Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 310: ALCS Game 5/Leveraging Clayton Kershaw

Episode Date: October 18, 2013

Ben and Sam talk about ALCS Game 5, then discuss how the Dodgers could get the most NLCS value out of Clayton Kershaw.

Isn't it easier to remember the episode numbers now? Good. Significantly. Really should have taken that day off before. Should have. We should take five more days off. Yeah, we should. Good morning and welcome to episode 310 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball

Prospectus. I'm Sam Miller with BaseballPpectus. I'm Sam Miller with BaseballProspectus.com editor, Ben Lindberg. That was awkward. Well, at least people know what my job is now. Yeah. An occasional contributor to the Paul McCartney literature. Yes. That's right. How did that happen? People don't know what that...

You wrote a piece for Grantland ranking Paul McCartney's deep cuts. Is that what it was? Yep. That happened because I finally found... And we should note, non-ironically. Yeah. You are a sincere fan of Paul McCartney's solo career.

Huge fan. I wrote that. I was so excited to write that I wrote it a month before it was going to run. I couldn't wait. Once I decided to do it, I just sat down and did it because I couldn't possibly wait. I would have done it years ago if someone would have paid me to, but no one would have. Have you seen paul mccartney solo live well i guess solo would be the only way i'm not that have you seen him

with the beatles uh i've yes many times i've seen him really many times how much money have you spent on paul mccartney's concerts uh well a couple times i was taken by family and probably didn't pay anything. One time it was a free show, like a secret show he was doing that I found out about and got in. And then the last time I went, I found out that you can get cheap Paul McCartney tickets if you wait till like an hour or two before showtime and just like keep refreshing stub hub until people get desperate i don't remember how much i got them for but less than list price so i don't know i mean hundreds of dollars but not not a ridiculous amount in total and given the choice would you rather have uh would would you rather live the rest of your life without ever hearing another beatles song

or without ever hearing a pa McCartney solo song? Like, I guess what I'm saying is, which catalog do you prefer? It's closer than you think for me. Probably Beatles, but I'd probably kill myself either way. So I wouldn't want to live in either world. Are you talking to me through a beard right now? I'm not. Okay.

I'm currently beardless. Okay. I saw your tweet earlier about beards, and I thought you sounded different. No. The last beard I had was in August, but I very rarely keep one during the season. I generally keep one in the off-season when nobody sees me. The thing I don't like about this whole beard thing is that beards don't deserve attention. Beards are basically just an advertisement for your inability to fit into society.

I'm perfectly fine with people growing beards if they just don't want to be part of the world. That's legitimate to me. Why waste effort? What I don't like is that these baseball players are essentially, they are the jocks of our culture. They are the cool kids. They are the quarterbacks.

Well, I was going to say the quarterbacks of the culture, except we have quarterbacks. But they are essentially handsome sort of bro types who can be on the cover of gq and represent the mainstream and um and a beard in that setting it looks just dumb and forced so uh like i'm totally fine with people who um who are just scummy losers like me having a beard. I don't like the beard fashion statement from jocks. So you'll not be naming your beard? I don't particularly mind if they grow it either.

I prefer they not name it, I guess, is where I go. Yeah. I've never gotten to full beard. I've gotten kind of close just through sheer laziness and reluctance to shave and the fact that I don't see people much. But I've never quite gotten all the way. I always have to go outside at some point before it becomes a beard and then I do something about it.

Yeah. I don't have to go outside. I mean for five months of the year I just don't have to go outside at all and most beards that I grow are accidental. Six days pass and I realize I've already got one. Yes, so segue, you were just watching a lot of beards. I want to correct the record. Yesterday when we were talking about Miguel Cabrera and I suggested that the predictability of the way that teams were attacking him might have caught up to them and that he was able to just sit on that outside fastball

and adjust and do damage. And I've since looked, and in fact, virtually all of his hits during his successful stretch over the last seven games or whatever uh have come on pitches that were middle in um so in fact he's he's basically hitting mistakes uh and the plan to throw him outside pitches still does seem to be working uh and so that's corrected okay and last amador update ever, I promise. Sean Foreman finally humored me, so he is now 315 on baseball reference, which is actually too heavy, but I'm not going to say anything.

You just said something. Oh, yeah. Well, probably doesn't listen. All right. So a couple of quick things from this game, or do you want to talk about tomorrow's game, the Dodgers-Cardinals game? Because the question about Kershaw that somebody sent us is interesting enough. Yeah, let's talk about that question, but let's talk about your game first.

All right, so Alex Avila left the game after a collision. left the game after a collision and um you know in the in like the 20 minutes or so between the collision and him actually officially leaving the game there was much discussion about his concussion history um and whether you know this was a this was a sort of particularly unsettling play to watch because of that and when he left ken rosenthal reported from the dugout that it that the concussion that a concussion was not a concern, that it was simply a knee injury, that he had his knee twisted or something along those lines. And John Shambi of ESPN's radio crew was talking about this later and sort of speculating that that might not actually be the...

I mean, John didn't have any inside information, but he said that it was interesting that they showed so many shots of Avila in the dugout right after the play and the inning after the play and lots and lots of conversations between the trainer and him and the coaches and him. You could just see that he was being monitored and looked at and watched very closely. And as Sean B. pointed out, nobody was pointing at his knee.

There was never any indication that they were worried about his knee. You would think if the knee were enough to take him out of the game, maybe you would have seen somebody check his knee. And so I just wonder if you think that that's kind of, you know, a little too paranoid to talk about that. Or do you think that we're still at a place where teams might be kind of covering up the extent of head injuries in situations like this? I don't know about covering up, but I've been kind of slowly writing an article and talking to people about catchers and concussions over the last month or so. And I talked to David Ross and I talked to some doctors and some people with MLB. And I spoke to Jose Lobaton, who had a really terrible concussion experience. And it seems like the impression I got is that baseball is very much on top of this.

Like they're not like the NFL kind of has this reputation of being slow to react to the news or trying to minimize the seriousness of it. Seems like MLB has kind of been out in front of it or has been pretty diligent about monitoring it and trying to make sure that they have the latest information and the latest protocols. And it seems like, um, they don't necessarily know right away if there has been a concussion or if there's a possibility of a concussion. I think it was Lobaton told me that like when he was hit it felt right away it felt like just any other foul tip he didn't really know that anything was was terribly wrong right away um and then i think it was after he after the inning was over i think he might have come back out for another inning or something and then uh he just started feeling really nauseated and and after a while and i think went and threw up or

something in the the dugout bathroom and then it got more serious from there but it's not um it's not like like a flip switches and you're you're not concussed and then you're concussed or you can't you can't tell right away sometimes um and it seems like i spoke to a trainer also with the rangers and there's just a whole new protocol about it where uh like it used to be that everyone would come out and they'd surround the catcher and everything and now it's just supposed to be like everyone gives him space the trainer comes out uh and does a little diagnostic or something himself. And so it's, I don't know, I think it's worth worrying about, and I'm sure the Tigers were worried about it. I don't know whether they were covering anything up or just being cautious

and trying to watch him closely for any signs of anything. Well, I guess the question is i mean without actually knowing anything i mean the the question that shambi's raising is was it really his knee or or was he actually leaving for i mean they said it was his knee uh do you have do you would you would you have any sort of inclination to suspect that it's it's not his knee i mean is there any reason that you would think that that they would have an incentive to not say it was concussion concerns or concussion symptoms? I mean, I don't know what the protocol is in baseball. My understanding is that in football, basically, if you have concussion symptoms, then they have to bring you out. Even if they don't

know you have a concussion, they do a checklist and if there's enough of the red flags go up, even if it's not a concussion, they have to pull you out for X amount of time. My further assumption is that basically doing the test almost gets you there. If you have reason to do the test, you could probably, you know, fail that test almost automatically. I don't know what baseball's policy is as far as in the moment. Do you know? I mean, can they, could they have just, like if a guy got hit in the head with a bat and he was wobbling around, would the, I mean, is there any protocol that keeps the team, if they wanted to, from just waiting until after the game to check him out?

Which is how football was forever? Not that I know of. I don't know. I mean, we see people get hit all the time, right? I mean, catchers get foul-tipped constantly, and it's not like they do a test every time. So, I don't know. I think everyone's very vigilant about it and pretty conscientious about it. And if you suspected that a guy had a concussion, you probably wouldn't want him playing anyway, right?

I mean, even if you weren't concerned about his health, he wouldn't be helping you at that point. I don't know. What incentive would they possibly have for – are you thinking about it as some kind of like Deke the Red Sox thing where they don't want to let on that it's more serious than it is? No, no. I'm just thinking that it's a sensitive thing. If they – and I'm going to – I'll just say I don't think that we have a lot of –

I don't think there's good evidence that this is what's happening, and I don't think it probably is what's happening. And Shambi also noted that he seemed to be limping later, which would suggest some credibility to the knee explanation. So I mean I definitely probably take the Tigers at their word. I do take the Tigers at their word. I'm more interested in it just kind of as an academic discussion but um no i mean i think that the the incentive to lie if there is one would be that um that you know head head injuries are very sensitive and if they let him play for an hour before polling him they would have to answer hard questions yeah right there's a lot of incentive to be very careful about it it is also

incentive from their perspective to to not have to answer hard questions about it. If you, if you failed to be careful, you wouldn't, you wouldn't want to be caught not being careful, I guess. Yeah. I'm glad.

So my, I'm glad I'm not a catcher. Yeah. I would, well, no, you're not. You would,

you would absolutely love to be a major league catcher. You're glad that you're not currently concussed, but I would never aspire to be a, a major league catcher you're glad that you're not currently concussed but i never i would never aspire to be a major league baseball player even when i was a little kid playing baseball i never seriously i never dreamed about that or anything because you were realistic or because you just it wasn't what you wanted to do uh i don't like participating in team sports. Interesting. It was all I dreamed about.

It was completely my dream. I dreamed about being a general manager. So did you play? You played, right? I played through eighth grade on school teams and stuff. I'm curious how much you practiced. Because I was a tiny, tiny kid. I had no, no, I had no, no athletic ability and no muscle. Um, but I was, you know, committed to making the majors. And so, I mean, I was like, you know, I was the hundreds of ground

balls every day kid. And, you know, like, uh, you know, the, the, you know, a couple hundred swings a day kid, but that's because I had a i had a incentive i mean i was going to make the majors i had to do that i don't know if i would have done it just to win my stupid little league game yeah i i had a very hard time motivating myself i mean you know i wanted to win just because we were playing and my teammates wanted to win and everything but i was i don't know i was very philosophical about the whole thing like you know eighth grade no one's gonna remember who wins here or who loses my my coaches loved that attitude um i actually do remember a lot of games and how they ended now that i think about it i remember a few things i think i remember i remember i remember specific people being bad

too like there are people i'm not gonna name names but now that, too. Like there are people, I'm not going to name names, but now that I think about it, there are people who 20 years later, I still think, that guy sucked at baseball. So some people do remember. Yeah, I don't know what it was. I feel like I probably could have played in high school if I wanted to. I went to like a little Catholic boys' school, and I was okay. I probably had the athletic ability to play there,

but I had a lot of homework to do did you say you went to a little did you say you went to a little catholic boy school did I hear that right only only little catholic I was a little catholic boy at that time until I was what was the height limit I until I was 16 or 17 I was I was a very little catholic boy uh but yeah it was like that was the point where weekend practice became a thing. And that was just sort of a deal breaker for me. I just kind of wanted to go home and read science fiction or something. All right.

So this I don't have much to say about. I just want to note it. The thing that makes me happiest about this postseason is that Koji Ohara has survived. I mean, he's thrived, but he has survived. I was terrified going into this that he was going to give up some big home run because that is what he does. Occasionally he does give up the home run. And he was going to give up some big home run,

and we were going to hear all about how he throws too many strikes, he's not a real closer, this is why teams didn't trust him, and it was all going to get denarrativized right before our eyes. And I'm just so thrilled that everybody gets to watch him do this. It's just delightful. I'm genuinely happy about this fact. Yeah. Well, he did give up a home run right he did he gave up one and it passed it just passed i the second one probably might have killed him but he got he got he got away with one and that's nice i mean just that

is nice but um probably partly helped i think he came back the next day and had like a five out save yeah again again tonight and again tonight yeah so uh the return the the four plus out save continues to uh to accumulate i'm happy about that keeping account i am i need uh the sixth one will be the the well i guess the seventh one will be the record breaker uh in recent history but uh really there's only been one year higher than six in recent years. So I think we're at five now? I think maybe we're at five now. So we're getting there. I'm proud of him.

I feel like we were ahead of the curve on Uehara. Am I wrong? I mean, obviously, he'd been good before we ever talked about him, but he never, I don't know, we talked about how he should have gotten more money this winter, right? We were ahead of the curve in talking about him. I don't want to, I mean, I don't know that we were ahead of the curve in recognizing that he was good. I mean, certainly there were. He had been good for quite some time, which was why we were surprised that he hadn't made more money. But yeah, it's nice to see. Okay, so let's finally talk about this question. Do you have it in front of you? Yes.

The question comes from Andrew. He says, in theory, how many runs would the Dodgers have to score in the top of the first to just pull Kershaw and throw a patchwork staff game or Ryu on short rest? Surely if they drop a 10 spot, they are safe to go to a pen game and run Kershaw out to oppose Wainwright in game seven. So yeah, I wanted to answer this. The first thing I did was look to see what the record for runs scored an

inning was. Cause I didn't know offhand. I remember a game. I remember a 14 runner when I was a kid, there was a 14 run game. The Indian scored 14 runner when I was a kid. There was a 14 run game. The Indians scored 14 runs, I think, off the Yankees in 2009, off the World Series winning Yankees. But the record is 17, or that's the modern record happened in the 50s. So I just, to start out, I just thought, okay, what if they tie the record?

What if the Cardinals come out and score 17 runs in the first inning? Not the Cardinals, the Dodgers. Dodgers, yeah. Would Mattingly pull Kershaw in that case? Because I kind of have a hard time imagining him being pulled under any circumstances, any realistic circumstances, because it's the playoffs and he's the ace. And I don't know, I just feel like maybe they wouldn't pull him. But then if you leave him in for two innings, then you might as well leave him in for a regular start, I guess, at that point. Yeah, well, if he pitches two innings, he's only available for maybe two the next day.

And so the question, the real question is, if he warms up, have you already gone too far? And so here's my, we can answer, do you want to keep going down? Do you want to keep picking numbers? Yeah, well, what are you going to say? 17. It seems like if he threw, if they scored 17 in the first, I don't think they'd pitch him. Yeah.

Right, because I guess if, right, because they'll be in St. Louis, and so he won't have even pitched yet at that point, so you could just take him out. He won't have even appeared, and he point. So you could just take him out. He won't have even appeared, and he'll be kind of fresh the next day. So, yeah, okay, if they tie the record, I'll say that it happened.

So I guess we should answer what we think the number should be and what we think the number actually would be. Well, I don't want to answer what it should be quite yet because I want to talk about another thing but um i would guess that the number is uh like probably 12 is what it would be is is what it would be uh i have i could see it being 10 i don't think nine gets it done though yeah i think you need double digits i do too Okay, what was the other thing you wanted to say? Well, it's on this topic.

It's actually, this is what I think they should do. And they can't really do it now because there's no precedent for it in Kershaw's career. But it seems to me that it's fairly obvious what they should do in a perfect world is that they would pitch Kenley Jansen in the first inning, Brian Wilson in the second inning, maybe another reliever in the third, and then they have three innings to see what kind of game it is. Because after three innings, it's perfectly reasonable

that they would be up 7-0 or something. And I would think if you're up 7-0 after three, it's probably best to use Kershaw. And in that case, they wouldn't have even had to warm him up because he's not going to come in until there. And I think this actually makes a ton of sense because when you think about it, I mean, we have this idea about high leverage innings

and some innings are worth more than other innings. And that's why Craig Kimbrell doesn you know the fourth inning up by 16 runs um but the that's sort of an illusion every inning is worth you know in in any individual game the ninth inning is is worth as much as the first inning um the the thing is though that with a finite number of resources a finite number of good pitchers you save your good pitchers for the times where it's most likely to affect the outcome. Now, in this case, there's only one finite resource that the Dodgers have. Kenley Jansen can pitch tomorrow, or he can pitch the next two games. There's no real limit on what he's going to be able to do over the next two games.

The Dodgers can pitch him in game six with no real concern about what he's going to do in game seven. Same with Brian Wilson, same with their whole bullpen, same with everybody except Kershaw, who is the one finite resource. So you do, if you could, you do want to leverage Kershaw. So in a way, the long season gets completely switched up in this case. And the only possibility of leveraging your innings is to wait and see if you can possibly use kershaw now the one downside to this i guess other than i mean the obvious downside is that nobody's prepared for this and it would look weird but the in a in a world where this was realistic the one downside is that uh well i guess there's two one is that you're limited to six innings in kershaw with kershaw now i would argue that that's not. One is that you're limited to six innings with Kershaw.

Now, I would argue that that's not a bug, but that's actually good. I would say that as long as you have a fresh bullpen and your bullpen is not under any sort of strain, you should almost always limit your starters to six innings or maybe less. Kershaw might be the exception. Kershaw might be the one case where, in fact, he's better the third time through the order or even the fourth time than most of the relievers in the Dodgers bullpen.

So conceivably the downside would be there. The other downside would be that you don't have the option of getting Kenley Jansen for a four-out save if you wanted to do that. I mean, there are situations where Kenley Jansen would go more than an inning. Although, in game six, maybe not a lot. I mean, I think that Mattingly would use Kenley Jansen for more than three outs in an extreme situation, but it would not be the case that he would do it in any one-run game because he's got another game to play tomorrow

and he's going to want him then. And the other nice thing is that you don't give the Dodgers or sorry, the Cardinals any chance to, you know, to use their pinch hitters really against against Wilson and and Jansen and anybody else in the bullpen, because you're if you do, they would basically have no bench for the rest of the game. So you're kind of taking away their ability to stack the lineup lefty righty the way they would want to. So it seems, and you also get to, I don't know, I was going to say you also get to pinch. It's a little tricky because you don't get to pinch hit late in the game, you have to pinch hit early in the game. I'm

not sure that matters. I don't know if matters it's you're just as likely to have runners on in the second or the third as you are in the eighth or ninth so that might actually be that might not be a problem yeah um and uh so yeah so i think it i think it works now the most likely scenario is that the dodgers are you know up one nothing or something after three and they have to bring in Kershaw, and it ends up being exactly the same. But if they score... So let's say in that scenario, let's say they're going to go 3 with the pen and 6 with Kershaw. Now how many do they need to score?

How many do they need to score through 2 that you don't even warm him up? And how many do they have to score through 3 that you don't bring him in? And now you're a lot closer to the end of the game. Yeah. So you've also used the back end of your bullpen yeah so you have six innings to go and you would put in what would you you'd put in ryu yes i guess you put in ryu uh probably depending on the score i mean he's an option maybe he comes in for you know a couple innings uh or you could you know you could bring in a capuano's injured is that right uh he's not on the roster i don't think

okay so you know you could you if you really wanted you could go an all bullpen game i mean most of the guys in the bullpen aren't pitching you know at this point anyway like they're only really going with two two or three guys so you could pretty easily scrap together a bullpen game and maybe get three out of Volquez if you wanted to do that. And if you do that, the nice thing about doing that is if in the fifth, things start to get closer, or the sixth, things start to get closer, you still have Kershaw. You could still go to Kershaw any time it gets within, say, four or five runs.

You could just bring in Kershaw, and you still have Ryu fresh the next day. If you're only with Ryu on short rest, then you basically can't in Kershaw and you still have Ryu fresh the next day. If you went with Ryu on short rest, then you basically can't use Kershaw anymore. Unless you were willing to go with Granke on, I guess, two days rest. Or

in the last go. I don't know. I don't know. I think... You'd have him in the last go for a couple of innings, I guess. He's had two days, so I guess you don't really have an Alaska. Yeah, I don't think they want an Alaska anyway. Well, I don't know. Over six innings, I mean, what's even the difference between...

What's the difference in expected runs allowed between Kershaw and Ryu over six innings? Ryu on short rest. True. So then it's probably three runs. I don't even think it would be that. Sorry, not over six innings. Nine innings would be three runs. Yeah, over six.

Maybe two. Two runs, yeah. At most, I think. Two runs, but with a lot higher potential of disaster. Yeah, over six, maybe two, maybe. At most, I think. Two runs, but with a lot higher potential of disaster. Yeah, probably. I don't know. I think I'd probably do it with a five-run lead. Five runs through three?

Yeah. But would you warm him up if it was five through two? I guess if you would bring him in at three, you wouldn't warm him up at 2. I don't know if I'd do it at 5. I'd do 6, which isn't a big difference, but it feels like one to me. Yeah. And we know Kershaw has relief experience. He relieved in the All-Star game.

So he's an old hand at that. So yeah, I like the idea. I don't know. What are the downsides all seem to be sort of soft factors, right? Psychological stuff. Relievers won't be prepared to start a game. Kershaw won't be prepared to come in and relief. They'll all be something less than their true talent in their regular roles.

I guess that would be the argument. And if you're Mattingly, then you have probably some additional incentive not to try anything crazy because if it doesn't work out, whether it's because of that crazy idea or not, people will blame you for it. Yeah, people have already, I mean, the average Dodger fan, if they don't win, the average Dodger fan has mentally already bank win the average dodger fan has mentally already banked the win because it was kershaw and we'll think that any any way that they lose tomorrow the average dodger fan will will find somebody to blame because they had

kershaw going you know like in his head that guy thinks kershaw would have won if you'd done it Yeah. But who cares? Mattingly's a tough guy. Right. Okay. Okay. All right. We'll see if they do it. If they do it, we can talk about it. Well, other strange things we've talked about have come to pass.

So we'll see where our powers extend. By the way, the one thing that I never dreamed of being a baseball player for the actual playing or the fame or the money, but I'd love to be a baseball player to be a good quote. I would love to be like the go-to guy in the clubhouse who will give you an interesting quote. I would not. I'd be that guy because like having been a, you know, interviewing players often it's sort of a letdown and they don't give you anything interesting. And then you talk to the one guy who like actually considers your question and really gives it some thought instead of just spouting some cliche. And you're so grateful to that guy just for like treating it as an actual conversation that he's participating in instead of an ordeal that he has to get through, which mean i would treat it probably as an ordeal that that i have to get through but if i could just kind of come in and like be the guy that that reporters come to after the game and i'd

say something interesting and i'd be like the i'd be a hero to all the bloggers and everything because i'd i'd be the former editor-in-chief of Baseball Perspectives who became a baseball player. That'd be pretty cool. I'd like to be that guy. Yeah, I would not be a good quote. If I were a professional baseball player, I would very deliberately never give a good quote. I do not trust reporters like me. I just do not trust us. Yeah, but you also don't like confrontation or awkward interactions, so you wouldn't want to just turn people away either.

Well, the path of least resistance in a clubhouse is to be boring. Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, I would not. I would generally advise people not to talk to reporters. Except us. Talk to us. We won't do you wrong. Okay, so that's the week in podcasts um send us emails for next week at podcast at baseball prospectus.com join our facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild there are people talking about playoffs in there and rate and review us and subscribe to us on itunes and we will be back on monday