Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 548: How Game Ones Were Won, Plus NLDS Discussion

Episode Date: October 3, 2014

Ben and Sam banter about MLB’s AFL experiment, then discuss what went down in the ALDS and preview the NLDS.

The train from Kansas City is coming into town. The train from Kansas City, nothing I can do can make it turn around. Good morning and welcome to episode 548 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives presented by the BaseballReference.com Play Index. I am Ben Lindberg of Grantland.com, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectives. Hello. Howdy. Baseball takes a long time.

Yeah. Nobody was complaining that that game took a long time. No. I did not hear any calls to, like when Kevin Jepsen threw the final intentional ball to Alex Gordon. I did not yell at my TV, just let him go to first. Speed up this process. Yeah, well, I was going to ask you about that. It's the playoffs, so we don't get a chance to talk about non-playoff things but i presume that you have read about the arizona fall league pace of play initiatives yeah so that would be one of them that's one of the things that is going to be tested in the afl this

year is automatic intentional walks no more four balls, just signaling for a walk. How do you feel about that? I'm fine with it. Yeah, that seems reasonable. I mean, I don't know. There's like once every eight years or so, somebody does screw something up. Right. Kevin Jepsen did, as I noted.

Kevin Jepsen once threw a wild pitch and cost the Angels a game on an intentional ball. I do like the variance in different pitchers' intentional balls. I wrote a couple of pieces a year and a half ago that you edited about intentional ball throwing. edited about intentional ball throwing uh and how like uh i think it's calvin herrera i think who throws them like 94 and then you have other people who throw them like 55 um and some people can't control it and some people accidentally throw it over the strike zone and i mean that's a uh that's fun if you're just like trying to find off-season material to write about, but it's not necessary for the game. I mean, you could add all sorts of trivial quirks if you just want to see ballplayers doing things that are less athletic than the things

that they're supposed to be doing. If only Herrera had taken it easy on those intentional balls, I'd probably be healthy now. Yeah, I might be misremembering who that is but yeah so the other experiment are going to be a pitch clock which is what you feared are you upset about the pitch clock uh did i fear it why why really in my in my head i loved that idea what happened i don't think so so. What was my opposition to it? The anxiety.

I think you were so worried about seeing a counting number that you would just be focusing on that and not the game. Huh. That is why I feel like I like the idea. Because it sounds anxiety-inducing. I don't remember why I was against it. It is Kevin Herrera who threw the 92.1 mile an hour intentional ball. So there's a pitch clock to limit the number of times pitchers can hold the ball.

There's a pitch clock for between innings breaks, which is two minutes and five seconds. And hitters are supposed to be in the box by the one minute, 45 second rule. Pitching changes, pitch clock, there are restrictions on hitters stepping out of the batter's box. So pretty much, and also limits on mound visits, right? much and also limits on mound visits right so it's pretty much everything that we discussed or that anyone ever discussed as a possible measure of shortening games so that's that's good it's good that they're testing them all in a environment where it doesn't really matter if things get weird and hopefully whatever turns out to work well in the AFL will be

tried out in spring training and then the real thing and they'll keep whatever works. This intentional balls piece that I wrote is super fun. Yeah. Yeah. I like this piece. Link to it on the Facebook page. This is a delightful piece. Okay.

I will. Kelvin Herrera threw 92.1, but Herrera's average fastball that year was like 98. So Henderson Alvarez was the leader for percentage of actual average fastball speed. Because Henderson Alvarez threw a fastball 93 on average and an intentional ball at 91.4. So basically as

hard as he can throw it. And then Brian Villareal threw one 41 miles an hour. Wow. I'm surprised it even registers at that speed. I just want to encourage everybody to read this piece. Nobody will if I don't encourage you to. Nobody did. Nobody did when it was new

and on the site. And now it's two years old. And about the exact opposite of the thing we're paying attention to, which is tense baseball games. But there's jokes. There's a good picture of Henderson Alvarez's gum.

Well, you can find a link at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild. And if that hasn't been incentive to join the last hundred times I've told people to join, then this will probably do it. Let's get this thing trending, people. Okay, so we saw a couple baseball games today. The Tigers-Orioles game seems like it ended a very long time ago. It was kind of a long time ago at this point. Is there anything to say from that game other than

the very obvious point that the Tigers' weaknesses came back to bite them? And that was how we thought the Tigers might lose games, or we thought that was what their weaknesses were, that they don't field very well, and they don't have a great bullpen. And that happened. It was a close game for most of it. It looks very lopsided if you look at the final score, but it was a one-run game. And then the eighth inning happened, and there was a fielding error on the shortstop, Andrew Romine, on a pretty routine play. And after that, the Tigers' bullpen was unable to record an out for a very long time. Why do the Tigers have such a bad bullpen? I mean, this has been going on for years,

and it's not as though they haven't invested in it. It's not as though the moves they make are, like there's no Brandon Leagues here. I mean, haven't they basically done what the Angels have done, which is, you know, try some different, you know, they've gone out and they've gotten some guys who are flyers and some guys who seem like they should be reasonably sure and, you know, brought some guys up from the minors and traded for some guys who seem like they should be reasonably sure and important you know brought some guys up from their major from the minors and uh traded for some guys and yet every year

they're i mean look the the angels for instance have like six former closers like all they did is they just went out and got guys who used to be closers and or some still were, and threw them all in the bullpen, and it worked. They've got a bunch of really good pitchers. And the Tigers basically did that too, and they have nothing. They have nobody they can count on. I mean, Soria is like, I mean, the Angels went out and got Houston Street. He comes in. I don't think he's allowed a hit since they got him.

He's been insanely good against righties, against lefties. He just can't be stopped. Soria, though, when they got him, he had a 1.06 FIP. He was arguably the best reliever in baseball up to that point. And his FIP is actually skewed because a quarter of his walks were intentional. So if you take those out, then it's even better. And yet they get him. He doesn't pitch that well down the stretch.

He probably got hurt. He did. He disappears. And now he comes in and he allows three or four today. Right. I mean, Joe Nathan last year, I wasn't a huge fan of the Joe Nathan deal because he had, it seemed like his velocity was dropping last year and all that. But on the other hand, last year, he had like the eighth best ERA in history or something like absurd. It was like he had the best year of his career.

thing like absurd it was like he had the best year of his career and this year he has uh allowed his his era is almost quadrupled yeah it's really sort of a dire situation out there right now there's no one that you feel comfortable giving the ball to except i mean maybe maybe anibal sanchez and i i understand why they didn't use him today maybe they wanted to save him for the Verlander game just in case they need someone to go multiple innings but if you're not going to use him then there's just no one there's really no one that you can feel confident and I mean maybe maybe Soria is trustworthy and we're reacting to a small sample of his with the Tigers. But since he was hurt and he hasn't pitched well, he doesn't seem to be anything close to a lock right now. And Jabba Chamberlain, whoever was calling that game, said that he'd been consistent all season.

But that's pretty much the opposite of the case. Certainly in the second half, he has been every bit as shaky as Nathan or anyone else out there. I mean, maybe Albuquerque has pretty good-looking stats, but he's still, I don't know, he's still Albuquerque. He's still sort of shaky. So there's really no one. There really isn't even one guy that you say, like,

we just have to get the guy, we just have to get the game to this guy. There isn't even that guy. So I don't know how they got to that point. They have, they have a bunch of just hard throwing guys. And that seems to be a strategy that works for other teams. They have guys like Evan Reed and Luke Poconen and all these people who just sort of throw straight hard fastballs. But that seems to be a formula that works for some teams, just stockpile guys who throw hard. And some of them turn out to be good relievers. And it has not happened for the Tigers. And this is going on a few years now this most of this run that they've been on where they've won the division four years in a row and they've got this core of

great starting pitching and miguel cabrera and other sluggers and this just seems to be an achilles heel every year yeah it does it's it's. I mean, it feels like at this point there's like three bad bullpens in all of baseball, and the Tigers are always one of them. Yeah. And they've probably invested more in their bullpens than most teams, and they don't seem to be making bad moves on their face other than other than you have to assume that this is probably phil coke's fault right like phil coke is the he is he is the mole he is in that old anderson cooper reality show he is the mole and he's really good at being the mole so we never quite catch him uh yeah i don't know what it is, but maybe it's something that we have to start

digging Dombrowski for. I made a joke during the game that he's really good at making trades and really bad at building bullpens, so he should just trade for a new bullpen every year. And he has done that to a certain extent, but even the bullpen trades don't seem to work out all that well.

Yeah, you don't really think Dombrowski's bad at building a bullpen though do you I mean it he hasn't built a bullpen but what like do you think that you would have been able to pick out the bad bullpen each year based on the players that they had added I mean if I had shown you the Tigers bullpen in January and said, oh, and they're also going to get Soria, and then I'd shown you the Angels bullpen and I'd said, oh, and they're also going to get Houston Street, would you have picked out the one that was going to be amazing and the one that was going to be terrible? Or with the Royals, would you have picked out the

Royals bullpen going into this year? I mean, Holland was a stud. Who else was? I mean, it's probably fair to assume that if Davis was in the bullpen that he'd be pretty good. He had been very good in the bullpen once before. Uh-huh. But, and, I mean, Holland is just kind of your failed starter who panned out, but he was clearly going to be good going into this year. So, yeah, I mean, I wouldn't have, maybe the Royals,

just because the Royals had a really, really good bullpen last year, too. So it's not a total shock that they do this year. But the Angels, you're right, and many other bullpens that turned out to be good, you're right. So I don't know that it's enough. It was the knock on DePoto going into this year, too. Yeah.

DePoto couldn't build a bullpen. Right. So I don't know. It's hard to build bullpens, I guess, even though it seems like a lot of teams have good ones, but not the Tigers. So that was the story of that game, I suppose, not to shortchange Chris Tillman and Buck Showalter, who got a lot of credit for going to his bullpen early, which seemed to me sort of unmerited in that Tillman had thrown, I think, 105 pitches and was not the sharpest.

He was going to a ton of deep counts on guys who don't normally go to deep counts. Ian Kinzler seeing 10 pitches per play to clearance against Tillman. So that didn't seem to me to be that noteworthy a move that he took Tillman out after throwing 105 pitches. It was maybe noteworthy that he put Andrew Miller in in the sixth, who I think hadn't been used in the sixth during the regular season. And Miller was great. And they've got a really deep rest of the bullpen.

And that was the story other than their offense, which was also pretty good, unless it was just the Tigers' bullpen being bad. So that was the story of that game. And the Royals played another really good, exciting, extra inning game. That was fun. It's hard even to tell whether it's just a knee-jerk reaction to everything Joost does at this point. It seems to be. Any move that Joost makes is immediately criticized.

There wasn't anything that got as much abuse in this game probably as the Ventura decision, but there were still things. But that doesn't necessarily have to be the story of the game. We can talk about other things that happened. Well, the Vargas move got more abuse than the Ventura thing as it was happening. Like pre-Moss home run, I don't think the Ventura move had nearly the we're watching a train wreck in slow motion kind of vibe.

Leaving Vargas in for the sixth. Leaving Vargas in for the sixth. Yeah, exactly. Which was, I mean, there's this way that Yost seems to be completely, I don't know, totally projecting, I don't know, I mean, I'm not looking into his soul or anything, but based on his moves, there's this kind of, like, this impression that he's, like, lost his center, that he doesn't know what to do, and he is constantly kind of looking over his shoulder at the last thing he screwed up, or that people criticized him for,

or that maybe he didn't screw up, but that it turned against him, and trying to avoid making the same mistake, and you just sort of, I don't know, you get the feeling that he's like kind of almost incapable of thinking things through right now. I know that he's not. I know that that's like way exaggerating what's actually going on in his head. But it's like it feels like he makes the counter move from the previous one in the next game, even though the circumstances are different in the next game.

All the details are different. You can't just go, oh, well, I pulled James Shields too early. So I can't do that again. But it's not James Shields anymore, and it's not the same game, and it's not Ventura, and it's not Moss. It's all different stuff. And so then you have him leaving Vargas in in the sixth um and I don't think that it was uh it was it was not a good idea I don't think to leave Vargas in I mean I'm on the I'm on the uh I'm on team pull the starter as soon as you can, especially in postseason. But I don't think that it was like a historically bad.

I mean, it wasn't abnormal. I mean, Vargas had thrown 70-some pitches. I think it's probably the median manager does just what Yost did, probably. And we paid a lot more attention to it because it's Yost and because we're we're not sure he has a center at this point um yeah go ahead and probably the same same thing with holland and not bringing holland in in a in a tie game on the road which is something that many managers maybe most managers wouldn't do and and i don't know is it most managers, wouldn't do.

I don't know. Is it true that they wouldn't do it in the postseason too? I know they wouldn't do it. Maybe that changes things. I'm not sure. Yeah. I mean, it did seem kind of crazy to bring Danny Duffy in, a lefty to face the heart of the Angels order, and Trout and Pujols coming up.

That seemed risky, seemed scary. It worked out fine, just like everything that Yost has done so far. See, I thought that the bringing in Tim Collins, that was probably the one where I was most flabbergasted because Collins just isn't very good. I mean, he got demoted this year. He was left off the wild card game roster. I haven't double checked, but unless he was unavailable for some reason,

he was left off the wild card game roster. So this guy who, again, assuming that's what happened, this guy who two days ago wasn't one of your 14 best pitchers or however many pitchers they carried, now he's the guy you go to in the ninth. And I get that he's left-handed and that Josh Hamilton is like the one. That was so ugly. Well, that was really, maybe, maybe he knew that Hamilton, I mean,

maybe he knew that Collins repertoire was just what was going to get Hamilton out. Cause that was as bad as anybody has ever looked at the plate. But Collins has no platoon split. I mean, Collins is the least loogie lefty ever. I mean, Collins might, I'm going to do some play indexing right now, in fact. But, so it seemed very weird to me that it was Collins there, and that bothered me. Okay, well, I mean, the main story of the game, I suppose, was the pitching and the fact that Trout went hitless and Pujols went hitless

and Kendrick went hitless with three strikeouts and Hamilton went hitless in five plate appearances. And no matter who Yost put in, that was what happened. The vaunted Angels offense didn't really deliver other than a couple of solo shots by Iannetta and Fries. And, of course, the Royals went without a hit for several innings also. And then Moustakas ended it, and that was that. So it was a fun game. Nail-biting, intense, good playoff baseball.

How close are we to the trout can't play in the postseason narrative? I mean, not how close, like how likely is it that it's going to happen, but how many played appearances? I think he might already be there. Like I think there will already be talk. Right, because there was that one, there was the one at that, right, where he had the chance to, there was a guy on second, was it? And he had the chance to drive in the go-ahead run.

And yeah, I saw lots of tweets sarcastically saying it and sort of warning that we are going to get the hot take from someone I saw lots of tweets sarcastically saying it and, and sort of warning that we are going to get the hot take from someone saying that trout can't hit in October. And I guess we're all collectively sensing that it is going to happen and trying to prepare ourselves for it. So yeah, maybe, maybe, maybe one more offer it takes. I, I, um, I saw, let's see, I think I saw two of his at-bats and the rest I was listening.

So I haven't double-checked this hypothesis. But I had the feeling that based on the two at-bats I saw, as well as the first at-bat, which I saw the pitch chart of, as well as the first at bat, which I saw the pitch chart of, that the Royals were extremely committed to the kind of advanced scouting report on Trout. The throw him fastballs high, he can't hit them, and it's the weirdest thing in the world that the best player in baseball can't hit this one pitch that you can just throw over and over and over. They seemed very, very committed to that and the the it feels like everybody in baseball probably had the same advanced scouting

report on john lester too right that because i'm sure they all noticed that he doesn't throw over to first yes you can get a big lead but the royals were really committed they're like us you know we're gonna do it until you make us not do it. And I wonder if the same thing is kind of happening with Trout, where maybe they're more committed to that than other teams are. Trout, even though teams have been pitching him more and more up and hard in the second half, he still hasn't figured out a way to beat it. in the second half, he still hasn't figured out a way to beat it.

And it would be interesting to see if either he finds a way to beat it or if the Royals don't stay committed to that plan or if it's simply the fact that if you aim there and you miss, he hits home run or you hit him or you miss and walk him or whatever. You still have to execute and it's hard to execute. It is hard to believe that Mike Trout has a hole, has a permanent hole somewhere that he won't adjust to that if he does continue seeing those pitches. He did work a pretty good walk,

an eight-pitch walk against Wade Davis in the eighth, so it wasn't a complete loss for him. Are you still play indexing? Yeah, let's see. So active pitchers, Ricky Romero is a lefty with a reverse split and Jaime Garcia has a very small reverse split. Brian Burris has a small reverse split. Jose Quintana, a very small reverse split.

So he is not yet unique in this. However, there's 128 names that came up in my query of lefties who had faced X number of righties. And it looks like there's like maybe six with a reverse split. And Collins, I think, has the biggest of them in his career. Well, you would not have known it from that Hamilton at at bat that was ugly yeah anything else from that game jared weaver looked pretty pretty good yeah jared weaver looked pretty good throwing lots of stuff in the 60s and getting swings and misses with it yeah what how far do you think you'd have to go back to find a postseason game where the starters average fastballs on both teams

was slower than this game yeah right when kelvin herrera came in he he didn't actually pitch but if he had pitched his changeup probably would have been faster than the starters fastballs i don't know that that has to be pretty uncommon to have two guys like that going, particularly in a game one of a series. Yeah, good point. Mike Socha bunting with Cole Calhoun. Oh, yeah. Brutal. Even after the count got to 3-1.

Oh, 3-1 with the platoon advantage. A guy who hasn't bunted hardly at all. Trout coming up next. Trout coming up next. was that was hard that's about as bad as a bunt gets i guess yeah no i know no no bunt ned yost will call for in this postseason will be as mockable as that one was yep and there was another terrence Gore appearance and another easy steal of second. He did not attempt to steal a third. If he had, he might have scored if that next fly ball had happened. You surprised that Houston Street and or Joe Smith were only allowed one inning?

Yeah, I'm not sure. I don't know. I'd have to look and see how they've been used all year. Well, it's october it is i mean presumably they have i mean you know we know how baseball works they've been used in one inning since i bet neither one of them has gone more than four outs but smith through 12 pitches street through 11 it's uh this is this is the game. Yeah. If they're physically capable of doing it, this is the time when you'd like them to do it. The Angels are carrying nine relievers.

They should. They've got a lot of good ones and they've got a three-man rotation. They have a 10. Every day they go in to the game with 10 pitchers available. How many games do'm going to do some play indexing how many games do you think there have been i hope this is due i hope this is findable how many games do you think there have been where 10 pitchers pitched in like the last

like since 2000 playoff games any games um i don't know how many many pitched in the wild card game? Were there 10 for one of those teams? I don't know. I don't think so. No, there weren't. No. I don't think. No.

Yeah, it's not common. Fine number of players. Batters faced since 2000. They're all going to be September. The Royals only used seven pitchers in that wild card game. Uh-huh. Alright. It's play indexing. Alright. So

if we exclude September because those games don't count there have been seven games since 2000 in which ten pitchers pitched. Okay. Just now you know that. The Angels are prepared for the Earth.

Yeah, maybe overprepared. Okay, so that was that. Do we want to just quickly say something about the series that are starting today? We've got the Giants and the Nationals. Is there any reason to think that what seems to have become the consensus that the Nationals are the favorite with the World Series favorite or certainly the pennant favorite is not the case? Is there any reason not to pick the Nationals to win this series? Is there any weakness on the Nationals that you perceive?

Not really. nationals that you perceive uh not really um the nationals are favored 63 to 37 in this game in the monday game and of course that's a big pitching mismatch between strasburg and pv but they all are other than other than game three they're all pretty much big pitching mismatches. So I would expect the Nationals. I think the Nationals, well, let's see. They'll be favored in every game, even on the road, except for probably the Bumgarner game. And it does hurt the Giants that they will not have Baumgartner for two games in this series.

I mean, is Peavy a truly better pitcher than he was with Boston? Is he anywhere near as good as he has been for the Giants? Who knows? I thought you might. No, I would say he's not. I mean, first of all, I would say he's not. I mean, first of all, I would say he's not, just because it's not like he blows you away with how great he is. He's had some good starts, and he's sort of, I don't know, it's not like he's striking out 16 batters in a game.

He's not Corey Kluber. But second, he's 33. He's Jake Peavy. What, the game he's not cory kluber uh but second he's 33 he's jake peavy what you think he's changing like you think he just he he gets to this point in his career and then he gets on a plane and he's like ah i think i'll fix things happened it worked for worked for ryan vogelsang once uh vogelsang is not jake peavy that's my point it's like jake peavy has pretty much got pitching down. I think that Jake Peavy

knows what he's doing, has known for a very long time, has good days, has bad days, but there is no radical Jake Peavy transformation coming. And if there is, it didn't just happen because he got traded. He's Jake Peavy. Jake Peavy is like the most predictable

thing in the world. Other than the postseason, I don't think that I... We're not going to make a big deal out of his postseason record, I hope. Not I. Do you know about his postseason? I mean, he is very poor. Very poor. But we won't make a big deal out of that.

And Tim Hudson has pitched quite poorly lately i like the idea that because when you talked to him earlier in the season he seemed to credit his ankle injury for pitching well almost that his his control had been so good because he was sore still from the ankle and he was conscious of that and he was not pushing off as hard and so he had better control and i wondered at the time what happens when his ankle feels fine and he's healthy does he pitch worse and probably that is not the reason why he's pitching worse but he is pitching worse the dodgers are more heavily favored than the nationals in game one which sort of surprises me because the cardinals have adam wainwright, and the Cardinals seem like a really good team

in a way that I'm not sure that the Giants are. But Kershaw. Yeah, well, Kershaw-Wainwright is about as small a gap as you can have in a game started by Kershaw. Yeah. But, yeah. Still, yeah, 64 to 36. The Angels are 60 to 40 over the Royals in game two,

which I guess tells you that, well, I don't know, maybe it doesn't, but I was going to say I guess it tells you that Pakoda sort of buys Matt Shoemaker. And the Orioles are 54 to 46 over the Tigers, which basically means home field advantage and nothing else. Yeah, so, okay, so Nationals-Giants seems to be a pretty easy call in that the Nationals just have an amazing rotation and every single starter in it is really good. And even the guys who didn't make their rotation are really good.

They're in the bullpen and there's no apparent weakness there. I guess defensively the Giants are a better team than the Nationals, but that's the only place where they really have a clear advantage, and it's not as if the Nationals are the Tigers fielding-wise. And maybe you could say that bocce is an advantage also i don't think any i don't have a clear sense of what matt williams is exactly but but bocce's good so there's that but yeah i i can't really come up with a reason why the giants would be favored to win this series other than Hunter Pence's motivational speaking

abilities. And the other series is closer. As you said, it seems like it should be closer. The Dodgers were my preseason pick to win the World Series. So I don't know whether I'm obligated to my spring self and I'm supposed to stick with that pick or whether I can now reevaluate. But I guess that the Dodgers would, I mean, it's not a huge difference, especially with Rue being kind of iffy. But when you have Kershaw and Greinke and the best lineup in the league, probably that is a pretty strong start. And the Cardinals have pitched a lot better. And Lance Lynn has been really good all year.

And Shelby Miller has been good lately and seems to have found more pitches that would enable him to be a successful pitcher. And things have gone well for them lately. But that's, other than the Dodgers' blue shield not turning out to be so hot, I guess they are still the favorite here. You know, I had blue shield once, and it actually wasn't that great. You really want Kaiser if you're in this area. I've heard that's good.

That's that for that series. Anything else on NLDSs? I don't think so. We encourage you to enjoy a four game day today. First game starts at 12. Last game starts at 930. So if

you'd like to, you can make this a full 12 hours or given how long Royals games are going these days, 13 or 14 hours of baseball. So enjoy that. Please join the Facebook group so that you can read Sam's article on intentional ball velocity at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild, where 1800 something other listeners are talking about baseball and arranging meetups. This is a new thing. Effectively wild listener meetup groups to watch baseball this October. So you can go there and post where you are and find some other people to watch baseball with. And please send us listener emails. We will get to them at some point. There will be a slow day at some point next week, probably, where we will do some listener emails. So send some at

podcast at baseballperspectives.com. Please rate and review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. The ratings and reviews help us attract new listeners and convince them that we're worth listening to. And please support the sponsor, baseballreference.com. Go to baseballreference.com, subscribe to the Play Index using the coupon code BP to get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. And have a wonderful weekend.

Enjoy playoff baseball. We will be back on Monday.