Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 368: Least Beloved Baseball Figures/Comping Tanaka/North Korea’s Top Prospect

Episode Date: January 21, 2014

Ben and Sam discuss the least beloved baseball figures and whether it makes sense to compare Masahiro Tanaka to other Japanese pitchers, then answer a listener email hypothetical.

I'm writing you a big song. I don't want to have to hold your hand. I'm writing you a big song.. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg. How are you, Ben? I am well, thank you. All right. So far as I can tell, nothing happened today in baseball. So I have a few different topics, like three-ish, sort of. None of them particularly, well, I don't know. One is arguably timely, one is exceptionally untimely, and the other is basically just a joke email. Okay. So I'll start with the untimely one, because it's quick. Grant Brisby wrote a piece today

looking for baseball's five most hated players. Did you see this? Not players, but five most hated people. I had not seen that yet. And he ultimately concludes that there is no fifth, that there are four on Rushmore, and any attempt to add a fifth would simply be a disservice to the others. It would just dilute them. Nobody can contend with the top four. And so his top four, just out of curiosity, do you want to go ahead and guess the top four? Don't spend much time on it. I don't want to hear you thinking.

Loria? Yeah. Boris? Yeah. Well, does it count players who have gotten in trouble for things? Like Josh Lukey or someone? It does not count Josh Lukey. I mean, I'm sure it would count him, but he's not on there.

Mm-hmm. Selig? Yeah. And last one, player. Obvious one. Number one with a bullet. There's really no question about it. Current player? Oh, A-Rod?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Okay. And I think he's right. I don't think there is a good fifth one. Or at least, I don't think there's a fifth one who can reasonably compete with those four and is currently engaged in the game in any way. Um, but I was curious just to know, uh, I wanted to know who your fifth would be,

uh, if you, if you had to have a fifth one and, and how close we can come. So, uh, so I have, uh, I have an, I have a few, they're all imperfect for various reasons. But I'm willing to share my few with you, and then maybe one will have jumped out at you. Okay. So the obvious one, the only person who could really unseat A-Rod at the top would be Barry Bonds. And Barry Bonds is less beloved than A-Rod. This was actually least beloved, not most hated. And Barry Bonds is less beloved than A-Rod, but obviously is not currently active in the game in any specific way.

So for that reason, he loses a lot of value. But I think he actually still qualifies. By nature of his sort of starring role in the Hall of Fame vote every year. As long as he's on the ballot, and this is a debate that we have every year, I'm considering him still part of the game. That seems reasonable. So A-Rod is my – I mean Barry Bonds would be one. Joe West is the one that I suggested to Grant. And Joe West doesn't quite have the name recognition of any of those guys. No, not quite.

And somebody responded, and I think reasonably, that you could make the case that if you're going with an umpire, Angel Hernandez is less beloved. But Joe West, I think I would go with Joe West because he's sort of more famous, more vocal, more of an institution. I mean, look, let's be honest. Angel Hernandez is not going to be an umpire in two years. You know, he's, he's not long for this job. I don't, I personally suspect. Um, and it doesn't really matter. He's just a, a, a, a, a, a horribly blind shit passing in the night. Um, whereas Joe West is, you know, an institution, he might make the hall of fame for Pete's sake. Um, so, but the point that this person brought up i think is legit

um which is that there is not really one central umpire with which we focus all of our seething hatred uh i feel like you could also make a case for uh for bob davidson for instance bob davidson i actually like less than the other two uh so i don't know that an umpire uh i just don't umpires uh there are you know uh i don't know 90 of them or something and they're all villains like pretty much like 82 of them are villains so they cancel out each other they split the vote basically this is this is a classic split the boat moment yeah so but that's one and Frank McCourt not part of the game but still making as I understand it tons of money on the parts of the Dodgers operation that he owns the parking lots or whatever and not not you know has not been gone from an official capacity for very long. And really is like the sort of villainous owner to end all villainous owners.

I mean, the closest thing we'll ever have to the... Major League owner. Yeah, exactly. And just, you know, really went out on top, which is to say on bottom. So Frank McCourt still has some lack of belovedness, but I think he loses too much for being not in an official capacity right now. Murray Chass has really been making great strides. Strong choice.

Because Murray Chass really tipped this year. He was the guy that bloggers hated and that hated bloggers and would get involved in these little spitball wars. But this year the BBWA really turned on him. There were ranking members from big organizations that were like... Like Tyler Kepner said, something like he would never speak ill of a BBWA member except Marie Chass. And so there isn't a writer, there isn't a media person in there. Chass, the problem is that Chass was probably never popular enough, famous enough to sit alongside A-Rod, even in his prime. And now he runs a blog as a blogger.

So probably not Chas, but very underrated. If there were a baseball-specific Skip Bayless, someone who did just hot takes and just did only baseball, but I don't know that there really is anyone who fits that description exactly. The other thing is that Chas has had like a couple of sort of even non-blog war scandal. Scandal is the wrong word, but controversies over the last couple of years with his Marvin Miller stuff. Yeah. So, yeah, not beloved. But mean you know probably probably a nice guy um i don't know uh doesn't doesn't qualify i would say and so anyway finally i get to my pick who is still an active player

still fairly famous still employed fairly famous not nearlyRod famous, but semi-famous, still employed, and unbeloved for many reasons covering any type of person who would not be loved a person. And that is Del Mignone. Um, okay. It's a lower grade of non-belovedness, I think. Yeah. It's niche unbelovedness. I mean, this is like he's not Radiohead, but maybe he's Spoon, you know? A big deal. I like Spoon. you know a big deal i like spoon i do too i like radiohead i'm saying he's the spoon of being unbeloved is what i'm saying like he doesn't he doesn't headline coachella but he's the second row of coachella uh-huh so this is uh is it because he's been in a few places and played poorly and so he has that going for him also, as well as...

I'd say it's a few things. Well, he's an anti-Semite, is one thing. He has that incident, yes. He threw a bat at a man, is a thing. He's large, and I find that there's a... Baseball players are not like mall Santas. They do not get more beloved the fatter they get. There's a, I think there's a bias against fatball players.

And, not one that I have, but I think that people do. I think we're quicker to turn on fatball players. We do, because we expect them to. But if they're good. Oh, a beloved, yeah, Tony Gwynn, for instance. Yeah. Yeah, nobody holds that against him. But there is a feeling that you had one job, right? Oh, a beloved – yeah, Tony Gwynn, for instance. Yeah. Yeah, nobody holds that against him.

But there is a feeling that you had one job, right, if you're a professional athlete. Right, to not – yeah. And that one job was to perform athletics. And so, yeah. And then he also plays a particularly inelegant form of baseball in this um you know modern modern way of playing he doesn't he he's he's he's in many ways he's jeff francour with a lot more hype um and he also you know he's he he moves around the league and any team that signs him has to deal with the uh 45 minutes of mockery that follows. So there's just a lot of things going against Delman Young. Yeah. He probably shouldn't be on Rushmore,

but if you want to go to five, then that's a strong choice. All right. You got one to add or just want to listen? Well, on Twitter, I feel like Lukey qualifies. Yeah, he does. I don't know that people who just show up at the ballpark know his backstory or know who he is at all. So that probably keeps him off of the list. But if you know him and you know his story, then it seems like generally the level of vitriol is on par with the people

who are on that list. Yeah. Josh Luckey, not well known enough. I mean, unwell known enough that I feel like a lot of people are going, who? Right now. But I don't also know how to describe Josh Lukey in two sentences without. We have pretty savvy listeners. Okay, Josh Lukey, relief pitcher, bad business.

Look it up. Look it up. Yeah, but Lukey, yeah, Lukey's not a bad one for that reason. Any others? Nope. No owners, no GMs. No GMs, mainly. There's not a few. I don't know.

Maybe Dayton Moore might have made that list a year ago, but I think he's salvaged his reputation somewhat, both by winning last year, which made some people like him more. Other people didn't like him more because of the trade that led to that winning. But he's also sort of had a good winter. He hasn't really done anything to upset anyone this winter. So I don't think he's quite there. And I don't know who else would be there.

I can't think of a manager or a GM or an owner that's really in that class. Yeah, I can't either. I can't either. You have to have a lot of power to get on this list, really. Like, you know, like Selig is almost an automatic, and I don't have a big problem with Selig, the way he does his job. I wouldn't say that I love him,

but I don't really have any serious issues with Selig at this point. But when you get that much power, you're a gimme. You're an automatic. Yeah, and you have that sort of tenure. All right, so that's one topic. Second topic, I don't know if you read this about, I don't know, four or five days ago,

but Ben Badler wrote a piece about Tanaka in relation to Daisuke Matsuzaka and whether it's sort of, I don't know if it's exactly this, but basically whether it's kind of an appropriate comp for Tanaka. And his point was that people use Matsuzaka as a warning because Matsuzaka was such a disappointment and was so hyped, but that in fact Matsuzaka was quite good when he arrived, had two extremely good years. Quick pause to point out a fun fact that is sort of amazing and awesome, and I love it.

According to baseball reference, in his first two years, Matsuzaka picked up 9.4 war. Yu Darvish, in his first two years, 9.9. Great fun fact, isn't it? Yeah, it is a good one. great great fun fact isn't it yeah that is a good one uh and uh and you know points out that a bunch of uh matsuzaka's contemporaries american contemporaries non-japanese contemporaries also flamed out horribly after those two years uh and finally pointed out that a bunch of japanese pitchers have done great and that if you're going to draw anything you might say that the

comps are quite favorable to Tanaka. Not my point. Not what I want to talk about. I am always uncertain about whether it is relevant that Tanaka is Japanese

when you start thinking about these comps. I have mocked in the past the tendency to only force Japanese comps on Japanese players. And it feels silly and wrong. Maybe offensive. Not sure.

And yet, I also can't shake the feeling that there's probably various reasons why it would be legitimate. And I just wanted to get a sense from you how legitimate you think it is. And particularly because I recall you writing about the Japanese players who have come here as a sort of a cohort and what we can kind of learn so what are your thoughts about japan japanese on japanese comps i wrote something yeah about scouting japanese players and it basically boiled down to the fact that that relievers are seem to be pretty reliable commodity just because they're the ones whose role or whose, whose job changes

the least when they come over. Um, you know, you have, you have infielders playing on different playing surfaces. You have starting pitchers who are on different work schedules. They're, they're, they're starting on a completely different schedule. Um, whereas relievers are still just kind of coming under the bullpen. And so generally they've been fairly reliable. I mean, I think it makes sense to look at what other Japanese pitchers have done as a way of assessing the quality of competition that they are coming from and that they posted their statistics against in Japan.

The fact that a lot of them have pauses in their delivery or something is kind of a cosmetic thing, and that probably leads to a lot of the comps, I think. The fact that there's sort of a, a Japanese pitching motion and to an extent, also a Japanese batting approach or batting stance, um, that makes it very easy to come up with those comps. Uh, Tanaka doesn't really seem to have that so much. But I don't know. I mean, for every—I guess it does seem that there's—the perception is that there's like a nibbling that happens, right?

That's how I hear it used most often, that these guys have really good stuff by NPB standards, and then they come over here and the hitters are better and stronger. And even if like if they were if they were control pitchers in Japan, that might not necessarily translate because once they get over here, they they might not be getting as far off the off the plate or they may be afraid to come in and not trust their stuff, or maybe not have stuff that they should trust, and so their walk rate goes up. And I guess that's something that we've seen with Matsuzaka or with Darvish. So I think it's valid to an extent.

It's valid to an extent. You hear a lot of Kuroda comps for Tanaka, and I don't know. I can't really speak to how valid that comparison is specifically, but there's something to it probably. Yeah, and there's going to be some sort of similarity in pitcher usage up to this point. They've all thrown hundreds of thousands of pitches at this point, and Japanese pitchers have thrown them at a kind of a rhythm, a usage rhythm that is more similar to each other than to non-Japanese pitchers. And they perhaps have been trained by a philosophy, a pitching philosophy, that is more consistent among Japanese pitching coaches than here.

I don't know if that's true, but it seems certainly conceivable. I don't know if that's true, but it seems certainly conceivable. And I think that there are – the one thing that really makes it justifiable in my mind is that what we know about Japanese baseball is that it's like it's roughly AAA level, like in between AAA and big leagues, right? It's like a little bit better than AAA, a little bit worse than the majors. And so at that point, you're really talking, I think the value in evaluation has really shifted from sort of traditional scouting to statistics. That's close enough that the statistics should be able to tell you the player's story really well. the statistics should be able to tell you the the player's story really well but um it's not really um it's not the same style of play so you can't just simply translate it and say well it's

it's this times you know 108 and that gets you to the majors or whatever um because it's it really is it's a different style of play it's a different style of play. It's a different style of hitter. It's a different approach that hitters take. Dan Brooks the other day was looking at some kind of really specific thing. I forget what it was. And he found this kind of weird cluster of hitters behaving differently in like the NL Central or pitchers behaving differently in the NL Central in a specific situation than the other divisions in baseball. And it was probably just kind of like

a fluky thing, a fluky congregation of these sorts of pitchers or something like that. But he was wondering whether it might actually be this kind of emergence of strategy based on these players uh these teams facing each other 20 times a year whether seeing the same opponents over and over might actually create this like i don't know chain of events where the the style of play actually changes and the approach that teams take changes and maybe they react to each other's changes in approach and that leads to new changes in approach. And so in subtle ways the game actually becomes different. And based on what we hear, that's more or less kind of true in Japan where the approach really is quite noticeably different. And

so you have to figure out a way to tease out the performance some way. You can't simply just do the blunt adjustment like you would from double A to triple A. You really have to think about what is specific about the environment they're pitching in, what is specific about the opponents they're facing. And for that reason, I would think that that wouldn't necessarily be comps though. Well, it might be if the approach to those hitters changes across the league, then it would be a comp. You might expect pitchers who have spent six years of their lives or more learning to pitch a very specific kind of way and you're

going to have to kind of deal with that one way or the other there are people who will say the same thing about triple a players though right that you can't just apply the translation that certain the the idea of the the quadruple a player i guess basically that that there are certain guys who can just mash at triple a when they can feast on guys with weak stuff and then you you can't just apply some factor to their numbers because once they get to the majors whatever they're doing just doesn't work anymore um there maybe are some people who fit that description, some players. Yes. Yes, there are. So, but I guess it's more different in NPB than in AAA.

So it would be valid to do that for more players. Yeah, I don't know. I kind of probably feel like there might be value in it, but you're much more likely to oversimplify things and overgeneralize and come up with false positives than you are to actually get any useful information. So I guess I would say that even though there's probably something that could be gleaned from Japanese to Japanese comps if you were extremely cautious of it. We're not, really. And we're almost certainly going to just lead ourselves into dumbness. That would probably be my conclusion.

Do you buy the Matsuzaka was good for a while argument? Because, I mean... Well, he was good for a while. Kind of. That's not really an argument that's a description yeah well I don't know

I mean his first his first two seasons were both like over four FIP years yeah but I mean yeah

in in Boston in a hitter's era i mean over 450 true in boston in 2007 probably isn't that bad but uh i i remember him being really good his first year and not as good his second year that's how i remember it but i do remember him being really good his first year maybe maybe he wasn't yeah't. Yeah, he was. I mean, he's, that was before he started walking everyone. Okay. Well, yeah, so I, I don't know. I, we, I'm sure we'll talk about Tanaka again later this week when we find out where

he's going. But man, I keep, when I read the reports and read the reported amounts that it's going to take to get him, if, I mean, any team that makes a comp from him to Matsuzaka would not want to pay this price. I mean, if Nick Caffardo said it would take like $6,120 in his column this weekend, and that's not including the posting fee. So if you add the posting fee onto that, which is not completely accurate, but if you do that and call it $6,140, that's over $23 million. That's, I mean, that's CeCe Sabathia

money. That's top 10 pitcher in baseball money, which is a lot. You would have to be quite confident that his stuff will translate. And a lot of people say it will. I know, listening to the most recent fringe average episode jason and mike seem to think that he's more of a mid-rotation guy like a number three um and if if that is what he is if he's more of a number three than an ace or a two uh then that's that's a lot to pay for him i mean mean, there's really no such thing as a domestic 25-year-old free agent who has been good, or that kind of pitcher comes along very, very rarely. So you can see why you would want to pay a lot.

But as we talked about, at this point in the winter, there are so many decent options still available. why you would want to pay a lot. But as we talked about at this point in the winter, there are so many decent options still available that you kind of wonder whether there's an opportunity there to slip in and not exactly get a bargain, but at least, you know, get someone at a market rate while everyone is focused on Tanaka? Yeah. I don't think that the Daisuke comp would trouble me, to get to your question from four minutes ago. Daisuke's body broke.

What we're talking about is mainly whether the performance is going to translate from Japan to the States. And Dice K's, I think Ben's point is really valid. I mean, it did until his body broke. And then he had arm injuries and hip injuries. arm injuries and hip injuries. You don't pick one pitcher who's been injured and necessarily conclude that that's the only way it can go. You look at how all pitchers get injured and you figure you probably shouldn't sign any of them

because they all get hurt. When I think about Japanese pitchers in particular, their durability doesn't seem to be of any concern. I mean, that is one thing that in particular does not seem to be a negative trend among the Japanese pitchers that have been over here in the last eight to ten years. Yeah, I don't know. I guess that's true. I'd have to look. I don't know. I guess that's true. I'd have to look. I don't know about the injury rates or anything.

All right. So I want to ask this one question that is only barely related. Barely, barely, barely related to it. But this was from our email show that we didn't get to it. But Mike asked, let's say there's a player from North Korea who is alleged to have amazing skill, the baseball equivalent of Kim Jong-il's golfing. They put out a tape of a 15-pitch inning where he flashes three 70-80 grade pitches, but that is all the footage available. Video experts could confirm that it was not doctored, but those 15 pitches are all you had to go on. One, what sort of

contract would he get in an open bidding situation? Two, what if part of this secrecy included his age not being revealed? You'd find out upon signing him, but you'd have to put up a bid prior to any of that knowledge um well very very very tenuous connection but actually what got me thinking is i actually there is no connection except in my head i was i thought about this because i thought well like if if this happened would scouts actually be putting you know darvish comps on him and that seems inappropriate like i was thinking about this as i thought about how i feel about the comps right um and of course there's no reason to put a darvish comp on a guy who's from north korea and yet 99 sure you'd see one

yeah i mean not necessarily from a reputable source but you'd see it somewhere well uh this guy would get would get a lot of money i think you think so 15 pitches from north korea well 370 to 80 grade pitches uh if you could if you could tell that from watching 15 pitches on video. I mean, who has 370 to 80-grade pitches? Like, no one. So, I mean... But you don't know anything about, like, you don't know, you might not even know when these pitches were pitched. Well, okay.

I mean, if you have no idea when the footage comes from and the guy could be 60 years old, then probably I wouldn't pay much for him. But if you knew at least that the footage was recent, even if you didn't know his age, I think he would get a lot. How much? How much? Just give me numbers. That's the question.

Yeah. I think he would get... I think he'd get something like... I think he'd get $15 million a year. Oh, wow. Oh, $15 million a year? Yeah. For how many years?

For four years. I think that that's insane. Too high? Yeah, but mine's not much lower. Oh, I'm right. I think you would get four years and $30 million. I feel like $30 million is the upper limit of what clubs don't care about. I feel like clubs would spend $30 million on a gamble, but they would not spend $40 million on a gamble. This number is always

moving. It goes up through the years years but i feel like there's always some um some symbolic emotional breaking point where it becomes real money and right now i feel like baseball's real money is 30 31 million dollars and it's it's all it's all it's all whatevs until 30 and then it starts to get real so what what's the main source of uncertainty here? There's the fact that he just flashed this best stuff in baseball. We don't know that he can repeat it, I suppose. It could have been his best day. We know nothing about his age.

We know nothing about his makeup. We know he's never faced a good hitter in his life true we don't know anything i mean his makeup we know that his stuff will will play if that is actually his stuff then i'm i mean i guess i'm kind of concerned about the fact that he hasn't faced good hitters well i'm not saying that i'm not saying it's a deal breaker but it's part of the equation he's never faced he's never faced a he's never faced a good baseball player and he he i mean the makeup he is is much bigger than i would say the makeup for like a cuban would be because he does not live in the modern world like you like this is he he lives in a world where like millions of people starve in famine and there's like, it's this horrible dystopia.

It's just nothing, nothing comparable to anything he's going to see. And couldn't you say that that has made him stronger, that he'll have better makeup because he has survived that? You don't know what it's going to be. I'm just saying it's a, it's an uncertainty. I mean, you're, you're, you could be looking at something. You're probably looking at something, maybe looking at something like PTSD, right,

when he comes over. If nothing else, I mean, there would be... I don't know. It's a weird situation because you would want to rescue this guy, definitely, but without counting on anything from him, if that makes sense. I wouldn't necessarily want to even put pressure on him to do anything. He's escaping this insanely bad environment and i just don't think that you know you don't know what you're going to get and you

also don't necessarily want to put the same sort of pressure on him that you would put on another kid right i guess that's what i'm saying is that you don't know what uh like leverage points you have on it because you're a humane person right um yeah i don't know i i just think that uh it's so rare to find a talent like that um and coupled with the fact that teams seem to have fewer places to put their money on the player market these days they they can't they can't bid uh any amount that they would like to on on most international players uh anymore they don't have as many attractive options available via free agency. And this guy comes along who flashes better stuff than, than anyone who exists. Uh, I, I don't know. I, what if, what if you knew his age? Uh, because, because the age part was part

two of Mike's question. So what if, what if you know his age and he's, say, under 30? Does that move the needle much for you? No. I don't. If he were, I could, maybe if he were 17, it might make it better for me. But otherwise, no. I mean, I'm thinking fairly short-term deal. I mean, four years is a fairly short-term deal anyway.

And the stuff is there. To me, the stuff is just as likely to fall off at least 21 as it is 33 if it's there today. Okay. Well, I guess I will end up with this player because I will outbid you. Yeah. And when you put it that way, I will outbid you. Yeah. And when you put it that way, I definitely do. Now you want him.

I definitely do. I'm actually, there was, there was a little sadness when you said that. Yeah. He'll be a sensation for me. Can you imagine? This would be,

this would be the story of the year. Video experts confirmed that it was not doctored. Video experts confirm that it was not doctored does not necessarily mean that it was not doctored either. No. But let's assume for the spirit of the question. All right. All right. So that's it.

Well, we've settled that. We'll know what to pay when that player comes along. In a year and a half, we're going to get this exact question, and it's going to be prefaced with, I know this is going to sound weird, but I know you'll never answer this. Either that or it will actually happen, because some of our weird hypotheticals have come to pass okay we'll be back tomorrow

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