Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 425: The Costliest Injuries Suffered So Far

Episode Date: April 10, 2014

Ben and Sam discuss events from Wednesday’s games, the new transfer rule, and the injuries that could cost teams playoff spots.

Time goes by, right on by, and I'm still hurting, yeah, hurting. Good morning and welcome to episode 425 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus, presented by the BaseballReference.com Play Index. I am Ben Lindberg, joined as always by Sam Miller. Howdy. Howdy. So there were a few firsts in baseball today on the season. We had the Royals hitting their first home run of the season, which was long overdue.

We had Billy Hamilton getting his first steal, which was on Yadier Molina, who did not attempt to throw because it was futile. He was there by the time the pitch was at the plate, and he basically did Billy Hamilton things the whole game. He, in that same inning scored on basically a pop-up it was caught by the right fielder but could have been caught by the second baseman he tagged and scored he also had a single and i think he had a triple and he beat out a bunt and it was the sort of thing that we have hoped to see from Billy Hamilton. And we saw the first managerial ejection of the season. Rick Renteria was ejected for arguing balls and strikes. And I'm kind of curious about whether, I mean, obviously there are usually many more managerial ejections than this. We haven't seen any because you can now appeal and go to a replay

instead of arguing fruitlessly until you get thrown out of the game. I also kind of wonder whether we'll see fewer ejections even for balls and strike only arguments, disputes, than we would have in the past just because managers are maybe just sort of in a better mood now or kind of have friendlier feelings toward umpires now that they're not bitter about some call that they think didn't go their way and and they had no recourse and they were frustrated about it so maybe they would take it out the next time there was a a borderline pitch or something and now

that won't happen. And actually, Joe Madden tweeted something yesterday. He said, it's been a love fest with the umpires, a big happy discussion. Almost no reason to get upset anymore except balls and strikes. So even balls and strikes probably less upsetting than they would have been in the past. So managerial objections and arguments, sort of sadly, but not totally sadly, really an endangered species now. Just not something that we see anymore. And the other thing that happened was that Paul Goldschmidt hit a home run off Tim Lincecum. So that now takes his head-to-head record against Lincecum to 13 for 24 with seven home

runs. So are you buying any ownership of Lincecum on Goldschmidt's part? Good question. Yes. I wouldn't say so uh-huh i i i'm not i'm not uh i'm not a uh hardcore anti-matchup person i know a lot of people are uh and i'm not i i buy i buy ownership but um i i i guess i just don't quite get there yet with Goldschmidt. Because the thing about it is that that almost entirely includes the portion of Linscombe's career where he sucked.

And so it's not unusual for players to hit home runs against him, Linscombe. And obviously this is more than usual but a lot of players have hit Linscum hard in the last two years, and so it's more believably within the realm of random fluctuation. I'm not quite there yet. I noted today that Ian Desmond actually has a higher career OPS against Lincecum, and that's only in 14-play appearances, so about half as much time, but people hit Lincecum hard.

That's kind of his deal now yeah so i i'm it's it's uh compelling but not quite convincing to me yet the uh sacrifice fly dropped his career ops against lindsingham by like 30 points um and the other thing i wanted to touch on, can we just talk about this catch, no catch transfer rule for a second? Have you been following this? So there's now this rule, or I don't know if there's actually a, there's no new rule on the books, right? It's just a new interpretation of the way that the transfer rule is interpreted. So if you catch a ball and you have it in your glove and then you drop it when trying to transfer to make the throw, you are not credited with the catch, even it seems if you have

held onto the ball for really a pretty long time. I mean, Josh Hamilton caught a ball the other day that it was pretty clearly a catch and a drop in the transfer. And that was, you know, a few seconds, maybe he had possession of it. Today, though, or Wednesday, there was one where Elliot Johnson had the ball after the catch. I mean, he took steps. He took like had the ball after the catch I mean he took steps he took like a few steps after the catch it was very clearly having possession of the ball and he dropped the ball on the transfer and it was ruled not a catch and Terry Francona challenged the call and it was it was up it stood. So this was probably the most glaring example of this, but we've seen it a few times recently and I wonder

what you think about this new interpretation. Well, a few is more than two and you named two. Is there a third? Yeah, there have been others. I think the Elliot Johnson one was the most obvious example, but yes. You know, there's this, you know, with football, football's had replay for a long time and announcers have noted in the past that, you know, one of the hard things for officials when they're doing replay is trying to determine possession of the ball because in frame by frame, it's actually like you can almost always see movement of the ball. Even if you have possession, you can see movement of it and there's this way that the frame by frame actually distorts what's happening and makes it like the literal interpretation of what's happening takes you

away from what is actually happening. Like, the literal is actually less real. And so, I guess, I mostly have only seen the Hamilton one that you're talking about. I'll send you the Elliot Johnson one while we talk. I mean, so you're allowed to, you're allowed, you know, it's not an official catch until you voluntarily take it out of your glove. Until you remove it from your glove, right? And that hasn't changed. I mean, that's the rule. That's the, there's an ad.

That's the rule and that's still the rule as they interpret it. But when you watch in slow motion on replay, you can convince yourself that the ball is kind of falling out of the glove unwillingly. And I don't think that's the case. I feel like this is a case where umpires have watched this video like a little too literally. Yeah. Because I don't even know that the interpretation...

Yeah, oh wow, yeah. I'm watching the Elliot Jones one. Because when you watch it in full speed and with decades of baseball watching behind you, you realize that that's a natural action that fielders take to sort of move the glove toward the hand. And then you sort of release the ball before your hand actually has possession of it. If Hamilton referred to it as a flip, I think he said he flips the ball to his hand.

And it's not nearly as drastic as it sounds when he says that. It's really just that there's a two-step action to taking the ball out of your glove. One is that your glove hand releases it. The other is that your throwing hand takes possession of it. And when you watch that in slow motion, which now the umpires can do, you see this second before the ball is in control of the hand where it is no longer in control of the glove. And so I think that I frankly, basically what I'm saying is I don't think this is like a new interpretation of the law at all. I don't think there's any precedent here. I think this is just bad umpiring.

I think those are those are mistakes that will quit being made. Yeah. Rob Nair tweeted something, which is what you're saying. He said, sorry guys, but what you think is a clean catch, in quotes, might be and sometimes is the baseball rolling around loose in a glove, out of control. And he also said, I know it's hard, but I hope MLB sticks to the new rule about the clean transfer from glove to hand.

I never liked the ambiguity. And I'm trying to think back and I can't really remember many examples of times when I thought that this was a problem before. You know, like, I mean, there were there was the occasional play where you weren't really sure whether it was a drop ball or a transfer, but it wasn't something that bothered me routinely. In those in those instances, you genuinely weren't sure whether it had been caught or not. routinely in those in those instances you genuinely weren't sure whether it had been caught or not and there was the the ambiguity was whether the umpires had given too much credit for the catch and uh that's not what we're talking about here these these the ball is it seems to

me in these cases the ball is clearly in control and it is in the process of moving it toward the throwing hand that it uh loosed but intentionally. I think it seems clear to me that it's fairly intentionally. Yeah. It was, yeah, this was something that teams were told, I think. Daniel Rathman wrote about it yesterday in his What You Need to Know column at Baseball Perspectives. And he said, as Rangers manager Ron Washington told reporters,

the league informed clubs during spring training that runners would be called safe on any failed transfer, after which replay would be initiated to determine whether the fielder controlled the ball while in contact with the base, the ball while in contact with the base, which seemed okay, but in practice it's sort of murky and it seems like maybe they've gone a bit overboard on this. We'll probably see it corrected along with other things as the replay stuff develops. Hey, can I banter something real quick? Yep. I believe we've talked in the past about the Astros 0.0 Nielsen rating that they got last year and grappled with what that means for

baseball and for what the Astros are doing. And I just want to note that they got another 0.0 Nielsen rating. They had one last September and I actually wrote about that game as the worst game of 2013, but they got another one on Monday, and to me, this is significant. It's actually a significant development compared to the one they had last year. Last year was pretty easily excused because it was on a Sunday, they were going up against football, it was September, the Astros were in the middle of a seven-game losing streak and 75 games out of first place. It was like two weeks from the end of the year.

Really no reason to watch that game. This was game seven. They were 3-3. They were going up against a division rival. And it was a Monday. So there is, I mean, for goodness sake, a Monday in April. There's no such thing as football on Monday in April. Game seven makes it sound so momentous.

It was a must win uh well by shaughnessy standards it was uh and so um so this is uh i mean it again like 0.0 nielsen ratings are sort of a statistical like they're just kind of a fluke right i mean clearly people watched it just one of the thousand households that has a meter wasn't watching. And so it's not necessarily a big difference from a 0.2 or whatever. But nonetheless, you get the feeling that if they're getting 0.0s on Mondays in April, that this could be a recurring thing and makes you question anew what Astros baseball means to the Astros. The Houston Chronicles piece, I think, or maybe it wasn't, maybe Mike Axies noted this,

that it was broadcast at the same time as a NASCAR race, which feels like a NASCAR race on a Monday feels like a very generous excuse for what is happening there are always other channels there was a strongman competition from 1994 being replayed on Fox Sports 2

right yeah okay there were billiards competitions going on you know there were other cable channels Shawshank was on TNT There were billiards competitions going on. You know? There were other cable channels broadcasting. Shawshank was on TNT. Exactly, yeah. Good one.

You found the perfect reference. Thank you. The last bit of banter we talked the other day about players accepting extensions and whether they are costing themselves money and whether they should consider other players' potential contracts when they are negotiating these extensions and whether the union should be upset about players potentially not maximizing the dollars. So Buster only talked to Glenn Perkins, who signed what seemed like a fairly team-friendly extension with the Twins recently. And this is just quoting the paraphrasing from MLB Trade Rumors. Perkins said that he made clear to his agent as far back as his first extension that he was happy to take a deal and stay in town rather than pricing himself out of the organization. The lefty says

that maximizing money is not the most important thing and saw value in the possibility of a World Series run with his hometown club while providing for his family's future when he had the chance. He kicked things off by suggesting a new deal to his agent, with a deal coming together quickly thereafter. Then he was asked for his opinion on the idea of players accepting so-called team-friendly deals, and Perkins said that the chances of upside are met and often exceeded by the possibility of blowing your arm out. It becomes somewhat easier to take on risk as a player's earnings rise throughout their career, Perkins noted, but looking for a little more is tough when you are always one pitch away. His ultimate advice to players is get yours while you can.

So that was a very explicit formulation of what we had been talking about. And I wonder if we could, maybe we should do a better job of quantifying that injury risk when we talk about extensions for pitchers and we just sort of do the hand wave where we say that, you know, you, as Perkins said, that you're always one pitch away and that you can always blow out your arm, maybe we should do a better job of actually calculating what the odds of that are and factoring that into our analysis. Yeah, well, I mean, it's part of the long-term Pocota projections,

but of course there's, you know, I think as we've all noted when we talk about these extensions, there's a know i think as we've all noted when we talk about these extensions there's a there's a big difference between um you know the uh first percentile outcome for a player and you know like the 10th and that's a bigger difference for them than the 10th and the the 90th right i mean getting zero dollars is a much bigger loss than than simply losing you know an extra million on top right yeah you Mm-hmm. Yeah. Basically, the goal is that you don't want to have to work for your dad's landscape company. There's a big difference in happiness.

And I think any sort of happiness science will note that, that the extra million dollars that you get when you have $9 million or $90 million or whatever doesn't do much for your happiness. But there's a big difference between being like sort of like lower middle class and being upper middle class like that actually does show a big difference in people's happiness. So we just lost all of our landscaping listeners. Nice job. It's not it's not it's there's nothing I mean, landscaping is a great thing. I'm just saying, like, your dad's a jerk. You don't want to work for him.

Right? Sure. Everybody agrees with that. You don't want to work for your dad. Sure. Even if he's not a jerk, you don't want to work for him. Like, my dad's great. I like him.

He's really wonderful. Everybody should work for my dad but not me, that kind of thing. That's all I'm saying. Okay. should work for my dad but not me that kind of thing that's all i'm saying okay so the actual topic of this podcast we'll probably end up talking about less than we have talked about other things already um but not my dad just to be clear because not my dad i mean i'm accepting my dad who's listening right he listens um okay so there have been a lot of injuries lately. I have not looked to see the actual rate. There's been a lot of hand-wringing about the Tommy Johns, of course, and everything else. And

it is quite conceivable that the injury rate has risen. It was as high as it's ever been, I believe, last year. And it does seem like there have been quite a few significant injuries. So I just want to go through some of the most significant. I want you basically to pick the injury that we've seen so far that is most likely to make the difference between a team making the playoffs and not making the playoffs. So when we get to the end of the year and we do a retrospective analysis and we say that if this team had had this guy instead of having to play this guy while that guy was on the dl they would have made it because they finished two

games out or whatever it is um okay so you have a list i do uh baseball prospectus has a useful page that i don't know if many people know about it's's the collateral damage page, which you can get to through the homepage in the transactions button at the top that just lists basically every current injury. So everyone who's on the DL right now, along with why he's on the DL and what his position and what his team is. And also some stuff about how long previous players with the same injury have tended to be on the DL and what the effect, if any, has been on performance of those players when they have returned from the DL. So sort of a useful page. So I pulled that up and I just kind of picked out some of the more notable injuries here. You already know my answer though, right?

Oh, well, I know the one that made you the most sad. I don't know if that's the one that you'll pick. I'll try to think of a second one just to be interesting. All right. So I don't really have these in a particular order, but I'll just kind of go down the list. So, of course, there's the Jared Parker Tommy John. There is the Matt Moore something. We don't know exactly what it is right now, but it sounds not so good. It would not surprise anyone if it were a Tommy John. And, of course, the Rays have already had Jeremy Hellickson injured. There's the Jerickson Profar injury.

There is the Patrick Corbin injury, another Tommy John. Of course, Beachy and Chris Medlin, who is the one that made you the most sad. More Tommy Johns. There is also, let's see, I have some on here that is the one that made you the most sad. More Tommy Johns. There is also, let's see, I have some on here that probably we can rule out. Jose Reyes' hamstring probably doesn't rise to that level. Doug Pfister's shoulder strain, probably too early to put him in the same class as someone who we know will be missing the season. Manny Machado's leg thing. put him in the same class as someone who we know will be missing the season.

Manny Machado's leg thing. There's the Josh Hamilton injury now, which is supposed to cost him six to eight weeks. So that's somewhat significant. There is the Jose Iglesias stress fracture that could potentially cost him the season or most of it. would potentially cost him the season or most of it. And there is, let's see, there's Kershaw's injury, which may not prove to be all that serious. The Mets have Harvey and Parnell, but they're the Mets.

And I don't know, I guess you could throw Josh Johnson or or Corey Lubecki in there or Iwakuma. Mark Teixeira. Yes, Teixeira's hamstring. Iwakuma and Walker. Iwakuma and Walker seem like – I was surprised you didn't name them because Iwakuma and Walker seem interesting. Although only probably like three weeks and a month respectively or actually the opposite of respectively. There isn't a phrase for the opposite of respectively, is there? Like if you've already started the sentence and it's too late to say something other than respectively,

there's not really an option, is there? Yeah, you've identified a major hole in the English language. And, yeah, that's probably, those are probably the contenders. You know, Cole Hamels is hurt. Michael Bourne is hurt. There's Chapman and Latos with the Reds. Dave Robertson also with the Yankees, which is, you know, potentially sort of significant. I think that's it.

You want to throw Bruce Rondon in there? I know Paul Sporer was pretty upset about his Tommy job. And you could sort of, I mean, you might think that the one that you would, I mean, a lot of times the injury's true effect is sort of in the cascade effect. And so if you have a team like the Reds that not only loses Chapman, but is missing Broxton to start the year and who knows how he'll come back and is missing Sean Marshall to start the year and who knows how he'll come back, and is missing Sean Marshall to start the year. I mean, you might conceivably lump those three together, right?

You could if you wanted to. Yeah, you definitely have to factor in not just the severity of the injury but who the replacement is on that particular team as well as where you expect that team to finish in the pennant race. So I think those are all the possibilities. I don't think we've left out anything major. So does anyone stand out to you as the most costly? Did you say Derek Holland? No, I didn't say Derek Holland. So yeah, Derek Holland's a good one. Yeah, I would say, and this might just be years of socialization, but to me it feels like with pitchers where you know that once you

lose a pitcher, you know, you're already extending your depth chart because you're going to have to go to your six. And you just, you know, for an almost stone cold fact that you're going to lose another one and then you're probably going to lose another one. And at some point, and so you're going to have to go to your six and you just you know for an almost stone-cold fact that you're going to lose another one and you're probably going to lose another one and at some point and so you're really talking about um like a massive gap that probably extends below you know maybe well below sub replacement uh or well below replacement and so the two that jump out at me the most for that reason would be Holland and Medlin, neither of whom are the best players you've named, but are both very valuable and provide. Not only are they both good, but just in existing, they provide a very valuable role for a team. Just being able to stand on the mound for 800 batters is a skill. Both of those guys seem like pretty severe losses. Coupled with some of the other injuries the Braves have had, coupled with the fact that I'm crushing on Chris Medlin,

that's the first one that came to mind. Holland is actually in a lot of ways a very similar situation where the Rangers have had to deal with other injuries, and we've seen Ross and Sheppard and some other guy who I've never heard of having to pitch for them so far. In fact, let me check. Yeah, they still don't have a fifth name on their chart. And so those two jump out at me the most although i mean just on that same team the the profar injuries possibly

in the same class right i mean you've got you well three months of three months of josh wilson instead of profar yeah we don't actually know what Profar is yet though. Profar might not be good. We don't know yet. He hasn't necessarily shown that he's good yet. And what do you think the drop is from Iglesias to Gonzalez?

Because that feels like Iglesias is clearly not the best player on that list, but Gonzalez is notably bad among the replacements. Yes. At the same time, I feel like the Tigers maybe can weather that anyway. I don't know whether that will make the difference for them. I thought they were, you know.

The other thing is that you're looking at playoff odds and you're trying to probably zero in on teams that are between 40% and 55%. And the Tigers are not one of those teams. But the Braves are and the Rangers are. The Rangers are actually now at 31%. Braves are at 41%. And so both of those teams, it seems like, are right on that teeter-totter place. You see how carefully I avoided saying tipping point?

Yes. So, yeah, I don't know. I wasn't sold on Iglesias as even necessarily an above-average shortstop. But I figure Gonzalez, probably you're lucky if you get replacement level from him. So, I don't know. Maybe you're talking about a couple wins there. You could also mention, by the way, you could mention Gio Soto for the Rangers.

Yeah. Because Aaron Seabia is brutal. I mean, Aaron Seabia is... Aaron Seabia might... I always think back to that time when... And this is going to sound worse than it is, but in 2006 or so 2005 maybe rob nye wrote a column about how jose reyes was the worst regular in baseball and uh uh he you

know explained that position later when jose reyes was a superstar and so i don't that is this is in no way intended to pick on that column at all. But ever since then, I've, I've always kind of thought about like at any given point who the worst player, who the worst regular in baseball is, and it might be Aaron Sevia. Yeah. I think probably I would take the, I'd take probably at least one, maybe two other Rangers injuries as more costly than that, but that's not a good one. Well, I don't know. I'm inclined to go with one of the pitchers who is guaranteed to miss the season.

I don't know. My initial thought was Parker, but as you wrote, the A's did have pretty good starting rotation depth, at least to begin the season. So, I mean, who are you talking about getting Parker's start? Some mix of Malone and Jesse Chavez. Yeah, they haven't even had to call up Malone yet, and they still have Pomeranz in the bullpen.

I mean, if they were really at that point, they would have depth. Now, you lose Pomeranz out of the bullpen, and Malone will be up shortly. I think he just hasn't been needed yet. I mean, I'm not a— Malone is on the active roster right now. Okay, yeah. So I'm not a... Malone is on the active roster right now. Okay, yeah. So I'm not a huge fan of Parker. And so that one was kind of a non-starter for me.

I mean, if the Rays lose more for the season, and I'm not necessarily a huge fan of more at the moment anyway but yeah if they lose more that um that's potentially pretty big because you figure that they do lose more yeah right and you have to factor in that i don't know maybe he'll wake up tomorrow and feel just fine and he'll his second opinion will be really positive and and he'll be back in a few weeks but um but there is a significant chance that he could miss the rest of this year and if he did with helix and already out um for another for another month yeah um and they're i mean they don't have it's not like like they have not yet had to go to they three guys from Independent Link to fill that spot yet.

No. But yeah, no, you're right. I like Nate Carnes or something. If more were out for the year, that would be a definite contender. Yeah. I don't know who their fifth starter would be right now. Yeah, Nate Carnes, I guess. I guess. So, yeah, so that's kind of where I'm leaning, but maybe I won't take that just because we're not sure yet that it is that bad. a package deal though because uh if only one of them had been lost would they have signed

ervin santana to replace that one i'm not sure so um the fact that they lost two was was pretty pretty crushing but i don't know if either one of them rises to quite that level. Like the fact that they lost two was crushing, but then they uncrushed it by getting Santana. Right. And so then they're back to one. And so then which one do you credit the loss of one to? Do they split it?

They split it in half or what? Yeah. Right. Can we turn this into a – golly, though. I mean, right now, like they're still starting Aaron Horang, you know? Yeah. Right. Can we turn this into a, golly though, they, I mean, right now, like they're still starting Aaron Horang, you know? Yeah. Can we turn this into a bet? Is there, is there a way to, to like, to bet on who at the end of the year, which team is going to miss by the margin that the player provided or would have provided according to Pakoda? Can we do this? Well, picking someone is- Because that's really what we're asking, right? Yeah.

I mean, is picking someone doing that? Yeah. I mean, yeah. But I mean, unless you say it's a bet, it's not a bet. Okay. It's a bet. People can add it to the Facebook group tracking of all of our other bets. This is dangerous because I don't think we've ever had a bet that is likely to be concluded before this podcast is retired.

So this one might, though, conceivably might be concluded. One of us will have to admit defeat. We've had some. We had the minor league free agent draft. That'll be concluded this year. I don't remember that one. I'm going to... The thing is, I don't buy the one I'm going to the thing is I don't buy the Rangers in the first place

like if Holland were healthy I wouldn't have them making the postseason whereas the Braves would you know you're right I mean like Beachy's not Medlin though I mean to me they're not in the same class of pitchers so I'm going to credit it

I'm going to credit the loss to Medlin and I'm going to say that the Braves will miss the post season by a Medlin margin. Maybe Hamilton is a sleeper here. I mean, if he misses two months, and that's two months of your boy JB that could be that could be a difference maker is that a reference that i'm not aware of how is he my boy didn't you write a you wrote a whole article about jb shuck didn't you did i dream yeah about how he was how he and reggie willits were the perfect comp right that's not exactly that's enough if you're right you're the only person who's ever written an article about J.B. Shuck, so he's your boy. So Hamilton is projected for 3.1 warp, Medlin 2.8. So I was going to say, yeah, but how much did you really think you were going to get out of Hamilton?

But Pocota says no, impact player. So, yeah, I think that's a very legit, and that's going to probably be a close division. a very legit and that's going to probably be a probably be a close division and um you know the the angels are already you know uh starting a slightly sluggishly and uh he was the one you know good hitter so uh yeah and that that seems plausible to me i wouldn't i wouldn't argue with that that'd be like one of the my top four but. But I'm sticking with Medlin because I already blew it by touting Medlin alone among all Major League Baseball players for the 2014 season. And so this is like – this is a second chance. You know, this is like your bracket gets busted the first weekend

and then CBS is like, oh, you can do a second round bracket. And that's me. I'm getting in the second round bracket for Medlin. So I'm keeping him. Give me Medlin. Although my heart tells me that Holland might be the better pick. My heart doesn't tell me that. My heart is the opposite.

My brain tells me Holland might be a better pick. But I'm sticking with Medlin. I think I'll roll the dice and go with Moore. Okay. I guess it'll be hard to do the accounting on that one, though. I mean, if the Rays miss the playoffs by a game or two games, then we have to project what Moore would have been worth, and then we have to figure out who replaced him

or have to figure out who got starts because he didn't get starts. And it'll be, the other thing is what if, what if they win the wild card, but they don't win the division and they lose the coin flip. Ooh. Yeah. Baseball made it too complicated.

Nonetheless, nonetheless, we can figure it out. The scoring is the easy part. Just pick a name. Scoring is the easy part. So you're going with more. Yeah.

I'm going with Edlund. And just for fun, since Moore might end up pitching in four days, well, not in four days, but in 14 days for all we know, let's just go ahead and give you credit for Hamilton and me credit for Holland as well. So we each get two picks. Okay, sure. All right, good. So remember to register for Hacking Mass.

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