Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 446: Dissecting the Surprise Teams

Episode Date: May 9, 2014

Ben and Sam discuss two teams that have significantly surpassed expectations so far: the Colorado Rockies and the Miami Marlins.

Well, I was wondering how long this could go on Oh no, well I thought I could never be surprised Good morning and welcome to episode 446 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus Presented by the BaseballReference.com Play Index. I am Ben Lindberg, joined as always by Sam Miller. How are you? Good. How are you? Good. Have you any banter? I guess a quick one. This is going back to the Matt Albers save watch.

the Matt Albers save watch. One of the four pitchers who has a save for the Astros, Raul Valdez, was, I guess, released or DFA'd. I think released. Anyway, so that just goes to show you how easy it is to get a save in Houston. He got this save like a week ago, and it was not one of those like five innings and a blowout kind of saves. This was like he came in with one out

in the ninth of a close game. It's a legit save. So anyway, remains dangerous. So I just want to have a quick little poll, the two of us. It's a three-question poll, okay? Okay. First question, how many relievers will get a save,

or I guess how many pitchers? There will be relievers when they get the save, but they might be starters other times. How many pitchers in Houston will get a save this year? So you say it's four already? Four already, four to date, none with more than two. Seven. Really, only three more. Yeah someone someone will claim the mantle i'm gonna say eight okay so only four more you seem very surprised about the three more it was either that

or pick one so i figured well this was not the right time to pick one uh all right so question two of those seven and a half closers how many of them will be released before the end of the year two two including valdez so one more yes uh josh, it should be noted, has an ERA of 12 at the moment, although peripheral is not that bad. Anthony Bass has an ERA of 4.3 at the moment, although the peripherals are that bad.

They're actually, they might be the worst peripherals in baseball at the moment. He's striking out two batters per nine and allowing two home runs per nine. Well, 1.6. I rounded up and rounded down to make my point, but 1.6 homers per nine to two strikeouts per nine. And then Chad Qualls has been actually quite good, particularly if you remove his two intentional walks,

in which he has a 14 to 1 strike at the walk ratio so uh yeah probably a decent i would bet that josh i'm gonna say zed will get a save i'm gonna guess that uh if tony sip is still around he'll get a save jerome williams will definitely get a three inning one he's he's come close a few times and uh and albers will get one you do think albers will get one oh i definitely think albers will get one okay so that's that yeah all right that's all the banter it's all my banter okay well not a week of banter well i want to talk about the two teams that a lot of people are talking about. The two bona fide surprise teams of 2014, I think it's fair to say.

The Marlins and the Rockies. And both of these teams were predicted by the baseball prospectus staff in our preseason predictions to finish last in their respective divisions. Neither team received a first place vote. They had an average placement of 4.6. So it was almost unanimous that, uh, that they would be last. Some people pick them fourth, I suppose. I will not claim any credit for this. I just want to point it out. I picked both to finish fourth. However, because of a data entry error, I believe that the Phillies appeared twice in my standings. And since I had gone to sleep, you guys had to decide who to put last. And so you put the Marlins last. And I woke up and I thought, yeah, that looks good enough.

Just so you know all right so we'll give you slightly more credit than than that prediction will indicate but neither neither of us no one at BP saw this coming and the Marlins right now are tied for first place the Rockies are as we record this a half game back of the Giants so depending on whether the Giants lose or or win tonight they're still playing the Dodgers the Rockies will be either tied for first place in the West or a game back and the maybe the more surprising thing is that both of these teams have the peripherals that you look for in a team. This is not a case of teams just sort of fluking their way and defying run differential for six weeks and being outscored

but winning a bunch of one-run games somehow and doing the 2012 Orioles thing. This is not that. These teams both have the underlying numbers, or most of them, that would suggest that they should have these records. By baseball references, schedule adjusted, run differential. They are the two best teams in baseball entering play on Thursday. Colorado was slightly ahead of Miami. And by baseball prospectuses, adjusted standings, also heading into play on Thursday. The Marlins were the best team in baseball by third-order win percentage,

which is a team's projected winning percentage based on underlying stats and adjusted for their opponents. So they were first, and the Rockies were fourth after the Tigers and the A's, but both with third order winning percentages over 600. So both of these teams, at least to this point, have been for real. I should, I guess, mention that the Marlins and the Padres are currently tied in the eighth inning. So that will determine whether they are still in first place at the end of the night. But both teams have far surpassed our expectations, just about everyone's expectations.

So I want to talk about how real this is. Which one is more real? And are you a believer in either or both so maybe we can i don't know we should start with one of them maybe we should start with with the rockies i think the rockies to me are the more surprising one is that the case for you is one which one of these is more surprising um i guess if i'd had to say which team i thought was better before the year i would have picked the rockies yeah if i had to guess which team i thought was more likely to win the division or to you know to somehow surprise

us by winning 89 games i would have picked the marlins yes yes i think that bigger error bars right i think is the what they say yes, but the Rockies have been good. And I mean, it's obviously, it's Tulewitzki having an incredible start to the season and just being healthy. And that has always been the key for him because he's a great player whenever he's playing. And they've already,

they've gotten the crazy start from Charlie Blackman, and they've gotten better pitching than we probably would have expected. They, I think, have the third highest staff ground ball rate. And we talked about with Russell Carlton in our Rockies preview this year how you adjust to course field, how you beat course field, how you pitch in course field. And it seemed like the consensus was that the Rockies at least think that building a ground ball staff is one way to do that.

And they have successfully done that. And guys like Jordan Lyles have thrown sinkers more than they ever did before. And they're getting grounders. I should also mention Nolan Arnauto, who was one of the best fielders in baseball last year but didn't hit much. He is, of course, hitting a lot. He is on a 28-game hitting streak right now, which is a franchise record. That's crazy, by the way. Yeah.

That seems awfully low for a Colorado franchise. It does. Yes, you're right, course fields babbitt which is very high every year i guess though they it does seem awfully low but i guess that you know since since colorado hitters don't colorado hitters also do worse on the road than they should be expected to like that hangover effect so maybe i was trying any 29 game hitting streak or longer would involve multiple road trips yeah i'm not sure whether that's true. That might not be true.

I don't know. I was on MLB Now today, and we were talking about Tlilitski and the Rockies, and I was trying to do some research on that beforehand. And from what I Googled up, I found old studies by Keith Wollner and Ranney and Dan Fox and people who looked at it like pre-humidor cores when you would expect that to show up. And it didn't really from what they found. So I'm not sure if there has been anything conclusive that has shown that. And they've also gotten Carlos Gonzalez is off to a pretty good start and he's healthy and that

is always important for them. Drew Stubbs, who I remember theorizing that maybe he would be good in cores because he can't hit curveballs and maybe curveballs would break less and who knows whether that has anything to do with the fact that he's been successful so far, but he has been. He also was, I hope this comes back to me when I was in that nice little three week period where I was reviewing Nate Silver's early writings there was Nate Silver's theory about what hitters

Colorado should get and it was high strikeout low walk I think was that what it was I think so yeah and then I think that I think I reviewed it with like a decade more of data, and I forget what it was, but whatever it was, Drew Stubbs was the guy. Right.

I think the walks thing turned out to not matter anymore, but the strikeouts thing did. So you wanted high strikeout guys. And that actually is not what they've had this year, except for Stubbs maybe the the team as a whole it has the lowest strikeout rate in the National League and even Stubbs I think is below his uh career rate yeah they're uh they they have a bunch of guys who have uh seemingly lowered their strikeout rate that That is the story with them.

I mean, that's how they've kind of done it so far. And I mean, they've gotten, Brandon Barnes has been great. That trade, I mean, I criticize them. I think a lot of people criticize them over the winter for the Dexter Fowler for Barnes and Lyles trade. And that has worked out spectacularly well for them so far, as has the Justin Morneau signing, which I wasn't particularly high on,

but he's hitting like Justin Morneau again. Right, all these guys are guys that we don't like, particularly. So Ben, I have two quick questions for you. One, other than Blackman, which is just insane, and Blackman, which is just insane. Which is your favorite batting line on the 2014 Colorado Rockies? Because there are some real winners. There's Barnes, whose batting average is higher than last year's slugging percentage was.

Last year, he had a 650 OPS. This year, he's hitting 357, 416, 457. That's a good one. There's Morneau who, let's see, right now has the second best OPS of his career. This is a MVP winner and an MVP runner-up, and he has the second best OPS of his career. There's Corey Dickerson. Most notable for being less famous than Corey Patterson, who's hitting

348, 373, 587. Michael Kodair. Michael Kodair. He's a batting champ, though. His numbers are actually down from last year, I think. There's – those are the winners, right? Yes.

One of them has to be the winner. So which is your favorite? I think I'll take – I mean, in terms of improbability, it's probably Dickerson, right? Stubbs'.323 batting average would be a challenger, but the rest of the line is not out of bounds for him. Yeah, and the team as a whole has a.288 true average, which is leading all of baseball.

So this team has hit very well and has pitched pretty well, probably maybe better than we would have expected. And Adam Adovino is carrying my Effectively Wild Reliever League team. So the pitching is doing pretty well. The pitching is doing pretty well, but now, so here's a, I'm just going to toss out a hypothesis, which, you know, I have nothing to back this up, and this is, you know, standard crazy talk, but it's May. There's nothing else to say. The, I mean, the thing about Colorado is that park factors fluctuate more than you would think just throughout baseball. It's weird how sometimes parks will gradually evolve from being one thing to being another one. And a building gets knocked down and the air current changes and all of a sudden it's a slightly different park.

Or they add foul territory or take it away or change the batter's eye or whatever. Things change in ways that you wouldn't necessarily expect. or take it away, or change the batter's eye, or whatever. Things change in ways that you wouldn't necessarily expect. But Colorado, in particular, their park factor is artificial. It's actually man-changed. The humidor is the hand of grounds crew affecting the park factor significantly. grounds crew uh affecting the park factor significantly and so like when jay jaffe wrote his essay for extra innings a couple years ago one of the most interesting things in that essay one of the most interesting things in that whole book was showing um how massive a small change in

the ball can be like how even with baseballs the way they are with with uh you know baseball has standards for what a ball has to be in terms of springiness or whatever. And even within the error margins that are allowed for the manufacturers, you can have a 35-foot difference in a dead drop. And so when you start thinking about the humidor effect, which is an inexact thing um and could potentially have you know a pretty big difference on the ball um you wonder whether this is um like whether we're just going to look back at 2014 and talk about our favorite rockies lines and laugh about how the park factor was so then the but where that leads then is that then you would say that in fact their pitching is doing exceptionally well much better than you would have expected.

So either their hitting is insane and their pitching is okay, or their hitting is being floated by this, you know, some effect, and their pitching is actually now extremely good. And, of course, as has been noted, they're also hitting very well on the road. But still, come on, Brandon Barnes. I mean, they have hit well with runners in scoring position, but they've hit well in all situations. They've just hit well. And it's still early enough in the year that it's one of those flukes that isn't the typical kind of fluke, maybe.

It's the kind of fluke where the underlying stats back it up, but maybe the underlying stats themselves are sort of flukish in that Brandon Barnes and Drew Stubbs and Corey Dickerson can all have a good six weeks at the same time. And it doesn't mean that they are all suddenly much better players. Yeah, and Tulewitzki. And nobody is underperforming. Sure, right. And Tulewitzki is overperforming and also in the sense that he's not hurt or anything. Jordan Lyles. Jordan Lyles has a 816 OPS. I should also note real quick that every detail that I just included

in talking about Jay Jaffe's essay, every single detail I included was made up by me. So the 35 foot was made up. The phrase dead drop does not appear in it, and I don't even know what that is. I don't what it would be so that doesn't appear in it so just don't repeat any of the details the point is just that small changes in a ball can have huge differences in how far the ball goes that's all well troy hawkins has a 292 era nine saves, and a 3.6 per nine strikeout rate. You know what's crazy is that in July,

I'm going to be watching the All-Star game, and Darren Oliver is going to be there in a Rockies uniform, and I'm going to be like, I thought he retired. And then I'm going to look and know he would have had a 1.1 ERA in April. I'm looking at the line i'm looking at their pitching staff he's not there but i know that later in the year it will be there it will have appeared yeah and they've they've gotten good performance out of tommy canely who's a rule five guy he's pitched 17 innings with a 2.12 era i. I mean, it's just goes on and on. Boone Logan, a signing that I criticize

has been fantastic so far. I mean, everything has has gone well. So so we've gotten to the point, though, where they have 22 wins and maybe they're a little bit better than we thought they were. But are they better enough to contend all year? And, of course, we should also probably mention that they have Eddie Butler and John Gray, two of the best pitching prospects in baseball, who are both pitching in AA and pitching fairly well. So if there is a weakness in the rotation and there's an opening later in the year.

One or both of those guys could potentially be up. So there's the possibility of some reinforcements arriving. So are you buying? No. No. Not buying. Not buying. Where do you think they'll end up?

Well, you know, I mean, look, they're end up uh well you know i mean look that it it's they're going up against the dodgers so i mean there's even if i even if i were buying i wouldn't be buying them more than i'm buying the dodgers sure but are you buying them wild card buying uh i don't know i let me put it this way, Ben. I think it's a pretty good thing that you chose to talk about them tonight. Because if you'd waited until next week, probably we wouldn't have as much to say. They were shut out tonight by Texas, and you think that's the beginning of the end. Next week, Tulewitzki will be on the DL and Carlos Gonzalez will be on the DL

and they'll have lost five games in a row. You know, I would, you know, what am I going to say, Ben? Like you said, they're bad players having legitimately good months. Like, I'm not taking away from their legitimately good months. Yes, you are. You're taking away. No, they won those 22 fair and square still not a roster i like particularly i still think probably if i had to bet i'd still would probably bet on them to win more games in the marlins going forward and the marlins to be more likely to win 90 going forward. Okay. All right, so let's talk about the Marlins then.

First, can we do a transition to a little fun fact that addresses both teams? Mm-hmm. In their franchise histories, which this is, of course, the 22nd year that they've existed, twice, twice they've had winning records the same year. Wow. Yeah. 1997, the Rockies eked out a winning record. And then 2009 was when the Rockies

went to the playoffs. And the Marlins, people don't really probably remember this, but won 87, one of their low-budget 87-win teams. Okay, so the Marlins, as I mentioned, by BP's third-order record, have the best record in baseball entering play today, and you can sort of see why. If you look at their team audit page at BP where every player is listed, I looked on there, I sorted by played appearances, their top eight position players by played appearances,

so their entire starting lineup, is above average, has an above average true average. Even Casey McGee, as we discussed, even Hechevarria, everyone in the lineup, everyone who has been starting at a position has been above average so far. And not only that, but the pitching has been excellent. had a four-man rotation so far. They've gotten a couple starts out of Kevin Slowey and a couple starts out of Brad Hand and a couple starts out of Jacob Turner. They've sort of had four regular starters, and one of them is Jose Fernandez,

who, if he's not the best pitcher in baseball, is in the top handful. And another is Nathan Evaldi, who we talked about recently, how there's really no way not to like him. And then there's Henderson Alvarez, who is, as you said, you can be talked into liking him or not liking him. But as a third starter, not bad. And Tom Kohler, who I don't really have as nice things to say about, but he has been very good so far.

And the bullpen, C-Sheck and A.J. Ramos and Dan Jennings, they always seem to find these guys. The Marlins seem to be good at finding bullpen guys. Ben, you are so close. Can you name the final four players on the Marlins? By the end of the episode, I will. So are you buying this?

You say that you would. What I said a minute ago was wrong. I would not take the Rockies over the Marlins. I would take the Marlins over the Rockies, both in median results, in sort of mean outcome, and in ceiling, I would take the model. Yeah. When you look at the roster, there are a lot of players that I legitimately like on this team all of a sudden.

There are a lot in the lineup. I like the—because I like—oh, by the way, when we were talking about Evaldi, and we noted that in the group of of under 25 pitchers that we were talking about he had that the second highest fastball velocity and the highest strike rate uh should also have noted i didn't know it at the time but i should have noted that he also had the highest ground ball rate he is uh like a top 10 ground ball pitcher right now yeah he's doing it all and he's walked 1.2 per nine yeah he's kind of an ace yes sort of and it was sort of surprising that he wasn't last year given how hard he threw he was he was one of those guys

you mentioned who threw really hard but didn't get strikeouts and now he's getting strikeouts so uh and i think my favorite fact about jose fernandez is that he he has lost a lot of strikes. If you look at the BP, BP has a sortable stat page for pitcher-catcher batteries, like individual pitchers and catchers, and it shows how many extra strikes that battery has gained or lost. has gained or lost and if you look he actually has lost the most the sixth most sixth most strikes of any pitcher since the start of last season he's like 43 strikes in the red he's he should have had 43 more strikes based on where his pitches were in in which counts and which pitch types they were and all of that so whether that's because of the framing of Rob Brantley and Soto Amakia and the catchers who have caught him, or I don't know,

maybe it's just as hard to call Jose Fernandez pitches as it is to hit them. He has actually been squeezed. He's had a tight strike zone. So imagine if he had had even a normal strike zone, what his walk and strike outreach would be. Anyway, there is the foundation of a strong rotation there, I think. And also, like the Rockies, they have some potential reinforcements. They have Andrew Heaney, who ranked as the top left-handed starting pitching prospect in baseball on our 2014

top 101 list. He is off to a good start in double a so he could be up potentially at some point and and take over that spot that's been kind of rotating among a bunch of scrubs so you could look down the road and maybe by the end of the year the marlins will have four really good starting pitchers, age 24 or under, and Tom Kohler. And Jacob Turner, more likely. Who's also 24 and under. He is, but yeah, not quite the same caliber. Not quite the same caliber, but I'm just saying that I would probably take him over Kohler.

I don't like him. Yeah. So what do we say about this team? I mean, they have had, as I mentioned, I mean, Hechevary is hitting.282 with a.330-something on base percentage. Casey McGee is hitting.320 with a.38 something on base percentage. Casey McGee is hitting 320 with a 386 on base percentage. Garrett Jones is hitting sort of okay well. And Salta Makia is hitting really well.

And so there's a bunch of that. And there's also, of course, Stanton has been great. And Stanton is great. And Christian Jelic has been pretty good. And Marcelo Zuna has been pretty good and I think I have now named every Marlon so no no no you I mean no no it's there's other guys though there's yeah there's Derek Dietrich's been pretty good and Jeff Baker's been pretty bad and Reed Johnson's been pretty good but Donovan Solano's been pretty bad but Jeff Mathis is hitting good

Jeff Mathis has a 435 on base percentage. Ed Lucas has been pretty normal and Greg Dobbs is gone and AJ Ramos has been playing and Archimedes Caminero is around and Mike Dunn wears a shirt and Carlos Marmel

is also alive and Carter Capps. Carter Capps. Capping it off. mole is is also alive and carter caps uh-huh and now carter caps carter caps yes now you're capping it off did you get it off did you get donovan solano i don't i got donovan solano okay yeah so uh so you've changed your answer you like them better than the rockies i also like them better than the rockies do we do we like that and i remember there were people who picked them as wildcard team this year, right? John Marossi. What's his name? Marossi, yeah.

Yeah, John Marossi, and he was roundly knocked. But John Marossi, yeah, he's got something every year that he's ashamed of by May. Yes, he likes to make the super bold predictions. But this one, at least so far looks pretty good so um this is obviously this is a team whose whose best self is probably a a couple years away um but they are they are not like the astros a team of the future who is awful in the present they are a team of the future who is pretty decent in the present also. Do you believe the Marlins have gone from being

just absolutely horrible to... Wait, actually, let me see. So the Marlins have gone from right, from a last place team that wasn't even trying to a last place team that spent a ton of money and tried really hard and almost got Albert Pujols to a last place team that spent a ton of money and tried really hard and almost got albert pools to a last place team that wasn't trying to a first place team all in the time that the astros haven't won three in a row i know all right i mean we we love the astros because of the whole

tearing down and rebuilding um but the marlins have done this many times without the fanfare sorry i mean they've just consistently been able to find young talent, even if they then have to trade that young talent. They develop it, they draft it, they develop it, and they keep cycling it through. So to what degree are we buying the Marlins then if we like them better than the Rockies? Well, so let's rephrase this question because I'm not going to answer this. I don't want to answer that. But I'll answer something slightly more specific. The Rockies playoff odds right now, 35%.

9% division, 26% wildcard. The Marlins playoff odds, 13%. 6% division, 7% wildcard. The Marlins' playoff odds, 13%. 6% division, 7% wildcard. So, you know, Dakota is considerably less happy with the Marlins, and even though they play in the easier division. So,

can we agree, can we pass a resolution that we think that... Do they play in the easier division? According to Dakota, yeah, Pakoda thinks that the Dodgers win 91 and the Nationals win 89. And then, of course, they think that the Giants win 89, which is

as good as the Nationals, while the Braves only win 84. So, yeah, considerably easier in Pakoda's estimation and in mine as well. Not necessarily easier all the way through, but easier to win. So, I would feel comfortable saying that I would put money up against Pakoda's position on these two teams. I would that that Pocota would be over on on either to me, I guess, given given that neither was really expected to do much heading into the year. And Pocota is usually pretty slow to adjust its its thoughts on the team's true talent.

And I'm sort of surprised that the that the Rockies are as high as they are. They have a 26% wildcard percentage, which is quite high. Let's see. Higher than the Braves, higher than the Brewers. I don't know what they started with. I could possibly find it. As can I possibly. Yeah.

That page exists somewhere. So yeah, I would definitely take the over on that Marlins percentage. Yeah, I mean, 12.8%, 7.2% wildcard. It seems to me that they are stronger than that. But it is hard to imagine them hitting remotely this well. I don't know whether it's harder to imagine the Rockies continuing to hit so well or the Marlins, but neither really seems all that likely to keep hitting this well. But I can kind of buy the Marlins pitching maybe to some extent.

Yeah, I'd take the Marlins pitching and I probably would, gosh, I'd spend so much time mocking the Marlins hitting, you know. Yeah, our David Roth preview from this year where we went through every washed up veteran and they even haven't they haven't had a plate appearance from rafael for call so they've still got that uh that reminds me of one of my favorite um player comments in the bp annual which was for donovan solano and it went like this there's only so much value that a player with no power no speed and a fringy hit tool can bring to the table, and when said player can't play shortstop,

even in a pinch, it can be tough for him to warrant even a roster spot. Fortunately for Solano, he's on the Marlins, where that package of skills was strong enough to make him the everyday second baseman. With Raphael Fercal now ahead of him on the depth chart, though, Solano will be lucky to get more than 140 or 150 starts this year

so opening day playoff odds uh were 12 13 for the rockies and uh six percent for the marlins so it looks like they've gone up sort of semi-proportionately um but yeah i'm sort of surprised too anyway all right well i'm glad we did this well-timed episode Before they're no longer such exciting stories But they've been fun Alright, so that is it for this week Please send us emails at podcast at baseballperspectives.com For next week's listener email show

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