Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 264: Four Questions About Miguel Cabrera/World Series Odds Update

Episode Date: August 13, 2013

Ben, Sam, and guest Zachary Levine mull over four questions about Miguel Cabrera, then talk about the World Series odds of the Tigers and other teams.

Okay, you're an animal! Yes, there we go, you're a tiger! You're turning the tiger! You're great! Good morning and welcome to episode 264 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg, and joining us from a terminal in LAX is Zachary Levine. Zachary, how are you? is Zachary Levine. Zachary, how are you? I am good. I am about an hour and a half away from takeoff, and I apologize for any pages or this incessant background music. It's part of the territory here. Well, Sam usually likes to go hour 45, hour 50 on these things, but we'll see if we can keep it short enough for you to make your flight. Thank you. How was your wedding? Wonderful. I think we have to clarify that it was not my wedding. It was a wedding I was attending, but it was very nice. Great. All right. And you've brought a topic today, right? Yes. I wanted to throw out there four questions for you guys all about Miguel Cabrera,

since he seems to be a pretty big topic these days. And it is four questions predicting the future. A question about one month out, 10 years out, 15 years out, and 50 years out about Miguel Cabrera. Ask me 100 years out and I've got it. Okay. Ben, do you have a topic uh yeah i'm actually also talking about the tigers as it happens and their world series odds um and i guess mine is maybe just if i'm i don't know i don't know if i'm gonna get to mine and i'm not sure I'm comfortable saying it. So we'll get to mine if we get to mine, okay?

Okay. I'd like you guys to have me on for the gambling show, by the way. Yeah, I was going to say, I'm sure you'll have something to add to this. And by the way, this appearance is really a victory lap for you after the hidden ball trick was pulled off this past weekend by the team that you predicted, and that we cited your prediction last week, I think, that it would be the Rays, and it was.

So well done. Thank you. When I was watching live, I was watching that game on Fox, and I don't know if you were watching, the announcers were just baffled as to what happened. They thought the guy got called out for leaving early, and then they showed the replay and talked about what a terrible call it was. And then I assume one of the producers or somebody in the truck just got in their ear about, hey, that's not what they called. But

it was not the Fox broadcast's finest moment. Today I watched 48 Box, and one of the things that was interesting is how often the announcer has no idea what has happened in some cases entire at bats later they have not noticed a bach was called that believe it or not i mean this is going to be hard for you to believe but i swear to you it's true i mean i watched games where there would be a bach called bach called a pitch would be nullified the runners runners would move up. In one case, the runners scored, and an entire batter later, I finally turned it off without the announcers having noticed that everybody had changed positions.

And is baseball the only sport where the people who are hired to explain it to you have no direct line to the field, basically? They basically have uh there are instances like this where they just have no idea what has happened they're they're they're they're watching from the same seat as everybody else they don't have any particular extra communication with the umpire or the dugout and so occasionally there are these wonderful instances where they just like can't can't help you like, does that happen in football? I don't think so. I think in, in football, everything,

everything that has to be announced is announced by an official with a microphone. It seems like, I mean, it seems like in foot, I mean, there are those times where the announcer just can't see the right field corner or the left field corner or something and doesn't really know what happened immediately. But in football, there's so much stuff going on in the field, right? I mean, they must miss more, I would think, right?

I mean, I guess after watching replays, you pick up on things, but they're all of those players doing different things, and there's no way you can notice all of those things. Well, I mean more procedural things, you know, things that are actually recorded in the events log, basically. Right. Well, I grew up listening to John Sterling, so I'm used to announcers not always knowing exactly what is going on on the field. So go ahead with your... Oh, sorry, someone's getting paged to get on their flight to Australia right now. Go ahead with your... Oh, sorry, someone's getting paged to get on a flight to Australia right now.

Go ahead with your Miguel Cabrera. Yeah, go ahead. I have a few different Miguel Cabrera topics, mostly because I couldn't decide on one. And I wanted you guys to weigh in and presumably agree, because that seems to be the way this show goes, on a couple of things, starting with one month in the future. Will we see any controversy about Miguel Cabrera, who has had hip problems and who has had back problems and who is getting awfully close to a second straight triple crown, and talking about this is something that happens in football all the time,

whether he sits or whether he plays in September, do you think that if he is, like right now he's two ahead of Chris Davis in RBIs, he's close to within five home runs of Chris Davis after homering in all three games against the Yankees and then homering last night. And he has a huge lead in batting average. And I mean, going for a second straight triple crown is pretty much, I mean, it would just, you'd write his induction into Cooperstown right there. Do you think there will be any issue with the Tigers trying to shut him down as the season goes along, rest him, something like that,

knowing what kind of lead they have and how fragile he is? I would guess, I don't know. I think maybe the fact that it's a second Triple Crown maybe changes that a little bit, that it's not a once-in-a-lifetime, once-in-a-career accomplishment for him. It's something he did last season. Yeah, but it's a second straight Triple Crown. If this were six years later, I think your argument might have some relevance. But, I mean, two in a row, that's a totally, I mean, baseball loves it's, it's, it's, it's in a rose. Yes. Um, well, I don't know who would be, who would be, uh, hypothetically angry at him for, for sitting. Cause I mean, if he, if he sits, it will just be in service of the team, right? He'll, putting the team before himself. I think Zachary's implying that the Tigers will want him to sit and that if he plays...

Oh, I see, and he will want to. And he will want to, or his camp will want to, or the fans of people who make a big deal of the Triple Crown will want to see if he can do it again. And that it will explicitly be in the service of stat chasing. And then will we get to this issue that we get to the NFL in week 17 every year where guys are sitting and is a guy going to get rusty going into the playoffs? How necessary is it for somebody to sit? Does he DH every other game in September?

Just sort of how you think they'll handle that. Yeah, I don't think it's an issue. I think Miguel Cabrera gets to decide whether he plays. He's one of the, I don't know, maybe four or five guys in the game, maybe there's a few more than that, who essentially just gets to decide. I mean, we watched this with Albert Pujols, where he played through an injury that would have sat every other player in the game, basically. But the Angels don't particularly get to tell Albert Pujols when to sit at this point.

And I think Cabrera basically has reached that level. And if he goes for the triple crown, I don't think anybody's going to hold it against him. There will be a column or two here. But for the most part, dude's out there having dudes out there having fun and, you know, people, people probably want to see him go for it. So I don't think we'll see any controversy. I don't even think that, I don't even think the Tigers will really bring it up. Yeah. I don't know if it's,

if it's just a case of like wanting to get him extra rest. I don't know that there would be any controversy if he's actually playing through an injury where he's hobbling around the field and bleeding in the batter's box or something in pursuit of this milestone then i could see that potentially becoming an issue but if it's just a question of getting rest or not getting rest because and we we kind of see that at the end of seasons also right with teams that know they're in whether it's better for for them to play everyone until the last day of the season so that their timing is good and they don't kind of have a layoff where they forget how to play baseball or something before the playoffs. Or the other option of resting everyone and going in at full strength.

So that's something we see some debate about every year. But yeah, I agree. It probably wouldn't be a huge story. All right, 10 years into the future. We'll go 10 years into the future. Miguel Cabrera is currently 30 years old, and he hit his 358th home run tonight. Will he finish his career with over or under 600 home runs? Over. Will he finish his career with over or under 600 home runs? Hmm.

Over. I think I'll go with, yeah, I'll go with over. 242 home runs from age 30 on is like, I mean, that's Raul Ibanez, right? That's not that big a deal. Isn't Raul Ibanez, right? That's not that big a deal. Isn't Raul Ibanez an extreme case now? Yeah, he's a Hall of Fame post-30 player, right? He's a median, median Hall of Fame. He is the median level for Hall of Famers post-30.

So, like, 242 is how many, well, Chipper hit two, Chipper... I I said 10 years, but, you know, it could be a few more or a few less than that. Yeah, so from age 30 on, oh, shoot, I did from 30 on. It needs to be 31 on, doesn't it? So from age 31 on, there are, you know, there are 26 guys, 27 guys who hit.242 from 31 on, although there's also guys who are active who are very close. But, you know, you're talking about, yeah, Ibanez has hit.244, Carlton Fisk, Greg Nettles, Luis Gonzalez, Steve Finley, you know, guys who,

you know, it's a combination of guys who were really good and didn't age all that great or guys who were not that great but aged really well. Andres Galarraga hit 300 and, you know, Palmeiro hit 375 and I don't know. Yeah, I say he gets six. Six seems pretty easy at this point. Yeah, I'll go with six. at this point. Yeah, I'll go with six.

15 years in the future, we assume he will be inducted into the Hall of Fame, and as he is elected or getting ready for his induction, will the following line appear in any recaps of the event or previews of the event? Quote,

You don't know me. I will kill you. I know all of you, and I will kill you and blow this place up. And I guess I'll explain that. That's, I think, 2010, what Cabrera was alleged to have said as part of a drunk driving arrest and sort of an angry event at a bar. And it's sort of been forgotten about, in my opinion, three years later that I know as much as we all talk about all the steroid talk leads to a lot of this, you know, why don't we ever talk about drunk driving and things like that. It seems like there is certainly this major thing out here, like a really awful event that we seem to, maybe we've forgiven or just forgotten about because he's hit a bunch of

home runs or our memory is short. Is that something that you still associate with him? And do you think it should be a bigger deal like we hold the steroid guys to or anything like that? I'm not sure that line would be in his career obituary if he retired today. It seems like it has been kind of forgotten. I think it surfaced now and then during the MVP

debate last year, just because you had the people making the character clause argument. I think Colin Wires might have written something for BP about this, actually. He did, yeah. Yeah, right. And so he was making the argument that it doesn't make sense to sweep this under the rug if you're going to hold other people accountable for other things. Of course, that wasn't something he did during his MVP season, but I guess it would be relevant for a Hall of Fame debate if you're inclined to consider that sort of thing. Do you think it ever cost him a vote? No, I don't think so. I doubt it. brought up and he's not you know he's not obviously what you know it's it's a lesser crime than uh josh lukey but is is sort of uh accused slash pled out to uh but i mean it's not nearly the sort of venom when he walks into a game that you see with some other guys like lukey

and i think it's good that there's not i mean it's a what you know what his his history with alcoholism he did some awful things that that uh that were rightfully judged harshly at the time. But alcoholism is a hell of a thing. And, I mean, if we assume that he went to rehab and got himself cleaned up, we should – I mean, I think that we should be a merciful people who forgives people when they get clean and congratulates them and rewards them for it. So to me, it's a great story. Josh Hamilton has had about a billion magazine covers written about his sobriety. And just like Cabrera's crimes aren't really brought up, it's not really held up what he has presumably done, which is get sober. Presumably.

I mean, honestly, who knows? Maybe he hasn't. But if we assume that he has, it's a good thing. So I wouldn't put it in his Hall of Fame piece myself. Or I might say it was a turning point in his career because this was the offseason before last year. So it was a turning point in his career to this was the off season before last year so uh it was a turning point in his career to some degree well said and going ahead 50 years will people then still put mike trout and miguel cabrera in the same sentence the way that 50 years later, people of my parents' and grandparents' generations still tell you if they were a Mays guy or a Mantle guy or a Duke Snyder guy, whether

there will be Mike Trout, Miguel Cabrera sort of being tied at the hip based on last year's MVP voting and maybe even this year's and the division of camps will be a thing that remains. And whether that's good, whether it's like Mantle and Maze or, you know, Affirmed and Aladar or Walter Johnson and Christy Mathewson or just these names that you sort of associate together. I'm going to say no. I would think...

Just because their peaks will be sort of different times. Yeah, right. I think, you know, Trout will be playing for a decade or close to a decade after Cabrera is out of the game, probably. And I think probably Trout would be lumped with Harper, I think, most naturally, or it seems like that's likely, that he would be grouped with someone roughly his own age who was also kind of a phenom at the same time. And hopefully by that time, we won't still be talking about the 2012 MVP race, I hope.

Well, we're still talking about the 1941 MVP race, aren't we? Yeah, you're still talking about the 1941 MVP race, aren't we? Yeah, you're right. Yeah, I think that the fact that their careers don't really line up means that people, when they look at the broader picture, won't really lump them together. To me, it would be much more like, I mean, there wasn't a great race between Hank Aaron and Stan Musial, but it would be like if they had one great race. I guess you could look at 1957 when Hank Aaron won the MVP award with 239 points and Stan Musial was second with 230. That's as close as an MVP vote gets. I don't know if there's been a closer MVP vote. It was probably a hot topic with lots of hot takes at the time. And nobody lumps Aaron and Musial. So my guess is that particularly because Trout does have the perfect counterpart in Harper,

and particularly because Trout and Harper so closely resemble Maze and Mantle, that I think that that narrative has real legs and will be pushed hard forever. And I have no further questions unless you have something 100 years in the future you want to predict. Well, I'll be smelly. I'll be gross. I'll be dead. All right. On that note, we offer World Series odds at Baseball Prospectus for the first time this season. It's on our Facebook group, and another listener wrote in and asked about this. So according to our playoff odds report, as of Monday, and I guess the Tigers lost, but as of Monday, they had a 25.5% chance of winning the World Series, chance of winning the World Series, which is sort of surprising given that we always talk about how the playoffs are a crapshoot and maybe the best teams don't really have that great a chance of winning. And so you'd figure it's kind of one out of eight, even once you get to the playoffs. But we're basically giving them a one out of four chance. And Zachary, you seem

like the sort of man who might know what the Vegas odds of this are, do you? I looked a few days ago. Mostly I wanted to see how much Vegas was reacting to what the Dodgers were doing and whether they were getting, I guess, a whole bunch of money in on the Dodgers, which would make them lower the odds. And the Tigers were still the favorites, which I think speaks to more than anything to the fact that the next few teams were all National League teams. Just with your chances of winning the World Series being your chances of making it there times. What's basically 50% so it's pretty much proportional to your chances of making it there and

I think the the NL field was seen as a little bit tighter that there was a lot coming in on the Braves with their recent success and The Dodgers I think I want to say the Tigers were something like 6-1, which is I guess what you would want to get if you thought there was about a 1-8 chance. You're never going to get 7-1 on it with a house edge. And the Dodgers and the Braves I think were next. So I think in both systems the Tigers benefit from A, from their enormous division lead, which the Braves have too, but also just how much tighter the NL field is seen as being. So according to our playoff odds report,

then our listeners should withdraw their life savings, right? And just go bet on the Tigers to win the World Series then, I guess. That would be the smart move. If the number I'm quoting is correct, and I can put a comment in with one with one of the odds uh in the morning or something but uh the one that i i really noticed was uh was how low uh the pirates were how long the pirates odds were how much uh how much more you would get by betting on the pirates successfully than uh than i think even on the cardinals. There's still not a lot of respect being shown by the betters toward the Pirates.

I guess not a lot of confidence in them to win in the playoffs with that rotation. So I asked Colin Wires where this number is coming from, our director of research at BP, who is kind of the brains behind the odds. And so he gave me three reasons why they have such a high World Series percentage. The first, kind of the obvious one, is that they have a really high percentage chance of winning the division. I think we had them, as of Monday, we had them at 98.7% chance of winning the AL Central, which was higher than any other team except the Braves. And the Braves are our second ranked team on the playoff odds report.

So that's the first thing, is that they have an excellent chance of getting to the postseason. The second thing is that they have the highest third-order winning percentage, according to us, which at this point makes up the bulk of our estimated winning percentage for teams at this point in the season. So that's based on basically the underlying numbers of this season, how many runs they've scored or how many runs they should have scored and how many runs they should have allowed, and looking at what their kind of underlying winning percentage would be. So we just think that they are a very strong team, basically, and that maybe their record is

not even an indication of how good they are. And of course, they they upgraded a bit potentially at the deadline. And then the other the third factor is that the Tigers get an advantage for being an American League team. So they get an advantage in the World Series because of the league quality adjustment. And we still have a pretty significant league quality adjustment, which is, you know, based on players moving from one league to another and also on interleague play. And the interleague play advantage, even this season, was still pretty dramatic, as I recall. So there really does still seem to be some gap between the leagues. And so, you know, if an AL team and an NL team have the same record, then you favor the AL team. So those are kind of the three reasons behind that. And so when we say that the playoffs are a crapshoot, which we at BP have sort of said many times over the years, there's something to that,

but it kind of overstates the amount of randomness there is. And that in the long run, the better team does still tend to win the playoff series most of the time. And so the Tigers get that league quality adjustment and they are a good team and they are very likely to get to the World Series. And all of these things add up to a number that seems high, but suggests that we should all go bet on Detroit. Well, this is, of course, all testable. I mean, we have 100 years of data, so this seems like something we could pretty easily test, right?

Yeah. I don't know if it's easy, but yeah. Sure. I'm looking on Bodog, and's the Tigers are five to one. What did Zachary say? I said six to one, but I don't know if it's changed or I did not remember correctly. So when all our listeners go out and bet on the Tigers to win,

they could actually maybe, maybe bring the odds down to what they should be then. And what are the, what are the Braves and Dodgers sound? The Braves are six to one and the Dodgers are 11-2. Oh, okay. And we had the Braves at about 13% prior to Monday, and Dodgers at also just right about 13%. Pirates, 11-1.

Yeah, and how about the Cardinals? 9-1. Okay, so how about the Cardinals? 9-1. Okay, so they also like the Cardinals more. And are the Reds longer than the Pirates? 16-1. Yeah, that's what I figured. Okay. The thing I would like to know about that is,

do we give, in the odds of winning playoff series and winning the World Series, do we give any credit to teams that have top-heavy rotations where they might have their third-order data and everything might show that they have a 520 winning percentage, but if you get a team with a top-heavy rotation, it might in actuality be more in a playoff series. You just wound Ben up.

I only vaguely recall what you're referring to. I wrote an article, was it last season? It seems like so long ago, about looking at teams with top-heavy rotations versus just well-balanced rotations and whether one had outplayed or underplayed its expected winning percentage in the playoffs or something. And as I recall, there was no difference.

And I think we discussed it on the podcast. I think twice. And we're confused. We were confused. You should bring me up way more often so I can just make things up again. Yeah. Who knows? Maybe I did the math wrong. All right. Well, that that was fun uh hope your flight

is safe and awesome um and uh we'll have you on again sometime i appreciate it all right so we'll be back tomorrow email us at podcast at base uh geez ben is it podcast or podcasts just singular podcast we we do one podcast, you and I. I know, but as we've talked about, that email used to serve multiple podcasts, so it would have made sense that it might have been podcasts originally. Podcast at baseballprospectus.com. We'll answer a bunch of them tomorrow, and then we'll stop doing that, and then we'll do more shows.

All right, see you.