Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 67: Did Our Opinions of Players Change in the NLCS?

Episode Date: October 23, 2012

Ben and Sam discuss whether the NLCS performances of several players affected how they think about them or changed the narratives that followed them into the series.

The Giants won the pennant! The Giants won the pennant! The Giants won the pennant! The Giants won the pennant! Good morning and welcome to Effectively Wild, the almost daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives. I'm Sam Miller in Long Beach, California. I'm with Ben Lindberg in New York, New York. Ben, we missed the Monday episode. Yes. I suppose that that limits what we can claim to be. We are no longer a daily podcast.

No, I feel bad about that. The postseason has led to a lot of extreme recording circumstances, and even right now we are recording later or earlier than we ever have. It is 3.23 a.m. Yes, where I am at least. I'm not wearing pants. It's so late that even the crickets are asleep, it sounds like. Yeah, actually.

Or dead, possibly. Possibly. I saw some lizards in my backyard today, and lizards eat crickets. And we had actually kind of been secretly hoping that lizards would come and eat the crickets. So I don't know if that's the case. I have seen crickets in the recent past, but not in the last 20 minutes. Lizards don't really make any sound. We just have to take your word for it that they're there.

So that's not as fun. So the San Francisco Giants are the National League champions. The Detroit Tigers are the American League champions, as everybody has known for many days. The Giants beat the Cardinals tonight in game seven of a sort of odd series. Not really all that much drama in any individual day and yet a great deal of drama as the series progressed and I thought that today we would just talk about some of the players whose postseason performances could perhaps change the popular impression of them and just talk about whether we think that the changes are deserved or whether these are just small, flukish performances that we will have forgotten about by spring training. How does that sound?

Sounds good. So I don't really know how to progress, so I'll just start saying words, and you'll say some words. So Kyle Loesch, John Heyman, wrote a piece about hisesch to get a C.J. Wilson type deal, which would be something like five years, 75 million. And the front office executives thought that that was maybe a long shot. Loesch went on to have really two pretty bad starts. Game seven was an unmitigated disaster. Loesch had to be pulled quite early and replaced with the bullpen and put the Cardinals in a pretty deep hole. And game, I believe it was three. Yes, it was game three. Loesch only allowed one run, but he gave up a ton

of base runners and it was really sort of a fluke of sequencing that he survived that start and got yes the win walked five struck out two walked five struck out two seven hits and only one run so um kyle loach um what kind of free agency is he uh what kind of free agent i should say well this is where we're supposed to make a john hayman scott boris joke right um i guess i don't know i've been kind of uh mocking the idea i guess for a while that kyle loesch is now uh a top of the rotation starter and talking about how Scott Boris is probably working on a big binder to send to every team to tell that team that he's worthy of an enormous contract this winter. He still kind of looked more or less like Kyle Loesch to me,

but lately, I guess before this series at least, I was questioning my assumption and wondering whether this was a new Kyle Loesch. And Kyle Loesch has said things about how he's pitching differently now and he's pitching in different locations and he's getting ahead of hitters and he's learned things since he joined the Cardinals and he's a sinker baller now and he's getting ahead of hitters and he's learned things since he joined the Cardinals and he's a sinker baller now and he gets grounders and I was kind of wondering whether I had been too quick to dismiss his recent success and whether there was something more

sustainable about his ace-like season and then the World Series happened and he had two, as you said, pretty terrible starts. So I don't know that two starts should really influence my thinking either way. But I think it kind of has anyway, maybe. I was kind of looking for a reason to think this was just Kyle O Shabbat to turn into a pumpkin. And he kind of did that on a big stage. And I wonder whether that will affect his contract at all, because it did seem like he was kind of set up to be one of those guys who gets a bigger contract than he should maybe

and gets paid more for his recent performance than his entire career, which is basically a league average pitcher or a little worse. So I guess I would kind of lean towards the side of saying he is still that. Yeah, I thought that Loesch kind of reminded me of Joel Pinheiro when he was coming up against free agency and sort of a – not quite the same pitcher but some similarities in some of their peripherals. Of course, Pinero was – well, I just wonder. Loesch had his big breakout not under Dave Duncan. And in a weird way, Dave Duncan was sort of like Petco for pitchers where you didn't quite know if you wanted that guy away from Dave Duncan. from Dave Duncan. And I wonder if we would be talking about Loesch any differently if he had made his big advance under Duncan, but he didn't.

I'm not a big believer, though. If Heyman was suggesting $75 million and I'm suggesting something like Pinero's $17 million, I think a Ted Lilly-type deal in the middle probably makes sense to everybody else. It kind of worked for Pinero for a while, right? There was the whole question of whether he would be able to sustain that new approach once he left St. Louis. And then he went to the Angels, and he basically did for one year, right? I mean he was basically –

Yeah, well, he kind of did. I mean, he was basically. Yeah, well, he kind of did. It was almost like I'm going to exaggerate a little bit, but it was almost like every single start he got less of the pitcher that he was. And so, like, by the time he ended that two year contract with the Angels, he wasn't even really a ground ball pitcher anymore. He was just sort of like he was like jeff soupon you know he had just completely reverted to league average um and there was really nothing notable about him um but yeah i mean he he didn't he didn't completely collapse but i mean his ground ball rate dropped quite a bit from um his last year with the cardinals to his first year with the angels and then it dropped significantly in the second year and um by the by by the second year i think his ground ball rate in his second year away from duncan was

actually lower than the cardinals team ground ball rate and i guess it wasn't entirely the ground ball rate it was his last year in st louis he had a crazy walk rate. He did, yeah. Yeah, 1.1 per nine. Yes, which he led the league. He walked 27 batters in 214 innings, which probably isn't the sort of thing that was going to keep happening anyway. Well, and that's probably more than anything what made me think of him when I looked at Loge, because Loge, I think, had the fourth lowest or something like that walk rate. This year, he walked 1.6 per nine, and that's never really been a hallmark of him. That's a walk per nine lower than his career rate, and that's pretty much the only thing that changed in his performance. I mean, that and sequencing. If you look at his numbers with runners on base, they're absurd.

And so you're looking at two things that have changed. One is almost universally acknowledged to be luck-based, unless it's over a massive sample size. And the other is the walks. And I would say that probably the walks are the low end of what he's capable of, and I wouldn't really expect him to i i would rather have ted lily than um than loach uh at least ted lily at the point when he signed his contract me too and and that deal that three i think it was three and 33 wasn't like universally celebrated or anything like that i i remember people were sort of like yeah about him and so

uh i imagine that if Loesch signs anything more than 3 and 33, I will kind of be like, eh. Well, I would love to see the package or the proposal that Scott Boris puts together for Kyle Loesch this winter. Binders full of Kyle Loesch. Yes, right. Just to get that joke out of the way. So we spent 10 minutes on Kyle Loesch. Right. Good for us. So we spent 10 minutes on Kyle Osh. Right, good for us. We can spend less time on everyone else now. So Pete Cosma.

Pete Cosma had the huge NLDS, and then he had a rather small NLCS. If you put them together, it is something like a useful major leaguer. Not particularly good, very low slugging percentage, good on base percentage. But if you look at Cosmo's AAA stats before this, it is nowhere near a major league player. He had roughly a 300 slugging percentage in AAA over the course of multiple years. On the other hand, former first-round pick, just five years ago, he was taken 18th overall. Do you think Pete Cosma has a future in this league? Yeah, I think so, but probably not any kind of high-profile future.

I mean, maybe this was probably the most headlines that Pete Cosma is ever going to get. He just got. I would think he could kind of stick around as maybe a utility-ish guy, or a guy who fills in a starting role over

short stretches or something. Or, I don't know, maybe at his peak he manages to be a second division starter type. But I guess I probably wouldn't expect more than that, probably. You're probably more optimistic than I am. I would be surprised probably if he starts 100 more games in the majors. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe not.

He's 24, so probably. I mean, Angel Barroa started 100 games. Yes, right. He hangs around and catches on here and there, but nothing. I mean, no great future. This is it, though. we're in agreement that this is Pete Cosma's this was Pete Cosma's month yes

Marco Scudero besides hitting 500 this series and winning the MVP award for the series of course he had a pretty spectacular three month run with the Giants, and in something like half a season, he's hitting something like, I don't know, 380 as a Giant. So if you can just imagine that, like imagine we shift the last three months to the first three

months of this year, and Marco Scudero is hitting 380 at the all-star break um how would you evaluate him uh i really like marcus goudreau and i liked the trade at the time of course not expecting that he would make an impact like he made um i i've wondered in various round tables and tweets, uh, what kind of contract he will get as a free agent. I think it's an interesting case. Um, I mean, all the years and all the money. Yes. Right. I think you think so. You think it's going to be a real Brian Sabian veteran special. I don't know. I think that probably that, uh, well, I I'm of two minds about Sabian. I think that he got unfairly criticized for the Aubrey Huff deal. I think people, um, after he signed Huff, uh, after the world series, I think people acted as though he had signed Huff at,

you know, at the peak of Huff's value for, um, you know, an unreasonable rate. But what he had really done is signed Huff, hoping that he could reproduce about a third of the value he had produced in 2010. I don't think that was unreasonable. Huff simply collapsed. On the other hand, though, you have the Randy Wynn precedent, which is a trade like, I think he traded Jorvit Torialba or something like that. I forget who it was some catcher for randy win randy win went completely bananas for two and a half months and

sabian signed him for a multi-year extension that was not nearly so good and that is probably pretty comparable to what scudero is in fact just for fun i actually um i would do you know about the the voros um law do you know about this have you seen the reference just like anything can happen over a small sample yeah his yeah and and he set the sample at like something like 75 plate appearances and i um i think uh rainy has a similar one which was uh anything can happen over 200 i unaware of these laws also coined the randy threshold which is that any major leaguer can do anything over 300 sample uh 300 plate appearances and that's because randy went in 2005 hit 359 391 680 in in about three appearances slugged 680 in pack bell park uh and so sabian signed him for a lifetime contract yeah uh and i uh so i could see him

doing that with Scooter Oak. Anyway, I forget where we were going with all this. I think, I mean, Marcus Scooter was a starting shortstop last season. I kind of wonder whether there's a team out there that still sees him as a shortstop or someone who could possibly be a stopgap shortstop. And if so, whether they would be willing to pay him accordingly. I don't think he played a single game at shortstop for the Giants, so if the Giants see him as a second baseman

and some other team somehow still sees him as a shortstop and wants to pay him like one maybe they could swoop in and get him um but i agree that when a trade works out as well as this trade has worked out and the guy becomes a playoff hero and the team goes deep into the playoffs and possibly goes all the way through the playoffs uh i guess i would be surprised if the Giants didn't offer him as much money as anyone else offered him. And I mean, I guess you probably wouldn't have expected Marcos Goudreau to get a multi-year deal before that trade. Now, you definitely do, I would think. So I guess the question is, how many years since he's 36 I would guess he could probably

just expect a two-year deal and do you have any idea what kind of annual value he could get right now well let me ramble for a little bit first he actually did start 25 games for the rockies this year um and he didn't start any for the giants at shortstop but i think that's probably more about what their needs were i mean this is a team that started mike fontenot at shortstop last year and traded for orlando cabrera i'm over when i've always heard and had to fill in there yeah i mean he wasn't yeah i'm not sure whether keepinger played short. He probably didn't. But, I mean, this is a team that has pretty low demands.

It just so happened that they had a shortstop they were comfortable with this year, and they didn't have a second baseman. So, Scudero had hit.362 for the Giants, all that stuff. He had a 99 OPS plus this year because he was so bad with the Rockies. Do you think that his second half is significantly more significant, significantly more significant, significantly more predictive than his full season stats? significantly more predictive than his full season stats?

I mean, I certainly don't think he's better than he was in the couple seasons before this season. But he was... In the three years before this season, he had a 102 OPS+. This year, he had a 99 OPS+. So it was essentially season... Across the season, he was no different than Marcus Goudreau always is. And if you include his postseason performance, in fact, I bet you it is almost identical. So do you think that Marcus Goudreau is an unchanged property? Yes, I do.

But I don't know that he'll be paid like one. But I think he was a good player before this season. I mean, as a guy who could play a premium defensive position, at least adequately, and hit better than a shortstop, I mean, he was pretty valuable. Yeah, no, I mean, I dig him the most. He's fun. He's great. I'm just wondering whether we need to adjust our expectations. One more question about him, which is that he's 36, as you noted. Does it make any difference to you that he was essentially a non-entity until he was in his 30s? Does it shift your ideas about the aging curve when a player blooms so late?

Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, I guess so. And I wonder, I mean, we always talk about second basemen not aging well because they're kind of in between positions and they don't really have the skills that allow you to play one position and they just kind of end up at second because they can't play anywhere else. allow you to play one position and and they just kind of end up at second because they can't play anywhere else he is kind of a second baseman by circumstance more so than skill i guess so i don't know that i would ding him as much for that and yeah i guess when it comes to a late bloomer i

might expect them to age a little better than the typical guy, his age. But I don't expect him to be ageless or anything. So 2-16 seem fair to you? Or do you think it'll be more like the 2-12 that he signed with the Red Sox? I think he will get some sort of second half and postseason bonus. And that 2- 16 could be realistic yeah i think 2 and 12 maybe would be better because i well then again i mean he was very good for the red sox he was probably worth more than they signed him for so sure yeah that was a i thought

that was a pretty good signing at the time um all right we are uh typically at the point where we would be out of time but i i promised people that we would go a little longer because we we abandoned them yes on monday so let's do one more okay um madison bumgarner uh this series lost his spot in the rotation to Barry Zito. Um, Bumgarner, I would have thought a month ago would have been, um, probably in my top five Cy Young predictions for 2013. Um,

I wrote, um, after his terrible start, I think, no, uh, after Wainwright's good start in the NLCS recap about how favorably he compares to Adam Wainwright's best two seasons and yet there's something not quite there about him and the thing that is not quite there really came to a head as he sort of lost it toward the end of the season and then in the postseason. This is not the first time this has happened. 2010 and seemed to have almost lost his prospect status at the time and then just as quickly found it again and ended up being a postseason hero for the Giants in 2010 as a 21-year-old or rather as a 20-year-old. Do you think that there's any reason to worry about Bumgarner's

both long-term future and sort of more near-term future in 2013 based on what you've seen in the last month or do you think this is simply late season dead arm kind of tiredness um well the last time that he had problems and almost lost his prospect status as you said was a big velocity loss, right? It was, yeah. So, and he hasn't, I mean, he never, I guess, really recovered that velocity, or at least, I mean, he's not a guy who throws in the mid-90s or anything. He's a low-90s guy, but he's succeeded anyway. And he hasn't really, I mean, that hasn't happened this time, right? It hasn't really been a further loss.

There's been some, yeah, in the last month for sure. It's not dramatic. It's not five miles an hour. I can look it up as you talk. Yeah, I actually am. So he's averaged 90.7 on his fastball in october and for the full season he was at 91.7 so he lost a little yeah a little yeah but but not not um not a paradigm shift whatever um no uh Whatever. No. I don't know. I guess, I mean, most guys, it could be a dead arm period.

Certainly some guys or most guys tend to gain velocity as the season goes on. I don't know that that continues into the postseason. I mean, what do you think was the main thing responsible for his struggles? Well, I'm not a pitching coach. I thought that in the National League Division Series, it looked pretty apparent that he really hadn't lost his mechanics, that he'd lost his release point. You could sort of tell that the Giants that he lost his release point. You could sort of tell that the Giants were worried about his release point. You could see Posey was really kind of counseling him from behind the plate. And I don't know whether that is the sort of thing that is always going to be a threat for him because he has a little bit of funk to his pitching mechanics,

or if it was a cascade from maybe his fatigue, or if it was just a thing that happened one time. But, I mean, everything was less crisp. The lost mile per hour certainly affects his fastball. slider he was really having trouble locating um i did um i looked at his pitch charts from his last good start which was in august and his last start in this season uh in the postseason, which was game one of the NLCS, and he essentially has lost the ability to pitch inside. He can't go inside. The target is inside, and he's leaving everything kind of unfinished, and all the pitches are kind of leaking out either away and outside of the strike zone away when he's lucky or right over the heart of the plate when he's not lucky.

So it's hard to know exactly what that is. But, I mean, the problems – he didn't have – like Vogelsang had a giant ERA in the last month of the season. Baumgartner did not, but you could see the problem was almost more troubling because Bumgarner is a guy who... It was five and a half. Was it? Okay. So... In October, September. Yeah, September. Okay. So yeah, so it was bad. Nevermind. But his... I mean, Bumgarner is a guy who strikes out five guys for every walk. And in the last seven starts of the season he struck out about one and a half per walk and so that's a huge change um and i mean you're talking about from a peripheral

standpoint you're talking about his worst start of the season repeated seven times basically on average so there were a lot of problems it's this is not a postseason thing um so i don't know it's hard to say i rambled a bit i like i said i'm not a pitching coach it's hard for me to say exactly what it is and um i mean i would say that from my personal standpoint i am extremely worried about bum garner right now um i was talking to a friend about who should start game one, and he thinks that Bumgarner should. I think that probably Linscombe should, although I'm not really comfortable with any of them. But I think that probably nobody right now worries me more in the short term than Bumgarner. And I do sort of feel like my impression is uh he is broken in a way that um maybe isn't easily

fixed right now i'm not so worried about him long term and i would still think that he is a uh you know he's an an ace level pitcher going forward i was just gonna use that word. I was going to say, I mean, it makes me think of what Jason Parks says about aces, that there just aren't many of them. And that it really, I mean, people ask him if he thinks that so-and-so is an ace and he'll say, we need to see it a little longer um that there are really only a handful of guys who he would consider an ace or that maybe even the industry would consider an ace um i mean i don't know how helpful it is to to argue about the term ace because it it means different things to different people i guess um but the way he uses it is really the, the ultra elite types, like a Verlander or, uh, I don't know, a holiday or something. Um, just guys who have done it year

after year after year. And I don't think he would put someone like Baumgartner in there even after a couple really good seasons. So, yeah, I guess that kind of speaks to that. But I don't know. I wouldn't be so pessimistic about him going forward, I guess, at least next season, maybe in the short term. If his mechanics are screwed up, they will stay screwed up. I don't know. Real quick, we'll do one more, but kind of not in as much detail. Ryan Vogelsang sort of kind of blew his season stats quite a bit in the last month.

Very good postseason. He had a 129 ERA plus last year. He had a 103 ERA plus this year. And as we talked about earlier, 103. That is exactly what Bumgarner had. Is it really? Mm-hmm. Well, what do you know?

103 is also the over-under that we set for postseason level pitchers. I think actually 102.5 was. So I'm just curious. Do you think that Vogelsang next um is closer to a 129 or closer to a 120 oh sorry a 103 um i guess i'd say closer to the 129 i guess i don't know i was persuaded by your recap of his last start that said that it's time to stop talking about how he was bad for a while and talk about how good he's been lately and that he actually is that good. All right.

So, yeah, I'll buy it. I'm with it. All right. We'll be back tomorrow to preview the World Series. Lance Berkman has already done the heavy lifting by predicting Tigers in five. We may have something to add to that. I can't promise, but we'll try our best. My prediction will probably be similar.

All right. All right.