Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 33: The Least Likely Team to Win a World Series In the Next 10 Years/Does it Matter if Jimmy Rollins Jogs?

Episode Date: August 31, 2012

Ben and Sam slum it with a bunch of bad teams from baseball’s underclass and speculate about which has the least hope of going all the way before 2022, then discuss Jimmy Rollins’ benching and how much running out a popup really matters.

Good morning and welcome to episode 33 of Effectively Wild, the Daily Baseball Perspectives podcast. Coming to you from a shower in a bathroom in Vancouver, Canada, I am Ben Lindberg. in Vancouver, Canada. I am Ben Lindberg. Coming to you from his Honda Fit with the door open tonight, or today, is Sam Miller in Long Beach, California. If you're wondering why one of us is always in a car or a bathroom

or both of us are in strange places, it's because we are considerate people and we don't let the podcast interfere with the other people in our lives that's true so i'm sitting in the shower who are you uh who are you not disturbing right now i'm trying not to wake up my girlfriend and you're in canada again i'm in canada again you have a girlfriend in Canada? Yes, I do. Did you meet her in Niagara Falls? This is the first time I can ever legitimately say that.

That's exciting. Okay. I'm going to say it many, many times over the next five days or so. What is your topic? My topic would be the San Diego Padres, sort of. Okay. And I want to talk about Jimmy Rollins' Hustle. Hustle. I like talking about Hustle. I know. That's one of the reasons I picked this. Well, I don't actually want to talk about the Padres. I do, but I think I probably will put that off until next week. What I really want to talk about is the sort of baseball's underclass. The Padres have won,

is it nine out of ten, and are playing well. And they're an interesting team, and they have a smart front office. And the nine out of ten have come against all over 500 teams I believe and so there's a lot to like about the Padres but my question is actually a lot broader it is this if you had to if your life depended on picking one team that would not win a world series in the next 10 years I think that the Padres would be one team that some people might choose, and they would probably not be the team I would choose. I just wanted to know what team you would choose if there is a team that you think you could say confidently will not turn it around in a decade. Let me think it over while you explain why you don't think it's the Padres. Well, I don't know why I don't think it's the Padres.

I mean, the Padres clearly have maybe as many systemic obstacles as any team. They are in not a great market. They have a not great TV situation. They have, obviously, it's a tough division with a team that seems intent on turning it into an AL East sort of competition each year. And they are always going to be the underdog and we've seen that a team like the padres uh i guess what i'm what we've seen is it is not uh the case cycles come every four

or five years like you might hope that a team can really lose for 20 years if the odds are stacked against them and it's taken 20 years for the pirates to get relevant for a brief moment and it's been 20 years and the royals have never really been relevant for a brief moment i don't know though if though if that is going to be a permanent part of baseball it seems to me that um that there is a model for building out of nothingness that some teams have kind of mastered. And I don't know that I would count the Royals out. The Royals, of course, with their system that we talked about, seem like they – I mean, I wouldn't put my life on the line saying that the Royals wouldn't win a World Series, I don't think. And I don't think I would about the Padres either.

The Padres have maybe the best system in baseball right now. And I think that they've done a great job of locking up players. I think that the moves that they've made have been really strong, although they haven't really been put to the test because they haven't made any moves to turn into a first-place team yet. The moves they've made have been on their own schedule and on the margins, but they seem very smart. The Maben deal in particular was inspired, and I thought that the Carlos Quentin deal was, and I thought that the Carlos Quentin deal was and I thought that the Matt

Latos deal was and so. Well, I mean, just looking at the standings right now, this question is harder than I expected it to be. And I feel like it's harder than it might have been a few years ago. I mean, it would have been very easy to pick the Pirates, let's say, a year ago, or two years ago, or 17 years ago. I guess I'm a little less comfortable doing that now. This is going to be probably a silly pick,

but I would say the Orioles. The Orioles, not a bad pick. Well, I don't know. It might be a bad pick because they are 14 games over.500 right now, regardless of how they got there. And if the season were to end today, they would be in the playoffs. Although, well, they'd be in the play-in game at least and so they would have uh i guess a 50 50 ish shot at a one in eight ish shot at winning the world series

yeah and that's just one year that is just one year uh and of course that gives them a better chance at it than a lot of teams do this year. And, I mean, it seems silly to pick a team that's 14 games over 500 over, say, the Astros or the Cubs. So I guess that is really us just— Well, you can't really pick the Cubs, though, because they're a big market. They're an elite division. They have Theo Epstein. So you can eliminate almost every team pretty easily. You wouldn't pick the Astros, probably,

because they're also a good market. And they have been... I mean, I think that there's a process element at play with the Astros where they're almost artificially awful because it is the plan. And, of course, we love their front office. And you can make a pretty good case for almost every team in baseball

it's not an easy answer I think that I might go with I love their front office but I could consider the Blue Jays but I think that my pick would probably be the Indians but then of course you've got the division the division is so I almost went for the Marlins.

I almost went for the Indians. But, yeah, as you say, the division was the deciding factor for me. The Marlins is a good one because they are – They kind of just got out of the – Yeah, they've put themselves into like a four- or five-year hole. You know that they're not really going to probably compete for the next half decade. Yeah, you'd think. Although they do have those two World Series.

Yeah, I guess so. And I went with, I guess I went with Baltimore over Toronto, just kind of out of a front office respect thing, mostly. What about Colorado? Colorado seems like a bad guess. Yeah, but I don't know. At the NL West, I just never have any idea what's going on there. I guess maybe now that the Dodgers are the capital D Dodgers again,

or all-caps Dodgers, maybe they will kind of make the NL West a less volatile division. But over the past few years, I just generally have no idea what's going on over there. So that's kind of why I left them out. Yeah. But it's not just you. The staff predictions for the NL West are hysterical every year. Yeah.

The AL East is tough. It is tough, but maybe the wild card thing opens it up. I mean, the wild card thing does open it up, but maybe... I don't know. Orioles is a good guess. I approve of the Orioles.

Okay. And of course, I'm betting against a playoff appearance this season still. And, of course, I'm betting against a playoff appearance this season still. Although at this point I'm rooting for it, I think. For a while there I kind of wanted the numbers to look more like they should. Now I'm just kind of rooting for the chaos theory. I think we're going to probably end up talking about why we root for the Orioles next week. So that'll be – there's a tease.

All right. Okay, so Jimmy Rollins, you wrote an article at Baseball Perspectives this week about hustle. So you are the world's foremost expert on hustle. So I'm glad I have you here. Jimmy Rollins yesterday was benched by Charlie Emanuel after not hustling or being perceived to not hustle after hitting a pop-up. And I mean, to me, did you see the play? I didn't. No, that's the news to me. All right. So to me, it looked like a very typical run out of a pop-up.

I certainly wouldn't have thought anything about Rollins' apparent lack of hustle, except that John Neese, who was pitching and was in the best position to catch the ball, did not catch the ball. He dropped it, and second base was uncovered. And so Rollins could have gotten there very easily if he had been running hard. And so Charlie Manuel benched him after that inning, even though Rollins stole second, maybe in an effort to make up for not being there already.

Um, maybe in an effort to make up for not being there already. Uh, Mark Manuel kind of just said a few words to him after he got back to the bench and he benched him and, and there had been some backstory, uh, about this. It was not the first time Jimmy Rollins has had some sort of, um, also related talking to or, or infraction. Uh, I think a couple of weeks ago he was talked to about not running out of ground out and in some previous seasons too. Um,

so maybe it was, it was more kind of a straw that broke the camel's back than a particularly egregious play. Um, but you know, I mean, Rollins kind of didn't talk to reporters very much. He said.

He hustled out of the clubhouse. Yes, he did. He said, Manuel already told you what happened. There you go. But when he was asked two weeks ago about why he doesn't run hard on every play, he said, you'll end up breaking down just the wear and tear on your body. Why do people do a lot of things? It's just the way it is. It's like, if you're a pitcher, why don't you throw every ball at 95 miles per hour? I don't know if that analogy really works,

but sometimes it's not going to happen. Hustle doesn't take talent, but there are other things that go on sometimes you just get upset about. And Charlie Emanuel, according to the story, does not consider that an excuse. And he is concerned about Rollins' actions impact on other players. Not that the Phillies have any young players who could take a lesson from Jimmy Rollins. They're all older than Jimmy Rollins. I don't know. from Jimmy Rollins. They're all older than Jimmy Rollins. I don't know. I mean, I guess one of the, I guess you didn't really talk about your stance on hustle as much in that article as you did,

how we could measure it and decide who does. You know, infield fly balls are caught, I think, 99% of the time. That's an actual number. I'm not just making that up. So the run value of a pop-up, when people calculate those things, is almost identical to the run value of a strikeout. You're not much more likely to get to first base on a pop-up than you are on a strikeout, which occasionally is dropped, and that sort of thing can happen. So is it always kind of the wiser cost-benefit analysis says not to bust it down the line, at least when you are Rollins' age and have had some knacking injuries and you're on the fillies

and you're not contending for anything in particular or does the fact that you're not contending make it even more important that you hustle or what do you think I the first game I ever went to as a as a child as a six-year-old there was a pop-up into right field and the guy really hustled. The batter hustled, hustled, hustled, sprinted down to first, sprinted around first, and the second baseman just totally dropped the ball like a total error. And the runner got caught in between first and second because he'd been hustling so hard and he got thrown out. So that was – I think uh, I don't know. I mean, hustle's, uh, I try not to, it, there's a real tendency to judge hustle as a, as a, I think as a fan and also as a manager, because it is run as hard as you can on the way to first. And so when you see a player who is not doing a thing that you know that everybody is qualified to do, if they only care to, it can be frustrating.

But I tend to just think of it as a skill like any other skill. like any other skill. And I'm sympathetic to the idea that you have a certain amount of not literal effort, but effort that you can put into your job. And when you are putting effort into things that don't really matter, it frustrates you and distracts you and can make you not really a happy employee. I mean, I've certainly had that in my life where I've had jobs where I thought that some of the work was less important than other work and it bothered me that I had to do the unimportant work as well. So, I mean, I am talking about doing this podcast. I am talking about doing this podcast.

No, I think that basically, I mean, I think that hustle is a valuable thing. There is value. There are runs that you pick up over the course of a season and over the course of a career because you hustle. And I would love to see every guy do it. And I would love to see every guy do it, and I would love to see Rollins do it. And I don't really buy the idea that he's going to break down if he runs hard to first base on that play. Jimmy Rollins has to do less running this year than he has done in previous years,

and I think that he's capable of a few extra sprints. But I don't know. I guess what I'm saying is I don't expect any person or player or employee to be perfect. And you pick and choose the places where you're going to be perfect. And if the weakness in your game you don't run out pop up, then that's just a weakness in your game. Everybody has got a weakness in the game, in your game. in the game, in your game. Well, I kind of wonder whether there's, you know, people talk about how it can be a weakness to hustle too hard in other areas.

If you're running into outfield walls, then maybe that's not a good thing. You'll catch a ball every now and then that you wouldn't have caught, but you'll also go in the DL every now and then when you wouldn't have otherwise. So I wonder, I mean, if... When Jimmy Rollins pops up to the pitcher, he should not run into a wall. I'm just on the record. Don't run into a wall in that situation, Jimmy. Jimmy Rollins has popped up, I think, more than any other hitter this year,

or there might be one or two guys who have a higher infield fly ball percentage than he does. So he knows better than anyone that these things are usually caught. The AP lead for this Jimmy Rollins hustle story is this. Jimmy Rollins' latest jog toward first earned him a spot where he won't have to hustle on the bench. Bad. Well, I don't know. I mean, if one out of every hundred pop-ups is dropped, I wonder how many of every thousand full-on sprints to first base leads to some sort of strain or ankle dislocation or some problem of some sort. I mean, if you don't, I mean, you don't, it's, it's not,

you're not racing Usain Bolt down the line though. I mean, he, he runs, he like this guy actually runs hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of yards every game. I mean, he runs in before the game, he runs in the outfield they're capable of running. I think I'm not, I mean, I don't know. I, I, I don't really know, Ben. It's hard to say. I will say this though, that the, the, the confusion, the, um, the ambivalence about this, uh, issue is perfectly encapsulated by his stolen base. The next play, he got the exact same 90 feet. He got it by running hard. So he's clearly not opposed to running hard when there's a incentive to do it.

He, uh, he did, he, it was the exact same result. And yet, uh, nobody accepts that because there's just a sense that, uh, hustle is, is, I don't know, it's, it, it sort of shows you how hustle is for show, but it also shows you, um, how, um, uh, you know, how we judge it. And it's, I don't think it's, I don't think it's a totally unfair thing to judge. I guess I wish it were consistently policed. This was sort of a results-based benching in that he jogged more or less like, I don't, I wouldn't say every other player, but many other players. It certainly didn't seem like anything extraordinary that he jogged after hitting a pop-up. If John Nese had not dropped that ball and he had not had any opportunity to go to second, would he still have been benched?

It seems unlikely. It does seem unlikely, and that is annoying. Yeah. And I wonder whether the focus on it is just kind of things are not going so well for the Phillies. They can't do anything about most of those things, but they can control this one thing. And so maybe it's kind of a desire to control one little thing in a season that has not gone well for them and I suppose it could have some sort of effect on a young person on the roster. Just out of curiosity before all this came up in the last few weeks did you have any sense

if you had to rate Jimmy Rollins hustle over his career would you have what would you have any sense if you had to rate Jimmy Rollins' hustle over his career? What hustle score would you have put on him? Yeah, I don't know if I would have had enough information to – Oh, well, you certainly wouldn't have. Yeah, no, neither of us has nearly enough information. I just wonder if you had a – because my impression of him was that he was all over the place and he was a hustler and he was a little jackrabbit out there. You were wrong.

Yeah, I was. Goodness gracious. Somebody take this podcast away from me. Okay. So that's the end of episode 33. that's the end of episode 33. We are going to get out of our showers in our bathrooms and our cars in our garages and go enjoy our long weekends. And we hope you will do the same. And we will speak to you on Tuesday with episode 34.