Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 229: Derek Jeter, Yasiel Puig, and the All-Star Game/The Royals and Blaming the Ballpark

Episode Date: June 21, 2013

Ben and Sam talk about a pair of All-Star candidates, then discuss Royals GM Dayton Moore’s comments about Kauffman Stadium suppressing walks.

I don't need a ballpark to play big. We got to play different games then. But Ozzie, does this ballpark play very big? Yes, it does. It's not down. But what are you going to do about it? You can do nothing about it. You're going to move it in?

That's up to them. But, you know what I mean, pitches we gain. You can imagine if this ballpark was small, maybe we'd be in first place. Maybe not. That's why I did the ballpark and I put attention to it. You know, this is the way they are and we got to deal with it. Good morning and welcome to episode 229 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives.

I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg. Ben, how are you? Okay. I'm looking at the Yankees' official website, and they have an all-star game thing on there that has little button-shaped icons for the players that they want you to vote for. So there's a vote Canoe, and there's a vote Ichiro, and there's a vote Cheater. Yeah, sure.

Vote Cheater. Cheater has had an excellent season, so why would you not want to vote for him? Well. He wouldn't even be able to play if he were voted in. Why vote for him? Do you think that there's some financial benefit to the team to having an all-star selected who can't play? Well, from the team's perspective, unless Jeter specifically goes and tells them, do

not do this for me. I mean, it's what you do. It's what you do when you have Derek Jeter. I mean, you just, there's a certain amount of, um, there's a certain amount of like kind of shared delusion that comes with, with, uh, having Derek Jeter and you can't acknowledge such things as him not playing at all. Uh, like, like, you know, I, I, well, I don't really, it's like some dictator who dies and no one admits it and they preserve him it's kind of i mean the the it is it is like that that's a lot like what it is it's kind of interesting though that they they put cheater but not but not a rod uh I can understand why they, at this time, would choose not to do that. Vote Brett Gardner. Vote someone who played.

I wonder what the precedent is for this. I wonder if there's a precedent for, I mean, you know, Willie Mays played 24 in a row. I could see if it were his final season. If he had already announced it. I mean, because the first precedent that comes to mind is Mike Schmidt getting voted in two months after he retired. And, you know, he retired hitting like 180 or something like that in a month. And then he quit at the end of April, I think, and he still made it. But I wonder if there's a precedent for a guy.

I'm sure there are people who have been voted in who hadn't played a game yet. I bet you there's six. I bet you there are six players in history who have been voted into the All-Star game without him. He is fifth in the voting among shortstops. So he needs some help. Actually, well, if Jeter's only fifth in that crop, of course that's... Hardy, Andrus, Peralta, Lowry.

Alright, I take it back. It's never happened. Because if it had ever happened, it would be happening for Jeter right now. Especially with the muscle of the Yankees' official website behind him. Come on, people. Get out the vote. Derek Jeter needs to be an all-star. Uh, yeah, yeah.

I mean, it'd be... It would be such a thrill for him yeah right to play under the bright lights yeah the national stage uh okay so what are we talking about fifth huh he's fifth by he's a distant fifth but he's fifth okay i was going to talk about uh dayton moore yeah so was i kind of um yeah that was that was my primary topic i was also i guess since we're talking about the all-star game uh i'm sure this is a topic that neither of us cares about very much but um there are lots of articles being written and lots of Bruce Bochy quotes about whether Puig should be an all-star. Vote Bernie Williams. They should put a vote Bernie Williams button up there.

Yes, I would assume that you are in favor of a Puig being on the team because he's interesting and exciting and the game should be interesting and exciting. I haven't put much thought into pre specifically because it's been it's it's uh i think it's actually been less time than it is between now and the all-star game so uh like there's all as i think as we've seen uh crazy things can happen in in two week stretches and uh so it would be crazy, but it's totally conceivable that tomorrow Puig could start an 0-for-41 stretch. But in general, yes, I do believe that the hot rookie should have a prominent place.

I was in favor of, if I'm recalling this correctly, Dontrell Willis starting in 2003 when he was the hot new thing and pretty much in most cases I'll choose the story over any sort of logic I wonder if he has time to become a deserving candidate if he were to

come in again he came in again tonight so if he were still hitting 460 with a 800 slugging percentage, if he does that over the next couple weeks, I wonder whether he would catch up. Well, he was 1.3 wins above replacement going into today. And so you figure with the home run, maybe put him at 1.5.

Double the playing time, you get him to three. There's going to be an awful lot of All-Stars with fewer than 3 wins. So yeah, I think he could do it. It'd be tough. I mean, it'd be hard to... I mean, if it comes down to the final vote and it's between Puig and Jeter, I'll be torn. Well, you give it to DJ.

You've got to figure Puig... My guess is that Puig will be torn. Right. Well, you give it to DJ. You've got to figure Puig... My guess is that Puig will be the final vote. That'd be cool. It's a speculation. I feel like they... I think they'd like to get a guy like that in there to raise interest in the final vote. Harper was the final vote last year, right?

I think so. Yeah, that would be interesting. Okay, so Dayton Moore. Yeah, why don't you say what Dayton Moore said? blamed their lack of home runs on the ballpark and said that basically they can't hit home runs at Kauffman, so they don't try to, and that they don't hit home runs on the road even because they're so used to not trying to hit home runs

from being in Kansas City and that sort of thing. So Dayton Moore has now sort of said the same thing, but with walks this time. So he said, we have the largest ballpark in terms of square footage of any ballpark in baseball. When pitchers come here, they have the mindset to use that park, put the ball in play, throw strikes, attack the zone. There isn't the same fear factor of getting beat deep

that you might have elsewhere. I think that plays a huge factor in that walk statistic. And then there were some quotes from former Royals hitting coach Kevin Seitzer, who was the guy who was supposed to make the Royals more patient and didn't really. And he said, pitchers mainly fear the long ball. If your lineup isn't hitting home runs, pitchers aren't pitching around you. They're going after you. There's no need not to. home runs, pitchers aren't pitching around you, they're going after you, there's no need not to. It's interesting because the implicit statement in that is that if you're in this ballpark,

then pitchers know that walks are going to be particularly useful for you, right? As a hitter, right? They're not walking you because they know that a walk in a park like that where you know it's hard to do damage with the bat is particularly stupid so then from the team's perspective they should know that a walk is particularly useful yeah if it's bad for the pitcher it's good for the hitter and so they the royals as a team should have by this logic which i'm not necessarily accepting but by this logic the royals as a team should have, by this logic, which I'm not necessarily accepting, but by this logic, the Royals as an organization should have extra incentive and extra emphasis to and on getting more walks, getting players who can walk, telling their players to walk, having a walk approach when they go up to the plate.

And so what Dayton Moore is essentially saying is that they are just constantly getting beat, that the other team is just beating the smack out of them in this war over the walk. The other team is winning constantly. Is that basically what he's saying? That's probably not how he would want it to be interpreted. But yeah, I guess that's sort of the implication um and i mean i i almost i want to give it some credence because i've long been confused by how the royals could be so bad at walking for so long uh prior to dayton moore i mean prior to even

allard baird i think it's just been it's been like decades since the Royals have been a team that walked a lot. So I almost want there to be an explanation like it's the ballpark as opposed to just I don't know, like this legacy of not walking has been passed down from front office to front office or it just happened to happen this way. office or it just happened to happen this way. It would almost make more sense if there were some institutional explanation like the ballpark that was consistent for the decades that the Royals have not walked. And I do think, I mean, there's something to it. I think I was just talking to Colin and I asked him if we had park factors for walks, which we do. And he sent me them, and the Royals have the fifth lowest. So Kaufman, is the park that suppresses walks fifth most? And you would think that there would be some – I mean my gut tells me without having looked, my gut tells me that Petco has suppressed walks.

Certainly that's the feeling you get thinking about their pitchers, their particular brand of awful reliever with the 9 to 1 strikeout to walk ratio, right? That is exactly what I figured would be the case and that's and that's the first thing I checked. And that is apparently not true. Um, I mean, just eyeballing the list, it does look like there's some correlation between whether a park is a hitter's park or a home run park or not. Uh, like the bottom, the bottom five, in addition to Kansas city has Anaheim i think is first uh first lowest or last um and dodger stadium is in there and then in the top five you have the white socks and the cubs and the rockies uh and then the blue jays are six so it does seem like there's some rhyme and reason to it but uh petco is fifth highest according to this i i don't know why that would be um so i i looked in it it looks like uh over the past couple years at

least the royals have actually walked more often at home and i guess part of that is just home field advantage um and i don't know whether it's that their opponents have walked much less often there than they have or than they have at their own home parks. I don't know if that's why the park factor is so low. If I may interrupt. Sure. I looked at the other agents in this little drama. at the other agents in this little drama. And over the past, since 2007,

which is Moore's career with the Royals, the Royals pitchers have walked more batters at home than any American League team except the Orioles. So they are walking a ton of people at home. Now, they have lousy pitchers, but of course our argument, or not ours, I guess the people who Dayton Moore is arguing against, are saying it's the hitters, it's the personnel, that's the point. And Moore is saying, no, no, it's not the personnel, it's the factor. And so in this case, I suppose you can't have it both ways.

The Royals pitchers walk more opponents than anybody in baseball or have over the last six years than any team except the Orioles. And the Royals hitters have walked fewer times on the road than any team in baseball over the same stretch other than the Mariners. So they are an extreme non-walking team away from home, and they are an extreme walking pitching staff at home. So those would be two things that ordinarily you would probably hold up as evidence. Now, I would imagine that Dayton Moore, in good faith or not, I'm not sure whether it's in good faith, would have explanations for that.

That's kind of why I think I wouldn't really like to get in an argument with Dayton Moore because I don't think I would ever really know whether he was arguing in good faith or not. At this point, it sort of feels like he's saying things that are just convenient because they're sort of hard to take at face value but they're not things that particularly make his team look that well and like we said with the i think we mentioned this at at one point i don't remember if it was about the royals or not we were talking about whether uh it bothered us if a hitting coach said something like walks don't matter or something like that or home run it might have been the royals we might have been talking about when the hitting coach said that home runs are bad or

something like that yeah um i mean ideally you would think that he could still say something along these lines and also say uh however you know we we value walks to a great uh degree we value controlling the strikes under a great degree it's obvious we're not doing a good enough job. Our offense has made some strides but there's a lot of work to be done and we probably need to this is something that we as an organization look at from short season ball all the way up and it hasn't

been our bright spot over the last six years. Yeah, there were some things he said. He said there comes a point for all young guys when they get confident enough to hit with two strikes and then they can take more pitches. When you get deeper into counts,

obviously you have the opportunity to draw more walks. And then he said plate discipline and patience are certainly qualities you count or you scout, no question. When we were in Atlanta, we very much believed in walks and on base percentage it was an area we looked at when drafting guys we took guys like brian mccann and adam laroche and rafael for cal all very good on base guys we also took jeff rancore who had a different approach that worked for him it's more of an individual thing than anything else and

okay and then he also says it's more nature versus nurture. Some guys just have that natural discipline, which is interesting because if he's saying that, then how can you also blame the ballpark, right? I mean, nurture is sort of the ballpark. So he said it's more nature versus nurture. Some guys just have that natural discipline, guys like Alex Gordon and Billy Butler. It's not something you can necessarily teach though. We do preach plate discipline throughout the minor leagues. So, and the,

the article describes him as a steadfast believer in on base percentage. And there, I don't remember which winter it was that he, he was talking up on base percentage a lot of times and then went out and signed Mike Jacobs and a bunch of people who never, ever walked. And maybe that was the Frank Corr winter too. I don't remember. Joe Posnanski has written about that about 100 times. So I don't know.

I don't see how you get to have it both ways and say that you value on base percentage and plate discipline and patience and all these things. And then just – I mean at some point you have to kind of walk that walk, right? I mean you have to go get guys who do that. Yeah, yeah. I mean you never – I don't know. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you never – I don't know. I guess you can find ways to criticize GMs for anything, but I think as a fan, faced with this information, you sort of hope that your GM will sort of tear his shirt and go, I know it's killing me. I just can't take these guys. I don't know why they don't walk. We've got to walk more. You just want to see them emote in the same way that you do. I guess maybe he's worried.

I mean that maybe would not reflect well on him if he's like, I don't know what's going on. No, and it wouldn't be appreciated either. If he did that, it would be easy to criticize him too for being like sort of, uh, undisciplined and a huge part of a GM's job is to, to, you know, be disciplined in your message. So I don't know. I mean, it's, it's, it's not entirely clear to me how to judge his, his words. Uh, it is, seems pretty clear to me that it's easy to judge the product on the field as, as, you know, it's been a big disappointment for many years. And, uh, so anything, you know, it's been a big disappointment for many years. And so anything, you know, at this point, at this point in, you know, after this many years of losing, pretty much any excuse is going to be fairly easily mocked as an excuse.

And so, you know, it's hard to obsess over the message that he chooses. But the question I had, the reason i wanted to ask you about this is that um the royals fans that you know are are kind of in public that that that we know of uh you know they have a hard time dealing with this they have a hard time dealing with the words that come out of their front office's mouth they have a hard time dealing with the way that team plays uh the royals are uh you know in a lot of ways kind of taking the caricature of themselves to the next level of this and um and like you know without without without either of us coming to any conclusion on whether they're a good front

office or a bad front office i know a lot of royals fans think they're a terrible front office and they have a you know they have a hard time office. I know a lot of Royals fans think they're a terrible front office, and they have a hard time coping with that. And I just wonder, I don't think we've ever talked about this before on the show. Maybe we have. If we have, we probably both have new answers today anyway. But if you're a fan of a team and the front office is just doing terribly stupid things, do you have a hard time wanting that team to win? Does it affect your fandom if the front office is bad?

I think it would if I felt like the winning would then reinforce that bad process or whatever. If I felt like, you felt like if the team won, then that front office would take it as a validation of the things it was doing, and that in the long run that would be counterproductive and would lead to worse teams and less winning, I guess I could probably talk myself into that. I mean, I wouldn't actively root against my team, I don't think.

But yeah, I guess I would probably take less pleasure in their success. Just, I don't know, because as a fan of baseball and sort of the analytical side of baseball, I think I would enjoy being a fan of a team that embraces those things too, maybe more openly, or puts a team together in a way that kind of, well, that's not true. I guess I would enjoy a team that put together a winner like the Twins too, just kind of scouting really well or something. would be that would also be be fun and enjoyable as a fan but um yeah i guess i guess i would i would enjoy it less probably yeah i i i don't know if i i also think i i would enjoy it less and i think it's probably uh a case where i would not begrudge a fan who sort of whose loyalty faded a bit. I think that I can easily root for bad guy players, for criminals and cheaters and such. I know this.

I know this because I've been put to the test. And I passed that test. And I passed that test. I cheered with gusto for a completely unlikable and scurrilous scofflaw. And I think I can vote for – I mean I also know I can root for a team that loses for a long stretch without really even questioning my loyalty to that team. I mean, I think I can absolutely love a lovable loser, but when a GM makes a move that I consider dumb or just to be bad process, I get so emotionally invested in refuting that decision and arguing against it and telling everybody around me what a dumb move it was. But it's very hard for me, I think, to want to see it work. want to see it work.

And it takes a little bit of discipline to not get personally affected by these sorts of moves, I think. And when it's one move, it's easy. I mean, if it's one move, I think it's easy to go, oh, well, you can't predict baseball. Isn't that what makes the game great? But if it's an entire system

of putting together a team and of viewing baseball uh i you know it sort of wears you down and i could see not wanting to root for a bad process because it feels um you know it it feels like it doesn't make sense i mean at the end of the day i guess what i'm saying is at the end of the day, if your choices between the team that you arbitrarily root for because of the region that you were born into winning or the sort of natural order of the universe holding up and everything you know to be true about physics and yourself and your soul and truth is put to the test. I mean, you kind of don't want to have your worldview rocked too much. It's sort of more disturbing to have everything you know be disproven

because then what does that mean for you? What does that mean about all your plans for yourself? If you don't even know how to build a winning team or how baseball works, what are the odds that your career plans are going to work out? You've got no shot. You're never going to get your kid into college. Yeah. The conflict must be even more agonizing if you're one of the many Royals writers who has been criticizing this regime for years because to some, I mean, to some extent, your own reputation is kind of on the line. I think we wrote, or we talked once about how once you,

if you lose your fandom, you then start sort of just rooting for your own predictions to come true. That that's kind of your main motivator, that you don't wanna look dumb. So it must be kind of a conflict for a Royals fan. I mean, I would think that anyone who's really a Royals fan would probably be thrilled to see the Royals in the playoffs now, regardless of how they got there. I would think that it would be exciting for them. But at the same time, if you've been writing for years about how their approach to

team building is flawed somehow or you know they shouldn't have traded will myers for james shields or something like that uh then maybe you kind of have something at stake in there not succeeding also yeah and and again it goes back to to one move you can swallow you know if if jamess turns out to win the Cy Young this year and Will Myers turns out to be awful, well, you could swallow that, that you got that one wrong. But if they win the World Series, then kind of by definition, that means that every single move they made was right, if for no other reason than for the butterfly effect.

I mean, Dayton Moore could at the very least say, oh, well, without Jeff Francoeur and the clubhouse, we never would have gotten here. Without Uniesky Betancourt's role four years ago as a mentor in spring training, I just know for a fact that Alcides Escobar never would have turned in anything. Were they traded for each other?

I'm trying to remember. Did Uni go over to Milwaukee in that? Yeah. Frankie Dillard Milwaukee in that? Yeah. Frankie Dillard was in a separate thing. Anyway, but you get what I'm saying. If they win the World Series, then if you've spent four years railing on every move they've made, well, gosh, that's quite a knock on what you do.

It was the same deal. Even if your reputation, and all reputations can, I mean, goodness gracious, if you look around at some of the pundits that are out there, you can be wrong constantly. But, I mean, you would think at a certain point you'd be like, well, geez, what am I doing here? And it's really hard to make the argument, like if the Royals won the World Series and all of their fans were delirious, it would be really hard to make the argument that they didn't go about it the right way. It might be a smart argument. You might be right about that. Yeah, but you can't make it. You can't persuade people who are delirious with joy

after seeing the Royals win the World Series that they fluked into it or something. I mean, I guess we talked about that with Brian Sabian and the Giants. Yeah, and Amaro was there, right, or something. I mean, I guess we talked about that with Brian Sabian and the Giants. Brian Sabian, yeah. Yeah, and Amaro was there, right, when the Phillies won theirs in 2008-ish or so? Or did he? Yeah, I think Amaro was there.

Yeah, Amaro was there. So it takes about like four months before you can do that, but you cannot do it immediately after. Yeah. And I mean, I think that you have to i think a gm who wins a world series i i know that it goes against everything that we talked about with process over results but if a gm wins a world series you know i don't care if i i give them at least at least a year or 18 month pass because as a guy who really genuinely, you know, on my 30th birthday, I really genuinely believed that the Giants

might never win a World Series in my lifetime. You know, winning one is no given. And so getting one is pretty amazing. So I will give any GM a pass for a while if they win the World Series. I don't think Amaro did win one. You don't think so? I don't think so. The Phillies won in 2008.

I think that was still Gillick. And 2009 was Amaro's first. Gillick? Wasn't it Wade? I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't know. Good podcasting ahead. Here we go. This is good stuff.

Hold on tight. Yeah, Gillick. Yeah, you're right. Gillick through 2008. Yeah. Jeez. Of course it was Gillick. It couldn't have been Wade.

It couldn't have been Amaro. We didn't even have to look it up. Right. Yeah. we didn't even have to look it up right um yeah so yeah there's no way to make that argument and be persuasive and not look bitter so um yeah i can understand that but the royals are they're making it difficult to defend them these days uh i mean i i i kind of like their team and was optimistic about their team. But when they say things, they shouldn't say things. They shouldn't say things.

They ought to try that. Because there's no rule they have to. I mean, if you get to this point where everybody's basically bad-mouthing you because you've lost for 21 consecutive years uh i guess i guess at least once a year you've got to do that big pr push to convince them that there's hope uh this year but um you know it's unlikely they're gonna convince the casual fan that like oh this team that's been losing literally since you were born is the smart team. I mean, you might, if you do like a prospectus Q&A, you might convince some of us with your awesome words and your great ideas. But the average fan in Kansas City knows the Royals suck,

right? I mean, the average fan is not going to forget about what the Royals are. I mean, that's got to be pretty well established. So there's probably not a great deal of benefit to having this conversation in the mainstream local media. Yeah, and blaming the ballpark never really comes off that well, I don't think. I mean, it may be— It's your ballpark, too. Do something about it. Right, yeah. It's the one thing he controls yeah right yeah it's a silly thing to complain about because you can you can tell her your team to the ballpark if

if you think that that makes sense um and it's not even it's not even like the most extreme park so if it were some crazy outlier i guess i could see it like when the rockies complain about how it's difficult to develop pitchers there or something i'm yeah i'm kind of willing to give them the benefit of the doubt but well that's not their ballpark that's the that's the air that's they do not control the air yeah right uh and is it possible for it for a team to to lose for a considerable amount of time without developing the reputation of a bumbling, incompetent front office? I'm looking at other teams that have been losing for a while,

and it seems like, I mean, I guess the Mariners kind of have a bit of that now, probably, that perception that they are incompetent somehow. I think that has probably happened by now. I guess that the Twins – Incompetence. I think incompetence is a bit strong. Yeah, I guess so. I mean I don't necessarily believe that.

I'm just trying to assess the popular opinion. The Twins are pretty roundly mocked at this point. Yes, the Twins have some of that. The twins are pretty roundly mocked at this point. Yes, the twins have some of that. The Padres don't. Well, I guess the Padres haven't lost as persistently. They had a good year in 2010, a good year in 2008. The Mets certainly have it. The Phillies have it, even though they haven't been losing very long.

Well, I mean, yeah, I guess, yeah. Go ahead. The Marlins have it for different reasons. Would you say that the A's lost persistently before last year? Yeah. 2006. Several years that they didn't make the playoffs. Uh-huh.

Yeah, it was like six years, I think. They didn't really bottom out, I guess. Right. They always won, I guess. Right. They always won 70-something. Yeah. So that probably helps. And, I mean, I guess, like, do people think of the Pirates as incompetent? They did until they started winning.

Right. Well, I mean, last year? Well, last year they were winning they didn't win at the end but for four months of the season they were a competitive team yeah that's true okay and so i think i think there was a perception that the pirates were on the upswing i i think if you would ask in april of 2012 yes the pirates were probably considered a bottom five front office before they started winning what about the the Orioles before last year? They were very bad for quite some time, but I feel like,

and I guess Angelos was kind of regarded as a meddling, miserly type of owner, but the front office wasn't really. I feel like they kind of got a pass for being in the AL East, and they didn't really have a Royals type of reputation. They were bad for over a decade. Yeah, it's hard to remember. I remember the Orioles being considered a bad front office, but it's hard to exactly remember the day.

front office but i it's hard to exactly remember the day like in 2000 uh geez what was it like 2003 that they signed palmero and and uh tahata and lopez um palmero not palmero tahata lopez palmero yeah palmero maybe anyway uh like I think in that era, they were considered a bad front office. The mid-2000s, they were considered a bad front office. And right now, I don't think they are. And so it's hard to remember exactly where they fell in 2011. I guess I can't really pinpoint my memories that well. I guess it's possible if you're, I mean, the Indians have been kind of bad, not, not for a very long time. I guess it doesn't work that way, but the Indians maybe are, are regarded as more smart than their results would, would suggest. Oh yeah. Sabermetric, one of the early adopters. Yeah, no, the internet, the, uh, the, the Indians definitely have internet cred. Yeah.

Okay. All right, are we done? Do we need to make a joke about the Royals finishing first in the league and not getting walks? Is that a joke that we need to cover? Should we just acknowledge that there is a joke out there? Yeah, that's a callback. Leading the league in strikeouts plus balls in play. Is that a callback to Malouf's comment

about leading the league and not hitting home runs? That is. That's exactly what that is. I got the reference. All right, we're done then. Okay, so send us emails at podcast.baseballperspectives.com. If you have a free five seconds or so over the weekend, please rate and review us.

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