Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 4: Harp

Episode Date: July 23, 2012

Ben and Sam discuss the disappointing Miami Marlins and resurgent southpaw Francisco Liriano.

Good morning and welcome to Effectively Wild, the Baseball Prospectus daily podcast with Ben Lindberg and me, Sam Miller. We're certainly glad you're listening and we thank you for making us the number one sports podcast on iTunes, I believe. Yeah, it was a quick rise to the top. Yes, it's almost unrealistically quick. Ben, how are you doing tonight? Doing very well, thank you.

Good, I am as well, thank you. Didn't ask, but I was wondering. Yeah, thank you for leaving the space for me to say it. We're going to switch our format, as I understand it. So we're now going to talk about twice as many items, uh, each, each show. And, um, uh, you'll, you'll, you'll tell us what to talk about and then I'll tell you what to talk about. Is that correct?

That is correct. By popular request. We are, we are each talking about a topic rather than each proposing something brilliant and then depriving the listeners of one of those things. Uh, so my topic for tonight is the Miami Marlins. and each proposing something brilliant and then depriving the listeners of one of those things. So my topic for tonight is the Miami Marlins. Interesting. I've never heard of that team.

No, I have heard of that team. And I know a little bit about them. So why don't you tell me what's interesting about them at the moment? Well, shall I ask you what your topic is first so we just tease it? Tease it? Yes, right. My topic is going to be Francisco Liriano. Okay. All right.

So if we start off with the Marlins. So the background, of course, is that the Marlins have not been able to draw fans in previous years. They've been last in NL attendance for, I think, five seasons before this season. And of course, before this season, they went on somewhat of a spending spree and brought in Heath Bell and Jose Reyes and Mark Burley, and they also opened their new stadium. So this was sort of a make or break season for them that we thought would maybe tell us whether baseball would be viable for them going forward. And if not, it would be sort of a disaster. So the early returns are not so great in that the Marlins have now lost five games in a

row. They're seven games under 500, I think, and they're fourth in the division. So things not going so great on the field. And then off the field, or I suppose in the stadium, they are 12th of 16 NL teams in attendance, which is an improvement, but is not really the sort of new ballpark boost or honeymoon period that you hope to see when you spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a new building. So I guess my question, and of course they're spending money now too. They're in the top 10 in baseball and payroll,

and not only for this year but for several years going forward they have among the most money committed of any team so my question is how much trouble are they in now seeing as they haven't seen the attendance boost that we expected the results on the field have been disappointing and they have a lot of money owed over the next several seasons. Are we going to see another classic Marlins sell-off or is there some way to salvage this situation? Well, aren't they listening to offers on everybody, including Giancarlo Stanton at the moment?

Yeah, which is sort of depressing in that he's a guy that you'd like to see them be able to lock up and not go the Miguel Cabrera sell-off route. But, I mean, I guess, do you think it was just, okay, we'll spend all this money and open this new stadium and give it half a season, and if it flops, then we're doomed and we'll sell everyone, and if it succeeds, then we're okay for a while? I mean, can you really do an about-face that quickly and go from adding everyone to a fire set?

I guess maybe you can. Yeah, well, I guess you can. I mean, they certainly don't seem like a stable organization from any angle. Even before things started to go wrong, that organization always seemed like one that was a circus in one way or another from the owner's box all the way down. I think that I'm not shocked. I wouldn't be shocked if they had less patience for this than another organization. I don't know that we, unfortunately, I don't think that we've learned anything about the viability of baseball in South Florida, which is, I would like to get an answer on that.

But the fact is that, you know, even though they have the new ballpark, But the fact is that even though they have the new ballpark, they have to go I think a lot about, too, about his free agency. There was a sense that they were always going to be a half a season away from trading you. And he didn't want to sign a five-year deal with the team and then have them trade him after a bad three months. So he and probably the agents that know the Marlins have a better read on this than we do. And the fact that they were so worried about it, to me, speaks fairly loudly. Yeah, it was just so, so shocking to see the Marlins throwing that sort of money around over the winter. And there was sort of a sense that they might be getting in a little too deep or just going overboard a little bit with the new ballpark opening and making the sort of

commitments that they've never been able to make in the past. And it's interesting to just to see them go so quickly from those free spending ways to back to possibly the cost cutting of the past. And I wonder, those guys, I mean, Jose Reyes is not playing particularly well. Mark Burley is being Mark Burley, which is a good thing. And Heath Bell, of course, has been sort of a disaster. Anyway, it's not what I was hoping for. I was hoping for. I was hoping this would be sort of a successful story for them.

Not so far. Have you and I ever spoken about Ozzy Guillen's third son's name? I don't think we have, no. Well, you know that he has a son named Oney. Oney, yes, right. And you know that he has a son named Ozzy Jr. Right. And he has a third son. Do you know his third son's name?

I don't think I do. It is Ozny. Oh, yes. I've heard Ozny. Yes, that's the best of the three. My favorite thing in baseball. Ozny. So, Francisco Liriano?

Francisco Liriano? Francisco Liriano. I guess the thing that I love about Francisco Liriano is this quote that I recently read from an anonymous AL personnel director regarding Francisco Liriano, who says, It's amazing to me continually how often trades are made based on the last two starts, which is awesome. The idea that major leaguers who have years and years of track record and have been scouted extensively nonstop, nonetheless are capable of swaying a team's opinion for a million-dollar decision based on two starts. And then, of course, there's the fact that Liriano makes me wonder whether that is prudent or not.

He has struck out 25 guys in his last two outings. He had 30 swinging strikes two starts ago, which is an unbelievable number. Aaron Kleeman said that it was the most in baseball since Johan Santana in, I believe 2007 although I think that Lincecum had more than 30 in game one of the 2010 playoffs but um even getting beyond that uh do you think that um Francisco Liriano is worth getting excited about over two starts or even a dozen or are we looking at Scott Casimir 2009 all over again he's certainly not I mean he's one of those guys with with ace level stuff at times when he's not hurt um but whom you would never really trust to do that over a consistent period because he

really hasn't he went from being basically the best pitcher in baseball before his injury to a shadow of his former self, back to really good again, back to can't find the strike zone, to relief, to starter. I mean, he's a guy who certainly could blossom and turn into someone who can consistently pitch at that level I suppose A team could get lucky in that way I wouldn't be comfortable giving much for him expecting him to continue what he's done over these last couple starts certainly Well how many starts would it take? much for him expecting him to continue what he's done over these last couple of starts, certainly. Well, how many starts would it take? I mean, you only need him for basically most three months. So you're talking about getting his next 15 starts if things break right. How many starts going back

do you need before you're confident about 15 starts going forward? I'm confident to a certain level, but I think I would, I mean, I would take a guy like Dempster, for example, over him. Um, even though Dempster probably has less potential to be overpowering in any particular start. I don't, I don't think Liriano really is at the point where he could establish trustworthiness in less than a full season at this point. But as a rental, I would certainly consider him useful. And as I wrote last week, it's just the weirdest thing that Liriano has been a twin all these years

in that he just doesn't fit the profile of a Minnesota Twins pitcher in the slightest. So you'd think almost for that reason, just to sort of have greater homogeneity on that team, they might trade him just because he's the unknown and the unknown is scary. I mean, it would make sense to see him go somewhere. And I could see a team giving up something of worth for him, although it looks like maybe the trade deadline is sort of shaping up to be a dud with guys like Carlos Quentin getting extended or a Dempster or Garza seemingly taking a higher price than teams are willing to pay and the new CBA rules about draft pick

compensation for in-season acquisitions is possible that this next week or so will be a little underwhelming. Well, yeah, it might be, or it might be the opposite. I think nobody really knows whether everybody's going to go bananas or not. It's uncharted waters. Okay, well, let's close it out. And I'll close it out just real quickly with one last quote from Ron Gardenhier to your point about Francisco Liriano being an unusual twin. Gardenhire said of Liriano's struggles,

when you get yourself in trouble, it's because you're trying to strike people out. True words, true words. And so that'll do it for Effectively Wild today. We'll be back one day from now with two new topics and a whole world of baseball in front of us. Thanks very much. And Ben, I'll see you later. Yes. Until Tuesday.