Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 66: Performing a Post-Mortem on the Yankees

Episode Date: October 19, 2012

Ben and Sam discuss the deeper significance, if any, of the Yankees getting swept.

Good afternoon and welcome to episode 66 of Effectively Wild, the Baseball Prospectus Daily Podcast. In New York, New York, where it is pouring rain, I am Ben Lindberg, and in Long Beach, California, where no doubt it is 70 and sunny. It is Sam Miller. That's exactly right. It is exactly 70 and it is extremely sunny. So are you not?

Because we don't have the sadness of the Yankees hanging. Right. Are you not recording from the garage now that we're doing these sort of ad hoc afternoon shows? That's correct. Well, when we're recording the next day, I do them from my house. Okay. That's why we haven't heard crickets in a while.

That is right. There are still a lot of crickets in case anybody is worried that the season has ended for crickets. There will be crickets to come. Yes, I have been wondering when we will hear the last crickets, but that's one of the things that you can stay tuned to the podcast to find out. We have closure on one championship series, and we are one game away from closure in the other one. Should we talk about the one that's over?

I think we should talk exclusively about the one that's over today. Hmm, okay. We can talk about the other one tomorrow or Monday. Yeah, that makes sense to me. We've got quite a while to go before the World Series starts, which is kind of odd because of how urgent the scheduling was up until now, and now there's just going to be a pretty long lull. Yeah, I think that Major League Baseball's stated desire

to not have games played in November or whatever is actually probably not as significant as their desire to start series on Saturdays or on weekends. But maybe that's just my guess. I think the... Wait, when are they starting it? Thursday? Wednesday, the 24th.

I think the seventh game of the series, if it went that far, would be November 1st. So that, I just said, is completely 100% wrong. Well, no. I mean, it is earlier, I think, and that is something that they wanted to avoid. I guess they didn't completely avoid any possibility of it. But it is kind of odd that the ALCS started one day or less than one day after the ALDS ended. And now there's a possibility that both championship series will end and then both teams will sit around for five

days and wait for the World Series to start If the NLCS goes seven though it would only end Monday, right? Yeah, I think so I guess I don't know, what are they supposed to do? I guess you don't have much choice. No, I think so. I guess I don't know. What are they supposed to do? I guess you don't have much choice. No, I guess not.

That's true. Anyway, let's talk about baseball. Okay. What about it? Because I wrote a recap of it, and my recap of it basically said that it was more or less a continuation of the first three games and that something had to change to extend the series and nothing changed. The Tigers got another great pitching performance. The

Yankees again struggled to score and they got swept as a result. Yeah, that's what happened. Yes.'t i mean you need to probably create a deeper narrative to explain what happened well yes uh there's no shortage of that certainly let's first off um there are two sides to this there's the pitchers and there's the hitters you i think it was wrote in advance of this series uh you you You quoted somebody who was quoting a scout, I think it was you, who said basically the Yankees were so bad and so out of their game,

so off their game in the division series that it wasn't even worth scouting them. Yeah, that was Buster only quoting someone. Yeah, so you watched both series. You watched this series. Would you, um, if you had to lay a percentage on how much of the Yankees lack of offense you would attribute to the Tigers pitching and how much you would attribute to the Yankees offense, what would your percentage be? I think it changed halfway through the series. Um, I think the first two games, the Yankees still looked like they were swinging at bad pitches

and missing hittable pitches. But then when the series moved to Detroit, and whether it had anything to do with that, I don't know, whether it had anything to do with the lineup changes that were made then, I don't know. But it seemed to me that the Yankees started having better at bats and started fouling off pitches and not swinging at as many pitches outside the strike zone

and making starters work more than they had up until that point. And it just kind of didn't matter anyway because it was Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer who are maybe the two best pitchers in baseball right now, just about. So I think they, I mean, they did make them work. They made Verlander throw, they made him throw 130 something pitches. They got Scherzer out of the game after five and two thirds. So I think they kind of improved their approach there.

I think you could say that they got themselves out in the first couple games, especially in the first game against Pfister, who wasn't quite as sharp as the other Tiger starters. But I do think they kind of ground out at bats more so than they had before that in the last two games. It was just all in vain anyway. So if the Tigers had actually been able to set their rotation in an optimal fashion with Verlander first and maybe Scherzer second, it could have been the case that the Yankees would have lost to them anyway, It could have been the case that the Yankees would have lost to them anyway, but then made their sort of transition back to Yankeeness in time to beat Pfister and Sanchez.

We could be dealing with a split series right now. That's possible, I suppose. Or maybe they would have been so demoralized by facing Verlander and Scherzer and not having a chance that they would have given up completely. Well, I hope that everybody read Colin's piece this week on narratives because you will filter everything you see through that idea for a while. And the idea is that we find narratives to sort of fill in information gaps, but the narratives aren't necessarily compelling. They're usually, you know, there's a, well, I guess, I know you're a fan of the book The Black Swan.

Is that right? I mean, I guess. I like the idea at least. So there's one of his chapters in the book The Black Swan is about how newspapers make us stupider like the idea at least so there's a there's a one of his chapters in the book the black swan is about how newspapers make us stupider um because they over explain with causes of things so um if a jobs report comes out uh that is a certain number and the stock market in uh you know unrelatedly goes up the newspapers the next day will say that the stock market responded

to the jobs report. And if the stock market unrelatedly goes down, the newspapers will say the stock market responded to the jobs report. And so, there's certainly, I think, a lot of that going on right now. And the New York Times piece, one of the New York Times pieces about the game yesterday is, I think, just a massive, just a perfect example of this kind of cognitive dissonance that we do. The story says, whoop, there's RJ. The story says that, well, I'll just start quoting things. There was too much October evidence of fundamental offensive deficiencies apparently camouflaged throughout the regular season

but revealed against postseason pitching. So that's clearly saying, hey, this is a team that is flawed and we just missed the flaws. And later on it says, well, and it goes on, the Yankees were younger with harder-throwing pitchers and a more opportunistic lineup built around their career-prime sluggers until CeCe Sabathia faltered thursday the yankees had excellent postseason pitching but their starters are either old or untrusted and i just think there's all of

those sorts of explanations are um uh are you know after the fact kind of a thing yeah the same story goes on to talk about how out of character the Yankees play was Sabathia it says without his a game so if he had had his a game it's a different story the Yankees had excellent postseason pitching but their starters are either older untrusted but it wasn't a problem because they had excellent postseason pitching the usually magical Mark Teixeira had two misplays at first base, so kind of acknowledging that Mark Teixeira is a good defender, and there's nothing structurally wrong with Mark Teixeira's defense, and yet the game in the series turned on it.

Cabrera and Johnny Peralta's home runs, it notes their timing was perfect, just as the wind picked up in that direction. So you have these sort of two competing ideas here. One is that the Yankees were a team that was destined to fail because they had these flaws. And the other is that the series turned on things that couldn't have been anticipated. And I think that's probably true.

There's almost nothing that you could have anticipated about this series. If the Yankees had hit seven home runs in this series, then everybody would have said that this is a powerful offense that hit 245 home runs in the regular season, and it's just too strong for even good pitching to keep down. And the fact that that didn't happen gets spun the other way. And I guess in fairness, it's not totally a second guess in that people had been saying similar things all season.

That a team that was so reliant on home runs might not hold up in October, which is something that I wrote about in June, looking at previous teams that were reliant on home runs and found that, if anything anything they lost less offense in October than than other kinds of teams do so I mean it was something that people said might be a problem ahead of time it wasn't purely something that they just fit to the results but I still don't think there's any merit to it really um I don't. I just looking at those past results and not seeing any trend that says that looking at, I mean, Yankees teams have been built on power and patience for most of their successful run over the last couple of decades. And I think more often than

not, it works in the postseason just as well as it works at any other time. So I don't think that the idea that there was some sort of fatal flaw to this lineup that was just exposed really holds water. So I think that we're kind of in a similar position to last year. We, maybe I am, and maybe other people like me are. I don't know if you are but um the red socks last year had that collapse down the stretch and i found myself in a position of kind of really defending them and pointing out that for most of the season they you know they were a great team that they had the best record in baseball very late in the season and that what happened was

unexpected but not necessarily um and it was important. It was significant, but it wasn't necessarily telling. And so I think I picked the Red Sox to win the AL East. I thought that it wasn't going to be lasting. And I find that – I think that I'm going to find myself in the same position this offseason, defending the Yankees and saying, no, really, they were a really good team. They bring back a lot of really good parts. They don't have to, you know, they don't have to worry too much about next year.

And so one of the comments in a piece that I wrote by my friend Peter Elwood said, you know, hey, are you just doing are you making the same mistake with the Yankees that you made with the Red Sox? And so I wonder, do you think that I am if I do that? Do you think it was a mistake to defend the Red Sox? Do you think it will be a mistake to defend the Yankees? Or what? No, I mean, I guess in the thing I just finished writing,

I sort of defended the Yankees and said that there's no need to blow the thing up just finished writing, I sort of defended the Yankees and said that there's no need to blow the thing up and rebuild it, not that that's something the Yankees really do. I mean, I don't know. I could see the only structural problem I can see is not so much the way the team is built or how it scores as much as it is the age of the roster, which is very, very old. And that is a real problem. And that is something that should cause you, I think, to be a little more wary of the team's future. But at the same time,

the Yankees have been, I mean, they've tended to be an old team really probably always, but certainly in recent years, because they're a team that's often built on free agency to a large extent because they have the money to buy free agents and free agents tend to be older because they've already had six years of service time somewhere. older because they've already had six years of service time somewhere. And so they're almost always in the position of having old guys who are declining and just kind of hoping that they're still productive enough that they can win. And usually they do, and it almost always works for them. So, no, I don't think so.

And, I mean, the Red Sox collapse was something that went on for a month. And then it was accompanied by all the clubhouse dissension and the clubhouse unrest and turmoil and all that. And even if that was something that was made too much of in light of the collapse, I guess it was something that was going on and went on to some extent this season. There's really none of that with the Yankees. There's no particular sense that this is a team with bad makeup, I guess. I mean, aside from what people will say about Alex Rodriguez, I guess.

Well, I think that you could, first off, we talked in August about the potentially developing idea that the Yankees had collapsed and were simply backing into the postseason. I mean, there was a kind of a sense of panic around them throughout the summer. They ended up winning on the last weekend of the season, the last series of the season. And then obviously they won the division series, so it wasn't until the ALCS that they lost. But the offensive collapse took place in the ALDS too, right? I mean, they didn't hit either series. And as far as, I mean, they might not have a bunch of bad makeup guys, but they have the Alex Rodriguez thing.

They have players, really two of their most popular players, three if you count the scattered boos for Cano, three of their most popular players getting booed. And you know that there's an amplification of any turmoil in New York. So even if it's not necessarily a makeup situation, there's certainly going to be an omnipresent storyline about kind of happiness. Yes, I am not looking forward to living in new york for the next several months as we find out who the yankees bring back and don't bring back and and have to hear about this nine game stretch for that entire time because it is still just nine games i mean

yes they i guess were worse in the second half than in the first half but it wasn't a total collapse or anything it was also the Orioles improving and I don't know I I guess I just looking at all the people who struggled I mean I guess there are concerns about Curtis Granderson in that he's kind of more of an all-or-nothing player than he used to be and yet he is a player who hits 40-something home runs and plays center field so how bad can that be really um I don't think anyone I don't know if anyone is but I don't think anyone should be seriously concerned about Cano based on his postseason after the season and the several seasons he's had.

Swisher, it sounds like, probably will not be back, I would guess. And A-Rod has vowed to return, which is a concern, but not so much because of the postseason stuff as because of the rest of the season stuff, I would say. So I don't know. I mean, it doesn't seem like it's a team where you're going to suddenly start hearing fried chicken and beer in the clubhouse stories. It's not that kind of uh collapse i don't think alex rodriguez alex rodriguez yeah okay that's that's almost the

exact same story i guess so yeah um i think that i think the next time somebody asks alex rodriguez um whether he wants to be traded or whatever he should say say, I'll be back in the Terminator voice. Everybody will laugh and see what fun Alex Rodriguez has had. And he will become extremely popular. Nobody will ever boo him again. I think that's all I can say. Yeah, I don't know. Do you think that there's a reason? What a whimsical A-Rod that is.

Do you think there's a good chance he'll be traded? Because I just can't see it, really. Because he's not so bad that the Yankees would eat his entire contract to get rid of him. And yet, it's kind of hard to imagine a team taking on a significant amount of his age 37 through 41 salary? So I don't have any idea. So I don't want to imply that I have any idea. If I had to guess, though, I would guess that he's gone. It feels to me like he's, that the momentum is certainly building in that direction.

But can you think of an example of a Yankee throughout our lifetimes who was kind of, I don't know, that we got this far into the soap opera? Without him becoming a true Yankee or leaving? I mean, yeah, it just seems like this happens every couple years or so with somebody. And it seems like it usually ends up with the trade. I'm just – I don't know. Maybe – there's probably people I'm forgetting. But has there been a truly kind of a – I don't know, like a Yankee scandal that didn't end with a trade eventually?

Or I don't know if scandal is the right word, but a Yankee soap opera? I mean how close – nobody has ever talked about this with A-Rod before, right? The Rangers wanted to trade him and eventually did. I guess an equivalent might be the Red Sox and Manny Ramirez. Yes, always perpetually on waivers. Yeah, and it took a really long time before that ever happened so maybe maybe the mani precedent is telling that you can keep going with the guy but i don't know it just it it feels to me like this is um the storyline is the the storyline is going to get

ratcheted up before it gets ratcheted down. So you probably really have to imagine the news landscape in a few weeks when it has kind of gone up a few levels and it might just become impossible to take back. I mean they did – they benched him. Like do you remember how big a deal it was when they pinch hit for him just the once it was like a massive thing that i mean we were all shocked twitter went crazy it was the lead of the stories the next day and then it quickly became the norm that he was not starting freed up it was almost like the first hit of crack yeah you just started you're kind of tentative and you just test it and you find you like it and addicted to crack i mean it could just be that joe gerardi loves the feeling of benching

rod and he just can't stop doing it and uh so he i mean it it really just in terms of i mean how it was almost unthinkable five minutes before that pinch hitting appearance by Ibanez that that would happen. And two days later, it was full-time benched. I mean, like, that happened really fast. Yeah, that night after he was pinch hit four in the clubhouse, he said he 100% expected to start the next night. Yeah. And then, yeah, it became the norm that he was a bench player all of a sudden. And it's really, even after all the coverage, it's kind of incredible that he has this reputation

or relationship with the fans as someone who has won multiple MVP awards with this team. It's kind of incredible that he could be so good for them for quite a while and really not build up any kind of currency with anyone. Yeah, on a season-by-season basis, he's got to be one of the 10 greatest yankees ever right probably i mean he wasn't there 19 years or whatever so probably if we i mean yeah but on a season by season basis but he was basically like a what six win guy on average peaking around 10 yeah probably those those two seasons he had were about as good as he ever was.

Yeah, I mean, it's incredible. Someone asked me the other day if I thought his number would be retired. Oh, that's a good question. It is a good question because, I mean, if you just purely based on stats, I'm sure he stacks up very, very well compared to most of the other people whose numbers have been retired, or he certainly would by the time his contract is over, if he were to stay for the duration of it. And yet, there just seems to be no chance that that would happen. I can't imagine that happening.

Yeah, I actually did a piece for the Canadian, The Score, one time about Yankees numbers. Yes, I remember that. The bar is really exceptionally high. There are Hall of Famers who have not been... There are Hall of Famers who are associated mostly with the Yankees whose numbers haven't been retired.

My guess is that the answer is no. Let's say he's produced... I don't know how much it is, but let's say he's a 50-win player with the Yankees. I bet all their 50-win players have their numbers retired, but I bet there are guys in their 40s for sure. Like, I think Joe Gordon was around 40 and it wasn't retired.

So, I don't know. Anyway. And presumably he will enter the hall of fame as a yankee which is also weird yeah yeah i guess i guess he i don't know i mean i guess you almost have to associate him most closely with the team that seems never to have warmed up to him and now wants to get rid of him um i i don't know i could see him well i don't know probably if you if you look at bulk it's probably a yankee but those mariners years were really something special and um i mean there's i think that you could maybe make a case that people will want to prefer to remember him as a Mariner. But yeah, he spent most years with the Yankees.

He won his MVPs with the Yankees. He won his World Series with the Yankees. Although, who knows? I guess he also won an MVP with the Rangers, but yeah. Maybe he'll end up going in as a pirate. Well, we tried to talk about the Yankees, and we ended up talking about A-Rod, just like everyone else does. Yeah, the Tigers will get there.

If anybody's out there thinking, why aren't you talking about the Tigers? We've got a whole week and a half to talk about the Tigers. Yes. All right, that's all. Okay. We'll be back on Monday.