Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 234: Byron Buxton, Joe Mauer, and the Twins/Dylan Bundy, Tommy John Surgery, and PRP

Episode Date: June 28, 2013

Ben and Sam discuss three things about the Twins, then talk about Dylan Bundy and the PRP approach to treating partial UCL tears.

you know once it started i made it real clear that that was the main goal is i want to stay in a twins uniform and um you know i want to win so i think uh we're definitely heading in the right direction good morning and welcome to episode 234 of effectively wild the daily podcast from baseball prospectus i am ben lindberg joined by sam miller how are you sam the same Miller. How are you, Sam? The same. End of the week already. I feel like this one went fast. I kind of keep track of my weeks now by what episode we're on of the week. And I'm surprised that this is the last one already. Yesterday, you asked me whether I thought reading some iTunes reviews during the podcast was encouraging people to leave more oh i didn't mean that i i meant specifically just you reading them just you acknowledging

them that we're looking at people would right if people are more likely to uh to leave a comment if uh if it's going to make your day or if they, they find it creepy as I sort of do that you're aggressively monitoring them. Like there's something strange like this. People do. I would, I would think a lot of people just want to slip in, leave the note, do their thing. You know, I mean, uh, be part of the wisdom of crowds as these things go and then slip out. And then, but, but you're like, uh, you're there. And as soon as they go to the, to the comment, to the comment board, you like flip on the light and you're like, I see you. Yeah.

Hello. And you're very nice about it. You're genuine. But you'd be like a concierge who when you go to fill out the guest book, turns on a light and was sitting there in a big puffy chair the entire time in the dark. Like sitting there in the dark and like, like standing there in the dark, staring at the guest, guest book. Well, since I revealed that I'm reading them, uh, I've noticed an uptick in the number of reviews and the creativity of the reviews that have been left. So I think there might be a correlation. I don't know. Yeah. I think,

I think that's the other way it can go. Right. I mean, clearly a lot of people are – they want to engage and they like that you're engaged. I mean, I think probably there are a lot of people who are not like I'm describing and actually prefer to have it land on somebody's ears. So that's good. I just wondered. I'm not saying one way or the other. I just wondered. I just wondered. I'm not saying one way or the other. I just wondered. Well, the most recent one says that the podcast is better than a Muninori Kawasaki post-game interview.

And speaking of Kawasaki, he's back. He's back in the majors already. Melky Cabrera went on the DL and he was recalled. So my topic today is would he have been recalled if he was not such a good clubhouse guy? Poor Casper Wells, by the way. Yeah, well. Like all along, coaches were like, just practice real hard, get good at baseball. Should have just been a character By the way

Another review said that They wish that we would explain The intro clip at some point During the show Which we cannot do Because we have no idea what the intro clip will be Until we finish recording the show So I'm sorry

We can't comply with that request Usually it has something to do with the episode now, as opposed to early in the show's run where it was usually just a door opening or something. So you can usually figure it out. But sometimes it's a mystery. What's your topic today? The Minnesota Twins. Okay, and mine is going to be Dylan Bundy and Elbows and PRP.

But I wanted to pose a question to you before we begin. The Angels just swept the Tigers. It was kind of a Trout Cabrera showdown on Thursday night. Trout went four for five. Right now in our value leaderboard, Trout is just ahead of Cabrera. And it basically, well, I guess last year was a bigger difference between them. It's almost a non-existent difference right now. And it's based on kind of the secondary skills that Trout has again. But there's not a gap like there was last year.

And we're about halfway through the season. And I wonder how you think it will play out this year. I guess the difference this year is that Chris Davis is kind ofender that there, that didn't really exist last season. So if he, if he has a second half, like the first half that he has had, uh, I think he'll probably win maybe just because voters will, will be happy to sidestep the trout Cabrera thing for the guy who ended up

hitting 55 homers or whatever he's on pace for. Oh yeah. Cause you know how voters love to sidestep things. Yeah, they don't ever write columns to draw attention to their votes or anything. But I think that maybe, I don't know, if Chris Davis finished the season with a 700 slugging percentage, I think he would probably win. But between those two guys, do you think that it will be, I don't know, will we have a repeat of last year where we have one side arguing against the other side

using the same sort of arguments that were used last year? Or will it be like, well, Cabrera won last year, so now it's Trout's turn to get the the accolades or something or I mean you could certainly argue that Cabrera is having a better season than he did last year um even if he doesn't end up winning the triple crown he may be the more productive player and and right now I don't think you would have sabermetric sort of people lining up in support of Trout because there's basically no difference between them um do you have any and in fact yeah and depending on your site right yeah right I

didn't look at the others but I'm sure it's well yeah the plus minus hates Trout's defense this year like like real like puts him I last I checked like one of the 10 worst defenders in the game yeah right he was like a like a minus 12 left fielder. Mark Simon wrote something about that. Yeah, so he's actually fairly low on that site. And so, you know, in a weird way, I think that wanting to avoid the – I think to some degree the set heads want to avoid the why are the three sites different argument because it's it's a hard thing

to express especially when you're trying to engage with you know mainstream audience so I don't know that it yeah like you said I don't know that it's something that they would that would be so eagerly taken on but I mean it seems to me the case this year is that there's not going to be any narrative for Trout. Trout's going to be on a bad team. Arguing for Trout would be like arguing for Joe Maurer or something, which someone will do and someone should do, but it's not like there's going to be a big Joe Maurer for MVP push.

I would think that for the same reason, there's probably not going to be a big Trout for MVP push unless the Angels come back and win the division, in which case I think Trout will probably be the MVP. Okay. All right. You want to talk about the Twins? sometimes it gets to be like fairly late in the evening and I still don't have a topic. And I think, what if we not talked about in a long time? And I always think the twins, we never talk about the twins. And so in the back of my mind, the twins is always the go-to topic, but I don't actually know what to say about the twins. Um, we really only usually mentioned the twins as an aside in a strikeout conversation or to talk about Kevin Correa. We haven't given an update on Correa for quite some time. So I just want to bring up three quick things on the Twins. Two of them are questions and one is just a little tiny thing.

And so the first one is that Byron Buxton is officially the number one prospect in the game, according to Jason Parks. I saw that John Sickles chimed in with his agreement. And very few people will ever be the number one prospect in the game. Even if you have updates mid-season, it expands the field somewhat. I remember Dom Brown was the number one prospect in the game for like two months um so he he would you know that the field grows but for the most part very few people get

there it's a huge thing and you know the the the rate of those guys turning into stars is exceptionally high it's uh it's very good it's a very good rate so uh buxton number one prospect in the game i just want to know right now who would you rather have buxton or uh and i'm going to read 10 names right now that are all from kevin goldstein's royals future shock in 2010 okay so this is the 2010 is the class that was the greatest prospect class ever where everybody was doing the, uh, you know, prospect value rankings and finding out that the Royals farm system was worth more than like 17 teams combined and all that. Okay. So I'm going to read you 10 names. Okay. Mike Moustakas, John Lamb, Eric Hosmer, Mike Montgomery, Chris Dwyer,

Danny Duffy, Christian Cologne, Johnny Giavatella, Tim Collins, Chris Dwyer, Danny Duffy, Christian Colon, Johnny Giavatella, Tim Collins, Robinson Yumbati. Those 10 right now or Byron Buxton? I can have all 10 or just him? No, you get all 10. You get all 10 with their current contract statuses. And they all come right on over. You get them. Wow.

I like that question. I'm kind of leaning towards the bulk of the 10. Well, let me think. I mean, how many of those 10 have a legitimate chance still to be something? Moustakas does hosmer does probably not lamb and montgomery i mean you know there's there's some scenarios where they do but neither one is considered anything you know really right now uh danny duffy i think has some chance to be something tim tim collins is something and you know maybe gia vitella yeah i mean he's doing his usual well he's not doing that great but no i mean probably not gia vitella

maybe but i mean gia vitella i would i guess maybe i would put slightly ahead of lamb and and montgomery but not by much and then cologne is. Okay, well, when you put it that way, I guess, I mean, it's really only half or so of those people really have a shot to be something, and the ones who do have a shot to be something, their service time has already started, and in some cases they've got a couple to be something. Their service time has already started, and in some cases, they've got a couple of years in already. I guess, I mean, Jason had that quote from a scout who said that Buxton's floor is Torrey Hunter. So if we say that that's true, and that he's going to be at least Tori Hunter with a significant chance to be much better than that, I guess I would lean towards him.

I mean, I still feel like Hosmer could be a star. Yeah. turns out to be a star and the other people turn out to be, I don't know, maybe another average player somewhere in there, then maybe that is better than one superstar. Well, yeah, I guess I'd go with Buxin because you'd have to find roster spots for all those people too. Well, not the ones you don't want. Right.

I don't know. I guess Buxton. I'm not happy with it. I would go Buxton and be happy with it. I did cheat, though, and I did not name one name. The number four prospect on that list was Will Myers. If I throw Will Myers in, do you take the package? Yes.

You take the package easily? Yes. Yeah, I think I take the package at that point without many qualms, although I do still think that it would be worth doing the math and it wouldn't completely shock me if, in fact, Buxton is still the better pick. I mean, yeah, I assume that if, I mean, clearly the Royals don't have all these 11 guys, but I assume if the Twins called the Royals and asked that the Royals would say no, and I assume if the Royals called the Twins, the Twins might say no,

because I think there's a bias towards saying no. But, you know, much more likely to say yes in that scenario. Okay. All right. Number two question. Jeez Louise, this is going to go long. Number two question. It was not long ago that in my head I considered the Joe Maurer contract to be a bad contract.

And that the Twins had, the twins had locked up this catcher just as he was getting too old and couldn't catch as much and he was going to slow down. I think that was the consensus. That was the conventional wisdom, right? There was a couple year period where there was a sense that it was a bad contract and it could get ugly later and it certainly wasn't good. It wasn't a particularly movable contract. Maurer right now is actually on pace to essentially match his mvp season in in in war um and he's um

he's got after this year he's got uh five years and 115 million dollars left on his deal um he's 30 this year uh i want to first ask you does that seem like a good contract to you? Are we past the calling it a bad contract? Or is there still an argument that a catcher after 30 is not worth $115 million, even if he's Joe Maurer? And two, I guess, anticipating your answer, two would be, what would Maurer get if there was an opt out in his contract and he could opt out this offseason? Uh, well, I think he's played his way out of the range where we were starting to think that it was like a true albatross sort of situation. Uh, I mean, the concern was with his lower body injuries. And then last season, he basically spent half of his time at DH or first base.

And it seemed like that was going to be the progression where he would just play more and more at other positions. And maybe he would stay healthier if he did that, but he would be less valuable if he did that. But this year he's played almost, I mean, he's, he's played four games at first base. He has, he has started, I guess, 19 games, it looks like at DH. So he's played almost 50 games at catcher. And as you said, he's hit really well, I guess. I don't know. I don't think, I don't think they would sign him to that contract again today, probably, if they could get out of it right now. You don't think they would sign him for $5,125 or whatever I said?

You said $115, right? Yeah, that's right, $115. So that's only $23 million per season. I mean, compared to, I'm just thinking of other contracts. Yeah, Hamilton got $5 million. Right, that's exactly who I was thinking of. It's not like anybody was necessarily holding that up as the contract to match, but, I mean, he got it. Yes.

He got it. You figure that's somewhat close to reality probably. Yeah, and there were probably more reasons to be concerned about him than there are about Maurer right now. So Maurer right now has almost – I mean it's really uncanny. I didn't realize this, how similar his batting line is this year to Joey Votto's. This year they're almost the same player um except that mauer catches two thirds of the time um and except that vato has basically five years in a row of doing exactly this or a little bit better and vato is also a year younger so um so vato's deal which he signed

uh what last year mid mid-season last year, I think? Yeah, I think so. So that deal is way, way larger than Mauer's. It goes another 11 years from now, if you include the team option, 10 years from now, not counting this year. If you don't, and it's like 180 or 200 something, 213 years, 263 million,

although that includes a couple of years. So that have passed. So basically Votto's got a much bigger contract. Is that a good comp for Maur or do you think that that's a misleading comp for Maur? How old is Votto? 29 and Maur is 30. Yeah, they are pretty close.

I guess it's, well, I don't know. You can compare anyone to anyone. I guess it's good in that I guess they're sort of the same type of hitter at this point. Let me just, I mean, from 2010 to 2012, Maurer hit 315, 399, 437. And even doing that, he did kind of get to the point where people were very skeptical about his ability to earn that contract. I guess it was really 2011 where he was hurt and didn't hit all that well when he was back. I mean, I've kind of changed my thinking since you started asking me about this. I guess if he were to be a free agent now, certainly I think that the Twins would sign him to the same deal because he's probably just worth more to the Twins than any other team since

he's kind of the marquee player there and has a history there. I'm just trying to think whether, like, I mean, if he got injured in the second half or he had a down second half and hit just like he did last year or the year before, how much that would change my thinking. But I guess it's fairly reasonable, I suppose. Yeah, I mean, we could probably, if we made a list of the worst contracts right now, I wonder whether he would even be on the top 10.

Oh, gosh, I don't think, I think he would be, I think it's a plus contract. I think that everybody, every team in baseball would be happy to have that contract right now. I would think that if he were a free agent right now, he would probably get something like... Well, Mark Teixeira got 8 and 180, and I think that he is... I think he is... Well, he's a little older than Teixeira was but I mean I think probably

better ball player than Teixeira was at the time and that was four years ago so there's a bit of inflation there so yeah no I don't think it would be on any list anywhere of worst I don't think it would be on a 10 worst contracts on the twins right now because it's a good contract

so how much has your thinking changed on that in this season the past three months uh i think it's changed because uh last year he was worth it okay but the year before he was not and so now this year cancels out the year before it's it's not only is he worth it but he's so far beyond worth it i mean he's gonna be uh you know he's got it he's he's got a shot to be the best player in baseball this year still he's he's really within that that range um so um you know it not only does it cancel out the bad 2011 season but it probably goes you know further like he's gonna end up this is his third year under this contract you figure at 23 million a year you want him to be worth probably

four and a half wins or so uh a year and uh i just closed the page but uh he's gonna be you know he'll probably get pretty close to reaching that through the first three years. And so, you know, probably he'll, I don't know that he'll decline faster than inflation. Yeah, I guess you're right. All right. The last thing is very quick, and i just want to bring it to your attention do you know who caleb theobar is so caleb theobar is a uh left-handed reliever for the twins and it sometimes feels that there's so many people writing about baseball and talking about baseball

that the only thing left uh that you can have uh all your own is a reliever with six innings. Uh, uh, and so I'm, I'm claiming field bar, uh, right now because he's a reliever with about six innings. Uh, he is right now, uh, has the best, uh, he's got a 14 and two thirds innings for the twins this year. He's 26 year old. It's his rookie season. He made his debut former 18th rounder uh let go as a minor league free agent by the brewers uh twins picked him up and uh right now lefties are hitting 050 095 050 against him they are one for 20 with nine strikeouts and one walk uh the one was a single obviously as you can tell by the line. He is the best, obviously, a tiny sample. But nonetheless, if you keep the samples small enough, he is the best loogie in baseball so far this year. And if you look at his minor league splits over the last two

years, he has been ridiculous against lefties. And so I just am pointing him out as perhaps this year's Tommy Lane, or maybe Aaron Loop or something like that, the reliever who you look at at the end of the year and you go, holy cow, how did he put those numbers up? And then you never hear about him again because he's not actually good. Yeah, I'm working on an article now about kind of this year's crop of relievers who came out of nowhere to strike out everyone. I love those guys. Oh, they're the best.

Relievers are the best part about baseball. Other than the young guys and the old guys, relievers are the next best thing. I don't know how that can be because usually we're so dismissive of relievers and yet I'm so, like I'm totally willing to buy into a relievers good story over a small sample like I'm I'm just endlessly entertained by figuring out how someone I don't know just struck out a ton of guys over a 10 inning period or whether he's done that before or how he does that even if I don't expect it to last or don't think he's all that good or all that valuable

I am just captivated by the the stats and the stories for some reason um yeah okay so my topic uh was inspired by Dylan Bundy who is going to have tummy john surgery he's another one of these guys who we've been kind of hearing about his injury for a few months now. He initially had this elbow injury that he was just going to rest and rehab and have the platelet-rich PRP therapy, platelet-rich plasma injection therapy. therapy, platelet-rich plasma injection therapy. I had on one... Can you imagine, by the way, if you just told somebody like, oh, we're going to give you human growth hormone or we're going to give you platelet-rich plasma, and you just ask some random guy off the street which one sounds like it should be illegal, they would have no idea which one is creepier. It's hard to...

Platelet-rich plasma sounds like the most horrifying thing in the world. It's really hard to draw a distinction between those two things, really. So when you were off one day, I think it was, let's see, it was late April, Paul Sporer co-hosted the show. This was right after Chad Billingsley uh before we found out that he was going to have surgery and he was another guy who we knew he had an elbow issue for a while and he was going to try to rest in rehab and he was pitching for a while in spring training and then he had soreness again and it it was one of these cases where it just there seems to be an air of inevitability about it where when you hear a guy has an elbow issue we all just kind of automatically assume

that he's going to have surgery at some point and we wonder why he doesn't just do it and just get it out and get it out of the way so that he could come back sooner uh so i had i had cory dawkins on to talk about the uh dodgers decision to kind of you you know, the treatment course that they prescribed for him and whether it was a mistake not to have the surgery sooner. And he said that basically it wasn't that that they did the conservative thing. They did the smart thing. It didn't work in his case. But that while it's easy to come up with examples of times that this didn't work, it's maybe it's easy to forget about the times that it did work and that you should always explore every other option before you have the surgery,

just because surgery takes a long time to come back from. Not everyone comes back from it, even though the success rate is pretty high now. And it kind of starts the clock because after a certain number of years, you're just as likely to have that injury again and have to have the same surgery. And if you do, the success rate is pretty low after a second Tommy John surgery. So he said it basically was fine. He had no problem with how they had handled it. And so I'm seeing the same sort of reaction to the Dylan Bundy news. Like Cliff Corcoran wrote a thing at SI basically about all of the PRP cases like this

that haven't worked. And he said, it seems that all that PRP treatments are doing is delaying player surgeries and thus extending the period of time during which they are either diminished or altogether absent. And so I emailed this to Corey and I asked him about it again, like are you still convinced that this is a smart thing to do?

Because if the Orioles had known that this would end in surgery for Bundy and they had had him do it right away as soon as he started experiencing these symptoms, then he could have been back by opening day next year, whereas now it's probably closer to the all-star break. And he sent me a study that was published in the American Journal of Sports Medicine in May, May 10th, I think it was, that was exactly about this topic. Because I emailed him and I said, we should do a study or something, or someone should do a study. And he said, someone did do a study about this exact thing. The title of the study is Treatment of Partial Ulnar Collateral Ligament Tears in the Elbow with Platelet-Rich Plasma.

That is exactly what Bundy had, a partial tear. He had the PRP. And this study is co-authored by four doctors, one of whom is the late Dr. Yochum. and uh okay so i'll just uh so the background is studies have demonstrated the potential of prp to heal damaged tissue to date there are no published reports of clinical outcomes of partial ulnar collateral collateral ligament tears of the elbow treated with prp the hypothesis is that prp will promote the healing of partial UCL tears. So they took 34 athletes with the same thing that Bundy had, this partial tear of the UCL. All of them had failed at least two months of non-operative treatment

and had attempted to return to play unsuccessfully. They took various measurements of their range of motion and MRIs and all these things. And then they had the PRP. And the results of the study suggested that this really does work. So the results say at an average follow-up of 70 weeks, 30 of the 34 athletes, 88%, had returned to the same level of play without any complaints. The average time to return to play was 12 weeks with a range of 10 to 15 weeks.

And then there's a bunch of technical stuff about their range of motion and their scores on various tests. And so one player, it says, had persistent UCL insufficiency and underwent ligament reconstruction 31 weeks after the injection, but 30 of 34, it worked for them. And the conclusion is the results of this study indicate that PRP is an

effective option to successfully treat partial UCL tears of the elbow in athletes. So I thought that was really interesting because I have the same reaction that everyone else does when this news comes out about someone's elbow hurting. I'm just all doom and gloom and expected to lead to surgery, and it's easy to come up with examples of players it hasn't worked for. So Corey pointed out that maybe we just don't know when players are having this done. Maybe it's something that is done without the news coming out, so we don't put it in the plus column for PRP

because we don't know that it ever happened. It just worked, and the players didn't have surgery. So I don't think it's fair, even though I've had the same inclination that everyone else, and Mike and Jason talked about it on Fringe Average and said the same sort of thing. It seems like it's not fair to cherry-pick examples of guys it didn't work for and say that it doesn't make sense for teams to do.

Apparently it works. I give this study four days in my memory before I completely forget and think next time, God, why are they going through with this? They're just going to have to do surgery. I have the narrative very strong in my head. You're going to need to bring this up periodically. This is going to be like one of those habits that doesn't catch until the seventh try.

Yeah, I might just put a link in a blog post at BP too because I want people to see this because I had never seen anything like this before. I would have thought that I would have seen a link to this or something when it came out, but I never did. The thing about Bundy though is that the timing thing isn't really an issue the way that it would be for most pitchers because he's in the minors. So they're getting six years out of him one way or the other and it doesn't really seem to me to be that significant. I mean, obviously, with a pitcher,

you never know when they're going to explode anyway. So yeah, ideally, you want to get them while they're safe. But in his case, it seems like there's a real incentive to not putting him through surgery and putting him to that extra risk, even if it costs you a little bit of time. And the way it works out now, if he comes back next All-Star break, it sort of very organically pushes back his service time just past the Super 2 time too, right? So it sort of works perfectly for that. Yeah, you're right. And the Orioles are contending this year,

and they could use some pitching help. So I guess there was every incentive to try to get him back to the point that he could help at some point this season. So yeah, there's that. And often in these cases, it's often it's like the surgery will end the player's season, but he could have the surgery later in the season and recover over the off season and still be ready for the next opening day. So there's no real downside to trying to play through it for a while. It won't really delay his comeback any. So there are cases like that too. But yeah, I will put a link to this at BP because it seems like something that people should be aware of. And I'll have to remind myself of it too every time that I hear about these things. I mean, I don't know,

it's possible that in some of these cases, people are trying to use it on partial tears that are so extreme that it couldn't possibly work. Like, I don't know, maybe they're just kind of trying anything or, but I don't know, kind of give the the doctors and the training staff the benefit of the doubt I mean if there were if there were no evidence that this worked I could see maybe trying it a few times just kind of as a crazy experimental hey maybe this will work sort of thing but if there were no record of it succeeding um I don't think that would last very long. So you kind of figured that there had to be some sign that this would work. So yeah, good study, I guess. Good to know.

Bye, Ben. Bye. Have a nice weekend, everyone. Send us questions for next week's email show at podcast at baseballperspectives.com.