Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 282: Reassessing Trout vs. Harper/Top Pitchers Versus Top Position Players

Episode Date: September 9, 2013

Ben and Sam discuss (again) whether Mike Trout or Bryce Harper will have the better career, then talk about where they would rank today’s top pitchers and position players for the future.

Good morning and welcome to episode 282 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg. Ben, how are you doing? I was really hoping this was the Breaking Bad podcast, but I must have made a wrong turn somewhere. At least it's not the Longmire podcast. You should be so lucky. Are you familiar with Will Smith's season?

I know he's a reliever now, and he's been good. Yeah, he's 38 strikeouts and four walks in 29 innings with one start in there. So it's possible that those stats are even better as a reliever. And Will Smith is, yeah, he had his one start. He basically gave up six runs in four innings. Five strikeouts, one walk. So he's been essentially unhittable since then. And Will Smith is like the most, I don't know, he is maybe in my mind the prototypical A-ball prospect who has no chance of making it in the majors.

I mean, like when he was in high air, I mean, not high age, short season ball, he had 76 strikeouts and six walks. And I remember there was a little bit of a freak out among some angels fans about whether he was a prospect or not. And, you know, there were people who thought he was the best prospect in the organization at the time. And then there were other people who left him off the top 20 altogether. And here he is as a reliever, completely dominating. And there was another thing about Will Smith that was interesting, but I don't know if I'm going to be able to pull the memory up. The Royals just traded a pitching prospect, right?

Yeah, in the Maxwell trade. Oh, yeah, that's right. So, yeah, so one of the things in that transaction analysis was looking at all the pitchers who had had certain benchmarks in the minors, and it was mostly like elite prospects. Kyle Smith, that was. Yeah, so it was mostly like kind of elite prospect types. And then there were a couple of non prospects who had who had had like that particular strikeout walk and age ratios in a certain level. And Will Smith at that point was already the most successful

of all those pitchers in the majors and now is just getting more successful. As a reliever, 25 and a third innings pitch, 33 strikeouts, and three walks. It's good. I've been so spoiled by other relievers who've done this that now I'm not even impressed, really. No. Yeah, it's true. Kevin Segrist is my favorite of this type this season. And he's outclassed Smith in pretty much every way.

He's a 40, I think he's a 41st round pick, former 41st round pick, who was never ranked highly as a prospect. I think Kevin Goldstein wrote about him a bit last year and just said, basically, he's a soft-tossing lefty, low ceiling. He was a starter at the time and had kind of good numbers but not high strikeout rates in like high A and maybe a little bit of double A and just didn't really look like he was going to be anything but, I don't know, maybe a back-of-the-rotation starter, if that. And suddenly he's a reliever, and he throws really hard all of a sudden and is a lefty and in 32 innings has allowed two runs with 44 strikeouts and 16 walks.

So not as great control, but, but pretty much unhittable. So I don't know. They're just so many of these guys. Well, how about, yeah.

How about your guy, Neil Kotz? Yeah. Neil Kotz is amazing. I mean, he was, there, there are very few things I'm currently rooting for in baseball,

but, but in, as a favor to you, I have been rooting for Neil Kotz all season. Me too. Cause I figured there was a 50% chance that he would just... That was going to be so embarrassing for you. Yeah, he would just blow up and be awful after my article about how he had reinvented himself. And suddenly, somehow he has not made me look stupid.

Did you write that article? It was like between his first and second appearance in the majors or something like that? Yeah, I had been planning to write it when he was called up, when he was in the minors. And I think I missed that he was called up. And so he had had an appearance or so in the majors by the time I got it out. But yeah, I don't know. Brett Cecil was barely a major league starter, and now he's a good setup guy.

It's just, I don't know, there are so many people. I feel like if you're a struggling starter, just might as well put you in the bullpen and see if your stuff plays up and you somehow become a dominant setup man i don't yeah but but for like four months i mean most of the guys that we've named are going to be worthless next year sure yeah it it does yeah it feels strange because it seems like it's so easy to make these guys or find these guys and people still pay money for these people when they're free agents i i don't know whether it's because there's such turnover that there's always a need for them,

even though it seems like it's so easy to make them. But, gosh, it's hard to imagine paying a lot for these people instead of just taking your, I don't know, taking some AAA starter and putting him in the bullpen and suddenly he's unhittable. I don't know. Anyway. Louise Coleman. Yeah. starter and putting him in the bullpen and suddenly he's unhittable i don't know anyway louise coleman yeah bruce chen by the way made you pay for not drafting him is it louise or lewis uh i always lewis i always said lewis yeah it's there's no there's an o right yeah yeah yeah the royals have just a ton of those guys.

They've, I think they have the best bullpen ERA in, in the league or in the majors and just. Yeah, they do.

I was just going to write about that actually for Wednesday. Well, now I stole your thunder. I broke, that's okay. I broke the story.

No, it's okay. The whole point of it is that it, that, well, the point of it is that it's not worth paying

attention to anyway. because they're still the Royals. And because it's still just a bullpen. All right, so what's your topic? I wanted to revisit Trout versus Harper again. Oh, good. I'm going to ask you to revisit Trout and Harper versus other people. Uh-huh. Okay.

So why don't you start? All right. So I just wanted to, it seemed like before the season, whenever I did a radio interview, I was unfailingly asked Trout versus Harper and which one I would pick and which one would have the better career. and which one I would pick and which one would have the better career. And I mean, I basically considered it a toss-up more or less, but I always said Trout just, I don't know, just because he had had the one incredible season that most players never ever have

and had established that he could perform at that level. And so that kind of equaled, out the the being a year older and but i basically considered it i don't know if 52 48 or something uh so i wanted to revisit it now and see what what we would say after we've had almost a full season here, and Trout has been even better than he was last year, which is incredible. Harper, when he's played, has been better than he was last year. He's been somewhat more selective and has chased less and has whiffed less and has walked more and has hit for a little more power. And just generally has been better. And every leg of the triple power and just generally has been better. And every leg of the triple slash line, he has been better.

But he's only played 101 games. He's had a series of minor to somewhat serious injuries. Now he has this hip problem, which is lingering for quite a while, and he's flying back to see a specialist or get another test. And he has this pattern now of playing through injuries, which on the one hand, you, I guess, applaud his dedication to being in the lineup and helping the Nationals win. But on the other hand,

you realize that maybe it is achieving the exact opposite of that goal. And we talked about when he ran into the wall and how he said he was always going to play like that. And has, I guess, continued to play like that, although he hasn't really run into any walls lately. about this hip thing, which is it's kind of a continuation of what seems like a season-long trend of the Nationals treating injuries strangely or having people play through injuries and there not being great communication between the training staff and the manager and the player. And, of course, Harper told Davy Johnson that he was fine

for a few straight days while he was clearly limping around and no one stopped him from playing. So he has this somewhat concerning fragility for a person his age and a tendency to maybe make those injuries worse or at least delay his healing by playing through them. So you have to factor that in. So I guess my answer would be the same now, and maybe my probability that Trout will have the better career would be higher than it was at the beginning of the season. I can't decide how much higher because I don't want to overreact to, you know,

a series of day-to-day injuries and the knee thing. And maybe in a couple of years, Harper is fully healthy. And this looks like a blip on the way to superstardom. And he's done all the things that you would like to see him do when he's actually playing. But I don't know. If it was 52-48 before the season, maybe it's 60 40 now for me um so it it's interesting to me that you're focusing on the harper aspect of the harper part of this equation i mean isn't it seems to me that by far the most significant information that we got this year it comes from trout's end uh

i don't know maybe i guess so uh we We knew Trout could be incredible for a season, and I, like everyone else, was expecting him to come back to Earth a little bit, and he hasn't. He's gotten even better, which is amazing. Yeah, I mean, it's new data and certainly makes me think even more highly of Trout. I already thought so highly of him after last year that I don't know how much higher my opinion could go. Yeah, it's just that we knew that he could do that for a season. What it seems to be, though, is that this level is actually just his standard level. Yeah. That this is his normal level. This is his standard level. This is his normal level. This is his resting heartbeat. So it makes you actually think that what he could do in a season is probably something like

12 or 13 wins and that he could very easily average. It's still hard to say these words out loud, but it's very possible he could just average nine wins a year for the next 10. That's like a completely reasonable projection for him at this point. And to me, that's significant because there's always, I mean, there's always, well, I mean, like Zach Granke had a season as good as this, for instance, as good as one of Trout's seasons as a pitcher. You can do one. It's like if everything kind of just exhales all at once and you get all your goodness in one year, it's not that impossible to have a nine-win season.

I mean, you can find guys who have great career spikes. Trout's was better than most even. I think something like no player had ever had a season as good as he had without making the Hall of Fame, if I'm remembering this correctly. So it was an absurd hype. But the fact that he's repeating it, that's really super significant. This is two years now of nonstop insanity level goodness. And so to me, the question is now, it used to be what are the odds that Trout is really

this good, as well as what are the odds that Harper is going to be a generational player like he's been projected to be. And now it's settled. The first half is settled. Trout is this good. And so you just have to figure out what are the odds that a player who has never demonstrated 10-win ability will demonstrate it. And the odds of that are pretty low, right? I mean, I would think that you now would have to drop to something like,

I don't know, I'd guess 76-24. No, no, 78-22. I'd go 78-22. Wow. You're always very high with the percentages when we talk about Trout, and I'm always low, and I feel insecure. Do you remember we talked about whether it would be a good bet to bet on Bryce Harper hitting 50 home runs? Yeah, I do remember that. Well, I might have made that bet. I might have made a bet along those lines, and I don't feel very good about it right

now. He's hit seven in 250 plate appearances since coming back from injury on July 1st. And that's not why I'm feeling insecure about it. It's just 50 is such a big number. And it's hard to imagine somebody reaching that number who's not at that level already. And at the time, I think we thought, well, he had like 11 in a month. He was 20. And, you know, he had all this awesome back story. It seemed reasonable, but now it seems pretty unlikely.

The way that the bet works is that every year until he hits 50 in a season, I owe a guy dinner and every year from that point on he owes me dinner. And so, you know, like one year isn't that significant. But on the other hand, if he hits 50 in his ninth year, then I still lose, you know, because it's a 15 year bet. Yeah, that's not looking so great right now. It doesn't look as good as it did. Although I don't know how much, I mean, you know,'s maybe it's just the injuries maybe it's all the hip what would you have said for the trout harper percentages before the season if you can if you can remember probably 52 48 yeah yeah maybe i might have i might not have even gone that far. I might have just done a coin flip. Uh-huh. Okay. Well – You know what? Actually, when was it? Last summer, last June. Oh, I guess – so last June, I was at a wedding, and I had just started reporting on Trout, or maybe I had just started looking at it. I don't think I had talked to him yet.

And Trout at the time was in an insane hot streak, but he hadn't gone through the entire summer. So it was a lot smaller sample. But somebody asked me Trout or Harper, and I was still taking Harper at that point. Yeah. How much did working on that story affect your opinion of Trout talking to people and talking to him? Not much? Probably not much. probably not much i probably not much i i think i i was i i learned a bit about his style of play um that made me a little bit more confident but you know not much i mean there's not at this point with both of those guys less so with harper now than than a few months ago but with both of those guys, less so with Harper now than a few months ago, but with both of those guys, talking to people is almost like it's just a hyperbole contest

that the whole world is engaged in. In a sense, you're not necessarily getting good information. You're getting awesome color from people. It's fun and you're sharing this great experience with everybody, but there's not a whole lot to say. They're beyond the uh you know they're beyond they're beyond analysis yeah and and we've been we've sounded pretty negative about harper in this podcast but i don't think either of us would be surprised or

particularly surprised if he did hit 50 home runs or did come out and have a trout season in a couple of years. I mean, those things are still very much possibilities for him. Yeah, so he's 20 this year. And even with the injuries, he's going to play 110 games or so. Maybe. He could be done. Who knows? He could be done. So he could be done so he might

play 102 or 101 yeah and he still has like a top 25 war of all time for his age um if he had any sort of a full season he would have been you know like he would have been right around griffey if you just pro if you prorate it to 140 games, he would have been right around Griffey at 12th all-time. Kind of a big deal. Still a big deal. Alright, what did you want to ask me?

In fact, his season looks a lot like Willie Mays' age 20 season, although with more plate discipline. And he's playing a, you know, his defense, I don't know. It's hard to know whether his defense got worse this year or not, but that's one place that his value drops a little while his offense went up. Okay. Anyway. So my question is, uh, I asked you to give me your, to, to rank the best pitchers in baseball for the year 2019.

And I just want to take three of them, and I have a little exercise. For the year 2019 or through the year 2019? It doesn't matter. That's what I was thinking, but I guess it doesn't matter. All right, so through the year 2019. So I just want to pick out three of them one for their relevance to the conversation one is Clayton Kershaw who's going to sign a huge huge contract probably to stay with the Dodgers maybe one and he was your number one one is Jose Fernandez who is on the tip of everybody's

tongue and he was your number three I didn't three. I wasn't even really ranking them. I was just kind of putting them in a group. You're so bad at this. I told you I hate ranking things. Okay. Anyway, Kershaw would be one, and I'd have to look at the list, but Fernandez would probably be two or three. Okay. All three. Okay.

All right. Good. And Zimmerman would be number 10, right? Yeah. Okay. And so number 10, you had Jordan Zimmerman. So, all right. Fair enough.

Sorry. So just one by one. I also similarly have a list of baseball players here who don't pitch. And so I'm just going to ask you, I'm going to go down a list of names and then you tell me when to stop. And the question is, who would you rather have in 2019? Contracts don't matter.

Service time doesn't matter. Age obviously does because we're talking about a real world where 2019 is part of our human timeline. And so don't worry about 2018, 17, 16, 15, 14. Just 2019. Who would you rather have in 2019? Okay, so we're going to start with Kershaw.

Kershaw or Trout? Trout. Harper? Harper. McCutcheon? How old is McCutcheon? He is 26. McCutcheon. He is 26. McCutcheon.

Machado. Machado. Stanton. Yeah, Stanton. Posey. Posey. Hmm, okay. So Posey is 26, so he will be in his early 30s.

Gosh, I guess I'd still take Posey. Longoria? Yeah, still Longoria. Buxton? No. Okay, Kershaw over Buxton. Yeah. yeah all right number two fernandez uh trout harper mccutcheon yeah all the same people right okay so all those yeah miguel cabrera oh uh no 30 no you'd rather have fernandez and cabrera yes okay 36 year old cabrera yeah

let me ask you this uh uh puig 22 year old puig yeah i mean i guess he'll be right in his prime i i guess i would take puig hayward I mean, I guess he'll be right in his prime. I guess I would take Puig. Hayward? Ooh. I guess I'll say no. I like Hayward a lot, but eh. All right, so like Puig Cabrera, that's like the money spot for Fernandez.

Okay. And Zimmerman, all those guys. David Wright. He's what, 29? 29 or 30, yeah. Zimmerman's like 27, I think. Gosh. I guess I would take Wright.

Profar? Hmm. Yeah. Profar. Kipnis? kipnis kipnis yes myers yes goldschmidt yes posner yes bogarts yes cano Yes. Cano? Yes. Alex Gordon? No. Sano? Yeah.

Correa? You know I said no to Gordon, right? Yeah. You're just going anyway. Yeah. Correa going anyway. Yeah. Correa, no. Okay. Votto, just out of curiosity, Votto. How old's Votto?

30. Yeah, take Votto. Okay. So, yeah, so I just wanted to get a sense. I mean, we all know that there's a lot more risk for pitchers, and Will Carroll once said that he wouldn't give a six-year pitcher or something like that, or a six-year deal, or maybe a five-year deal, or maybe a four-year deal,

I don't remember, to any pitcher ever, which, you know, that's a somewhat probably hyperbolic statement, but there's like this sort of amount of risk that we all acknowledge in pitchers. And so I just wanted to try to put some sort of scale to that risk. And so like you have the best pitcher in baseball is worse to you, is less valuable or more risky to you than the seventh or eighth best player. And then the third best pitcher you had like, you know, around like the 11th or 12th, I guess. And then the 10th best you had around like the 22nd or 23rd. Um, and so that's interesting to me. One thing that's interesting to me is about how it seems to me that you, uh, penalized roughly the same deduction for the pitcher aspect of each player equally. So it flattens out once you get past the top, like basically, okay, you, it's like, instead of multiplying, like, okay, for the first best pitcher you take this you know the the third

best player and then for the third best you take the ninth and you mean i don't know yeah 27 it's not a multiplier it's just you you just add like a seven or eight point to merit at the beginning and then from that point on it's flat you know what i'm saying yeah i guess if i if i considered one of them a bigger injury risk then it might have been like an exponential thing but since none of them really had much of an injury history which is why they were on my list in the first place um i guess zimmerman does but um i yeah i just kind of counted their risk as equal is it entirely injury risk that you're you're thinking about or that you think we're talking about you don't think pitchers don't have more performance risk you don't think uh i don't think so i i mean i don't

know maybe but i feel like the bulk of the risk is the injury stuff and i i don't know i feel like i just kind of i would just take the i i feel like the best position player, the most valuable position player is just more valuable than the best, most valuable pitcher even if they're both healthy and playing full seasons. sort of as a companion question if it were the same question but for the next 10 days then would you still take posey stanton machado longoria mccutchen and harper over kershaw or i guess maybe those guys might not be your best players but yeah would you take would you take seven seven or eight players before you would take kershaw if it were just for the next 10 days? I think I'd take fewer probably, but probably still, I don't know, at least like five or so. Really? I think so.

I'm not sure I would take more than two. Yeah, I think I would. I don't know if, yeah. So if that's the case, then you would virtually, you would basically never, ever, ever vote for a pitcher to be MVP. It would have to be a pretty extraordinary season for me to want to do that, yeah. Huh. If you look at the war numbers, and I mean, even those are, it seems like there's a pretty clear advantage. And I know that's, partially that's the way that we compute war at BP, where we give fielders a lot of credit for pitchers, you know, preventing hits on balls in play. But I feel like that's kind of a fair thing to do. So, I mean, the top warp seasons, like Trout's at almost 10 now,

Cabrera's at 7.3, Goldschmidt's at 6.2, and then the top pitcher seasons, we actually, yeah, we have like Harvey at like, oh, wait, I'm not sorting by the right thing. But we have Kershaw at like 4.5 right now. And it seems like, I mean, just eyeballing like Fangraph's numbers, they have Trout at also 10, Cabrera at also 7.3, actually almost exactly the same. And then they have Kershaw, they have Kershaw at 5.6. And the highest they have is Harvey at 6.1. I haven't looked at baseball references, but maybe it's a similar breakdown. It kind of is at baseball reference, but this seems to be a down year for pitcher war for some reason uh

like you don't have like holiday was you know holiday was in the eight to nine range when he was good this year kershaw's six eight and sale is six five which is uh which is the highest because we just recently talked about how kershaw is like the best pitcher we've seen recently, or having the best season we've seen recently. I guess it's a low BABIP thing. Yeah, I don't know. I feel like we're... I don't know. It might be that, again, we haven't adjusted mentally downward

for the decline in league-wide offense. I also feel a little bit skeptical about park factors right now. I don't know why, but for me it feels like park factors have gotten a little more extreme in the last couple of years. And I don't know if I'm confident in that. Anyway, one thing about this, though, is that pitchers basically get paid roughly the same as hitters get paid for the most part. They don't get as long of deals because of the risk involved, presumably. But on an annual basis or if you had one year, I imagine that, well, Trout's in a completely different level. But I think that Kershaw might be, if everybody was signed to a one-year deal next year,

I think Kershaw might be the second or third highest player in baseball. After Trout and Cabrera, I could see that, yeah. So then are we undervaluing the role of the pitcher, or does baseball overvalue the role of the pitcher? the role of the pitcher or does baseball overvalue the role of the pitcher? Well, I mean, we've been talking about how baseball overvalues relievers for the last decade, two decades, and they still seem to be valuing them the same as they have throughout that time, which makes me wonder whether we're missing something or not, but it's hard to figure out what it is. I don't know. Maybe it's just, it might just, maybe pitchers are fundamentally less valuable, but because you have to have them and the differences between them are just as stark as they are

for position players, you end up paying the same amount for the elite pitching talent, even if they are restricted somewhat in their ability to have an impact on the game. And you just, you treat them as if pitching were 50% of baseball and winning and pay them accordingly. And maybe, I don't know, maybe there is some overvaluing there. All right. Well, I just want to thank Chad and Chris and Izzy and Esmartano for helping me come up with a list of position players to go down quickly. So thank you guys, and we'll be back tomorrow with episode 283.

In the meantime, email us questionsforwednesday at podcast at baseballperspectives.com.