Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 63: The Slide Heard ‘Round the World/Why Does Everyone Hate the Cardinals?/Ryan Vogelsong Rewards Bruce Bochy

Episode Date: October 16, 2012

Ben and Sam discuss whether Matt Holliday’s takeout slide at second was against the rules and why the Cardinals are so widely disliked, then talk about how Ryan Vogelsong has rewarded the Giants for their faith during a string of bad starts.

Good morning, or at this point probably good afternoon, and welcome to Effectively Wild, the Baseball Perspectives Daily Podcast, our 63rd episode. I am Ben Lindberg in New York. You are Sam Miller in Long Beach, California. We have one game to talk about from yesterday. So I figured we would pad out the podcast with 20 minutes or so on A-Rod flirting with fans.

What do you think? Well, we only need to pad about 18 and a half minutes with that. Especially because if we really got desperate, we could make small talk about the Canadian rock band Sloan that you watched last night instead of baseball. i did and i'd do it again uh is anybody going to be guiding this conversation do you have any uh no not really um we said that we would talk about the game

so let's talk about the game what do you want to talk about um well so i have two things that i uh just want to mention um or ask you about or something i want to meander around them i want to circle them uh surround them uh get close to them but not actually touch them i also wanted though just before i get to those two things or get near those two things i um I want to point out that Mike Kruko on KNBR last night was asked about Matt Holliday's slide, and he described it with a phrase that I have never heard. I probably have never heard because it has probably never been said, and yet if it is not a huge part of the sport from this point forward, I'll be disappointed. He referred to it as Bush Bowl. Bush Bowl. Bull that is of the Bush League variety. So Bush Bowl, you have an assignment,

get it into at least one piece every six weeks or so so that we can keep it going. Did you see the Matt Holliday slide? Yes. Baseball is weird. Baseball to me is the weirdest thing, how it is a totally nonviolent, non-contact sport, and yet somewhat arbitrarily it has allowances for these super violent moments that just look totally irrational on their face. I mean, not only was Matt Holl Holiday able to do that on a field, like that opportunity was presented to him, but he was not even dinged for it. There was no

punishment or penalty or anything of the sort. It might have been illegal. It seems that the, the rules in the rule book are sort of vague, more strict than they're ever called, but so vague that these things tend to just get called based on precedent. Which is true of many rules in the baseball rulebook. Which is also weird because of how many rules and clauses and sub clauses and comments there are. rules and clauses and sub clauses and comments there are there's this great illusion of specificity um and exactness and yet um uh and yet i think we all know that the rules are called as they were called the game before the book uh is you know often less important um than precedent but But anyway, the rule is, if you would like me to read. Sure.

Well, as though I have it right here. Hang on. All right. According to rule 6.05M, a batter is out when, I'm quoting from Andrew Baggerly's piece. A batter is out when, I'm quoting from Andrew Baggerly's piece, when a runner shall in the umpire's judgment intentionally interfere with a fielder who is attempting to catch a thrown ball or to throw the ball in an attempt to complete any play, which describes every takeout slide. I mean, certainly you have a right to go toward the bag, but I mean, there's obviously that we know that the intent of almost any slide is to not go at the back the and then the official comment continues the objective of this rule is to penalize an offensive team for deliberate unwarranted unsportsmanlike action by the runner in leaving the baseline for the obvious purpose of crashing the pivot man on a double play rather

than trying to reach the base obviously this is an umpire's judgment play. So there it gives a more specifically, it mentions leaving the baseline, but it doesn't seem to limit you to leaving the baseline. I think that that holiday would have been considered leaving the baseline because if you go past the base, you are no longer in in the baseline. But I don't know that that's true. The baseline is generally considered a left to right thing. I don't know if if depth matters. But anyway, that's what happened. So that's a lot of words to say whatever the umpire thinks, basically. Yeah.

Well, I mean, if you read it, I mean, if you read this rule and you didn't have any experience with baseball, you would read that and think that any slide that interferes with the, with the fielder is illegal. And that, that, unless the fielder is impeding the runner's path to the base, the runner has no right to disrupt the throw. And so essentially it seems to me that almost any slide that, that makes contact or disrupts the fielder should be illegal by that definition, but maybe that's rigidity that was never intended.

Mm-hmm. Well, I saw a couple examples of plays from the 70s that kind of are making the rounds on the blogs today. Buster Only tweeted a video, which is on YouTube, or at least was on YouTube, knowing MLB it probably isn't anymore, of Joe Morgan taking out Dick Green in 1972. And then Dane Perry posted one of Hal McRae just launching himself at Freddie Patek in 1977. Both of them look worse than the holiday one. And of course, there are always worse things in the long history of baseball than whatever we're complaining about at the moment. I mean, it certainly, whether it was against the rules or not, it is not the sort

of thing that I would want to see in a baseball game. I'm watching this play. Here we go. Yeah. I mean, Hal McCray is just airborne in this one that I'm looking at. I don't know. Oh, my goodness. Well, the second one is ridiculous. So there's certainly precedent for this. The Joe Morgan one, though, I mean, he barely goes past the bag at all, and he doesn't go past the bag until well after he's made contact. And the defender is standing in the two feet in front of the bag, the second baseman is. I mean, that to me is a totally fair slide.

The second one, the fielder is again standing well in front of the bag and could reasonably have been spiked. And yet it's funnier when you when you pause it because he goes in almost standing up but with his butt first well we will oh my goodness this is spectacular this is so good I gotta play it again because I want to hear the

announcers and see if the announcers say anything so I'm gonna play it we'll link to these videos so that you can laugh along with us. Otherwise, you're just listening to us watching videos, and you'll be jealous. Well, that's cool. All right. Are you still there?

Yeah. So Holiday seemed to regret it. I don't know if he exactly apologized, but he said that he is not a dirty player and that he slid, I guess, a little later than he. He said, I wish I had started my slide a step earlier and talked about the heat of the moment. And you're trying to keep your team out of the double play and playing hard um but that that did seem to cross the line uh between playing hard which is something that players are praised for and uh i don't know not that he was intentionally trying to hurt anyone but he was playing in such a way that an injury was not unlikely.

Yeah, I'm not mad at Holiday. I find the rule odd, or I don't know if odd is the right word, but sort of weird. And I think that he probably, if it is an illegal play, then he should have been punished for it, which is to say that the runner on first should have been out. But I don't know. I mean, yeah yeah i think that it was um it wasn't like the worst slide i've ever seen and um i don't know that there was i mean i certainly don't think that he was trying to injure scudero and the uh if he was perhaps a bit fast and loose with scudero's body then then that's, you know, regrettable.

But I don't know. I guess this dovetails into one of the things I wanted to talk about, which is that everybody hates the Cardinals. And this is new to me, and I can't figure it out. Do you have any sense of why people hate the Cardinals? Because to me, this is a team that I would think that it would be a pretty popular team, if not quite. I mean, they're not quite the Rays or the Orioles or one of these teams that is an underdog. They're not an underdog.

But they're certainly not a kind of Red Sox-style team that is brash, and they're not a Yankee style team that is big spending, and they're not even like a Tigers style team, which some people will not like me saying this, but I mean, their best player is a drunk driver and such, and I could see that being a thing that some people would have a hard time rooting for. I can't figure out the reason that anybody hates the Cardinals. And I'm sure there are good reasons. Do you know them? I don't really. I mean, I guess people naturally resent successful teams, and the Cardinals have been successful.

been successful um i mean they're kind of the the nl yankees almost in their winning of championships both all-time and and recent um i'm recent yeah they won in what they won in 87 and they won in 2010 and they won in 2011 and they won in 2006 so i guess that's three in our lifetimes that's more than anybody but the Yankees, I think. Yeah, so I mean... But I mean, they're not like, you know, they're not the Patriots. They're not, you know, every year for about the fact that they took out a better team or better teams to get here, maybe? I mean, or people were rooting for the Nationals, they were a good story, and now they're out of the playoffs. Maybe that has part of it. as part of it.

I mean, or maybe it's just some sort of, I don't know, they play hard and they're known for being gritty and that sort of thing. And if you're not a fan of them, that annoys people. I mean, I don't know. I only became aware of this fairly recently when someone else asked me why people hate the Cardinals because I don't know. I have no idea. I mean, not that I have any really negative emotional reaction to any team ever. But, I mean, even if you are the sort of person who does,

I don't know what the Cardinals did to people to make them dislike them. I asked a friend of mine who also writes about this, and he's a total Cardinals hater. And I'm not going to say who it is just because I haven't checked with him, and I don't know if he knew that I was going to do this. But I asked him why he hates the Cardinals so much, and the majority of the conversation was merely him saying that he hates the Cardinals and not really giving a reason. And ultimately, he said that he does legitimately hate that they are the whitest team in baseball and that they are late comers to the beard game. Yeah, well, there's something to that i guess will leach wrote uh something for sports on earth he is obviously a huge cardinals fan and he wrote about the fact that everyone hates the cardinals and why um and i don't know he seems to say the same sort of thing we're saying

he's realizing uh let's see the rest of the world was cheering for the young likable fiery washington nationals with their superstar youngster and their facial hair and their natty attitude the cardinals weren't the heroes to them they were the brutish villains the cobra kai the empire stomping on the dreams of the upstart rebellion uh and so he's saying that he and fellow cardinals fans sees uh the card as a grinding, fighting, clawing team. Everyone else, he says, they saw a team that caught every break a team could possibly catch last postseason and now was doing it again. One that was hoarding all the good fortune from the baseball gods for themselves. They saw a two-time wildcard team taking out a better team whose time had come.

They saw a franchise that has made the playoffs nine of the last 13 years, one that has won two of the last six World Series, knocking off the upstart team with a surging fan base, and they saw them as selfish bullies who didn't deserve to be in in the first place. Weird. That all seems very weird to me because this is a team of um i mean again going back to the tigers the tigers um are i would say also i would think the tigers were maybe the worst team uh in the al playoffs going in well you know except the orioles um and and in a way a sort of a disappointing team because they spent so much and there were such expectations. The Cardinals are winning because of Alan Craig.

And I don't know how you could hate Alan Craig. And they're winning because of Yadier Molina. And I don't think you can possibly hate Yadier Molina. I mean, late bloomers are fun and they're great to root for. This seems like a team that I would be rooting for if I didn't want them to lose so badly in this series against the Giants. But I don't know. I guess people have sort of,

I don't know if they've hated Carlos Beltran before, but they've at least... But people don't hate Carlos Beltran. A lot of people hate Carlos Beltran, but not the people that we follow. The people we follow love Carlos Beltran all the more for it. The people we follow are a very small portion of the people who follow baseball, so I don't know what the typical baseball fan thinks of Carlos Beltran. I think it's just La Russa. I think people still think of it as Lausa's team and people hate larusa and i can appreciate that yeah i could understand it when he was there um mike matheny doesn't seem too hateable no he doesn't um he doesn't uh i think the only i think i think the thing that the Cardinals could do to turn this around would be to have Mike Matheny also do a sort of a dugout dance like Ron Washington.

And then we would all yell, do the math. Yes, because I think that I think if all of America was shouting, do the math, it would be like the Cardinals would probably be America's sweethearts again. So just an idea. Okay, and so lastly, Ryan Vogelsang, very good yesterday, very, very good, said that it was the best he's ever pitched as a pro after the third or fourth inning or whenever it was that he said it clicked. And of course, Vogelsang in our preview of this, of the NLDS, we didn't know the Giants roster and they hadn't announced the rotation yet. And so we had to just sort of guess where to put everybody.

And our preview had Vogelsang in the bullpen because it seemed as good a guess as any that he would be the odd man out of the rotation. And, you know, it just goes to show that probably nobody should ever read anything that purports to be baseball analysis because it's totally unpredictable. um about i don't know maybe a month or so ago when vogel song was at his lowest point and uh his his era over his previous like i don't know seven starts was like 40 and um yet he had a a startlingly good strikeout rate and a good strikeout walk rate um and dustin parks of The Score tweeted something that I don't remember the exact words, so I'll paraphrase, but it was something along the lines of, you know, faith in Vogelsang

is basically based on believing in this theory of dips and that, you know, it's all predicated on this idea that what doesn't happen, or I don't know quite how to phrase it, but that FIP, which doesn't describe what actually happened, is more telling than the stats like ERA that we were all raised on. And I think we mostly believe that to be true, although it's a little bit more nuanced. And yet, having been raised for 20 years on the other, it's still sometimes hard to make that mental leap. And I love cases like Vogelsang's where your faith is really put to the test. And you believe in FIP, you believe in peripherals, you understand that BABIP fluctuates, you understand that these players are to a large degree

at the mercy of luck for short periods of time and yet it can be a real test of your faith to believe in it. And I'm glad that Bochy kind of kept his faith in what Vogelsang was doing and did not do the sort of easy thing, which would have been to just point at the runs aloud and say, well, we can't keep doing that. We can't keep giving up runs and benched Vogelsang. He clearly made the right move. And I don't know how much Bochy would attribute it

to stat-headiness, but I don't think that it was probably totally outside of his decision-making process, and it was a good move. Well, I guess it's hard if you've been watching Matt Cain for several years to believe everything Vip says. Yeah, it's true um okay we're done i'm done unless we

want to circle back to a rod flirting with fans absolutely not okay uh oh wait one thing one thing one thing yes the uh the idea of uh this faith idea that faith that you know putting your faith to the test idea actually i um there was about a year ago, I think, I noted that over the previous two or three seasons, A.J. Burnett had the same ex-fip as somebody else who was really good. Oh, well, there was a famous tweet this season about how... Oh, yeah, no, I remember that one. Right, Corotta and Burnett had the same ex-fip. Yeah, and so the idea was that Corotta is much loved by Yankees fans

and Burnett was much hated, and they had the same ex-fip because, of course, Burnett gave up many home runs last year i found mine i found my tweet what was yours okay so my tweet was october 3rd 2011 aj burnett's ex-fip 3.86 jared weaver's ex-fip 3.80 really puts your faith to the test right and um the idea at that time was that nobody would think that that burnett was anywhere near Weaver. And I wasn't suggesting that at all. And yet here's A.J. Burnett having a really, really, really good year that nobody saw coming. So, of course, so did Weaver. Okay. We probably should have stopped a minute and a half ago. Nothing like rereading your old tweets.

Okay, we'll be back with episode 64 on Wednesday.