Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 325: The Offseason’s First Listener Emails

Episode Date: November 8, 2013

Ben and Sam answer listener emails about pitcher hitting, the Phillies’ new analyst, Scott Boras’ use of stats, and more.

Good morning and welcome to episode 325 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from baseballperspectives.com. I'm Sam Miller, joined as always by Ben Lindberg, and today we have no guests. It's just you and me, Ben. How are you? Okay. So, Ben, you went to see Built to Spill, which is one of my, I don't know, favorite bands. So how was that tonight? It was great. That was my first time seeing them live as opposed to the other ways one would see them. It was good. It was really good. good it was really good was it loud and swirly yeah uh yeah it was i mean it it sounded like the the songs are supposed to sound i know they they have a reputation for being sort of unpredictable

live is what i've heard uh wasn't really that unpredictable but it was you know it was good they had some trouble staying in tune. It seemed like between songs, presumably because they were rocking so hard. I, uh, you were so interested in my, uh, well, not interested, but you were so, uh, so flattering of my camera obscura headline on today on the site today so i spent when you told me that you were going to the built to spoke on so i spent all day imagining uh built to spill headlines and the best i think the best that i could come up with it it would be it would have to be a very specific article but it would be uh keep it like a seagrass that's good yeah that would have been

good when i wrote about seacrest that one time. Exactly. I was wondering why you didn't use that headline. I'll go back and change it. Go back and change it. No one would mind. No. All right.

It's email Friday. We're doing emails on Fridays now. Yes. All right. So I'm going to start with an email from Annie who says, my question regards National League pitchers and hitting, and there are a few parts to it. I've always sort of wondered why starting pitchers don't work on hitting more. It seems like these guys, many of whom hit regularly, at least through college, would be able to contribute significantly more than they presently

do if they were focusing on hitting. It also seems like a team that had its pitchers work on hitting better would stand to gain quite that had its pitchers work on hitting better would stand to gain quite a bit from it i assume the main reason for restricting them is just that having them out there on the bases and running around increases their risk of injury and teams value them too highly to take that risk but correct me if i'm wrong i guess the first part of the question is do you think any team would ever start encouraging its pitchers to focus extra on hitting with the goal of them becoming hitters at least on par with, say, the average NL middle infielder? Or do you think any pitcher, say, Garrett Cole, would be allowed to take it into his own hands to do this?

It seems to me that just not having the ninth spot in your order be an automatic out could make a significant difference in the game. The second part is, how much better would a pitcher have to get at hitting to override teams' fears about increased injury risk? So the question, I guess, at its heart is, how much better do you think pitchers could be if they tried? I mean, the fact of the matter is that major league hitters have been selected because they're like the 1% of the best 1% of the best 1% in the world. I mean, what they do hitting major league pitching is staggering.

It's an accomplishment that is almost unfathomable. And so the idea that by practicing an extra 20 minutes a day, a non-professional hitter would be able to improve a great deal might seem like folly. But on the other hand, these guys do get base hits. Every single one of them gets a base hit at some point. So they're clearly there, at least if not in the 1% of the 1% of the 1%, at least in the 1% of the 1%. So how much better do you think a 350 OPS hitter could be

if he actually tried, if he committed himself wholeheartedly to becoming a good hitter? Probably not that much better. There's a difference between American League pitcher performance as hitters and National League performance as hitters. I have those numbers. I have those numbers. I'm saying them first. Well, I have them too, though.

We both have them. Mine are more accurate. So National League pitchers this year had a .324 OPS, and American League pitchers this year had a .213 OPS. Hang on. Hang on. You are incorrect. What? You are incorrect.

Both of those numbers are false. How? Where are you? I'm at Baseball Perspectives. I'm on Reference. I have As Pitcher. I'm on their league splits page, As Pitcher.

As Pitcher. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Well, they're close. I have 341 for the NL and 224 for the AL, which regardless of the difference, we don't have to sort that out. But that's actually a huge difference.

Yeah. 110 points or so. I think that's bigger than it normally is. I've looked at this in the past and I've never been struck quite like I am right now. I don't think... We're talking about 300 plate appearances for the AL pitcher. So you're really

at the mercy of small samples. I don't think that the AL pitchers are usually that bad. But let's say it's 50 points of OPS. I mean, that is entirely unless we believe that pitchers are somehow chosen for the NL because of their ability to hit, which is unlikely, that is entirely the result of batting 30 times against Major League pitching a year. And taking more batting practice. Taking more.

I don't see it. So here's my answer to Andy's question, though. Last year, by the way, it was only like 50 points difference. Yeah, I think it's usually about 50 points in my recollection. So my answer to Andy's question, I think the problem is that batting practice doesn't do this. Like, I don't think batting practice is that useful. I don't think batting practice makes you that much better of a hitter. I don't think batting practice makes you that much better of a hitter, and that the only thing that makes you a better hitter at this level is standing up there and facing 98-mile-an-hour fastballs and highest-level breaking balls on a semi-regular basis.

So there's not much you can do, unless you're willing to let Garrett Cole pinch hit every time a game, you know, there's a six-run lead, to just get him more accustomed to it, there's really not that much you can do. I think the only thing that a team conceivably could do is instead of using the DH throughout the minors, as is the custom, you could have your pitchers hit all the way up the system. The problem is that then there's a hitter in your system who's not getting the development. I mean, DHs are usually position players

who are also needing development as hitters. So you're sacrificing to do that. But, I mean, it's conceivable to me that a team might decide that it wants to keep its pitchers somewhat accustomed to hitting and gain that benefit as they move up the system. But I don't think any amount of batting practice is going to make much difference. Batting practice can never mimic Matt Harvey.

And it's more than anything, it's the ability to conquer the fear that that pitch is going to hit you in the forehead. There's that. There's also just the repetition of seeing thousands and thousands of pitches and knowing what break looks like and being able to anticipate that. I mean, a pitcher's never going to – I mean, what Annie said about, like, an average NL middle infielder, that's way out of the question, I think,

that you couldn't get close to that. You could get less terrible. So I don't know about how good you'd have to be to outweigh the injury risk. I mean, it's true, I guess, that starters have a lot of downtime. I mean, they're, I don't know, doing wind sprints and working out and they have a throw day and everything. But presumably they could probably take more BP. But like you say, that probably wouldn't help that much.

So I don't know what you could really do. Yeah. Yeah. I think pitchers should just stop hitting. That would be a solution. Well, you know, my understanding growing up was always that pitchers were too busy working on their pitching to hit. And so I kind of came into this initially thinking that that was the answer. But then I realized that during batting practice, they're the ones who are shagging.

You know, they're the ones bored out in the outfield, shagging fly balls. So clearly there is time. I mean, they do have downtime, but yeah, I don't think that batting practice is all that useful. There was actually a question that I don't think we'll answer, but it asked what the consequences would be if the National League as a whole decided to one-up the AL and simply remove the pitcher from the lineup and go with an eight-man lineup. And it does occur to me that that's a good question. Why do you think they replaced the pitcher with a DH instead of just removing him? What's the point of adding the DH?

Why not just say the pitcher doesn't have to hit? I don't know. Players like the DH. Maybe. I guess that's true. Probably players do like it, and of course the union likes it. Yeah.

Yeah, all right. Okay, next question. Mark asks about the phillies and mark asks mark sent us multiple emails about this so i don't know if i'm going to read the whole the whole the whole line but uh the phillies just hired an analytics guy you might have heard about this everybody out there um and the link he sends us the headline headline is pretty telling, the headline from the Good Fight, the SB Nation Phillies blog is, Phillies hire the analytics guy they're going to ignore. And there's a link to a very well-written article, a well-written piece about why you shouldn't expect the Phillies to become sabermetric just because they hired a sabermetrician.

Mark asks a series of questions about the Phillies and whatever. But I don't know where you want to pick this up because I know you want to talk about this. Yeah, I mean I just wanted to generally react to the news. Yeah, just go ahead. Take it wherever you want. I mean I assumed once we knew that Ruben Amaro was hiring a stat guy of some sort, and it seemed like maybe he'd been talked into that or forced to do that by ownership or something, but he was very clear all along, like, we're not changing the way we're doing things. It seemed like he was more interested in finding out how other teams are analyzing players,

which he thought would help them when they're dealing with those other teams. More interested in that than... Which is such a weird thing. Like, that's such a weird thing. Like, they're hiring a guy from the league. Basically, the guy they hired is, he's from the, he's from basically like the league's, I don't know, arbitration department.

He works on arbitration cases. They didn't hire him, is the thing. did well that's the that's the twist right yes he's a he is he has the most demeaning uh job in history which is called an externship yes he is not an intern he is an extern so all along i figured that that they would get some guy and they would just stick him in some office in the basement or something and probably not listen to him, but he would sort of check the stat guy box. But the guy would have a salary and get benefits and everything and have his name on the website or something. It's not even that.

and have his name on the website or something. It's not even that. It's just a guy who's outsourced or loaned out from the labor relations department as just a temp, basically. He's one of those people who used to show up in the sitcom The Office and Michael would make them do menial tasks and stuff. And maybe it will turn into something if they if they like him if he doesn't contaminate them with his with his stats like I don't know it's crazy I mean if at this point the the Phillies you know assuming what we think of of where their analytics or lack thereof stand,

they're so far behind that it's pretty tough to catch up now because it's not like even if they hired one full-time person, I mean, that's the bare minimum. They'd be behind everyone else still with years of work to catch up on, and this doesn't really seem to be much progress toward that even all right i'm gonna make the case now that the phillies are actually the geniuses in this situation i'm gonna try okay um so you know when you're filling out your march madness bracket if you're in a bracket like an office pool with like 50 you know 50 50 entrants the the the only, the only good

strategy is to pick a bunch of teams that are not likely to win because what you want to do is differentiate yourself from the herd. Because basically, if 15 teams are picking Wisconsin

to win it all, to pick a team that never wins it all, and Wisconsin does win it all and you're team that never wins at all and uh and wisconsin does win it all and you're one of the 15 well you only have a 1 in 15 chance of of of actually winning the pool anyway right because everybody else picked wisconsin too so your odds aren't that great but if you pick uh you know florida state and florida state's like a six seed and you're the only person who picked florida state if they make it, you're the only, you know, you win it. That's it.

All you need is basically one thing to happen. And so it's good to basically go against the grain when there's, you know, a large pool of people. So the Phillies, if 29 teams are all using stat heads and are all making decisions and competing with each other on the same playing field, then maybe the Phillies are smart to be playing on a different field. I mean, we talk about this all the time with small market teams that we know are going to lose.

Like, you know, we talked recently about the Joe Posnanski piece that I loved so much from like eight years ago where he talked about how the Royals should just be signing five foot seven right handers who only throw 84 because nobody else is trying to sign those guys. And who knows? It probably won't work, but maybe it will. Nobody else is doing it. It's like sort of just this classic differentiation. So maybe the Phillies are figuring, look,

if 29 guys are all fighting for Scott Feldman because his FIP is good, we're going to be the one team that basically has an obstacle-free path to what we want to do. And maybe what we want to do isn't as good as what everybody else is. We're picking Florida State. They're a six. Everybody else is picking Wisconsin or Duke. They're ones. I mean, clearly, you'd rather have a one than a six. But you've got obstacles on the way to the one. We've got a clear path on the way to the six it's maybe it's absolutely brilliant right couldn't it be brilliant nobody was fighting for delman young delman young sucked but what if delman young had been great like he could have been but he couldn't

have though he could have though he could have jeffrey core had that amazing year for dayton more once you know like once. It can work. You only need one thing to happen, and that one thing is like pigs flying, but still you only need one thing. It's a valiant attempt. Maybe if the other teams didn't have scouts, I would say there is something to it, but they have scouts also. So it's just depriving yourself of information that everyone else has

and not really gaining any extra information. Unless they're funneling all of their non-stat head money into paying more scouts who are better at scouting, then no. Uh-huh, yeah, probably. Good try. I love, I just love this, I love this position, externship. I just think that's the most insulting thing

you could say about a person. I mean, I guess the guy has a full-time job, I guess, with MLB, right? So he's... Oh, we would kill for his job. Like, you and I would both kill for his job and I mean probably not but wait you you wrote that piece about how you don't want to work in baseball but I would kill for his job okay uh I would I would gladly have Ruben Amaro ignore me

as it is in fact that's what I do all day every day so okay uh all right uh Do you think the Phillies are going to – I mean the question about the Phillies is relevant. I mean like how long can they keep doing this? I have a – I talk to a lot of people about baseball who don't know that much about baseball and they're curious about statistics and analytics and they want to know about this money ball thing. about statistics and analytics and they want to know about this you know this money ball thing and and and a line that i have that i use a lot and that i thought was true until about 20 minutes ago when i heard about the phillies was that i always tell them like basically every team today is more stat savvy than the money ball is that it's just like been so absorbed that the most philistine – philistine is the right – no, it's the one – not philistine. Never mind.

Anyway, the most backwards team still has just reams and reams of data, right? still has just reams and reams of data, right? And so now I find that, like, I guess I didn't really appreciate the extent to which the Phillies were against this. I sort of knew that they were like the 29th or 30th team in analytics, but I didn't realize how aggressively they were against it. So how long do you think a team can really hold this position? I mean, is this like their last year, or are we still going to be having this conversation about some team in Major

League Baseball, maybe not the Phillies, but some team in 10 years that just continues to be like culture warring it? I don't know if there are any other teams now even. Luddite is what I was going for, Luddite. Yes. It has to be the Phillillies i feel like because just about everyone else is on board like except for maybe the team could change though a team could change yeah it seems sort of unlikely that it would go backwards like they just mariners

went backwards yeah but not to the extent that they just have no one doing analytics. No, but they could. Could. I think it lasts as long as Amaro lasts. So, yeah, maybe this year. I mean, it could keep going. Like, it could have. This was the way they operated before right and they were a successful team before because

they for a while there had sort of pre Amaro had really great scouting and they built this team with this homegrown core and not Lee and Rollins and Howard and all these people if you could sustain that,

if he had shown the ability to continue finding and drafting people like that, then it could go on indefinitely, I guess. But clearly that hasn't happened. So his leash can't be that long right now unless the Phillies get their new TV deal and they go out and spend a ton of money and win despite kind of not really having a lot of young talent ready right now. But I don't know that he would still be the guy there.

And it seems to me like whoever the next person is, if ownership is fed up with Amaro at some point and gets rid of him, they'll probably want to change course and do exactly what Amaro didn't do. And that would be probably hire someone, make the extern a full-time employee. All right. So John asks, on the most recent Behind the Dish podcast, Keith Law interviewed Scott Boris on some of his top free agent clients, Ellsbury Chu, Drew Morales. For all of them, he quoted classic stats and seemed to specifically focus on RBI totals.

And Keith sat there silently. I found this bizarre. This is a conversation between two experienced industry insiders who both know full well that GMs are not evaluating Morales based on his RBI totals. What's the deal? I didn't hear this podcast. Did you hear this podcast? No, I normally listen, but I have not heard this episode. So to the specific point, I guess we can't really speak to it. I mean, I don't know. I'm just completely speculating. I imagine that from Keith's perspective, you get to choose which direction the interview is going to go. And if he starts just like he can have a nice,

cordial conversation with Scott Boris in which Scott Boris is really open and shares a lot of information and has a great conversation that is useful to the audience, or he can start being like insulting him and then the interview will be a different kind of interview that, you know, might be more fun or might not be. I probably would have gone the way that he did. Um, but I, and I don't really know if that's where Keith was or, or what, but anyway, um, as to the question, uh, we are going to, to, you know, we're going into the offseason, and we are going to hear Scott Boris talk about his players a lot over the next month and a half. And he's going to talk about RBIs, and he's going to talk about wins and that sort of a thing.

And it does seem like a good question. I can't imagine that these things come up in negotiations anymore. Do they? My impression of those, you know, the binders he produces for his clients is that no one looks at the binders except the client. The client looks at the binders and thinks that his agent is doing a really great job and making this big binder and then they get sent to the teams and the teams use them as paperweights or something um the only difference though i guess is that or the exception is that boris sometimes goes straight to the top right so he doesn't the owner yeah so if he if he's going to

the owner then he's speaking the owner's language and maybe the owner's language is RBIs and wins. Or I don't know if maybe he's, if he's trying to, to build some sort of public opinion. Also, he's appealing to the fans of the team possibly, um, to put pressure on, on ownership or on the front office, and most fans are still looking at those stats. So I doubt that if he's having a conversation with the general manager, he's saying exactly the same thing that he was saying to Keith. If he's in an arbitration panel, though, he is. That's sort of a weird thing where if you're in arbitration,

then RBIs matter, but if you're in free agency, they probably don't. Yes. So that's probably how it is, but we don't technically know. But I don't know, maybe you do leave. I mean, if you're Boris, if you're an agent, you can say whatever you want, right? You can start however you want. You can say you drove in 120 RBIs.

I mean, probably the team isn't going to be like, you know, screw you, Boris, I don't believe in RBIs either. He'll probably be polite. He'll, just like Keith, he'll probably be polite and say, okay, well, where can we find common ground? So it actually wouldn't surprise me necessarily if he led with the most flattering statistic, whatever that is um but yeah i don't i don't really know i don't know it does seem like a weird a weird um venue for

for rbis to come up because yeah clearly maybe he didn't get an audience didn't yeah didn't didn't realize who would be listening to keith law's podcast i don't know i want do you think that war is in any of Scott Morris' binders at this point? Maybe. Yeah. Probably. I mean, if the war makes the player look better than the RBIs, it's probably in there. And if the RBIs make the player look better than the war, it's probably in there.

Probably the FIP is in there when it's lower and the ERA is in there when it's lower. All right, James asks, what if baseball allowed two-way substitution, allowing a player who had left the game to return? Is baseball the only sport that doesn't? Asking me about other sports? I don't know. I can't think of one.

Volleyball? Uh, what? I don't know. I don't know. Volleyball has substitutions. I can't rule out the possibility because I don't really watch other sports, but the ones that I've

seen have that. Okay, so let me turn this into a very specific question okay if if baseball allowed two-way substitution once you came out of the game you could go back in the game would there be more roster spots or fewer roster spots fewer fewer right because you wouldn't need you wouldn't have any need for emergency situations yeah and you can you can mix and match pitchers you you wouldn't need like three situational lefty guys right you could just you could take one oh you could just have your one lefty unless you're worried that

that he hurt his arm once he cools down or something but you could yeah instead of just using four different relievers to get through an inning, you could presumably go switch them off, alternate or something. Um, so this is, yeah, this is sort of this classic place where, where there are two conflicting desires I have for baseball. Uh, one is for the quality of play to be high and for the best players to be in the game. The other is for things to get kind of nervous and tense. And so in the one hand, if you could do this, you'd see a lot higher quality of play. You know, you could have matchups more, you could have, well, basically that's what you could

do. You could have matchups more, you could have, you know, defensive specialists a lot more and offensive specialists a lot more. But on the other hand, I really like the idea that once you go to your second catcher, you start to get nervous because what if he gets injured? Or once you run out of position players, you know that any minute Randy Wynn could have to come in and play third base because you're out of position players. So there's two competing drives, I guess, in the entertainment value of the game. I think I like the limited roster more. I think I almost always like the idea that a pitcher could be playing left field. Yeah, me too. All right. And Chris asks, this will be the last question.

Chris asks, listening to the Call and Wires send-off show last week, it occurred to me to ask, of all the former internet scribes who have taken MLB front office positions over the past few years, who is likeliest to write a ball-four style expose of that side of the business someday? Or will they all be precluded from doing so via confidentiality agreements? They will be, but that's part of the equation. Who is likely to break that confidentiality agreement and you you know more people than i know um yeah i don't i had a confidentiality agreement just as an intern so i can't imagine what and i did they didn't tell me anything so i don't know what mine was like a two-year thing, I think. Maybe I wasn't supposed to talk about stuff. So these guys, I have no idea how long it would be. It might be even longer.

I don't know. Colin, probably. Yeah, it's not Kevin. I think everybody thinks it's Kevin because he's so punk rock. But for all of his punk rockness Kevin is a Kevin is a good company man Kevin Kevin Kevin falls in line when he's uh you know when he's working for he's he's a loyal employee is what I'm saying it's not going to be Kevin yeah I don't think it's I don't know I don't think it's likely likely to happen. Maybe long after when the statute of limitations on the NDA has expired, someone could do some sort of memoir.

Well, I could see. I mean, I think like Russell, I don't know when his expires or if it would. But if there was a point where it was non-threatening to his employer, I think Russell could write a wonderful memoir. I'm sure he could. But even then, if you have any – if you're harboring any hopes of working for another team, which a lot of people are if they've had some sort of consulting gig for a while, then that would probably hurt you. A team would be less likely to hire you. You'd have to have switched careers basically or be retired or something so bill james yeah yeah i guess bill james is a logical one he's he's writing all the time as it is not about red sock stuff but yeah he's already got a fairly

loose tongue he's already he's got a very uh he's got a's got a very – it seems like he's got a very flexible confidentiality agreement. Whatever nondisclosure agreement he's signed does not preclude him from speaking more than most. And he's basically – he's near retirement age. And he's a celebrity. I mean no matter what he says, he could get hired again. Yeah, or maybe he wouldn't care. Or maybe he wouldn't care. He either wouldn't care or he could get hired again. Yeah, or maybe he wouldn't care. Or maybe he wouldn't care. He either wouldn't care or he could get hired again.

I mean, he's more powerful than a nondisclosure agreement. So it's Bill James. Yeah, probably. You're right. He's not a former internet scribe, though. He is currently writing on the internet, but he is not. He has a website. Yeah, he does, but he didn't get to the Red Sox because he had a really cool Tumblr.

No, not really. Yeah. All right. So Bill James, we agree. Good questions this week. All of you really turned it up a notch, I guess, now that baseball is over. You have nothing to fill your time, so you've been writing us emails. But good ones.

So, okay, so that's it we'll be back next week with more shows uh send us emails for next week at podcast at baseball prospectus.com yes sorry go ahead are we taking veterans day off uh i don't know you're really putting me on the spot here. Well, you could always delete this. Yeah, maybe I will. I don't know. We'll talk about it off air.

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