Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 193: AAA Teams vs. the Marlins and Astros/The Braves and Strikeouts/Pickoffs and Pitch Counts/John Farrell and the Jays/Non-Superstar HOFers

Episode Date: May 1, 2013

Ben and Sam answer listener emails about whether good minor-league teams could beat bad major-league teams, the Braves and Ks, whether the Jays should regret letting John Farrell go, and more.

Good morning and welcome to episode 193 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus. I am Ben Lindberg with Sam Miller. It is Wednesday, so it's email show Wednesday. You sent us emails. We are now going to read and answer them in accordance with the email show. Was that the first hoo-ah in the show's history? Yes, I think so. Yeah, I don't even actually know technically what hoo-ah is. I think it's supposed to denote

excitement, excited agreement yeah i guess all right okay let's do emails you want to start yeah sure um all right so uh let's see i'll just they're all pretty quick so we can probably knock out a whole lot of them um let's just fly through them all right so this is from a gentleman named mike in fairfax who actually says this is a quick one here to what extent should pick off throws be accounted for when thinking about pitch counts granted it's less stressful than a maximum effort pitch but it seems like it should play into the calculus should it count as a half pitch three-fifths mike uh so my first thought is that it shouldn't count as anything because it's not it really isn't

it's it's just nothing like a pitch it doesn't you don't get your whole body into it it's I mean it's not just not max effort it's it's almost no effort relative I mean it would be if you and I did it like for us to throw to first base is not that different than for us to throw, uh, to first base, uh, is not that different than for us to throw a pitch to home. But I mean, if you really look at what pitchers do on pitches to home, it, it really is like a, a very complicated machine all working together at full effort. Um, and, uh, so I think that that's, um, it's hard to compare the exhaustion of that move to one to first. But since he asks for a number, and I guess technically zero is probably not a great answer.

If you want to be perfectly precise, you might say some number. Do you have a number? I mean, my inclination was also zero. It's just so much less physically stressful and also less mentally stressful. I mean, there's just no, no real pressure associated with it. Um, I mean, I guess you could throw it away. So maybe that worries you a little bit. Uh, I don't know. I, I mean, I really wouldn't count it. So if a guy threw 400 pick-off throws, though.

Yeah, okay. Yes. Yes, there is some number of pick-off throws at which I guess it would become a concern. become a concern um i guess it would be maybe like i guess in a in the course of one at bat if a guy threw over the first let's say 20 times maybe i would start to think that that could possibly affect his next pitch all right so i'm, uh, 12 pickoffs to the pitch. So if, uh, if he has a pitch count of a hundred and he's thrown 12, 12 pickoff throws, I would, I would credit him for 101. And since, since pitch count science is so, um, unprecise to begin with, it's, uh, it's almost impossible to imagine a situation where I think that would change my decision. But yeah, I'd say somewhere between 8 and 12 per pitch.

Okay. All right. I would say more than that. All right. Matt in San Francisco asks, Doug Thorburn wrote in his article yesterday about how John Farrell has had a tremendous impact on the resurgence of John Lester and Clay Buchholz. how John Farrell has had a tremendous impact on the resurgence of John Lester and Clay Buchholz.

If this is true, then why did the Blue Jays let him go to their interdivision rival for Mike Avelis? It seems as though the effect Farrell would have on the Red Sox may have been overlooked by the Jays' management. If the Red Sox win the division and the Jays miss the playoffs, or if the red sox cause the jays to miss the playoffs could this be a fireable offense maybe that's a big a bit extreme but it seems as though this is a big oversight so i think that if you're trying to figure out how likely it is that john farrell is the reason that the red sox are going to beat the jays this year there's two things there's two there's two. One is what are the odds that what you've seen from the Red Sox and particularly Lester and Buckholz and maybe even Dempster can be credited to Farrell? Sorry, I got ahead of myself. What are the odds that those things are real as opposed to just early season mirages? And second is what are the odds that if it is real, it's related

to Farrell? And my guess at this point is I would guess that there's maybe like a 20% or 30% chance that what we're seeing is a true leap forward rather than just a statistical anomaly. And of the 30%, I would guess that maybe it's a 20% chance that I would credit it to Farrell specifically. So you're talking about a 1 in 16 chance that this is Farrell who is the difference. I mean, I'm not saying that Farrell is not generally a good manager and might also be a key factor in the Red Sox success. But, I mean, if you're looking at it from the Blue Jays' perspective, they didn't think that Farrell was a very good manager, apparently.

And they would certainly have some insight into that. So if you think that he's not a good manager, you probably don't mind too much if he goes to your division rival and does bad managing there. And so it doesn't really bother me. I mean, I tend to think that, like, for instance, the interdivision trade embargo is sort of weird. If you think that the trade is a good trade for you, then it's probably a bad trade for your opponent, and you should be thrilled. And it's specifically the way that people sometimes react

when the trade doesn't go well and make it a bigger deal because it's a division rival. I think that probably makes teams a bit averse to them or GMs a bit averse to them because they don't want to have people saying that such a move is a fireable offense. But I wouldn't call this one a fireable offense. No, neither, I mean, has some interest in, in working for another team, I would guess. Right. I mean, you would prefer to have a guy who is kind of committed and is not really pulled in multiple directions and just, you want, you want your team to be his first choice, I guess. Right. I mean, does that enter into the consideration at all?

Yeah, it does. Like if a guy wants to leave, I mean, not that he's going to throw the season or anything if he had stayed, but I mean, I don't know, if a guy wants to leave and maybe he feels like he has a job waiting for him if things don't go well where he is, and I don't know, maybe he puts a little less effort in or he's a little less committed or invested in the team that he's with, possibly. Yeah, that seems fair. Although also, if you have a guy who, I mean, if like let's say he's hot in demand and you have the rights to him,

I mean, that's an asset. And to him, I mean, that's an asset and you should, um, I mean, that may be, might be something that would excite a lot of teams to know that you've locked in a guy who could go elsewhere. But I mean, yeah, if clearly if he's unhappy or is, you know, specifically going to be less happy where he is, then he presumably has more value to another, you know, another situation and you should cash that out, I guess. I don't know. I mean, it just, who really, I mean, John Farrell had no reputation for being a super genius.

He was a fine manager who one team wanted. I mean, I guess it's just the narrative that supposedly he would come back and fix those couple pitchers who had struggled because he was with them when they were coming up and he would have some special insight into them. And they are maybe kind of a, I mean, they're certainly important to the Red Sox. turn those guys around and make them top of the rotation starters again, then that would certainly make him more valuable than the typical manager, probably. And more of a risk for them to let him go to a division rival.

Yeah, it is a special case. So I wouldn't totally disregard the question at all. I think it's a fine question. But I don't know. I just have a hard time thinking like giving full credit to the red Sox impending world series championship, uh, to whatever John Farrell, you know, said to Clay Buckholz in spring training. It just seems like this, uh, it's a complicated sport. There's a lot of factors and, uh, I don't, I don't know. I would have a hard time blaming them, the blue Jays too Blue Jays too much for whatever role this one is. All right.

So let's see. Dustin says, in light of Anibal Sanchez's eight-inning 17 strikeout domination of the Braves on Friday, I made the offhand comment to some friends that I didn't believe this would be the last time this season that my favorite team would fan at least 17 times. I was met with some ridicule and I fully realize this number of Ks is far from a common occurrence, but I don't think it's an outlandish prediction considering the Braves roster and its collective proclivity for going down on strikes. So I also don't think it's ridiculous at all. And in fact, I don't know that I would, I would, I would think that there's maybe something like a one in three or a one in four chance that the Braves strike out 17 times this year in another game.

We should have done some math. I did. Oh, you did? A little bit. Very simple. I didn't – I shouldn't say I did math. I did – I counted. So there have been 104 games in Major League history with 17 strikeouts per game,

17 strikeouts on one side in a nine-inning game. So that's about one per year. But half of those have come since 1999. And, of course, as you would expect, it's accelerating. There were seven last year, seven the year before, five the year before that. So basically one in five in Major League history have come in the last 3 years So that's 17, which is what Sanchez had The Braves strike out 18

Those are about half as common, but they've accelerated at about the same rate And there were 7, there have been 7 in the last 2 years And the Braves really are a strikeout prone team. So like right now, they're just about on pace to match the 2010 Diamondbacks who have the record. So, you know, I think if you figure seven is something like the true expectation per year for the last couple of years, maybe you bump that to eight this year, then you expect about one out of four teams to do it every year. And you would expect a team of four teams to do it every year. And you would expect a team like the Braves to be especially likely.

So maybe you bump them up to, you know, if every team were like the Braves, then maybe you'd expect one every two years or even slightly more than that. And the fact that the Braves have done it once doesn't make him any less likely to do it again. So with almost a full year to play, I'd give him, you know, not quite even odds, but something close to even odds at another 17 strikeout game, not from one pitcher, um, because the odds aren't nearly as good that one pitcher will stay in that length of time, but for an entire game. So my favorite, when I wrote about Philip, uh, Umber, my favorite fact from that piece was looking at the Extreme Strikeout era.

And in 2012, there were 1,100 games in which one team struck out at least 10 times. So 1,100 in 2012. There were 700 games that matched that description in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. So 50% more in 2012 than in the 20s, 30s, and 40s. So 50% more in 2012 than in the 20s, 30s, and 40s combined. Well, good research. Crazy, crazy, right? We don't even have a crack podcast research team pulling these things for us. No. Do it all on our own time. Free time. We do it on our free time. Yeah. Okay. Let's see. I guess would you feel bad if we answered the AAA team and the Marlins and Astros question? Because I know that you have felt bad about that topic in the past. No, I wouldn't feel bad. But I actually read this a few days ago and I haven't looked at it.

I forgot about it. So I don't have anything to add. But yeah, let's do it. Yeah, okay. I haven't really thought about it either. This is from Mark in Tacoma, Washington. This weekend, the Cubs have a four-game series against the Marlins, which is about as bad as MLB gets since the Marlins don't play the Astros this year. As a Cubs fan, that's a shame, by the way, that the Astros don't play the Marlins. As a Cubs fan, I'm happy about this series because they finally have a competition

that's at their level. That got me wondering, is there a AAA team that is actually better than an MLB team? I'm not thinking of a team whose AAA affiliate is actually better than they are. I think we can assume that's not the case anywhere, though I'm not totally convinced that the starting lineup, but not the pitching for the Tacoma Marine years, isn't better than the Mariners. I'm thinking of a AAA team that has a good record and is part of a good organization like the Durham Bulls with the Rays. Could they be better than the Marlins or Astros? Probably not, but would a AAA all-star team be better than the Marlins or the Astros? Or, thinking about it another way, how would the Astros or Marlins do in the International League

or the PCL? First place, I assume, but by how much? Didn't we both plan on writing this article last year? I know you did. I did something similar to this once that I don't even remember what it was now. But yeah, I know you thought about it and I may have thought about it. It's a fun topic. And I think if you go by the BP replacement level, I think, is above what we projected these teams to be? No, not what we projected, right? But replacement level is like 50. Isn't it higher? I don't think it is. I think it's like 48 or 50. I think I just looked at this. Okay.

Which would mean that we didn't project either of these teams to be below that, but certainly either team could end up below that. And teams have ended up below that, so it's possible. And I guess that certainly suggests that if you're talking about a comparison to a AAA all-star team, then I guess the worst teams in history would be worse than that team. I don't think, though, that it's fair to say that a AAA team is replacement level.

Because I know that replacement level generally mirrors the level of talent that you can call up from triple a but it also includes the um type of sort of uh waiver bait that you can get the casper wells's of the world the the you know the the player that maybe the the veterans in double a i mean it's it's not just taking it's not it's not a saying that every player in triple A and every team in triple A is replacement level. It's saying that in the world exists these options and these options aren't limited to triple A and therefore triple A on its own would theoretically be below this. I mean, this is a question that I think, this question gets asked in various forms in every sport.

And at most levels you'll hear about, you know, could, uh, you know, could, could Alabama beat the chiefs or could the, you know, X men's team beat the WNBA X team or whatever. Like there's this, oh, there's always a desire to compare it. And it almost always, when you're comparing the levels, the, uh, the whatever, it almost always ends up being not nearly as close as you think it would be, I think. And my suspicion is that it's not as close as we think it would be in this case. Now, baseball is a different animal, and it might be closer than we think it is. different is a different animal and it might be closer than we think it is but um i think that you would have to go to you would have to create some sort of triple a all-star team uh before you could beat even the marlins or the astros or maybe he didn't include that in his question he did yes

he did and i think that i mean i think i don't think there's much doubt that it, well, I don't know. I think that, I don't think there's much doubt that a, that a minor league all-star team, that if you put together your very best minor league team from across all the levels, that they would be, they would be able to beat the Marlins and or the Astros. I personally don't think there's much doubt about that. But I think that you would probably have to get, my guess is at least a four-team super team together at the AAA level before you could beat either one. And when I was thinking about this last year, I wanted to see how far down you could make this plausible if, for instance, a high-A all-star team could beat the Astros. And I kind of have come away from that idea. I probably think that it's not nearly as realistic as you think it would be.

Yeah, I doubt that. I think I remember on an up-and-in episode, Kevin and Jason talking about whether the best college team, like a college World Series winner, could beat a low-level minor league team, like a bad low-level minor league team. And I think they concluded that the college team would just get destroyed just by an all-professional team.

Because even a really good college team has a lot of people who just don't get drafted. They're just not even good enough to play on, on a bad professional team. Uh, the, the, the thing about that though,

is that the pitcher is like 40% of the game or 30% of the game or something like that. And, uh, a really good college senior could absolutely i mean you see college seniors occasionally in like the pioneer league and they just absolutely destroy it and not even the best ones yeah so i could see uh i could see college pitchers you know throwing no hitters in the pioneer league but but the point generally yes i agree i mean depth is a huge part of the game that usually gets overlooked in these sorts of experiments.

Okay. So yeah, the all-star team then could beat them, but the best single team could not. Yeah, that's what I think. Okay. But of course, it's a really easy thing to run, and one of these days we'll do it. I mean, it probably wouldn't take more than two hours for one of us to actually put this together, right? Yeah, I guess so. All right.

So Bobby asks a question about last week when I came out in support of an innings to runs per start ratio stat sort of a thing where like you would uh you would basically phrase the player's stats in the um to the scale of of an average start you know so like cliff lee's average start would be 7.1 innings and you know six hits and two run 2.2 runs and whatever and so he uh fights back and says um i like the idea but it feels like a part measure. If we're going to improve, let's dream bigger. Replace the RA with something that makes more sense. If you're going to look at innings per start, look at durability. I'd rather take someone who goes 6.1 on average but takes every turn on the hill

over someone who can go 7 but misses starts, which is a very good point. I have no problem with that point. And the third one, I guess really what I'm getting at is maybe it's better to have a counting stat than a rate stat, something like pitching runs prevented, but isn't that what war is? And so I think that I just, I'm reading this because I want to restate the case for why I like this idea. Yes, it will not do as much as war does. That's the point of war or warp. Those are supposed to be kind of all-inclusive and if you can make them even more complete, then you tweak it to make it even more complete. It is essentially as complete as you can make it at any given time and therefore

it is going to make every other stat less complete and therefore kind of less good. But we still have lots of other things we look at because it's important also to be able to describe the player and to put the player's performance in a perspective that's relatable and that describes their style and shows their strengths and weaknesses within that one number. And so the reason that I like this, and I don't know that it would work initially this way,

but I think over the course of time it would if people got used to it, is that it's just really relatable to look at a player's pitching line and to envision what he did in that game. I mean, everybody can look at a box score, look at what the pitcher did, and decide whether it was a good start or a bad start. And the more you look at a pitcher score, look at what the pitcher did and decide whether it was a good start or a bad start. And the more you look at a pitcher, um, using that framework, I think the more you would get a good sense of, um, the nuances between different pitchers. So I like, like, I don't

think that this would be the thing that replaces a warp or that would even necessarily be the thing that replaces era but um it would be i think uh it would be a really intuitive way of capturing um the picture in a way that is just really relatable and that people would understand uh exactly what it means so that's all that's all okay um it's not even my idea i don't know why I'm so defensive about it. You're very attached to it, though. Okay, last one, I guess. This is very quick, and I just want to answer it because this is from Juan, who is in Panama City, and I like Panama City. I was there a couple years ago, and I enjoyed my time there.

Did you get a hat? No, I did not. That would have been a cliche. So he says, Sam Ben, we've all heard of superstar players. We've also all heard of Hall of Fame players. Hall of Fame question, very timely.

At what point is a superstar player implicitly a Hall of Fame player? Phrased differently, can you reasonably be a Hall of Fame level player without being a superstar player? Ily a Hall of Fame player. Phrased differently, can you reasonably be a Hall of Fame level player without being a superstar player? I realize that length of career has some bearing on the issue. You can be a superstar for five years, say, and then have your career derailed due to injuries. But I've been wondering about the relationship between superstar status and Hall of Fame status and would like to hear your thoughts on the matter.

Well, I mean, this is, I guess, why something like JAWS, Jay Jaffe's system for determining who should be in the Hall of Fame has both a career component and a peak component. You want someone who has a long career and a valuable career, but you also want someone who was among the best players in the game at his peak for some period of time. I think Jay uses seven years. I guess you can be a Hall of Fame level player without being a superstar if for some reason you were extremely unrelated or underrated during your career i guess if we're if we're defining superstar as as i don't know popularity or or q rating or something um and you just happen to be a ben zobrist type who for whatever reason wasn't wasn't all thatknown or celebrated, but was kind of a superstar level player, then yes, I guess so. Although you probably wouldn't have the greatest chance

to get in if you weren't even appreciated while you were playing. But I mean, I think you have to have played at that level for a while, would think uh i guess i don't know i'm trying to think of who the best example of of someone who was never a superstar level player and made the hall of fame or i don't know i or or is a good candidate i guess like a rafmeiro type. Um, I don't know if he was, if he was superstar level for a time, maybe, I guess so. Um, but I don't know. You, you need to, you need to be both, I think. Yeah, I think, um, both things are social constructs. Neither one is actually a, you know, a, a defined thing. They both kind of defined thing. They get defined by other people. And the Venn diagram would, I think, have a huge amount of overlap between them. And probably the

space where they differ would be longevity. I think of superstar mostly in terms of what kind of support they get in awards voting. And I think of Hall of Fame, obviously, as what kind of support they get in awards voting. And I think of Hall of Fame, obviously, as what kind of support they get in the Hall of Fame. And I think there's a little bit of room for a player like Craig Biggio, who distinguishes himself to some degree by longevity and probably also by, I think that probably, I don't know this, but my guess is that even though there's a kind of positional bias in the hall of fame against, I think second baseman and third baseman, I would suspect that historically there's maybe even been a more significant bias against them in MVP voting.

You take a guy like Bobby Gritch, who if you take away what you know about the writers and what they voted, if you just look at his stats and you don't know anything else, you would say superstar player, yes, Hall of Fame player, yes. Then you look over at his awards voting and you realize, well, i guess he wasn't a superstar because he never got any mvp votes and then you look at his hall of fame voting and you say i guess he wasn't a hall of fame voter because he got booted after a hall of fame player because he got booted after one year um so i i just think both things are um you know they're constantly being redefined a little bit here and there, but mostly they are synonyms. How good would a guy's...

Let's say you have a player who... Let's say he peaks at a three-win season, but he's worth three wins for 20 seasons in a row. If Starling Castro never got better, but he also played until he was 42... Right, but he's just this good until he's, yeah. I mean, there is a point at which I would put that guy in. I mean, if he's a three-win player until he's 50 years old or something, but he was never better than that, I'd probably put that guy in.

Would you? Yeah, I don't know. I probably would probably would sure i probably would put that guy in yeah okay i don't know yeah who is that who is that guy i don't think that guy exists really but that that might be andy pettit uh yeah andy pettit had better seasons than that i think yeah i mean obviously nobody's done exactly that but uh let me think i'm i'm trying to think because andy pettit has has had basically one year over a 135 era plus but yeah you're right he's had better seasons than that yeah so he had a eight he had an eight win season in 1997 like yeah win like like eight wins of the replacement right and a

seven and a six so but otherwise he's got a lot of threes and a lot of twos of his of his 18 seasons like 14 of them are between two and 3.8 but very consistently not bad which is consistently not bad which is good uh maybe like a i don't know to say Vizquel, but he's not even that good. I can't even – people actually talk about Vizquel as like a Hall of Fame candidate. I don't get it. Do you see any real argument for that? That none of this matters and people like him? Yeah, well, that's a good one.

Okay, so there is some level at which you could never be a superstar and be a Hall of Fame level player. Then you would have to have incredible longevity, probably more longevity than any player has ever had. Longevity and consistency. Yeah. Okay. All right.

All right. We're done. We'll be back tomorrow with another wonderful episode.