Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 438: Bryce Harper, Hustle, and Health

Episode Date: April 29, 2014

Ben and Sam discuss Bryce Harper’s latest injury and their thoughts on when hustle becomes counterproductive.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, cause you can't knock the hush. But until the late night, I'm the one who's crazy. Cause that's the way I'm making it be. Cause you can't knock the hush. I'm just trying to get my mind, don't have the time. Good morning and welcome to episode 438 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, presented by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com.

I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg. Ben, how are you? Okay. Did you just see the tweet from our friends at YouCan'tPredictBaseball noting that the Diamondbacks now officially have as many losses as the Tigers have played games? No. now officially have as many losses as the tigers have played games no uh diamondbacks story gets sadder every day it seems like it does although also they've played eight more games than the tigers which is also interesting this is two fun facts in one because it both of those could stand on their own but yeah that those diamond Wait, why does it get sadder?

Because they signed Lucas Harrell. Oh, yeah, that's true. They traded for him. Yeah, you're right. Player to be named later. All right, anything? Or should we just plow right into this? Well, you know how Ryan Goins was my 2014 test case for mechanical adjustments?

Yeah. My ongoing struggle to understand whether I should give any credence to reports that some player has overhauled his swing or has changed his stance and he's a new player now. So I bookmarked or mentally bookmarked this story by Shai Davidi from late February, where it was your typical mechanical adjustment story for Ryan Goins. And the story was that Kevin Seitzer, the new Blue Jays hitting coach, had seen something in Goins. He had invited Goins over to his house over the winter, put him through some drills, made an adjustment with his hands. And then the quote from Seitzer is, I told Alex and Gib, Anthopolis and John Gibbons, there's more in this kid's tank. I wouldn't be quick to pull the trigger on a second baseman. With the way he plays defense and the runs he saves with his glove,

he's going to be able to contribute with the bat, I believe. And then the story says, two and a half months later, spring training is underway and Goins is the front runner to open the season at second base. With my series tourists, Chris Goetz and Steve Tolleson, his primary competition, really the job is his to lose, even with free agent Steven Drew still sitting on the open market. And the hopes riding on the 26-year-old's streamlined swing are a primed reason for that.

And it goes over how, you know, Goins is going to hit now. And so this was my test case for the year, although there are many, just because Pakoda predicted Goins to hit.247 with a.283 on-base percentage and like a.360 slugging or something. And every time we did a preseason list of what the weak positions in baseball were, what positions were really going to cost their teams this season, Blue Jays' second base kept showing up at the top of those lists. And so I was hesitant to go all out in criticizing that because, you know,

new Ryan Goins. And so now Goins hit 150 with a 203 on-base percentage and 217 slugging in 66 plate appearances. And now the Blue Jays have gone to Chris Goetz at second base. That's interesting. All of that's interesting. Yeah. It's a simple size of one, but I will add it to the others.

Part of what's interesting, though, is that in the comment, the BP annual book comment for Anthony Gose, a player who hasn't been mentioned yet in this conversation, written by Adam Sobsey, one of my favorite comments, he ends with, It'll be a bonus if he and Goins both stick, giving the Jays a duo of bizarro world conjugations of go goes g-o-s-e and goins uh and i also like to think that uh in a particular

bastardization you could also say gets with a z is also a conjugation of go right yeah sure goes gets and goins sure this is almost as good as your mike of Go. Right? Yeah, sure. Go's, Get's, and Goan's. Sure. This is almost as good as your Mike Karp pun the other day. No, that was not. That was just the spirit caught me and I fell down. That was not nearly as much of a keeper as this one is. I feel like this one has callback potential.

Unlike Chris Getz. is I feel like this one has callback potential. Unlike Chris Getz. If you're calling up Chris Getz, I mean, you know, that's not good. You should have a better plan than that, right? Chris Getz, we know what Chris Getz is, and it's not really a guy that you want starting at second base. So I wanted to talk about Bryce Harper.

Sure. If that's okay. And Bryce Harper, of course, as everybody knows, is going to be out for six to eight weeks. He injured his thumb diving headfirst into third base. And there are various reasons that this is significant and various ways that you could talk about this. But what's really been interesting to me is how Harper has found himself at the center of this controversy

that extends beyond him. It feels like it has been bubbling up for a year or so about the idea of hustle. And I don't know if you've noticed this. I don't know if other listeners have noticed this, but I feel like there's a conversation happening right now among baseball writers about whether hustle is even a good thing and that hustling itself calls for hustle, demands that players hustle, and even just guys hustling just on their own accord has been a divisive kind of thing. It's been sort of mocked as perhaps disruptive, as injurious, in fact. And in fact, literally, in this case, injurious. And I find this fascinating. I find the whole thing fascinating. I also find the response to Matt Williams' benching of Bryce Harper a couple of weeks ago for not hustling to have been fascinating and i find out that harper's been injured and

uh... it has been wrapped into this uh... to also be fascinating i just want to find out where you come down uh... on hustle both kind of uh... uh... in an abstract way uh... are you pro-hustle or do you have anything against hustle as a sort of a cost-benefit analysis? And more specifically, from your perch out here in the non-uniformed portion of the sport where you have not worn the spikes, you have not pint-hard the bat, worn the spikes uh you have not pined hard the bat uh do you feel that from your seat you're capable of having a a a worthy perspective on hustle well i'm i don't know whether you can can you be pro hustle to a point and say that that you're you're pro hustle until it becomes

a problem like if you hustle too hard yeah we'll talk about let's so tell me give me give me your line what where's it's what are what are i guess what are the what are the mile markers in the hustle journey and and where does it start to go uh into into the woods well i don't know whether this harper injury qualifies right right? Because, I mean, sliding headfirst into third base, which is how he got hurt, is, you know, that's not an instance of extraordinary hustle, right? I mean, sliding into a base is not above and beyond, right? I mean, you should slide, I would think. No, maybe you should try to always slide foot first so as not to endanger your your hands

because this is an injury that we've seen other guys have from sliding Dustin Pedroia and Josh Hamilton so maybe you want to teach people to to slide a different way maybe it's less risky but well wait hang on let's because if there's going to be mile markers there's got to be a first mile uh to mark so can we just agree that stretching a double into a triple, that involves running hard, which is what we're talking about. We're talking about running hard in order to try to get some benefit for your club, right? We could just say running out every ball in play, just sprinting first. every ball in play you're just sprinting whoa hold on hold on that's a much later that's a much later mile this is a this is this is trying to get a triple we're we're good with triples

right we don't find triples to be excessive hustle no uh okay so we're pro triple if you've got a shot at getting there then then no that's so that's that's just the very first building walk i don't think anybody is against triples. All right, so then head first slide would be the next thing. It's slightly faster to slide head first than to slide feet first. It visually looks more aggressive, so it has the added benefit of looking like hustle. Yeah, it appears. At least in a part of the uniform that is visible. More like hustle, but it also exposes you to a different type of injury and arguably,

and I just, I'm sure I didn't read the only thing on this, but a few days ago I happened to be reading something that found that it does lead to more injuries than feet first sliding. So presumably it comes at some risk, but it gets you there faster. Are we in favor of headfirst sliding when necessary? No. I mean, it depends. We'd have to know what the injury rates are and what that cost benefit is and how many outs you're going to get because you're milliseconds slower. But it seems to me that if there is an elevated injury risk of something like this that requires surgery, then I would be okay with just telling everyone not to

do that, even if it means an occasional out. So you would be fine telling a team no headfirst slides? I think so. I mean, I'd want to know more because I don't really know what the difference in time is. I mean, it can't be that great, right? Three and a half seconds. If that were the case, I would say it's okay. No, it's minuscule, but on the other hand, there are, as Matt Williams noted, how many thousands of headfirst slides go unnoticed. I mean, I watched one just now, and nobody got hurt. So we're talking about minuscule effects on both sides. I don't know if anybody's done the math.

But, you know, it does seem reasonable. I mean, Peter Borges slides feet first exclusively, and I've always admired that. And when I was timing him against Mike Trout, who is an aggressive head first slider, one of the most frequent head first sliders I've ever seen on the base pass, I didn't see a, you know, I thought that it was actually, Borges is so used to sliding feet first and he's so good at it that he actually is able to start his slide much later and it doesn't seem like it costs him

but that's because he's become very good at it part of his game is to get there fast while sliding feet first and so it's a learned skill I don't know that everybody can do it as well as he does and as safely as he does right well that's the thing. I'm saying that I'd be okay with telling people to stop doing it,

but I don't know whether you can do that. Maybe if you're teaching people in Little League, maybe you teach the kids not to do it, and then they get used to sliding feet first, and that's that. But if you acquire someone at the Major League level or even draft someone, maybe those habits are so ingrained that you can't change it. So, you know, and you don't want them to be tentative in some way. Well, are we going to get to crashing into walls?

That's a few miles ahead. Yeah. Okay. We'll get there. What's next? Running out every ground ball even, you know, up to the point where the play is is is concluded so uh ground ball to the to the pitcher let's let's actually start with just saying you run you don't know it doesn't have to be a uh you know the fastest 30 yards you've ever run

but you are locomoting toward the bag at something like full speed in case something happens. I think this answer might vary for me based on the player and the profile of the player. I mean, if you're a young player who has no track record of injury and is a guy who's maybe known for his speed or something or even not, but just well-conditioned guy with no elevated injury risk, then I think it's reasonable to expect you to run hard on every play. I mean, major leaguers can generally run to first without, you know, subjecting themselves to too much strain.

Now, if you're an older player, if you're a player with a history of hamstring issues or calf strains or whatever, any sort of lower leg problem, if you're a pitcher who's maybe not conditioned as well to sprint or doesn't have to do it in games often, I'd be okay with you not doing it. If there's really any elevated risk because I don't think the benefit is great.

You know, just going back to that Cano beating out Grounders article I wrote and contrasting him with Jeter, it's like, you know, maybe you can beat out a handful of singles over the course of a season and that's not an inconsequential amount of value. That's valuable. But if there's a significant risk that you're going to pull something and be on the 15-day DL because you wanted to get that single, then I think it's reasonable not to expect you to do that. So it varies for me. If you're Mike Trout and you're young and you're healthy and you're fit and you have no injury history and you have the speed to beat out a lot of grounders, then by all means do it. If you're a guy who's not going to beat out a lot of grounders from running that hard and has some elevated risk profile, then I would say just be conservative.

Yeah, I think I basically feel that way for a slightly different reason. I feel like there's, when you're talking about young guys, you're not just, it's not just that they're more able to handle it, but you're also, you're trying to develop a kind of a mindset in them. You know, they're young, they're rich, they're being molded and sculpted and they're under your care. You have a lot of years with them ahead of you and you want to develop this particular quality of grinding. As much as we mock the guy who is lionized for his grinder mentality despite being bad at baseball, there is generally, I think, a fair consensus that

if you can have a good player who also wants to win, that's good. You'd rather have a good player who wants to win than who doesn't want to win. And I don't know that that's necessary. I imagine that Bryce Harper's pretty good at motivating himself, and that most of these guys are pretty good at motivating themselves. But I do defer to the manager to know the personalities and to know which guys need it and which guys don't. So it would make sense to me that a manager would see a young player and say, you know, I promote certain personality characteristics, it also would

make sense to me that a manager would see too many cases. I mean, you know, all managers can get to do is manage. And so they're probably all looking all over the place for opportunities to manage. And anything that they see that sparkles is an opportunity to manage, and they probably overmanage in some cases. Anything that they see that sparkles is an opportunity to manage, and they probably overmanage in some cases. But, yeah, I mean, I kind of defer to the idea that young players can, you know,

be kicked in the butt a bit and, you know, Raul Ibanez can be sort of left alone and handle his own business and be trusted. So what about the expectation that you would run every ground ball out. You remember how Bryce Harper used to do it, where he'd get walked and he'd run to first like he was trying to beat out a double play. Do you mind an expectation that young, healthy players without hamstring issues should run full speed, run as hard as they can on every play? Nope, I'm okay with that.

I mean, I've never really liked the sprinting to first base after a walk thing because that seems like false hustle to me. That seems like broadcasting your hustle. There's no benefit to that. You walk, you get to walk, literally, if you want to. So that's just sort of a Little League, Eckstein, I'm Mr. Hustle thing. What about super hard takeout slide at second base? I don't know.

I mean, probably against. I don't know. I mean, probably against. I mean, double plays can really be bad for an offensive team. So if you can break one up, that's big if you can do that regularly. And I don't know. I mean, I guess there is the incentive there. There's maybe more incentive than there is to try to beat out a typical grounder. But I'm generally, when it comes to contact, I feel like I would err on the side of caution. Okay, what about sliding and or diving for fly balls up by four runs or more? I don't know. I mean, the question is, can you turn it off, right? I don't know whether you can do that. Can a fielder weigh the leverage of the situation and say, I'm up by four, I don't need to dive in this case? And, you know, when it's a tie game in the ninth, just turn it back on and say, now I can do it. Or is it something where you just have to have that ingrained? You have to, it's an instinct. It's, it's something that is built into the player after years of

playing as hard as he possibly can to get to the major leagues. And you can't necessarily just deactivate it at certain times. If you could, if it were possible to factor the situation in and say it's low leverage, there's no real benefit to my going all out for this fly ball, then yeah, sure, I'd be in favor of that. Let me rephrase then. There are a handful of players who get a reputation for not sliding ever. And Garrett Anderson always had this reputation in Anaheim, and I think it was generally an unfair reputation.

But there are some players who just don't slide as much. Do you have an issue with a player who just, that's not his style, who just kind of chooses to be slightly more lackluster? I mean, would that grind on you over the course of years watching him? Or do you trust a player to sort of know his limitations on such plays? I think that might bother me. Never sliding would bother me. All right, and then running face first into walls.

Or, you know, I guess this would fall under risking injury in a sort of explicit way, you know, because you really want to catch that ball. You know, I mean, that would be running into walls. Do you have a problem with running into walls? I mean, you're going to say, well, it depends on the play. It depends, but like we've already determined that they can't turn it off. So it might be for all, you know, for all they know, it might be the seventh game of the world series and the tying run is on second base. Uh, they treat every play like that. So do you, do you want them shying away from the wall? Yeah, I think so. I would prefer my players not to, to crash face first into the wall um you know i mean even if i feel like if

you get to the point where you're crashing face first into a wall what what's your probability of catching the ball anyway it's got to be fairly low right i mean we see that happen all the time that guys go right into the wall and they don't catch the ball and then you've you've gotten nothing out of it you've just crashed into the wall yeah but there's i mean there's all sorts of i mean like trout has you know all those those home runs that trout has robbed uh all but you know maybe one or two of them they involve impact you know he's running and he sort of he leaps into the wall or you see like you know josh reddick uh do his thing where he sort of uh climbs the wall his spike. I mean, that's probably super dangerous. Who was it?

I just saw somebody do one that looked, oh, I think it was Billy Hamilton on like opening day or so, like the second inning of opening day maybe, and he like did this full sort of Superman leap into the wall with his spike outstretched and like planted into the wall to brace for impact. And, you you know it looked horrifyingly dangerous it wasn't an aaron rowan face mash or bryce harper face mash um but you know i mean anytime you're aggressive with the wall when you're sort of the anti nelson cruz or the anti bobby abreu yeah i don't have an end that's no talk about that um yeah well i don't have an answer. Talk about that.

Yeah, well, I don't have a problem with the type where you're drifting back and you're timing your leap and you're just trying to pull the ball back over the wall. Those generally seem fairly low impact. I mean, maybe you come down against the wall as you're falling after having jumped for the ball, but you're not slamming your head into the wall. You're not running into it directly. So those are fine. But yeah, the ones where you just aren't aware that there's a warning track and you just run full speed into it. And again, I mean, it's, you know, I'm sitting here saying that and when you're in a game and you're going back on a ball, it's hard to, it's hard enough just to track the ball in the few seconds that it's in the air, let alone to do this cost benefit analysis of whether it's worth it to the team for you to go all out after this ball. Or, you know, what is the run value of my catching this ball as opposed to it falling for a double or something? I mean, you can't do that math at that moment, probably. But, but, well, you know, if there were, if there's a player like a Rowand or, or someone who has

demonstrated time after time that he will run into walls, I would be less likely to acquire that player. Yeah. So that brings us to the important question, which is that Bryce Harper has now missed, uh, missed, he's going to miss significant time two years in a row. Uh, he seems to be getting injuries that don't just keep him out, uh, but affect his play when he's in. There was that great piece we wrote on his swing and how it seemed to have been affected by his injury last year, and now, of course, he has this same injury that, as Keith Blott pointed out, seemed to maybe have sapped Dustin Pedroia's power last year. This is a thumb injury that Matt Williams noted he has previously suffered as a high schooler.

So we've got a guy now who's going to have about three years of service time at the end of this year and almost certainly have unfulfilled potential, an injury tag, lots of missing time. Is he now officially a concern? Well, I'm feeling better about picking Trout over Harper and the Trout versus Harper early on in that debate. But, I mean, I hope we get to see a full season of great Bryce Harper, and I'm sure we will at some point. He was baseball prospectus's staff consensus NL MVP pick this season, which actually sort of surprised me. He wasn't on my

top three, I don't think, but that was the kind of expectation that people had for him going into this year, and talent-wise, you can understand why, but, but yeah, I mean, after this, after this year, he, he will have that injury prone label, I think. And, and it's probably about as fair as it is for, for any player. So it's, it's, it's disappointing. I would like to see a full season of healthy Bryce Harper and see what he could do. But, yeah, I mean, I would downgrade my expectations for him and his career a little bit just based on the way he plays and the fact that it doesn't seem like his body can necessarily handle the way he plays. Yeah, I suspect that this hustle thing between him and Matt Williams,

I'm generally pro-hustle. I'm particularly pro-hustle when it comes to dropped third strikes. It just irritates me to no end that they don't make the catch or throw the ball. That kills me. But, yeah, I mean, I'm more or less pro-hustle. But I think that, for the most part, I think that players have their own speeds. They more or less know where effort becomes an injury risk, and I trust them to weigh that. I think that managers generally have an understanding of what players' limits are,

and I trust them to push players to that limit and not beyond. And I think that when you have these sort of skirmishes that happen between players and managers, as this one happened with Williams and Harper, I usually assume that it's not about the hustle at all, that this is just, you know, something visible that happened on the field. It's one of the, you know, one of those things that we see that, you know, that happens in front of us. But then basically, Matt Williams just didn't like Bryce Harper already. And Bryce Harper probably already didn't like Matt Williams already. And they probably had had some sort of tension between them. And this gave an outlet to that tension. So my guess is

that it's probably not worth reading too much into the literalness of the dispute. That's just my guess. Mm-hmm. And are you expecting still to see the monster Bryce Harper season at some point? Yeah, I think I still am. Yeah. Yeah, me too. And I mean, I wonder, though, whether we will see the monster national season that we've been expecting because they kind of let everyone down last year. And now this year they've had lots of injuries between Harper and Pfister and Zimmerman and Ramos and everyone who's been hurt. They are at least so far sort of heading for another season like last year where everyone came

in predicting them to win 100 games and then stuff happens. Wait, aren't they winning? Aren't they doing pretty well right now? They're doing okay. They're a couple games over 500. I think they're behind the Mets actually. A couple games over 500 and you can't be that far over 500. They have a 540 winning percentage.

So yeah, what is that, like an 86 win pace? Yeah, about what they were last year, just sort of a different trajectory. But yeah, they are Harper. I mean, Harper's a microcosm of them, I guess. Just the team with super high expectations, really strong roster, lots of skills and tools and talent that so far has not put it together. So I'd like to see Nationals firing on all cylinders and Bryce Harper doing Bryce Harper things all year.

Not these Bryce Harper things, but the good ones. We should put the article, the Bryce Harper swing article that Ryan Parker did on the page because this is a really good article that everybody should see to see how his swing was affected by his injury last year. And just because it's good reading. I will link it on the Facebook group, facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. All right.

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