Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 49: Another Attempt to Explain Why You Don’t Need an Ace in October/The New Old Ichiro/The Steve Johnson Story

Episode Date: September 25, 2012

Ben and Sam revisit their discussion from last week on aces in October, talk about the new old Ichiro, and tell you more than you need to know about Orioles starter Steve Johnson.

Hello, and welcome to Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus. This is episode 49, and we are recording it a bit early. As we record it, the Orioles are playing the second game of their doubleheader, and the Yankees are leading their game, and the A's are leading their game, and by the time we record this, you will not care about any of those status updates. I should say by the time we publish this. Ben Lindberg is in New York, New York. Ben Lindberg, how are you?

Great. Thank you. You're welcome. Do you have a topic about baseball? Yeah. Before I get to my topic, though, I just wanted to revisit an old topic, not that old, our topic from, I think, Friday, which was when we talked about that article I wrote about aces and teams with aces not really being much better in the playoffs. I wasn't really satisfied with my explanation for why it was the case.

We talked a bit about why it's the case, and I don't know that we really came to an explanation, but I was on XM on Sunday night, and they wanted to talk about that, so I figured I should prepare a better explanation for the national show as opposed to our humble little podcast. Which is, by the way, just as national. Yes, international even. It is. Maybe we'll talk about that tomorrow. No.

No, okay. Well, I talked to Colin Wires a bit about why he thought it was the case that we don't see a big advantage in the playoffs for teams with either a really good number one starter or a top heavy rotation that they could presumably manipulate to focus on the top three guys or so. And his thought was that for one thing, there's not that huge a difference between the playoff team with the best ace and the playoff team with the worst ace. Or even if you look at just the top three or four guys in the pitching staff, no one really gets to the playoffs with a bad pitching staff. So even the best one, obviously not everyone is the 2011 Phillies, but everyone has at least decent pitching if you get that far. And then secondly, the teams that maybe don't have as good pitching as some other teams probably compensate in other ways.

So if they got to the playoffs with an inferior rotation or without an ace, then most likely they made up for it somewhere else. Maybe they have a really good defense or a really good lineup. So they compensate in some other way. And so we don't, in the end, see any real advantage for a team with a top heavy rotation or an ace. And that made some sense to me man i reject both of those things out of hand i mean neither of those makes any sense to me at all none at all no i mean for for the first one where you say the difference is not that big it doesn't matter you're just running a correlation so you're just seeing if the ones that are better do better and even if it's a small difference between the best ace and the worst ace, and even

if that shows up as only a small advantage in the postseason, as a correlation, it would show up just as well as if the difference between them was Justin Verlander and Charlie Morton or whoever. So I don't accept that. And the second part of it, which is that teams compensate in other ways, is fine, except that there's not really a comparable situation where the defense plays 30% more defense in the postseason than they do in the regular season. The whole point is that an ace pitches 20% of his staff's starts and perhaps 10% of his staff's innings during the regular season, whereas in the postseason he might make 25% or 30% of his team's starts, and he might throw, you know, I'm just throwing numbers out there,

but he might throw 20% of his team's innings in. So the idea is that the ace is the one factor that is amplified in the postseason. Offense or defense or anything else is not amplified. I could see bullpen being amplified. Bullpen could be, and I think that's one reason it made sense to everybody that in the secret sauce back in the day, back when we thought the secret sauce meant something, bullpen was one of the things that was identified.

And it is similarly mysterious that bullpens don't seem to correlate to more success in the postseason, which is what we were talking about on Friday. So we are no closer to an answer than we were last week. I don't consider us closer to an answer than we were last week. All right. Well, that's not a satisfying way to start this episode. My topic for today was Ichiro. I hate that that wasn't your topic just then. We're so short on topics all the time, Ben. That was a recycled one. It doesn't matter. We just talked

about it for like two and a half minutes. We could have padded for two minutes and then we'd be halfway done with this show. Now we got to just start. Oh, goodness. Mine is Steven Johnson. Steve Johnson, I should say. Steve Johnson. Yes, I am familiar with him. Okay. There was some question about whether I would be familiar with your topic today. I am.

Yeah, I'm still curious to see what you're going to be able to add. Okay. What was your topic? Ichiro. Ichiro. Go ahead. Let's go. Okay.

What was your topic? Ichiro. Ichiro. Go ahead. Let's go. So this, in a way, is revisiting an old topic also because we talked a bit about Ichiro when he was traded to the Yankees, who at the time were the lofty Yankees, and still are, I suppose, would re-energize him or rejuvenate him, or in some way, just allow him to recover some of his prior performance. And this is something that Grant Brisby wrote about also,

that he just sort of had a feeling that Ichiro would get back a lot of his production after this trade because it just seemed like something that would happen. And I had that feeling too. And I didn't want to say that I had that feeling because I couldn't really support it. And so I guess we kind of just expected Ichiro, or we concluded that Ichiro would be more or less the same Ichiro, at least once you adjust for the change in ballparks. So since the trade, Ichiro has hit.331,.356,.481 for the Yankees, and as we record record is one for three with a double in his most recent game. So even after you park adjust, if you assume that we are park adjusting, uh, completely accurately, and we are accounting for the difference between Safeco and Yankee stadium for each row, um, he has been almost as good as he ever was for the Mariners since this trade.

In 2004, of course, he hit.372. He was a little better that year. But if you look at his total production for the Yankees this year, it matches up very well with any full season he had with Seattle. He has already out-homered his Mariners self from this year with the Yankees. He has nearly equaled his stolen base total. And I wonder whether now, having seen him, you think that any of it is attributable to the change in setting. And by the change in setting, you mean apart from... Not just the ballpark, but yes, the situation.

Gosh, Ben, who knows? I don't know. Probably not. You know, probably not. Maybe or maybe not, but I would not wish to posit one way or the other. The ballpark, though, is crazy, right? I mean, that's a huge part of it. Yes. I always, to steer this away a little bit into a bigger topic, but I always have a hard time differentiating or sort of separating standard park factors from the actual park numbers. And I mean, I generally, if I see that somebody has done much better at home than a

typical split would suggest, I usually just brush it off and figure, well, that small samples, two half-sized samples that have kind of gone in opposite directions, and it probably doesn't mean anything. But Igero, I believe all five of his home runs since he was traded have been in Yankee Stadium. In Yankee Stadium, he is hitting.353,.380,.560. In Safeco, he hit.216 259, 292. Since he has been traded, his isolated power is, obviously it's not a full season, but it would be the highest of his career by a decent margin. And so it's hard to say whether he has just sort of cracked Yankee Stadium.

I imagine that's not true either. I wouldn't really posit that either. But the splits are really massive between home and road. And, of course, people have been talking about how friendly Yankee Stadium is for moderately powerful leagues since they opened it. Maybe somebody simply said, hey, Itro, all those home runs that you were saying you could have hit now would be the time. Yeah. Probably not that either. Yeah. Well, I mean, people have said that we should maybe find a way to use more personalized park

factors and that maybe someone who say an Adam Dunn or someone who can hit the ball out of any ballpark, would not be affected by a ballpark the same way that Itro, who, regardless of what you might have heard about his power, has not really shown extreme power in games. And that he's a guy who maybe would be affected disproportionately by that short porch because more of his fly balls would tend to go out as opposed to some other guy but then it's kind of a slippery thing because even though adam dunn has a lot of power adam dunn still hits balls to the warning track in certain parks that would go out in other parks um so it's hard to say. I don't know that

a generic park factor though captures the impact on any particular player. So I think it's certainly arguable that Ichiro has been affected more by the move to Yankee Stadium than some

other generic lefty would have been. Okay. Okay. Yes. Did you, just out of curiosity, had you written off Ichiro before this season? Yeah, I guess so. As I certainly didn't expect him to be any better than an average player and maybe not even that good. So, yeah, I did.

I thought that his season last year was fascinating because, you know, Ichiro has always been a guy who projection systems tended to underrate because they never could swallow his BABIP. And what was interesting is that last year, pretty much across the board, his numbers were very similar to his career norms, except that his BABIP had dropped a ton. And it was going to be interesting to see whether that was a fluke or not.

And so I had not written him off. I think that by the time that they traded him, I had certainly written him off and just assumed that that was it. Yeah, the BABIP cratered last year and so did his fielding stats, which... Yeah, but then the fielding stats have bounced back. Yes.

And his speed numbers were fine. I mean, he stole 40 bases in 47 tries, etc., etc. Yeah. So, I mean, he stole 40 bases in 47 tries, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. So, I mean, it's not really a safe thing to read into one year of fielding stats, but for a guy who's been average or above average every single season, really, according to any system, suddenly he was terrible last year. According to FRA, he was negative uh for a guy who had never been more than negative 0.8 in a season before um and so that coupled with the babbitt sort of supported

the narrative that maybe he had lost a step and if you're each row and you lose a step maybe it's more harmful than if some other guy loses a step because he depends on, on speed and, and beating out infield hits. Um, and so that sort of supported the idea that, that maybe he had lost a step and it had been a disproportionately large impact on him. Um, yeah. So I kind of went along with that to some extent. Yeah, yeah. Let's save the rest of our words because I imagine that in a month or so we will talk about each row's offseason outlook, and we'll probably go over some of these identical points.

So let's move on to Steve Johnson. Steve Johnson pitched for the Baltimore Orioles today. He started the first game of a doubleheader. He pitched quite well. He threw five shutout innings. And Steve Johnson, there has not really been, I guess maybe, I mean, I guess Adam Jones is the star of the team without a doubt, but there really hasn't been a breakout star of this breakout Orioles team. And so I'm going to just suggest that modest little Steve Johnson is my new favorite Oriole. And I hope that he has a chance to be a great Oriole in the postseason. And so I'm

just going to tell you a little bit about Steve Johnson. Steve Johnson is, according to Baseball Perspectives annuals throughout the years, there is exactly one interesting fact about Steve Johnson, and that is that he is the son of former Orioles pitcher Dave Johnson. Every comment that we have ever run about him has led with that fact, which is hysterical because Dave Johnson doesn't matter. Nobody knows who Dave Johnson is. It is not like he is Vaughn Hayes' son and we all go, oh, Vaughn Hayes, it's Dave Johnson. Dave Johnson is a non is not like he is Vaughn Hayes' son and we all go, oh, Vaughn Hayes. It's Dave

Johnson. Dave Johnson is a non-entity. So Dave Johnson, a little background about Dave Johnson, he was an undrafted free agent out of junior college. He actually did not even go straight from high school into junior college. He drove a trailer, tractor, you know, a tractor trailer. He drove a tractor trailer out of high school and then he latched on after a couple years with a junior college was not drafted uh signed with the pirates made his major league debut at the age of 27 but only for a couple relief outings basically pitched for three years at 29 30 and 31 he 31. He spent seven years in AAA. He wrote a article in 1990 for a Christian magazine called Guideposts called Against All Odds.

And so you kind of get an idea of the Dave Johnson story just from that, just knowing that he wrote a story called Against All Odds. You kind of know all about him already. He was on the Why Not Orioles of 1989, and he is now an called Against All Odds. You kind of know all about him already. He was on the Why Not Orioles of 1989, and he is now an employee of the Orioles. He's actually an occasional color analyst, and he does some of their broadcasting. So that's Dave Johnson, and Steve Johnson is his son.

He grew up in Maryland. He was a 13th round pick, and the thing that I love about Steve Johnson, besides the fact that when you hear the name Steve Johnson, you have to sort of think for a second to try to remember if he's the son or the father, because Steve Johnson sounds like it should be the father's name. Especially because there's a Jim Johnson already on the team. That complicates things even further.

When Steve Johnson was first called up, I thought it was kind of a little too much for the Orioles to expect us to remember another generically named pitcher with the last name Johnson. Are you saying there are too many Johnsons in that clubhouse? Yeah, I am saying that, yes. So Steve Johnson, the thing I like about him is that he was traded by the Dodgers to the Orioles for George Sherrill. And the Orioles were really bad when they made that trade, and really bad teams trade their middle relievers and their closers and their batters and their bad relievers at the deadline when they can,

and they always get some A-ball pitcher without much upside. And you never really think about them but that's you know the best you can do is you're trying to get something and that's what you get and so steve johnson was that guy um low upside he was at one point i think the the dodgers uh 15th best prospect and you know his faint praise by baseball america they talked about his pitch ability and that sort of things that he didn't really have any good off-speed pitches. But he's always pitched pretty well in the minors, and he is now in the majors. He made his debut for the Orioles this year, and he now has made three starts. He's actually, where Leaf and is a starter, he's made three starts,

and in those three starts, including today, he has a 2.12 ERA and 22 strikeouts in 17 innings. So he has been basically dominant in those three starts, not just a, you know, a BABIP fluke. And in 33 innings as a starter and reliever, he has a 1.62 ERA, 43 strikeouts. And everything that I read about him said, eh, he's got an okay fastball, no real good breaking pitch. But today against the Blue Jays, he was making them look very foolish. He's got a big, slow, stupid curveball that he had guys on their front foot and kind of bailing from. And he had an effective changeup.

And I don't know what the Orioles' plans are for him or for any of their rotation going into October they've had 12 starting pitchers this year they've had eight this month only one of them has really been notably good and he's a question mark Jason Hamill so I actually don't think that I could guess with more than 50% certainty what any of their rotation spots are going to be in October. My guess is that it would be Chen, Tillman. Wolf has an injury issue, right? Does he? I thought he pitched. He's got something going on.

Okay, well, he's got the bad. He's got the bad going on. But anyway, Tillman, Chen, maybe Saunders and Gonzalez or something like that. I'm not really sure. Wolf is having an MRI on his left elbow today. Talking about Wolf, but Wolf is terrible. Yes. Let's forget about Wolf. So I doubt Steve Johnson makes it into the rotation,

but I bet he makes it into the roster, and I'm going to be cheering for him. I like him. Do you have anything to add about Steve Johnson? Well, I think Jason Hamill is still my pitching surprise of the 2012 Orioles, if only because we had seen him before and had seen him be very bad before.

But I guess Steve Johnson has now surpassed the fabled dave johnson if you if you certainly if you look by wins above replacement player dave johnson finished a win and a half below the replacement player and steve johnson is about half a win or so above so uh he has now, maybe we will rewrite Dave Johnson's player comments to mention that he is the father of Steve Johnson. Dave Johnson does have black ink on his page. He led the league in home runs allowed once. And that's it.

He also actually, the one last thing about Dave Johnson's career, seven years in AAA, about a billion years in the minors, and he finished with a perfect 71 and 71 500 record, which I guess doesn't matter at all, but there's something that is nice about that. And 22 and 25 in the majors.

Yeah, don't bring that into it. All right, so that's the end of our show. We'll be back tomorrow with topics that you'll like more, and we hope you have a great Tuesday.