Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 466: The Battle for Bay Area Supremacy

Episode Date: June 9, 2014

Ben and Sam discuss the weekend’s unwritten rule violations, then talk about the teams with the best records in baseball, the A’s and Giants.

You're in it to win it and then you've ripped it in half You put it all together and dish it out Hey, I know where you're from It makes it that much nicer to meet you Hey, I know what you've done It makes it that much better to defeat you Good morning and welcome to episode 466 of Effectively Wild It makes it that much better to defeat you. baseballreference.com. We recommend that everybody please subscribe to the Play Index at baseballreference.com. Ben, did you use the Play Index this weekend at baseballreference.com?

You know, I did recently. I was trying to find teams that had scored the most runs in the league and allowed the fewest to see how common that is in preparation for something that we might discuss shortly wait uh when did that come up that came up when rj wrote rj did something differently rj uh wrote about the a's maybe a week ago and i think that was that they were at the time they were first in the league in true average so the time they were first in the league in true average so offense and they were first in the league in defensive efficiency

so defense and they might have also been first in the league in whatever pitching metric he was looking at at the time I can't remember they're first in a lot of categories good team I use the play index of baseballreference.com a lot this weekend as well. Also partly because of the A's,

because I was going around looking up various ways to make Sean Doolittle's current stat line even more interesting. One walk, Ben. One walk. It's a great one. You've long loved sean doolittle two two batters this year have entered the game as a pinch hitter and drawn more walks in that game than the entire league has drawn against sean doolittle it's not my favorite fun fact of yours but it's not mine either. It's not mine either. I couldn't actually, I have to admit, I couldn't actually come up.

I was not satisfied with any of the Sean Doolittle ones that I was able to generate or, I guess, workshop. Some of them, I mean, if you've allowed one walk, that's all that you have to say, I think. I don't know that you even have to go deeper in search of a fun fact. That's fun. That's just a fun fact on its own. That's a good point. I wrote an entire article last year about, or last offseason, about Derek Law, the Giants minor league relief pitcher, who had 45 strikeouts and one walk in his season or I think it was in his season.

It might have been after a promotion to high A or something like that. And that was good for an entire article. And that was in high A, which doesn't mean anything. Like the entire point of the article was that high A doesn't mean anything. And still seeing that line was enough to write an entire article about Derek Law, a 24-year-old relief prospect. So, yeah, Doolittle, something else. All right, so I wanted to talk about the – well, I was going to say I wanted to talk about the A's series in Baltimore, but do you have any business?

Not really, actually. Sort of a slow weekend in effectively wild issues. ineffectively wild issues? So I guess three things I want to talk about from this series that the A's had in Baltimore, two of which are tabloid kind of issues, and the third one is more substantive, but maybe none of which need a whole episode. So first off, Nelson Cruz attempted to steal home on Saturday. Saturday? Friday? I think Friday. In an attempt at a walk-off home steal. The A's were playing a shift with Chris Davis up.

It was a full count. And he was able to get a big lead. He took off and I was at Fernando Abad, I think, delivered the pitch quickly, quick pitched, you might say, and Cruz was out by probably 11 feet. Did you have any thoughts about this? Did this inspire any opinions from you about baseball? There have been a few instances where something like this has happened, where a runner has been successful and has taken an extra base

because of the shift and defenders being out of position and not counting on the runner taking that base. I suppose you are, are you implying that this was a deke, that they set a trap for Nelson Cruz and caught him in it? No, no, not at all. I was not at all implying that this was a deke, that they set a trap for Nelson Cruz and caught him in it? No, no, not at all. I was not at all implying that it was a deke. Do you think there was any chance of that? That they would deke Nelson,

that they would actually play multiple people out of position on the off chance that Nelson Cruz would decide to try to steal home in the 11th inning. No, I don't think there's any chance that they were planning on Nelson Cruz stealing home. I know Derek Norris noted that there was like a funny look in Nelson Cruz's eyes. And after the fact, he's like, it felt like Derek Norris sort of had that like feeling like when a horse starts kicking and then like three minutes later there's an earthquake. Like you said,

it sort of felt weird vibes in the air. But no, I don't think that teams are routinely playing defensive shifts to deke a runoff third. Not teams. Just the A's. You're underestimating the A's like everyone else. So you watch more

shifts than anybody. Not in the world, but you're one of the probably 30 most shift-watching human beings in the world. Do you see a lot of base runners on third who are using this in any way to distract the pitcher, to sort of take crazy leads, to bluff, to dance to to just wreak havoc at all or uh is it pretty much an unwritten rule or something that you don't yeah i haven't seen it all that much i guess most of the shifts that i watch are are when bunts are involved in which case there is no runner on third so so that's probably a big part of it but um but but I haven't anecdotally seen a whole lot of that.

Hang on. I said, oh, that's true, but I'm not sure. Why wouldn't there be a runner on third if there was a bunt? That actually seems like the perfect time to bunt is if a single is disproportionately valuable. That would be when you would bunt, right? But usually the third baseman's over there. Well, yeah, but we're talking about the idea that he's not. It doesn't happen all that often.

So you're saying there aren't many shifts like this? I think it's fairly rare. I mean, most of the bunt cases are with the bases empty. bunt cases or with the bases empty um i mean it's it's it's less common than than a shift in just overall right in just any situation uh so here's what i thought about this and um i don't know that this is necessarily something something that a team could use in the future but here's my observation of this play uh nelson cruz attempts to steal home let's for for the for the moment put the nelson cruz uh part of this aside and and talk about everybody else involved in the play so uh abad gets totally confused and just pitches like he

doesn't step off he actually delivers a pitch uh which is not what you're supposed to do you should step off then you can um throw it to you can throw it anywhere you want the hitter can't swing um you can you know if the runner stops you could you could run him back uh for instance um and instead abad rushed through this weird herky-jerk stretch position kind of pitch. It was odd and weird, and it was not what he was supposed to do. So Abad, clearly taken by surprise, didn't know what to do, had not prepared for this situation. That's what he wants you to think.

Chris Davis sprints away. I mean, Chris Davis actually backed away from the plate faster than Nelson Cruz approached it. Like, as Nelson Cruz was running toward home, the distance between him and Chris Davis was growing. That's how fast Chris Davis sprinted away from the plate. Now, what Chris Davis should have done, I don't know exactly what he should have done,

but I'll get to what he probably should have done in a second. But clearly confused, wasn't prepared for this, didn't know what to do, awkward. And then Derek Norris, I'm assuming it was Derek Norris. It's possible that Vogt had replaced him by that point, or it's possible that they traded for Kurt Suzuki again by that point. I think it was Norris, though. Catches the ball, but basically jumps out in front of home plate to catch it he leaves the catcher's box jumps out and catches it as though he's taking a

throw from an infielder and then lays the tag down which you know probably was was good because it put him in a good position to to lay the tag down um and given a bod's strange reaction I don't know it's conceivable that he wouldn't have had time if he had stayed in his catcher's squat. But anyway, he's not supposed to do that. I don't even know if you're allowed to leave the catcher's box to get a pitch. I think you're probably not, and it's conceivable that he had actually violated a rule

and could have been penalized. But all the same, what he really shouldn't have done that for is that Chris Davis could have taken any swing in the world, world hit him and it would have been a catcher's interference and nelson cruz despite having his uh his subterfuge snuffed out uh would have been given a free pass back to third base because it would have been a catcher's interference uh and uh bases were not loaded right for a second and third i think yeah i'm looking but anyway catcher's interference would have been the optimal outcome for the orioles in that situation so uh norris done goofed by jumping into the

i want to say the classic catcher's interference position but there is no catcher's interference position and and also he would have been hit in the back. That's how far in front he was. Davis done goofed by leaving his position. And, you know, it's also, I guess once Cruz starts going, he can't swing because he might kill him. But, you know, he could have done something. Probably should have bunted, actually, given the shift.

Well, no, there were two strikes. It was second and third. It was second and third. Okay, so Davis probably done goofed and abad done goofed um and it just strikes me that the lesson that you would learn from this is that uh nobody actually had any idea what to do in this situation and with the uh slightly better execution just a slightly better execution from a better runner uh would have been a piece of cake. And that leads me to think that probably teams should be looking for more opportunities to not necessarily steal home, but do weird, crazy things that are unexpected. Although maybe part of the lack of preparedness is the fact that it was Nelson Cruz.

Well, yeah, but even Cruz himself, himself you know didn't have the lead he probably could have um and uh you know if he'd gotten a message to davis for instance and they would have had the catch interference backup uh plan uh it might have worked i mean there's a lot of ways that i think even with nelson cruz it might have worked uh so uh yeah it were Billy Hamilton on third, then there would have been a lot more paying attention to it. But there's a lot of guys who run slightly faster than Nelson Cruz and a couple steps more from the lead. It could have been executed. I think it could have been executed. I think that the A's had absolutely no idea what to do in this situation. It showed, and it makes me think that. I think that the A's had absolutely no idea what to do in this situation, and it showed,

and it makes me think that if I were a manager, I would be looking for similar opportunities to do the completely unexpected, because these guys aren't really trained for that. So we'll have to do an episode where we come up with completely unexpected things to do. Maybe. Maybe we will. All right. Second thing. Manny Machado.

Nobody supports him, correct? Throwing his bat? I mean, not just throwing his bat. The initial confrontation with Donaldson was completely crazy behavior. I'm inclined to forgive him that

because as you know, my thesis about unwritten rules is that they're a way of using peer pressure to get people to act against their best interests. And if you start putting the idea in defenders' heads that they have to tag you gently, that has actual benefits for the runner. I don't think that's what Machado was doing. I think Machado, I think he just lost, I think as he was losing his balance, there was this sort of way that he lost his mind as well. He lost his bearings. He got vertigo or something,

and his brain just sort of spun a little bit, and he forgot where he was, et cetera. And so I don't think there was any, I don't think this was quite as intelligent as the normal unwritten rules are. But that was crazy stuff. I mean, he went on, he's on tilt, right? I mean, he basically had two complete crazy man moments in one series.

There was another hard tag showdown confrontation last week, not nearly as serious, but Mark Melanson placed a hard tag on Everett Cabrera when he was running to first base. And, I mean, he really kind of shoved him out of the baseline almost on his way to first. And on his way back to the dugout, Cabrera kind of turned around and was talking to Melanson and was giving him nasty looks and everything. So I don't know whether there's a hard tag epidemic in baseball, but that's two.

Well, so the hard tag is not actually – there is a history of hard tagging and strategic hard tagging. I don't think that what Donaldson was doing was a strategic hard tag. I don't think that what Melanson was doing was a strategic hard tag, but in Maury Will's crazy book, how to steal a pennant, which is a, you know, as you know,

one of my favorite books, despite being a total train wreck. He talks about first baseman hard tagging and the tension that it would create. But he talks about how Joe Torre was one of the toughest, hardest taggers. And he says, Torre wouldn't just tag me with the ball. He tried to pound me into the ground with it. All part of the game of stopping the stealer. And so I don't know if Machado or Everett Cabera, was kind of taking the hard tag battle

that he engages in with first baseman and or second baseman in shortstop and just sort of lost his sense of context and misunderstood the motivations of the guy who was tagging him. But, you know, the way that you tag a guy is not totally innocent in all cases.

Mm-hmm. Anyway. Donaldson's tag didn't appear to me to be particularly hard. No, no. Donaldson did nothing. It was absurd. Machado was crazy. That tag was nothing.

That was a normal tag of a guy who was trying to avoid a tag. And it's not like Donaldson had no leverage and Machado wasn't pressed up against a hard surface. So it's not like he was going to really grind it into him or anything. It was basically just a little bop. So I'm not defending Machado at all. And I'm not saying that Donaldson intended anything at all. I'm just saying that the hard tag anything at all. I'm just saying that the hard tag is actually part of the unwritten rules rulebook. And anytime there's

an unwritten rules rulebook, there are 7,000 notes in the appendix trying to sort out which hard tags are okay and which aren't. And so you can maybe understand why these guys would get confused. But then throwing a bat at the pitcher, which I presume that was intended to be at the pitcher. I don't know for a fact. Maybe he hates Alberto Cajaspo. Maybe Cajaspo tagged him hard once. Or maybe he forgot that Donaldson had been taking that.

Maybe he didn't even notice that that wasn't Donaldson. Right. It seems very likely that he didn't notice because it had just happened like five minutes earlier. But whoever he was throwing the bat at, that's a big deal. So I want to know what you think the suspension will be. I would guess not much more than, say, I would guess probably something like five games. Yeah, I was going to say.

Because there was one, I feel like there was this case last year maybe where it seemed like something really serious happened. It seemed like there was going to be a very long suspension. And it's almost always just a handful of games. There's very rarely an especially long one. All right, let me ask you this. Maybe it was Brett Laurie's suspension I was thinking of when he threw his helmet at the umpire.

I forget how long that suspension was, but not as long as everyone seemed to think it would be. It was four games, I think. And that seems like a more... Well, he didn't throw his helmet at the umpire. He threw his helmet, and it bounced up at the umpire. It was careless, but he wasn't aiming at an umpire. No, but he threw it pretty hard in the direction of the umpire

so that it wasn't really that surprising that it hit him. And throwing a bat at a player is potentially more serious, but then again, if he was throwing it at the third baseman, there's not much potential to hurt a player is potentially more serious. But then again, if he was throwing it at the third baseman, uh, there's not much potential to hurt a player. Maybe he was throwing it at the umpire. Maybe he was throwing it at the third base umpire. Then what?

Uh, yeah, I, I was going to say six games, but now let me ask you this. Um, and I would be, if I were the commissioner,

I would have, uh, suspended, uh, Lori for probably 18. And I probably would suspend Machado for about, uh, yeah, if I were the commissioner, I would have suspended Laurie for probably 18. And I probably would suspend Machado for about, yeah, 15 or 20. But let me ask you this. So this is now, this is, we're seeing escalation, right?

We saw benches clear over some sort of aggressive posturing. And then we saw pitches thrown at his lower body. aggressive posturing and then we saw pitches thrown at his lower body and then we saw a bat thrown which is nearly unprecedented in the sport and represents real clear escalation so now let's say next time the orioles and the a's play uh machado's up pitch comes in it's a strike he takes it norris gets up and fires the ball back to the pitcher, but right in the Machado's face. Like, just right into it, and, like, knocks out four teeth. Yeah. Suspension, how long? Ten.

Ten? Yeah, I just don't think the precedent is just that, I mean, I would give him a longer one. All right. But doubling it seems like something that would reasonably happen. All right, so then Machado has jaw surgery, comes back the next year. I think it doubles every time unless there's murder. First pitch comes, he swings and misses, and very clearly and very deliberately has on his follow-through backswing

crushes Norris in the head with a bat, like just very clearly deliberate and very, very sturdy contact, uh, concussion. Let's say Norris, uh,

actually let's say no stretcher, but Norris has to leave the game. How long is the suspension? Hmm. Well, the league has been pretty sensitive toward head injuries and concussions in general so I'll say that they would up the severity there although I feel like that would be

that would be a case where it would be easier to fake hitting someone on a backswing I feel like than in doing what Machado just did. I think it'd be easier for some people to fake it, but based on what we saw from Machado, not easy to fake it. Yeah. Not a great actor,

not a great acting job. And this, you know, I don't know if I'm very weird, but the thing that actually bothers me the most about this is that now Machado is in a position where he's going to have to just keep lying about this. And I, I hate people lying.

I just don't like lies. I don't like the idea of lying. And yet Machado now is going to have to, for the next, maybe not for the next 20 years, but certainly for the next few years, keep on pretending this thing that none of us believes. That bothers me. I don't like that. I don't like that he's going to go in front of the of

the commissioner and just like look him in the eye and even though everybody knows he's lying he's still gonna lie it bothers me in a way perhaps that is the greater punishment could be five game suspension could be could be uh all right last thing about the a's series they won two out of three from the Orioles. They are just crushing everybody. And so are the Giants. Across the Bay, the Giants are also crushing everybody. Clearly, I would say, clearly the two best teams in baseball up to this point, they have played better. And as you know, I've been watching the Giants a long time. I haven't seen the Giants play this well since at least 93 and maybe ever. Just, I mean, and they win.

You know, I told, I happened to be at my folks' house this weekend, and I told my dad that, you know, when they're down by two, you're pretty sure they're going to win. And when they're up by two, you go do something else. You know they're going to win. And I was there for two games, and both times they fell behind by two. Once they fell behind by three. And then just

very casually came back and won yeah uh they won you know they won on sunday with their sunday lineup uh and it was the the fill-ins that that won i mean so anyway the a's are are have the best run differential uh they're doing crazy crazy things with run differential right now um like record hits the giants have the second best run. They're the only two teams in baseball with a greater than 85% chance of making the playoffs. According to our playoff results as of Sunday, those odds will go up significantly because the Giants won and the A's won a blowout.

So they'll probably both be up around 98-ish or so by the time you're listening to this. And so my question is to you, Ben, which team, which team is better? I'd like to take the Giants, but I can't, I don't think I can't come up with a reason to prefer them. I liked the A's better coming into the year. I, I predicted that they would win the AL West and that the Giants would have been the wild card. So I liked the, that was my, that was my baseline. That was my prior. i like the a's better and they haven't really done anything to to dissuade me the giants have been great i mean

they've both been better than i expected but but the a's you just you just covered it right i mean i said so at the beginning of the episode they scored more runs than anyone they've they've allowed fewer runs than anyone which which is hard to do. If you're in a pitcher's park, it's hard to lead the majors in runs scored. And yeah, I mean, the run differential is crazy. The defense is crazy. It doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of luck involved in it, really. I mean, it's not like they're just doing some crazy 2013 cardinals thing

with runners in scoring position they're they're just hitting really well pitching really well fielding incredibly well they're uh they're even their park adjusted defensive efficiency is like i have to check to see if it's unprecedented or when the last time it happened was, but the scale in the glossary is something like, you know, a four point something is excellent on the scale and they are a five point something right now. So they're kind of off the charts there. They're deep. They don't have a whole lot of weaknesses except for, I guess you could say, second base where, you know,

maybe the guys that they have will start playing better or, or they will go out and get someone. But, um, as, as well as Brian Sabian's moves over the winter have worked out with the exclusion of the, or with the exception of the Lincecum deal that no one liked. Um, and even though i would i would bet that the giants are a better or a safer bet to upgrade in mid-season either because maybe they have more money to spend or just because they have a long track record track record under sabian of of being active at the deadline but i don't know i can't really can't really come up with a reason to like the Giants more than the A's, though I like them both.

Yeah, I feel like the fact that the A's have been – I mean, look, the thing about it is that a big part of your answer is always going to be – not yours, but our answer is always going to be, well, which team do we think was better two months ago? You certainly have to weigh that. And the fact is that the A's have been the best team in baseball for basically going on three years now, almost three years now. And the best team over the past two years by a wide margin, I think it's by like 15 games or something. I just made that up. It's probably like a game. Who knows? And the Giants, on the other hand, were pretty poor last year. So let me

give you maybe a couple of things to consider. One is that the Giants were projected to win more games than the A's coming into the season. So while we thought that the Aants were projected to win more games than the A's coming into the season. So while we thought that the A's were better, based on what they did last year and the fact that the A's are really good, they've been very good, Pakoda looked at the team's rosters and concluded that the Giants were really good too and didn't consider this to be a particularly surprising thing to have happen. So that's one thing, right? Another thing is that, and I don't know if you know of a way to look this up.

I think ESPN has this somewhere. But my sense, I'm probably wrong. I shouldn't even say this. It feels like the Gi the giant it seems to me that the giants have been beating a lot of good teams and therefore it's my feeling that they've been playing more tough teams early they also uh they also uh had uh you know played more road games than home games although uh that balanced out a little bit more this weekend. So, you know, probably I'm wrong about that.

Baseball Reference has a park-adjusted run differential somewhere with, I think, a strength of schedule thing, if I can find it. Yeah, and the A's have actually played one fewer home games than the Giants, and the same number of road games. So that doesn't really matter. The Giants have a better record. There's that. We talked about balancing run differential

with record early in the season when a couple of blowouts can be disproportionate. The A's have been blowing a lot of people out because they're really good. On the other hand, the Giants have been winning more games. The Giants also have been blowing a lot of people out because they're really good. On the other hand, the Giants have been winning more games. The Giants also have been winning more games, close games, with a very good bullpen.

They have four guys with an ERA under 1.4 on their bullpen. The A's are far behind in that category, probably. No, especially when you consider how many I mean how many late innings they lost uh early on giving high leverage to Jim Johnson which is not something they necessarily have to do ever again no uh and of course I don't know the Giants are gonna get Brandon Belt back pretty quick they're gonna get Santiago Garcia back pretty quick I know the A's also have injuries but uh and every team has injuries but do these guys they're getting back i can't think of guys they're getting back soon like right they basically like they've been losing coco crisp for like two days a week or they've they've got guys who had tommy john and aren't

ever coming back but as far as guys coming back it's like Eric O'Flaherty. That's about it. On the DL right now it's just Griffin and Parker and O'Flaherty and Josh Reddick and Jake Gallenmore. So yeah, nothing much missing from their current roster and

the Giants have Belt on there and Casilla and Scudero and Kane, I guess, is still on there. Yeah, Kane came back this weekend. Okay. He had been on the deal. I think he's been on the deal twice, right?

Because he had the sandwich. The sandwich, yeah. So, yeah, that's my case for the Giants. Oh, and then, yeah, so what is this? Is this a thing? Do you know what ESPN's relative power index is? I do not. So this looks like, huh.

Yeah, so this is basically run differential with a strength of schedule multiplier. And it has a strength of schedule multiplier. And it has a strength of schedule column. Yeah, it has a strength of schedule column. It also, I don't know, it has columns for record, run differential, and strength of schedule. So we don't know which of those are weighted. But in this so-called RPI, the two teams are essentially tied well ahead of anybody else. So I would probably take the A's too, though. Yeah.

And, you know, if anything, I guess if anything tips the scale, it's that I've tended to, I and we and you and everybody in the world has tended to underestimate the A's for the last three years. So you've got to figure there's a 1% underestimation tax. We've also had the underestimate Brian Sabian conversation a few times. That's true, we have, and it is an even year. It's an even year, Ben. You know what they say about even years.

I do. They're divisible by two. All right. That's the end of that show. Okay. So please support our sponsor, Baseball Reference. Go to baseballreference.com. Subscribe to the Play Index.

Hang on. Hang on. The basic formula is 25% winning percentage, 50% strength of schedule, winning percentage 50 strength of schedule 25 opponents opponents sorry 25 opponents strength of schedule wow that's complicated go multiple layers on this schedule that's very complicated i don't know that the last i don't know that i'd add the last four. No, so they're adjusting the strength of your opponents by how strong the opponents of your opponents were. Well, that's admirable. That's not a pretty much washout, right?

I guess maybe that's just a way of doing league balance. Actually, maybe that's what that is. Maybe it's a way of doing... By the way, did you look... Oh, yes, right. So I was asking about the interleague split just before we started recording, because I wanted to... what that is maybe it's a way of balance of doing by the way did you look oh yes right so i was asking about the interleague split just before we started recording because i wanted to i was going to say something about i like the a's because they are in the stronger league and i wanted to see

whether that was still the case and it does appear to be the case at least so far this season the al has defeated the nl uh at about a 540 clip. I think they're 69 and 59 against the National League. So, yeah, about what it's been lately. Interesting. All right. I should have saved that for a topic. Yeah, well, we can always recycle it.

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