Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 226: Predictions About Zack Wheeler/The Story of Signing Puig

Episode Date: June 18, 2013

Ben and Sam discuss their expectations for Zack Wheeler and other young pitchers, then talk about the true story behind the Dodgers signing Yasiel Puig.

Hello. What? What? What did you say? I just plugged in my mic as you started talking. I said hello. Oh, okay. Probably should have just assumed that. Good morning and welcome to episode 226 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus. I am Ben Lindberg,

joined as always by Sam Miller. How are you, Sam? Good, Ben. How are you? Okay. I was... It's nice to talk to you. Yeah. I was doing... Somebody, by the way, I was on a podcast the other day and somebody... You're on a different podcast? Yes. And somebody in the comments said, it was nice to hear sam uh talk so enthusiastically

for so long a lot of times on on effectively wild it sounds by the end that he's ready to call it a day well which is which is um true i am literally ready to call it is the end of my day and i would say that if you're listening with even the smallest bit of attention, you will hear that same tone in my voice at the beginning of the show. Well, that actually ties into what I was going to say, which is that I was doing some research on our show length. And there's been a startling trend. been a startling trend as the the person who makes the podcast posts and puts the time stamps on them every day i've kind of watched this evolve over time and i've been i've been hesitant to bring it up because i don't want to draw your attention to it because i'm afraid that there will be some sort of backlash once once i actually put it out there but uh our our average show length in our first

10 episodes was 15 minutes and 18 seconds and in our five five minutes and 18 seconds of which was me complaining that we were going along yeah probably uh there were a couple like 12 minute episodes in there which is like how long it takes us to start talking about a topic now. That was so the plan. That was the plan. So much what I want to be doing. The average for our last 10 episodes 3208.

You know what I think did it? What did it? I think it was in the off season when we switched to one topic as a way of saving ourselves a lot of labor. I don't know if people know this, but the hardest thing is really getting a topic. Because you don't want to go into this thing with a topic that you're not sure you can squeeze 12 minutes out of. And there's not a lot of things left that Ben and I necessarily want to talk about or that we haven't talked about.

Ben and I, you know, necessarily want to talk about or that we haven't talked about. And although to be actually, to be honest, I think that the topic was the hardest part really from probably the second or third week on. So in the off season, we switched to one topic and that was a way of, you know, it's basically saving ourselves because how could we possibly come up with two topics in the middle of January? But what we ended up doing is getting used to speaking for 18 to 20 minutes about one topic. And now that we've gone back to two for 18 to 20 minutes about one topic. And now that we've gone back to two topics, we're just in that rhythm.

Yeah, I guess that could be it. We also do a lot of this. There's a lot of self-reflection at the beginning of shows. Have you noticed that? There's a lot of talking about our intros and how much we're unhappy or whether the show is going long. I mean there's a lot more self-reflection. I would say that the topics themselves don't actually even begin on average until four to six minutes into the show.

Yeah, well, hopefully it humanizes us. We're not just baseball-talking robots. We have personal lives. Yeah, do you think that we're like the Marc Maron podcast, though, where everybody just fast-forwards until they hear the Stamps.com promo and then they hit play when the guest is on? I don't know. Well, when people complain at all about the show, they complain that it is not long enough. I have not seen any complaints from people other than the hosts that the show is too long.

So I guess that's a good sign. So we should start. What are you going to talk about? I want to talk about the story of signing Puig. Oh, great. Oh, that's good. And I would like to talk about Zach Wheeler. Okay.

Which one of us goes first? I think mine will be quick. Okay. You want to go first? Sure. So Wheeler is going to start Tuesday. He's going to make his major league debut. And I know that it's been noted at various points in the last maybe five or six years that we've become perhaps a bit too prospect hungry that basically any top 25 or 30 prospect who comes up gets the Matt Wieters fax treatment about them quickly and you know we sort of overreact but I just want to note that I feel like we've been particularly ruined for pitchers this year by Harvey and Miller. And not because they've been good, but specifically because neither one was very good in the minors. We have still not gotten to the point where it has been a year since Shelby Miller was terrible in AAA. A year ago, he was... He was good before that. good before that he was good yeah no he was a great prospect but he was uh he had a a couple days ago i noted that he had a 5.70 ra and triple a exactly one year ago and

that there were two or three more bad starts after that so we're still not even a year removed from him being bad in AAA. And then Harvey was also an elite prospect. And certainly there was reason to be excited about him coming up. But you could find a lot of teammates on his teams that were putting up numbers similar to him. And so there was no reason to think that he was necessarily going to come in and be a top four you know, a top four pitcher immediately. And Shelby Miller might be the second best pitcher in the national league right now, uh,

or has been this year. And so it has gotten, I think, uh, it has gotten me a bit irrational about Wheeler. just as I think it probably makes me a bit irrational about every starting pitcher right now, uh now who comes up. And so I want to just ask you two things.

One is, do you have a theory that would explain why young pitchers might be better now than they were 10 years ago, if you believe that that's true? And two, can you make a unnecessarily specific prediction about Zach Wheeler's future, both in the long term and in the 24 hour term for me? Why they're better? I don't know if I believe that they're better. I would, yeah, I mean, I'd want to see the numbers, I guess, before building a narrative about why they're better without actually being sure that they are better. I have, can I introduce a theory, a hypothesis, I should say?

My, so I wrote a piece a year ago about why there are so many converted position players that are like superstar relievers now. Um, and Sean Doolittle being the prime example is a guy who was a, an ace reliever in the bullpen less than a year after he, he started pitching for the first time. And, and, um, people who were in the game sort of said, you know, that's it pitching, especially in the bullpen has just gotten so simple simple that it's really just the stuff that guys have today is good enough that you don't really have to pitch. We've crossed this point where, and it shows in the strikeouts,

we've crossed this point where the average stuff pitcher's stuff is basically unhittable. So I wonder if there's also an element of that to starting you watch harvey in particular and it is not a delicate game that he is working he throws high fastballs that nobody can hit and 100 pitches into the game they still can't hit him he's got he's got a great breaking ball but you know he you're supposed to have to have a change up and he you know't really. He doesn't have one that's all that good. And you watch Shelby Miller, and it's sort of the same thing. He can throw 25 fastballs in a row, and nobody's catching up to him.

And so I just wonder whether we've reached this point where guys are just unhittable, and the only thing that can really bring down the really elite stuff guys is either an injury or fatigue, because we're in a pitch count generation era, or wildness. You see them walk themselves into trouble. But you just, you don't, I mean, I've watched, for various reasons, I've watched almost every Harvey and almost every Miller start this year, and it's like you just never see either one of them get hit. And so I just wonder whether there's a lot less of an emphasis necessary

on being able to do the things that we think of sixth-year pitchers being able to do. Yeah, maybe. I mean, well, offense is just down generally, so I guess it's not surprising that some rookie pitchers would also be pitching pretty well. It's not like every one of them comes up and is good. I mean, we saw Gossman struggle and get sent down again. Yeah, and I keep thinking about Trevorvor bauer who was this guy last year and still hasn't really done anything except a couple of oddly oddly uh captivating starts

uh i guess my prediction for i don't know the rest of this year or so for for Wheeler will be that, I don't know, I'll say that he'll walk, I'll say over four batters per nine. I think maybe people have been sort of spoiled by Harvey's control and command this season, although I guess he walked some guys last year. But that seems to be sort of the difference between them is that they both have excellent stuff, but maybe Harvey has better command of it right now. Or maybe that's just one difference between them. But since that comparison will be made, I think he will probably have a tougher time throwing strikes and putting the ball exactly where he wants it to be. And, man, I don't know.

A prediction for one start, you're going to make me do that? Yep. I guess his debut start will not be as impressive as Harvey's debut start where he struck out 11 batters in five and a third last year um that's a boring prediction but i don't know what else to say about one start okay i'm gonna i'll say that uh in wheeler's career he will win uh 126. He will have a 100 career ERA plus. He will strike out 18 batters in a game sometime in the next 1,000 days. And he will get Cy Young votes for the Mets, but for no other team in his career. And Bryce Harper will hit more home runs against him than against any other pitcher that he faces in his career. And tomorrow he will go six innings, allow four runs,

but two of them will be runs that he leaves for relievers as he comes out to start the seventh and gives up two quick base runners, gets pulled, both runs come into score. And I'll say eight strikeouts, three walks, and one of them will be in the seventh inning. Wow. Usually I have to drag predictions out of you, and now you're just overflowing with predictions about Wheeler. Well, if you make them absurdflowing with predictions about Wheeler.

Well, if you make them absurd enough, nobody holds you accountable. So as long as you make predictions that nobody takes seriously, it's all good. Okay. All right. So my topic is about the way that the Dodgers sign Yasiel Puig. Have you read Joel Sherman's article about this in the post, which came out this weekend? I've not. Okay. It's a, it's a good article. I missed it when it came out late Saturday night in the Sunday paper. I was driving most of the day on Sunday, so didn't see this until Monday. So I wanted to talk about it because it's a pretty interesting article. He talks to a lot of teams and he talks to the Dodgers about, well, he talks to the Dodgers about why they did sign Puig. He talks to other teams about why they didn't. And he goes over

kind of exactly what they knew at the time that they signed him. So the picture he paints, basically, is that the Dodgers saw, well, the headline of the story, and who knows who wrote that headline, but the headline is, Dodgers gambled big on Phenom Puig based on just one BP session. And that is pretty much the story that he tells, that the Dodgers signed this guy they really didn't know much about. They had no eyewitness scouting reports from their own organization of actual games that he had played in. They had limited film. They just didn't know much about him. And then they saw this one impressive BP session, and they threw a lot know much about him. And then they saw this one impressive BP session and they threw a lot of money

on him. And he talks to, um, Logan white, uh, who, uh, is the VP of scouting for the Dodgers.

And white says, I wanted the player and I will tell you how badly I wanted him. I would rather he come to us with the talent I saw and fail to turn those tools into anything. Then go someplace else and succeed. I couldn't have lived with that. Uh, and so he talks about this, this BP session. He says, uh, he says, because he looked great in batting practice and could establish an internet connection. This was like part of, part of the signing. Uh, here we go. White and his associates never saw Puig sprint or throw all out. White found a YouTube video that showed Puig

making a dazzling throw while in Cuba. And White was impressed with the intelligence he saw when Puig, the child of engineers, established an internet connection for White's laptop after the Dodgers executive was unable to do so. Oh my gosh, that's like the equivalent of Will Smith in that movie, The Pursuit of Happiness, being able to solve the Rubik's Cube. Yes, right. So establishing an internet connection is the new Rubik's Cube. Yeah, well I know from having worked at Bloomberg and having been almost a tech support guy for scouts that some scouts not so good at computers and establishing internet connections so I can kind of understand why that would be valued so basically Puig did did tech support for the Dodgers and that helped him

be signed he White saw LeBron level athleticism and the ball exploding off the bat. Those were crumbs of information, but White was convinced this was the best set of tools he had ever seen on an amateur. And White had drafted Matt Kemp. But in like the 14th round or something. White says, no one had much data on the guy. No one had much information, but someone was going to sign him. And I wanted it to be us. And so he, Sherman goes to, I think, 10 other teams and asks them why they didn't sign Puig. And I'll, I'll link to this article in the podcast post at BP if anyone wants to read it. And they basically say that they didn't know enough about him. He says, I contacted executives from 10 teams beyond the Dodgers and each said their organization declined to sign Puig based on some combination of one, too little information and too little

time to gain more. Two, refusal to pay big dollars based just on workouts. Three, background checks that suggested Puig had a poor makeup. And four, concerns that his body had thickened some already while not playing for a year. He quotes Brian Cashman. He didn't think that he knew enough, et cetera, et cetera. So it goes on and on. And then there's a quote from Dodgers global cross checker Paul Fryer, who basically said, are you out of your bleeping mind to Logan White when White told Fryer that he was going to offer him 42 million for seven years. So I guess there are three possibilities here that I'm interested in. The first is that this is exaggerated in some way, that maybe the Dodgers knew some more than this article lets on.

Maybe White is kind of exaggerating how little they knew, or maybe Sherman is spinning it a little to make the story more interesting. That's kind of the boring possibility. And then there's the possibility that White is crazy, that this was not a good decision, that it seems to have worked out incredibly well, but that it was a really bad idea and that if he went around doing this for players all the time, it would have a

really low success rate. And Sherman mentions, as we've discussed on the podcast, how the industry kind of thought he was crazy to throw this much money at a guy that he didn't know much about. So that's the second possibility that this was just a bad decision that has worked out well. And then the third possibility is that, uh, Logan White is, is really smart and is a genius and is an excellent scout and saw something that other teams didn't and was willing to risk that money where other teams weren't. Uh, and that basically all the credit should go to him. Um, so I guess what I, what I want to know is which of those three possibilities do you put most stock in? Do you think that White is just a genius? Do you give him all the credit in the world for this?

Do you think that he kind of lucked into it? Or do you think there's maybe more to the story? do you think there's maybe more to the story well uh when ned colletti spoke to us at the bp ballpark event in i'm gonna say may uh he was asked or maybe he wasn't asked it actually to be honest ned colletti was uh delightfully confrontational to people who were not confronting him uh it was it was just absolutely a joy to watch him wind himself up about the slights that he imagined that we were projecting his way. And at one point he was talking about Puig, and he explained it thusly. He said that their international scouting had fallen into such disrepair, and their international signings had dropped to 30th in baseball in terms of dollars given out for at least two, maybe three years in a row

that they essentially couldn't get anybody to work out for them. They said that the way that it works down there is if you're not considered a team that's likely to give the best offer, these guys, the players and their representatives basically see you as a gamble and nothing else. If they go work out for you, you can have a bad workout and word will get around. But if you have a good workout, it doesn't really matter because that team is not actually going to give you

the most credible offer anyway. And so especially in the Dominican, they were just being shut out on even the pursuit of some of these players. And so Ned pretty clearly stated, we had to do something to change the perception of ourselves. It was in our interests to overpay or to appear to be overpaying. And so I actually asked Stan Kasten, who's the Dodgers president, about this and he confirmed

it and reiterated it and kind of went into a little more detail. And so if you assume that that's part of the calculus as well, then you would probably say that they are getting lucky that Puig is actually performing like a $42 million player. In that scenario, they might not have actually expected him to perform like a $42 million player, and they might not have particularly cared if he performed at that level as long as he was you know good they obviously wanted him uh and if he performed at you know a useful level that might have been enough and so you might say that they

got lucky there i mean logan white is uh it's unless unless his reputation has been revised in recent years, is held in extremely high esteem around the game. And so, you know, I don't dispute his genius. I don't know if it was necessarily on display here. It does feel, in the telling of that story, that it maybe doesn't necessarily... I mean, I think that the thing that I want from a genius scouting director or player development guy or whatever the case may be is to have a persistent competence, a persistent high-level intellect

rather than the mad genius who's going to go out there and do things that might seem irrational but turn out well, because that guy almost never seems to end well. Yeah. So, yeah, so my guess is that, my guess, my uninformed guess, is that if it weren't Puig, if this weren't Puigmania, that these stories wouldn't be nearly as colorful. They probably wouldn't be told as colorfully to reporters. They probably wouldn't be written as colorfully for readers. But right now,

everything about Puig is larger than life. And so even the anecdotes about how he ends up getting signed become larger than life. And it should be noted that Coletti was talking to us, and I think Caston talked to me before Puig had been called up. So he was hyped, but it wasn't full-on Puigmania. Yeah, that makes sense. And, but it wasn't full-on Puig mania. Yeah, that makes sense. And there's the fact that the Dodgers had just come into a ton of money, so they had a lot of money to spend. And the CBA restrictions on signing international players

were about to go into effect. So this was kind of the last gasp of the era when you could spend what you wanted on those guys. So those were factors. And it's possible that White was pushing to sign Puig for this amount purely based on how good a player he thought he was, but he might have actually gotten approval to spend that amount of money because of those other things that you're talking about.

Maybe Coletti and Kasten weren't so sure that he was such a great player, but they wanted to do it anyway for the reasons that you mentioned. The thing is that usually when a team signs, like let's say nobody else was offering more than $20 million. Well, it wouldn't really matter whether they properly evaluated him or not. Normally you would say, well, that's still dumb. Well, it wouldn't really matter whether they properly evaluated him or not. Normally you would say, well, that's still dumb. If his cost is $20 or $21 or $22 and you can't get him for $23, then you're doing something wrong. You don't have to spend more money than you need to even if you think that it's that undervalued. But if we're taking the Dodgers at their word, that's not true in this case,

that they actually did have to perhaps well overbid everybody else. So I don't know. I mean, I see a lot of avenues where they come out of this looking good. All right. We're done. Please send us emails if you want questions answered at podcast at baseballperspectives.com. And tomorrow is the email show.

So we will get to some of them then.