Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 296: Rivera’s Farewell/Carlos Gomez’s Strange Suspension

Episode Date: September 27, 2013

Ben and Sam discuss Mariano Rivera’s farewell, Carlos Gomez’s suspension, and Bud Selig’s legacy.

Good morning and welcome to episode 296 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus. I am Ben Lindberg, joined by Sam Miller. Hello, Sam. So you already live in a world where elementary is airing again. Like, it is already aired in your world. Has it? Yeah. 10 o'clock. 10 o'clock? That's late. Season premiere. Season premiere. it yeah 10 o'clock 10 o'clock that's late season premiere season premiere you're you're so excited

you're so lukewarm on shows that i consider better than that show yeah you're really you're quite fond of that show i am quite fond of it i like to have i i like to have one show that does not require me to uh you know to be cool you know i mean like so much of what i watch is sort of subconsciously filtered through the you know like the importance uh lens you know like oh this is it's important that i watch this show or it's uh it's significant that i can talk about this book or yeah like i'm you know and so it's always nice to have just just one show where i just uh like i don't talk about it with anybody i just sort of gleefully uh enjoy it well i watch long so you don't have to explain this concept to me uh-huh that's my elementary worst that's just the worst show oh my gosh it's not a great show it's not a great show um

okay uh just a quick follow-up to my topic from yesterday about the september starter usage andrew ku who is one of our stat guys at pp uh just did some subsequent research into that today to break down uh to break down the month of september by week to see if there's any trend towards playoff teams using their starters for shorter outings as as they get closer to the playoffs uh and there is um the last couple weeks, it goes down to like 88 and then 86 or so pitches per start. So once it's really officially sewn up at that last couple weeks of the season, teams either do take their guys out to rest them more or they take them out so they can put bullpen guys in and actually win the game.

So that does happen when you, when you dig a little deeper into the numbers. The thing is there's no actual merit to the BBC Sherlock Holmes show either. I mean, it is equally vapid and sugary and pointless. Why does it have such a great reputation compared to, that's the thing. That's why elementary is so enjoyable

because it feels forced to like the BBC show. What is it called? Sherlock? Yeah. It feels like you're watching it because everybody else is telling you how good it is. And yet, it's no better. That's the thing.

It's like that feels like an empty experience. Like there's nothing that frustrates me more than when I invest a significant portion of my life consuming some entertainment because like it just feels like everybody is and I want to be able to talk about it or I don't want to miss it or whatever. And then at the end, I realize like four seasons have passed and I haven't enjoyed it at all. end I realized like four seasons have passed and I haven't enjoyed it at all I've watched all of Sherlock just because it's like three episodes per per season and I like Cumberbatch but it's not it's not significantly better I don't think um okay uh so have you people are people that are coming to us now with their strange baseball occurrences that they want to happen. It's like we talked about the hidden ball trick and that happened. And we talked about a home run hitter getting ejected or someone getting ejected mid play

or and these things keep happening after we talk about them. And now people are sending us their strange things that they want to see happen as if we're like someone with healing powers who you would bring a sick child to people are pregnant i didn't yeah i i didn't read the email that i i saw one email what was the request uh this person wants to see uh it's from from corinne she has a humble request of our magical powers, and her request is she wants to see a team score in all nine offensive half innings of a complete game. It seems doable. It does seem doable.

I think we can do it. Well, it's gotten close. I would not use – if I could cause an event to happen though, I would rather see a team score 80. Like as long as we're picking like tremendous offensive achievements that have never happened, I would just once, just once, I want to see a team score 80. Like I'm sick of these 22 to 3 games where like, you know,

some team scores 12 in the first and then it sort of tapers off. I want to see 80. I just want to see one time a team score 80 just to see what that would look like. Not even 50? 50 would be not enough for you? Nah.

I mean, 80 would be... I mean, 80 would really be something. Yes. Right? Sure. 80 would be something. You have to admit that 80 would be, I mean, 80 would really be something. Yes. Right? Sure. 80 would be something. You have to admit that 80 would be something. It would.

So let's do that. Well. I did, you know, I one time bet somebody a Coke that a team would score 30 in like a five-year period, and three years passed, and no team scored more than like 23 and i realized i just had absolutely no shot i had made a horrible miscalculation and then uh one day i'm watching the rangers play the orioles and they they it takes a i mean they scored 30 against the orioles and it took quite a series a sequence of events to get them there. And it was like, I mean, it was the best Coke I ever drank. It was an incredible game to watch.

I mean, it made me understand why people bet on baseball. Because for 50 cents, I was completely all in on this game that had been completely decided. But 30 was fun. 80, though. 80 80 is yeah like that's something it's a lot more than 30 all right uh i'm kind of sad again about kind of sad about rivera tonight are we we're not doing a show tonight we We're just bantering, I guess. But yeah, kind of sad. Kind of sad on multiple levels, I guess. Sad to see someone unique go out of the game

because there aren't really that many players who are interesting in the way that Mariano Rivera was interesting, is interesting, who have that kind of unique talent or unique approach to the game. And he was just sort of a freak in many ways. And I like having freakish players around. So baseball will be more boring without him. Well, the thing about him is that he got freakier every day.

He was a freak for many years, but I would say it really just started getting fun like four years ago. Like a whole new level of fun. And, I mean, what is he, 43 right now? And, I mean, once you get to this point, even if he wasn't Mariano Rivera, even if this was just like, you know, any player, any typical, like if Darren Oliver started pitching as well as Rivera does, that would be amazing fun. But when Rivera then brings all this backstory with him,

it makes it even more incredible. I mean, we talked about how we're happy to let guys walk away when they want to. Really, it's an amazing thing to be able to retire on your own terms in any field. Bless his heart. I'm happy for him. But I would feel so much better if he had a 3.70 RA this year. It really feels like a missed opportunity. like a missed opportunity and uh you know i mean if if i if i had the the power i it might be the one case where i would insist i might force him i might do horrible things to his family to

to to make him keep pitching yeah so i don't know if i. That's not the same as you, though. You're sad. I'm disappointed because I lose a fun fact maker. It's kind of a different thing. It's amazing. Very few players can play for 20 years at that level without becoming hated. Especially for the Yankees. Yeah, especially for the yankees yeah especially for the for the yankees i mean everybody's even even guys who seem well liked uh there are corners in the world where they're they're hated but you know nobody i don't i don't really feel like anybody hates

rivera the closest thing you get are these kind of half-hearted arguments that you know oh he's just a closer he's just a reliever he's just a reliever, he's overrated. It's about as close as you get. But, yeah, I mean, nobody personally wishes him ill. And I feel like almost everybody, he and Tomey are probably the only two guys who I can think of who made it, you know? Tomey should have gotten a farewell tour. Yeah. He never really officially announced that was happening. You know? Tomei should have gotten a farewell tour. Yeah, he should have. He never really officially announced that was happening,

so didn't get any gifts. But yeah, I kind of feel like my childhood died a little bit too. With Rivera? Yeah. Because I don't consider myself a fan of any team anymore. I grew up rooting for the Yankees, but it doesn't bother me in the slightest that they are not going to make the playoffs, that they didn't make the playoffs.

I feel nothing about that. But, you know, seeing those three guys who were people that I rooted for when I was a fan and watched for most of the time I was growing up. Kind of sad. Okay, let me ask you a question. Let's fast forward 14 months. And so it's September, October, no. It's late November of 2014. We've lived through a year without Mariano Rivera.

And we're moving on with our lives. And Rivera announces he's coming back. He's been throwing again. He's got the fire again. He liked to pitch. The Yankees signed him for $5 million. And everything is in line for him to pitch in 2015. What's your happiness rating? Or what's your happiness level with that? Or I guess, what's your happiness rating or what's your happiness level

with that and or or i guess what's your unhappiness level if that's better uh i don't think i'd be happy about that i'd be happy if he suddenly changed his mind and came back next year which would kind of be hilarious after after this whole farewell tour and all the celebrations and everything. I'd be happy about that. If he took a year off and he came back at 45, then I'd be worried about seeing him not be perfect anymore. So probably wouldn't be in favor of that. This is about as well as he could have gone out, really, all things considered.

Other than, I guess, having him pitch in the postseason again would have been nice. But other than that, this is about how you would have hoped it would happen if you're not like us and want him to pitch forever as some sort of science experiment. Yeah, it would have been nice to see him in the postseason but on the other hand it might be better that he's not because you wouldn't get to have the ceremonial goodbye if it were the postseason you know you couldn't you couldn't do this artificial thing that they did which you know i think everybody sort of enjoyed it i enjoyed it um the you know cheater and pettit going out and having him come out and all that.

If it were the postseason, it would just be like the game would end and Mariano Rivera would walk off. If he saved the game, like if he saved game seven, actually it would be really interesting to see him save game seven because everybody would be like dogpiling and and going crazy but otherwise uh in any other scenario you would just he would just be in the dugout he would be losing you know he would just walk into the clubhouse so uh to get the goodbye uh kind of i mean i i imagine that if they were going to make the playoffs they would have done the same thing

tonight and then it wouldn't have been nearly as interesting, knowing that he was going to pitch for another week or two. It's kind of weird that he's going to go play the Astros now, maybe pitch against the Astros, which will be... Yeah, I wonder, you think he will? I bet he does. Yeah, probably not. I bet he's done.

But he might play center. Is that... So explain this. I bet he's done. But he might play center. So explain this. What does that mean? He's always been interested in playing center field in an actual game because he's always prided himself on his outfield abilities and shagging fly balls, which is, of course, how he got hurt a couple years ago. So it's like his baseball bucket list as he wants to play in center field.

And Girardi sort of allowed that it might be a possibility because this last series is completely meaningless for both teams involved. Yeah, I mean, if the Astros aren't going to take the game seriously for an entire season, why do the Yankees have to? And then it would be okay, yeah. Yeah, I would like to see him catch yeah I'd love that um all right what so all right so that's your topic you're done okay I guess my I wanted to talk about uh Carlos Gomez and I don't know it might spill into Bud Selig's retirement or it might not we might talk for 40 seconds and then be done um I don't know, it might spill into Bud Selig's retirement or it might not. We might talk for 40 seconds and then be done.

I don't generally, my feeling on unwritten rules generally is that I'm fine with baseball players having whatever internal culture they want to so long as I don't have to debate that culture. So generally I find it to be just all perfectly whatever and stupid and it doesn't annoy me until everybody is talking about it. Um, so unfortunately we might talk about it, uh, but I'm not interested so much in any of what happened, uh, on the field, uh, last night, Wednesday night, uh, or Gomez's really role or anything in it, I'm much more interested in the suspension, which to me felt super weird and maybe disturbing, because he didn't do anything, I guess. I mean, he did things that are sort of hateable, maybe, and that you could see why the Braves would be upset about it. But he did not do any of the things that players get

suspended for. And it feels strange that, or it feels potentially strange that Major League Baseball is now really taking this sort of power to suspend players for whatever in a new direction. You know, he didn't do anything violent. He didn't do anything unnatural. Nothing he did was unnatural. He watched a home run for too long, but players do that. And then he jogged around the bases, and while other players were yelling at

him he responded but he didn't leave the baseline he did not make any physical uh move toward another player uh and so uh did he did he initiate the yelling or was the yelling in, cause you could hear McCann yelling at him. It's hard to know exactly. It seems like the consensus is that he did not, that he, he, you know, he took the very, very, very slow jog out and he stared at the pitcher. But it seems as though some combination of Mahal and McCann and Freeman started the talking.

And then, I mean, Freeman was walking after him, yelling at him, uh, which certainly seems to be more suspendable. I mean, Freeman left his position, right? What, what Freeman did, um, and I'm not necessarily saying he should be suspended, but what he did was it was an unnatural movement. That feels like suspension. What McCann did was like way beyond suspendable in, in my kind of opinion. Uh, I mean that was the best case you can make is that Gomez

was essentially getting suspended for fighting words, which fighting words is, you know, it's non-protected speech. Um, and like in the real world. And so as a sports analogy, you can sort of see why if you're instigating, even if it's just not de-escalating, you could make the case that that's a suspendable or a finable offense if it sort of leads to a riot. But if you're suspending for that, I mean, what McCann did was far, far, far more aggressive.

Yeah, I was surprised that he wasn't ejected. That seemed strange if you're going to eject Gomez. I mean, it's what you're saying, but it's, I mean, he didn't get even that. He didn't get removed from even that game, let alone from a future game. Yeah, and Freeman, I mean, Even that, he didn't get removed from even that game, let alone from a future game. Yeah. And Freeman, I mean, he and Freeman both got fined.

You could make the case, sort of, if you wanted to, in a way that a fine is actually, like, maybe worse than a suspension, in a way. Because you actually get paid during your suspensions um you don't get paid you know a fine is actually taking money from you uh the suspension is you know he doesn't he doesn't play tomorrow he didn't play today but he still got paid the game didn't matter uh you might argue that if the brewers were in a pennant race that they wouldn't have suspended him. But there's sort of an open acknowledgment that the game doesn't actually matter that he's playing. And so sure, why not? Whatever. It's an easy compromise. But realistically, McCann getting a $5,000 fine or whatever he got paid, a fine,

and Freeman getting a cheap fine is nothing. It's completely insignificant. And, you know, like Matt Kemp went after Carlos Quentin in the player's parking lot or something along those lines, and he got like a $5,000 fine not suspended. So if you're talking about aggression or fighting words as a suspendable offense, Gomez is not where I would certainly would not start the line. It feels very weird to me. And it all goes to, I mean, I basically, I think that Bud Selig,

I don't have any gripes with the way that he's run the league for the last, you know, basically for everything post-94. I don't really have any gripes. I mean, there's been things that have gone well and things that haven't gone well, but it's a tough job and things are going to go poorly in such a complicated industry at times. Basically, I think that the things that people gripe about are generally fairly small things. There is this weird kind of last minute power grab that he seems to be making though with these suspensions and we saw it with the apparently arbitrariness of the um ped

suspensions um where it was just like yeah instead of 50 games we'll just say 214 um and it kind of feels that way with gomez i just i don't know that I don't know what the precedent is for Gomez for a player being suspended for doing what Gomez did yeah so is it is it like baseball is is upholding unwritten rules by suspend like is it is it a is it sort of a tacit acknowledgement that gomez is not playing the game the right way and that mccann is is the defender of of the old school baseball traditions or something is that is that kind of a unspoken message here it It could be. And if that's the case, it doesn't look great that Gomez is Latin and the others are all white guys.

I mean, it doesn't look great. I'm not saying that's a factor, but it doesn't look great if that's kind of what the thought process is. I just wonder whether basically what it is, I wonder, is like they didn't have any real resistance from Gomez. Like I said, he still gets paid. He doesn't care if he doesn't play today. He wanted to take responsibility. I mean, he was apologizing on, you know, all over the place to try to like kind of like look mature in the situation. And so he probably was, you know, a non-resistant party in this.

And so I just wonder, and this is maybe slightly conspiratorial, but I just wonder whether it was like, oh, well, this is an easy place to establish the precedent that we can suspend anybody for anything that might lead to fighting. And it's a way of sort of taking control of, taking a little bit more control in all the events leading up to a brawl which isn't a which isn't a bad um uh thing to want to do i mean it would be great if they could get rid of brawls get rid of bean balls get rid of that whole culture of like grown

men hitting each other in the face right in of everybody. Like I would love that. Well, yeah, I mean if you're going to take measures to make any situation where a player is going to get hurt less likely, then I mean the much bigger risk is pitchers throwing at people and they haven't really, doesn't seem like they've gotten any harder on on pitchers in that regard right i mean we we talked about the ryan dempster suspension a little bit right and how he basically wasn't suspended because he was suspended for five games and didn't even really miss a start for that it was just kind of a slap on the wrist for a really, really blatant attempt to hit a batter.

Yeah, and if you're a batter and you take a step toward the mound, if you don't charge the mound but you take a step toward the mound, that would be something that, you know, if Gomez was basically cited for inciting violence, then certainly taking a step toward the mound would qualify, but you never see anybody get suspended or even really ejected for taking a single step toward the mound, right? No, I don't think so. So, yeah, I mean, it hasn't been a consistent, if that is the reason that MLB was sort of, I don't know, establishing this precedent, it's not like there's a lot of signs that they've been working toward that. So, you know, it's probably not that.

But I don't know. I just wonder. It's a very, very easy situation to set a precedent that doesn't seem to have necessarily existed before. existed before. Well, I hope that if this is some sort of power grab, or even if it just smacks of that, I just hope that it doesn't jeopardize relations between the union and the league at all, because it's been pretty nice for the last decade, over a decade to have complete labor peace and no threat of work stoppages and no, no angry words between them for the most part. Um, so it would be a, it would be a shame to, to see that eroded at all. Um, because you're right. I mean, that's the, I guess that's the number one thing that people hold against Selig is the strike.

And I guess if you want to defend him, you can say that since the strike, it's been pretty much smooth sailing, except for the almost strike in 2002, which was then averted. So. Yeah, I always wonder about that how many years of like if Seelig argued that the strike is what enabled the next 20 years of peace then how many years of peace

does he have to bank before it cancels out the strike yeah that's a good question he's I don't know he's so I was thinking before we started recording about why it is that he seems to provoke such strong reactions and such strong opinions and people saying that he's the him at all, whether people thought the same thing about previous commissioners, whether it's just a product of the fact that he's been around so long and he's made so many decisions that have changed the game that you can always find something to hate, I guess, if you're kind of a traditionalist and you don't like interleague play or you don't like instant replay or you don't like the all-star game counting or whatever it is, the wild card, all the expanded postseason, all of the things that he's done, he's made many, many decisions. So it's easy to find something you don't like in there, I guess. I mean, it would be tough to please everyone while making that many changes to the game over a two-decade period. So I don't know whether it's just that he's annoyed someone at some point over his long tenure,

and that's why so many people hold that against him. And I guess the biggest defense of him probably is the profitability of the game, it seems like. That's kind of the defense that people offer in response to the other things as they say, well, baseball is healthier than it's ever been and it's making more money than it's ever been. And it's an $8 billion's you know a eight billion dollar industry instead of a one billion dollar industry when he took over or

whatever the figures are um which is which is a legitimate defense i guess although i i kind of wonder how much of that is ceiling and how much of that is just external factors that yeah probably most is not him but most most most things aren't him i mean probably a lot of the bad things that he gets blamed for aren't really him either probably i mean yeah like like the tv money is not bud sealing really i mean i'm sure he's played a part in the fact that the tv contracts are are high and there's a lot of broadcast revenue and all that, but in part it's just a product of the fact that sports programming is period kind of would have reaped the benefits of that. And people give him a lot of credit for MLB Advanced Media and MLB.com and how baseball has been ahead of the game technology-wise. I have a hard time believing that he was the driving force behind that. driving force behind that um i mean maybe he you know put the people in place who were the driving forces behind that and and was open to it and i guess that's all you can really really ask about

that ask about that but you know he's a he doesn't use email so it's kind of hard to believe that he's like pushing baseball to the the cutting edge technologically so i don't know very very divisive um and i guess i'm i'm kind of wishy-washy on him i like a lot of the things that he's done and there are a few things that i i don't like yeah i don't i don't i don't know i don't have a great ruling on him I'm not like super sad to see him go but I don't generally have bad words for him nope

alright that's the week that's the week send us emails for next week at podcast at baseball prospectus dot com rate and review us on itunes and subscribe to us on itunes uh so that other people can come across the podcast and join our facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild which has been very busy and growing lately. And I've enjoyed the discussions over there,

as I know you have, Sam. Yes, and we may or may not have a Monday show. Ben and I are still debating this. So if it's not there, it's not supposed to be there. If it is there, well, Ben won. Okay, so we'll be back at some point next week have a wonderful weekend