Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 32: Joe Mauer and his Contract Clear Waivers/The Demise of Erik Bedard

Episode Date: August 30, 2012

Ben and Sam discuss whether a team should have claimed Joe Mauer, what he’s worth, and what his future will look like, then talk about the end of Erik Bedard’s stay in Pittsburgh and how sad it is when a guy who’s always either good or injured goes bad.

Hello and welcome to Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus. I'm Sam Miller. I'm with Ben Lindberg. Ben, are you there? I'm here and I'm quite all right, if your next question was how am I. My next question is how are you? I've already answered that one, so let's move on. Let's first, before we get to baseball, quickly address the cricket situation. I got three messages, emails, responses

to the cricket situation today. Two were positive. One was neutral, merely noting what we had already established, which is that there are crickets. And so the pro cricket group has taken a two-to-one lead, and my door is open today. But phone lines are still open, and I will continue to monitor the pulse of our listeners.

So we said two pro cricket emails would carry the day, and they just barely mustered enough support. They just squeaked by. Yeah, this is going to be like we're getting dangerously close to 538 territory. I'm going to be monitoring the demographics of this and all of that. Do you want to talk about some baseball? Yeah, why not? Joe Maurer is my topic.

And Eric Bedard is my topic. So why don't you start with Joe Maurer? Okay. So Joe Maurer was placed on waivers, which is, of course, something that happens to many or most baseball players in August. So that in itself was not remarkable. He was not claimed by any team, which also was not remarkable, in that he does have a large long-term contract. And regardless of what the Dodgers may do these days,

in most cases when players are placed on waivers, especially with a gigantic contract, they do go unclaimed or at least nothing happens. But there was a considerable amount of speculation about whether something would happen. People wondered, Ken Rosenthal wrote about whether the Red Sox would be interested as a team that has kind of had its eye on Maurer in the past,

but just recently shed a lot of payroll. And according to Rosenthal, they didn't want to take on a whole lot of payroll just after they kind of got through celebrating losing so much. Which is weird. Can I say that's weird? I mean you don't shed payroll so that you can celebrate how much payroll you have. You shed payroll so that you can spend that payroll, right?

Right. I guess so. I'm not saying that the Red Sox should have claimed him. I'm just saying that's a weird justification for not claiming him. Yeah, I'm sure – It doesn't really hold up as far as I can tell. Yeah, I'm sure if they had felt that it was a good value, they probably would have done something about it.

Yeah, I think that's more the issue. But anyway, go ahead. So I don't know. I just kind of wanted to talk about Maurer because his value or the perception of his value has fluctuated quite a bit in the past few years from the point in 2009 where he was the MVP and really a great player and signed his huge deal to the point in 2010 where he kind of went back to being what he'd been before that, which was also an excellent player but not quite at the same level, to the player he was last year where he was hurt a lot, less productive when he was playing.

His power kind of disappeared. And now his bat is back more or less to what it was with the exclusion of his MVP year. And yet he is not worth as much as he was the last time he was putting up numbers like this because he's now basically splitting time between catcher and DH in first base. And of course he is still an excellent hitter as a catcher and a very good hitter at other positions, but not quite to the same degree. He's not. I don't know. Well, yeah, okay. I was going to say I don't think he is a very good hitter at other positions, but I think that he actually probably is a pretty good hitter at other positions, and I'm not giving enough credit to the decline in league-wide offense,

and I'm not adjusting enough in my head. So I take back my interruption and I apologize for it. Okay. I accept your apology. So he is 29 years old. He has $142.5 million remaining on his contract. Say that again? $142.5 million remaining on his contract. $138 from 2013 through 2018. So I don't know, I guess that works out to about 23, exactly 23 per year this year and every year through 2018. So, I mean, are you at all surprised or did you think there was any chance that someone would want to take on Joe Maurer's contract? And what I guess, where do you see his career going from here? Do you think that he is about to turn into a Jason Kendall type or is he I don't know, will he come anywhere close to justifying that contract?

Um, I, uh, I'm not surprised that nobody wants that contract if that's the conclusion we draw from him clearing waivers, which, um, as I wrote about last week, is not necessarily the conclusion to draw from that. A lot of players don't get claimed because the teams that would theoretically want him know that they're not going to get him, that there are conversations. Anyway, that's a whole other thing. So anyway, I'm not surprised that nobody would want his contract. I think it was a little bit unclear though when he was on waivers whether that was the consensus view or not. that the twins would still be asking for plenty in exchange for him and they wouldn't just give him up and that it would not be quite so simple

as merely would a team claim him and get stuck with that contract. I think that it is probably the case that, well, when we used to talk about joe mauer it was that he was going to have an elite bat at catcher and it wasn't clear how long he was going to be able to stick at catcher and when he had to move to another position his bat would carry another position i think that at this point uh his probably his his his probably his upside is something like John Ulrud's 30s at first base, which is good and useful, but always the kind of guy who never really seemed to get enough credit from Major League Baseball, from around Major League Baseball,

and isn't a really exciting option at first base. and isn't a really exciting option at first base. He has, well, he might homer 10 times this year for the third time in his career. And so that pretty much gives you an idea of what he is. I mean, I don't know. I think maybe people think of Joe Maurer as having more power than he really ever has. If you look at his year-by-year home run totals for his full seasons, it goes 9, 13, 7, 9, 28, 9, 3, 8. So whatever it was in that one year,

I remember he had some kind of crazy opposite field power numbers and really hasn't been able to duplicate that or sustain that that was just kind of a one-year anomaly well he's kind of taken over the each row mantle as the guy that everybody assumes could hit home runs if he wanted to and at a certain point uh in a player's career you figure if he wanted to he would yes um he's a big guy, and you project more power from big guys. And he did have that one year. He has had a 220 isolated power in a season. So there's that.

I guess that's the optimistic way of looking at his career is that he has shown it and he does have the body for it but yeah i mean i think that joe mauer especially last year uh he wasn't really contributing much of anything and you would have thought that if he were going to change his approach to become a different type of hitter uh that would have been the time to do it and he he hit three home runs, and I think he had one going into September. And it seems like, actually, I'm not 100% sure about this, but he is as patient as any hitter in the game right now. I think that he swings at fewer pitches than anyone or is in the bottom five.

And I'm not sure that that was always the case it might have been so somebody should probably double check but um it could be the case that actually the uh change in his approach that he's making is actually to become less aggressive and i wondered whether uh whether the offensive bounce back had anything to do with moving off catcher half the time and having less wear and tear and all that um he's actually hit much better on the days that he's been catching for whatever that's worth he has a 900 plus ops as a catcher and about a 700 as a first base dh guy um of course maybe those first stage first base base DH days are keeping him fresh enough to hit when he's catching. It could be. It's also that he's basically hitting his career norms right now.

His line right now is almost a dead ringer for his career line, and it might just be that this is who he is. Last year was an anomaly. And it might just be that this is who he is. I mean, last year was an anomaly. So I wonder, I mean, if the move to talk about his Hall of Fame chances, which at one time seemed very promising, maybe the positional switch will keep him healthy enough to keep playing beyond how long he would have been able to had he continued to catch full time but as you say he's not clearing the offensive bar by nearly as much and and i wonder he's a guy with

almost 40 career wins above replacement as a 29 year old which uh under most circumstances i think would probably be a pretty good pace um but that is probably going to slow down a bit even even with his good numbers this year we have him as as a little bit under two wins just because he is splitting half his time at first base in dh yeah yeah i think that he'll get there on merit i think that his wins above replacement player will reach a Hall of Fame standard, but I think that his battle is going to be that he's going to look like a guy who was really good in his 20s and petered out, and voters have traditionally not really respected those guys a whole lot, especially when they hang around a while. I think if you disappear at 33 and you have those huge numbers in your 20s,

you can still get credit for that peak. But when a guy has a long and unexciting, I mean, you know, Jason Wojtkowski wrote about Jason Kendall, who is a little bit below Hall of Fame standards, but in the public perception, and I think in voters' perception, is way, way, way below standards. And it's because he had the type of 30s that I think you're fearing. I mean, I don't think either of us thinks Maurer will be that bad, but the sort of 30s that don't age well, that don't create great legacies and uh just for the record i checked and mauer's swing percentage this year is a career low it's not like super dramatically lower than in the past but it is a career low okay so we won't have to do a correction segment on that tomorrow not unless he swung like nine of ten pitches he saw tonight and pushed himself over okay uh eric bedard eric bedard um nothing earth-shattering but uh he was

released by the pirates and um i just find this fascinating i find it um an interesting twist in his career because bedard has always been or at least for the last few years has been the kind of pitcher that um you thought would just be a perfect fit on a contender because he's either really, really good or he's just on the DL. And so you just could predict getting him at a discount. And if you happen to luck out and he's healthy in October, you've got a very good playoff starter. In his career, he slots in exactly between Josh Beckett and Zach Granke for ERA plus and Pakoda before this year projected a 3.21 ERA for him and 2.1 warp in 19 starts which is to say that Pakoda liked him more than all but perhaps a half dozen or a dozen starters in baseball on a per game

half dozen or a dozen starters in baseball on a per game basis um and so the great irony is that um he's been on losing teams all of his career he's been the perfect pitcher for a contender and he's never been on a contender and this year out of nowhere he is shockingly on a contending pirates team and they release him um and uh so this is uh weird and it's sad if you care about Eric Bedard I don't think probably anybody cares all that much about Eric Bedard but it's an interesting twist and the other little twist to it

is that Bedard's well it seems there's one story on MLB.com about his release and maybe one of the reasons for his release. And it seemed like sort of he didn't seem to care that he failed or he didn't take it as seriously as maybe the manager wanted to. And I can quote the piece that said reporters were bemused by bedard's nonchalant dismissal of terrible outings uh despite manager clint hurdles frequent defense of the left hander as a fierce far fiercer competitor

inside than what he shows on the outside there's every indication he took the same cavalier attitude with management as he did with media uh and as an example the lefty felt the curveball on which carlos gomez had hit a go-ahead home run was well-located, low enough that if he doesn't swing, it hits the dirt. But a few minutes earlier, Hurdle had said the breaking pitch was up right in the path of the swing. So it could be that Bedard found a team. I mean, I don't know. Bedard's always been on, other than after the trade to Boston last year, sort of. He's always been on bad teams.

He's been on bad teams his whole career, and maybe he just internalized that, or maybe he, I don't know. I don't know. It's all speculation. Who knows? I doubt that's really the main issue. The main issue is that he has an ERA over five,

and he couldn't outpitch Jeff Karstens for the fourth slot in that rotation, and also as a little sub-issue, Garrett Cole was promoted to AAA tonight, and it's conceivable that the Pirates are at least keeping in the back of their mind the possibility that Garrett Cole could be an October surprise. Jeff Karstens constantly surprises me by being not bad. Yeah, me too. The makeup thing, or the character thing, was kind of a theme with Bedard in Seattle too, wasn't it?

I vaguely remember he was sort of not a fan favorite because he didn't talk to the media much or at all, but then there were other segments of that fan base who thought he was misunderstood in some way. Yeah, if you're misunderstood in some way, then that's a bad indicator regardless, I think. It's not necessarily your fault, but it's a bad indicator that you are being misunderstood because being understood is a part of being a successful adult. I don't remember the specifics of Seattle,

but yes, there was some smoke there. Something, who knows? Who cares? Yeah, I'm fond of the either good or injured guys. The Bedards and the Hardens and the Sheetzes, although all of those guys now have been bad for a time. Yeah, it's sad when the good or injured guys just become bad that's a really sad part of the career and you never see it coming because you rarely you know you you only see him a few times a year it sneaks up on you when they get old you know his comp his uh pakoda

comps this year before the season which this surprised me because i don't think i don't think bedard has really pitched a game of relief his whole career, maybe a couple. His comparables were Hideki Okajima, Matt Thornton, and Arthur Rhodes, who all found great success as relievers in their 30s and at least in two cases had starting backgrounds. starting backgrounds so i don't know if that means anything it probably doesn't but it uh would be cool if it did just because it'd be fun if bedard made himself into an awesome yeah lefty reliever who could stay healthy well just glancing at his numbers it doesn't look like they're a whole lot different i mean just his peripherals don't look a whole lot different from what they've been for a while now well it's the low end of, it's the low end of his strikeout rate and the high end of his walk rate,

and his velocity is down a mile from last year, two miles from the previous, and I think that the general talk is that his command is a bit off. Uh-huh. Okay. Well, I'll allow that release to happen then okay all right um i'm posting so why don't i wrap it up uh ben thank you for talking about baseball with me we'll be back tomorrow with two new topics and uh then it will be the weekend uh let us know what you

think of the crickets and have a great day