Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 276: How Would Wladimir Balentien Hit in the Majors?/Oakland’s Second-Half Success Narrative

Episode Date: August 29, 2013

Ben and Sam discuss how Wladimir Balentien’s explosive season in Japan would translate to the majors, then examine the notion that Billy Beane’s teams play better in the second half.

remember when we used to call a long home run a valentine blast cold brewed valentine we've got a lot of greatness going for us good morning and welcome to episode 276 of effectively wild the daily podcast from baseball perspectives.com i'm sam miller with ben lindberg ben i found i found out your twitter name now it's a wrap it's a wrap took you took you a few years um all right so we should address a couple things uh lingering things from the email show you know what i love about the email show is that it leads to the email follow-up show next day. Lots of Facebook discussion also these days. Not that you would know. That's between you and him.

Call back. All right. So the first thing is we talked yesterday about whether measuring players' heart rates would be useful. And Dan Brooks emailed me a link that I just had a chance to glance at. It's about researchers who are able to determine changes in this sort of thing by video by looking at variations in successive frames of video that are imperceptible to the naked eye. That's a quote. I didn't use those words myself. So, for instance, the software makes it possible to actually see someone's pulse as the skin reddens and pales with the flow of blood,

or it can exaggerate tiny motions making visible the vibrations of individual guitar strings or the breathing of a swaddled infant in a neonative intensive care unit, which doesn't seem that helpful in baseball. But I think this goes to my point, which is that there will always be a way to find the data and that more and more teams are going to be wanting all the data before they even know what they're going to do with it. So that's an interesting thing, and I am very grateful to Dan.

And I hope that this will make you admit you were wrong. Okay. Sure. All right. Now, do you want to do the thing about the catcher balk? I have it. Yeah, you have it. Yeah, you do it. John sent us a note to let us know that in Burlington a few years ago,

there was a walk-off catcher's balk, which is the play that we were talking about yesterday, where the catcher leaves the catcher's balk too early in a squeeze play or an attempted steal or an intentional walk, actually, any of those. If he leaves the catcher's balk too soon, it is a balk. It is a catcher's balk. We have never really seen it called. I've never seen it called. But John points out that this happened in a minor league game

to walk off the game, which is a spectacular way to end the game. He cites Randy Wehoffer, who is the broadcaster and director of media relations for the Iowa Cubs, who says, yeah, nobody had any idea what was happening at the time, but I'll never forget it. And this goes back to what we were talking about, how baseball is the only game where umpires, it seems to me, where umpires make game-changing calls and don't bother to explain it to anybody. So you figure...

This supports Zachary Levine's article from last week at BP where he talked about how we should give umpires a microphone so that they can be patched into the PA system at a park. And when something confusing like this happens that people at home and people in the park wouldn't know what just happened, they could be patched in and announce what happened. I like that idea. Exactly. Yeah.

I mean, you can imagine that everybody at this game walked home like WTF, no idea what had happened. It would have been like just, they would have probably come up with all sorts of incredible theories for what happened. And I guess, I don't know, I feel like we should talk about Miley Cyrus, because everybody is, but I don't know. I guess, maybe not, maybe not.

Okay, do you have anything else? I just wanted to mention, since we're bringing up the Brandon Phillips C-Trent altercation, I was in a clubhouse. I was at Citi Field earlier tonight, and I realized how little I can perceive who's a good clubhouse guy from my trips to the clubhouse, which are not as regular as a beat writers, obviously. But I was in the Phillies visiting clubhouse. And I think if I had known nothing about the players there and had had to surmise who was

a good clubhouse guy based on just what I saw in the hour and a half or so that I was in there, I would have concluded that Michael Young was like the most unpopular player on the team, I think. I don't think a single person spoke to Michael Young the entire time I was there. He was just sitting at his locker, not really saying anything or doing anything. And the only person to talk to him in that entire hour and a half was a reporter who came over to ask him some questions about clubhouse chemistry which i thought was amusing but and meanwhile there was like you know this group of of players chatting and watching highlights on each other's phones and like sitting in a kind of round table and just making fun of each other and

looking like they were having a really good time and people coming over to ask what they were watching. And meanwhile, Michael Young was not saying a word. I was in the Indians clubhouse not long ago and I wanted to talk to Giambi. And Giambi was wearing headphones, which I consider to be generally not a great clubhouse thing to do. I mean, everybody wears headphones at some point. But I watched Jambi for like 15 minutes and he was just sitting in his locker with headphones. And I thought, that guy's all hype. Come on.

And then I found out like a minute later the headphones weren't plugged into anything. In fact, he was – Just for reporters. I mean, he had them in there. But yeah, no, they weren't on. And then I had a chance to talk to Giambi and I've been, I've had a like mega crush on him ever since. Giambi really in five minutes of talking to you will completely win you over.

He is, I feel confident saying the greatest man who's ever lived. So yeah, you can't just watch Michael Young, Ben. You have to talk to Michael Young. Yeah, that was my mistake. Probably. Okay. What's your topic? Vladimir Balentine and home run in Japan.

It is Balentine. According to the baseball reference pronunciation guide, it is Balentine. That's not what I was going to ask you. Did you call him Vladimir? Yes, it's also that so that it's vladimir really yeah it's not well vladimir what did you think it was vladimir yeah yeah i thought that's what i thought it was nope it's vladimir yes he's not from eastern europe no he's not he's from v No, he's not. He's from Curacao. And I want to talk about the A's.

So yours is way more interesting. So start with yours. We'll see. Okay, so Valentin is completely crushing the Japanese Central League. He has 51 home runs. The all-time single season record is 55 and he's got 32 games left i think so he would seem to be a very good bet to to break that assuming that he gets pitched down the stretch with some no he would be a very good bet regardless uh yeah i guess so under no circumstances is he a very is he not a very good bet regardless. Yeah, I guess so. Under no circumstances is he not a very good bet to break that.

Four homers in 32 games? Yeah, right. I mean, it's been reported that with the previous American players who were challenging that record, they just weren't pitched to. Tuffy Rhodes and Alex Cabrera share that record at 55 with Sadaharu Oh. And I don't know how many games they went without a home run when they were sitting on that number. But it looks like he's going to break that or he has a good chance to break that. And there's really no one. My initial thought was that I think we've mentioned that offense is up in Japan this year because the ball changed.

And so my initial thought was that this was just inflated by the new ball. But really, no one is anywhere close to him. I think the Japanese stats site is really not very easy to use. But it looks to me like he is leading the rest of the league by almost 20 home runs. He's hitting.339. He has a.461 OBP, and he's slugging.827, and no one is really close to those kinds of numbers, and when I looked a little deeper, it's not really that offense is up this year. It's up relative to the last two years when they were using kind of a dead ball, but relative to prior years, it's not at all out of line with scoring there. The league ERA is 3.82 this year. Last year, it was basically a run lower, 2.86, and in 2011,

3.06. But before that that when the ball was the regular ball it was basically the same four point one three three point five five uh three point seven four three point eight four so roughly what it is now so it's not like this is just purely inflated by that um he has 14 doubles yeah that's interesting i guess mean, yeah, every extra brace hit has left the ballpark pretty much. And no triples. Yeah, no triples. So someone was talking to me about this at the Sabre seminar and was pointing out that if the Japanese league, which we generally regard to be AAA level or somewhere between AAA and the majors, if he's destroying that level of pitching and that level of competition, then that would suggest on the surface at least that he could hold his own in the majors if he were to to come back and uh he played in the majors from age 22 to age

24 was never played a full season but uh struggled for for the mariners and the reds uh his his career line in 559 plate appearances is 221 281 374. The last we saw of him on this continent was 2010 when he spent almost a full year at AAA at age 25 and hit 25 homers and slugged 536 and was pretty good, but nothing like what he's doing now. So I was wondering, I guess, what this says to people in the industry when they see Valentin going crazy over there now at age 29 and whether there's any increased interest in him. And he was signed to a three-year contract over the winter. He plays for the Eccles Swallows. He has

a three-year deal for $7.5 million, which you can understand why he went over there to play. He's been there since 2011. And that's obviously way more money than he was making here, than he would have been making here.

And probably will stay there because he's in a three-year contract. But I wondered whether he would hit well if he came back, how persuasive it is to MLB teams that he could hit for them if he had the opportunity. So I asked a pro scouting director about this, and I guess I'll just read his response he said this is a good question and I'm not sure that I have a great answer the general rule of thinking is that the level of play in the NPB lies somewhere between AAA and the major leagues though much closer to AAA you're going to be running up against fewer pitchers with mid-90s fastballs and more pitchers

who rely heavily on trick pitching and changing speeds with breaking balls. That isn't to take away from what Ballantyne has done, but only to highlight that if he were to return to the States, the walk rate would likely drop precipitously while the K rate would rise. But by the same token, I was convinced that there was no way that Colby Lewis could perform at the same level that he was when he was in the NPB, and he certainly proved me wrong. So I wouldn't rule out Ballantine being able to provide average value for a major league team.

But I think there would have to be a lot of teams that see Ballantine as a viable power bat off the bench, and maybe one or two that would be willing, mistakenly, in my humble opinion, to roll the dice on him as an everyday player. So that is the interesting i think answer to the question that that i was wondering and that's yeah that that's really interesting that's that seems to be far less credit than i would have expected uh to be given to him i think i was actually i i in a way i think i was probably expecting you said that was less credit I think that was maybe more credit

I was kind of expecting it to be totally written off as just like quadruple A player punishing bad pitching or something yeah but it's the thing is this is not

I mean for one thing, the thing is, this is not, I mean, for one thing, if he were in AAA and he were doing this, I mean, he is so far beyond what anybody is doing in AAA right now. I'm looking at the PCL batting leaders right now. And PCL is not just AAA, but it's a wildly inflated offensive environment. And, um, Valentin's got almost 200 points of ops on anybody in the pcl he's got 150 points of slugging on anybody in the pcl he's got 26 home runs yeah on anybody in the pcl so i feel like if he were doing this in the pcl it would be you know i mean it wouldn't

guarantee him anything but certainly it would i mean you know, I mean, it wouldn't guarantee him anything, but certainly it would, I mean, almost, I will go so far as to say that if he were doing this in the PCL, any team that he was doing it for would have called him up by now. So I don't think that pro scouting director would think it was, it was folly to call him up and give him a shot. And he's not doing it in the PCL. He's doing it in a league that this guy, this scouting director says, is somewhere, not necessarily far above, but somewhere above the PCL and not as inflated an offensive environment. So better competition and not quite the altitude effects. So I'm surprised.

When I see this, I don't necessarily think Valentin is... I wouldn't go so far as to say this is quite Edwin Encarnacion blowing up in his late 20s, but something like that blowing up in his late 20s. But something like that, maybe. I mean, I would consider it reasonable to think that if he were in the majors this year exactly the same way that he is now, that he might be, you know, certainly I would consider 30-plus home runs

and, you know, something like a 900 OPS to be plausible. That's, yeah, i don't know it's i guess i mean the the stats certainly would would suggest that if that's the level of competition and he's destroying it as he is i mean destroy he's got an 822 slug yes um i i don't i mean but you look at the people who who share that record with oh and it's like i mean toughy roads um toughy roads played parts of six seasons in the majors and hit 224 310 349 which which is i guess roughly what what Valentin hit, something like that. And, I mean, he played. He got over 2,000 plate appearances in AAA. He hit.288,.368,.463 there.

So, I mean, looking at those players who've had some of the all-time best NPB seasons, and Alex Cabrera just got like a cup of coffee in one season in the majors as a 28-year-old. And, I mean, I guess the fact that those players weren't very good and didn't have much success over here, I guess makes it easier to write off what he's doing. Yeah, but I mean, those are two examples. And I mean, the whole point of translations, which are inexact, but it's that they have a much larger pool. I mean, Nori Aoki was supposed to be awful when he came over here, and he turned out

to be really good. I mean, Aoki had had good seasons in Japan, but he was coming off a bad one. But, you know, he had had good ones. So, you know, maybe it's unfair to include him as the counterexample, but, I mean, guys do come over and play really well. More pitchers than hitters. And American guys go over there and don't play well. On Ballantine's team, Lastings Millage is a teammate of his, and he's hitting 251, 329, 436 with 16 homers and over

420 play appearances. So he's not having any sort of special season. Yeah, so imagine that Raul Ibanez, if we're just getting to pick one example and make a case out of it, imagine that Raul Ibanez at 29 had gone over to Japan and played what his major league stats after 29 would translate to in Japan. You'd go, oh, Ibanez, he was a minor league washout. I mean, you would say he was nothing accomplished, and it shows how easy it is to crush Japan. But, you know, Banez became a good player. Maybe Tuffy Rhodes became a good player for all we know. Yeah. So, I don't know. It's interesting. And, you know, Ballantyne, he's not an old guy. I don't know that we had the, I don't know that the book was closed on his career. Yeah, right.

He wasn't – I mean he was kind of a flop in his initial tries, but he was fairly young. And, yeah, it will be interesting to see if he ever gets a shot again. I mean he's making $2.5 million and he's signed for the next two seasons, $2.5 each of those seasons. So he'd have to get a pretty sweet offer to want to come back. Even if he could get out of that contract, he'd probably have to be offered an everyday job, I guess, to want to come back to the majors during those years. Let me ask you this.

Imagine that if he had been in the United States this year, imagine that he would have been, you know, Edwin Encarnacion. He would have been a breakout star, but, you know, for just a couple of years and then, you know, his career would have gone and he would have been, you know, largely forgotten, like, you know, Richard Hidalgo or something, just a guy who had a couple of big years. Or he can be in Japan and be the all-time home run record and have this incredible year where he just was the kid who only hit home runs. What do you think is better? What do you think would be more fun?

I don't know. I mean, I guess I'd kind of like the – I don't know. I guess I'd kind of like the, I don't know, I guess players pretty much everywhere regard the majors as kind of do it at this level, even if you're not quite at the same level. I guess I would rather be Encarnacion than hold that record, assuming that I'm making pretty good money in the U.S. too. All right. So here's the question now. Here's our daily bet, I guess. Maybe daily bet should be a feature on it. Here's our daily bet.

Sounds a lot like daily prediction. We don't like those. How many home runs in the major leagues does he hit before he dies? Like going forward, not counting any that he's already got banked right um gosh uh okay i'll i'll say 17 yeah i mean zero has got to be the same zero should probably be the the safest answer yeah if you want to get on the nose, but not necessarily closest. I will say that he hits 95 home runs as a major league. Wow. You're really buying this.

You're a big believer. I'm not buying. I am buying some part of it. He's a guy who has a plus-plus tool, and that this will get him a shot in the majors, and that given a shot in the majors he probably would have done better than he did uh you know if he'd stuck around and uh you know 90 home runs i don't know maybe it's a little high but over the course of you know six years or

whatever that's not much so i uh i'm i'm on it i'm with him him. Apparently he was never a top 100 prospect guy. I would have guessed that he was. Okay. I would have never guessed it was pronounced Vladimir. All right. Well, we both learned something today. You want to talk about the A's? I do.

The A's, you know, last year the A's, of course, were like this incredible, incredible second-half team. And you probably have an idea in your head that the A's for Billy Beane's entire tenure have been a great second-half team. They had a run for a few years where it was unbelievable how good they always were in the second half. That wasn't nothing. There was a narrative that went along with that. They always were in the second half. And that wasn't nothing. I mean, there was a narrative that went along with that. And Billy Bean, I think, said, or at least it was attributed to him, that you divide the season into threes, right?

Into thirds. The first you evaluate, you assess, you see what you have. The second third, you repair it or you get it in order. And the third, you ride that to victory, to championships, right? And this year, of course, the final third is not nearly complete, and 24 games doesn't tell us much, but they're 12-12 since the trading deadline. They had lost a couple games before the trading deadline, before that, and they've kind of just describing something that had kind of flukishly happened.

Did Billy Bean ever have this figured out? This year, you wouldn't look at their middle third as being very active. They traded for Kai Aspa. That was their one move on the trading block. They brought Sonny Gray up, and I guess Dan Straley came up for good. And I guess a couple guys got sort of settled in positions maybe a little bit. But basically, they are more or less the team that opened the season. And so I guess you would say either one of three things happened.

Either they changed their strategy, something in baseball caused them to change their strategy, or this year the strategy was affected by circumstances, or there was never a strategy. That was always kind of just something pithy to describe something that needed a narrative. And I'm just curious, what is your thought about how the A's have handled this pennant race? I'd like to know what the A's splits, either first half or second half, or those thirds are for his entire tenure there.

Well, there was definitely a run where you would there was yeah definitely yeah absolutely um but this this is his 16th season as gm so if we looked at that entire span to see whether this is actually true that would be interesting um i i don't know i i i mean i think that three-year stretch or however long it was, that didn are certain GMs who kind of their greatest strength comes in the offseason and others who are stronger midseason. And so the first group would just kind of put their team together over the winter and not really tinker too much or not tinker too well during the season. really tinker too much or not tinker too well during this during the season and then the the second kind would be great at at identifying holes and pulling off trades to shore up weaknesses in

the middle of the season and it seems like something that maybe is one of billy bean's skills um so i could i could buy it being real not not to the extent that it was for those few seasons where it was just like flip a switch and suddenly they start winning every game. That seems like just kind of a random clustering thing that happened and formed a narrative. But I could see some. I wonder if you looked at all playoff teams, would you see a trend towards being better in the second half or final third or whatever just because those teams tend to be buyers? Well, I mean if you look at playoff teams, playoff teams you know have success. I mean that's a survivor bias, right? Yeah, definitely. you know, success. I mean, that's a, that's a survivor bias, right? Yeah, definitely. Um,

but I mean, if you're asking whether competitive teams like teams that are in the hunt at the end of July have better final thirds, uh, because they invest more, you'd probably expect to see some element of that, but something small. Um, yeah, I mean, it doesn't necessarily, I don't know. Maybe it doesn't sound like a groundbreaking strategy. Uh, but I mean, it doesn't necessarily, I don't know, maybe it doesn't sound like a groundbreaking strategy. But, I mean, for all these years, at least for this particular run and then recreated last year, it was such a difference that it just felt like you were seeing something. It did. Maybe that's the lesson that Billy Bean has taught us, is that when you think you see something, you best be skeptical.

Yeah, I'm skeptical. I think there could be something to it, but not nearly to the level that it was perceived for a while there. So there's this – Tom Verducci wrote a piece in August of 2011. The headline is Games Shifting Strategies Leave Bean, Sage of Moneyball Behind, which is just tremendous timing. You'd love to be the writer who writes that article in August of 2011. But it's an interesting piece. He talks to Bean about how the environment has talks to Bean about how the environment has changed because teams value young players much more, not just as trade chips, but as assets that they use. And so then I'm going to pick it up. July for Bean was like sitting at a casino table with no whales. To complicate

matters, he found old school gunslingers such as Kevin Towers replaced by young, well-educated number crunchers who did their baseball undergrad work as disciples of Billy Bean. Bean and Towers both play professionally and bring a certain competitiveness to trade talks. They operate as ballplayers do without a fear of failure. This year, Bean found too many phone calls that came his way that sounded like this, quote, I have interest in one of your players and this is what i'm going to give you for him end quote being said that's not deal making it's name your own price so um yeah maybe there's something to the idea that the environment has changed around them as well and you know we did talk about this trade deadline and how quiet it was and how then you know my theory is that um i forget what my theory was but i had theories about it

uh well yeah one theory was that we would see a lot of august trades and we haven't yeah not not so much it's been quiet it's been a quiet august it has yeah okay okay uh it's name your own price by the way the the last thing i said that was not a bean quote that was for a bean quote. That was for Ducci. I didn't make it clear. I don't want to misattribute that. All right.

That was a fun show, Ben. Yeah, it was. We'll be back tomorrow with the last show of the week. And don't forget to email us, podcast at baseballperspectives.com.