Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 467: What’s Next for the Tampa Bay Rays?

Episode Date: June 10, 2014

Ben and Sam discuss whether the Rays are doomed if they don’t deal at the deadline.

And when the sun's low And the rain's high I can see it now I can feel it dark Good morning and welcome to episode 467 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, presented by The Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I'm Sam Miller and he's Ben Lindberg.

How are you, Ben? Okay. Manny Machado apologized, so presumably I guess he will not be lying. So that's good. I feel good about that. His soul is clean. Let's see. I did like that while he was apologizing, he snuck in that he thought that the tag was a little aggressive.

Good. Good to keep bringing that up. good good to keep bringing that up um did you see the uh matt uh lee croix or lacroix i can't remember he's been so gone so long matt matt lacroix i always pronounce it lacroix i said lee croix i think yeah did you see the thing about his mayonnaise and banana sandwiches. Saw a headline, didn't click. So he apparently, okay, so I'm just going to read it. Earlier in the season when the Nationals were struggling through injuries and inconsistent play and before the current hot streak, LaCroix turned to a traditional Southern delicacy before games to snap the team out of its rut, a banana and mayonnaise sandwich on white bread.

Quote, a lot of people were hurting in the beginning and we needed some big wins, so I thought, I got to go with a banana and mayonnaise sandwich on white bread. Quote, a lot of people were hurting in the beginning and we needed some big wins, so I thought, I got to go with the banana and mayonnaise. The Nationals are 5-0 on days when he eats the sandwich before the game, a fact that the jovial LaCroix is proud of. I like this because it is not explained why he thought that this was going to snap them out of the rut. It's not like, like if he were eating,

if he had just started eating it and they had won and so he did it the next day and they had won needed the next day and they won that would make sense that that's how baseball superstitions work you're just doing something but like for some reason out of the billions of things he could have chosen to do slightly different he chose this and it's not explained why he chose this. It's a traditional Southern delicacy. Is it a traditional Southern slump buster? Is that part of what it is known for? It's not clear. I got to go with the banana and mayonnaise. He knew immediately.

I got to go. He looked outside, saw the team losing and said, I got gotta go with the banana and mayonnaise. But the best part of this is what Aaron Gleeman noted about it, which is that LeCroy, they're only 5-0. A spell reference says it's LeCroy. LeCroy, all right. They're only 5-0 on days when he eats the sandwich before the game, which means that over the course of the two months that he's had this secret weapon, he's only used it five times. As Gleeman notes, he doesn't

eat the sandwich every day because he doesn't want it to lose the special ability it has to get the Nationals victories. Which is good. Alright. I have one more thing before we get going. Do you have anything else? Nope, go ahead. My one more thing is I want

to sneak in a play index if i if i can cool sure um so this is a this was actually a request uh from a listener named sean and it's somewhat timely and so i thought i'd get it in there quick uh going into friday's games troy to lewis he had a 512 batting average at home on the season it's actually exactly 500 right now what is the most played appearances in a given split with a batting average over 500? It's a good question, right? I like that question. So I thought I would find out. So I went to Baseball Reference Split Finder.

And it's tricky because a lot of the splits, none of the good players would get. I mean, basically, if you get i mean basically if you're if you get 350 plate appearances you're not going to do it it's just you you have no chance and so you know like the home road one well you know the good players have 350 so they're basically excluded so anyway i went through every split to see if i could find the most played appearances in any split. So any split is allowed except for splits where the success or failure of the player is intrinsic, as in team wins is not a split I was willing to look at. Similarly, anything that actually describes the hit

instead of the circumstances is not allowed. So online drives is not allowed. To the pole circumstances is not allowed. So online drives is not allowed. You know, to the pole field is not allowed. Those sorts of things. On home runs, for instance, not allowed. So I just went through and I just did every single split that I could. Similarly, by the way, 3-0 count, not allowed. However, you know, two outs would be allowed. Two outs doesn't

significantly change the hitting environment. All right, so I went through and did them all. So I'm going to start from the bottom. On the road, Terrell Lowry, who is Grant Frisbee's favorite giant ever, hit 500 in 31 plate appearances. So that's as high as you can go on the road. Nobody has ever hit higher than 500 with more than 31 plate appearances so that's as high as you can go on the road nobody has ever hit higher than 500 with more than 31 plate appearances on the road okay jesus montero 36 plate appearances at home is the highest for at home uh-huh gil hodges 500 plate appearances uh 500 in 41 plate appearances against left-handed pitchers so that's as high as you can go in a lefty righty platoon split uh but those are all tough ones because like i said um you know stan musial never

had only 70 or 80 plate appearances against righties so he's basically excluded so uh now we're going to go into the ones where good players could conceivably appear so uh jimmy fox hit 561 in 59 plate appearances in St. Louis in 1939. So we're now at the 59 in St. Louis. Tony Gwynn hit 541 leading off an inning in 70 plate appearances in 1994. So we're up to 70. I wasn't sure whether I should count this one, but it's not the winner, so I did. Against ground ball pitchers, Reggie Jefferson hit 500 in 1996

in 81 plate appearances, so we're up to 81. Two outs and runners in scoring position, Pete Rose, 500 in 85 plate appearances. Wow. That's a good one. You know he milked that one. Even though there was no baseball reference and there was no such thing as splits, you know that some writer kept track of it.

That must have been a story. And told Pete, and Pete milked it. You know. All right. 93 plate appearances. Tony Gwynn, third time against a pitcher in 1994. So the third time against the starting pitcher he hit 537.

Alright, so then 108 played appearances against the St. Louis Browns in 1936. Joe DiMaggio hit 525 in his rookie year. So that's not in St. Louis but that is against St st louis uh 108

and then finally we get to george sissler who hit 526 in the month of june in 1920 131 plate appearances that's the record george sissler 1920 barely counts as baseball as you know i go back and forth on 1920, but that's part of it. 21, probably yes, but 20, really tough call. The modern for months would be, the very modern for months would be Todd Helton in May 2000, who had

102 play appearances. I tell you all that so that you guys can root for Troy Tulewitzki, who, if he can keep it up at home, would blow past that record, but keep an eye out. If you find any others that are worth rooting for as the season goes on, we'll root for Troy Tulewitzki, who, if he can keep it up at home, would blow past that record. But keep an eye out. If you find any others that are worth rooting for as the season goes on, we'll root for them. All right.

So, Ben. Yes. I want to ask you about the Tampa Bay Rays. Please do. Rob Nyer this week wrote an article at Fox Sports with the headline, The Rays 2014 has lost dot, dot, dot. And maybe they're 2015 too? Do you...

I think it's fair to conclude that they're 2014 has lost. I would say so. It's not a certainty. It's only been two years since the Oakland A's had a three-week run at zero on our playoff odds report and still made the playoffs. But the Rays' odds are down to 2.7% to make the playoffs. And that was before their most recent loss,

which is their, what, 13th in 14 games? Good point. So tomorrow they'll be at around 1%. They're as out of it as anybody. Let's go down here. They had the fifth lowest playoff percentage heading into Monday. Only the Astros, of course. Padres, Cubs, Phillies, and Astros. Yes.

So real quick, if the Rays are out of it, are we saying that the Padres, Cubs, Phillies, and Astros are also out of it? I'm comfortable doing that. Okay, I'm going to keep going up the list until we stop saying that teams are out of it. Are we saying that the Padres, Cubs, Phillies, and Astros are also out of it? I'm comfortable doing that. Okay, I'm going to keep going up the list until we stop saying that teams are out of it. The New York Mets, 4.9%. Out of it? Done. Texas Rangers, 9.4%.

Oh, sorry. Chicago White Sox, 8.1%. Done. Minnesota Twins, 9.4%. Done. Texas Rangers, 9.4%. Done. Texas Rangers, 9.4%. I would act as if I were done if I were the Texas Rangers, I think. Miami Marlins, no.

Kansas City Royals, 10.2%. No. Okay. And so then Marlins, 12.5%. Would you go? I'll let them stay in it for the moment. So we'll say that everybody over 10 is in it. All right, so then let me ask you this.

Do the Rays have a better than 10% chance of winning in 2015? I would say so, yes. I mean, looking at their roster, I have their COTS contracts page up and the nice convenient page where you can look at any team's payroll obligations over the next several seasons. And the Rays aren't really losing anyone from this team, which right now doesn't seem like a great thing because this team is not playing particularly well. But we thought heading into the year that it was a great thing we thought we thought the Rays would be among the best teams in baseball this year as they they have been for the last several years so and and if I can interrupt furthermore we expect the Rays to win more games in the AL East than any other team

from this date forward we actually we actually have them having the highest expected winning percentage in the AL East going forward, which that won't be enough, but we still think that they're the best team. Right, so that's the thing. They have cuts that let you look at who's going to be a free agent when, and on their page right now,

the only guy who is listed as being a free agent after this year is Eric Bedard. And that's, that's about it. And then the year after that, of course there's price and well, price mostly. And then some other guys, Jose Molina and Matt Joyce, I guess is also a free agent after that year. Grant Balfour who might not make it until then, but,. Grant Balfour, who might not make it until then.

And Price probably won't make it until then, right? I mean, Price isn't a free agent until after next year. But realistically, he probably won't be there in 2015. And that could be the case for other players, too. It could, yes. So if they had the payroll room to keep everyone together and to pay price he's making what 14 million this year and he's going into another year of arbitration so it's it's going to go up so if they if they somehow had the money to pay him that much i i

assume that would be the highest salary they've ever paid a player for a single season i think price's salary might now right now be. So if they were to keep the whole band together, then they would go into next year probably as a contender, right? I mean, we thought they were going into this year. Of course, they've had the injuries to pitchers, significant injuries, Helixson and Moore and Archer and all these people. So if they came into next year fully healthy and maybe Will Myers hits and doesn't miss time and all the things that we thought would go right this year went right then, then presumably they would begin the year as a strong contender again.

So the question is, yeah, can they afford to keep it together? Or not even can they afford to, but will they decide that they should? Because they're always weighing what the best thing is for them long term. And if it makes sense to sell someone now in order to replenish the system, and you can certainly make a case that now is a pretty good time for that. Well, but so, okay, so this is always a tricky time in assessing a team against their projections because the thing that Pocota does really well that we don't is hold firm, you know, regress the mean, not overreact to small samples. On the other hand, what we do really well that Pocota doesn't is notice changes in players' true talent levels

more quickly than Pocota can. So is there nobody on this team that you have radically reassessed at this point that you think is not the player that we thought they were at the beginning of the year and that Pocota thinks that they mostly are now? I mean, you know, I'm not really concerned about Evan Longoria not hitting so well. I'm not, not really that worried about Will Myers long term. So I guess maybe, maybe Ben Zobrist, just because he is, you know, kind of at that age where players go through their steepest decline and he declined a bit last year so uh you know if we're not going back five years or whatever it is that pakoda is looking then you can can certainly paint a picture of a declining ben zobrist and um i mean i guess you could you could make that case about price i suppose although he has just had an incredible, you know, peripherals. I mean, his strikeout rate, his walk rate are phenomenal. I guess he's not throwing quite as hard, but who is?

Not you and me. No, we lost our fastballs quite a while ago. So I can't really say that I'm all that worried about these guys because, I mean, some of them, you know, like Longoria and Jennings and Myers are not really at an age where you worry about a big decline from people. And the pitchers are still mostly young, at least, I mean, the ones who have contributed, the ones who are hurt also. So I don't know. Is there anyone that you have really re-evaluated uh no probably not and i think that that's um well i mean relievers but yeah otherwise otherwise no and um the other thing maybe we we talked about him not long ago and it's it's getting worse.

It's actually getting worse, not better. I thought about saying Jose Molina, but... Still no extra base hits. Yeah, yeah. And we should note that the fact that they, that Pakoda projects them to win more games than any team going forward in the alas again does not include matt moore and does not include helixson um and when you look at their pitching staff um they're starting pitchers in particular and every pitcher is is under

every pitcher except well even bedard but forget bedard every. Every pitcher is underperforming his FIP. Every pitcher's FIP is better than his ERA, and really significantly so in most of the cases. I mean, with Odorizzi, it's more than two runs. With Price, it's just about a run. With Cobb, it's nearly a run. And with Archer, it's about a half a run or a third of a run. And so all these guys, I mean, really when you think about it, if I name those four and then I give you more next year, Matt Moore next year, I'm not sure that there are two rotations in the American League that I like more than that rotation. Yeah.

But then, of course, it makes you wonder what's up with the defense because that was always a, well, that is at various points been a staple of the Rays. I don't know if it's a real problem or not. They have guys who are known for being good defenders, especially in the infield, but they're not this year. So that's a problem. That's not easy to fix necessarily. It's easy for that to regress, I guess,

but it's not easy for it to fix. Yeah, and we've talked about, or I don't know, I've written about other people have talked about the lack of talent seemingly coming through the pipeline, the lack of success in the draft in recent years. Kylie McDaniel was talking about this with jim callis on his podcast before the draft and he was saying that he he was speaking to someone with a team who had some some sort of objective ranking of success in the draft and the rays were dead last over over some recent period since they got good and stopped having,

you know, the number one pick in certain years. And they don't have a very strong farm system. At least they, they didn't rank very highly in our farm system rankings coming into the year right now. They only had two top one Oh one prospects on the list. One of them I think was odor easy and he's up. So the only other one

was, is any Romero, um, who is toward the bottom of the list and, and has pitched very poorly this year in AAA. So not a lot of great talent coming through the system. Some, some lower minors talent, I think, but not a lot that you really project them to arrive and help the team next year or even necessarily the year after. So I guess that's the question. If they wanted to keep the team together next year, if they wanted to, and if they could afford to, then maybe that team would be good. But then are they in a tough spot after that, where they've held on to everyone that they could have turned into prospects like Price

and like their other veterans on this team? And they've missed out on that opportunity to cash them in and replenish as they've done with other veterans in the past. So for the purposes of sustaining this low payroll team, do they have to deal now and kind of give up on next year? Do you think if you're the Rays and you know that fans aren't coming no matter what, is it tempting to just go ahead and punt 2015 too

just because there's just so little incentive for you not to do otherwise? I mean, I know it's more fun to win than to lose um and so maybe that's all the incentive it takes is that they just don't like these guys don't want to be watching a bad team every day especially having you know established for five you know six seven years that they can be competitive every year um i mean it just it it feels like eventually they have to to rebuild right eventually they're gonna have to do it aren't they yeah you can't do this forever can they they've been doing the on the fly rebuild for years just just trading guys who are approaching

free agency patching in new guys who are coming up and they've they've done that with with jennings and and with myers and all these guys year after year they've added someone but um and and in recent years with the pitchers and cob and archer there's just always another guy there but right now there isn't really another guy there so yeah you you'd think so i don't know whether if you're the raise and you and you know that you're not going to draw no matter what you do, then maybe winning is just all that matters. Winning is, at least to the people in, say, the baseball operations department, they know that when they win and they make the playoffs, there's very little attendance boost and revenue boost.

So they're just in it for the winning, I guess. To suffer through a losing season would be especially depressing, right? Because, I mean, what do you have to look forward to then? Yeah, that's actually an interesting point. Yeah, that's true, right? interesting point. That's true, right? Every other team is basically working for a business and the Rays are working for, I guess it's a business, but it's more of like, I don't know. Staying alive.

Yeah, it's somewhere between staying alive and an art project right you know like nobody's really watching like it's almost like you're like it's the difference between writing before you have like a publisher and a job and an audience and and like it's just basically going into the desk drawer and you can do whatever you want and you can be free and it doesn't matter if you accidentally say something offensive because nobody's reading it and then and then you you get a job writing and like there there's three layers of editors checking over everything, and you have to be careful about how something's going to be received. And yeah, so the Rays don't have to do that necessarily, because nobody's there to watch them. But yeah, I mean, right.

I always felt that way at A's games, too, where there's just so few amenities in the park that the fans are only there to see a team win. And if the team wins, it's an amazing experience, and you get your money's worth. And if the team loses, you go home completely empty. You just get nothing. You get an empty bucket. And that's probably what it's like to work for the Rays, too. And the Rays came into this year talking about how much they had spent. And I think it was Friedman, maybe Sternberg said something about how they had overcommitted.

They had spent more than they wanted to or that they comfortably could. And of course, you never know exactly how open teams are being about their finances, but to keep price instead of trading him, the payroll went up to about 77 million, which is still one of the lower totals, but up from about 62 the year before that. So they kind of went all in at least as much as the raise ever do this year, and it's worked out worse than anyone could have expected it to. Everything has sort of gone wrong. So I don't know what financial ramifications that has,

whether the fact that they went all in this year means that they can't do it next year and maybe they have to deal some guys. I don't know. They don't have much of a track record really for making midseason trades because they've kind of done all of their dealing in the offseason and they haven't been a seller really. So we haven't seen them dump

and we haven't seen them make a big blockbuster to add someone for the stretch run either. So it'll be interesting to see whether they deviate from that or whether they wait until the winter and try to deal guys then. The Kazman trade, that was probably the last big one. Uh-huh. Yeah. So do you still have the COTS page in front of you? Yes.

So who's getting traded? Yes. So who's getting traded? Well, Price is clearly, I think, the best candidate, I suppose. The Indians are drawing 3,500 fewer fans per game than the Rays. I guess that's by weather, right? Early weather? April weather?

Yeah, maybe. Maybe that's something to do with it yeah um who else i mean uh i don't know there there are other guys who are free agents or i mean balfour has has next to no value now it seems like um joyce i mean i i guess they could they could deal joyce i don't i don't know that he's gonna bring back a huge return obviously melina's not gonna bring much now and then there's sean rodriguez and i guess um sobrist is sobrist uh when is sobrist a free agent um sobrist i think is a free agent after next year so that's that's that's someone who could, who could bring a, bring something back probably, even though he maybe seems to be on the downslope, but, uh, I don't know.

I mean, they need to, they would need to make a price trade that would be equivalent to the shields trade, right. And get, get someone someone someone significant back and maybe you can maybe you can make the case then that that the raise held on too long instead of dealing him last winter yeah that fit man well it's not his whole fit because he's allowing home runs but that strike out the walk rate is insane yeah it's crazy record setting i mean he's got he's got room before he loses the record. Like, he could walk.

Like, he could come out and just intentionally walk to bases loaded, I think, for fun and still be on pace. All right. Well, good. Good for them. You know what they should do? You know what they should do? What? Banana and mayonnaise sandwich.

Like, every nine or ten games. Well, they did the thing today. Yes, they invited a Seminole medicine man, and it rained outside the stadium, which was, I guess, kind of what he was trying to do, but they didn't win. If you are going to do a rain dance, Florida is the place to do it.

That's like being a slap-hitting shortstop playing in Coors Field. Yeah. The park factor on the rain man, on the rain dancer. Anyway. All right. So that's that. Please send us emails for tomorrow's show at podcast at baseball prospectus.com and please support our sponsor baseball reference by going to baseball reference.com using the coupon code bp

to subscribe to the play index and get the discounted price of 30 on a one-year subscription we'll be back tomorrow