Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 313: The Dodgers and Tigers in 2014/Tim Lincecum’s Contract/Listener Emails

Episode Date: October 23, 2013

Ben and Sam discuss the Dodgers’ and Tigers’ futures, then break down Tim Lincecum’s contract and answer listener emails.

I'm still grumpy, so there'll be no silly questions. Good morning, and welcome to episode 313 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg. It is the day that the World Series is going to start. When you're listening to this, it is the day when absolutely nothing is happening, the day that we're talking about this. So congratulations.

You live in a better world than I do. So we're going to do, um, some emails. We're also going to do a little bit of conversation cause we didn't get to talk about something I wanted to talk about, uh, because we had Zachary on yesterday. Nothing against Zachary. Um, but, uh, Ben, I wanted to ask you something about the Dodgers and the Tigers. All right. But, Ben, I wanted to ask you something about the Dodgers and the Tigers. All right. Since they are now eliminated, I wanted to do a quick kind of exit interview sort of thing on what the public or popular narrative is about them as they fail out and how you think that might affect their off-seasons.

So what is your perception of how people view those two clubs given their post-seasons? I think they were viewed as very strong teams that suffered from injuries at the wrong time, in part. A lot of people said that the turning point of the Dodgers series was Hanley getting hit by that pitch, which, you know, maybe, but it seems like sort of a stretch. I mean, it's an impact, certainly. He's probably the best player on the team, and he was either unavailable or diminished for the rest of the series, so that matters.

But as we talked about with Cabrera, it matters only so much. So that was part of the perception that he was hurt and Kemp was hurt and Ethier was hurt. But I think people still think they're a good, strong team if they have everyone healthy and that they're pretty well set up for next year. if they have everyone healthy and that they're pretty well set up for next year. The Tigers narrative also has some of that in that the Cabrera injury sort of dominated some of the discussion of their postseason, but also some focus on the fact that their window might be closing and that maybe they only have like one year left until some of those contracts

start to get scary and there's not a whole lot of young talent on the way and then probably also some focus on the things that they didn't do well because they ended up kind of coming back to bite them in the last game although not it's not really fair to to blame their defense for Jose Iglesias not making that play because he was the guy they brought in to fix their defense and had that effect to some extent. So that and the bullpen, it was just kind of the idea that we knew what their weaknesses were, we saw it coming, and in the end it did them in despite all the things they did well.

Yeah, I've heard a few um sort of talk about the dodgers as uh anything less than the world series was going to be a big disappointment for them and um i think mainly i hear that because like magic johnson more or less said that earlier in the year and had to walk it back a little bit. But there was a perception that within the organization that was the feeling. But I don't feel like anybody who's talking about this actually agrees with that or feels that way. It doesn't feel like there's any disappointment popularly about what the Dodgers did this year. This was sort of their first big year as a money team, kind of. I mean, they added all those guys last year, but they weren't a very good team last year um and they started the

year in last place for a really long time and then played like the best team in baseball for the last four months they won a playoff series they got to you know they got to play 10 or 11 playoff games. And I feel like if they go into the offseason with the public perception that they don't really need to do anything. I think if they don't do anything this offseason, if they just stop with what they have right now, there will be columns being written in March about how they're going to win 110 games and score 1,000 runs and be the best team since the 96 to 2,000 Yankees. If Puig can hit the cutoff, man. Yeah, presumably Puig will be on a strict cutoff man. Regimen this offseason.

Exactly, just every day I wake up, eight hours of cutoff, man. Everywhere he goes is going to be cutoff, man. But yeah, I mean mean i feel like the dodgers right now the the momentum behind them or or or like the kind of momentum behind the perception of them is just gonna grow for the next four months until uh until opening day comes and people are gonna think that they're absolutely unstoppable especially if if matt kemp comes to spring training and talks about how he feels better than he's felt in years and hits, you know, six home runs in, you know, in the spring. And so, yeah, I think the Dodgers probably don't need too much.

I can see it being the case that the Dodgers might want to, they might, like, make one move just to demonstrate that they still are the big spenders. that they still are the big spenders. Like they don't want to – like if they don't do anything, it's conceivable that people will then start talking about how, well, they may have overextended their budget or whatever. So, you know, I could see them signing some like closer to fill their eighth inning, like some kind of classic rich team thing where they go out and get, you know, like when the Yankees got Rafael Soriano, that sort of a move, just to kind of keep a little bit of movement in their money. But, yeah, I mean, they're good.

They're going to be good. Not a lot of pressure for them to make moves because no one else in the division is really a threat at this point. It doesn't seem like. There was one 500 team in the division other than the Dodgers, literally a 500 team, 81 wins. And the other teams, I mean, you could sort of see like maybe the Padres have been kind of a semi-trendy pick to like make a move one of these years. And they've got some young guys and maybe that comes together. some young guys and maybe that comes together but uh otherwise it doesn't really seem like the other teams in the division are on the rise or or like the dodgers are going to really have

to spend more to keep pace with them or they're just not being not being pushed really by their their division mates so yeah so espn had a little fun fact that the Red Sox are the seventh team since 1991 to go from last place to the World Series in one year. And this works out to just slightly fewer than random chance would suggest. It's like one out of every 18 or something teams does that. 18 last place teams does that and you know theoretically one out of every 15 teams would make the world series if they were all starting at exactly you know an even an even point um so does this fun fact shock you does it i mean because because i bring this up because the dot you say the Dodgers don't have any competition, but you might just as easily say that the NL West has four last place teams, basically.

And one of them is probably going to end up winning 94 games because baseball. Yeah, that's possible. But, I mean, you could—we'll know more over the winter than we do right now. Like if one of those teams goes on a spending spree all of a sudden, I mean, the Red Sox spent a lot of money over the winter and signed a lot of free agents. And there were reasons to think that they would be better just because of that. People didn't think they'd be as good as they ended up being. But I don't know. I mean, if I don't know if if if someone in that division goes out and spends a ton of money and brings in a ton of players, then maybe the Dodgers will respond to that. But right now the status quo is just kind of that they are the class of that division and it doesn't look particularly close. last place to world series thing is actually uh it's convenient parameters but it's actually not as as dramatic as it seems um so i i bring it up to to make you think but i don't think it's

actually that convincing i i agree that the dodgers are you know clearly better than the others and i wouldn't want to bet on any of the others um or even the field i wouldn't bet on the field against the dodgers is what i'm saying um so the tigers i feel like uh the tigers narrative is that they are too fat and too old and too slow and people don't like to see that in october generally even when it's working people don't like to see it in october but when um you know when they lose because they're they're fat and slow and and to a little bit of a degree old i mean you know it seemed like everybody on that team was limping uh and the ones that weren't uh run so slow that they they limp anyway i mean like they run as though they're limping it was a it was a slow fat team and so i could see them uh going into the off season being kind of pressured

i don't think they read the columnist but i would think columnist will talk about how they need to add they need they need an excitement at the top of the order is probably the the euphemism or maybe they'll then they need catalysts or they need they need you know crap Well, they could use karma or Cosma. They could use Cosma, too. So I'm going to try to get ahead of the insane trade proposals, and I'm going to predict the trade proposal, which is different than predicting the trade. But I'm going to predict the trade proposal.

So here's what I think somebody is going to propose. Somebody will propose that the Tigers need to sign Jacob Ellsbury to provide catalyst at the top of the order. And trade Austin Jackson for Howie Kendrick. And, of course, that move doesn't actually work because the Angels don't need a center fielder. So the Cardinals will have to be brought into it jackson will go to the cardinals uh and like i don't know carlos martinez or something will go to the angels and howie will go to the tigers in this trade that's not going to happen instantly it's only a trade it's a trade proposal for a trade that's not going to happen is what i'm now making a trade proposal trade proposal proposal i think part of this i think this is a new this is a new genre i

mean i've just created the trade proposal proposal part of this may have already happened i think i vaguely remembered this this happening i just googled tigers ellsbury and in nick cafardo's column from from the globe this past weekend, uh, he wrote tigers have stars, but still in need of a lead off man. And they, uh, he proposed that they sign Ellsbury or possibly, uh, chew. And granted Jackson is a fine center fielder and excellent athlete, but on a team of base cloggers, he simply doesn't get on base enough yes which is awesome so this is it you you can confirm that i was actually out of town this weekend yes i could not have read you didn't even have cell phone receptions i didn't i didn't have a cell phone reception so uh excellent so it's starting the momentum is

building and of course howie kendrick good friends with tory hunter so you know that there will be uh someone will mention that in their trade proposal that i'm proposing uh so that's what i think the tigers are going to need to get uh they're going to they're going to need to get i mean if there was a way that you could work a brett gardner trade proposal into a tiger's column i think that would go over well. That would be total clickbait. Do you think they actually need to do anything? We've talked before about how their lousy defense wasn't as much of a problem for them as it would be for other teams just because they strike out everyone and they allow fewer balls in play. So they were kind of getting away with it,

and they could just slug a lot and it didn't matter so much if they were a station to station base running team and and they have won you know a good amount of games and and made it pretty deep into the playoffs uh so it it has worked it hasn't worked perfectly but it's it's worked well enough to i mean it's not like they need to change their roster construction to get over the hump and to get and to win a world series i don't think they can they can win a world series with this approach they just need to execute it very slightly better yeah they almost made they almost made the world series this year they almost won the world series last year.

I mean, you know, almost being, like, they got closer than anybody else. Yeah, they were in it. That's exactly what I mean. So, yeah, no, I don't think that the Tigers needed to do anything this year differently. I think they could have won it this year with the roster that they had. You know, Cabrera getting hurt getting hurt a obviously hurts a great deal but b also created this like great symbol of what they are right because he became even slower and and the defense became even worse yep um so it became like it just basically became something

to focus on that crystallized you know their team's overall weakness so that wasn't like that that wasn't sort of great optics wise but um uh but no they could have won it this year i i think that with a roster like this though um you know it gets a little harder every year because they're going to be slower next year um and so i don't know that's a little bit of a problem they're still going to be i mean they're still going to be slower next year. And so, I don't know. That's a little bit of a problem. They're still going to be, I mean, they're still going to be way better than probably anybody in the Central. And they're still going to have the best pitching in the postseason. There's certainly, if Brandon Beachy can go from undrafted to really good, the Detroit Tigers can go from really good this year to really good next year. Like that will not even come close to testing baseball's unpredictability, the Tigers being good next year. And as you've written about it, it's not a bad problem to have to have a bad bullpen or to have to have your bullpen be your weakest link, because that's it's kind of the least stable thing from season to season.

So if if you think that was what killed them this year, then there's a very good chance that, that they'll have a good bullpen next year. Exactly. Um, so one thing that they are not going to do is sign Tim Lincecum. That's right. He's off the market.

Because Tim Lincecum, while we've been recording this, uh, the details have been coming in on Lincecum, who's signed for two years and $35 million. And the first response I have to all these moves is that I think that we almost always think that the money is bigger than it actually is. Like we have a hard time adjusting to rising salaries. So whatever somebody signs for, we have a little bit of sticker shock and go,

holy cow, he's signing for that much? But that's been true ever since forever and we're just not very good at adjusting in real time. That said, Tim Linscombe seems to be a bad pitcher. That said, Tim Linscombe seems to be a bad pitcher. And, I mean, like, you know, two years he's been, you know, basically something like the worst pitcher in baseball. Yeah, yeah.

It sounded like a strong statement at first, but you're probably right, given the park and everything. Yeah, other than all the pitchers who don't get to pitch as many innings. I mean, obviously, there are many worse pitchers who are not allowed to throw 400 innings as a starter. But, yeah, I mean, among qualifying pitchers, he's been an absolute disaster. And, you know, I don't know. It feels—it doesn't feel necessary to me, but maybe it was. I wish someone would make a timeline of all the times that we've talked about Lincecum this season and speculated about what he would get because I don't really remember.

I remember saying a low number, and I think you said a higher number, but that may have been many, many months ago. So it has little bearing on this. I don't know. It does seem like, I don't know, it seems like betting on a, it is betting on a bounce back, right? Because I mean, despite inflation, I don't think there's been so much inflation that the going rate for a pitcher with placement level. Yeah. For replacement pitcher, public pitchers, you know, 17, 17 and a half million. So they're betting on a bounce back unless they're just so grateful to him for being a successful pitcher in the past or something that they think that his popularity makes it worth keeping him around or clearly they expect him to be better than he has been now for the past two years at age 30 after age 30 having lost quite a bit of velocity and that doesn't seem like a strong bet i I predicted in the preseason predictions that we did,

that the staff did, I predicted Tim Linscombe would finish third in Cy Young voting. Huh. That was partly, I feel like if you get a ballot that you get one free, you get to throw one away on a on an attention seeking whim so like like there i feel like there are there are writers who use the entire ballot for that and and that's immoral that that should be discouraged but i do i do think you get one

one cell in which to put anything you want uh because you have a hunch and so that was like my that was my i think i actually i think I talked about it even beforehand and apologized in advance for it. But I did think he was going to bounce back. I no longer think he's necessarily going to. I mean, yeah. He was better this year than he was in 2011. I mean, he walked players more or less in line with his good seasons seasons not quite as good but but you know much better than 2012 and he he gave up fewer home runs slightly but still more than he used to and

and there was there was like a a FIP ERA gap there not not as huge as the previous season, but again, it was sort of a sequencing thing, I guess. So, you know, if you want to believe that that isn't a reflection of something, that it's going to change, I guess you could talk yourself into that. it's going to change. I guess you could, you could talk yourself into that. Yeah. I don't really see the scenario where Linscombe gets better though. Like I, I mean, if, if he, if he, if his ERA corrects itself to his peripherals, then he's, you know, a useful pitcher. And it, I mean, if it goes all the way, like if you're not even going to allow that there's any of that as his true talent or is this, you know, if he has some sort of, you know, problem working from the stretch or, you know, problem, you know, with Babbitt for home runs for fly baller or whatever the case may be.

But like, I don't really see him as a pitcher who has the the ability to adjust in the old age. has the ability to adjust in the old age. Like, he doesn't have, like, I don't know. I don't even know what I look for in pitchers who do. But, like, Dan Heron, I could see Dan Heron being an adjuster. Like, Dan Heron's, you know, he loses the velocity, but it seems like he's able to do a lot with the baseball. And Linscombe doesn't feel like he can do as much with the baseball. He's electric, and that's about it.

And I'm not sure I see what the adjustment that he makes is that's really within his skill set. He doesn't have command. He's never had command. Even when he was awesome, he never had command. You'd watch. He'd just throw it down the middle, and the ball would end up somewhere not down the middle. And it didn't really ever seem like he knew where it was going uh it's just that he you know it it would move and it couldn't be hit um so it's not like like i don't ever envision him being the guy who's

gonna like sort of tinker and and figure out what works and have this great command to go with it um i i felt that way about casimir too though and casimir came so much so much farther back than i ever thought casimir would come so yeah uh i mean you know who knows who knows who's a good bet to age well would you pay 17 and a half million for a guy with lincecum's fip 3 3.7-ish, who throws 190 innings? Yeah, like if I didn't know his name was Tim Lincecum, like if these two years had just fallen from the sky, what would I think of this pitcher?

In that park, probably not. Yeah, and knowing how hard he throws and what his build is and everything yeah i so that's that's not great if you wouldn't if you wouldn't pay this amount of money for the best possible interpretation of who he is then the the more realistic interpretation of who he is looks like an even worse deal. Whatever. I mean, not that any of these moves is crippling. It's like your Josh Hamilton transaction analysis from last year where you sort of pointed out it's not a good move and it seems like a lot of money, but it seems like every team has a lot of money right now.

Yeah, there's not necessarily anywhere else to spend the money. The Giants are kind of interesting because they win the World Series in 2012 and they stand completely pat, just completely. They brought back every single person from their postseason roster except Terrio, who was kind of even in the mix until the very end and sort of got forcibly retired and aubrey huff who i think had one plate appearance in the postseason and every single other person from the postseason roster was brought back

and they go to last place and now they're going they re-sign pence they re-sign lindsay gum they're essentially standing pat on the last place team too which is also still the world series team it's like the same guys and it's not a particularly old group so it's not like you look at them and go oh well Brandon Crawford he's a thousand years old no I mean they're basically guys who are you know aging through their 30s like this is their roster last year in age 26 25 scuderos 37 26 26 29 31 30 so those are all their regulars and then their their pitchers 23 29 28 zito gets replaced and vogel song probably i'm guessing vogel song comes back so 35 um and then their relievers 30 28 32 28 35 so basically if you

took out 2013 and just said oh they're bringing back the world series team it would it would just like they're doing the same thing again and i don't know that it's necessarily a worse idea than anything else they were going to do like i don't know what they i don't know what the great plan is for filling 600 innings in their rotation good they didn't have they didn't have a plan last year. I mean, last year they went into this season with five pitchers and not one pitcher more. Like they had nothing when anything went wrong.

And so I guess it's just like, well, we're just going to keep signing pitchers until there are no pitchers left, maybe. Yeah, see what they do with Barry Zito. Yeah. So, yeah, I don't know. I guess it's probably not the move that's going to cripple the franchise for eight years. Especially because it's a two-year deal. It would have to be very bad.

It would have to be pretty bad. I just don't know that I would want Linscombe in a rotation for any amount of money. So when you start getting into big dollars, then it makes it harder. Anyway, should we do an email? Sure. All right. Let's find one. All right.

So this is actually worth talking about because we were talking about the Dodgers, and so we'll just talk about the Dodgers for a little bit more. Logan says, with regards to Alex Guerrero, the Cuban infielder who is signed with the Dodgers for, I believe, $26 million. Logan writes, the timing of the signing by the Dodgers seems odd from a leverage perspective, given the amount of suitors and the relatively low price tag. Is it conceivable that Scott Boris moved Guerrero to the Dodgers at a low ball price purely to screw over Robinson Cano for leaving him as an agent? I just imagine that Boris texted Jay-Z the welcome to my house, good luck with Robbie,

and wanted to send a message to other players that if you leave Boris, he'll ensure you don't get the money he can get for you. The idea behind this conspiracy theory being that the Dodgersgers can no longer bid on cano and so it hurts cano's leverage on the free agency market uh logan then continues am i thinking into this too much yes probably um it seems it seems i mean for one thing if if there were other teams that were bidding more for Guerrero, I mean, we would hear about it. It's not like Boris would be able to keep that secret.

I mean, we would know immediately, right? I mean, we know what four other teams bid for Abreu besides the White Sox. I imagine that we'll know if there's any sort of controversy, any team feels like they got uh like like not treated fairly in their bidding for guerrero they would uh you know they would they would probably mention it yeah so it seems it seems insane i mean have you had any sort there i think there are cases where uh it has been pointed out that agents could have conflicts of interest where maybe he's representing multiple players in the same position on the same market. Yeah, that comes up with Boris himself often.

Yeah, it's inevitable, and I don't know. It's probably easy to read into the final deals because of that. My guess, though, is that players are going to be extremely sensitive about this to the point that they're going to see conspiracies that don't exist. So if you're an agent, you would have to go way out of the way to avoid even hinting at a conspiracy that exists. I mean, it just would be completely ugly and awful if that were even part of Boris's reputation, which it's not. I mean, he's been representing players for 25 years with a reputation that has improved, but for a long time he was considered a villain. Greedy, people didn't

generally like him in many corners of the game, but it was never considered the case that he was not doing what was best for his client. Yes. And I doubt that Guerrero would take a discount in order for Boris to stick it to Cano. I guess I could imagine Boris taking some pleasure in it, perhaps. I mean, I don't know. Maybe it's not his motivation but maybe it's satisfying in a way i could i could see that i but i i can't really imagine it influencing or you know determining which teams he's trying to to shop guerrero to or anything like that

the the the interesting thing to me is that this now – I mean the person who really gets a bad deal out of this is – well, maybe he doesn't actually. I was going to say is Mark Ellis because Mark Ellis has a $5.75 million option I think for 2014 club option. And so now the Dodgers are expected to turn that down. And that just seems like such a reasonable deal for Mark Ellis. Five million bucks with the buyout. It's like really it's less than five million dollars to keep him. And so let's see. Reference has him as a three-war player this year, 2.5 last,

and 3.3 the year before. So either, and I think we might have mentioned this before, either the league and these systems have vastly different ideas about the positional adjustments at second base, and I think we've mentioned it, third base too. Or this is like great news for somebody who's uh you know if teams believe this would be in line to get you know I mean in line to get 18 but even you know more realistically maybe 8 to 12 I mean he's no he's no worse than Scudero is he is he even perceived to be worse than Scudero? Probably not. I mean, probably after Scudero's kind of crazy half season with San Francisco, but probably not, and he's younger than Scudero.

And so everybody wins except for Cano and the Dodgers, I guess. Yeah, and Don Mattingly, because he really likes Mark Ellis. Although the Dodgers fired Trey Hillman today, who is apparently Don Mattingly's best friend and bench coach. So it seems like there will be problems there. Yeah. Well, maybe. We'll see. I wonder about it.

Yeah. The move that we probably should have mentioned was that if the Dodgers are going to make one make one big move as you mentioned it would probably be extending clayton kershaw right yeah i guess i i guess i forget that that didn't happen remember that it seems so inevitable and there have been so many numbers tossed around that uh that it seems like it has but no it hasn't there was a weekend where it was like uh there were reports that it seems like it has, but no, it hasn't. There was a weekend where it was like there were reports that it was very close. Yes. And it just didn't happen. Interesting.

We'll do one more quick one, even though this is going much longer than I'm comfortable with. Wow. Stu says, with Kershaw's 48 pitches thrown in one inning, it got even Rick Sutcliffe saying that was too many pitches in one inning, an injury risk. So it was 48 pitches in one inning worse than 48 pitches over four innings. And the conventional wisdom has been for the last decade or so that it is,

and the logic behind all pitch count stuff is that fatigue makes pitchers more likely to hurt themselves, particularly with sort of cascading effects on their pitching motion. And so, yeah, the more tired you get, anything that puts more strain on you is worse. And so I'll just quote quickly from a Jay Jaffe piece that he wrote when Ian Kennedy threw 50 pitches in an inning this season. He wrote when Ian Kennedy threw 50 pitches in an inning this season. What has gotten less attention is that teams have grown conscious of single inning pitch counts as well because running up such high totals without a break is believed to place an undue amount of stress on a pitcher's arm. Some organizations mandate the automatic removal of their minor league pitchers above 35 or 40 pitches. As far back as 2004, then Giants head trainer Stan Conte said in a baseball prospectus chat quote we track all innings over 25 pitches as a stressful inning some pitchers

may only throw 100 pitches but throw them in four innings so on the surface it looks like their count was not as high but they put a far a far amount I'm guessing a fair amount of stress on their arms if they threw 35 pitches in one inning. End quote. Given that emphasis, high pitch count innings are relatively rare. According to Brooks Baseball, since the beginning of 2009, pitchers have thrown at least 40 pitches in an inning 371 times, which averages out to about three per team per year. Only 65 pitchers have gone above 45 in an inning in that span,

or about one per team every two years. Kennedy's outing of 50 pitches tied for the seventh highest total in the majors since 2009, and the highest total in the majors since 2009 was Paul Mahalem, who threw 54. I certainly start noticing it at around, uh, my heart rate goes up after about 30 and I start counting very, uh, uh, very determinedly and thinking that something exciting is going to happen. I don't know what that exciting thing is, but once it gets up into the high thirties, I think, well, this is, this is getting out of hand. Something exciting is going to happen. And it usually doesn't. Yes.

So, all right. Uh, so that's the show. And it usually doesn't. Yes. So, all right. So that's the show. We'll be back tomorrow. In the meantime, you guys can email us questions for next week's email show at podcast at baseball perspectives dot com. And we'll answer some of them. Bye bye.