Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 202: Bryce Harper Hits the Wall/Albert Pujols’ Pain

Episode Date: May 14, 2013

Ben and Sam talk about how a player’s willingness to crash into walls affects their expectations for him, then discuss whether Albert Pujols can improve if he keeps playing.

I run through a wall, never heard of hurdles in the morning after staying up all night long? I order the same thing at all hours generally. I don't really, I'm kind of a... What is it? I kind of prefer dinner food at all times, but I did get an omelet, so that's breakfast-y. But I also got some salmon. So this is not a salmon omelet. Noelette no they are two separate you ordered two two entrees and you're gonna eat them at once yes well i mean i will not put one bite from one in my

mouth and then put a bite from the other in my mouth i will finish one and then immediately begin the second one well at the risk of going on too long about this what's what's in the omelet and when was the last time you ate uh um i guess the omelet contains vegetables like yeah vegetable omelet i think it is and uh the last time i ate was i don't know uh several hours ago, I guess. And this is the diner that was made world famous by the TV show Elementary a couple days ago. Yes, it was. It was finally on. As noted in Effectively Wild a couple months ago, your diner was on TV. Yes, I saw it.

It was exciting. All right. So what are you going to talk about today? Well, I was going to talk about Bryce Harper and his hitting the outfield wall. But then I actually saw the play, and it was not what I expected when I read that he had run into an outfield wall to catch a ball. Because when I read that, I assumed it was a case of him just being gritty and playing hard and just running after a ball as hard as he could

but then when i watched it it was more like he just forgot that that outfields have walls yeah it was it was weird uh i don't know whether it's like a an experience in that stadium thing or something but i mean all stadiums have warning tracks that tell you that the wall is coming up and uh he seemed to have no awareness of that for whatever reason on that particular play yeah it's hard to talk about that play because the the only thing that I can think of to say when I when I watch that play is why did why didn't he not run into the wall and presumably he would have if he had I mean he presumably uh there's a reason that he ran into the wall. And I can't for the life of me imagine what it is. Yeah, it was like one of those cartoon things where a character runs into a wall and kind of sticks there for a second with his arms all spread out and then slowly slides down.

Yeah. It was like that. I wonder, I mean, is it, yeah. I mean, what was that then? I really don't know. I was like that. I wonder, I mean is it, yeah, I mean what was that then? I really don't know. I don't either. I mean there's always a tendency to be like, oh geez, he shouldn't have done that. Why did he do that? Whenever you see somebody mess up. I mean the fact that he, I mean he has no rational reason to run into a wall. Clearly, something distracted him or caused him to forget that he was about to run into a wall. It was hard for him not to run into that wall for some reason.

I don't know why, but it's so weird to just see him run straight into it with no defense. Is it possible that he just didn't register the warning track, that for some reason he took a step and the warning track didn't kind of echo through his feet and up his body and toward his brain and he thought he was still on grass? That's what it looked like. There's not like a jut in the Washington ballpark where that, where the wall would go out sharply where he might have, I mean, you know, I could see if you played in Pac Bell or in AT&T Park, I should say, and you were used to Triple's Alley, you might sort of forget and think, oh, there's a wide expanse out here. Yeah, I don't know. It was weird. It was inexplicable by me. But what I was going to ask was whether you would, because he is kind of the sort of player who would run into a wall to catch a ball, not unintentionally.

And so what I was going to ask is whether you would rather have a player who does that or whether the fact that a player does that makes you more or less optimistic about his his long-term performance i mean because assuming that that your willingness to run into a wall is say maybe correlated with your desire to ben let me cut you off okay yeah that's your topic we'll talk all right that's our topic okay so my topic is going to be uh albert pools playing through pain and um i also have one uh little aside before we start that which is uh i don't know if you've noticed but there's this play that um where a first baseman is getting ready to feel the throw from the infield and if the if the throw now is up the line, you'll sometimes see this play where instead of fielding it in front of the bag, they'll step behind the bag and field it on

the other side of the foul line. Do you know this play that I'm talking about? This play is all the rage this year as far as I can tell. I mean I'm seeing it constantly and like I just saw it last night. Actually, I heard one announcer a couple days ago say that coaches are sort of recommending this play as a way for first basemen to keep safe, to keep from getting hurt as they stretch for a ball and stretch in a way that might lead them into the runner. You don't want people to get hurt. It's always hurt. But I just think this play is getting completely abused.

And it makes it very difficult for the base runner to keep running hard. And it feels like a little bit of a scam. And so I saw Eric Hosmer do it last night. And it wasn't the first time that I've had this reaction. But he really didn't need to do it, I don't think. It was a pretty unnecessary and overly cautious way of fielding the ball. And the base runner has to totally adjust, and it's awkward for him. It slows him down and makes it more likely that he'll get hurt

because he's trying to dodge this weird first baseman fielding the ball like almost in a straddle of the bag. So I just think uh you'll start noticing it more now that i've brought it up and then uh we can we can gnash our teeth about it later on okay all right so go ahead uh yeah okay so so there are certain players uh who i guess have a reputation for for running into outfield walls or being more willing to do that than other players. And so I wonder whether that makes you more optimistic or less optimistic about that player's long-term performance in that, I mean, I guess there's a happy medium in that when he played

for the Yankees, at least, Bobby Abreu had a reputation for doing exactly the opposite of that and being wall shy and not being willing to go anywhere near walls, which seemed to be backed up by what I saw. And of course, when he would let a ball fall, it would often be a double or a triple and that would be bad and his defensive stats were not so good then or or ever really so you you you want a player who will go to the wall to catch a ball um but you maybe don't necessarily want someone who will crash into the wall over and over and over again, because obviously there is some risk of injury. Bryce Harper came out of that game when he ran into that wall, even though that was not really an example of the kind of wall crashing that we're talking about. But, you know, there have been examples of players who have really seriously

hurt themselves by doing this repeatedly over the years. So I wonder whether that desire or that willingness to just do anything and put yourself at harm to catch a ball and help the team win could be correlated with other good things that you would definitely want a player to do. Like, I don't know, put in extra hours in the batting cage or be in peak physical condition or just, you know, play as hard as possible. And so that quality would be desirable and would make you think that maybe that player would age better than another player

or would just maximize his potential. But on the other hand, there is the risk of a devastating injury or just repeated moderate injuries that could bring his career to a close earlier or make his career less productive. So I wonder if Bryce Harper is the kind of guy who will run into an outfield wall to catch a ball intentionally sometimes, does that make you feel like it's more likely that he's going to be an all-time great or less likely that he is going to be an all-time great? Right. So this used to come up a lot with Torrey Hunter.

Torrey Hunter would love to run over walls and he would some especially later in his career he would sort of lose the ability to and to break aaron rowand i guess was another guy well yeah rowan is the classic i mean there's this i think the giants fans always had this idea that aaron rowan's contract which i think was for 50 million million from Sabian. Like $41 million of that was for the face fencing. And the rest was for his flukish good offensive year. But mostly it was for the face fencing. And to go back a bit, I guess Pete Reiser with the Dodgers is like the classic example of a guy who just kind of cut his career short

by running into walls all the time. Anyway, continue. Yeah. I did not know that Pete Reiser was a classic example of anything yeah i think so i i've just learned something he fractured his his skull running into a wall once oh so uh so we would always ask you know socia after the game after tory hunter would would you know topple over a wall and you know uh hit his head on a chair or something. They were up by six.

Do you really want Tori Hunter doing that? Then it came up last year with Trout too because Trout has a little bit of this in him as well where he sort of dives when he's up by nine and you know kind of has taken some walls really hard in a way that like you don't really see peter board just take the wall hard and so she always says the same thing and so so with tory which is that um you don't want to be you don't want to start doing things artificial out there you want to do what comes naturally and you trust that these guys are sort of physical geniuses and they know their bodies

and they know how to play at one speed and that speed is extremely hard. If that leads them into a wall every once in a while, then so be it. But you're much more likely to be hurt if you start trying to avoid the wall, if you start really trying to be deliberate about your actions and cautious. And he had, as always, no matter what question you ask him, he has an example about Pedro Guerrero.

And so he actually, I believe, did have a Pedro Guerrero example where Guerrero was trying to take it easy in a spring training game and ruptured a disc in his back or something, jogging to first. So, always Pedro Guerrero was trying to take it easy in a spring training game and ruptured a disc in his back or something jogging to first. So always Pedro Guerrero. So I, though, think that the – I mean what we're really talking about is, I think like you said, not really about one catch or whether there's great value in that

one extra catch that Harper might make a year or even four extra catches that Harper might make a year doing this, but whether there's a character trait that's revealed here that has value. I think that there's not. I would argue that there's not. I don't think that the guy who runs into the wall wants to win more than the guy who doesn't run into the wall. I think that they just have different strategies for winning. They have different mental math of how they're most likely to win. One guy is playing for that play and wants to win that play and that's his mindset. Another guy wants to win over the long run and that's his mindset. We're assuming that there's any mindset here. It could just simply be the speed at which they play or the opportunities they have. But I mean there's nothing inherently less win-oriented about being healthy and wanting

to be in good shape. I mean that's another way that baseball teams win games is by staying healthy. So I don't think – I would not take an example like Aaron Rowan and extrapolate will to win out of it. I think that most baseball players are willing to do what it takes to win, and sometimes what it takes to win is to not sprain your knee when you're up 4-0. So, I mean, you watch, this actually is another, it comes up a lot with Buster Posey, because after his injury, the Giants told him to really be cautious around the plate.

Don't get in any collisions. And you see it with Posey. You can actually see him avoiding base runners, avoiding contact. And so sometimes there was a play once where he had a force out at home. It was like bases loaded, none out. And the throw came in to home. He fielded it and then stepped off the plate before the base runner came in. Well, he did it too quickly.

And they didn't get the out. Basically, he stepped off too quickly and they didn't get the out. And there's a certain type of Giants fan who thinks, like, this is a bad thing for Buster Posey. I mean, you don't want him to be a wuss out there. You want him to, you know, be able to take a hit and do what has to be done to get the out and to get the win. But, you know, I think everybody is capable of going through the math and realizing that a healthy Buster Posey wins a lot more games. And I guess it would be easier to

consciously alter your home plate collision avoidance behavior maybe than to, to alter your outfield wall avoidance behavior. I would guess just, just cause you have more time generally, I guess, to, to prepare for a home plate collision or you, you kind of consciously intentionally set up in a, in a certain way to prepare for that uh whereas going after a ball i guess is i don't i don't know that it's something that involves as much thought it's just kind of an instinctive thing or there's less time to to think about it because

i don't know the difference between going after a ball hard and then going after a ball hard to the point that you actually run into the wall is not that big a difference probably most of the time. I don't know that it's something that you can alter or should alter. I just was wondering whether... I guess in Harper's case, he is certainly the sort of player who does appear to have a tremendous work ethic, or so you hear from everyone who has seen him work. So I don't know whether it's correlated in the whole population of players, but he does seem to possess both the work ethic and the willingness to run into walls. both the work ethic and the willingness to run into walls. And I don't know. I guess the odds of him becoming one of the best players ever might be slightly higher

if he were a little more cautious around a wall. I don't know. Well, the odds of him becoming nothing are, I would say, greatly higher because he's willing to run into becoming nothing. Yeah. Uh, are, are great. I would say greatly higher because he's willing, because he's willing to run into a wall. Yes. Um,

and that's worst case scenario, but it's there. And over, I mean, if he has a 20 year career or something, uh, and it, and maybe his willingness to running into a wall,

I don't know how much that gains over the course of a season, but if you say it leads to, I don't know, five more fly balls caught or something, which maybe is too much, but probably all of those flies would be extra base hits. So that would add up to a decent amount of defensive value over a long career also. Yeah, that seems like a high number to me.

I mean, if you're comparing him to a Brayu, yes, if you're comparing him to 90% of right fielders. I mean, bottom line, I think the question you're asking is, would I think more of Bryce Harper's future if he quit running into walls? And the answer is yes. I think to some degree it's a little admirable that he's shown this super intense, high hustle style of play. And it's a nice quality to see him have and I'm glad to know that it's in him. But ideally if I were his GM, if I could flip a switch and make him run into no more walls, I would.

I were his GM, if I could flip a switch and make him run into no more walls, I would. Yeah. And I guess running into infielders also because he has the same sort of style of play on the base pass, I guess. Yeah. Running into anything. Running. I wouldn't want to see him running out of time either. So running out of things, running into things, running out of things.

Yes. Running around things probably except the bases. You can run around the bases but otherwise running around things is usually counterproductive. All right. So Albert Pujols is, as everybody knows, playing through paint. As you know, I've been watching every instance that Albert Pujols has to run for the last month. And it's been a fascinating exercise. And after a month, it just has me feeling like this whole thing is so weird.

Because he is absolutely not going to get better. There's no way for him to get better while he's playing. There's no way for him to get better while he's playing. And yet, I don't know. The Angels keep putting him out there, and he wants to be out there. And it's the second year of a 10-year deal. And, I mean, literally, like, I think this is literally true. If they just keep playing him, he will be in this much pain until the last day of the 10-year deal. he will be in this much pain until the last day of the 10-year deal.

Because it's not a thing that will heal except as far as I understand. I mean, it could heal over an off-season. It could. It could heal over an off-season. But he just had an off-season. Yes. Although he also had knee surgery in the off-season. So maybe that's good. But somebody asked Mike Socha yesterday before the game if it could ever heal right if he's playing.

And you expect Mike Socha to be like, yeah, we're seeing some positive trends or whatever. But he just sort of like in a very dour way that I'm not used to seeing from Mike Socha, he just sort of said it's tough, it's tough, it's really tough. Did he have a Pedro Guerrero story? I'm very sad that he didn't. So Pujols, though, I've seen a few good signs out of him lately,

and then there's also a bad sign. So I'll get to both of those. The good signs are that he does actually seem to be running better this week than he had been two or three weeks ago. And he also is clearly more willing to run this week than he was a few weeks ago. And I also watched him last night run out of ball to first base. And, you know, it was slow. He went very slow and he jogged and it wasn't full effort at all. But it also, he is not quite at the farcical level of like seven and eight second runs to first anymore.

He is at least trying to look like an athlete a little bit more, which suggests to me that the pain isn't quite as bad. And he's had three instances of running hard over the last week that are overall positive. Now, the bad sign is that when I – I have mostly heard Albert's injury and pain, the effects of it described in relation to base running from the Angels. Most of the focus has been on his base running. Now, it might just be that I haven't been paying close enough attention. But for the most part, I haven't heard a lot of talk from the club about how it affects his hitting.

And the idea has been that Albert Pujols can still be productive with this injury. He can't run, but he can still be productive. He's still a great hitter. We're still putting him in the lineup because he's still a great hitter. We expect great hitter things out of him. And last night, at least my exposure to that, that changed. And Socha said, when asked a question about his offense said it's obvious that he's banged up um he said uh uh there's no doubt he's been impacted from some issues with his lower body and being able to leverage the ball the way he can uh which is a explicit statement about his ability to hit uh at times he feels good and at times there are things that are slowing him down a little bit.

And then here, this is significant, somewhat. Socha actually corrected himself. He said, I mean holding him back a little bit from where he wants to be in the batter's box. So he was being very clear to say that he doesn't mean slowing down on the bases. He means held back offensively. And I mentioned that I had clocked his fastest home the first time in a month on Sunday and wondering whether there's some optimism that he's coming out of the pain, that there's some positive trajectory. And Socha would not embrace that and said, you know,

some days it's better, some days it's worse. It's not a thing that you can really expect to get better. There's no slope toward health in this case. And so it was hard for him to even fake optimism about it. And the last thing that's tricky about it is that ideally, if you rest the guy, he'd be DHing. He wouldn't be standing at first base for an hour and a half every game um and yet he's been playing first base about half of the games that the angels have played and the reason is because he thinks that it helps him be a better hitter uh that it's hard for him to stay loose and if he's dhing and particularly with his foot and his leg it's very hard for him to stay loose so he needs to keep moving around if he wants to be able to hit. But the problem is that that makes

it harder for it to heal. So as Sosha said, it's a catch-22. It's tough to take the burden off when that burden helps you be the player you want to be. So I sometimes hear things referred to as Kafka-esque, and I have never read Kafka, and I don't think this is Kafkaesque. However, there is this weird state where Pujols is trapped in a prison, and there is no metaphorical jury that's going to hear his case. He's just going to be stuck in this prison forever and ever and ever, potentially. He's got this injury that might just last 10 more years. So to bring this around to a question, Christopher Long, the Padres quantitative analyst, tweeted a few weeks ago the question, who would you rather have for the next, I think, eight years, Albert Pujols or Paul

Goldschmidt, salary, salary irrelevant, just who's, who's the better ball player. Um, and I wanted to ask you that question. And then I want to ask you two similar follow-up questions. Huh? Okay. Um, 10 years, eight, eight and a half. Yeah. Uh, Eight. Eight and a half. I guess I would take... I guess I'd take Goldschmidt. Yeah, I think... Those are going to be mostly his prime years and Pujols' decline years for a typical hitter.

And given what we've seen from him so far, it's reasonable to expect that his decline years are steeper than the typical hitters, I guess. I mean, given what you've said about the injury, yeah, I would go with Goldstein. Yeah, at the time I was undecided and I think I would have leaned toward Albert, but that was probably three weeks ago, and having watched him closely for three weeks, I've switched. I would go with Goldschmidt. It's a weird situation where Albert Pujols, the veteran, is actually the upside play in this.

He's not the safe one. Goldschmidt is clearly safer. There's a chance that Pujols is a one and a half win player for the next eight and a half years at this point, or that he never stays on the field for more than 50 games a year, or something drastic happens like that. And so if I were picking for the next eight years, I don't think I could bet on the risk that Albert Pujols' injury represents. So follow up, same rules, but Pujols or Freddie Freeman? follow-up uh same same rules but uh pool holes are or freddie freeman i like freeman less but uh i don't know i mean i guess at this point i i feel like anyone who is

kind of an average player now, uh, and, and is pre prime or, or in his prime, um, probably take that guy over Pujols. Okay. Okay. So then the last one,

last one, Albert Pujols or Mark Trumbo. Uh, I don't know. I feel like I'm being, I mean, there's a possibility that I'm being overly low on Pujols and that he is an all-time great, and often those players do things that are not typical.

And Trumbo, I guess, is, I mean, he's 27. He's not quite as young as Goldschmidt and Freeman, but yeah, I'd probably still go with him. Yeah, that's incredible because it was like 15 months ago that they were starting a 10-year deal with Pujols for $250 million, and everybody was super happy and excited. And it it's gonna usher the franchise into a new a new a new aos dynasty and now here we are yeah i i guess the uh the the quality that makes a player run into walls is maybe not completely divorced from the quality that makes a player play hurt to his detriment if that is what poolujols is doing which I guess is not clear but

but if I knew that if a player had that tendency like he wanted to win so much that he was just going to be out there no matter what even if it would serve him better to take some time off and heal that would make me less optimistic about a player long term also. Yeah. Yeah, probably. And I think if you asked a player, they would tell you that that should make you more optimistic. I think that you and players 100% disagree on this. All right.

Well, we're done. And my omelet and salmon have not arrived. All right. Well, I hope it does. We'll be back tomorrow with the email show, podcast at baseballperspectives.com. Send in your questions. We'll answer them. Thanks. See you.