Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 487: Ballplayers Say the Darndest Things

Episode Date: July 8, 2014

Ben and and Sam banter about Bronson Arroyo and Sean Doolittle, then discuss comments by John Lackey and Jose Bautista.

It's not the same as we say, it's the same as we say, it's the same as we say, but today is another day. You said it's not the same'm not surprised you said it's alright index are we not that is true can't dispute it no so now that that's been said uh i'll just say it again brought to you by the play index at baseballreference.com uh how are you ben great how are you okay how do you feel about bronson arroyo's tommy johnson i was gonna bring it up i don't i don't feel that great about that people people know that I really enjoyed Bronson Arroyo's injury-free streak. Remind me, the streak was that even in the minors, he had never been on the DL. He had never... Yes.

Yeah, he and Mark Burley just never on the DL. And so this is particularly depressing, right? Because Arroyo was hurt earlier this year. So that broke the streak. He was on the DL for this, I guess, so that we didn't know that it was this serious at the time. And so, yeah, this is kind of depressing. This is, you know, all Tommy Johns are slightly saddening with this one,

especially so because it's Bronson Arroyo. And he seemed as close to indestructible as there was among pitchers. And the interesting thing is that he said he was pitching with the torn ligament for six starts. So I looked at his six starts and he pitched pretty well in those last six starts. He pitched Bronson Arroyo-like. No one would have raised an eyebrow at the performance while he was pitching with a torn ligament. He had a 3.99 ERA and 20 strikeouts and 7 walks in 38 innings. It was very, very Bronson Arroyo-esque with the torn ligament,

which is interesting because we've talked in the past about what pitchers did before Tommy John surgery. Did they just retire? Did they keep pitching? Did they not have this injury? And I think they always had this injury, maybe at a lesser rate than they do now, but they had it. And if possible, they pitched it i think it's it's possible to do it bronson arroyo proves that you can do it for six starts i think a hundred years of baseball history proves that you can do it for for years in fact sure i mean i mean it's it's it seems uh it's it seems indisputable that lots of pitchers were uh pitching with uh you know frayed ligaments. In some cases, it fully detaches or whatever. There is occasionally a pitcher who actually has a pop, and at that point,

you can't really do anything at all. Most guys have surgery well before that point. They simply just in a previous era wouldn't have had surgery, I guess. I wonder how long Arroyo could have gone. Like for instance, Arroyo, how old is Arroyo? Arroyo is 36? 37. 37.

So he's like right around that age where, like so if you look at Tommy John rates, there's, by age, you know, there's various parts where it goes up and then it goes down or whatever. But then at a certain point, they just fall off completely because nobody who's, you know, other than Jamie Moyer, nobody who's like 43 is going to bother. Like, they just, they hang it up, right? And so that sort of gives us that skews a little bit the idea that this is a young person's surgery um but arroyo is like right on the cusp where you could see if he'd been like maybe 39 he might not have or if he were slightly worse he

might not have bothered to go through with this you could even imagine that maybe three years ago jamie moyer had tommy john surgery when he was 48 i know but jamie moyer's a jamie moyer's uh clearly a an exception to everything in many ways yeah he's he was 48 you've already established with the premise of this that he was uh uh an exception um but you can even almost imagine that if arroyo had had this arm pain, you know, toward the end of 2011 when he wasn't very good, when it seemed like his career was essentially coming to an end anyway, that he might not have had the surgery. It would be interesting to, I mean, we would have found out maybe after he retired or something. He'd say, oh, I'm pitching in pain. But we wouldn't really know that surgery, you know, that he was a surgery candidate necessarily. He just would have kept on pitching until he washed out of the league like Mark Redman and, you know, every other lousy pitcher who just started sucking. Yeah.

It's funny that I can only come up with one. Chris Benson. Chris Benson. Chris Benson, another pitcher. Both of them. Both of the previous pitchers. Yes. Chris Benson and Mark Redman. Brian Moeller.

Yeah, that's another one. Matt Morris. Sure, good one. These are all pitchers. Alan Bennis. Yeah, eventually. Andy, too. Osvaldo Fernandez.

We could go on. Alan Watson. Rick Rodin. I'm getting too far back now. All right. So do you... How old's Burley now? 34?

35. 35. What kind of odds would you give her? I guess what I'm saying is, what are the odds that he makes to the end of his career without a Tommy John surgery at this point? Or what are the odds that he will have one before the end of his career, would you guess?

50-50. He's got a lot of... He's got 3,000 innings on his arm at this point. Do you think there's a 50-50. He's got a lot of... He's got 3,000 innings on his arm. You think there's a 50-50 chance that even Mark Burley will have a Tommy John surgery sometime in the next, let's say, five to eight years? I am afraid so. I can't remember.

Did Tom Glavin... Didn't Tom Glavin have something late in his career? Tom Glavin had a similar injury free streak or DL free streak. And then, yes, he did. Let me see, looking it up on his BP player card, I remember that that streak was broken at some point. Yeah, it was 2008, left elbow strain, flexor tendon, had surgery. Not Tommy John, I don't think but but elbow surgery so yeah so

even mark burley i think is vulnerable to this i i'd hate to see it because he's now the last last man standing yeah well i mean there's other people standing we just don't we just don't know it yet i mean there's lots of there's lots of people whose streaks are sort of in their infancy. Like, you know, Tim Linticum, I think, for instance, right? Has never had an injury that I know of. Maybe he has. Probably does. Let's see. Not a serious one. Nope. No deal. Yeah. So he's, you know, in nine years, he'll be there with them. We just don't know who the guy is right now. All right. Can we mention Sean Doolittle's tweet?

You may mention it. I have to mention it because, as I said in the Facebook group, it was an intersection of both of our interests. Sean Doolittle, upon making the All-Star team, I assume, tweeted Sorry if I didn't respond to your text or tweet. I was jumping up and down on the bed, blasting All-Star by Smash Mouth. So

Sean Doolittle, of course, a pitcher you find fascinating, playing Astro Lounge to celebrate. Cal Eldred. Yep. Jeff Judin. former pitchers no longer pitching Jamie Navarro

forgot about Jamie Navarro Eric Plunk alright so let's talk about a couple things well I'm sorry did you have a response to Sean Doolittle no I was just happy to see it. Were you disillusioned by this?

How could I be disillusioned by this? Because not only are your feelings about Astro Lounge not quite my feelings about Astro Lounge, but All Star is, I think, the most unforgivable track on that album to listen to in your eyes right and do little could do no wrong before this so does this tarnish him

wow irony really is dead to you isn't it I'm pretty sure that I'm pretty sure that he wasn't bumping it like already when the call came like you just happened to be listening to it no my guess is that a it never happened as reported that uh b if it did happen it would have been fully ironic and c what likely happened is that he

uh did all of that without actually playing it, that he merely sang it, that he was singing it in an ironic way. I think you're looking at... And the lyrics do fit an all-star. I mean, if you are in a situation where you have been named an all-star, the lyrics do fit. They're applicable to the situation.

Well, I think you're looking through rose-colored glasses at Sean Doolittle here. I think this was purely celebratory. Uh-huh. Fine. Yeah, I mean, no, I still don't have an issue. It's a fine song.

It's okay. Okay. Alright, so I wanted to talk about two things that baseball players said well i guess one is a baseball player said it the other is i guess a baseball player said it too although maybe a manager said something maybe i don't know if we're going to talk about what baseball players said or the manager said but uh uh the first one that uh was said the thing that was said uh was about Nelson Cruz.

So Nelson Cruz had a big game, a big game against John Lackey, I believe. I think this was the game he went five for five. And after the game, John Lackey sort of slightly passive-aggressively and slightly aggressive-aggressively complained that Nelson Cruz is a cheater, no good cheater, and that everybody know nelson cruz is a cheater no good cheater and that everybody should not forget that he's a cheater and just sort of in general complaining that he got beat by a guy who not that long ago was was cheating and uh buck showalter nelson cruz's manager uh responded uh quote uh everybody needs to make sure that their own backyard is clean there There's so many insinuations, quite frankly, about people in every club. You usually don't hear those comments after

a shutout or something. Considering the timing of things, it's one of those things that you keep quiet about it and it reflects poorly upon the person who said it. He might want to be careful. So what do you think of this? What do you think about this? I know that, for instance, if I were to start saying that a player, if I were to, particularly if I were to start accusing a player of using steroids or performance enhancing drugs without any evidence, I would be, you know, widely condemned appropriately. I would condemn myself. widely condemned appropriately. I would condemn myself.

You would condemn me. I would be condemned on the Facebook page that I have every once in a while glanced at. And it would be unacceptable. However, what about players condemning each other? Do you feel okay about players condemning each other? Do you feel like it is Lackey's place to complain about Nelson Cruz? And let me take it further. If, let's say that Nelson Cruz didn't have this conviction in his past,

if John Lackey just started insinuating that Nelson Cruz was on performance-enhancing drugs or if he were insinuating that, say, Charlie Blackmon or Josh Harrison or one of the other surprise performers this year were using something illegal, how would you feel? What would your reaction be to that? Well, I mean, I guess I like it when players are anti-PEDs. We saw a lot of that over this offseason, but that was not really directed at any particular player. It was just we need to clean up the game and everything,

and we need to have stricter testing, and that sort of attitude is fine if it were if it were just baseless insinuations about a player then i don't know i mean maybe you you figure that maybe they they know something but even even so they're not going to say what it is that they know so it it doesn't seem all that different to me, really, than one of us saying it. I wasn't sure whether Lackey was saying that he's still doing it or saying that he's tarnished by having done it. He said you guys forget pretty conveniently about stuff. I don't know whether that, whether that means that he thinks that writers should, uh, should just not let up on Nelson Cruz for his former infraction, his former transgression, or whether he is

suggesting that he is still taking something. Um, that wasn't, wasn't totally clear to me but but yeah i don't know there is a there is a way that uh uh that that these things do tend to be sort of stated so vaguely that you're not even sure what anybody's saying like i don't even know what showalter was saying for that matter like was showalter saying that there are insinuations about Lackey And that Lackey needs to be careful Or was he just saying That somebody on Lackey's team Has insinuations Or what

Lackey prefaced his statement About Nelson Cruz by saying three times That he wasn't going to say anything I'm not going to comment I've got nothing to say There are some things I would like to say But I'm not going to comment. I've got nothing to say. There are some things I would like to say, but I'm not going to PEDs in the past. He could be talking about some other Red Sox player or just you never know if someone on your team is doing it.

So you shouldn't speak up about it because you might look silly when someone on your own team is shown to have been using something. when someone on your own team is shown to have been using something. I don't know whether it was in reference to anything about Lackey himself or just general Red Sox or just general baseball. You never know. If one person on one team is taking it, it's not unlikely that someone on your team is taking it. So it's the same sort of thing we hear when someone gets caught using Pintar or something. A team is often reluctant, you know, the manager

is often reluctant to go and tell the umpires to check the guy for Pintar because it's quite likely that pitchers on his own team are using the same thing. So I guess it's a glass houses thing. Do you think that Lackey went too far, or do you think that Lackey went in his sort of weird insinuation but not actually saying anything and not being very clear? Did he not go far enough? Should he have been more clear? He's going to start bringing

these things up. Is that fine? But he should be more clear so that, you know, he can, we can sort of put the words to his name a little bit better. I don't think he went too far. I think, I don't know, probably better just not to say anything, but I think probably... He didn't. He basically didn't, right. I mean, he really didn't, though, kind of. I mean, he... But he did. Barely. I mean, he barely did.

No, he did. He said, look at me. I'm pouting. I'm unhappy. Why are you giving glory to the guy who beat me when he's a no-good cheater he said that i mean you know it was pretty clear that he was he was uh invoking the steroid guy who had won the game and complaining about it yeah yes definitely i mean right it it's it's kind of hypocritical because you figure that if nelson cru been on the Red Sox and had hit the home run that had won that game for them, he wouldn't have he wouldn't have gone up to the writers and said, you guys forget pretty conveniently about stuff.

So it's it's a product of his frustration at having lost the game, having been beaten by Cruz. And and, yeah, he he probably shouldn't have said what he sort of said. Well, I have to say, I think that we complain so much about players being boring. And I'm not sure which we actually dislike more, when players are boring and try to say nothing, or when they actually try to say things, but they're sort of dumb and inconsistent and illogical and irrational. But I think I'm perfectly fine with ballplayers slandering each other, throwing mud at each

other, accusing each other. I would be fine with, although I guess I would like them to, I guess I'm fine with that based on the presumption that they would know things, that they would actually be in a better position to know than, you know, anybody else would, any of us would, and, you know, maybe even in a better position to know than the drug testers would. I mean, I've talked about this before. I think it's basically the player's game. I think that the most effective way to police an organization is often when the players police themselves and when it's the player pressure, the peer pressure, the unwritten rules that keep people from doing things that the players themselves don't want them doing. And so in general, I kind of think that there's, I don't know, I probably have this utopian vision of players all being both responsible but also honest and aggressive with this stuff.

The thing is, though, that you have to accept that they're going to be really dumb. They're going to have a lot of really dumb arguments. Anytime a player opens his mouth, you have to decide, okay, do you want to hear him give the boring, cliche answer, or do you want to hear him give the honest answer that reveals something and that tells you something about what he's actually feeling? And if you want the second one, you just have to be prepared for it to probably be a bad argument. And for it to probably not use all the information that it should, the objective analysis and the well-researched point of view, it's probably going to be a little bit emotional and shaky and arguable. And so I guess I'm okay with that.

I think I'm okay with players both not being the best analysts of certain aspects of their sport, but also continuing to talk about those things. I think. Now, on the other hand, I don't feel that way on Saturday afternoon when I'm hearing some former ball player calling a game and being really dumb about things. But I think the reason for that is that most of the time those guys are speaking in the cliches. When you hear a broadcaster in the broadcast booth, a former player in the broadcast booth, they're usually frustrating because they're only relying on the same cliches and

the same dumb cliches, and they're not actually revealing anything. I think that the ones that do reveal things can be very interesting. Steve Stone was very interesting for a long time, still is sometimes. Mike Kruko's very interesting, and that's because they're not leaning on the cliches. They're also smart, though, so that's part of why they're interesting. I don't know. I'm trying to think if some of the announcers I dislike, if I would like them more if they were just as sort of dumb.

Dumb is the wrong word. I shouldn't have said dumb. Inarticulate. dumb dumb is the wrong word i shouldn't have said dumb inarticulate uh inarticulate is not quite the right word either inarticulate is more like what i am being uh i don't know wrong wrong let's say wrong uh yeah that's what i mean not dumb certainly not dumb absolutely not done uh uh if they were just as wrong as they are but if they were kind of honestly wrong and originally wrong, if they were originally wrong, I think I'd be perfectly fine with that. Especially because a lot of times when you, when ballplayers are, you know, wrong, originally wrong, they actually

are, you know, that carries with it a lot of embedded truth that we don't have access to. So anyway, I guess all I'm saying, what I'm saying is that if all players want to rat on each other in the media, I'm not going to get as upset as I think a lot of people will get upset. Now, that said, the inconsistency is going to be prevalent. And yes, anytime you hear a player complain about the cheater on the other team, it is almost inevitable, not always, but it's almost inevitable that there's going to be a cheater on his team as well.

Or that later he'll play with the same player and it'll come up and, you know, they'll have a chat in spring training and then all will be well. Yeah. I will say, though, that there was was a time there was an occasion this year i forget who it was i forget what team it was where one player was complaining about another player it might have probably had something to do with peralta or something like that and um and i i was gonna you know i was gonna gotcha this guy i was gonna you know go find all the teammates on his team who had been implicated. And there was not one guy on his team. It was a totally clean team.

And this is not like 2005, 2006, where you could find nine guys on every team who at some point were named somewhere or everybody had played with multiple players. There actually are clean teams. I don't know how many clean teams there are, but might get clean. I don't mean clean like in the sense that nobody's using now, and I don't mean dirty in the sense that somebody is using now. I just mean untainted teams, that there's nobody on the team who's been named anywhere.

And my sort of gut guess is that there's probably like 8 to 10 right now, teams that are clean of any particularly compelling evidence against any of their players in the past. Well, I have no problem with players holding a grudge against someone who's tested positive for something in the past. I mean, it's so overblown when a columnist writes about it and his outrage because he has a column to file and that's a hot topic that will appeal to a lot of players

and the rage just flies off the page. And it seems like too much because that columnist was not personally affected by this player taking steroids uh taking whatever he took and so it seems out of proportion why are you getting so upset about this you just write about baseball your livelihood was not affected by whatever this player did and it it's also you kind of don't have the standing to criticize it because you don't know what you would do in that situation or at least it's very easy to look down at someone who did something in a certain situation but if you've never been in that situation and you've never faced the same incentives who's to say that you wouldn't have been tempted to do the same thing with a player

though neither of those objections applies a player who who didn't take anything and of course we never know for sure but players themselves know for sure if they did or didn't do something and if they didn't do something then i would expect them to be upset to hold a grudge maybe even after the player is suspended in services time because a player who took something is a player who's trying to get ahead who's trying to beat out this guy either directly or indirectly by using some sort of substance that that this guy was not willing to take and uh he has also passed the test he knows that he could have taken it himself and he didn't. So I have no problem at all. I would probably feel bitter myself if I were a major league baseball player trying to hang on to the job and another guy was trying to beat me out by doing something that was against the rules. I would not be pleased about that either. So if John Lackey wants to remind us that Nelson Cruz broke the rules in the past, I don't really have a problem with that.

If he is insinuating that he's still breaking the rules without evidence, eh, you know, I'm going to dismiss that. I guess I would advise against that. But any bitterness about the past doesn't bother me. And of course, just the context of when he said it just makes it look kind of petty, just because Cruz had just beaten him, and that's when he chose to make this observation.

That's exactly what I think. All of those words are exactly what I think and meant to say. And anything I said that would disagree with any of that, anything I said previously, the ones to litigate this stuff in the manner that they see fit. And I think that generally they do a pretty good job. The players have, in the last few years, I think the players have done a pretty good job of it, even if we sometimes snipe at them for being inconsistent. And I wouldn't mind if they did an even better, more vocal job. So, perfect. That's all. So then the quick second thing is jose batista uh ripping the replay

system and i i i happen to uh be re-watching a game today from april 13th because i wanted to see the espn broadcast where that guy fell asleep and then the commenters commentators noted it and then he he sued them and uh while i was waiting for this to happen sean cruck i believe was talking about um the replay system and this was of course early in the season two weeks in and uh there were he was relaying complaints from somebody in the game about how uh it wasn't working because you know a play had been missed the day before like the umpires had gotten a call wrong, and then when they went to replay, they still got it wrong, and John Farrell

got ejected. I can't remember if Kruk was saying this or if he was just relaying this from somebody else, but saying, just scrap it, and then get rid of it, and then bring it back if you ever fix it, but don't have it if it's not working. And I just don't understand this viewpoint, Ben. Can you explain if there's any logic to the idea that a system that only captures 90% of missed calls is somehow worse than the one that captures zero? I mean, if your point is that it's adding delays

to the game, then that's a fine argument. If your point is that it takes away from the charm of the game, that's a fine argument. If you're at any point that is in which the results of the system itself are irrelevant to the argument, I'm fine with that. I can certainly

see Baptiste or my dad or John Kor or anybody uh... not liking replay still after having seen it seen in play for a few months if you are arguing has anything to do with the uh... success of the uh... of the calls getting overturned in which it's fairly well

i think the consensus is fairly well established that they're getting a lot of calls that were wrong overturned and extremely few calls that are being called wrong because of replay. Certainly, there are some that are being called wrong despite replay. I mean, what, how many calls? Since the glove transfer nonsense early in the season, has there been any call that was wrong because of replay? Like the umpires got it right, and then they went to replay,

and they overturned it incorrectly? I mean, if there has been, there's been like one or two. Right. So, like, again, I'm fine with people still still not liking replay but i don't get this argument so do you have anything you want to say in in uh mr batista's defense i i don't and i mean batista is a is a notorious call complainer he always he always has been so this is not a a new thing he is he has always seemed to think that umpires are out to get him he is he has said as much and so this seems to be just a continuation of that you'd think that he would be happy that more calls were being taken out of the hands of the umpires that he

seems to believe has been just more persecuting him no right you're right you're right four umpires can do this much damage to him imagine how much six umpires or eight umpires or a whole office full of umpires could do it's like uh it's like having granada the country of granada uh wanting to destroy you or having the country of like china wanting to destroy you just more umpires and he even seemed to imply that there was some some ulterior motive behind this replay system. He said, they should get rid of it evident i don't know what kind of agenda the people that are doing the replays are on what their plan is what their purpose is what they're looking after but obviously getting the right call on the field is not what they're doing i i don't know it's it's the same thing lackey gets beaten by cruz and he says something sort of petty about

cruz and batista has has a call go against them I guess the Blue Jays have had the replay system not work in their favor a few times and so he is saying something petty about that I don't know it's athletes are hyper

competitive right and things don't go their way they're gonna lash out and say something off the cuff that, as you said, doesn't always make sense. And they will use whatever happens to have been the instrument of their downfall as the butt of whatever their comments. It will take the brunt of their comments. And in this case, it's the replay system.

And no, it doesn't make any sense to me certainly the the replay system has been made to look silly at times this season it it could have perhaps been designed better or it's easy to say that in in retrospect in hindsight but but overall it's been it's been a good i would, and it has definitely made calls more accurate. So I cannot defend Mr. Batista. All right. Okay. Fair enough.

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