Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 284: The Best Damn Listener Email Show Period

Episode Date: September 11, 2013

Ben and Sam answer listener emails about Mariano Rivera’s workload, rarely applied rules, FIELDf/x and shifts, quality starts, and more.

We've got dead air in 15 seconds. Great, okay, I'll go get Bulldog. You, take over the show. Me? A sports show? You're the only one here. Okay, uh, sports enthusiasts, this is Dr. Fraser Crane filling in for Bob Bulldog Briscoe. You're on the air. This is Mike. So what's your take on the damn Yankees this season? Are you speaking of the frothy musical adaptation of the Palsy Migs?

Or the baseball team of which I know nothing? What a weenie. There's nothing to that. But he brings up a good point. You see, while I'm on the air, please feel free to call in about anything other than sports. Please. Please feel free to call in about anything other than sports. Please. Good morning and welcome to episode 284 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus. I am Ben Lindberg, joined by Sam Miller. It's Wednesday.

Hello. It's Wednesday, so it's the listener email show. Sam has picked out some emails or will be picking some out as we go. I just wanted to start with one that related to our topic from yesterday or my topic from yesterday. This is from Luis, and he's emailing about the topic of advanced scouting in the upper minors, which I made the case yesterday that teams should invest more in advanced scouting in the hyperminers because it will both prepare their prospects for the major leagues and the access to data that they have once they make it to the majors. And it theoretically would help them perform better, which would make them more attractive as prospects. So Luis writes, might make zero difference to the former, it might help the latter more drastically. It may lead to more mature approaches for some individuals. My point, though, is that having more extensive reports on minor leaguers might help major league teams when those minor leaguers

come up. The scouting reports might not be as useful as reports compiled against major league opponents, but I'm sure they'd be better than who's this, some rookie, pitch him inside. Do you think there's something to this? Could this force rookies to adjust faster than usual? So this is an interesting point that didn't really even occur to me while we were talking about it. Of course, there are scouting reports on players that teams have access to. And pro scouts are always looking at players and assessing their abilities. It's just not quite the same as advanced scouting, where you're actually trying to come up with ways to get them out and to pitch them. It's more, you know, what their abilities are and what their abilities will be. what their abilities are and what their abilities will be so it's a different sort of scouting and maybe it would be useful to a major league team to have some some amount of advanced scouting already done when a when a rookie opponent shows up i don't buy it

uh just i don't buy it because well i mean when you, first off, I mean, you're talking about having an extra scout doing this. You're not talking about having the regular pro scouts who are out there scouting minor leagues do this. So you're having to hire another scout to do this. And it's just really inefficient. When you think about what advanced scouts do, if you're advanced scouting the Red Sox, because you're playing the Red Sox, you go out a week before you play them, or maybe two weeks before you play them, and you watch the entire team for a couple of days, and you get to see the entire team. Maybe not the entire team, but basically the entire team, all in one shot. Whereas with this, you're talking about maybe advanced scouting teams where maybe five of those guys are going to face you at some point and who knows when.

Even if you limited it to AAA, it's still really inefficient and an efficient way to advance scout. And I just don't know that there's really that much benefit to it. I mean, unless you're the first team that plays the guy who's being called up, you're going to be able to scout him in the majors. And even if you're the second team that plays him, you're still going to at least be able to look at tape and see what he does. And the odds are that if you're the first guy to see him, that you're not going to be, that he's not going to have a full-time role right away unless he's a super prospect who's being

brought up to play full-time immediately, in which case you probably have pretty good scouting reports on what his strengths are and maybe even what his tendencies are. So it just feels to me like I know that the answer to all of these things is always, yeah, well, a win

is so valuable and the investment would be so cheap. Why not just do everything? If one win is $5 million, then this is worth one run. It's worth it. Yeah. Exactly. And to me, this feels like a little bit of a stretch to get there. So I do think somebody pointed out that somebody else wrote in and said, I don't know, something about how there's really no value in winning in the minors.

And I don't think you were saying that there was. That's not why you were suggesting that they have advanced scouts. But it is actually an interesting point. There are organizations that do value winning in the minors. Not all organizations do, but some do. They want to have winning teams from short season ball on up so that the players become accustomed to winning and think of the game as being about winning. And so, in fact, it might actually, to some organizational philosophies, it would actually be valuable if it helped you win those sort of games that we consider meaningless. you keep affiliates maybe if you're your minor league teams are winning and you have an affiliate that's close to your major league team and you you want to strengthen that relationship it always

helps to have a winning team down there and uh players performing well so that's all right put all of these things together and i say it's it's worth worth investing a little bit into and i say it's not all right so uh richard says, should the Yankees overwork Mariano Rivera in the stretch run, assuming that he's retiring at the end of the season? Goodness gracious. I hope we are assuming that. That would be, this would be like Jimmy Kimmel's greatest hoax yet. Well, there was some talk recently that Girardi was going to talk to him and try to talk him out of it. Ah, okay.

Well, since they know he won't be playing baseball next year, they have no fear of doing long-term damage to his arm as they trot him out night after night through September, potentially the postseason. What do you think? Sure, if the only risk is long-term damage. But if the risk is short-term ineffectiveness also, then it could backfire. I mean, I don't know. I don't know that he can do that physically.

I don't know whether it's clearly they have managed his workload much more in the last several years trying to keep him healthy throughout the season. And I don't know, even looking at it on a short-term basis, I don't know that he can go two innings regularly. He hasn't. He did that recently, or Girardi tried to do that with him. What was it? Like, it was one of the Boston games this past weekend. Yeah, it was Sunday.

Yeah, and he gave up a home run in the ninth and blew a save, and that was the game that the Yankees won on a wild pitch or something. And that was the first time he had had a two-inning save opportunity in the playoffs, even in three years or something, and in the regular season, I think since, I don't even remember what it was, 2006 or something that surprised me. So I don't know that he physically can do that now. I don't even know whether it's just his long-term health that you'd take into consideration. Would he even be Mariano Rivera if he's being asked to pitch that much?

Yeah, I think in the Vennenn diagram there's probably a big overlap between the things that make you ineffective in circle and the things that risk your long-term health circle like that that's probably a lot of overlap but not entirely and i would say that presuming he's sort of consents to this and i assume he would uh yeah i think he certainly would probably feel a lot less guilt about it i mean i i a couple of years ago, I was playing soccer, and like I broke my toe or something. Like a guy kicked my foot as I was kicking, and, you know, it hurt my toe really bad. And I went to the doctor, and the doctor was just like, yeah, you're like a grown-up. You're just going to like – it will just hurt for the rest of your life.

What do I care? You know, like when you're not a professional athlete, uh, your body doesn't matter anymore. And, uh, so she just, you know, basically sent me on my way and, uh, my toe still hurts every once in a while. Um, but yeah, I mean, when you're, if once he's retired, I mean, what things that we think of as being really serious and like big deals and, you know, like, oh, my gosh, like you were almost crying when Matt Harvey hurt his elbow that one night. Take away the baseball playing aspect of it. And it becomes like extremely low stakes. And Mariano Rivera will never know that he has, I don't think, that he has a bad elbow if he gets a bad elbow in a couple

years. I don't think, at least. But, yeah, it's possible that they are doing that a little bit, too. I mean, the two-inning save might not have been a coincidence. I think it was a four-out save he had tonight. Yeah, and Robertson may have been unavailable that day or something. Yeah, he was. have been unavailable that day or something. He was. Yeah, he was. That's part of it.

So, yeah, if you don't have your eighth inning guy who's just as good as Rivera at this point, then sure, try Rivera. Maybe better than moving the seventh and the guy to the eighth or whatever. Yeah. All right. These two questions are somewhat related. Jeff asks, oh, geez, I forgot my answer. Dang it. I don't remember my answer.

I had an answer and now I don't remember it. This is a bummer. Jeff asks, what is your favorite instance of a seldom used rule being applied? This came to mind after he read about the, you saw the minor leaguer who got one pitch strikeout? Yeah. Because the batter was stepping out of the box and arguing, so the umpire just assigned him strikes. So that's what brought it to mind. So that's what Jeff asked.

And then Chris asked, gentlemen, is it illegal to throw a glove at a ball? So I will first answer that one because this might be your answer. This is a really – this would have been a good answer. It is illegal to throw a glove at a ball. The rules are interesting. The reason I'm answering this is because the rules are so quirky. If you deliberately touch a fair ball with your cap, mask, or any part of your uniform detached from its proper place on your person, then it's a three base penalty. If you throw your glove at a ball, a fair ball, it's a three base penalty. But then here's the twist. If you deliberately touch a thrown ball with your cap mask or part of your uniform detached

from its proper place, it's only two bases. So if it's a batted ball, three bases. If it's a thrown ball, two bases. Same if you deliberately throw your glove at a thrown ball. So that's two bases as well. So that's a good – in fact, the correct answer to this from my perspective might actually be that when I was a kid, I believe a teammate of mine was actually called for this because he scooped up a ball with his mask. And it was just like, I don't know, it was like a squibber in front of home plate or something like that.

And it died. And so he went out there and sort of nonchalantly just scooped it up with his mask because he's so cool. And the umpire, if I'm remembering this at at all right the umpire called him for it and so this was like coaches would tell you this constantly for like the next five years coaches were always telling us about how this is illegal because we all remember that time that it happened once i think i i think i wrote a thing about that when i I was with the Yankees, one of the things that I did was I wrote these memos for coaches and I guess minor league coaches also

about little known rules, which I've mostly forgotten by now. And I just kind of come up with a scenario where this thing could happen and go through the penalties and what the person should have done. I don't even know if they got sent out to anyone or if anyone read them. But I think I did one on the catcher's mask thing.

Was it assigned? Yeah. Was this assigned to you? Yeah, it wasn't just me. Just here you go, guys. Yeah, no. I was so desperate to write something that I just started writing memos to everyone. No.

No, I was so desperate to write something that I just started writing memos to everyone. No. Yeah, so I think I did one on that, on the catcher scooping with the mask thing. My very favorite weird rule that nobody knows about is that it is considered a balk if a – no, it's not considered a balk. Sorry, let me rephrase that. If a manager or anybody on the opposing team calls timeout with the purpose of trying to get the pitcher to balk, there's some penalty, like it's a ball, I think. Or no, no, no, I think he's ejected. I think that it is an automatic ejection if you call timeout with the sole purpose of trying to trick the pitcher into balking. And that's such a weird rule that

Jason Wojcicki pointed out that this is where he wishes baseball was like the law, the legal system, where you could then look up to see when or if it was ever enforced. Because that call might have been enforced at some point. I'm sure it was enforced once if it's in the rule book. And yet nobody has any way of knowing. It's like virtually impossible to look up. I wouldn't even know how to look it up and I doubt baseball has any record of it. So that's my favorite weird rule.

Do you have a weird rule? Nope. you literally wrote the memo yeah i guess i did i don't know i got nothing all right uh let's see uh daniel asks i had a couple questions about the implementation of field effects data into gameplay do you think we'll see more extreme shifting than teams like the Rays and Pirates are doing currently? I'm not talking about the frequency of shifting, but rather putting six or seven guys on one side of the field for dead pole hitters, something like that. And this is a good question.

Because for all the talk that we've heard about how shifts are increasing, we're essentially still seeing the same, close to the same shift that has been in place since Ted Williams. So it's not, I mean, there has not really been a revolution in shifting so much as, you know, there's been a gradual appreciation of it. But you're not seeing really, really different looks. I mean, the right fielder is, or the second baseman standing out deep

is sort of a little bit new. But do you think that there is room for creativity in baseball beyond that? Or are we sort of just basically stuck with the same basic defense with, you know, one infielder pulled over one way or the other? I think there are variations on that theme i don't know whether there's something so incredibly crazy i mean there's there are only so many things you can do really um yeah i mean if you put i don't know

if you put everyone on one side of the field, I do think that the hitter will adjust to that eventually. There's a point for every hitter. There are certain hitters who are quite willing to drop a bunt I'm going to keep trying to pull the ball over the fence. And no one, no shift can defend against the home run and all that sort of thing. But I think everyone would have a breaking point where if you if you really had a dead pull hitter and you just put everyone over there. I mean, I don't know. We've we've seen Adam Dunn this season start trying to go the other way and kind of beat the shift. And Carlos Pena has done it in the past. And I think if it got so pronounced that, yeah, if it got so pronounced that what Daniel's suggesting became common, I think there would probably be some, some pushback to that. And, and maybe there wouldn't be

a long window where it was actually that effective do you you don't think it's possible that we're just not being creative enough that you and i aren't being imaginative enough uh yeah that's that's possible i i mean i think i mean imagine imagine being the guy who proposed leaving you know 65 feet unattended on the on the other side of the infield. I mean, everybody would have told him, oh, come on, Ted Williams, best hitter alive, he'll just punch it right through there every time.

You couldn't get away with that. Or, oh, I'll just lay down a bunt. Bunting is the easiest thing in the world. How can you not bunt for a hit every time? It would have been laughed out of the, I don't know, wherever you were. That's that it would have been laughed out of the, I don't know, wherever you were. That's where you would have been laughed out of. You would have been laughed out of there and anywhere else you attempted to go. I don't know. I'm sure it will. See, I don't know that field effects would make that possible, though, in a way that it's not possible

now. I mean, I feel like it would enable greater precision. Maybe you could pick an exact spot where someone should be standing or a precise angle where it would be the most effective for somewhere to stand, whereas maybe you wouldn't trust the batted ball data to give you that kind of precision. And so you just would go for a generic alignment for a certain type of hitter. So I could see greater precision and maybe more variation in where exactly people would stand. But I feel like if something really crazy were going to be tried, it could be tried just as well now with the data that we do have, which doesn't mean that it won't happen,

that maybe someone hasn't been creative enough. Yeah, I think that one of the things that would keep some of the more radical shifts from that, like if you try to imagine leaving left field vacant, well, then you're leaving open doubles and probably triples. And I think one of the things that keeps the shift from being consistently beaten by hitters who you know who could just lay down bunts is that you're only getting a single it's not a it's not a high reward it's a you know it's a reward and i i would like to see hitters try more maybe but you're not getting a big reward and if you started leaving places

open in the field where there were doubles and triples available, then I think you maybe would see. And I also think that for a guy like Dunn, it's probably actually pretty easy to hit a fly ball to left field. It's not that easy to hit a grounder to left field. I think that when you go the other way, it sort of creates a little bit of a natural elevation. You're sort of slicing the ball. I don't know.

You're sort of getting it up a little bit. And so I think that sort of limits what you can do with the outfield. I mean, it seems like the most likely thing that you could imagine would be playing five infielders for certain guys or playing four outfielders for certain guys. And if you had five infielders, you could still cover a lot of ground with two speedy outfielders for certain guys. If you had five infielders, you could still cover a lot of ground with two speedy outfielders. You could cut down a lot of singles. But you're basically taking out a bunch of singles and risking a bunch of doubles and triples. It's probably not worth it for that reason. I guess a't know if you could i mean a three i guess a three man it does seem like maybe better than i don't know maybe better than the shift would be a four man outfield but you know the ball's in the air for so long most fly balls get caught as it is if it doesn't go

out of the park the overwhelming majority of fly balls get caught anyway so maybe that's not worth it either someone that has been done a couple times that the two outfielders uh thing has been tried a couple times at least this season someone posted in our facebook group uh ben from texas posted that the astros did that uh it was like a really crucial time it was bases loaded bottom of the ninth tie game. Yeah, Socia does that about four times a year, but only with the runner on third and less than two outs in a walk-off situation.

Yeah, and a couple other people commented that the Brewers have done it too. They've been pretty aggressive with shifts. Renneke. Yeah, I thought... Socia guy. I thought Daniel, he asked a couple other questions that I thought were kind of interesting, though. He also asked if shifting helps and if it's important and if more teams are doing it, then does that mean that players who don't have a pronounced batted ball tendency are more valuable?

pronounced batted ball tendency are more valuable. And he also asked whether there would be a drop in the value of individual defense if players are positioned so efficiently that they're maybe asked to cover less ground. I would think with the second one, still probably not. I mean, I don't know. It seems like it's possible, I guess. It seems like good range is something that would help no matter how well you're positioned. But I guess you could cut down kind of on the margins on the value of someone who has incredible range.

incredible range if if you position a fielder so well that that any an average fielder would get to almost every ball then uh presumably that would decrease the value of of an andrelton simmons or someone who gets to everything maybe um and i guess i could kind of see that for the the spray charts thing too a guy who doesn't have a pronounced tendency does he can't be shifted against really because he hits the ball over the field all else being equal maybe you'd rather have that guy maybe you would yeah all right uh eric hartman uh asks uh he brings back up the, maybe my favorite ongoing topic, maybe, the Hot Takes series. The stories that would be hotter today than they were in the pre-internet, pre-Twitter, pre-all of this stuff days. And Eric says, as I sat in synagogue this morning, a historical event that would have launched a thousand hot sports takes hit me. Imagine the reaction today to Sandy Koufax not pitching in game one of the world series judy yom kippur

it'd be pretty wild if you ask me i beg to differ i think less wild today it was wild was it was pretty i think it was wild at the time and i mean at the time uh you know anti-semitism was like kind of just a normal thing right if i'm if i'm understanding madmen correctly uh like there was not a cultural sensitivity like at all i feel like if it happened today uh you know and it and it does occasionally like sean green said i had to decide whether to sit out of a pennant race game i believe uh maybe 10, 12 years ago. And there were some hot takes for sure, but not that hot, not sizzling. And, you know, furthermore... I think there's going to be one this weekend if I'm not...

I think the Mets are playing a doubleheader on Yom Kippur or something. And Josh Satin is Jewish and he has to decide whether he wants to play or something. Yeah, not quite the same. But the other thing about the Kovacs thing, if it happened today, is that Kovacs would have been in line to pitch three games that World Series. Today, whether you start game one, two, or three, you're only in line to start two games. Nobody starts three really except maybe in an extreme extreme circumstance it would probably keep him maybe from being

available out of the bullpen for game seven as we've seen sometimes happen but there's not a big difference between one two and three there might be really no difference between one and two at this point and uh i actually think that like the decision i mean bocce last year started barry zito in this is obviously for non young core reasons but he started barry zito in game one like by choice and uh i don't know that you can do something that would be weirder than that for your team, and yet, you know, not a huge deal, because Game 1 starter is a little bit of an arbitrary thing these days. Right? Game 1 starter, not as big a deal as it used to be. Yeah, I guess not.

Okay. Yeah. All right. Scrolling, scrolling. Where's the one about Justin? alright scrolling scrolling where's the one about Justin somebody asks who's better Justin Upton or Adam Jones I don't know who asked but

somebody asked that it's a simple enough question who's better Ben Justin Upton or Adam Jones Adam Jones yeah I think so too do you think that's... I didn't just look up anything.

That's off the top of my head. But yeah, I think that's my instinct. Is that a new position for you? Well, it probably wouldn't have been different last year, right? Because Upton was worse, I guess, last year. Yeah, but he was having a worse season, but you still thought. I mean, that dude was hotly in demand this offseason. I mean, we thought he was a big deal still, right?

Didn't we? Sure. Yeah. Yeah, potentially is still a big deal still, right? Didn't we? Sure. Yeah. He, yeah, potentially is still a big deal. Um, he's 26 and Jones is 28, but yeah. Um, right now I would probably take, I would probably take Jones. Sure. He's, I mean, he's, he's doubled the value of, of Justin Upton over the last two seasons. He's never had a season, I guess, as good as Upton's 2011. But yeah, sure, Jones for right now. Yeah, I agree.

I think it's also, I would say that for me it's as recent as maybe the last six weeks that I finally tipped over. But yeah, I mean, Jones is basically the same hitter as Upton right now and plays center field instead of right field or left field. And I mean, the age, if we're talking about today, that's one thing. If we're talking about the next three years, you might argue that Upton is heading into the peak years that propelled Adam Jones

to a slightly higher level. So, you know, it's not in his new world, but yeah, I mean, Justin Upton is, um, I think Justin Upton is moving into the, the sort of, I don't know, disappointment zone a little bit. He's, he's, he's no longer young. He's not old by any means. He could still be, uh, he could still be a Hall of Famer, but he's not young. He should have been good this year. That's all. Should have been better. All right.

Last one. Runes, R-O-O-N-S. I was just going to tell you to answer this one. All right. Runes says, I'm a sabermetric centrist. Here's my question. Why hasn't the sabermetric community embraced the quality start more? I can't even find it on Baseball Reference.

And even though it's not a perfect stat, it has to be more tolerable than the win, yet still very palatable to the average fan. Keep up the great work. Wow. I can't believe I read that. Why did you never read a compliment in the history of email shows? I was just sort of in a little bit of a reading zone. People think that no one has ever said anything nice to us in an email because we've never read any of those lines.

You read those lines. I have. Yeah, I guess I have. You love to read those lines. Those are my favorite. Yeah. So the quality start, yeah. You have a spreadsheet of those lines. You just copy them.

Some of them are bolded. Filter them. I've never been a big fan of the quality start. It's kind of like a, I don't know, it's a compromise, I guess, sort of, between the win and something else but there's always that something else so i i don't know i'd rather i'd rather have someone use quality starts i guess it's it's more meaningful i suppose but um i don't know it's like if you want to convince someone that that the win is a bad stat to look at then i don't know. It's like if you want to convince someone that the win is a bad stat to look at, then I don't know, you want to give them the best possible stat

and hope that they will then meet you in the middle or something. Whereas if you suggest the quality start as an alternative, then maybe, I don't alternative then maybe it's not different enough to persuade them that they need to start doing something different. It's just, I don't know, it's not the best thing that you could look at.

Yeah. You remember how Prospectus used to have do we still? It used to have the support neutral record. Yeah, we don't have that on the site anymore but yeah that never caught on did it christina carl used it i think that was that was about it that seemed like uh that seemed like a nice a nice attempt yeah i mean it's intuitive it's it's on the same uh scale as wins everybody knows you know basically what

wins and losses i mean you know it appeals to the same part of your brain that responds to wins and losses. So quality starts, I think that part of the problem is that the quality start has never had a good answer to the sort of most common criticism. I think it's lost the PR battle because everybody at some point says six innings and three runs, that's a 4.5 ERA. That's not really very quality. And rather than point out, well, that's the worst you can be.

That's not all of them. If that were all of them, then that would be a pretty damning indictment. But it's the worst, and it's like saying, well, geez, 324 feet. That's not a very far fly ball. If it's over the fence though, it counts the same. You have a category of things and the quality start, the outer edge of the quality start is not that impressive, but it gets blended together. I think the quality start, it would help if it were, it's just one number. It's like, oh, he has 16 quality starts, but he's not 16 and 12.

If it were quality starts to non-quality starts, I think that it might appeal to people a little bit more. I mean, it doesn't really have any defenders on either side, really. You see it used periodically, but not with any real consistency on either end. I don't know. It's not my favorite thing. I mean, I guess what it's trying to answer is a thing that I don't put too much stock in, which is sort of like the particular distribution of your skill like to me i would much rather know that the guy uh you know produced six warp than that he produced it in a

particularly consistent way which is what quality starts purports to answer it basically is a way of telling you not how good the guy did, but how reliably he was at least okay. That's not really something I ever want to know. The idea behind it is not useful to me. If there is the occasional pitcher who has an ERA that's too low because he got bombed a couple of times, but otherwise he's pretty reliable, I don't know, like an ERA that's too low because he got bombed a couple times, but otherwise he's pretty reliable. You know, I figure that'll smooth out the next year. It's not a particularly relevant piece of data for me.

So I don't know. I just don't know that Quality Start is serving anybody all that much. Yeah. But, I mean, the reason that the sabermetric community hasn't embraced it is just because it's not specific enough. It doesn't really, it doesn't get you the precision

that statistics are generally going for. Agreed. Okay. All right. So that's the end of the show. We'll be back next week. Start sending emails now. Podcast at baseballperspectives.com.

Next week. Wishful thinking. You think we're skipping the next two days? No. What do you mean? You mean we'll be back with another email show next week. Yeah. We'll be back with another email show next week.

But we'll be back tomorrow. We'll be back tomorrow. We'll also be back next week. Yeah. It was a true statement. And the point is simply that we would like you to email us questions. Yes. We like them early so that we can look at them and think about them.

All right. Yes. So we'll be back tomorrow. Did we give them the email address? Podcast at baseballperspectives.com. Yeah. Okay. Don't forget to rate us on iTunes.

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