Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 285: Was the Marlins’ Season a Success?/Finessing Derek Jeter’s Final(?) Season

Episode Date: September 12, 2013

Ben and Sam discuss whether 2013 was a success or failure for the Marlins relative to expectations, then talk about how the Yankees should approach Derek Jeter’s age-40 season.

I'm hidden for the last round of Gonna settle old pain for the last time and ride Morning and welcome to episode 285 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg. Ben, how are you? Very well, thank you. very well thank you you just before you uh press record you sort of said in a kind of tired voice the yankees are one game out of the wild card are you do you do you have an opinion about this do you have a feeling like are you exhausted by the idea because you live in new york you you read the new york uh you read the new york post i. I assume you go to your little bodega every day. No, I get it delivered.

Yeah. No, I'm exhausted just because I'm exhausted, not because I'm not exhausted by the Yankees contending. I'm actually kind of excited about it. I think it's a really fun story. It's not a story that I... I wrote about it for our lineup card thing a few weeks ago about what I'd be watching in September when we did that whole staff thing because it's fun. excited about or to get behind because I understand that they're the Yankees and no one is going to root for them really under any circumstances. There's no Yankees underdog support movement.

But it's just kind of cool, I think, that they have managed to get this close despite everything that they've gone through. And and yes it's because they're spending way more money than everyone else so even when they have a bunch of guys making a ton of money on the dl they still have a ton of guys making a bunch of money still healthy but still the the turnover is pretty pretty incredible i don't remember uh when it's supposed to happen but when I do remember that the appeals process for these suspensions is actually it it goes on a schedule like there is a schedule and it's it's fairly condensed it doesn't go on that long which leads me to think that at some point A-Rod's appeal would come up and and I like the idea that this would happen like between games

four and five of the World Series or something i think the hearing was scheduled to start on september 30th if i remember right i don't know how long that would take but yeah that's that's yeah no so it it's usually you know it's not the the hearing itself doesn't take long and then i i think that the the arbiter has like uh like either a week or three weeks or something like that so that puts us right in the middle of october which means that a ruling would actually happen in the middle of the series and and that's kind of exciting i think that everybody has to root for that although like with uh like when alomar spit in the umpire's face as i recall the suspension came down but it wasn't until the next year.

And so I don't know if there is a precedent for suspending a player in the middle of the postseason. I'm sure Bud would happily do it with A-Rod, but I don't know. I'm not sure there is a precedent for that. There might be, but I don't know. I couldn't tell you what it is. Yeah, there's not a lot of precedent

for a lot of the things that have happened with with a rod this year so that would be just the perfect cap to how everything's gone for the last couple months what's your topic it actually is yankees related um i i want to talk about derek cheater and his final season and how it should be handled. Alright. His final season. You know when his final season is? No. Okay. Not with

certainty. I'm assuming that next season will be his final season. Alright. My topic is the Marlins. And I think I'm going to start tonight. Is that okay? Sure.

So, Jose Fernandez pitched tonight. It was his last outing of the year. He lowered his ERA to 2.19. He has the second-best ERA plus ever for a starting pitcher, or really any pitcher of substantial innings, at age 20 or younger. He's a phenom. It's been amazing to watch. And just for fun, I will note that, and I will note this only to demonstrate how incredibly fast things change, not because I'm intending to embarrass anybody, because that's not how

this works, but just 18 months ago or so in his preseason top 11 for the Marlins, Kevin Goldstein referred to Fernandez as, in a perfect world, a number three with the upside maybe of a number two. So things change incredibly fast, and Jose Fernandez was a great part of baseball this year. So my question, though, is not specifically about Fernandez. It's about the Marlins. And I want to know whether you think that this year, from April 1st on, so acknowledging that they had a bananas offseason, but from April 1st on, was this year a success for them, a roaring success, or an unmitigated failure or something in the middle. And just to do a little bit of, I will give you one fact, they're on pace to win 60 games. I don't know if that matters to you or not.

And I might know other facts. If you need other facts, I might know them. Well, I certainly wouldn't call it a roaring success. They are not the worst team in baseball. They're not really that close to being the worst team in baseball. I guess they're going to finish comfortably ahead of Houston. Yeah, about five games ahead of Houston. Yeah.

But you don't care about that, right? That's not... No, no. I mean, I guess in the sense that they have called up a lot of promising players and some of those players have played okay, that's a positive thing. That sounds really disappointing. I mean, if that's a positive thing. That sounds really disappointing.

I mean, if that's it, if that's where you are, some of the players they've called up have done okay. Yeah. And I'm not trying to make a joke of that. I mean, really, like, I'm trying to imagine what a success, because clearly they weren't going to win any sort of significant number of games. So we're not going to judge them based on how many wins they get um so what would have what would have constituted a success and what would not have uh in your in your mind and and i if you want i

can i i think that i think it probably is a success although i'm not sure that it is because i i've got i've been i've gone back and forth about eight times on this well um there's there's a there's a core right you can see a core there that could potentially more yeah more or less before everyone could on March 30th, 31st, though? I'd say probably more. But, yeah, I don't know. I don't know that the expectations are that much higher now. I mean, clearly we knew that they acquired some talent in their fire sale process. So it's not that surprising that some of it has appeared and kind of panned out. I mean, I don't know. It is kind of hard for me to think of what would have qualified as a success.

Yeah, well, one thing, for instance, one thing might've been if Jose Fernandez had turned out to be the second best 20 year old pitcher of all time. Yeah. Like that, that's a thing that alone. Yeah, sure. That's so that, that, that actually did happen. So that's like, that's one thing that would be a big success. And you know, if, uh, if he'd been, if he'd had a, you know, a labrum tear, that would have been a failure. been a failure, or at least a part of a failure. So I think the Fernandez thing is obviously great. I think that Giancarlo Stanton having a little bit of a regression is bad. Generally speaking, Stanton is both less valuable as a trade chip or chit, whichever you prefer,

now than he was a year ago, both because of the wasted year of service time and the fact that he wasn't as good this year. So in that sense, it was a disappointment. On the other hand, somehow Stanton didn't end up getting walked nearly as much as we thought he would. I don't know if that's a plus or a minus, but he didn't have to go through the year that I think some people feared he was going to go through and that some people sort of wondered what that was going to do to his development. Because, you know, he got pitched around, but it was not a historical pitching around. We were some of those people.

We were some of those people we were some of those people and you probably didn't see this you were probably sleeping or something but uh i just tweeted about an hour ago that he is tied for fourth on the team in intentional walks uh behind team leader greg dobbs and uh number two jeff mathis uh and and uh tied for fourth um Donovan Solano. Fun fact. All of those people have fewer plate appearances than him, too. Those three plus Logan Morrison, who's also tied for second, all have fewer plate appearances than him. There's some batting eighth in there, but yeah, even so.

There is, yes, there is clearly, but not for Dobbs. There's not batting eighth for Dobbs. Well, you don't want to let Dobbs beat you. No, he's the guy that you identify. Yes. So, Jacob Turner, good year by some measures. Kind of a disappointing year by some measures. Good ERA, held it together, bad peripherals.

Logan Morrison, a bit of a bounce back year. Looks like a credible major leaguer where a year ago, I don't think I would have said that. And he also managed to not get anybody, you know, super mad at him this year, which is not insignificant. I mean, a year without getting people super mad at you, that's positive momentum. A of all.

Yeah, A of all is. Well, I was going to get to that because basically if you look at their lineup uh their their players their position players i would say that one thing that makes this a disappointing year is that they did not really have a single revelation there is not one player in their lineup uh young or old where you look at him and go oh wow he's better than we thought he was you know like like oh he turned out to be, you know, kind of a pretty good ball player. And I don't know if the Astros have that, but at various points in the season, I felt that way about various Astros.

I don't feel that way about a single member of the Marlins lineup. I mean, you know, Jelic is good, but we knew Jelic was going to be good. And everybody else basically sucks and sucks as bad as you thought or worse. And Echavarria is, you know, that's, I would say that's a pretty troubling line that you have there. So there's no real revelations there. I feel like that's probably what I would have expected for him. Or, I mean, maybe not quite that bad but i i had no no expectations for him sure you just you go into a rebuilding year though and you've got a you know a wide open roster you've got a lot of young guys you expect

two or three of them to turn out to be like league average hitters and i don't think there is any of that on the marlins maybe maybe marcelllo zuna probably marcello zuna but otherwise i mean this is a really really ugly collection of of batters and nobody emerged from it you you just expect something to you know to climb out of the slop and turn into you know into something that can walk and that just didn't happen Eovaldi is that. I would say that that's a success. That's like the one guy that I feel like kind of emerged and you look at and you go, that's a useful piece that you didn't know they had and now you do. I would say that's a success.

Here's where I think the big success is. The big success is that their attendance this year is essentially right in line with 2011 and 2010. It's essentially right in line with where the Indians and the A's are right now. And those are miserable numbers. I think they're going to be probably second lowest in baseball probably this year. But I really thought that they had scorched the earth so bad that they were going to see a complete disappearance of their fan base. I thought they had ruined baseball for Miami for a long time. And what they've actually done is just sort of refound their pathetic level, which suggests that where I had feared that they had permanently turned most of Miami against him.

It has actually revealed that there is a not good, but at least decent portion of Miami that will always be with them. There is nothing they can do that will make those 1,404,698 people turn away from them. And to me, that's actually significant. It gives me some hope that they can at least maintain their pathetic market share going forward and not watch it completely whittle away. So that's what I would say is a success.

Between Fernandez and the attendance being almost credible, I would say a successful a success that between Fernandez and the uh the attendance being almost credible I would say successful season okay I'll buy that incredibly low expectations that that they surpassed I guess but but yeah sure um would would you be if you if you were a a young Marlins fan who maybe came of age when they won one of their World Series and developed some loyalty to them, do you think that you would go to Marlins games now? No, I don't. But I think if I were 14 or younger, I would. I think if I were 14 or younger, I'd be a Marlins fan going forward. Yeah. All right.

Is that it? Yeah, pretty much. Okay. So Derek Jeter is done for the year officially now. We talked earlier in the season when we did that show on player options about what he would do financially. He has an $8 million player

option with a $3 million buyout. At the time, we speculated that maybe he would get around that somehow, go for some other sort of deal, get a little extra on that, work out something with the Yankees. Seems now like probably not.

Probably he will just exercise that option, you know, because there's not much of a case to be made that he deserves more than that or has played, you know, a salary that's commensurate with more than that uh there's there certainly wouldn't be a lot of public sympathy i don't think if you were to try to do that um i i i by the way i i see some places it's 9.5 million in some places it's eight more often i see 9.5 oh okay i was just looking at baseball reference. Okay. So yeah, right. Our, our, our pal Andy McCullough says it's 9.5. So it's 9.5. So let's just say that he accepts that there were, there were, there was a hot take from Heyman saying that he should just retire and stuff about his legacy and he doesn't need to prove anything and 40-year-old shortstop's not having much of a track record of success. And generally I don't do the so-and-so should retire thing because I'm perfectly happy to have people continue to play baseball

if that's what they want to do. I don't think Derek Jeter is in any danger of damaging his legacy considerably. So say he comes back and his quotes this night before we started recording suggest that he will be back or he certainly isn't thinking about retirement and he sort of bristled when people brought it up. Cashman said, I have not watched his last game. No one has. Of course, they've both kind of said more optimistic things about this season than turned out to happen. But say he comes back, he exercises the option. What do the Yankees do with him? I think it's kind of an interesting case. And I think the obvious parallel would be to Jorge Posada, who came into his final season in 2011. to catch he wanted to keep doing what he had always done and he just got marginalized basically

the the team signed russell martin uh pesada caught like one game i think that entire season and as the season went on he played less and less he became a platoon dh and then basically was benched in september and just kind of of got into a game here and there. Batted eighth that one time or ninth. Yeah, there was that, right. His wife got all mad. Yeah, right. He was penciled in ninth, and then he said he was hurt

and needed the day off, and Cashman held a press conference or told reporters that he wasn't hurt during that game, and there was, yeah And there was some discomfort, some sort of animosity about that. But overall, it doesn't seem like his legacy with the team was damaged. He's not feuding with the team. Maybe there are some hard feelings, but nothing notable came of it, really. He was just a player who was, you know, a Yankees great and beloved by the fans and everything. But basically they got away with just marginalizing him for that last year with no real consequences.

They just kind of stashed him where he could do the least damage or where he could help a little bit. So there's kind of a parallel here as Jeter enters his age 40 season. You can't go into this season expecting him to play shortstop every day, I don't think. You completely can. You could. I don't think they you you completely can you you could like it's actually not that unrealistic relative to you know like what we've been saying about Derek Jeter for the last 16 years I mean can you imagine in 1999 saying that he was going to be the starting shortstop in 2012 no uh but i think i don't know i think i think having experienced this season i i find it unlikely that the yankees would would go into 2014

expecting that i mean they went into 2013 expecting that and spent the whole season waiting for him to come back and just just because it's it's too hard to replace a shortstop is that it i mean if if you if they knew he was going to be healthy for 150 games do you think that they would hesitate to do it if they knew he would be healthy and and at least marginally productive offensively i think they would probably leave him there. Well, yeah, I mean, presumably he's going to play regardless. If they sign him, he's playing, right? I mean, there's a scenario where he's not, but basically he's playing. He could have probably a 630 OPS in his usual defense,

and he would still make it to the end of the season playing every day. his usual defense, and he would still make it to the end of the season playing every day. Yeah, but it seems sort of unlikely that he would be able to play every day, or at least it's not safe to expect that. So do you go into the season, and probably they're working under the assumption that A-Rod won't be playing next season. Or obviously they'll know one way or another before they have to make any decisions about this. So let's assume that A-Rod is not playing. Maybe his suspension is reduced to just 2014 and he misses the year.

And then Teixeira is back and plays first. You could put Jeter at dh right and maybe that's what you kind of maybe that's what you do maybe you just pencil him into the dh slot and uh i i i feel like there there wouldn't be any why not yeah there wouldn't be any... Why not? Yeah. There wouldn't be any... Why not third, Ben? Why not third? A friend of mine asked me whether I thought there was any chance that that would happen. I feel like the Derek Jeter switching positions ship has sailed at this point. Yeah, it's a different thing now.

I mean, Cal Ripken played third for Pete's sake. Yeah. Yeah, so third is. And that's where shortstops go. Yeah, I guess. I feel like shortstops who are 40 and can't even stay on the field, maybe they just go straight to DH. I don't know.

Can you really trust him to play any position in the field and give you a full year there? It seems... I don't know. I guess I don't think that playing the field... I don't generally think that playing the field significantly increases his injury risk maybe you think it does yeah i think so i mean it's it significantly increases the cost of replacing him when he goes down like to me that's the significance is not how much more likely it

makes him to get hurt as to how much more likely it makes you to be with a total zero when he does. I don't know. I think the move would be to just go to him at some point this winter and say, thanks for all of your fine service. They did this once before, right? Cashman went to him several years ago over an offseason and told him that they thought his defense had slipped and he needed to to renew his commitment to that so maybe this time and he was he was receptive to that and and and was okay with it he wasn't

insulted or anything so say cashman goes to him again and says uh we still think you're an important part of the team. We want you playing every day, but you're 40. The list of shortstops who have played a full season at 40 is, you know, you can count it on one hand, probably less than all of the fingers on that hand. And given how this season has gone, maybe he's okay with that. Maybe he's not completely okay with it, but he goes along with it anyway, because how can he really argue at this point that the best move for the team would be for him to be expected to be the everyday shortstop? And then you just sign someone and put him at DH

and hopefully you get something out of him offensively. But if you don't, it's not a big deal. And if he can't play, it's not that big a deal either. And there are some shortstops available. I mean, if there's money to spend, you could, you could go get Johnny Peralta if you want to, maybe you can get him on a one-year deal or something coming off the suspension. Uh, Steven drew is a free agent, competent people, nothing exciting, but, um, you know, maybe you, you pair one of those guys like, uh, a Peralta with, with Brendan Ryan as kind of a defensive sub you bring him back and and that could be a that could be a decent solution and and it's uh it doesn't seem like the sort of thing where the fans would be outraged that that Jeter is being treated this way by the

team in his last season having seen uh I think a lot of fans understand that he was not the greatest shortstop when he was healthy. And having seen him struggle this year, I feel like the support would probably be behind the team. There wouldn't be any people canceling their season tickets in protest. I'll be honest. I think, I mean, I would have moved, I would have done anything I could to move Jeter off the position 10 years ago. But if you start with the premise that they were happy to have him there for the last nine years, if that's the starting point, I say just keep him at short. I really think that, sure, there's a possibility it turns out disastrous. And again, I mean, yes, I would love to have Jeter taken off shortstop, but my position hasn't changed on that.

You're asking me now to pretend that I'm changing my position. And I just feel like Jeter is – the comp for Jeter might be Mariano Rivera, which is essentially the dude was elite for a very long time for you. He misses a year for injury, but he's not 50. He's, you know, he's, he's, he's going to be 40, but you know, that's not an absurdly, uh, old age. He was very good last year as a hitter. Um, and you know, my, I think that with Jeter, you sort of maybe owe it to him to presume that he's going to come back at something close to his normal level. I think there were people who doubted whether Rivera was going to be able to come back this year. But I felt kind of like he'd earned that too.

And he did and he came back and he was great. I mean, Jeter's going to be bad at shortstop there's no doubt about it but i don't know that he's necessarily going to be any worse than he has been and um you know i i i guess he just sort of gamble and go with it i mean the thing about cheater and the cheater posada comparison is like you know sometimes you hear a fun fact where it's like this guy leads leads the league in OPS and the gap between him and number two is as big as the gap between number two and number 75? To me, the gap between Jeter and Pesada as like Yankee icon or as like writes his own ticket kind of guy is like bigger between him and the next guy as like you know the next guy in last place i mean jeter is a whole other universe in kind of yankee iconography and so i don't know

that the comparison necessarily works i i think that uh it's possible that jeter takes a demotion real well and that you can marginalize them and bat a mate and everything goes quietly but it's also possible that it ends up just being really ugly and if i was i don't know i mean i guess maybe the yankees have like an appetite for ugliness that that i don't have in my life maybe they're fine with it i mean they seem to have just sort of rolled with the a-rod stuff in a way that you know me as a person who hates conflict and tries to avoid it at all costs, I could never handle. So maybe they'd be fine with pissing Jeter off and having an ugly year and having him walk out saying bad things about him. And then figure out three years from now we'll bring him back into the fold and everything will be happy like Bernie Williams. I don't know, though. To me, it just feels like, yeah, just give him a shot.

Whatever. I can't go along with you there. I don't think it's so crippling if it doesn't work out because you can't sign Johnny Peralta unless you want to sign him to play third as insurance

why not? you probably should so that's not a bad solution sign him to play third and if Jeter can't play you can always put him at short and pair him with Ryan so that maybe that's a compromise. But I don't know. I don't think I don't think Jeter deserves the opportunity to do whatever he wants. It seems to me like the odds were much higher that Rivera would return at an elite level or an effective level, at least, than they are for Jeter. And I feel like 2013 was the year when Jeter earned that shot, right? I mean, he, like Rivera, came off a pretty serious injury that ended his 2012 and was was given a shot to just start on

opening day as if nothing had happened uh so i feel like this was the year when you you gave him that because of who he is and now now he doesn't get another shot at that i don't think um interesting interesting use of my own words against me. I don't know that I have a good argument against that. What I do have is if, and I know defensive stats over 17 games are basically worthless, but prorated over the Christmas season,

defensive run saved has them at minus 49. Yes. Which I would believe, right? I mean, not because of the small sample or and what that says. But like, if you asked me what I, what I actually thought his true talent was this year, on a on a sore ankle with, with weak muscles that he couldn't work out because of the ankle at age 39. That's, that that might be about what if he had somehow hobbled out to the position every day that's probably about what i what i think he would have done

um yeah ucr 46 over 150 games it would have been um and i guess probably similar with our stats so uh okay yeah so so that's that's my position that you you kind of you don't count on him you maybe sort of passata him and hope for for something more than that but i like the i like the sign of peralta and you're covered either way option yeah it would be more fun if you signed like Michael Young to play third and then if Cheater failed, you had Michael Young play short. I think that that would be the most fun. Yeah, all right. Okay, so that's all I have to say about that.

Okie doke. See you tomorrow. All right.