Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 298: The Creative Questions Our Listeners Ask

Episode Date: October 2, 2013

Ben and Sam answer listener emails about unusual outfield alignments, high schoolers versus big leaguers, modern starters used like Cy Young, and more.

A playoff win in Pittsburgh for the first time since 1992. Good morning and welcome to episode 298 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus. I am Ben Lindberg, joined by Sam Miller. Hello, Sam. Hi. Hey, Ben. I was just wondering, how would you rate your internet speed on the standard 2080 scale I would

grade it as a present 3 future 4 because I'm hoping that people might go to sleep soon in neighboring rooms and it'll get faster yeah probably this is the toughest time of night right everybody's watching their

internet videos. But we will try to record anyway and see if it will work. So we are going to do the email show. We weren't sure whether we were yesterday. We are. Some of you sent in some questions today. Can I ask one quick question? Just a quick one. How would you rate the emails that we got this week on the standard 2080 scale? Probably it was a below average week, I think. You don't sound confident.

Maybe this hasn't come up in scouting. They flashed plus, I would say. All right. So, yeah. We should start with John, right? Because John... Yes. Although I wish we could just forget that this ever happened, but we should do it.

We should let you have your victory lap. Read the email. Well, there's three. There's multiple. As everybody knows, we've had multiple sort of contests throughout the course of this year, drafts in which Ben and I have put our baseball expertise up against each other. And a friend of the show, John. John.

John. Yeah. A friend of the show, John. He has been tabulating these for us in a Google Doc all the drafts he does wonderful work for us and so we're going to update since the season is over how we've done

the most famous I guess draft we did the original it was not the original the original was the under 25 teams but we drafted the worst team you could draft for 200 and some million dollar payroll. And the only suspense in this was whether Alex Rodriguez was going to play a game and I would get to count his payroll. Once I got over 200 million, I ran away with it pretty handily.

200 million. I ran away with it pretty handily. As John writes, Sam absolutely asterisk dominated, close asterisk this one, spending $209 million to earn negative eight warp, which is kind of insane. He was helped along by Canerco, Halliday, and Weeks,

who alone put up almost negative five. Ben finished at nine warp, or about 17 higher than Sam, while spending about $300 million. Selectingly, Dodgers outfield ruined his team. Crawford, Ethier, and Kemp totaled 5.5 warp between them. Did they call three of those guys? I don't know.

I think you did. What's interesting is that you, the difference, I mean, you spent $100 million more than me. Yeah, I was going for the high salary, guys. But, in fact, I mean, you spent $100 million more than me. Yeah, I was going for the high salary, guys. But, in fact, I mean, you got 17 more warps. So, really, you actually paid an almost market rate for those 17 warps. Like, you could have spent those on almost anybody and gotten roughly the same value.

Yeah. That extra $100 million. Anyway, so I crushed you on that one. The under 25 starting pitching teams that we drafted is a five-year competition, so we have lots of time to go. But we drafted in, I think, early May, so we've got almost a full season in, and Ben is leading by three and a half wins. And frankly, I feel a little bit more confident about your team than about mine at this point. And the under 90 mile an hour rotations, that was a one year challenge and we only have like three weeks or something like that. But as of right now, you lead with 1.4 warp.

Harry Pavlidis is at 0.5 and I'm last at negative. Harry Pavlidis is at.5 and I'm last at negative and finally we guessed how many home runs Jacoby Ellsbury would hit over five years and I don't remember which of us took the over I think I did but he is at one

he is at one in whatever time period that is so that's where we stand thank you John we'll update again in a year or so probably this is on the Facebook page, right? Yeah, there's a whole, there's a files section on the Facebook page where someone has put all these things into text files that you can look up and see who we drafted. So you can find that at the Facebook group, at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild.

All right, so since it's very timely, I want to just quickly get to Eric Hartman's email about the use of we. Because even if you're not a habitual we user, to refer to your favorite team, postseason really brings the we out of everybody. It is we central. And so Eric asks what our thoughts are on it. And he links to Dane Perry's rules of team weeing, which are interesting because they're not the rules that I would use a dedicated enough fan to earn Wii. So you must know your team's front office, for instance. You must own their merchandise. You must go to multiple games in person. You must have gone to some of their games on the road. All these things that really establish your bona fides. And that's legit, but it's not how I feel about Wii,

and I'm not against Wii, generally speaking. But where do you stand on Wii? Well, I'm not as against it as Kevin Goldstein famously was, and his position was that you have to be on the team or work for the team, and it has to literally be you in some sense for you to use Wii. I was at one time a Wii-er when I was a fan. I gave that up a long time ago. I don't object to anyone using it and anyone is allowed to use it, but I, I, it, it makes me, I guess it colors my, uh, my thoughts

about your impartiality if you, if you use we, or I, I tend to think that maybe you're not objective as an analyst if you use we, which may be completely unfair. Um, but that, that's kind of my inclination. If you're a, if you're a a we or maybe, I don't know, maybe you're so attached to that team that you aren't as knowledgeable about other teams or aren't as open-minded about other teams, but that could just be a bias on my part. So my rule is very simple and has almost no ambiguity. If you are talking to another fan of the team, you may use we as much as you want. It is a perfectly legitimate thing to say. If you are talking to your dad about the team that you both cheer for and you are not using we, you are missing

out on the American experience. So clearly, to me, there is nothing wrong with that. Any time you are with another like-minded fan, you too. It is like they say about something like, I don't remember what they say, but in church they say something about a church is wherever two people get to worship or something like that. That's what the Wii is. It's two fans being together become a Wii. And that's all a team is, right, is basically a collection of their fans. To me, it's two fans being together become a we and that's all the team is right is basically a collection of their fans it to me it's super legitimate um if you are talking to somebody

who is not a fan of that team you may never use we unless you are doing it specifically to stoke their ire so if you're a giants fan talking to a dodgers fan about which team is better you can use it antagonistically but to me saying we is essentially telling the person uh in a way it's like asking them to uh accept your authority or your opinion but without any evidence that they would like that they would appreciate to go to the to maybe to go back to the church theme it's like telling somebody that that something should be against the law because it says it in the Bible, and the person you're talking to does not believe in the Bible. You are not meeting anywhere in the middle, right? You can't really expect them to meet you on a thing that only you believe.

It is your religion. It is not their religion, and they don't have to follow the rules of your religion. And saying we is essentially forcing them into your religion. So I say yes when with other fans, no when talking to, you know, calling, I don't know, calling talk radio or something like that. Okay. So that's where I am. All right. Those are clear rules. Easy to apply.

I like them. All right. So ask an email question. Okay. Well, we have an email from Derek that contains a few emails, and maybe we can answer all of them. Derek asks, What would happen if a team decided to pitch a starter over a full season as much as someone like Cy Young did?

We're talking about 400 or 45 to 50 starts, 400-ish innings. How long would it take for that pitcher to get hurt? How quickly would we see effectiveness drop off? And if you had to bet on one guy, who do you think would be able to handle it? Roy Halladay in his prime seems like a decent candidate. All right. So good question. Yeah. I'm guessing the point i mean why would you like why why why right i mean isn't the isn't the question why if there's someone who if there were someone who could handle it then sure would wouldn't you want to well this is not really asking this does not start with the uh with the premise that he can handle it.

No. This is saying if you decided to pitch a starter – There's no reason to do it. You would never just up and do it. But if you did – But even if you had like – if you had Clayton Kershaw and he announced he was retiring at the end of next year and you could –, you know, he gives you the go ahead to abuse him any way you want. It doesn't seem to me like it would be, I mean, in this era of cheap bullpens, it doesn't really seem useful. Yeah, right. Well, and so part of the question is how

quickly would you see effectiveness drop off? And I'm guessing two starts, three starts, because you'd have a guy going on what is short rest for a starter in 2013 if you had him on a 45 to 50 start pace. And presumably he could only keep that up for, I don't know, a couple starts before it would start to take some toll. And this is also 400-ish innings would be an average of eight innings a start at 50. So that would be often on two days rest or three days rest.

And basically complete games if it were 45, which would be on one day shorter rest. So yeah, immediately. The second start I would expect effectiveness to drop. Even if it didn't drop, there are very few starters who, even if they were that effective, there are very few starters who are particularly better than their bullpen. Now, I mean, there is some extra benefit to saving your bullpen and I mean, your bullpen has limits too, um I mean you know you can't really overstate how incredible bullpens are these days right yeah I think I think LeVon

Hernandez could come back and do it but you wouldn't want him to right yeah uh Derek's next question if you could plug any players any player wait wait wait wait wait wait okay how long would it take for that pitcher to get hurt if if they did that if they did that to kershaw next year do you think he would survive the year could kershaw throw 400 innings left him out there no matter how poorly he was pitching yeah no matter how poorly he's pitching but as soon as he says i'm hurt i'm hurt then you pull the plug i mean he's not going to pitch through a sprained elbow. But, yeah, do you think he could do it? No.

Really? I think he would get hurt. I don't know that I would say that it's a... Don't they say that pitching while fatigued increases your injury risk exponentially? Yeah. And, I mean, you'd be fatigued in your second start, and then you'd make 45 more. Yeah, I think that if you, over the course of five years,

his chances of getting hurt would go up an insane amount. I'm not sure how quickly that would take effect. I mean, over five years, he's likely to get hurt anyway, probably. No, I know, but I think he would be much, much more likely to get hurt. Like, whatever he is over the course of five years he would essentially it would go to 100 if you did this for five years uh but what if it were i mean you wouldn't say over the course of two weeks he's certain to get hurt so we have to find but over one so the question is over one season i don't know i think i don't know i'd say that one say that. One season seems like the point where I struggle.

He doesn't say what sort of injury. We're not necessarily talking about a debilitating career-threatening injury, but maybe he's so tired he just pulls a hamstring or something. I mean, something would happen, I think. Isn't there like a 30% chance or something that a healthy starter will get hurt in a year? Yeah, but that's not the, the question is above and beyond that. So if it's, let's say double. Let's say for his injury rate to double.

How long does it take for a pitcher's injury rate to double? I mean, I would think a half season of this, a quarter season of this. I mean, I think fast. Because you're asking him to do something that he's never done. I mean, he'd be fatigued almost instantly, and then he'd be pitching through that for just such a heavy workload. Yeah, seems fair. I was thinking four months maybe, so reasonable.

All right. Okay, and then Derek was also asking, if you could plug any player in the majors as a high school catcher, plug in any player in the majors as a high school catcher, would he automatically become the best defensive high school catcher in the country? This excludes any major league catchers or players who have had some experience at the position at the high school level or better.

I'm thinking someone like Jason Giambi. I'm going to say no. I have no idea. I cannot hazard a guess. I've talked myself into and out of each position ten times in the last ten seconds. So start naming players this would be funny to do besides Giambi. It'd be funny to see Adam Dunn try it, right? Do you think Adam Dunn could be an elite catcher?

Elite high school catcher? Elite high school catcher. I mean, just think about how slow those pitches would be for him. He would be seeing these pitches in bullet time. I don't know. Some high school pitchers throw really hard. Very few

and most don't and not that hard. I don't know. Could he crouch? That's a good question. I don't think Adam Duncan can crouch. Sam Fold?

Well, that I could see. I mean, he's athletic. I'm just throwing names. Juan Pierre? Doesn't have much of an arm. He doesn't.

That's part of what would make him an elite defender. But does he? I mean, he probably does. I mean, for a high schooler. Yeah, I guess for a high school guy throwing to second base from catcher. Yeah, I guess for a high school guy throwing to second base from catcher, I'm going to say that you could not plug in any major leaguer. I mean, it's such a specialized skill set that certainly some aspects of it would translate. And if you're a major league quality athlete, you could probably be a good high school. a major league quality athlete, you could, you could probably be a good high school. I mean,

obviously we're just talking defensively, but cause it doesn't matter how, how poor a major leaguer would be on defense in high school. He'd, you know, hit 800 or something. So, uh, he could play catcher and it would be worth playing him no matter how bad he was, but for, for him to be as good as the best high school catcher? I'm going to say no. So 400 position players on an active roster in the majors at any given time, roughly 60 of them are catchers, so 340 non-catchers. Of those 340, how many of them are immediately plus-plus defensive catchers in high school? Like top 20 in the nation. Gosh. 200?

I think I'd go three. Okay. All right. I could see that, I guess. I don't know. I mean, yeah, there aren't really that many done types, you know, dedicated DHs who are just huge and not very mobile. There aren't really that many guys who fit that description.

So maybe you're right. But I don't think any guy. But okay, I'll allow most guys. All right. And Derek's last question was a more extreme version of a question we did last week. How big a lead would you have to spot a typical high school team to get the final three outs of a game against an average major league team? school team to get the final three outs of a game against an average major league team? Much, much more. I haven't seen a typical high school team. The only high school games I've seen in a long time were a high school down my street that is kind of like it's considered a pretty good baseball school in the district,

but I don't think they've ever had a major leaguer. And I would watch them. I would just – I'd be bicycling past and I'd pull over and watch for 20 minutes. And it was brutal. So, I mean, on the one hand, I want to say like that – ballplayers will sometimes tell you it's hard to hit 400 off a tee. It's hard to hit balls fair unless you're hitting home runs. There's always ways that they're going to get caught.

It's not that hard to catch a line drive, especially if you only need to catch three of them over the course of two hours if the lead is big enough uh so the three outs i would say that luck would eventually wear the the big league team down and i would say uh anything less anything greater than nine i would have a hard time betting on the on the major league team if it were a say three three innings to go though i might want 20 runs yeah i i wonder whether there's do you think there's any benefit that the high school team would enjoy just from being so bad that major leaguers haven't seen anyone so bad in that long and in you know a decade or two since they were in high school would there be sort of an unfamiliarity boost? Well, sometimes I'll walk past a group of junior high kids or high school kids,

and I immediately feel self-conscious because I feel like they're judging me, just like when I was actually in high school. That feeling I had of not being cool enough and having the wrong shoes immediately comes back to me, and I get all awkward and weird. So there is something extremely intimidating about 14-year-olds in a pack. So that maybe, otherwise... Even aside from the mental aspect,

just like facing a pitcher who's so bad that you haven't seen anything like that ever? I don't know. I wouldn't think so. I mean, I don't know. I wouldn't think so. I mean, I don't know. I wouldn't think so. I mean, it's, no, probably not. I mean, the first pitch would be weird.

The first couple pitches might be weird, but they don't have anything to beat you with, right? No. On the other hand, position players, right? Position players pitching. Yeah, that's true. They have like a 6 ERA historically. They're not pitchers.

A lot of them were probably better than, I mean a lot of them were better pitchers than your typical high school pitcher because they were probably good high school pitchers or even college pitchers. Certainly better, but I mean, they're allowing basically what amounts to two-thirds of a run an inning, and we're saying that a team would need a nine-run lead before we'd feel confident in them protecting it. I mean, what we're asking, what we're saying is that, that, uh, basically something approaching 80% of batters would reach. And so, I mean, have you ever seen any indication that any baseball player can do an 800 OBP against

any other baseball player? There's Sean Dunstan hitting 700 as a high school senior is probably the best indication. Sean Dunstan, of course, was very good. He was an elite high schooler, but probably at that point in his life was not an average major leaguer and still managed to hit 700. So maybe that's the best evidence.

But I mean, an 800 OBP is really something. So do you think better than an 800 obp really because you know well yeah it would be better i never walked you would need to have two two basically roughly 10 guys reach for two outs uh to score nine so uh you know like an 8 6 8 30 On base percentage. Reasonable? Yeah, I think so. All right. Okay. All right, this one comes from Chris in Breezy Point, New York.

Would you rather have an outfield consisting of three terrible defensive outfielders or an outfield made up of only two gold glove caliber defenders today i was bicycling with my daughter to preschool and there was this group of kids on bikes and all of them were in the sidewalk except one kid who was just in the middle of the road and so cars were backed up and he was just ignoring all these cars he wasn't doing tricks or anything like that and i just like as i rode past it was like keep your eyes down don't look at them they're they're high schoolers don't look at the high schoolers and actually intimidated you must have had a pretty traumatic high school experience and only one of them was really being a punk i imagine all the others were pretty embarrassed about their friend who was in the middle of the road for no

reason. Imagine how embarrassed your daughter was riding in a bicycle with you. Well, she's very young, Ben. I know. Alright, so two great outfielders, two elite elite outfielders, or three awful ones.

Who do you think is the worst center fielder that we've ever seen? Gosh, I don't know. I have to imagine that if we're talking about the three, if the terrible outfielders are really Adam Dunn, you know, three Adam Dunns basically, and one of them is in center field, that it's worse than we're imagining. If it were just like, you know, a below average outfield, I would definitely take the three. If it's three Raul Abanezes?

Yeah, would you take three Raul Abanezes or two Carlos Gomezes? you take three Raul Abanezes or two Carlos Gomezes? That's a great question. I think I'd still take the three Abanezes. I think so too. I mean, so Jose Molina's home to first time, as we brought up before, is like 4.7. And Jose Molina is unthinkably slow. He's a total punchline. And yet he's only, you know, he's basically 0.7 seconds. You just messaged me. Hang on. Let me see what you just. Oh.

No, I don't think I need to. We're doing well on time. Anyway, Jose Molina, 4.7 seconds. You know, elite, elite right-handed batter is like four seconds. So basically you're talking about, you know, he's like 15% or whatever, 7, 7, 7, what is that? Like 16% or something slower than the fastest guy. So if you figure that speed is mainly what we're talking about i mean execution matters to the jumps count and the arm counts and the ability to catch the ball once it gets to your

glove counts but mostly what we're talking about is speed and i think we probably overstate the value of speed or not the value but the the margin between the the best and the worst runners um so if you're talking about a guy who's three guys who run, you know, say 20% slower, but they are 50% more humans, I think that the math works out to the three. I agree. Yeah. I mean, it's not just pure speed, I guess. There's also instincts and the fact that Ibanez throws the ball directly into the ground sometimes.

Occasionally. But yeah, I'd still take three of him. Okay, wait. All right. Well, since we're doing all these crazy hypotheticals, there is another one. I think it has a fairly obvious answer, but let's just see. This is from James. In light of Zach Granke's narrowly missing out on the NL batting title,

because he didn't qualify, and players like Chris Davis pitching two shutout innings last year, who would win in a one-game playoff, the nine best-hitting pitchers or the nine best-pitching hitters? Assume a designated league average defense for both teams. Nine best pitching hitters assume a designated league average defense for both teams. You think this is obvious? I think so.

Just skimming the question, I think the nine best pitching hitters have the leg up here. Like you're saying nine Casper Wellses would be... Yeah. I mean, the problem is that casper wells is not good at hitting but if you're saying like if you could get and the well and the best i would guess that the best pitching hitters we never even see right because teams are reluctant to you know use a star player in that role and And I would guess that, that some of the best players in baseball would also be some of the best pitching hitters, but we never get to see them do that because it's not worth the risk. So if you, if you threw that out and just used whoever

the most qualified candidates are for one game, I bet you'd get some, you'd get some pretty good, pretty good pitchers. And you really wouldn't get any good hitters among the pitchers. You'd get a few guys who can kind of fake it, but I don't think the best hitting pitcher would be as good at hitting as the ninth best pitching hitter would be at pitching. I don't even know how to parse what you just said. I will say that logically, if a player comes out of high school or college and he's very good at both,

teams default to putting him, generally they default to putting him at a position because it's a higher success rate if you have an 18-year-old position player or even a 21-year-old position player, unless he's much better as a pitcher. The bias is toward putting him at a position. So you have to just imagine that if there are, let's say there are 75 guys in the majors

who theoretically could have gotten there in either way, had the talent to get there at either position, a lot more of them are playing a position right now than are pitching. And not only that, but the ones that were sent into the pitching pool, a lot fewer of them made it because they succeed a lot less often. So if you start with 75 guys, probably 60 of them turn into position players, and I'm just throwing out numbers, and 10 of them turn into position players, and I'm just throwing out numbers, and 10 of them make the majors, whereas 15 go to pitchers, and two make the majors. So there's just probably a lot more players who can play at that level. That's my guess.

Yeah. Is that enough questions? That's enough questions. And enough answers? Probably not. No, probably not. All right. So that is the email show. Send us more emails for next week at podcast at baseballprospectus.com. Rate and review us on iTunes and subscribe on iTunes. And we will be back with a couple more shows this week.