Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 347: The Rule Changes, Trades, and Signings of Winter Meetings Day Three

Episode Date: December 12, 2013

Ben and Sam discuss home plate collisions, the neighborhood play, and moves by the Mariners, Mets, and Nationals.

Oh, what's now? I'm gonna fly. Good morning and welcome to episode 347 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from BaseballPerspectives.com. I am Ben Lindberg, joined as always by Sam Miller. My topic for today is things that happened today. That's my topic. Today being Wednesday. And there were a lot of things that happened.

Some of them related to topics that we have discussed on the podcast at some point. So I thought we could run through those quickly. First, there was the rule change news coming out of the winter meetings. There was a meeting between managers and GMs and sort of a non-update update on the progress of instant replay. Seems like they're still ironing out the details there. But Craig Calcaterra wrote that he spoke to someone who he asked about the neighborhood play, which is something that we brought up as a potential sticking point when this news first surfaced. And apparently the plan, at least currently, is just to make that exempt from instant replay. You would still be able to challenge a transfer play, but not a neighborhood play. So I guess that's one solution. Not really, though. I mean, it's sort of a solution, but I mean, you're still like,

you're kind of acknowledging that you have a rule that you don't enforce. So why not just make it a rule? I mean, you shouldn't have rules that are not enforced in, I mean, rules that are not enforced are a, you know, a terrible thing in, in, in any sphere because then it becomes selectively enforced and can be used, you know, uh, for nefarious reasons. So just make it not a rule, make it, make it a rule that you don't have to touch second base if there's a play coming, if that's what you want it to be. Make it a rule it cool because yeah i guess if you're saying that it can't be challenged then you're giving tacit approval to to not stepping on the base and and at that point players would probably start to take advantage of it anyway and and get farther and farther away i guess if they know that it can't be challenged i guess umpires could still,

could still, you know, call the runner safe. But, um, but yeah, I see what you're saying, but apparently that that's how they're going to handle that. Or at least currently that's the thinking, which is something that we wondered about. And in, in other, uh, yeah. Wait, can I, uh, it's been a long time since I've slid. How hard is it to... Do you think it would be possible to just make the rule that the base runner can't slide through the bag, that he could go head

first through the bag if he wanted? So if your momentum takes you past the bag and you're diving, that's okay. But if you slide feet first into an occupied base, a base where there's a defender, you can't slide through the bag, past the bag. Is it hard to stop yourself? I don't know.

I haven't slid recently either. But, I mean, players don't usually lose contact completely with the bag when they slide in, do they? No, but I mean the feet don't go past the back border. Oh. That seems like it might be tough. Might be. Because often they'll slide all the way past and they'll just keep their arm on the base.

Yeah, often they will, but do they have to? Probably. If they're probably not just doing that for fun. I don't know. All right. Fair enough. And in other players colliding with other players news, home plate collisions will be banned. Assuming the Players Association agrees to that, which you would think that they would, that will be instituted in 2014. It'll be instituted in 2014. If for some reason they don't agree to that, MLB can just implement it unilaterally the following season.

But this seems like good news. This seems like something that the internet has been pretty unified on for a while now. I actually went to my Facebook feed earlier, just coincidentally after I saw this news, and there were two consecutive items by people posting this news and having completely opposite reactions to it. One of them was saying that this is great and players won't get hurt anymore and baseball isn't a contact sport anyway and we should protect the players. And the other one was basically saying, oh, this is the downfall of sports. It's the wimpification of professional athletes, and players should be willing to put their bodies on the line and that sort of thing. So both perspectives exist out there. Yeah, and I mean, you and I both are, uh, we don't like seeing things

get hurt. So like our, our, our opposition is fairly simple, but I think that it's probably a good idea to get rid of it now, regardless, because once you sort of have momentum away from a, uh, you know, some, the thing is right now that there, there are a lot of bat of runners that won't do it anyway. And you see it. It seems to me you see it more and more where you see a lot of cases where the runner has full right to destroy the catcher and doesn't. And I would say it's want the competitive balance coming down to which guys are more willing to do something they don't want to do, more or less.

I mean, it just becomes who's dirtier, basically. And even if it's for the rules, then it's not illegal, but it's still kind of dirty. for the rules, then it's not illegal, but it's still kind of like dirty. Who's more willing to throw the first punch or to just keep attacking? And that's kind of where we are now. I mean, if you figure 60% of the base runners aren't doing it, they are out of some sort of altruism, giving up a competitive advantage. You don't really want to have a system where they're disadvantaged for it. So once it gets to that point, you basically just have to legislate it away. I mean, I feel like I'm not explaining it that well, and I haven't thought about it that

well, but I feel like there's some little bit of like an analogy to PEDs, where you just, you don't want to have, even when people say, ah, just make PEDs legal, but you don't want a situation where everybody has to do PEDs in order to keep up. And at this point, you don't want to have, when people say, ah, just make PEDs legal, but you don't want a situation where everybody has to do PEDs in order to keep up. And at this point, you don't want to have a situation where everybody has to hurt the catcher in order to keep up when people clearly don't want to hurt the catcher. And I won't miss this play even just purely from an entertainment value perspective. I don't, it was never particularly interesting to me if the ball beat the runner by, you know, 10 feet or something. And then the only question became,

can the runner hit this other guy hard enough to dislodge the ball? That was not that interesting to me, which maybe is not why I don't watch football. But I always like the, I like the tag, and I like avoiding the tag. Avoiding a tag at home plate has given us so many great tag avoidance plays. Crazy Ichiro leaping over the glove and sliding at the back of the base and putting your arm down and then picking it back up and putting

your other arm on the plate and those kind of plays are much more interesting to me i think and and having a having a catcher have to receive the the ball and and get his glove over time to tag a runner those are the exciting plays at the plate to me more so than just seeing whether this guy's momentum can overcome the other guy's inertia um you have reminded me that i have to do my second annual year in slides oh yeah you should do that uh do you remember greg maddox doing like the the deke sounds familiar but yeah i haven't seen it forever. It's totally possible that I've made this up in my memory, but I vaguely recall Greg Maddox being in an Ichiro sort of situation.

He was past home plate by like five feet, and he deked the catcher, and it was sort of a legendary Greg Maddox moment at the time. And it seems to me that it's really in baseball's best interest to do things like this, not even just as a workplace safety issue, which is probably reason enough to do it, but just in terms of sort of positioning baseball as maybe the alternative to contact sports that are making people increasingly uncomfortable. It seems like, like I was, I was talking to someone who works for a team, it must have been three or four months ago. And he was telling me that he, he thought that baseball was sort of

poised to retain or, or regain some of the lost market share, that it's sort of surrendered to basketball and football and other sports, and that sooner or later the PED scandals that have rocked baseball will make their way to other sports. Eventually it will start to bother people that other athletes and other sports are doing the same things that baseball players were doing. And that as people find out more about concussions and injuries and the long-term effects of these things, that baseball stands to benefit in a way. Not that anyone in baseball would celebrate people in other sports getting hurt.

But in a way, I mean, if baseball positions itself as sort of the non-contact finesse skill sport, then it possibly stands to gain some fans who are uncomfortable watching players kill each other and players who are uncomfortable being killed. players kill each other and players who are uncomfortable being killed. So in that sense, it seems like not a bad idea for baseball to kind of brand itself as the game that you can play and probably not have to worry about anything life-threatening or quality of life-threatening even. So that's something that I take away from this also. I'm sorry, Ben. I didn't hear any of that because I was watching Greg Maddox on a loop

absolutely destroying Don Slott. It's the greatest thing I've ever seen. I can't believe that any part of me had forgotten this. So good. Send it to me so I can watch while you talk. All right. had forgotten this so good send it to me so i can watch while you talk um all right and so so that was uh that and then we can we can get into some of the the transactions that happened today not not anything major but somewhat interesting um you wrote about the the two Mariners moves, acquiring Logan Morrison from the Marlins for Carter Capps and then signing Corey Hart. And you were pretty positive about the Hart move in your reaction.

And then the Morrison move sort of soured you on the Hart move in a way, it seemed like. of soured you on the Hart move in a way, it seemed like. Yeah, they have to now play one of them in the outfield, which is risky. I mean, primarily because I think that Hart can maybe hang out there in an ideal world, but not knowing how he's going to be able to move after two knee surgeries and not knowing how much strain that's going to put on him in his recovery, you would think that the default would be Hart is the DH this year. Maybe next year he's back in the field, but presumably the team that signs Hart would think, this year he's just a DH, or maybe he plays first base or part-time first base or whatever,

but certainly not going to be running around in a big outfield. But Logan Morrison is perhaps, we don't know this and i don't mean perhaps like he's either worst or second worst i mean perhaps it's it's always hard to know with defensive metrics perhaps he's the worst defensive baseball player in the majors in roughly two full seasons worth of um of games he's he's negative 50 d uh by uzr um and uh he's about negative 40 by defensive run saved now our metric likes him more than that it does not like him it dislikes him but it dislikes him considerably less so it's possible that he's just below average and you you wouldn't think i mean he doesn't look like a weirdo he doesn't have like a crazy body or anything and he's young

and so you would think that he'd be able to move better than a negative 50 defender um but if you imagine for a second that he is actually the worst defensive outfielder in baseball um then the marlins put themselves in a position where they're either going to have that or they're going to have cory hart out there and so it just feels weird to to pair them up but more than that i just feel like um the mariners basically they could i mean there are ways they could move things around they have a long off season but this is pretty much it for their offense they've now filled their their two kind vacant positions. And it just feels like a fairly unambitious conclusion to their remaking of their lineup. They did Cano and that was really exciting. And then the rest of it was Hart and Morrison. And I guess if they don't have more money than that, then you're sort of stuck. I kind of thought they would have more money than that.

It seemed like indications were that they would have more money than that. It seemed like indications were that they would have more money than that. But, you know, those are two positions where I would think that you would, there's a lot of guys, there are the sort of guys who are still around in January and March and February a lot of times. And it feels like pretty early to concede that Hart and Morrison are the best you can do there. So in a way, I think that the Mariners got three or four wins better than they were 24 hours ago, but I actually like their chances less than I did 24 hours ago because now I don't see where they improve, unless they trade smoke for something, which is possible.

Well, I think just as we started recording, Jerry Krasnick posted a story at ESPN about Nelson Cruz and Shinsu Chu and where they might end up and how much they might make. Jack Z doesn't appear ready to close the door on upgrades to an offense that ranked 12th in the American league with 624 runs scored. The Mariners have been ardent cruise pursuers from the start of the winter and one baseball source said they'll continue to be in the mix for him. Didn't he turn down, didn't he turn down something absurd? There was a report that he turned down five years, 75 from them. That was not confirmed. And it it's it's hard to because i'm i'm not really i don't follow i follow uh rumors sort of from from afar i'm not really on in the

the twitter streets with the rumors i kind of i see them when they go up on MLB trade rumors or I see them when they turn into a completed transaction. And it seems like half the rumors today were just sort of refuting other rumors. Every post about a rumor had like two updates following that post about how that rumor had been debunked. So I don't know whether to believe that or not, but that was the report. I don't know where would he play at this point. Well, either they move Ackley and then Michael Saunders moves to center field and then Cruz plays a corner or they give up on Saunders. plays a corner or they give up on Saunders.

I mean, if they sign Cruz... Or they move Franklin and Ackley goes to second base. If they sign Cruz, they would have like three of the four remaining power hitters in baseball. Probably. They'd pretty much have cornered the market on power. Best offense in... I mean, pretty hard to argue that'd be the best offense in baseball yeah um and the interest nobody nobody nobody thought nobody took that seriously right i hope not we might get emails about that um we there is also the uh did you see the the ken

rosenthal tweet about uh david price not being willing to consider an extension with the Mariners? I did, yeah. Which is pretty interesting. So Ken Rosenthal ran into... That's a Mariner specific tweet. He's not just saying, I'm hitting the market, don't even bother. Right. Rosenthal ran into David Price's agent just in the lobby and asked whether Price would consider an extension with the Mariners. The agent said no. And then he asked the agent if Price would consider extensions with other teams. And he said yes. averse to extensions. He is just opposed to signing with Seattle long-term, which is interesting because we've talked about how the Mariners have had trouble attracting hitters. And you'd think that, I mean, the justification for signing someone like Robinson Cano is that, oh,

it's going to be so much easier now to bring other stars in here. Cano is like, he's a sign that we're willing to compete and a superstar is willing to play here. Apparently not persuasive to David Price. You know, you forget sometimes how different you are than the average Major League Baseball player. And then something like this comes up where you realize that none of them want to live in the place that you would most want to live. Yeah, Seattle's not so bad. Seattle's the best.

Who wouldn't want to live in Seattle? I like the Pacific Northwest. I hear this about San Francisco too, which is the greatest city in the world. And there are athletes who are like, nah, I don't really want to go there. The other move I guess we could talk about is the Nationals acquiring Jerry Blevins. Really?

Everyone wants to hear what we think about this. It's interesting to me because the Nationals not having a lefty reliever seems like it's been a storyline for the last, I don't know, year or so. There was even that quote where Davy Johnson almost suggested that the Nationals didn't make the playoffs because they didn't really have a reliable lefty reliever. And it was like the one thing that they were still lacking after their recent moves. And then they signed Jerry Blevins, who... Has a reverse split.

Right. So he's a lefty reliever, but might as well not be. I mean, he might not be a true reverse split guy, but he is not, like, a lefty specialist. He's not what teams typically talk about when they say, we need a lefty. They mean we need a lefty who can get left-handed hitters out. And he can get left-handed hitters out, but not so well that you would use him in that role

or that you should use him in that role. No, a good right-handed reliever is better against lefties than he is. Yeah, which is interesting. I don't know whether... I feel like there's maybe a tendency for lefty relievers to get plugged into that loogie role even if they don't fit it. I mean, not every lefty reliever is death on left-handed hitters.

There's a certain sort of lefty skill set that that leads to those results but i feel like often a lefty reliever will just sort of get pressed into service as the designated lefty guy even if he doesn't really have the arm angle or the pitch types or the results that would suggest that he would excel at that um Yeah, Socha, for a long time, for at least some time, Socha didn't carry a lefty in his bullpen at all because he thought that it was silly to use an inferior pitcher just to get a platoon advantage. He didn't think that it made up the difference in the math a lot of times

if you didn't have a really good one. And as time went on, the Angels started getting lefties, and he became, you know, they usually weren't lefty specialists, and he didn't always use them quite as lefty specialists. But, I mean, Blevins is the kind of guy who sort of, if they use him as a loogie, would be making Socha's point. He's a valuable reliever. He's a reliever who should have a place in just about any bullpen in baseball, but's he's uh you know he's a he's a top half reliever and a bottom third loogie so it it feels like it would be weird if the nationals

didn't i mean i everybody carries two lefties now so i don't think we have to conclude that this is all they're gonna do there's plenty of actual loogies floating around freely. Okay. And then the last item on my mental agenda is Bartolo Colon, who signed with the Mets for two years and 20 million. There was an interesting sort of reaction to the Mets signing Curtis Granderson. First of all, I think everyone just sort of disregarded their signing of Chris Young, at least sort of in the New York media. But when Granderson signed, there started to, I never, I don't really read New York papers, but I somehow pick up the headlines by osmosis somehow. And it seemed like the reaction to signing Granderson was not, hey, the Mets finally spent some money.

It was, that's it? They're just going to sign this one big free agent now? That's not enough. That's not going to make them a winning team. So it was almost as if they were damned if they didn't spend any money, and then they were damned if they did and didn't just spend all of the money. So now they've added another free agent to their list here. And is it surprising to you at all that the A's went for for Kazmir at a slightly higher price than Cologne or does that sound reasonable to you uh it's surprising to me I think that Cologne is the better pitcher

Cologne is the one I would want and Cologne is the one who has the sort of continuity there and all things being equal I think you probably probably would rather have fewer changes than more changes, especially if you're a winning team. And it's particularly odd because they didn't even make a qualifying offer, which means that they didn't even price them that comparably, basically. They didn't even really want to consider cologne it doesn't seem like um so i don't i don't know why nobody likes cologne he was he was like it was he's 40 and and weird looking for sure but he had like his best year yeah it Yeah. And it seems pretty legit.

I mean, this is basically going on three years now. It's not actually that different than R.A. Dickey's career path before the Mets traded him to Toronto. It's like it's 80% of Dickey basically each year. But it's hard to think that he's just going to break down now. I mean, certainly there's a scenario where he does, but there's about a million scenarios where Kazimir does. So I don't quite get it.

I would have rather had Colon, and I really like the move from the Mets' perspective. It's one of my favorites. Yeah, for him it seems like a pretty good value relative to what some other starters have signed for. And it's going from one large ballpark to another and from the AL to the NL, and you figure that will maybe offset some decline

or some being over 40. maybe offset some decline or some being over 40. I don't know. I don't have a strong sense of what the Mets are right now. I guess their rotation now is something like Cologne, Wheeler, Nice, Gee, and I guess Henry Mejia. And it sounds like Ike Davis is going to be moved and Daniel Murphy has been on the block. So their lineup is pretty uncertain now too.

So I don't have them pegged right now. Do you remember before last year there was a growing the Mets aren't that bad movement? Yeah. There was this idea that they were going to be a 500 team and could surprise everybody. Yeah. So if you believed that, then you'd think they were pretty good right now. But I don't see it.

Yeah. I don't think I see it at the moment either. Yeah, I've paid very, very little attention. I would actually guess I've paid less attention to the Mets over the last year, two years, and maybe three years than any team in baseball. Yeah, certainly aside from Matt Harvey mania, there hasn't been a whole lot of excitement there. Harvey mania. There hasn't been a whole lot of excitement there. Mets are maybe twins. But otherwise, I don't think there's

another team that's even close. Okay. Well, that was the day in baseball aside from the two agents who brawled in the parking lot at the winter meetings over a player. And Ruben Amaro. Oh, yeah. We didn't get to to ruben

amaro trolling trolling stat heads uh do you think there there was an element to that in that in that comment or was that just pure uh pure amaro i'm trying to find not i think it's pure amaro and it helps that i had just read an absolutely brilliant Phillies essay for the BP Annual that it's just one of the best things I've read about baseball this year, and it fits perfectly with Amaro saying that. It is almost as though it prophesied that comment. So I was primed for it. That comment was comparing Kyle Kendrick and Matt Garza

based on their career wins. Kendrick has 64 and Garza has 67. Obviously, there's an element of talking up your own player there, there's there's an element of talking up your own player there um but there's probably also an element of using wins to evaluate pitcher performance it was it was really much more the wording that he used then that it wasn't just a throwaway like it was like a he had like a whole setup like he was this was something he was waiting to to spring on you like like it was like this was his fun fact and he he wanted to to really spring his fun fact on you this is like a tweet that he had been thinking about for like the entire hour-long bike ride until he got back to

his to his house hypothetically as though someone might do that and he he really wanted it to land to land really hard so he you know he really he sprung it on him you can't you can't tweet and bike at the same time huh he spent the rest of the afternoon refreshing to see how many retweets and favorites it had uh 88 retweets at the moment uh all right. Well, that was the day in baseball. This was like what we originally intended this podcast to be. When we decided to do a daily podcast, we thought, we'll just talk about what happened yesterday. And it kind of got away from that. And we talked about a lot of strange hypotheticals that had nothing to do with news.

But this was very, very newsy, very topical. Well done. I congratulate you, man. Okay, so we'll be back with one more show tomorrow, the email show. Send us some emails at podcast at baseballperspectives.com.