Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 19: Scraping Ice

Episode Date: August 13, 2012

Ben and Sam discuss the impact of CC Sabathia’s elbow soreness on the Yankees’ short- and long-term outlooks, and the difference between winning a division and winning a wild card under the new playoff format.

Good Monday morning. It's a new week and a new Effectively Wild. This is episode 19 of the BP Daily Podcast. In New York, I'm Ben Lindberg. In California, he's Sam Miller. Sam, on Friday you talked about Eric Chavez and how good he's been, and now Eric Chavez has a stiff back and hasn't played all weekend, so you broke him. He had a sterling health record for 34 years before I got involved. Yeah. So whose successful season would you like to jinx now? successful season would you like to jinx now i actually uh my topic tonight is um sort of abstract and it's just playoff odds okay so no one will be harmed by your topic today uh my topic is cc sabathia all right great yeah um why don't you start your Your topic is better. Okay, so CeCe Sabathia has an arm problem,

which is not really something that we've ever been able to say about CeCe Sabathia before. He has been, of course, famously durable. He's pitched around 250 innings usually more than 250 when you count playoff innings for the past several years and now he is not going to get there this year because he has already spent some time on the DL with a groin strain now he's going back on the DL with elbow stiffness and it was one of those deals where he he felt his elbow stiffen up after uh i think a complete game start against the mariners uh felt that he could pitch through it and this the soreness sort of subsided between starts and then he made another start uh but he kind of felt it throughout that start and after that start and And according to him, his wife forced him to tell somebody.

So the MRI came back negative. It sounds like there's no structural damage. But at the same time, we have talked in a couple episodes about how scary the phantom elbow stiffness injury is. injury is. So, of course, he is signed for another four years and really five because his vesting option will probably vest for 2017 at quite a bit of money each of those years. So in the long term, of course, as scary as he says it is for him, it must be equally scary for the Yankees. And in the short term, I would think that's also the case in that without Sabathia, their playoff rotation right now is basically Hiroki Kuroda and then, you know, a bunch of guys with a lot of question marks or who aren't so much questions so much as they are just not very

good um andy pettit is expected to be back in mid-september so even if that happens he'd only have a few starts before the playoffs and then there are guys like uh freddie garcia and yvonne nova and phil hughes in the mix none of whom whom I think would probably pass our playoff starter test. So I guess, I don't know, how much would you be worried if you're the Yankees both short and long term? I guess the way that it's being described, I wouldn't be super worried about the long term. I, even in the best of circumstances circumstances i wouldn't have enough knowledge to actually say anything um useful on the topic and this is not the best of circumstances but um it really does sound like um this is a little bit more cautious than um than reactionary, and Sabathia seems to be disappointed by it. Not by the pain,

but by the fact that they're taking it as seriously as they are. I wonder if he regrets marrying that woman. And so, I don't know. I guess normally anytime I hear an elbow starts aching, you just start to clock until Tommy John. But Sabathia is – he's old enough and this doesn't quite sound like it has reached the level where doom seems imminent. But if it does, then you're right. Corota is the only guy who passes our test. And even Corota isn't. I mean, Corota's nice. I really like Corota a lot. But the Yankees at this point might be the only playoff team that would be starting him in the first game if the playoffs were to start today.

Yeah, and it's true. It doesn't sound too worrisome now, but it often does start like this when it does become worrisome, which isn't to say that this will. But, I mean, the first time I heard about it, it was just a little soreness and nothing serious, and he wasn't expected to go on the DL. Now he is on the DL.

And he's kind of had this aura of invincibility around him because of how heavy his workloads have been over the last five seasons or so without any disabled list appearance for any ailment of any kind. You said heavy. any ailment of any kind you said heavy um and i don't know it just kind of it's funny how quickly that sense that he's this guy who just can never get hurt and can pitch an unlimited number of innings and and you hear oh he's such an athlete and he's he's got a rubber arm and all that sort of thing and it's true obviously it has been true um but one arm ailment and suddenly it just seems so much shakier well can you can you refresh my memory you wrote about a month or so ago about pitchers who had shown tremendous

durability and one of the questions that I know that you had, and I think that you spoke about with your amazing, awesome expert, was whether this has forecastable value, whether a guy who has gone eight years without a stint on the DL is less likely to be on the DL in the next year or significantly less likely. Do you recall if you got an answer to that that was satisfactory? Yeah, it definitely does. I mean, it seemed like one of the things that you want to look at is a guy's track record.

And that certainly for at least for certain kind of injuries, it's uh if it's more of a freak injury then maybe it wouldn't be so predictive but but it i mean the people i spoke to definitely said that one of the first things that a team looks at when it's gauging whether a guy will get hurt along with his mechanics and his stuff how hard he throws and what pitches he throws and what his conditioning is like and his, his body, uh, just as important as any of that stuff. It seems once a guy has been around for a while is whether he has been able to stay healthy. And of course, Sabathia has. So, uh, that is definitely a big point in his favor. And now I said big. That is definitely a big point in his favor.

And now I said big. You did. I was actually listening too and I missed – I was listening for that and I missed it. But to just hijack it into the very large picture real quick, that was a deal that I think a lot of people at the time thought was potentially going to go bad because he's such a large guy and nobody quite knew how the largeness was going to age. And while the elbow certainly introduces some question into his future, perhaps, the size really has not been an issue at all. And Sabathia has been incredibly durable for the Yankees. He hasn't quite reached the peaks that he reached in the second half of his free agent walk year, which obviously no pitcher really could be expected to. But he's been a very good sign for them so far. And even with the reworking of his contract, I think that it's a relationship that's gone well.

Yes, it certainly has so far. So what would you like to say about playoff odds? Well, you've heard me mention this in our emails before, but the Giants today were, according to our playoff odds, were 70% likely to make the post season and the angels were 64% likely, um, which means that they are roughly in the same, um, in the same boat, right. Um, by those numbers, but of course, uh, they're not anywhere close to the same boat of the giants, 70%, uh,ants 70% odds 68% are to win the division whereas the Angels 64% includes a 60% of that to win the wild card and the wild card is no playoff

at all as far as I'm concerned it is a entry a potential entry into the playoffs but in my mind you just have to chop that in half so if you were to do that you would find that the giants and the angels are actually um on uh very different trajectories toward october right now the angels would be at about 30 percent 33 percent 35 percent and the giants would be about 70% still. So while that doesn't seem to matter to anybody because these playoff odds are just a thing on a website, I do wonder how much, I guess what I wonder is how the league and how the sport will adapt to the dual wildcard uh setup and whether the um wildcard entry will be seen as a valuable thing uh in the future which um if it's uh the sort of thing that you trade at the trade deadline if you're in wildcard contention or if that coin flip game is simply too unvaluable, too diluted in value to really put it at the same level as postseason berth,

if that makes sense. Yeah. A lot of people who didn't really like the idea of adding another playoff team in this new format did like the new format in that it it makes winning the division uh much more valuable and i think i think maybe once we see it happen once um people will adjust more to the idea that the new wild card is not the old wild card um and that i mean in in the past when you won a wild card you were essentially on an even footing or just about with a team that did win a division, whereas now you're right.

It's a 50-50 shot if that, that you'll advance past that playoff game. playoff game so i think there's definitely some risk in in in valuing that uh as you would have the old wild card and and trading for a a rental player and giving up something for the future for what ultimately might prove to be one game i guess um i guess we don't know yet because i mean one of the the nice things about making the playoffs is that i mean obviously the nice thing is that you can win the world series but even if you don't win the world series there's a a significant boost that comes from winning the playoffs in terms of uh the revenue from the extra games you play and the revenue in following seasons because there's like a playoff boost. People want to come to see a team that just made the playoffs. So I don't know that any of those things apply to a team that plays one playoff game and goes home.

I mean, it might not even be a home game, so you might not get any extra attendance from that, and there might be no carryover from it the following season. So, I mean, it's certainly a different animal. Yeah, and I think that my point is that we don't know yet, and that this is going to be something that is actually really sort of surprisingly hard to forecast how teams are going to relate to this entry. And I was trying to sort of think about the trade deadline this year, and I don't know if I can draw any conclusions from it. There are certainly there are teams like the Angels whose whose odds are heavily tilted toward the wild card that they are four or five, six, seven games out of the division and that it's not really, really realistic to think that they're going to make a great division charge. And I think I'm not sure about this, but I think that those teams tended to not do much this year. But I think that those teams tended to not do much this year. The Rays didn't do really anything except for adding Ryan Roberts.

And it's always hard to say because, like, the Orioles didn't really do anything, but they were trying to. So I don't know if that tells us – I don't know which lesson to draw from that. But the A's didn't really do anything they're really a wild card team cardinals uh they're quite exactly the cardinals didn't do anything they're a wild card team and you look at the teams that did do a lot and it's the giants and the dodgers who are both really fighting for the division and not the wild card neither really has any chance of winning the wild card um and the pirates who i think are somewhat a special circumstance um and the angels who i think could really grow to regret um trading as much as they

did for grinky if it doesn't work out or if they do win the wild card and they lose um you know that one game playoff and so i think there are always unintended consequences to these things. Maybe not unintended so much as unforeseen. I imagine that when the wildcard format began in 1994, I imagine that there was probably an expectation that teams would treat a division still as a significantly or at least a somewhat more valuable spot than the wild card because you have the home field in the first three games and

you don't have to face the harder team in the first round um and really it turned out that teams didn't draw distinction at all and by um i would say the end of the last decade, you could see, especially in the AL East, it was a non-issue in September. So it'll be interesting just, I think, going forward, particularly this year, but next year as well and into the future, to see whether this wildcard thing, well, to just see what it becomes. Yeah, I wonder if the fan expectation is really any different or whether a fan would be amenable to the idea

that it's not worth pursuing a wild card or not worth pursuing it to the extent that you would have before just based on the fact that it's not really a playoff spot so much as it is a chance at a playoff spot, I mean, fans really just want their teams to make the playoffs. And so I wonder if there would be... I mean, part of the decision of being a buyer or seller is a PR decision,

and based on what your fan base expects or what you think would upset them. I don't know that that's the major factor, but it's a factor. And I wonder whether people would be willing to see their team kind of lay back and not go after it because that wildcard is not the old wildcard. I guess maybe that's something where the expectations could change after people see their teams play that 163rd game and go home for a few years. So that has been episode 19. We will be back tomorrow and for three days after that,

and we look forward to speaking to each other while you listen again.