Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 184: Brett Gardner Makes an Adjustment

Episode Date: April 18, 2013

Ben and Sam discuss Brett Gardner’s new approach at the plate, and how hitters adjust to pitchers.

uh and also mike trout only has one steal and peter bordas has no steals okay that's the intro sir that's the intro and then people will be like what and then later it'll make sense okay all right good morning and welcome to episode 184 of effectively wild the daily podcast from baseballperspectives.com i'm'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg. And just before we start the show, Ben counts down three, two, one. And he's not actually doing anything. He's merely telling me when to go. And yet he does it in this sort of slow, dramatic way, like as though we all need to be quiet now

and we're all getting our last pieces of business in order. And he goes, two and then and then sometimes i interrupt him to ask him what number and then i start at three and then so that is and so he'll go 184 and then he'll go okay three two one and there's no i guess there's no reason really even to count down because there's none just say go he also does it when it's his turn to introduce when he's the one introducing and there's no there's no need to prep himself yeah at all no there's no reason to to hit record i could just edit the track so how are you recording that's true that's true you're right it's true we it starts when you decide it starts.

We're officially podcasting now. How are you doing, Ben? Okay. I was just reading because a few people tweeted at us or left comments about our hand warmer discussion from yesterday and raised the very good point that I don't know why we didn't bring up. I don't think it's a good point. You don't? Well, people on Twitter were asking whether maybe a hand warmer would be prohibited by the rules either now or if people were to start using them they would be prohibited because of the concern that pitchers would be keeping some stuff in there to doctor the ball with out of sight of the umpire.

And I thought that was a valid question. Why do you not think that is a valid question? Because they already go under the mound with a large cloak-like device on one hand. with a large cloak-like device on one hand. It's not that hard to smuggle foreign substances onto the field. It's hard to get away with it. It would be hard to get away with it if you tried it. All they'd have to do is look at the ball or go out and look at your hand warmer.

It'd be really easy if an umpire had suspicions or if a manager had suspicions and wanted to check, to go out and look at your hand warmer. It'd be really easy if an umpire had suspicions or if a manager had suspicions and wanted to check, to go out and check. It's not like the hand warmer has a time-delayed lock that you wouldn't be able to open or anything like that. I don't think that you need a warrant, for instance, to look in a guy's hand warmer on the mound. And so I think that it would actually not really increase the level of cheating in any way whatsoever or the likelihood of getting away with it.

I mean, you have a hat. They don't outlaw hats because guys have smuggled stuff on their hat. You're allowed a hat. You're allowed a pocket. You're allowed a sleeve. You're allowed a hat you're allowed a pocket you're allowed a sleeve but that's you're allowed a glove that's harder i mean especially today with 10 cameras trained on players at all times uh you can often see what's under the the brim of a guy's cap um but unless you had a camera inside the hand warmer it's a completely enclosed space. I mean, people, it's not always detectable if someone is cheating, right? I mean, the idea is that it not be obvious cheating,

that there would just be a little more movement on the pitch or something, but you don't want to make it so obvious. You don't want gobs of spit flying off the ball or that will just give it away. So I assume that, that i mean for all the pitchers who have cheated over time i'm sure there are many more who have gotten away with it than have been caught doing it uh or do you think so do you really think so um yeah i would i mean i would think that's a good question it'd be fun to try to figure that out i wonder if that's true i suspect that's not that true i mean i there there are permissive eras, of course, where people got away with it because I mean, there have to be success stories, I would think for a pitcher to risk cheating and being removed from the game or suspended or whatever the punishment is, he would have to have seen or heard of someone who did it successfully and just pitched better without getting caught,

I would think. I don't know. Best guess in the past 10 years. I can't think of anybody who's been suspended for it, but it's probably there's been a couple. But best guess in the last 10 years. How many pitchers have have cheated in this manner uh just having some kind of substance or file of some sort on them yeah yeah with some sort of regularity some like some sort like done they did it more than twice uh in the last 10 years i i would say it has happened i would i would guess that it has happened, but not more than five, probably. I would think it's happened. I mean, I don't know. It's much harder now than it used to be.

I mean, just the fact that there are high-definition cameras on everyone all the time makes it more difficult, I would think. Anyway, I looked at uniform rules. I couldn't find a no hand warmer rule. Uh, I don't know. There, it, some of them are kind of open to interpretation. There's a lot of stuff about having different material or different colors or different patterns. You can't have that. So your hand warmer would definitely have to be made out of a baseball uniform or something like a baseball uniform and look like your uniform and be the same color as your uniform. If it would be possible to interpret it as some sort of, I don't know,

deception device, then that would not be allowed. But I don't know. It's kind of hard to tell. I don't know. The rules do not prohibit every possible item that you could bring with you to the mound. So it's, I don't know, I would have to look more closely. There wasn't anything that immediately jumped out to me as something that would prohibit a player from using that, but very likely there is. I don't know. All right, well my topic is totally different. Mine too. Oh crud, you have a topic. I don't have to.

I was really hoping that that was your topic We've been talking for nine minutes What's your topic? I want to talk about trading international bonus money Okay I wanted to talk a little bit about Brett Gardner Which I plan to write about right after we finish recording So maybe I'll just cover it quickly.

Or we could make that your topic, and I could save mine for tomorrow, because I'm not actually that informed about the idea yet. Okay. Should we do that? All right, or we can see how much we get out of Brett Gardner. Like the Yankees. So tell me about Brett Gardner. You went to the game today. Yeah, I did, at least in part to talk to Brett Gardner

because I wanted to ask him about what he has been doing this year. So far he has not looked a lot like Brett Gardner. I guess in a number of ways. He has been good defensively. So that is, is Gardner-esque. He has not stolen a base, which is not Gardner-esque, but I don't think that means anything. He is not trying not to steal bases, but the thing that's different is that he is swinging a lot or a lot more than we're used to seeing Brett Gardner swing.

And he missed almost all of last season. But before that, when he was a full-time player and a very, very valuable player, his thing was that he would just kind of stand there and not swing at anything. He would swing less than just about anyone in the major leagues. In 2011, he swung at 36% of pitches he saw, which was the second lowest amount. Only Bobby Brayu swung at fewer pitches in that season. So he would just stand there and take a ton of pitches, and a lot of those pitches were in the strike zone,

but he would just let them go by, and he would and a lot of those pitches were in the strike zone but he would just let them go by and he would walk a lot and then once he got on base he was very valuable he'd steal bases and he'd advance extra bases and so now this year he is swinging an awful lot he's he's in the top 30 or so people as far as swing rate. He's at 47% before Wednesday night's game. So he's up about 11 percentage points just from last season, in his brief time last season. And that alone would be, I mean, if he kept it up for a full season, only one guy has had that kind of change in swing rate over a full season, just in the pitch FX era

of the past five years or so. Johnny Gomes, apparently from 2010 to 2011, went from swinging half the time to swinging about how often Brett Gardner used to swing. So it would be a very notable change. What percentile change is it? What? Not what, how many, what is the change from 36 to 50 or something? What did you say?

From, well, he was, the last full season, 2011, he was at 36, and now he is at 47. So it's pretty big. It is big. Yeah. And so I asked him about it. And the other thing is that he's hitting a lot of fly balls, which is not something that he has ever done before. So I asked him if one of those things, one of those trends was real or if both of those trends were real. The fly ball thing does not appear to be real. He is not suddenly trying to become a power hitter.

He's just been getting under balls, he said. So I wouldn't expect that to continue, but the aggressiveness thing seems to be a real thing that he is trying to do this year um he's he's not going up there trying to swing at everything but he sort of said that he felt like maybe he was letting too many good pitches go by uh and possibly being too passive um and he has tried to swing more often he's not he's not necessarily trying to just swing regardless of where the pitch is he's trying to swing more often. He's not necessarily trying to just swing regardless of where the pitch is.

He's trying to swing at good pitches. But so far he has been swinging more at pitches inside the strike zone and also outside the strike zone. And it's probably hard if you have resolved to swing more, only to swing more at good pitches, I would think. You're inevitably going to swing at some not so good ones too. And I talked to Kevin Long, also the Yankees hitting coach, and he said that it's something that they have been talking about for a while. It sort of sounded like he's been trying to get Gardner to do this for a while, and that he thinks it's going well so far and he's happy with

this transformation. So I don't know, it's kind of an interesting evolution of a player who was really good in his previous incarnation. We had him worth about four wins or so in 2010 and 2011 um just just by getting on base quite a bit by walking and by being so good defensively and on the bases and now he's he's a new kind of aggressive Brett Gardner so I don don't know. I don't know. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out over a full season. So far, he has not struck out more, but he has walked less. And he's been fine, basically. He's hit for a bit more power. And overall, in his first 60 or so plate appearances, he's been about as productive as he was in 2011 when he wasn't really swinging at anything, even though he has kind of a low BABIP, which I assume is bad luck. I haven't really looked to see if he's had some line drives that were right at people or anything yet.

But I don't know. It's kind of interesting that that would happen all of a sudden. So is the goal, would you say from talking to him, is the goal to hit more balls hard or is the goal to keep pitchers honest? I mean, is this a reaction to pitchers' adjustment to him? Yeah. Kevin Long seemed to suggest that. I mean, Gardner said that he's i don't know

he just tries to hit line drives uh and kevin long said that yeah that that was kind of part of it that that they are hoping that if he doesn't let all those balls just go down the middle that that it will kind of keep pitchers honest although i mean i guess uh if he does start swinging at all those hittable pitches then he will stop getting so many because he's he's also had one of the highest rates of pitches in the strike zone uh yeah which you would expect because he's a guy without a lot of power um and also because he doesn't swing at those pitches or didn't before now. So I wonder what the outcome of it will be. I mean, that seems like kind of the point is that he had this equilibrium

with pitchers that was working for him. Eventually the pitchers kind of try to take some of that away from him by throwing him strikes down the middle. And if you don't swing at them, then they get the edge. And if you do swing at them, you maybe sort of force them to stop doing that. So it might be that the goal is to keep the equilibrium just like he wants. I mean, it could conceivably be the case that this wouldn't affect his walk rate at all, because if pitchers no longer can, you know, throw strikes right down the middle to him, they have to be a little bit more cautious,

and he might get fewer pitches in the strike zone, and he might get more walks. I mean, the key is, I think, is to be aggressive in the strike zone, to not be aggressive all over the place. What's interesting, though, is that Gardner is a guy who, as I recall, he's been a long shot since forever. If I'm remembering the story correctly, he was a walk-on at college. He went to a junior college and he didn't hit a ball out of the infield during tryouts. And so he left after tryouts and he didn't get a call telling him he wasield during tryouts and so he left after tryouts and he didn't get a call telling him he was off the team so he just kept coming.

He didn't actually ever make the team, he just kept showing up until he was on the team or something along those lines. So I presume, I don't know this, but I presume that this has been his strategy for many years. It's been the way he turned no ability into some ability and turned no career into some career. You wonder about changing that approach now because the fact is that Brett Gardner probably isn't very good at hitting like other people hit. He's probably not good at hitting strikes. He's really good at taking balls. And you want to preserve the ability to do that. And so you have to do some things. I mean, you obviously, you have to take a bat, for instance. If he didn't take a bat up, he would, you know, his walks would presumably drop even though he swung

never. And so you do have to take a bat and you know he's sort of has to prove that he has the the figurative bat uh in this in this analogy or whatever this is that i'm losing myself into uh but uh but i mean ideally ideally what we want is to see brett gardner virtually the same because that's what he does um You just have to figure out a way to keep doing that. Now, in the past, I've looked at, I've sort of looked a little bit at guys who do this, like AJ Ellis is one and Reggie Willits is one whose value is basically in their ability to take pitches. And the amount of adjustment that pitchers do is actually a lot less than you would think. There is some.

And so you do have to, like I said, do something to keep them honest. But it's sort of amazing how little adjustment there is. You can take the first pitch, 50 straight plate appearances, and the pitch that you get in the 51st is not really that much different than it was in the first um there's some adjustment but it's not as much as you would think because pitchers pitchers basically actually i was just talking about this with someone um recently at the angels game uh pitchers the when you're trying to decide what pitch to throw the hitters tendency is basically the third priority they basically pitch to throw, the hitter's tendency is basically the third priority. They basically want to throw their pitches.

And so I don't know how much, and it doesn't really, you know, the batter is only relevant sort of in as much as, like, you know, you kind of consider it, but it's usually not the defining thing when you're making that choice. So I don't know how much pitchers have adjusted to Brett Gardner. I don't know how much this will change the way they pitch him. But I sort of hope that it doesn't change Brett Gardner because my sense is it won't work all that well. Yeah. I mean, if it does, it's I mean, he didn't have a an extended period of of being terrible that prompted this um which is kind of interesting i mean it's not like this was a response that he had to make to keep himself uh to make himself a viable major leaguer

he wasn't like a fringy guy before this when he was healthy i mean in 2011 he wasn't as productive as he was in 2010 and he did walk less. I don't know whether this is a response to that. He was still basically a league average hitter, roughly, which made him a really valuable player because of all the other things he does. But I don't know. I mean, he, I guess he's not that great when he puts the ball in play. I mean, he I guess he's not that great when when he puts the ball in play. I mean, you would expect a guy like Brett Gardner to have a really high BABIP every year and beat out a ton of base hits. And I guess he does get a fair amount of infield hits. But his BABIP is, I mean, career 317, which is not particularly impressive for a ground ball speed guy.

So, yeah, it will be kind of interesting to see what happens if he continues to put the ball in play more. I don't know. He has been one of my favorite players for a while just because I just never saw anyone like him. When I was growing up as someone who watched the Yankees all the time and rooted for the Yankees, there just, there weren't a lot of players like this. I mean, there were a lot of patient hitters in the kind of dynasty Yankees lineups, but not so much guys who were great defensively and great speed stolen base guys and guys who beat out infield hits. I guess there were some, but not really quite in the mold of Brett Gardner. So when he showed up, he was just kind of a new creature to me, something I had not really watched on a regular basis before. and it was really fun to watch him.

And I do remember when he was in the minor leagues, as you were saying, I mean, his numbers were good then and his walk rates were good then, but people questioned whether it would translate or whether he would be one of those guys who doesn't really have the power to keep pitchers honest and would kind of turn into what Dee Gordon has kind of turned into so far, where he wouldn't really be able to use his speed because he wouldn't be able to get on base enough. But he has managed to do that, and I guess this is the latest evolution in his effort

to do that. So I will be watching with interest. You know what else is weird, Ben? No. So he doesn't have any steals this year, and Carlos Gomez doesn't have any steals this year, and Jose Altuve doesn't have any steals this year. And in fact, steals are down a lot.

Last year there was a steal every 1.5 games, which is actually, there's two games played for every game. There's the home team and the visiting team. So actually a little bit more than a, you know what I mean. A steal every 1.5 games. This year there's a steal every two games, which is a significant difference. And their success rate is unchanged.

So defenses are, it seems that defenses are making it harder to steal. I wonder if that's a early season fluke or a thing, but we'll probably, you know what, now that I think about it, we'll probably talk about it at some point in the next couple of days. And so we'll just leave it at that, drop that little bomb on everybody and make them wait for the rest. Okay. All right. So that's 184. We'll be back tomorrow with 185 and I'm going to go watch the rest of the Mariners. Okay. All right. So that's 184. We'll be back tomorrow with 185,

and I'm going to go watch the rest of the Mariners-Tigers game. All right.