Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 293: Manny Machado’s Historical Comps/Ranking Playoff Rotations

Episode Date: September 24, 2013

Ben and Sam discuss Manny Machado’s injury and season, then talk about playoff rotations.

playoffs don't talk about playoffs you kidding me good morning and welcome to episode 293 of effectively wild the daily podcast from baseball prospectus i am ben lindberg joined by sam miller hello goodness gracious ben what you sound you sound sadder than usual yeah seriously everybody go back rewind re-listen to that intro and see if you don't notice that Ben sounds really just crushed by the news of Manny Machado and CeCe Sabathia's season's ending. I was actually just thinking about my reaction to Machado as opposed to my reaction to Harvey and how it is.

Yes, that is what we're talking about. It's not quite the same level of depression, I feel like, just because the season is essentially over and you'd like to think that it's the sort of thing that won't, won't continue into next season. Although it could be. Um,

I thought, I thought that the, um, I thought that Roy Halladay start was more like the Matt Harvey experience for me. So Matt Harvey's, um, Matt Hart,

Roy Halladay start today was like profoundly sad. I thought. Yeah. But that's, that's kind of been going on all year that's just it has been yeah yeah which maybe makes it even worse that topped out at 83 yeah yeah it does it does kind of have the uh i guess it has in common with harvey as a in addition to the fact that it's an exciting, promising young player,

is the fact that it was so sudden and unpredictable and there was no real cause for it. It was just a completely innocuous play. He wasn't even running hard. He just kind of landed on the bag the wrong way um that can just happen at any time to even a a young player um who's been healthy and so that's yeah that that part is kind of depressing but hopefully it it won't linger as long uh maybe harvey's won't linger as long as we initially thought it would yeah i'm actually kind of excited by the idea that harvey might be in the arizona fall league

um like i don't if he is maybe he'll i don't know who knows whether he'll be airing it out and maybe he'll be you know just working himself back into you know into shape or or. But I like when elite pitchers get to face non-elite hitters or vice versa. I like it when Manny Ramirez does a rehab in Rancho Cucamonga at the peak of his fame. And I don't think there's enough of that. So I'm kind of excited to think that he might be pitching against... I mean, it's good prospects, but I don't know. It'd be fun to see.

Are you going to see it? Yeah, I was going to ask, are you going to be out there at all? No. OK, I will see probably like a handful of Carson Sestoli gifts is what I will see. I think I'll be out there for the very beginning of the AFL. So maybe I'll see something. OK, so what's your what's your topic actually it is uh manny machado of all things okay and mine i was gonna say ranking playoff rotations but then it occurred to me that maybe we should draft the playoff rotations. It's not a, it's not a draft that, that we can have someone keep track of for

us and check back unless it, unless no, not, we can't really do that. We can't really do that. But, but we can talk about which ones we would, we would rather have where we would rank them. Do you want to, do you want to go first since we were just talking about Machado? Sure, sure, sure. So I'm going to just for the – we don't know the severity of the injury. And for the sake of this conversation, let's just be optimistic and go forward with the presumption that he'll be back for opening day next year and that this won't be anything that derails his career or anything like that.

And so I just wanted to review his season now that it's over. We've talked about Machado at various points. In fact, I think last year when they brought him up, we talked about him, and we talked about him when he was kind of just really starting to get supercharged in May or so. And I think we've both written about him this year. And Machado had this incredible stretch where he was playing at a Trout level as a 20-year-old and was on something like Trout's war pace for a while. And then he kind of had a pretty lackluster offensive second half.

And so you could very easily, if you wanted to, focus on the second half and say, oh, well, the league figured him out and he's not that good a hitter yet, but he's a great defender. But I just wanted to review it in whole and figure out who kind of his precedents are and historically what his season means. So I'll just go a couple quick queries. There have been 148 players in history, or I guess I think I did since 1945.

No, I didn't. It was in history. Who had like 400 played appearances at second, third, or short in an age 21 or younger season. Machado is 20, but I wanted a bigger pool. And he's at about the 65th percentile for OPS plus by that measure. He's 21, but you mean age 20 season. Yeah, exactly. So he's at about the 65th percentile for OPS Plus as well as for Offensive War. If you limit it just to 20-year-old seasons, you're down to 35 seasons that fit the bill, and he's 15th out of the 35. So that's a little lower than 65th percentile, but it's like 60th percentile. He he's above average and just uh

to give you a comparison he basically his age 20 season offensively looks very similar to starlin castro's age 20 season uh offensively uh castro was at shortstop he was at third but of course he was a much better third baseman and so uh he out he out wins uh castro and most of those other hitters because um of his defense and so you're when you start looking at at his war he basically moves up into the elite level uh sixth out of 148 for 21 and under and and second out of um 35 for for age 20 exactly and um so that's that's the quick stuff. But I went looking for the sort of four, the very most comparable seasons as his. And I think that I found them.

I think that these are the four most comparable. And again, we're looking at second, third, and shortstop. We're basically looking at players who had an offensive performance that was similar to his as well as a total value that was above average. I said above average is the bar, though he's well above average. And all these seasons are well above average, though none as high as his. So the four that I think are most comparable are Bill Mazeroski, who you can look at 20 or 21. His age 21 season is more similar. In fact, his batting line is almost identical.

Machado hit 282, 313, 431. And Mazeroski hit 275, 308, 439. So basically five points less on average in OVP and 10 points higher in slugging was Mazeroski. Adjusted for league, they're basically the same. Mazeroski hit 19 homers. That must have been like his best slugging season ever, right? Because he wasn't much of a power hitter. Well, Ben, maybe you should just give away all the innings. Okay. All right. so he hit more home runs than machado but fewer doubles um and of course he was also an elite defender though at second base and his his age 20 season was also extremely similar his line in that season was 283 318 407 so almost identical

average in obp and like 20 points less slugging. And that year he had eight home runs but had 42 extra base hits. So some pop. So Mazeroski's won. Number two is Buddy Bell, whose age 20 season would actually fit, except he was still an outfielder at the time, so he didn't get swept up in this net. But his age 21 season, he hit.268,.325,.393, similar with a little less pop, but 100 OPS plus.

Machado was 99. And also was rated as a very good defensive player at third. 14 homers, same as Machado. Of course, fewer doubles. The third season that reminds me of it is is adrian beltre's age 20 season 102 ops plus um this is kind of i don't know if you remember this but beltre at 20 was like incredibly patient like i don't think of beltre as a patient guy or he's always been kind of in my head a low obp slugger for what he is. But he had a.275 batting average,.352 OBP,.428 slugging, 15 homers,

102 OPS plus, great defense. So the last one is Robin Yount. I can't decide whether I think Yount is the best comp or the worst of the four, but also a slightly below average hitter. He was playing shortstop at the time, didn't have the pop that Machado had, although Machado doesn't have a lot of home run pop relative to some of the other stars in the game. So those are four names. You could include Lou Whitaker, Robbie Alomar, Mike Caruso as middle infielder types, but for various reasons I tossed them out,

even though they have kind of surfacy value-related similarities. But you're talking about a Hall of Famer in Mazeroski who doesn't belong in the Hall of Fame probably. And the thing that's sort of useful about Mazeroski is that if you imagine looking at Mazeroski through the lens that we might, it would in a lot of ways look very similar to Machado. There would be sort of concerns about his bat and his approach, particularly his approach. You would be intrigued by the power.

You would think maybe he might grow into a little more power or something like that. intrigued by the power. You would think maybe he might grow into a little more power or something like that. But really, you would be thinking, well, you know, his overall warp is so defense dependent. And, you know, we all know about one year of defensive metrics. And you might be thinking, well, it's either going to regress or he himself will lose some of that defensive value. And in fact, Mazeroski just kept being an amazing defender for the rest of his career. And it carried him all the way to the hall of fame so you're right that that is his best slugging season he never really got better as a hitter but he didn't he also didn't really get worse uh considerably worse um he got a little

worse but you know he basically was a below average but not terrible hitter for most of his career and then the last like five years he was pretty terrible um but you know he basically kept doing what he was doing and um if machado kept doing what he's doing it would probably be disappointing to some but uh you know it's it's a close to a hall of fame career what he would what that would be for him. This would be a pretty unusual trajectory, though, to have your big power year at age 21 and then last to age 35 but never hit for that much power again. Yeah. Seems unusual. Probably is somewhat unusual, but probably not as unusual as you think.

Yeah, nothing is. I bet a lot of guys have their best power year when they're 21. They're just in AA. I mean, one of the things that makes it hard to search for comps is that very few players are playing regularly at age 20. No matter how good they are, that's why I brought in 21, but even 21, if you're drafted

out of college, you're not in the big leagues of 21 either. So there's a lot of seasons in AA that would be similar to Machado that we don't ever get to find out about uh so bell never developed really much power either but became a very kind of good hitter um with a kind of i don't know he became a he was a batting average hitter for most of his career developed into a little bit of a walks hitter and also was an elite defender for most of his career at third base um and a bell not a hall of famer but probably should be um certainly better than mazaroski arguably better

than craig biggio um and uh you know would be one heck of a career for machado uh beltray in a lot of ways uh you could find similarities between them. They were both elite prospects. They both debuted at 19 with, you know, like half seasons. They both had things about their rookie seasons at age 20 that were not rookie, but first full season at age 20 that were incredibly thrilling. And, you know, both were graded out as elite defenders. And Beltre kept that for his entire career and probably, I would say, should be a Hall of Famer

and I would guess probably will be a Hall of Famer. And then Yount is a weird trajectory and I don't even know what to draw about him but basically held on as a near average hitter, and then he peaked in his mid-20s, mid to late 20s, and kept that level for an exceptionally long time. So this is not a particularly instructive way of doing analysis, but it's a way that I like to, to sort of shrink the sample actually as small as possible. And I don't know, do you have one of those that you think is particularly

kind of interesting or optimistic or pessimistic for Machado? I guess I like the Beltre comp. I don't know. I mean, he's the most recent, and they've kind of been grouped together even in the present season, which is kind of strange because we're talking about Beltre's age 20 season, and he and Machado have been kind of lumped together at times this season as maybe the best defensive third baseman in the American League and maybe among the best at the position, period, even though Beltre is now 34, but is still in that discussion.

So I don't know. I mean, I guess it's an encouraging group of comps if it's two Hall of Famers, maybe three Hall of Famers, maybe four Hall of Fame caliber players. I guess it's a few, because at the beginning of the season, Trout and Harper were kind of in their own tier, it seemed like. And then Machado had that crazy first half and pushed himself into that discussion where it was like you couldn't mention Trout and Harper without someone saying and Machado. Right. And then he had his second half, which maybe bumped him back out of that tier.

But if you look at the full season, I mean, maybe it's silly to look at at a crazy first half or a relatively slumping second half and and you know bump him up or down based on that uh if you look at the if you look at the full season i guess if his comps are hall of famers or neil near hall of fam, then he probably deserves to be mentioned in that group though. I guess not quite the same caliber of, of player. Uh, yeah,

well, that's why I wanted to actually, that's what got me thinking about talking about him tonight is that in my head, the narrative that I was going to talk about was how Machado had fallen out of the trout Harper group and, um, you know, why that happened and how pessimistic we are about him. And then I started like trying to find evidence to support this narrative. And I, I realized that there's

actually not any that, uh, he probably, I mean, you know, I think that at this point, the only reason that we put Harper, um, apart from him is because of the positive baggage that Harper carries from his age 15 season. I mean, Machado's season is more encouraging than Harper's, objectively speaking, right? Yeah, probably. And it's not like Machado is a 16th round pick who just came out of nowhere. I mean, he's Manny Machado. So we're still all in, okay?

Yeah, I think so. All right, okay. Okay, so I have this... I don't want to do a draft unless a winner can be determined. Okay. So we need to figure out either a way to have a winner. The only way that we could do a winner is if we take the players who are in the playoff rotations right now and say which is the best over the next year. We could do that.

I don't want to do that. Okay. I would like to do post-season ERA. Okay. I think I'd rather just not do a draft then, I guess. I don't know. I'm all over that idea. Okay.

Yeah, because post-season ERA will not tell us who was who is right um okay so then we can just talk about uh which ones we like best and i guess that i i threw the rangers into this group um so i have 11 and i didn't really look at at who which starters are lining up for which days or, you know, which teams are going to be able to set their rotations exactly the way they want them to, which is probably important. But just looking at the four or five guys who are in the mix for each team, and I've just kind of listed them here for my own reference,

And I've just kind of listed them here for my own reference. But I just wanted to talk about which ones that we think would be at the top of the group. And it's sort of a silly exercise to look at one facet of a team. But it seems like a thing that we do before every playoff period. We talk about who has the best playoff rotation. And there's no real reason to do that. Because, I don't know, I haven't seen any really strong evidence that it confers a great advantage over and above just how good the team is. that it confers a great advantage over and above just how good the team is.

But there is that perception that pitching and defense win in the postseason. And so playoff rotation is the thing that we talk about because it also seems to be one of the things that changes a little bit in the postseason or a team can somehow leverage in a way that it can't leverage a lineup, which is basically the same as it was during the regular season. So is there a playoff team that you think has clearly the best or the worst playoff rotation? Clearly is a relative term, but I mean, I would say that clearly probably the Tigers

would be my pick. Yes. Rotation-wise? Yes. Yeah, I would go with the Tigers first. Verlander, Scherzer, Pfister, Sanchez, even with a sort of diminished Verlander. How many, are we going four deep, or are we doing three? Are we going four deep or are we doing three? And are we basically cutting the value of the fourth starter in half to represent his usage?

Yeah, I think so. So, yeah, I would say Tigers. And then, I don't know, I guess I can just kind of go over what these look like. I didn't spend a ton of time, you know, reading about four, Peavy, and Rays, I guess, would be Price, Cobb, Archer, Moore, Dodgers, Kershaw, Granke, Nolasco, Ryu. You know what we should do is after every single one of these, I should make the same sounds like a law firm joke. After every one. Should I? No. No, we won't. Probably not. of these i should make the same sounds like a law fern joke after every after everyone uh-huh should i no no no probably not only if one of them actually does uh pirates i guess you have

burnett lariano cole morton uh and by the way cole i was wondering i was thinking about where he would be if we could redo our 25 and under starters draft, because at the time that we did that, he wasn't in the majors yet, so he wasn't in our sample. But if we had to redo him now, I mean, our top five in that draft was Kershaw, Strasburg, Moore, Bumgarner, Miller, followed by Harvey, Latos, Fernandez. Wow, Fernandez was eighth on that? So where does Cole slot in for you there among those guys? Like probably around eighth or sixth, seventh.

Yeah, I think I'd put him behind almost all those guys except maybe... I'd put him ahead of Miller, I think. I don't think I'd put him ahead of Miller. It'd be close. I think Miller, Cole, and Moore are all in a cluster around six, seven, eight to me. I don't know. I really like him. I think he might be my fifth or something.

Okay. Yeah. Okay, and then Indians, you have Masterson if he returns from his oblique thing. Jimenez, Kazmir, and then I guess Kluber with McAllister and Salazar floating around there. A's, you have Colon, Parker, Griffin, and either Straley or Gray. Braves, you get Medlin, Minard, Tehran. And then I guess Freddy Garcia is getting discussed as a fourth starter. Not Mahalem.

Also Mahalem, but seems like Garcia is a viable candidate there. And then Cardinals, Wainwright, Lynn, Miller, Kelly, Reds, presumably Cueto would be in there somewhere, and then Lados, Bailey, Arroyo, and Reynard. Kelly? Interesting. I didn't know that Kelly would be in there for the Cardinals. I think so, right?

Could be. Is Westbrook not pitching? I mean, Kelly has been really good. He's just... When I was looking this up, I was actually surprised at how good he has been.

I mean, he's been consistently effective. He has like a two ERA in the second half in 12 starts. So I think he's in there. And then Rangers would be Darvish, Holland, Garza, and Perez, I suppose. So is there like a tier? Is there a separation at some point where we can draw a line and say that these are the elite ones? You have the Tigers, and then I feel like you have to put the Dodgers there.

I wouldn't put the Dodgers. In fact, last night on the XM show, is it XM or Sirius? I don't remember which one survived. They're both now, right? It's Sirius XM. I thought they merged or something, right? Yes. This probably doesn't need to be talked about. I explicitly said that the Dodgers have a good rotation,

but it's not like they're the Tigers or anything is what I said. Although I actually think I was saying that they weren't last year's Tigers, which are the same personnel, but I have the benefit of hindsight to say that. But no, I would personally feel comfortable putting the Tigers ahead of anybody else. I would say that my next tier would be – You don't think Dodgers 1-2 would be better than anyone else's? Well, Dodgers 1 would be better than anybody else's, which means that it's not a leap to say their 1-2 might be I think even their 2 might be better than anyone else's

I would rather have Scherzer or Sanchez pitch than Granke Okay Yeah, okay And I would certainly rather have verlander pitch than uh ryu and i would certainly rather have fister pitch than yes uh nalasco i agree detroit definitely better um okay okay all right so detroit is number one i would put dodgers red socks number two and three together and then close. So not, not so far behind that I would necessarily put a gap there. I would have the reds and the Rangers and then I start getting confused and I

forget which teams we've, we've said in which we haven't. The rays, uh, would be below those maybe starting a new tier. Um, below those, maybe starting a new tier. I would put probably the Pirates near the bottom and maybe the

Indians at the bottom. Although I don't know how much to make of Ubaldo Jimenez right now. Yeah, right. I wrote about him recently and it seems like a real thing, like not necessarily a thing that I would count on continuing, but right now it seems to be a real thing. not necessarily a thing that i would count on continuing but right now it seems

to be a real thing um so i think i don't know you are a big fan of mike minor right um i'm a big fan of mike minor and i'm a big fan of chris medlin so i'm not i'm not but then they fall off and yeah and that's and i'm a big fan of those guys I don't actually think that you should be a big fan of them. Right. What I'm mostly a big fan of is how the Braves turn kind of just everybody they touch into a good starter. Like I'm a fan of the system that produced them. Yes. And I like those guys, but I like them because they're part of that system.

I mean, it's an emotional thing as much as anything else. So, yeah, so divorced from that and stacked up against the very elite pitching staffs in baseball, it seems to me like they might be either at the bottom or—I don't love the A's rotation. No, I don't either. I would have the Braves ahead of the Indians, Pirates, and A's. I don't know that I would put them ahead of the Indians. If Masterson is back and healthy and I like what I've seen from Jimenez for now, I'm fairly confident that maybe he can,

he can be this guy for at least a month. Maybe. Um, I, I kind of like those two guys better than anyone. Atlanta has, uh, Cardinals raise,

uh, I would imagine are going to be close to six, seven. And so who do you like between those two? Uh, let's see, I guess probably raise. Yeah.

I think I would probably say I'm, I'm very, very, very high on David price at the moment. Yeah. Yeah. Come around on him. Yeah.

Yeah. I always felt like my opinion of him didn't match the the perception of him at least until i don't know until maybe the middle of this year or something and and now it it seems pretty clear that he uh he is among the the very few best pitchers in baseball. So we've named 11 teams. Yes, we have. Is that how many we had? The 10 plus the Rangers?

Yep. Dynamite. Mission accomplished. Emails. Yeah. Tomorrow is email show. So send us some at podcast at baseball prospectus.com. I'm pretty sure that we will still be answering some that people send us in the next day because we haven't we haven't picked out a ton already.

So please send us some and we will do that show tomorrow.