Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 274: Mourning Matt Harvey/A Player Poll About A-Rod

Episode Date: August 27, 2013

Ben and Sam try to come to terms with Matt Harvey’s elbow injury, then discuss a player poll about Alex Rodriguez.

Good morning and welcome to episode 274 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from BaseballPerspectives.com. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg. How are you, Ben? Not so great. I'm kind of down. I warn people when I posted yesterday's episode in the Facebook group, I warn people that it was kind of a depressing one because we talked about Sabathia and the Mariners, not the happiest topics. And I feel like we have to talk about Matt Harvey today and I don't want to have to talk about that. I'm not so happy about that. I was a bit, I would say I was a bit surprised by how depressed everybody was i mean i also thought it was a bummer um and i don't know

that i think that it was a a disproportionate response but i don't recall that being like a normal thing when a guy gets injured is that a normal thing like i mean it was it was like a solid 90 minutes of just people mourning like it was really like it was like when james gandolfini died it was it was like that like there were no jokes at all nobody was making jokes about it it was just like like i actually was thinking should i say something funny no no no i think it was well i think the closest comp and i i was actually going to ask you whether you had one, whether you could think of an injury that produces. I just gave you one. It was James Gandolfini dying.

Yeah. Well, I guess, I mean, Strasburg is close, right? I remember being pretty depressed about Strasburg because he was so exciting that first year, and then suddenly he was having Tommy John surgery. It was so exciting that first year, and then suddenly he was having Tommy John surgery. And, I mean, he kind of, and it sounds spoiled to say this because he has been incredible ever since, but stuff-wise I feel like he's never been quite the same as he was that first year. And I don't know whether that is because of the injury and the surgery or just because that happens to pitchers as they get older, but he's never thrown quite as hard as he did in that first year. Um, and I has not pitched quite as well. Of course that was

like 70 innings. So who knows whether he would have kept that up over a full season, but, but you know, like the most electric arm in baseball seems maybe slightly lesser electric since that first glimpse we got of him. So I'm sad. Yeah, that's a good point. Strasburg, I wonder if we were – I think there probably was some of this with Strasburg too. I wonder if it was slightly less because,

I'm just theorizing here, but Strasburg was younger, and it felt like Strasburg, well, actually, was he? He was younger, right? I think so. Let me see. He was 22, 21, I guess. It was his rookie year, right? He was his, 21, I guess.

It was his rookie year, right? Yeah, he was his age 21 year. And so what's Harvey, 25, 24 right now? Yeah, Harvey is 24. So yeah, he was considerably younger. Yeah, so we were kind of playing with house money already with Strasburg maybe. Yeah, well, that's the so called injury nexus right is where where Strasburg was at that point 2021 where pitchers get hurt

more often and so it was a little more understandable I mean I guess we're I didn't even ask you what do you want to talk about and we're just kind of bleeding into my sad topic. Oh, is this your topic? Yeah, sure. Okay. Uh, well, okay. So just keep talking about it. Okay. Um, so yeah, so it's, it's, it's kind of depressing. Um, I've, I've been reading the various comments about it from Terry Collins and Sandy Alderson. And I guess the natural thing that people start to wonder is whether it could have been prevented. Hang on real quick. Are there any interesting comments from Sandy Alderson and Terry Collins? Are they saying anything remotely surprising? The one thing is that um they've they've acknowledged that he's been dealing with some forearm tightness all year um and so the interesting thing is like

if you if you read their comments about that you would and you knew nothing about baseball you would almost think that that he's been handled irresponsibly, like his forearm's been tight all year and he's been receiving treatment and he's still been pitching through it. How could they pitch him when he has tightness? But Harvey said that most pitchers would admit to some forearm pain if they were being honest about it, pitchers would admit to some forearm pain if they were being honest about it. And he'd never, never experienced anything, any like shooting pain or sharp pain or anything that made him

think there was something more serious going on. So it just kind of reminded me of how hard it is for even pitchers to tell if they're hurt themselves. Like you'd think that they would know if something was off, but not necessarily because they're always dealing with something. They never really feel 100% after a season starts. And so it's hard to, unless there's a clear moment where you hear something snap or pop or there's just incredible pain or something, it's kind of hard to tell when you should shut yourself down where you hear something snap or pop or there's just incredible pain or something, it's kind of hard to tell when you should shut yourself down because you can't ever pitch at 100% really.

So that's something that I feel like we have to keep in mind anyway. I don't know that there's really any lesson to draw from it because, again, Harvey seems to be past that point at which you really want to ease up on a guy's workload. The Mets have not done anything seemingly irresponsible with him. He didn't have any massive innings counts at young ages. They've kind of taken their time with him this year, skipped a start here and there, or given him an extra day. He hasn't had any 140 pitch outings or anything. So there's kind of no one to blame

except the universe and ligaments in general. So I don't really know what to say about it other than it's it's sad and i wish someone would figure out how to stop this thing um and do you have any reactions does he uh my impression is that he throws a bit harder now than he did like two years ago. I think so. Yeah, I think that, yes, that's the perception. We don't have the numbers on it necessarily, but I mean you've written about it, right? Or at least we've talked about how he became better after making the majors than he was supposed to be? We've talked about how he's been better.

I don't remember. My recollection is that he throws harder than the scouting reports were. The scouting reports were like he's 93 to 95 or something, and now he sits 96. and um this is you know that it's kind of a thing where i don't know if this is just another myth um that um you know you should mostly ignore but it's one of those things where um it it might be that these you know that for a few of these players who get really good and we get really excited we should just immediately feel gloom. The same that when Strasburg was coming out of college, I remember there were a few people who were saying his velocity gain is actually kind of troubling. Yeah. You know, it's sort of, it's not a great

thing to gain velocity that quickly. And really, it's not necessarily a great thing to have that velocity i mean the harder you throw yes as i understand it the kind of worse it is for your arm because it's just it's already kind of to the point that it can't really take it much more so i don't know i mean it's sort of like one of the things that's depressing about harvey if this is you know if this is a factor it's just that like now there's just no joy that we can feel because like the more, like, like paradoxically, the more exciting something is now, um, the more, um, dangerous it is. Yeah. Uh, yeah. I've talked about before how I'm so scared about pitchers generally. And that even when they're on some kind of

historic run and they've been great for a few years, I always have the feeling that it could slip away. And this is just another example of that. I wonder what do you think it does to the Mets' competitive timeline? Does it have any impact on that? Let's assume that he does ultimately have the surgery and misses 2014. Does that matter for their kind of competitive timeline? I mean, it matters in that they lose a year of him, but I guess next year was not really the year that it was probably going to come together for them.

It's kind of coming together, and you can see a core there, and the young pitching is exciting and the best part of that, but probably wasn't going to turn them into serious contenders until 2015, I guess, at which point he would theoretically be back. Yeah, it feels like what it does is it costs them the sort of outside chance that next year everything could break right and they could be the surprise contender. I mean, that's still possible, but it lowers the chance. I think next year was going to be a consolidation year. And I don't think they were in a position where they should have been investing a lot in next year.

Like a few pieces here and there so that if things break right. But yeah, I mean, it doesn't feel like this was the offseason to strike to me, especially because I still think that this isn't going to be a great offseason to be buying. By the way, so the last report that we had on Harvey before he came up said that he works 92 to 95 with his fastball and can touch 97. And this year his average fastball has been, I believe, 95.8. So that's his average. And he's touched 100 in it in looks like three games. And, you know, basically routinely touches 99. games, and basically routinely touches 99. So yeah, just in the last 12 months, I guess maybe it's like 15 months, he's had a big velocity spike in years.

Yeah, someone at the Saber seminar, and I can't remember which of the presentations it was, talked about that and about how velocity spikes can get us all excited and seem on the surface like a really good thing. But if it's too much too soon or too much too quickly, it can be a warning sign. And I don't know what you do if you see that happen. Do you tell a guy to stop throwing so hard? You hit him with a crowbar. Right. Yeah, just take matters into your own hands

before nature can do it for you. Yeah, because I guess from our perspective, the Mets probably know this a bit better, but you and I don't actually have any idea where the velocity came from. That's why I was writing about this. Like, like what the heck, right? Where does, how does a pitcher who's 24, 25, how does a pitcher just add three miles an hour in velocity after he's been doing this his whole life and was already throwing real hard?

It defies, you know, any real explanations from our end. So yeah, so you don't know where it came from and you don't necessarily, I mean, I wouldn't have any idea where to start with dealing with it. Uh, remember when we did our 25 and under track? Yes. Harvey was one of my guys, but, uh, this is sort of surprising to me. Harvey was the sixth guy taken and that was, yeah, that was, mid-May. And he was pitching incredibly. And I would imagine that yesterday he would have been the second guy taken. Who did we take ahead of him other than Kershaw? Kershaw won, Strasburg two, Matt Moore three, Bumgarner four, Shelby Miller five, and then Harvey six.

And so, yeah, I would imagine that he would have been number two if we'd done this yesterday. I'm just curious, where do you think he would go now? And let's say, don't hold the next year against him. Don't hold his inactivity against him. If we did a draft 12 months from now and he's, you know, rehabbing and gearing up and about to, you know, he's going to make his debut tomorrow,

where would you have him in that list? I mean, not that much lower, probably. Not much lower than two or not much lower than six? Certainly not much lower than six. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. The recovery rate is very high. It's something like 90-ish percent, 85, 90 percent. So I wouldn't be that worried.

It's more just missing a year, although you never know. He could be one of those cases that never does make it back completely um let's let's hope not but if he if he were on the verge of of starting and he was already rehabbing and his stuff seemed to be back then probably wouldn't bump him down much at all on anyway alright so my topic is is Alex Rodriguez so everybody will be very happy to hear about Alex Rodriguez

I just wanted to talk about this ESPN the mag you know like did you see this they polled players anonymously I saw a headline about it hadn I hadn't read it yet. Never not a great idea. Always, always fun to see what players say anonymously.

Although you wonder about the sampling in any of these. You wonder about how they choose the 36 guys, if they tend to be a particular type of guy. But I think they did good work. And the questions are interesting and the answers are interesting but anyway they they talked to 36 pitchers over the last uh week and all of them were granted anonymity and so the questions all involved the ryan dempster alex rodriguez beaning and um i uh i guess there's some there's some kind of uncertainty about what dempster was trying to accomplish there's that like i don't know if you saw this

but there's that uh possible explanation that really he's just mad at a rod for like not acknowledging him at a party or something like that right but um the the narrative that came out of that was like this was a player taking vengeance against a guy who had made all the players look bad and who had cheated the players and who was now playing through his suspension. And so in the simple narrative that you get, it's that players hate A-Rod. players hate A-Rod. Dempster gets to stand in for all players and his act gets to stand in as what all players would want to do.

This survey shows that that's not true at all. I don't have much to say about it, but I wanted to just talk about it briefly. Do you want to bean Alex Rodriguez? Not a single player answered yes. So that surprised me. And I'll tell you why that surprised me. It surprised

me because CJ Wilson once was talking about steroids and how they suck. And he made a comment about how there's not that much you can do about a guy who you suspect of cheating. You can bean him or you can take him out at second base, but that's about it. And I had never actually heard the beanball as PED retaliation idea before, and I think that I might have mentioned it in the piece I did about how all of these pitches are awful, but I had never heard that, and so I guess players don't really consider that. I guess that's basically,

Wilson's is not a mainstream opinion, I guess. All right. One pitcher said hitting A-Rod would be worth getting tossed, which confused me because none said they wanted to hit A-Rod. So apparently one pitcher just hates playing and was like, yeah, I'll do anything to get sent home. Several went out of their way to condemn Dempster. That was just Bush League baseball.

Said one star, the situation didn't call for it. You need to take caution with that kind of responsibility. 83% said that he should be allowed to play during his appeal which is interesting because again you you hear the outliers dempster is the outlier but you also heard from john lackey complaining that he got to play through his suspension and the narrative that comes out of that is oh players don't like this but um one pitcher says, we collectively bargained for that right, and I would want it for myself. It's his right. That should be supported. So that was nice to hear. I mean, these are all very, seem to be kind of, the answers all seem

to skew toward fairness and maturity. And so I liked this survey. I liked this poll. Let's see. Everybody hates Bud Selig, apparently. Half of them thought that A-Rod has been targeted unfairly. And also, lots of people don't like A-Rod. A fifth agreed with the ban. About another fifth would support a lifetime ban. So, like, a little more than a third would support the ban that he got or longer um and finally what surprised me is that more players

actually would rather would choose a rod as a teammate instead of ryan braun uh which did not fit my preconceived notions about where each player sort of stands within the game. So I was surprised a little bit just because there had been so much, felt like there was so much momentum against A-Rod. And this kind of makes me think that the downward momentum to some degree has kind of stopped. The A-Rod market is slowly gaining, slowly recovering a little bit. And maybe in a few years, the A-Rod market will be a little bit healthy again. Does anything stand out to you about it?

I guess it doesn't shock me so much just because we've already seen David Ortiz's comments. We've already seen David Ortiz's comments. And I feel like if David Ortiz was willing to speak out and kind of condemn his own teammates' actions, not in a really blistering way, but he said he didn't like it and didn't think it was the right thing to do, and that's unusual. It is. To hear someone come out and criticize a teammate's

actions especially in in defense of another player who's supposed to be extremely unpopular although they're kind of friends i guess yeah it's also that he's also i mean he's a hitter it is interesting i i agree it is interesting to see him kind of disagree with his teammate publicly but he's a hitter a rod's a hitter what's is interesting. I agree. It is interesting to see him disagree with his teammate publicly, but he's a hitter. A-Rod's a hitter. What's sort of interesting is that these are all pitchers, and pitchers and hitters have vastly different takes on throwing baseballs at each other. I don't know that David Ortiz... It would have been somewhat more interesting if it had been lackey, maybe, I guess. But yeah, but that whole thing worked out for A-Rod pretty well, really, in retrospect. I mean, his popularity was kind of argue for him very passionately, which sort of reflected well, I guess.

And then he hit a home run later in the game, which was kind of seen as the ultimate payback for getting drilled. And, yeah, Dempster's actions kind of not supported by it seems like most players so so that kind of maybe helped to rehabilitate his image a little bit yeah it would have been really interesting to ask the same 36 pitchers the same first question do you want to be an A-Rod uh before Dempster did it and before Dempster kind of got the reaction he did, and to ask if it would be worth getting ejected to do it before Dempster did it. Because you wonder whether, to some degree, I mean, you do wonder whether more pitchers wanted to do it,

and Dempster might have reflected some of the sentiment, and it just kind of backfired on him a little bit, and so people just sort of changed their mind. So that's a possibility, but yeah, I agree with you. Nice, good hot take. Sizzling. Yeah. One more thing on Harvey, one quote that Alderson said.

He said, these inning limits are not a guarantee of anything. They're certainly not based on science that will tell you if you don't do this, you're safe. There's no safe harbor here. I thought that was kind of interesting because you'd like to think that the innings limits are based on some sort of science, even if it's never a guarantee. You'd like to think that teams put these in place not because Tom Verducci came up with a rule that doesn't really make sense,

but because they've done some research on what happens to young pitchers who pitch a certain number of innings or increase by a certain number of innings at a certain age. Kind of makes me wonder whether teams know that much more about pitcher usage as related to injuries than we do. whether teams know that much more about pitcher usage as, as related to injuries than, than we do. Like I, I generally, like when Dylan Bundy got hurt, um, I don't, I think we got an email or I got an email from someone who kind of wanted us

or me to, to condemn the Orioles handling of him and, and really, uh, you know, like starting him, pitching him for a couple innings per start and just really going easy on him. And I just, I felt like I couldn't do it because I don't know anything about how pitcher usage affects injury rates. And I feel like if a team has some program, then I generally assume that there's some kind of research or some sort of science behind it. But I don't know. Maybe I've been overrating the degree to which teams know how to do anything about this. talking to Tom Tippett, the Red Sox stat guy at the Sabre seminar, and he was saying how the Red Sox had adopted a new, I think it was a shoulder strengthening program, just like

the Rays have, and how they had seemed to have good luck with it and hadn't had a lot of shoulder injuries. But he also mentioned that they kind of had a new elbow strengthening program. And for a while, it seemed like they had figured that out and no one was getting Tommy John. And then all of a sudden a bunch of guys did at once. Um, so that made me wonder too, whether, whether, uh, a throwing program or a strengthening program that gets a lot of credit for guys, keeping guys healthy has more to do with just injuries not happening to not happening to cluster on that team at that time for for a little while and whether that's just narrative building and whether there's just no hope at all for anyone and to end on a on another depressing note, there's a Casper Wells update.

Casper Wells can't see, apparently. He went 0 for 7 with four strikeouts on Saturday, and he's been shut down with vision problems. Not only that, but James Gandolfini is dead. How do we go on? Send us some uplifting questions for tomorrow's listener email show at podcast at baseballprospectus.com. We need a ray of sunshine this week. All right?

Okey-doke. All right. See you.