Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 62: Yankees-Tigers ALCS Update/How Hard is Pitching on Short Rest?/October Bullpen Strategy

Episode Date: October 15, 2012

Ben and Sam catch up on the Yankees-Tigers ALCS and Ben’s beat-writing adventures, then talk about why players and stats disagree about the difficulty of pitching on short rest, and Jim Leyland’s comments about closers.

Hello and welcome to Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus. This is episode 62. You may have noticed that we are somewhat off schedule during the postseason. Our apologies for that. It will probably continue to be so as Ben and I both cover the postseason, but we will continue to try to get you a daily podcast as early as possible. Ben, you get a couple days off because I don't believe you're going to be traveling with the Yankees, correct? That's right. I'm completely off today, and then tomorrow I just have to watch a game from my couch. We talked last week or perhaps two weeks ago about the value of beat reporters.

You have been doing something like beat reporting for the last couple days. What have been your impressions? I am tired and sick and I don't know how they do it for an entire season because yeah I've been going to games and writing about them for like five days or so and I'm exhausted. It's kind of hard to say whether I've done a better job of recapping these games because I've been at them or not. I was thinking about that this morning. I mean, I have more quotes in my articles from players and sort of more clubhouse color, I guess you could say, than I would have otherwise. But when I'm at the games, I also feel like I'm a little less aware of what's going on in the games just because, for the most part, I'm not seeing every pitch on TV. I'm not looking at game day. So I'm not paying

quite as close attention to what people are throwing and all the sort of details that you notice when you're watching the broadcast and you're just sitting at home and seeing replays and all of that. So I feel like maybe I'm losing a little there and maybe gaining a little in other areas. Although now that I've been doing it for a few days, I realized that you could almost fake it from home because I could just access all the transcripts of, uh, the postgame interviews with the managers and everything and the post-game notes that the PR department puts out from the internet without going. So all I would really be missing out on is the quotes from players, which as we talked about fairly recently, are usually not all that insightful. Occasionally you get a good one. Otherwise you could almost just forecast what a player is going to say based on how the game goes and how he does in it. Yeah, it's a little bit different in the postseason because you don't get to go into the clubhouse before the game. Whereas in the regular season, you would have that kind of hour where things are a bit more comfortable and you're not moving around with the pack have you been uh i think a lot of people are sort of surprised to learn that almost all the reporting after a game is done in a pack and you just go where the pack yeah there's

there's no way really to get a quote that 15 other people don't get um yeah you just kind of go in and there's just a knot of reporters surrounding whatever prominent player is happens to be there at the time and then everyone goes and kind of jostles to push their recording device close enough to pick up what the player is saying, and then the player finishes, and the crowd kind of disperses and reforms at another player's locker.

So it is kind of hard to differentiate yourself from the many other writers who are writing about the same things. I think you've done a tremendous job. I don't know, you did, you recapped the games that were in Baltimore as well. And I don't know which ones I enjoyed more. I think that probably the ones in Baltimore probably suited me a little bit more because I do like the GIFs. Yes, when I'm watching watching tv i'm more aware of funny things going on in the crowd or i don't know strange things that you see replays of and

then want to memorialize uh forever but yeah so it is kind of more of a traditional quotes style when i've been going to the games good Good quotes, though. You've gotten surprisingly good quotes. Yeah, there were some good ones last night because everyone was very depressed. Yeah. So they are very depressed because they are in the middle of what you found is the worst collective slump that this unit has ever had. This season, at least. That's all I looked at. Well, this unit has only been together for this season.

Yes, I guess. It wasn't clear whether Granderson was talking about during his time with the yankees or anything like that when he said that he couldn't think of another time but that there probably was one i just don't see how granderson could have been referring to a time before raul abanaz it wasn't it was not the yankees it was never the yankees without raul abanaz we've. It took 100 years, but we have finally found the true Yankees roster. And they're going to get bounced, it looks like. Losing the first two at home is certainly not the way to win a series. And Verlander and Scherzer are up next.

Verlander will also pitch game seven. Is there any hope left? I mean, there's always a little i guess but it's about as tough of an uphill climb as you can think of except when they lose game three to verlander and then have an even tougher climb um it's hard to imagine them coming back even if they somehow start looking like they did all season, which certainly could happen, and I wouldn't be surprised if they showed up in game three and at least had good at-bats. But yeah, against those two pitchers and Verlander twice and three games in Detroit, it is certainly not looking good for them. So Sabathia will pitch game three. He'll be on short rest because of the bizarre scheduling,

Game 3, he'll be on short rest because of the bizarre scheduling. And Corotta was also on short rest for his Game 2 start because of the bizarre scheduling. I think Sabathia is pitching Game 4. Oh, is he? Yeah, unless something was announced today, which I didn't see. At his post-game thing last night, Girardi said it would be Hughes in Game 3. Okay, that would make sense. Presumably, Sabathia will pitch Game 7 on short rest if it gets there, correct? Yes,

right. So Hughes versus Verlander is probably the biggest mismatch of the series, and yeah, that certainly doesn't make you any more optimistic about their chances of beating him. So I wanted to talk about short rest very briefly. We don't have any of the research in front of us, but it has always been my understanding that there is a very easily demonstrated drop-off from starting pitchers who are pitching on short rest, that this has been a very consistent historical phenomenon that very good pitchers become average pitchers when they're called on to pitch on short rest and save their team's seasons. Keith Law yesterday asked his followers, who, unlike you and I, include many, many professional

pitchers, what short rest does to them. include many, many professional pitchers, what short rest does to them. And I don't want to say it was unanimous, but it seemed to me from reading his retweets that it was overwhelming that the pitcher said it made no difference if it was just once, if they had some time to prepare, that you alter your preparation just a little bit, you might work out a little bit less, throw a little bit earlier, or throw a little bit less in between, and that anybody can handle one

and it doesn't really make any difference. Can you think of any reason that, besides perhaps a pitcher's selective memory, why the stats would consistently show a drop-off, but the pitchers believe it's false? I mean, I guess players believe a lot of things that are false. I don't know. I was just looking at Sabathia's days of rest splits,

and he basically doesn't have any. Whereas you might see another ace type pitcher like Cliff Lee, who just is never pitched on short rest or three days rest at least. When he's been in the playoffs, teams have just refused to do it as if they know that he won't be able to handle it for some reason. And of course the narrative with Corotta yesterday was that he's already had a regular season career high innings total, and he's never started on three days rest in the major leagues. And there had been some talk that he was fatigued even before this. And then he came

out and pitched maybe the best game of the season or one of his best games of the season. I can't think of a reason why a pitcher's memory would not reflect the data other than, yeah, I guess maybe they tend to remember the successes for some reason more than the failures. Yeah, I mean there's certainly a preferred mentality for a pitcher and that mentality is to be willing to pitch every inning and to have a very positive attitude no matter when you're called upon. I don't want to dismiss it just because – I just don't – I don't want to dismiss it as athletes talking tough, but it's hard to square it with data. And I don't have – like I said, I don't have, I didn't prepare for this by getting the data, which perhaps I should have. Jason Stark last year looked at the 21 pitchers who had pitched

on short rest in the postseason between 2005 and 2011. And those 21 starts, the combined ERA was 5.83. And of course, these are pitchers who were selected for their value. These are almost exclusively the best pitcher on the staff and the pitcher who the manager has faith enough to do this. So that supports your theory that maybe we don't see a big advantage for teams with aces in the postseason because their aces' effectiveness is blunted somewhat by the tendency to start them on short rest. It would support my theory, yes, although my secondary theory is that that's probably too small of a factor to affect it, but who knows? I don't know. I'm waiting for you to do the math.

So anyway, yeah. Anything else about this series? What else? Tell me. else about this series? What else? Tell me. Well, I also wrote about Jim Leland and his closer situation, which is interesting. I think after Jose Valverde's game one blow up, which was a lot like his game four, I guess it was, blow up in the ALDS, it seemed clear that there was going to be some sort of change in who would be closing games for the Tigers. And before game two, he kind of explained what he had seen and what he was thinking. He and the Tigers pitching coach, Jeff Jones, looked at Valverde's delivery and apparently saw some things that they really didn't like with his timing. He was very slow or something, and Leland also speculated. It was interesting because he said, I probably shouldn't say this, and then he said that it looked to him like Valverde was kind of waiting

for something bad to happen on the mound, which was maybe affecting him also. Anyway, so he basically went to a closer-by-committee approach for the short term. Yesterday, Phil Koch got the save and pitched the last couple innings. And it was weird because his quotes, which I kind of block-quoted in this blog post I did. He talked a lot about how closer by committee makes sense. It was almost as if he were your typical sabermetric blogger talking about why it would make sense to do things like that.

I'm trying to find the quote here. He said, this is why I think today I don't want to name a closer because what if the seventh inning becomes the urgent part of the game and I think I need to use the best guy for that matchup right then, I have to use him then. I can't say I want to close with him today, so I will not put him in now. There's a point in the game sometimes the biggest out is in the seventh inning or eighth inning, not always in the ninth inning. That's why when you start going by committee, that's what committee means. You say, this is the most important out I have to get. I will use my bullet now and take my chances later. If you don't use your bullet and you get beat in the seventh, it's like saving a pinch hitter. I will save him for the ninth. Well,

you may not need him in the ninth. So, I mean, that's essentially what every person who complains about a manager's closer usage says, that it's just kind of wasting them to save them for the ninth and for a save situation that might not be all that high leverage or to save them and not use them at all. that because he also said, he kind of responded to the idea that you, it was kind of the closer mentality thing that closers are interchangeable or that anyone can handle the ninth inning equally well. He said, I totally disagree with anybody that thinks the closer can be interchangeable parts. All I know is I go to winter meetings every year and everyone is talking about closers and everybody is talking about trying to get one. And some of the new philosophy in baseball is that anyone can close. I totally disagree with that. And then after game two, after Koch had succeeded in closing out the game, uh, he said, it becomes a tough scenario for a manager and you'll never be right. And as they were saying this morning, a lot of people believe in the moving part, the closing thing. I don't believe in that. And the other thing is that if you use the closer like I did Val Verde and it didn't work out, everybody wants to change the closer. At the same time, what will happen if you go by committee?

The next question is going to be, why did you use Dottel instead of Albuquerque? Why did you use Albuquerque instead of Coke? That's what's going to happen next. And it's kind of fun, but it him whenever it makes most sense to. And yet he was also saying that he doesn't want to do that long term, that he will switch back to the one, kind of the conventional closer model as soon as he can. And it seemed almost as if he was acknowledging that one way was better, but one way was easier for him, or that it just leads to less second guessing and that that's why he wants to do it, which was kind of a strange thing to hear him say if I was interpreting that correctly. comparable to a regular season decision for your closer i wouldn't think i think that part of the value of having a defined closer in the regular season is that you really don't want to answer this question 170 times in a row and um you know that you know you know the press is

gonna be fascinated with it and you're going to have to and And you do want your players to, I mean, I think that one of the things that came up when I was looking at the Dusty Baker paragraph in the NLDS preview was that when you hear that a manager like Dusty Baker is a player's manager, well, what exactly does that mean? And I think that what it usually means is that you give players clearly defined roles and you let them stay in those roles as much as possible. And so for Dusty, I think that probably has, you know, backfired in certain ways in his career. He's a bit too tolerant of, you know, veterans who aren't performing in their roles. And maybe he thinks that it took him too long for him to adjust to the notion of what a starter does and when a starter comes out of the game and that sort of thing. But I mean, clearly relievers do like to know these roles.

And I think it's a little easier to ask them in the postseason when they're already – I mean you wouldn't be shocked to see Joaquin Benoit come in in the sixth inning with the bases loaded and nobody out. That sort of a thing happens in October, and it's harder to get away with it in the regular season. Now, I mean obviously I'm on the position of use your best reliever when you need the out the most and don't assign somebody the closer role and all that stuff. So, I mean, as far as the strategy of it, I mean, I certainly prefer the unconventional model, but I can see why Leland, who maybe we would think is more traditionalist, would be less rigid in the postseason. And I think that even Dusty Baker, for instance, is less rigid in the postseason. I think they all become a lot less rigid in the postseason. And I think that even Dusty Baker, for instance, is less rigid in the postseason. I think they all become a lot less rigid in the postseason, and that made for a nice opportunity. I thought it was fascinating that he stuck with

Koch, because Koch was, I mean, Koch is the very definition of anybody closing, and particularly when it was half right-handed batters. Yes, I didn't think that made much sense. and particularly when it was half right-handed batters. Yes, I didn't think that made much sense. Phil, yeah, so Phil Koch. He let Koch stay in to face Russell Martin and then he said he did that because, quote, the numbers said he has not hit lefties that great, which is not the case unless he was looking at some very, very small recent sample size.

It hasn't been the case over the course of his career, and it hasn't been the case this season at all. So I wonder what he was looking at exactly there. But it just seems kind of contradictory to acknowledge the benefits of one way of doing things and then very staunchly support the other way of doing them. I certainly understand why as a manager who has to talk to the media every day and answer many questions and make many decisions, why it would be more convenient to just go with

one closer. But I mean, once you realize that maybe that's not the optimal way to do it, I would think you'd almost have to extend that not just over one month of the season, but over all the months of the season. I don't know. Well, it's not a sprint. You can't necessarily treat... I mean, a one-game strategy is not necessarily the same as a one month strategy or a six month strategy.

So, I mean, I'm like I said, I would prefer that managers would get away from this rigidity. But I certainly can kind of understand the perspective to not that one year splits are all that telling, especially for relievers. But just for fun, Russell Martin had 240 more points of OPS against lefties this year, and Phil Koch allowed 365 more points of OPS to righties this year. Right, so I don't know what you think about that. I mean, normally you ask a manager to explain a move, and he'll kind of offer an explanation that maybe isn't the most convincing, but isn't something you can refute completely either. But that seems like something that's just plain wrong. I don't know.

Um, so, okay. Um, we're gonna, we have a Cardinals Giants game that happens tonight and that's the only game of the day. So I assume we'll talk about the Cardinals Giants tomorrow. So let's just skip them for now. And, and this will be back tomorrow with episode 63 of Effectively Wild. Um, so come back.