Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 186: Deceptive Starters/Matt Harvey’s Improvement/The Blue Jays and Waiver Claims

Episode Date: April 22, 2013

Ben and Sam discuss the short-lived success of starters without great stuff who rely on deception, then talk about Matt Harvey and the Blue Jays’ use (or abuse) of the waiver system.

Thank you very much. Good morning and welcome to episode 186 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus in New York, New York, where construction sounds are the soundtrack to my morning. I am Ben Lindberg, and in Long Beach, California, where pretty bird sounds greet your awakening, Sam Miller. Hello, Sam. Hey. Hi. How are you? Okay. How's your weekend? It was really good. It was a really good weekend. For any particular reason? I had visitors and it was a really good weekend for baseball and I ate well.

You know what else is my dog, my parent's dog who I'm close to as well because she's 15 years old. My dog is 15 years old. Well, mine's about to die. She's got perhaps hours. She almost died about a week ago up there. It was very sad and we were expecting it. It'll be good when she goes. But they brought her down this weekend, and she made it.

She wasn't supposed to make it, but she's actually doing okay. She managed to play catch with a tennis ball with my daughter, who's like two. And so that kind of was really nice to see that. Getting dusty in here. Getting dusty in here. Yeah. Like every podcast listener just thought, wait a minute, Sam's a human being, not a monster that we're used to. Yeah, you don't treat insects well, but dogs are different. Dogs and children, dogs and children.

Well, not always children from what I've heard. What is that even? We won't get into that on the podcast. I have a dachshund who is 15, and they live a long time, but I'm dreading the inevitable demise. Do you hear? Because he's my childhood dog. Yeah. Do you hear, by the way, do you hear my dog gulping water right now?

Yes, actually. That's her. That's the dog. She's. Well, let us, keep us up to date on your dog. Yes. Well, I'm glad your dog got to appear on the podcast at least once. Yeah.

All right. I saw Oblivion this week. How was it? How was it? It was great. I saw Oblivion this week. How was it? It was great.

Any post-apocalyptic, anything that starts with post-apocalyptic, I will probably love, especially if it is science fiction. So it was pretty great. Even though it was just kind of a mix of a lot of other science fiction movie elements put together, it was pretty good. I like Tom Cruise in action movies. Yeah. I like Tom Cruise in action movies. Yeah, I like Tom Cruise in all movies. I don't like him outside of movies. Right, he may be crazy outside of the movie.

Maybe he doesn't even know he's in a movie. I'm not sure. Maybe that's why it's so convincing. He thought it was some sort of Scientology stage of initiation or something, but he is charismatic. Okay, so baseball. What did you want to talk about? Matt Harvey.

Ah, okay. I wanted to talk about the Blue Jays and waiver claims, but I just wanted to say, I don't think it's a topic unless you have something to say about it, but Mike Fiers is in the minor leagues now. The Brewers sent him down and called up Jeroen Burgos, who's kind of another Mike Fiers in a way. He's like a guy with great minor league stats

who doesn't have much of a projection, not much stuff. But Fiers is one of those guys who just has deceptive delivery and he's got good minor league stats and scouts say he won't be anything. And ultimately he probably won't be anything. And he had a rough end to last season and he had a rough spring training and then he had a rough couple starts. Yeah, one start, I guess, and a couple of relief appearances to start this season. And now he's in the minor leagues. The Brewers have kind of given up on him already, even after his four months or so of being really good last season. And probably because they didn't ever expect that out of him anyway. Um, but I just, I kind of appreciate those, those deception guys who

are really good for a few months and then you never see them again uh like a fires or a cole mentor maybe um that kind of guy who who people who look at just stats get all excited about and then the scouts say he's not worth getting excited about but then he comes up and is actually really good for a few months and maybe he's nothing at all after that but you've gotten most of a good season out of him which is more than you can say for most minor leaguers so i kind of wonder whether those guys are still a little bit underappreciated and whether if you could identify those those deception guys uh and guys whose deceptive deliveries would deceive major league hitters at least for a few times around the league

um maybe those guys are undervalued. If you can get kind of half a season out of one of them, then that's worth something. Yeah, it sort of feels like these minor league all-star types who don't project well, it seems like they often have a lot of success when they come up early on. I don't know, either because if they're pitchers, it's because of the deception, or just because they have pitchability and the league hasn't got a good look at them. For hitters, it's maybe that they have, they're kind of like, a lot of times they end up, these guys end up being like 26, 27, 28, and they're just good enough to be good for that year,

but they have no long-term future. If you have a guy who's really tearing it up in the minors but doesn't project well and then you have a guy who projects really well but isn't tearing it up in the minors, the miners i i wonder where the line crosses where the the present value and the future value intersect um and like how long can you ride that that quad a type or i guess it's not a quad a type it's something totally different than a quad a type but how long can you ride that and before you know you expect the value to get eclipsed. Anyway, I guess what I'm saying is I also wonder whether there's a way that teams can really milk every ounce of value out of these guys without going too far with them.

Maybe if you just sort of stream them. Yes, exactly. That's what I'm saying. Bring them up when you need a start but you don't give anyone a long extended look at them you just bring them up start now and then their exception thing works and you can kind of milk it for a couple seasons or something exactly all right uh let's talk about harvey then who is not that kind of pitcher so harvey is interesting because um we've sort of talked about the quad A types, bringing that back,

and whether there's a way to identify the quad A types before you get burned by them, basically guys who destroy the minors but can't make that adjustment to major league pitching. And Harvey is interesting because Harvey right now is like the best pitcher in baseball, sort of. He pitched against the Nationals, a very good offense, and against Strasburg and was incredible. I mean, he looked in that start, which was obviously only one start. Strasburg can look every bit as good. But in that one start, he looked better than Strasburg. He was throwing 99 right past people.

He's got two good breaking balls, and he seems to have really good control, or at least good control and good command. So since he got called up last year, he's got the best ERA plus in baseball. He's got a swinging strike rate that is triple the league average on fastballs. Normally, the average pitcher gets a swing and miss on a fastball every, or I guess a whiff on a fastball every seven and a half swings. Harvey's getting one every two and a half swings. He's got a strikeout rate better than anybody except Darvish, Scherzer, and Strasburg. And he just looks like an absolute superstar. And he, I don't know, I mean, he probablyzer, and Strasburg. And he just looks like an absolute superstar.

And he, I don't know, I mean, he probably is, I guess. I think that it's fair to say that he right now has what it takes to be a superstar, and he might be doing it right now, and this just might be it. He might win a Cy Young Award this year, for all we know. And I consider it, I consider what we've seen to be real. But Harvey's minor league stats were not that good. And this is just three months of play ago. I'm not looking at his 2009 minor league stats and being like,

wow, he made quite a leap forward. He played one year in the minors, basically. One and a half years. And they were good. He struck out a lot of guys, but he didn't, like, this was not Lincecum going through the minors or Mark Pryor going through the minors. He just, he was pretty good.

In the preseason scouting reports, Goldstein had a number 25 overall, which again, number 25 overall is like that's good, but it's not like he was the most hyped prospect ever. Goldstein had him sitting in the 93 to 95, I think, and touching 97. Now he touches 100 and he sits 97. And I just wonder if there's a way of, like we were talking about the quad A types, I wonder if there's any way of identifying the opposite guy who has a skill set

that is particularly good for major league hitters that isn't particularly better for minor league hitters. Like Harvey was good against minor league hitters, but you don't discount his stats to get his major league rates. He basically seems to be just as effective no matter who he's facing. A-ball, double-A, triple-A, the majors, it's all basically the same. Although I guess the walk rate was going up as he went through the minors, and the walk rate has gone back down in the majors.

But, yeah, I mean, I just don't know that I saw this coming with Harvey. It's supposed to be harder than this, and it doesn't look hard at all for him. Yeah, this kind of came up on the most recent episode of the Fringe Average podcast with Jason Parks and Mike Farron, and I was just like halfway through their discussion of it that I was listening to before we started recording because someone sent them an email to ask about guys like this just like halfway through their discussion of it that I was listening to before we started recording, because someone sent them an email to ask about guys like this who seem to improve after making the majors.

I mean, it's not just that the same stuff is working better against big leaguers, right? It's like he has better stuff now. It seems like he's throwing harder. He's throwing harder and with better command. And so where does that come from right is that just a mechanical tweak that that only the major league staff could make or is it throwing to big league catchers is he uh is he an adrenaline guy and he needed the the the 40 000 people around yeah so they said i mean they said maybe the mets had him kind of working on some things like focusing on his command or something in over velocity. Um, and, and that, yeah, maybe he was a little bored in, in AAA,

or he's just one of these guys who just pitches better in a brighter spotlight. Um, I don't know. I don't, I mean, I don't think there are a lot of these guys, I guess. Do you think there are more of more of the Harvey type who get better after being promoted or the deception type whose stuff sort of works for a little while and then doesn't? I would think they're more of the latter type. Yeah, I don't think they're more of the Harvey type. Although there's always this, I mean, like Shelby Miller is kind of doing it right now too, to some degree.

And it always raises the question of whether young pitchers should just basically be in the majors. If you have the stuff of Harvey and Miller, whether you should just put them in the majors immediately because the stuff is going to be gone. I mean, you do see pitchers, I think you do see young pitchers dominate this way, in a way that you almost never see young hitters dominate immediately. And so there's a little bit of an identification problem here. Is Harvey just benefiting from his first time around the league? Yeah, I was planning to email TrackMan today. Sometimes they share some data with us, and I was going to ask about his extension and release point information because he seems like one of those guys who maybe just has a really deep release point,

and his fastball just makes people swing really, really late relative to other fastballs of the same velocity. So I don't know if he would share that with me probably not because i think the mets use trackman but i will ask but uh it didn't it didn't look it doesn't look to me like like he's got uh like a particularly long stride or anything like that i mean he it actually looks like a very easy 99 yeah um and i wonder i mean, you in your piece today wrote about how he's getting so many swings on those fastballs up in the zone, and I wonder whether people will keep swinging at those when the scouting report is that, hey, don't swing at those because no one can hit them.

Yeah, probably. I guess it's hard to play off, but yeah, I wonder. Yeah, I do too. I mean, if he throws them for, he throws it mostly for strikes, and it's not like he's getting pop-ups on them because just nobody touches them. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing with high fastballs is always the tradeoff is you get more swings and misses,

but you also give up home runs now and then. And I guess he has not really given up home runs yet because no one has hit the ball. But, yeah, I don't know. It'll be interesting to see whether that lasts all season or whether people eventually lay off those and make him come into the zone a bit more and he will be a little more human at that point. He's good yes he is okay uh so the blue jays um they've had a pattern for a while now of making waiver claims

uh they make probably more waiver claims than any any team i i wrote an article about this in november uh just talking about sort of the moves that Anthopolis made before the big blockbuster trade. And at that time, they had made the second most waiver claims over the past year. The Yankees had made more, but they've kind of used the waiver system to get minor league depth. It's not like they're unearthing great finds here so much that when i wrote that article in november they had just claimed like cory wade and tyson bremit and david herndon and scott main just a bunch of just kind of i don't know organizational guys or back of the bullpen guys just arms uh and so they've they've continued to do that this season.

They have claimed a whole bunch of guys over the last month or so. And Charlie Wilmoth at MLB Trade Rumors wrote an article about how he thinks basically the Jays are sort

of abusing the system. They're not doing anything against the rules, but he thinks that the wayays are sort of abusing the system or they're not doing anything against the rules, but he thinks that, that the way they're using the system is not really the way that it was intended to be used. And that maybe there should be a change in the rules to prevent teams from using it like this. Mostly because guys just kind of get stuck in waiver limbo where,

where they're, they're get released by one team or they get placed on waivers and then they sit on waivers for a while and then another team claims them. And then the Blue Jays, they keep claiming guys and then immediately trying to send them to the minors just to be depth. They're not intended to be parts of the roster or replacements for an injured guy, really. They're just kind of people they're hoping they can claim

and then pass through waivers and just have them. So they did this for, like, Casper Wells and Jeremy Jeffress and just a whole bunch of guys. And so basically these players just kind of go through long periods where they're just sort of on waivers and then being claimed and then trying to be passed through waivers again and then someone else claims them and they don't end up playing for weeks at a time um and and it's not against the rules or anything but it's uh i don't know it's kind of it's i guess it's not

really what the system was intended for i mean the system is kind of intended to give players who don't have a shot with one team, a shot with another team. And the Blue Jays aren't really giving them a shot so much as they are just kind of burying them in another organization for a rainy day. And so this writer, Charlie Wilmoth, kind of, he proposed that there be a greater penalty, or at least that once you claim a guy, you have to keep him on your 40-man for like 30 days so that there would be an actual cost to the waiver claim. You would actually have to carry these people on your roster for a while rather than just discarding them or just burying them in your own system. So I don't know what I think. I mean, I can understand why Anthopolis is doing this, and I guess it makes sense.

Not that he is getting any great finds out of this so far, but I guess it's helping the team to some extent. And I can't decide whether I think that it needs a rule change or whether this is just kind of how it should work. Do you have any thoughts on whether this is an abuse of the system or just making the most of the system? So can we talk about Wells for a second, Casper Wells? So the Mariners designate him for assignment. The Blue Jays put in a waiver claim. Everybody applauds them for that. And they get him.

They get Casper Wells. And then two days later, they designate him for assignment. And so if any team wants him, that team can put in a waiver claim and take him, right? So the Blue Jays, essentially, they picked up a guy guy on waivers and then they waived him. And so the only point of this is that if no team takes him, they get him, right? That's the only gain they get out of this is if he clears waivers again, then he's theirs. But if they didn't do that, they would have to keep him on the—well, is he out of options? I don't as well uh he uh okay so he he's either out of options or he has to be on the 40 man right they can't

that's the whole point of of them designating him for assignment is that they can't just take him and then put him in single a with no repercussions they have to do something in you know basically for his benefit uh and because they weren They have to do something basically for his benefit. And because they weren't willing to do that something for his benefit, they have to put him back on waivers and see if anybody wants him. So this penalty that was suggested of something like having to put him on the 40 man for 30 days or something like that, it presumes that somebody wants Casper Wells. And if somebody wants Casper Wells, then the Blue Jays won't have him anymore.

If the Blue Jays get away with this, and get away with it as though it's like a heist, if the Blue Jays get away with this and get to do what they want with Casper Wells, then it's because no other team in baseball wanted Casper Wells, in which case it's hard to cry for Casper Wells. I think that... He seems like a pretty useful player. I would think someone would have it used for him. I think...

The internet certainly likes him. Yeah. He could play for the internet, if nothing else. I think during the first month of the season, the waiver priority is determined using the previous year's standings and the blue jays were not good last year so i guess they have a pretty high waiver priority so maybe some other teams did claim him and and they got him and so so yeah and they'll get him so if that's the case then they'll get him and it only it stalls him for however many days this process so that's the downside so

yeah the stalling thing is is got to be annoying and you're right the system is explicitly designed to give players um to put players and opportunities where they get to play uh that's what minor league free agent rules are about that's what options are about uh that's what all of it's about it's to to make sure that players get a chance and so if the problem is simply that it's taking weeks for these things to resolve and this came up in the off season too because there were uh i don't remember if you wrote about it or or matt cory or somebody wrote about uh a handful of guys who had been basically waived and claimed five times this offseason, four or five times. And that's annoying.

If it's just that it's taking too long, it seems like you could speed the process up somehow. I mean, it doesn't seem to me that maybe major league teams might feel differently about this because they want to evaluate the things that they get, and they might not necessarily know everything they need to know about a player when they're putting in a waiver claim and trying to decide where to send him. But it seems to me that if the primary concern is fairness to the player, then there's no real reason in this day of G-chat that you couldn't resolve these things in a much, much, much more quick time period, like maybe a day.

Like every team has a chance for a day, and you have to make your decision over that guy within like eight hours instead of multiple days, and that the waiver period takes 20 minutes. You know, like you could, seems like you could speed it up quite a bit. You wouldn't have to do anything to take away the blue jays strategy slash competitive edge but you could speed it up for the player's sake yeah that makes sense we should we should make that our our cause on the

podcast it's speeding up the waiver process we'll start a kick or something. This is probably the best way to get Casper Wells to follow us on Twitter. Yeah. Okay. We're done. We'll be back tomorrow and then the day after that is email show. So send us emails at podcast at baseballperspectives.com.