Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 233: Munenori Kawasaki and Clubhouse Chemistry/The Tigers, Strikeouts, and Defense

Episode Date: June 27, 2013

Ben and Sam talk about whether Kawasaki being sent to the minors tells us anything about chemistry, then discuss how much the Tigers’ defense hurts them.

It's the space of chemistry, yo. Good morning and welcome to episode 232, 233 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from BaseballPerspectives.com. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg. Hi. Hi. How are you? Okay.

I was combing through our iTunes reviews again, and I think we got one. I can't tell whether it's better or worse than the Pink Starburst one, but someone said that the podcast is better than Adam Wainwright's Strike Out to Walk ratio. Oh, wow. Do you think that people would be more likely to comment if they knew you weren't going to read it or if they knew you were going to read it? I guess, I don't know. Maybe it depends on how nice they are and whether they like the show. I don't know.

If I start, I mean, I don't know. We read the clever ones on air now once in a while, so maybe that's additional incentive, or maybe it's not. I don't know. But we appreciate it. Uh-huh. All right. Well, thanks, everybody. I did an iTunes review today.

Yeah. You kept up your end of the bargain? I did. You promised you would review anything? I've done two. So, yeah. All right. What do you want to talk about?

I want to talk about Munanori Kawasaki and chemistry. Mm-hmm. And I'll talk about the Tigers and strikeouts and defense. All right. Mine probably won't be that long, so I guess I'll start. Mine probably won't be that long either. Uh guess I'll start. Mine probably won't be that long either. This might be my favorite show. Well, we've said that before and then gone 40 minutes. 40 minutes, yeah. That's true. Go ahead.

Okay. So Kawasaki was finally optioned, which was sort of sad if you like Kawasaki. I guess the bright side is that he is now even more available for the home run derby. So there's that. But he was optioned because Jose Reyes was returning and he really was always meant as a stopgap fill-in for Jose Reyes. But it was kind of an unusual way he was optioned in that John Gibbons called sort of an informal meeting after the game yesterday to tell the team that he was going to be optioned. Oh, that is preciously hard. I know, which is, it's not something that I think I've heard of before.

something that I think I've heard of before. And there was a quote at the MLB.com story from Mark Burley, who said he doesn't remember ever seeing anything like that, like a team meeting where a manager just let the team know that a player was getting sent down, and that usually you just come in the next day and his locker is empty, and you're like, oh, well, that guy's gone. But Kawasaki had come to mean so much to the team come in the next day and his locker is empty and you're like oh well that guy's gone um but but you know kawasaki had come to mean so much to the team uh that that gibbons felt he had to say something

and it was an emotional scene um and of course kawasaki had also come to mean a lot to blue jays fans it seemed like uh he was getting his name chanted and serenaded and at bats and and he was very popular do you can i just interrupt is there any like sort of kind of latent racism in this would this be if he were uh maybe well i mean maybe like do you think do you think there's a do you think there's first off do you think there's any way is there do you think there's any way – is there – do you think there's any precedent for this for, say, a Dominican player? And do you think that – I mean I know there's the sort of the Eckstein thing, the kind of way that like Ecksteins get lionized. But I mean this seems to be almost like the – OK. So this is how I felt when I saw the sign language lady at the Wu-Tang show.

Right. Yes. Where like at first I was like, this is amazing. I want to be a better person. It made my day. It made the first two days. And the third day I was like, wait, why is there a sign? Why?

Like is there anybody at that concert who went and is like really now enjoying the show? Like they couldn't hear. They go to these shows constantly and they're like i don't get the fuss and then like this one person comes out and does the lyrics which like is the least important part of of even of even of a rap show it's like the delivery of the lyrics is significant but the lyrics themselves mean nothing basically and then so so then i started thinking this is probably just an ironic it's an ironic sign language lady and they hire her because it's showy and so then i thought wait are they just making fun of sign language now and so then it made my the third day story was me being miserable is what i'm saying so then i

wonder like this like i know that we i know that there's some uh racial bias in the way a lot of players are sort of presented by the media or perceived by various factions. And with Kawasaki, it seems to be there is a little bit as – I would say there's maybe a little bit of lovable fool in the way that he is presented to us. Definitely. Yeah. lovable fool in the way that he is presented to us. Yes, definitely. Yeah. And I wonder, I don't know, I wonder whether he, whether it's just his personality or whether he plays that up himself. I can't tell. I mean, he always, he kind of, he says things that are regarded as very endearing and adorable. things that are regarded as very endearing and adorable and adorable uh and i feel like if i were an extremely marginal player like kawasaki uh if i felt like people were were i don't know

appreciating more me more because of that i would i would do more of that i would carry around my little phrasebook and and say you, charming things all the time because, uh, there's no, there's no other way that Kawasaki is going to be popular. I mean, he happened to have a few clutch hits and that helped. Um, but in the long run, he is a pretty, pretty bad baseball player. Um, he walked every seventh plate appearance. Yeah. I wrote, I wrote something about that. Uh, how he was just wrote something about that, how he just sort of stopped swinging because when he did swing, bad things tended to happen. So he just kind of wasn't swinging, and it was sort of temporarily working,

but I didn't really think it would continue to work. Anyway, so he does seem to have come to mean something to the team. They seem to care about him and we're sorry that he would be optioned. And you can completely understand it from a baseball perspective, from a statistical perspective, it makes all the sense in the world. He doesn't have a lot to contribute to the team on the field with Reyes back. But, you know, we always talk about clubhouse chemistry and how we can't evaluate it directly. And so we're always looking for these tells sort of, we're looking for a sign of how much teams value it. And so I kind of wondered, I mean, Kawasaki seems like the embodiment of chemistry right now.

Maybe there are different types of chemistry. Maybe he's like a comic relief, keep guys loose kind of chemistry, more so than an inspiring leadership chemistry. I don't know whether those distinctions make sense, but he did seem to mean a lot to the team. And so you're talking about the difference between him and whoever the 25th guy is now. The Blue Jays have an eight-man bullpen, so presumably they could spare someone from there if they, if they felt like Kawasaki was just contributing so much via chemistry that it would make sense to keep him around.

They have Mark DeRosa who has hit fairly well, is kind of useful as a platoon guy who can, you know, hit lefties a little bit and play a few positions. But he's also a chemistry guy. Yeah, and also a chemistry guy. Yeah, super-duper chemistry guy. Yeah, so that's another thing I was wondering was when he was signed,

he really hasn't hit for the last few seasons. He's kind of hitting this year in a small sample, but hadn't hit for a while. And when he was signed, Anthopolis pretty much said it was because of chemistry and intangibles and that they had just imported all of these stars and remade the roster and they felt like they needed to do something for that side of things. And I think he even said that it wasn't a move they would have made a few years ago. But I guess they've kind of come around on the importance of that. So they signed DeRosa.

So he's, I mean, he's sort of expendable in that he's 38 and he's not making a lot of money and he's not signed through next season, although he does have an option. So I wonder whether, if DeRosa weren't himself a chemistry guy, you know, if he were just replacement level chemist, would he still be on the team instead of Kawasaki?

Or I guess what's the difference in wins between Kawasaki, who is worthless probably, or maybe worse than worthless, who is worthless, probably, or maybe worse than worthless. And the next most least worthy player on the roster, who is probably also fairly worthless. And over a few months of a season, I would think the difference between Kawasaki and the next guy, statistically, is not large.

and the next guy statistically is not large. So I wonder whether that has anything to do with it, whether in a different circumstance, if it hadn't been DeRosa, if they hadn't already kind of had a chemistry guy playing Kawasaki's position, whether they might have considered keeping him, even though he's not a very good baseball player, just because of whatever benefit that adds. And I wonder whether there are diminishing returns to chemistry. Like, is there a point at which you have a couple of good clubhouse guys and adding another

good clubhouse guy does nothing? You can't add any more to it because you already just have good chemistry. And Reyes himself seems like a kind of a guy who keeps people loose and is popular and has fun and all those sort of things. So yeah, I wondered about those things. Yeah, I had the same when I... My first reaction to this was, oh, well, they already have DeRosa.

And then I just thought, talk about an oversimplified view of human nature. I mean the idea that, oh, they've got a good guy. They can have 24 guys where it doesn't matter at all because they got one. So I obviously don't have answers to any of your questions. So let me just spin off and ask you a question that you won't have an answer for. Let's say you've got a 25-man roster. Let's say in your head, just kind of imagine that all of them are ranked from 1 to 25. One is your best player.

One is your Batista or your Dickey or your Reyes. And then 25 is your your worst player all right which number guy is it best to have be your chemistry guy if you if you can have 180 chemistry player on your team do you want him to be the best player the worst player or or what huh um i guess it doesn't seem like it usually is this way but i i guess maybe i i'd want it to be kind of my my star my face of the franchise type player um just because that's probably the guy who i'm going to make the longest commitment to. And, well, I don't know. I don't know whether being a good player enhances your ability to be a leader or be a clubhouse guy.

You hear sometimes that it does. Like you can't be a leader in a clubhouse if you're hitting 200. Like you can't be a leader in a clubhouse if you're hitting 200. But there are also lots of fringy players who are on rosters, it seems like, because of their personalities, or at least that's a factor in it. So I guess I would want my Batista type to be the guy. That's the guy who's going to be around longest and kind of has the most credibility because he's a really good player and and i'm credit yeah credibility but it could be that there's also there could be an envy there right you could have 24 guys who envy that guy for what he has and for the attention that he gets naturally well if that were the case i guess he wouldn't be such a good clubhouse guy, right? Like a great clubhouse guy would be able to diffuse that envy.

He'd be so lovable that no one would be able to hold it against him that he's perfect. I don't know. You're asking a lot of your clubhouse guy. I mean, it could be that, but I mean, it could be that. Like if Mark DeRosa hit, you know, 74 home runs this year, yeah, probably nobody would hold it against him, right? I can't imagine that he would lose popularity for being awesome all of a sudden. Well, you have 100 columns written about his possible steroid use. If he were your star and he were your clubhouse guy,

he would probably have more distractions. His attention would be being pulled in lots of different directions. Yes, he would have to do interviews all the time. Although, I don't know, maybe that's a good thing? Maybe it's a bad thing. I mean, maybe you don't want your star player to be the guy with 30 people around his locker every night. I mean, you're already going to have that to some degree if he's also the best quote.

Yeah, that's true. I mean, there's some teams that, like we had a guest piece at BP the other day about Brendan Ryan and how he's a really good quote and reporters like to talk to him and they go to him after games for quotes, even though he's not the greatest player. So maybe that does kind of relieve the burden on a star who's going to always have a lot of attention on him regardless of whether he can put his sentence together or not.

Yeah, and if it's the 25th guy, that guy's got a lot more incentive to keep being the 80 chemistry, whereas the star doesn't have that incentive. It's all his own choosing, whereas DeRosa is never going to let that slip. DeRosa is going to do the batting practice equivalent of going out early and taking extra chemistry. Kissing babies and shaking hands every morning. That guy visits hospitals like there's no tomorrow. Well, isn't it almost more admirable then if it is the star

who is the good clubhouse guy? Because he doesn't have to be necessarily. It could be. It could be. It could be right. It shows that it's not a self-serving thing. It's pure altruism. A very rare thing in a baseball clubhouse or life. There's so many layers to this. How are we? Ben, how are you and I ever going to run a major league franchise if we can't answer this simple question? Well, I'd be interested to know what teams think about this sort of thing.

I might go. I don't know if we – do you think that you could identify – I mean obviously you couldn't do it accurately because you wouldn't know. But do you think that you could identify the clubhouse chemistry guy on every team if you looked at the roster? No, not on every team. But probably on more than half of them, I guess. Just from reading things over the years and guys having certain reputations. I don't know that I could tell if I just stood in a clubhouse on a team that, I don't know, like a minor league team where I didn't know anyone and just watch their interactions and conclude who was the clubhouse guy.

No, I know. I mean, looking at like if I showed you the Tigers roster, would you go, oh, yeah, well, of course it's Cabrera or whatever? Yeah, I think. Yeah, maybe we should. Maybe we should do that on a future show. Maybe we should. Is it, if I showed you the Tigers roster, would you say it was Cabrera? Looking at the Tigers roster. Isn't, I guess, Torrey Hunter? Oh, yeah, yeah, sure. Now it's definitely Torrey, of course.

Although, yeah, I guess so. Although I don't know whether he commands the same instant respect there that he did on the team that he's been on for a while. I'm not asking if we could name the actual clubhouse guy. I'm asking if we could name the guy who wears the clubhouse guy label in public. Yeah, that'd be fun. I should do that on a show. Or something. All right. so speaking of the tigers uh on episode 37 of our podcast which by the way i listened to and we were so low energy that i i listened to a clip the other day i i guess it was the the one where

i was pulling the the clip of me picking the or Orioles not to win a World Series ever. And I couldn't believe that anyone is still listening to the show who might have been listening to it then. In fact, early on, a lot of the iTunes comments were like, great show except Ben Lindbergh died during episode two and they keep recording. What drugs are they taking before each episode? And to his credit, Ben took that seriously. And I think I took it seriously too. I enjoyed every one of them, but it did dawn on me that maybe I should try to turn off the energy a little bit. There's only so much that I can do. So episode 37, we talked about the Tigers defense being exactly what we thought it would be, which is terrible. And it's still bad. It's 24th in baseball and UZR, and I think it's around the

same in other metrics. So it's a bad defense. The other thing, though, that you've heard about the Tigers is that they have phenomenal pitching, and in particular, they're on a record-breaking strikeout pace. They are striking out more than a batter an inning as a staff, which is, like, would be the scariest thing in the world to, you know, to find out in 1988. Like, someday there will be a team that strikes out a batter per inning. It would shock you.

There's a thing like, I just looked at our defensive efficiency report, and they are second to last. Okay, there you go. There's a thing where high strikeout pitchers or maybe high velocity pitchers, and they have both, think allow lower pavips i believe uh i guess because of weak contact or whatever so if that's the case then that makes them look even worse then just they have an excellent pitching staff and they still don't rate well defensively yeah so uh and all five of their starting pitchers have an ERA that's at least a half a run worse than their FIP, and in some cases much worse.

So anyway, the point is that the Tigers have an interesting approach because they have a terrible defense and yet very few balls put in play. And I'm trying to figure out if this is working exactly according to plan or if they're wasting their pitching based on the FitBRA divide that I just told you. But just to put this in perspective, the Tigers allow four fewer balls in play than the Twins every game, which means that over the course of a year. I mean, that's total extremes, the Twins and the Tigers. Yeah, it is total extremes. But, you know, over the course of the year, you know,

cut that in half and you get them compared to the median, okay? But over the course of the year, that's 650 balls in play. So that's like 90 per position. And so I just wonder whether this is an inefficiency, being able to ignore defense is an inefficiency, or if strikeouts are so kind of like front and center and impossible to get at any sort of discount rate that it doesn't make sense to do this and that you're probably overpaying for your pitchers to try to do this if that makes sense do you know what i mean yeah uh like you can't really get a bargain on a strikeout pitcher can you probably not uh so if you could then this would be awesome because then you could get your strikeout pitchers and then pay nothing for defense and know that it's going to not matter.

But probably, in fact, it's the opposite, I would think. I can't get my head around it. I can't figure out which way this works. So do you think this is a plan that has worked or do you think this is uh uh a flaw that that they are barely playing through i think it i think it's i i think i like it uh i do it's if nothing else yeah if nothing else it's not like aesthetically pleasing like i want i want them to be good in all facets of the game sort of. Right. But I think it's sort of smart not to get too hung up on the defense because, yeah, it's less important for them than it is for any other team.

Yeah, okay, yeah. I think you've, yes, you've clarified this in my brain. Yes, it is. It might not necessarily be a great, like it might not be a strategy that saves you a ton or anything, but once you've got one, then the other half is very complimentary. So if they knew, if they had this strikeout staff and they knew they had the strikeout staff, then it makes a lot of sense to sort of semi punt defense. And if they start with the awful defense and four DHS, then it makes a lot of sense to go get strikeout pitchers instead of getting a

bunch of, you know, contact pitchers. And they are, they are always the team that, that drafts big guys who throw hard and get a lot of strikeouts. So that, I mean,

it seems like that is their strategy for acquiring pitchers and developing pitchers and seems like a fairly smart strategy. It certainly produced a good staff. So yeah, if you're going to do that, then I think it makes some sense. Yeah, so maybe not brilliant, maybe not revolutionary, but certainly smart. It's smart, it's working with what you've got.

Do you think it puts them in a cycle where it's hard to get out of this because it's hard to rebuild a defense all at once and it's hard to, you know, get away from a pitching staff all at once. So now they kind of have no choice but to just keep doing this, uh, to a, it's working very, very well for them. So they don't have a lot of incentive to try something different. I don't know. I mean, I guess once it could get to a point, I mean, eventually Cabrera is really not going to be playable at third. Even for them. And maybe Fielder will get to that point at some point during the life of his contract, and then there will be some kind of logjam, and maybe you have to go with a couple more defensively oriented people at some positions. I don't know. I don't know that they're locked into this forever, but I guess with the current core, they kind of are, and that's okay. Yeah, all right. Yeah, I'm okay with it.

It's fun. Yeah, that actually reminded me when you brought up episode 37. Episode 38 was when we talked about Omar Vizquel and basically at what point clubhouse chemistry can't cancel out being bad at baseball. And he was on the Blue Jays. So this is probably exactly the example I was looking for. Omar Vizquel last year was 45 years old. He hit 235, 265, 281, which is Kawasaki-esque, maybe worse than Kawasaki would do. He got

into 60 games and got 163 played appearances, and he was on the roster all season. He was never optioned. He was just always there, not really playing, not playing well when he was playing, but they kept him on because he was the veteran mentor type who would, I don't know, teach people how to play shortstop and conduct themselves well and all that sort of thing. And clearly they valued him enough to keep him all season. So I guess maybe that enters it. If they would keep Omar Vizquel at age 45 on their roster all season.

And to be fair, I guess that wasn't a competitive team so maybe that changes things they are expected to win now uh so they probably I mean you know they didn't try to bring Vizquel back as far as I know um so maybe that makes the difference and they wouldn't they wouldn't keep a 45 year old omar viskel on the current blue jays team but um but i guess that's kind of the analog so maybe in the same sort of situation if they didn't have a derosa uh they would keep a kawasaki uh yeah i was trying to look up an omar viskel fun fact but i didn't get there in time. Okay. All right. We're done then, I guess. All right. Good. Okay. One more show tomorrow.

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