably not that that experiment yeah i wonder what position in the i mean yeah what you'd want to do and what i why i pulled the plug is what you want to do is you want to find the situations where you want to figure out the likelihood that stanton is going to get walked in each situation so runner on first with one out he's going to get walked in each situation. So runner on first with one out, he's going to get walked X percent of time. Bases loaded two out, he's going to get walked X percent of time. So you want to figure out how often he's going to get walked in each situation. And then you want to balance that against how often each situation comes up in each spot of the batting order.

And then you want to value the benefit of Stanton actually getting the hit. So whether he produces more runs in each situation hitting or walking. And then you just multiply all those together, and then you have your answer. So somebody can do that. Anything else jump out at you here? Yeah, well, I want to at least read Chris's question. I don't know if we have an answer for him, but Chris says that he was watching the Tigers-Blue Jays game, and it was 35 degrees Fahrenheit in Detroit. Both Josh Johnson and Doug Pfister fought the cold early on, barely warming

their hands between pitches and in the dugout. It got me thinking, quarterbacks everywhere wear hand warmers around their waist to fight the cold cold when not in action why isn't there a secure lightweight equivalent for pitchers i can imagine it might hypothetically get in the way of your mechanics but i have to think the benefit of a loose warm pitching hand outweighs the cost um i've heard probably in two or three games every day for the past week somebody mentioned a broadcaster mentioned how important it is for the pitcher and or fielders to keep their hands warm because if you don't have warm hands you can't feel the ball and you can't feel the ball you're toast and so i don't i don't have an answer for this you said you were going to look into it you might not have an answer for it but i wanted to

read it so that everybody can think about this tomorrow when they're watching games yeah i plan to ask some pitchers about this at some point. I haven't yet, but it's interesting. I don't know. I mean, you certainly see pitchers blowing on their hands to try to keep them warm and getting permission to do that. So there clearly is a desire to keep their hands warm, and they seem to think there is some benefit to keeping their hands warm and they seem to think there is some benefit to keeping

their hands warm so you would think something that would enable them to do that would be something they would be willing to try but um i don't know i mean i guess i can't really think of a downside either other than just it's not something that they're used to. And so maybe they just don't want to incorporate something that they haven't tried because, I don't know, the mechanics and the delivery and the motion are all such pinpoint, precise movements that one little addition to that, one little unfamiliar aspect could throw the whole thing off. I don't know. Yeah, when Will Carroll was writing about these lightweight hats

that could protect pitchers, those got no traction because pitchers thought it was going to disrupt them. The football hand warmers seem to me fairly new. I don't watch football that closely, but I have watched football in my life, and they seem new to me. It seems like a fairly new. I don't watch football that closely, but I have watched football in my life and they seem new to me. Like it seems like a fairly new phenomenon. If I had to guess, I would guess that they've been around for like maybe 12 or 15 years, but maybe I'm completely wrong on that. So maybe it just isn't, you know, maybe it's just still a relatively new thing. Yeah. I have no idea about that.

I don't even know what the hand i didn't even know that those were hand warmers i mean i just i see their hands in there but i never knew exactly what they were doing like what else could they be doing in there well i mean i didn't know if it was like a pocket it's not like a pocket right i mean it's something that creates heat like isn't it like a muff sort of like is that all it is i think there's no there's i don't think there's one of those hot water things things you put in your boots when you go skiing. You break it and it produces heat. I don't...

You don't think so? Do you want to hit pause while I Google this? Hit pause. Hit pause. All right. Three, two, one, pause. And we're back. So this is what we found.

We found the Under Armour Adult Hand Warmer on a football site, which has three features. Cuff ends trap heat and keep out the cold, allowing you to warm your hands for peak performance. Waterproof exterior makes this hand warmer versatile, all season long. And convenient zipped pocket is specially designed for hot packs. So it works without those things, but you can put those things in there. That's what it seems to me. All right.

Well, yeah, at some point I plan to ask someone about this. Can we do one more? Sure. All right. Dane sent this question about quadruple A players. Good morning, Ben and Sam. I am a big Royals fan, and I am frustrated by the number about quadruple A players. Good morning, Ben and Sam. I am a big Royals fan, and I am frustrated by the number of quadruple A players that Kansas City seems to, quote-unquote, develop.

Most recently, Johnny Giavitella. Are there any statistical ways to identify quadruple A players? Are there any organizations that are particularly good at identifying quadruple A players before they arrive in the major leagues. So I would argue, and I don't know the answer to that, I would guess that yes, there are players who are, or teams who are better at that than others, but I kind of doubt it would be a statistical way of identifying them. I would think it's mostly a scouting thing because I don't know that the thing about quadruple A players is that their stats suggest that they can succeed in the majors. And I don't know, maybe some of them strike out a lot

and you kind of worry whether they will make enough contact to hit for power in the major leagues. And I don't know, but but i mean the reason or the way that they become quadruple a players is we look at their stats and think man that guy can really hit he can probably hit in the majors and then he gets to the majors and he can't because he has a slow bat and he just feasts on on triple a breaking balls or or whatever whatever the explanation is. So I would think that there are teams that are better at screening those guys, just purely in a scouting sense. But I would think that with the Royals in particular, I mean, I would guess that it's not a failure of the Royals scouting

that they have maybe had more of these guys than other teams. And I don't know for sure that they have, but let's just say that they have maybe had more of these guys than other teams. And I don't know for sure that they have, but let's just say that they have, I would guess that that's mostly just because the Royals have been bad for a while. And so they've had roster spots for these guys or they've, they've had teams that, that are willing to try it and see whether it works.

So I don't know, a, a, a Kila Kai, we, uh, Akilah Kayahui, uh, or, uh, or a Clint Robinson, um, guys like that could maybe get a spot on the Royals roster because they aren't very good teams. So might as well try it and see if it works. But I know that, uh, that the player that Dane mentioned is someone that I think we both like and i know you wrote about as as a potential breakout player i think in in our staff lineup card at some point this year um so i don't

know that we believe that he is one of those guys yet but maybe we are wrong are you still a believer in in javatella yeah uh well more than more than the royals are less than i'm a believer in Giavatella? Yeah, well, more than the Royals are. Less than I'm a believer in, like, Ryan Braun. Yeah, I mean, I guess the fact that they keep playing Chris Goetz instead of him makes me wonder what is wrong with him. But, I don't know, we kind of know what Chris Goetz is, and it's not a very good player. So I would give him a shot, I think, at this point.

I would give him longer than he has had because he has hit very well in AAA and has had, I don't remember off the top of my head, but maybe 300-something at-bats or plate appearances in the majors. And he's hit very poorly worse than chris katz but uh you would think he has more upside ultimately but i don't know that would be that would be my guess if there is one organization that seems like it's had more of these guys than others i would think it would be a product of that team's competitive situation more than their inability to tell which players are quadruple A players.

All right? All right. Okay. Sounds good. All right. Then we will be back with a couple more shows this week, and we will talk to you tomorrow.