Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 406: The Answers You Seek

Episode Date: March 14, 2014

Ben and Sam answer listener emails about Andrelton Simmons, finishers who can’t close, pitcher injuries, and more.

And a good number of them have hung in with the wet weather. As Crawford hits a little pop towards short. Simmons, what a play, and the scoop at first gets him. Two out. You haven't noticed, he's pretty good. Yeah. Good morning, and welcome to episode 406 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball

Perspectus, presented by the BaseballReference.com PlayItNex. I am Ben Lindberg, joined by Sam Miller. Hello, Sam Miller. Probably the most significant baseball number currently standing, right? Yeah, it's a big one. I don't think there's any that is currently standing that is a bigger deal. Yeah. Yeah, this is a bigger deal. Yeah.

Yeah, this is a big one. Which is weird because it's not like 406 is the record or anything. It's not even close to the record. Nope. I mean, in the 20 years before he hit 406, like everybody was hitting 400. Like at the time, like in 1942, I don't think 406 would have seemed like a significant number at all. I think it had been the first in like a decade maybe, I think, that someone had done it. But it wasn't unheard of as it would be today. No, right.

I mean, I wonder when it was. I guess the question is I wonder when it was that 406 became significant. Like I doubt it was significant in 1960 yeah ted williams was still playing then um yeah that's true yeah is that is that significant uh yeah it seems more mythological now that he's not uh-huh uh so yeah so maybe it was definitely a big deal in 1986 so anyway uh so big show we should have uh we could have actually made this a special show if we'd wanted to we should have researched the history of when 406 became special yeah i wonder actually that would be interesting to look you could look at um, well, I don't know. I'm not sure.

You could do it if you had access to it. Anyway, let's do some questions. 1930 was the last time somebody had done it. So it had been 11 years, and before that it had been five years before that. And 1930 was a crazy high batting average year? Mm-hmm. Okay. But 1941, meanwhile, I mean, he didn't even win the MVP award.

So, like, I'm certain it wasn't a big deal in 1941. I mean, it was a big deal, but it wasn't like 406. The point is just that 406 was not an iconic number yet. All right, so let's do some questions, if you don't mind. I don't. All right, Kyle asks, the movie Fanboys ends with the gang sitting down in a theater to watch Star Wars Episode I for the first time. The main character turns to his friends and asks, what if this movie sucks? On the Braves preview, Ben stated that he's glad that the defense tracking system will be set up in Angleton Simmons' lifetime so we can preserve, quote, he's quoting Ben.

I'm quoting somebody quoting Ben to Ben. So, quote, we can preserve whatever he does for posterity. My question is, what if the data says Angleton Simmons sucks at fielding? Have you seen Fanboys? Yeah. Okay. What if the data says Angleton Simmons sucks at fielding? What would that mean? That's actually a really good question. What would it mean if it comes out and suggests that Angleton Simmons is a, I don't know, can we say plus one fielder? Would that be enough to shock us all? Yeah, I would enjoy that almost as much as if it said he was as amazing as we think he is.

Why would you enjoy that? You would take it at face value, huh? Well, I'm assuming that we're accepting that the system is correct. If the system is just wrong, then that wouldn't be very exciting. Yeah, well, what do you have to evaluate a system is whether the results make sense, but then that becomes a tautology, right? It makes sense because it confirms what we already know like becomes a tautology right it's right it makes sense because it confirms what we already know and therefore we know what it says yeah yeah so

it's hard to imagine how that could be because we have all watched andrewton simmons and you did an article on some of his amazing plays and and they seem objectively amazing um yeah but i mean jt snow seemed objectively amazing to me. I've never seen anybody who was a better fielder than J.T. Snow when he was with the Giants, and this was not considered controversial. He was a genius, and then the metrics came out, and it turns out he's like, eh, he's okay. And so we should be prepared for the possibility

that there will be things that surprise us. And the reason I think it's significant is that people will use the J.T. Snow example or they'll use the Omar Vizquel example or they'll use whatever example to say, well, this metric clearly is flawed because it doesn't pass the sniff test. And so the question is, how low or I guess how high does Simmons' rating have to be for this system to pass the SNP test? Or if he was negative 40, would you still take it on faith because the system is the system and you believe the system? I wouldn't take it on faith, but it seems like the nice thing about the system is that it spits out all the specifics.

So you would know why it was saying he was negative 40. Sort of it does, but in a way it doesn't. It tells you the process, but it doesn't tell you the result in a way. The nice thing about the metrics that we have is at least they are counting a thing that happened. They count outs. I mean, the system is not going to tell us who's good and who's not, right? It's just spitting out the data, and then some analyst is going to use the data to compare to other players and say that someone is such and such, runs below average, or wins below average. So I would be – I'd be very skeptical if someone said Simmons was not a good fielder according to that data and I would want to want to know why

wait so you now you're saying you would be skeptical a minute ago I'd definitely be skeptical I I mean if it were proven that he was not somehow that would be fascinating I'd love to know how our eyes could be so completely wrong I'd love to know I'd love to know how you would envision ever proving anything though that's the, is how do you prove it? If everything is in relation to various metrics, there is no – I mean, there is an objective truth, but it can only be – I mean, all we know is what we can observe. So how do you prove it? I don't know. It would have to – I mean, if it somehow said that he does not run as fast as other shortstops,

and I don't know, maybe his positioning is really good, but he doesn't actually have great range or something, which seems crazy, again, because we're talking about Andrelton Simmons. But I don't know. I can't imagine any system that makes sense saying that he's not great. But if there were some hidden secret saying that he's not great but if there were some hidden secret thing that he's not doing that it would uncover that would be that'd be interesting i don't know i it's hard to believe it's hard to envision that scenario playing out but you could imagine it for

some other fielder who we think is just kind of good and then it turns out that he's not really that good that will that will happen with someone yeah certainly that's what i mean but kyle didn't i mean there's a reason kyle didn't ask about those right you know we we caveat all of our our defensive statements right now but we don't feel the need to caveat andrelton simmons and so that so do you think that when this comes out you will still put caveats in i mean there's there's the, I guess maybe there's the sample size. A fielder doesn't really get as many contested chances as a hitter does in the same time span. So there will still be the problem of not getting enough chances necessarily for true talent to emerge.

But I guess in a way, though, it might be the opposite, where now everything is process driven. And so it would be like swing rates which stabilize extremely quickly it might be the case that you would know in like literally like five games you might be able to tell it should be like 90 certainty it should be like fastball velocity exactly yeah exactly so it'll be a person's velocity instead of the ball velocity so all right so going back to the question will you caveat will you caveat your defensive uh uh i i'd be more confident in them much much more quickly i mean it i would not caveat someone running really fast uh that i can't imagine any scenario in which that's a fluke i

mean i guess you could have a guy who is hurt most of the time or has a lot of nagging injuries. And so he's not usually as fast as he was on that day, or maybe he doesn't give a hundred percent effort all the time. But if a guy runs really fast, then he is a really fast runner, or at least he has the capability to be, you're not going to get some slow guy just putting up a really fast time out of nowhere. You know what I was thinking about when I read Russell's article about the system is that the questions that will arise, I think, when we talked about whether this will actually introduce new questions or whether it will only settle them, I think that it will tell you what happened and that will no longer be debatable.

But I think that we'll have a lot of questions. The questions that will arise are questions of motive. So when Russell talks about, in a future world, being able to intuit a player's emotional state based on minute movements of his body, that's the sort of thing where it raises questions and so when players take a less efficient say say a runner takes a less efficient route around the bases um the the question will be well is efficiency truly efficiency or is there a reason he takes a slightly less efficient route is there a reason that that that angle sets up you know his whatever reason, that angle helps him get home faster? Or is there a reason why he takes a certain angle on fly balls?

Because there's always the, when you're chasing a fly ball, for instance, there are different factors at play. You're not merely trying to catch the ball. You might also be trying to set up to cut off the ball if you're not able to catch it or to block it if you miss it or to be trying to set up to cut off the ball if you're not able to catch it, or to block it if you miss it, or to be ready to throw. And so there will be all sorts of different ways where the data that describes what happens still might be open to some interpretation of why the runner or fielder did that, and whether it actually demonstrates a flaw in his game,

or whether it is a kind of added layer of design to the game that the system doesn't necessarily intuit. So I guess that's the answer to the question that we talked about last week. Yeah. All right. Next question. I liked that question, by the way. Me too.

That's a good question. All right. So Matt asks two questions, and I want to answer both of them. They're totally different. Last March, I had an email exchange with a handful of BP staffers about the seasonality of pitcher injury risk. Specifically, I was asking about a friend's theory that if you get through spring training healthy, you have a pretty good shot at staying that way all year.

Max did some digging through the DL database, and indeed, April had a way higher rate of attrition than all the other months of the season, especially for elbow injuries. Some of that is explained by carryovers guys who had gotten hurt the previous year and just needed to be re-added to the roles of the disabled but doug and cory both talked about very real issues of mechanical efficiency and shaking off the rust that could play a role in that phenomenon and our conclusion was that for myriad reasons it really is likely that a team that enters the season with a healthy staff will keep it if that's true should we be factoring it into our predictions

and project projections for a season more than we do most people already prefer to pick a team without injured pitchers to one with injured pitchers but maybe the gap should be even greater since the evidence seems to suggest the former will stay relatively injury free throughout the year. Also, do you think this is one reason teams tend to wait out the secondary pitching market more than the hitting one? Maybe teams have figured this out and would rather come to camp, see whether a pitching shortage crops up or not and act accordingly rather

than amassing depth that could be unneeded and expensive. I think I may have been on that email exchange, but it was a while ago. so I don't remember the details I mean I guess if there's if there's something to it I'd have to look at the numbers but if it's if it's true that a higher percentage of pitching injuries occur early in the season I guess that's something we should factor in if a team makes it past that gauntlet. You know, when we do our transaction analyses of trades in July, for instance, or there are certain projection systems that update as the year goes on, it seems like this is something that should be taken into account then. We sometimes will run Pocota, or we almost always will mention what their forecast is for the rest of the year.

And if you have a pitcher, we treat all pitchers as ticking time bombs, but if the bomb ticks much faster in March than it does in July, it could be the case that trading for pitchers in July is actually very sensible. Again, if these numbers check out, if what you guys talked about on that email chain was significant, it could be the case that a pitcher that is added in July is as safe or close to as safe or relatively as safe as hitters and that we should really just sort of safe or relatively as safe as hitters and that we should really just sort of discount the injury risk. And, you know, so maybe the team that is trading for pitchers in July is actually getting in something of an under underrated or an undervalued asset. I mean, maybe, maybe anytime,

maybe if anytime you can get a pitcher in July rather than in in January. Maybe you've already kind of won in a sense. Yeah, worth looking into. Yeah. Your gut feeling, do you think that it's true? I mean, you don't remember exactly what the email was. Does it seem to make sense? Because the carryover effect would be really big right i mean there's a lot of guys who are going to start the season on the dl yeah as i recall it it wasn't established definitively one way or another whether it was statistically significant so i i don't know i

would i would reserve judgment i could i mean i't know, I could talk myself into coming up with reasons why it would make sense that maybe you'd get hurt more often after a long layoff or something, you know, rush to get ready or you push yourself too fast too soon or something like that. But it's just a narrative unless we actually have the proof. unless we actually have the proof. All right. So I'm going to give you a hypothetical and you get to choose who's going to be healthier for the next month. You've got, let's say, Clayton Kershaw starting on opening day or you've got Clay Buchholz who has made it to June 1st healthy or you've got Sean Markham who's made it to June 1st healthy, or you've got Sean Markham who's made it to August 1st healthy, who's more likely to hit the DL in the next 30 days?

I would take, I think Markham would always be the answer to that at any point in the year. Yeah, so it feels that way, certainly. So if that's true, if that's correct, then what we're talking about is maybe interesting on a macro level. But still, I mean, we all can spot an injured, you know, an injury-prone pitcher's history and future without, you know, much trouble.

So maybe it's just one of those, I don't know, maybe it makes a one of those I don't know. Maybe it makes a marginal difference. It's interesting. Somebody should write about this. Don't you think? Wait a minute. Why did you guys have this wonderful email exchange and then nobody wrote about it? I don't remember. That's like serious

research went into this. Yeah. I'll dig it up. Alright. Here's his second question. research went into this. Yeah, I'll dig it up. Alright, so here's his second question, and it's going to be our baseballreference.com play index, play index, play indexing of the week. It's like we should have some sort of audio

drop for this, some kind of intro sound. It should be a, you know what it should be? It should be like archived footage from like an early 1990s movie where a man is staring at like a green computer screen and frantically hacking into like the Pentagon or something. Like it should be, definitely it should be something from the net. Do you have that? Can you pull that up?

I don't know whether it would come through on an audio-only show. All right, so his question is, Ryan Webb has finished 74 of his 266 career games, but he has zero saves. That seems very strange to me in the modern era of bullpen usage. Play index request, what's the record for games finished? Let's say since 1990 without a save. I imagine it blows web away, but I'm interested. And this is a cute question, but I think it's also somewhat of a significant one because the role that a pitcher is used in tells you a lot about him. And in a lot of ways,

in a lot of ways, the pitcher's role doesn't, I don't know, in a lot of ways, the way that we view a pitcher or the way the league views a pitcher doesn't seem to change throughout his career. And so, I don't know,

as you'll see when I start getting into this, but to answer this question, I first need to find where I wrote the answer to this question. All right, yes. So to find the answer to this question, I went to the Play Index Pitcher Season section, and I searched since 19... I actually went to 1988,

because that's when the sort of save era begins in my mind. And I searched for careers and I looked for pitchers with zero saves, zero career saves. And then I sorted by games finished. It's the easiest play index that we've done so far. Very easy. And the answer is actually Matt was wrong. Webb is not very far behind the leader. Webb has 74.

The leader is actually only at 82. And so that's Matt Albers. And so Webb is actually number two all time. Matt has discovered an actual real-life phenomenon in real time. Webb is chasing Albers, in a sense. He's very close to catching him. But the weird thing about any achievement that requires a career total of zero,

as we've talked about, it can disappear in a flash, right? Like Ben Revere has the most played appearances without a home run right now, but in April 15th, he might not. It's very easy that all that hard work just goes down the drain. So if Albers or Webb gets a save, then all of a sudden they're not on the list at all. So that made me think, well, Matt's probably right.

That even though Webb is currently number two and Albers is currently number one, there have probably been a number of pitchers who have reached higher save list games finished heights uh and just eventually got a save and so fell off the leaderboard so this side is a slightly more complex play index search this time i went to the streak streak finders uh section for pitchers and i looked for players who had the longest streak of games to start their careers pitching out of relief without a save. So if you started a game, it doesn't end your streak. It just doesn't count against your streak. But if you save a game, it ends your streak. So I went back to 1990. And so I looked for the longest streaks to start a career without a save. And then I looked at all

those pitchers' games finished totals which display in the results and uh sorted by games finished and uh albers is still number one believe it or not nobody has ever has ever been higher in this regard than albers is currently um so in fact uh what webb and albers is doing is very significant. Webb does slip down to number three at 74. Clay Meredith got to 76 before he got a save. There's a few other pitchers who were very recently very close to this record or whatever you want to call it. Jesse Chavez was at 72,

and then he got one of those four-inning fluke saves in July this year. So he's off. Joe Smith was making quite a run. He was at 66, and he finally got his first save last April. And so what I was saying about how it seems like our opinions don't really change or the way that the league views, guys, doesn't really change, very, very few. Sorry, let me back up.

There are 99 players who have had a streak of 15 or more. So 15 is pretty low. Very few players have had a streak, a saveless streak with at least 15 games. three-ish turned out to be closers so these are guys who were closing a lot of who were finishing a lot of games who were in the league for a long time but weren't seen as closers and they almost never do become seen as closers the the most famous are jason grilley who was kind of famously didn't become a closer until he was like 34 and totally reborn um and that didn't happen immediately either um last year was his first year as a closer after a couple of dominating seasons. Uh, Ryan Franklin, who was, uh, never really considered a closer, but, uh, did, you know, had a couple of years and, uh, Heath Bell, who, um, is probably the great success story out of these 19. Um, you do have a lot of guys on the list who were,

who were really good for a sustained period of time, like Scott Leinbrink was really good for a while, and Justin Spire made a lot of money, and Julian Tavares, but didn't become closers. Albers seems to be in danger of losing his spot this year because he's in a bullpen where nine guys could get saved. Yeah, I was going to say that Webb has a decent shot. Webb has some shot.

He's clearly not the closer right now. No. But the closer is not a closer. The closer is Darren O'Day. Is it Darren O'Day? Is it Hunter? I think it's Hunter. Okay, well, either way,

it's not a guy who has any sort of sheen that you have to scrub through to get the job. So Webb could do it. Webb doesn't really strike anybody out, and he's not. So it makes sense that he wouldn't. And he's been a big platoon split guy in the past, I think not so much last year, but not the greatest out pitch against lefties, and so that's another thing working against him.

You want your closer to be someone who can get people out on both sides. But I don't know. Feeling a Ryan Webb save this year. So that would put, actually I don't know who that would put in the driver's seat. But if he and Albert's both going to save. Of his 74, 60 came in losing games. Only 14 then came in winning games. I think five of them were games where he was the winning pitcher.

And the others were blowouts. The closest game he's ever closed was when his team won by four. And so there's, of course, a flip side to this. If Webb and Albers are sort of the best or, I don't know, the least closer-y pitchers in history, like nobody has ever been less closer-y than them in a way, who are the most closer-y pitchers? So for this, I wanted to see who had the highest percentage of games

he pitched in that he finished. So like, for instance, Mariano Rivera would have a year where he came into 60 games and won four of them and blew three of them and saved 44 of them. And so like 56 of his games he finished and the only ones he didn't would be like an extra inning game or a game that he blew somehow and somebody had to relieve him. So, who do you think – does any name pop up at you? And I'll tell you right now, Rivera, not number one, which makes sense because he had a full year plus where he didn't close. Rivera's at 85% and nobody has ever topped 90.

So do you want to guess? There's four guys ahead of Rivera. I was going to guess Wagner because he was a closer right away pretty much, but sounds like not. Wagner's number 11. There's 14 guys who are over 80%, so 14 are between 80 and 90. Wagner is at 82%. Rivera is at 85%. Which is surprising.

I don't think Wagner was a closer immediately. Wagner was explicitly not a closer immediately. Just surprising. I don't think Wagner was a closer immediately. Wagner was explicitly not a closer immediately. You got... I'm looking. You got... You got saves his rookie year.

Huh, maybe I'm thinking of Lidge and Dottel, because they were always behind Wagner. Yeah. But Wagner only saved 20... Yeah, he saved nine his first year, 23 his second. Yeah. Wow. Do you remember wagner's uh 2009 season where he saved no games uh no the year that he got traded to the red socks barely pitched 17 17 games no saves okay so anyway you have not you have not guessed it take two more guesses uh papelbon no that was that was my guess and papelbon

is number three ah okay well i got one in the group um huh uh i don't know give give them to me all right so number uh number i lost it number one one is Kaz Sasaki. I never would have gotten that. No, you wouldn't, would you? 88% Kaz Sasaki. Number two is Brian Harvey, although I'm double-checking, it's conceivable that, yeah, Brian Harvey is actually

on there, I think, because I set the parameters to get rid of his first couple years, because he predates 1990 so throw out Harvey so everything I said subtract one from every number I've said today so forget Harvey number two is Papelbon and number three Billy Koch shocking isn't that shocking uh I don't know you already raised the bar for shocking with Sasaki number one. It is, but at least it makes sense.

As soon as you hear Sasaki, you know, oh, yeah, well, of course, he came in. He was a veteran. He closed for three years, and then he disappeared into the ether. But Billy Koch, man. Yeah, but I don't know. He feels like a manufactured closer, right? That was the whole story with him. Like they just made him into a closer and then. But he was an old man when they did that, right?

Yeah, I guess. Well, he was in his later twenties, I guess, when he was with Oakland. Yeah, he was. Oh yeah. No, he, wow. So Oakland, uh, actually Oakland got, I didn't realize this. Oakland got him in his fourth year. Yeah. I had no idea. He'd actually been a closer for three years before that. I thought that they found Koch doing setup work in AAA or something. Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. I think it's not that at all. I think we're thinking of Keith Folk. Yeah, well, Keith Folk, yeah, the way you are, sort of. But I think that – I think Keith Folk, yeah.

Keith Folk was just coming off a bad year. So they – he had been a closer too. They saved him in the one year they had him. All right, so that's it. Play Index. Anything you want to say about Play Index, our favorite thing? Well, people should subscribe to it. We appreciate that some of you have sent us requests for Play Index searches,

but we prefer that you subscribe yourself and run the Play Index search yourself and use the coupon code BP to get the six dollar discount on the one year subscription uh with the the money back guarantee and new features being added all the time all right um so this is actually going to be the last uh question um this comes from matthew who asks a hypothetical uh which would you rather have, a team where you could choose, well, okay. So basically the question is, would you rather have an elite pitching staff but replacement level position players or elite hitters but replacement level pitching? Specifically, a team where you could choose whoever you want on your pitching staff but could only have replacement level position players or you could choose the best offensive players at each position but have replacement level pitching which team would win more games i actually think i know

the answer to this because i think i just read it but maybe not do you do you know the answer to this um no i i was gonna say something about i, wouldn't you rather have the people you could be more confident would stay healthy? Oh, that's a good point. Yeah. I mean, certainly, as we all know in fantasy, the only bad strategy is drafting pitchers early. Yeah. So in that sense, yes. And yet, pitchers get paid just as much as hitters.

in that sense yes and yet pitchers get paid just as much as hitters i mean if we're only talking about especially we're only talking about one year then pitchers definitely get paid as much as hitters um but uh i think dan wrote about that was it dan or was it mike fast some one of one of them wrote about this in the in extra innings the book uh dan turkenkop uh in the baseball respectus book extra innings two years ago and the question was is a run gained more valuable than a run saved right and um that was not i don't think that was the the main thrust of the article but the first couple pages address the question uh using the Pythagorean records. And the way it works, as I recall, is that if you're a good team, you want to take a run off. If you're a good team with great hitting, then you would rather improve your defense.

If you're a good team with great pitching, you would rather improve your defense. Defense here meaning run suppression. if you're a good team with great pitching you would rather improve your defense defense here meaning run suppression if you're a bad team no matter no matter uh how you're bad if you're bad you want to add offense um and so if if we're assuming that a team where you could choose whoever you want for half your team and then replacement level for the other i would imagine that that's a a pretty good team either way yeah and so in that in that case you would you would want to you would want to start taking off runs which would mean that you would want to have the the better pitching staff if you're a good team you want to have a better pitching staff however as you say having a better pitching staff

does not necessarily translate to uh you know to preserving uh protecting, to suppressing. Wow, third try. Not even close to the first two. Suppressing more runs because they could get hurt and they could just be terrible. The other thing, though, is that if you have good pitching, they can't do anything for your hitters, whereas if you have great position players

and they're chosen partly for their defense, they actually can help the pitchers. So to me, what you said about the injuries and the way that positions interact with each other both of those suggest that you would rather have the hitters so even though a run saved is more valuable to a good team than a run added i think i'm still going with choose the position players okay settled all right uh i am actually in arizona at the saber analytics conference choose the position players. Okay. Settled. All right. I am actually in Arizona at the Sabre Analytics Conference, and some of you listening are probably also here. Some of you have said hello already on the first day today, but if you have not yet and would care to, please do if you see me around.

Please send us emails for next week at podcast at baseballperspectives.com. Please join the Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. And please rate and review us and subscribe to us on iTunes. And that's it for this week. So we'll be back with more team preview shows on Monday. And to play us out, I have the first track from the upcoming album by The Baseball Project. If you don't know The Baseball Project, you should. It's a supergroup composed of a couple members of REM, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, Scott McCoy from The Minus Five.

They have put out two albums already. Their third album, called Third, comes out on March 25th. All of their songs are about baseball. They're also just good songs, and they were nice enough to send me an advanced copy of the album, which I am listening to and enjoying. So here is the first track from Third called Stats. Starting. 383. 56. 383 56

715 511 262 61 262 61 1.12 191 363 20 363 20

49 7 2,632 59 130 4,253 59 103 4256 5714 Thank you.