Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 69: The Weirdness of World Series Game One/Delmon Young’s Surprising Career

Episode Date: October 25, 2012

Ben and Sam discuss the unpredictable outcome of World Series Game One and observe that Delmon Young is starting to look a lot like Stanley from The Office.

Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen. Good morning and welcome to the 69th episode of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives. I'm Sam Miller in Long Beach, California. In New York, New York is Ben Lindberg. Ben, how are you? Feeling pretty good about myself. Because you predicted, as I recall, you sent me a note yesterday that predicted almost to the pitch everything that was going to happen yesterday. I don't know if I sent you a note, but I concluded yesterday's episode by saying that we would be back today to talk about how Zito dominated the Tigers and Verlander was kind of a mess. Well, no, come on. You can't use ironic predictions to justify your place in the world, Ben.

That's all I have. I do think, though, that when we hung up yesterday, I certainly felt, I don't know if you felt, but I certainly felt like that was the worst podcast that had ever been recorded. And it was the worst podcast because we refused to take the idea of predictions or really even analysis seriously, which is our job to do. We work for a company of baseball analysts

who have made our name with a prediction system. So we should probably be more open to predictions and analysis. But this is exactly why we probably weren't. I think that certainly you could have said with no doubt or shame that the Tigers should have won last night's game, that Justin Verlander was the better pitcher, etc., etc. But I don't know what good that does anybody. And as we saw yesterday, not only does that not necessarily turn into anything real,

but you could not possibly come up with a matchup more unbalanced than Barry Zito hitter versus Justin Verlander pitcher. And even there, there was a surprising outcome. I don't know if I noted it in my recap or not. I wrote a lot of things that I deleted. But Barry Zito now has a World Series RBI. Pat Burrell, cleanup hitter, four-five hitter, two championship teams, has won postseason World Series RBI. As surprising as the outcome of that game was, I feel like I'm never really deeply, truly surprised by the outcome of any baseball game.

Okay, so what could have surprised you today? I don't know if anything could have. I mean, I have this sense that, I mean, when I talk to people who don't watch baseball, and I mean really have no awareness of baseball like my grandma or someone, and she'll see that, I don't know, the Yankees got blown out in a game, she'll be shocked that that happened in that one game because they're the Yankees got blown out in a game, she'll be shocked that that happened in that one game because they're the Yankees and she feels like the Yankees must be really good and they probably don't lose ever or they never lose by much or something.

Whereas if you watch baseball all the time, you know that even in the most lopsided of matchups, the team that's not favored probably hasopsided of matchups, the team that's not favored probably has, I don't know, something like a 30% chance to win, something like that. So that was, I mean, that was one of the more surprising outcomes that the Giants would hit Verlander that well, that the Tigers wouldn't hit Zito all that well. Certainly was not what I would have predicted, ironic prediction aside.

But it's not like my mind is reeling or I'm questioning everything I know about baseball any more than I usually do, which is a lot. Yeah, I think if you had simply lined up Barry Zito's starts this year and Justin Verlander's starts this year and you just arbitrarily put them next to each other, you probably would come up with something like, I don't know, 25-30% of them. And 25-30% is a humongous number when you're talking about probabilities. It is the odds, for instance, that you will get a spade if you draw a card, basically. I mean, it's nothing. It's not an unlikely event whatsoever. It only seems like in advance. And I think we noted in an earlier, when we were talking about the inevitability of Justin Verlander, the feeling of inevitability about Justin Verlander, he won 64% of his starts this year.

Or I should say the Tigers won 64% of his starts this year, and he was the best pitcher in baseball. So, again, 36% is almost a coin flip. It's not quite, but it's very close. And that's just – I think you're right. quite but it's very close and that's just i i think you're right i think the i think that probably i would have well i would say that i was surprised by the third home run but that's totally illogical that the third home run surprised me because it was three but once the two were in then the third one is as likely as the first ever was surprised so because of where the pitch was. Yeah, well, except that it's Panda, and that's just what he do. But, yeah, so there was this sort of mental block in my head where I thought,

oh, he can't hit three, but that was just, you know. Whereas when he batted against Val Verde, you expected him to hit a fourth. Did he hit against Val Verde, you expected him to hit a fourth. Did he hit against others? He did. That was the only pitch he saw that was definitely in the strike zone. I mean, the pitch from Valverde was right down the middle. It could not have been more down the middle. It was the only pitch.

It's really like maybe, I don't know, maybe one of a half dozen pitches he's seen all postseason that have been clearly in the middle of the strike zone. And he put a good swing on it. But it's actually kind of frustrating watching Sandoval, if you're cheering for him, partly because he swings at pitches that are many feet out of the strike zone. But it can also be frustrating because when he does get the pitch right down the middle,

he so often misses it because there's almost really no distinction to him. It's a pitch is a pitch is a pitch. And so hitters' pitches, pitchers' pitches, they just don't matter. He either puts a good swing on something or he doesn't. Yeah. Well, if he were good at hitting the pitches that everyone can hit and also all the pitches that no one else can hit, he would be unfairly good, I guess.

Yeah, he would be. Although then you probably would get even more upset at his chasing because then you would think that there was – as it is, it's probably hard to convince him to take a better approach because he thinks, well, I don't do that much better when they're down the middle. So anyway, yeah. I don't know, kind of shocks or disturbs me when I'm watching baseball is to see a pitcher who loses the ability to throw strikes at all. Like who like Derek Holland against the Giants in the World Series two years ago, where he threw like something like 12 or 13 or 11 or something like that. Because to me, that that is like that threat is looming over every pitcher all the time. That is death.

That is the baseball equivalent of death. And you block it out. You convince yourself that it's not real and it can't happen. Yeah, that just makes me uncomfortable to watch. Yeah, if you really thought about how easy it is to lose the ability. I mean, it is amazing what these guys do, throwing strikes. It's amazing. And if you just got off by a millimeter,

it seems very easy to think that you could lose the ability to throw strikes at all. And it would be hard to watch baseball if you were constantly worried about that. So when I actually do see it happen to somebody, if Verlander had come out out walked five straight on four pitches and then left that would have been shocking that would have been probably the one shocking thing that could have happened yesterday if zito on the other hand had done that but he looked good he wasn't just uh i don't know he wasn't he didn't seem to be just kind of getting lucky. He looked good, like in a, I don't know, like in a sustainable way almost.

I guess maybe every pitcher does when they're pitching well, or almost, but yeah. But it wasn't like you were just kind of waiting for the Tigers to catch on to what he was doing so much or that he was obviously getting away with a lot of bad pitches. He was just kind of effective like he was the last time out. So, yeah. He was. I mentioned RJ's piece in my piece and probably like 75 people read RJ's piece and like four read mine or 75 read mine. And so the overlap is very small, so I can talk about this. how Barry Zito gets swinging strikes high on fastballs up, up and away,

which is an unusual place for a crafty lefty to work. And it's an unusual place really for anybody to work a lot of times. Up and away fastballs aren't usually an ideal pitch. And he does it by having that pitch sort uh appear to be the big breaking curveball it's sort of uh he releases it in the same sight line but it doesn't drop down away and if he can hit that corner the top and the high and outside corner which again hardly anyone works to, if he can hit that corner, it's very deceptive to a batter. And he can either get called strikes if they are giving up on it, or more likely he can get swinging strikes and pop-ups if they are a little late on it.

And that was revelatory to me because I've always thought of Zito. I mean, I see those pitches. I see him make those pitches. But you see so many lefties make those pitches as a mistake. I mean, that seems to be the most common problem for the inconsistent lefty is he doesn't kind of finish his rotation, his motion, and he leaves the ball up and away. And you'll see a guy like Jonathan Sanchez or a guy like, I don't know, Jorge De La Rosa or something like that, when they are wild, that's always where they're wild. And so I've just been conditioned to think that that's the pitch that is the accident. That's the mistake pitch. And it never occurred to me really, to be honest, that that's what Zito is doing. I mean, I know that Zito kind of works

up a bit, but I didn't really realize how systematically he does. And yeah, he made a lot of good pitches. He got strikes up there. If you look at his strike chart, he got a lot of strikes that are either in the very top quadrant or just off it. And I mean, yeah, you can see that the problem with Zito is that he doesn't have the stuff. I mean, he has the stuff that even when he's super duper on, like yesterday, for the most part, his ceiling is three strikeouts, one walk, one run in six innings. And if he doesn't quite have the stuff, you could see how it would have gone bad.

I mean, the pitch he made to Fielder with two on and one out in the first, he got the pop-up to left field. He got his outcome. It was a good pitch. It was where he wanted it. But, you know, it's also a pitch that's sort of right there. And even when Zito makes his pitch, there's a sort of a hold your breath and hope that the batter doesn't beat it because they're all beatable. Every pitch he throws is beatable.

If Pablo Sandoval can hit that Verlander fastball at his chest, then anybody could hit any pitch Zito wants to throw. They just, you know, batters are also fallible. Batters also are kind of guessing. And I mean, Zito is a major leaguer. But so similarly, the pitch that he threw to Delman Young to get out of that inning was, you know, again, it was the pitch Zito wanted to make. It wasn't a great pitch. It wasn't an unhittable pitch. and Delman Young hit a hard grounder. If Delman Young had hit a hard grounder a foot and a half over, then Zito is trailing early in the game. And so, yeah, that's why it's not as though I don't think anybody is going to still be that confident about Zito for a long, long time, because that's the best he can do is go out there and do that.

Delman Young did not look so good in that game. Not that he usually looks so good, but he did look so good in the postseason to this point. Yeah, but not really in the postseason. In his career, he's had, i think this is his seventh series or sixth series or something like that and he's had two good ones basically so uh the delmon young clutch god is uh is it's weird because he has had two two huge massive ones and he's why he's the tigers franchise postseason home run hitter, record holder, I think.

I didn't hear that. Is that true? Wow. I believe it is, yeah. He is. But Delman Young is so crazy because to think about how he was the number one prospect in baseball. I think he was number two three years and didn't transfer you know never turned into a good player right so so you think well he's the classic guy who was just absolutely filled with tools had all the tools scouts were obsessed with him couldn't get enough of those tools and it just didn't it just didn't translate to the majors at the end of the day you know he just couldn't make that step but you watch him now there is like nobody I think of as less tools that he just looks like a disaster in every aspect of the game he's

got he has no hit tool he has no arm he can't run he's i know he might be the fattest guy and i don't care if he only weighs 240 pounds he is the fat he is he's not in shape like he is smuggling tools. Yeah, my girlfriend, when I told her that he was 27 years old, she was incredulous. He is one of the oldest looking 27-year-old athletes I think you'll ever see. And I think I tweeted something the other day. I went back and looked at his capsule from the 2004 or 5 Baseball America handbook when I think he was ranked the number three prospect in baseball or something and it it said that scouts had concerns about his body and that he was I think it said he was looking more and more like his brother, Dimitri, every year. So, yeah, I kind of wonder how a guy who looked like that

and sort of had a reputation for a bad body, even as he was ranked that high, how he ended up that high. I guess, I mean, I don't know if it was just the something about his approach was so advanced, but that couldn't have been it. I don't know. I think he looks like Stanley from The Office more every year. I think the resemblance is starting to get uncanny

with that mustache. At all. Yeah. The Tigers have a lot of moving parts in the outfield, but I'm assuming that he is there to stay in this series, right? I can't imagine him coming off an ALCS MVP and getting benched at any point for Andy Dirks or something. Didn't he have two hits yesterday? I mean, he was their best hitter.

Man, even, I mean, when he gets hits, it just looks so bad that you almost don't want to give him credit for it. Two hits. Yeah, two hits. He and Jackson had two hits apiece. I think that to bring it full circle a little bit, although I don't know if we're done, so maybe this is just going to be a circle that sits outside the rest of the show. But to me, the failure of Delman Young to be anywhere remotely good as a baseball player

is way, way, way, way, way more unpredictable than anything that happened in yesterday's game. Yeah. Even given how often prospects fail, and you usually expect them to fail, but... Yeah, that's what I mean. The fact that a player who is in AA, which is very close to the majors, I mean, if you and i went

out to a park and there were uh there were five major leaguers five triple a players five double a players and they were playing a scrimmage um i don't i'm honestly not sure that you and i would be able to to figure out which ones were the double a players and so to be that close and to be that much of a consensus superstar um and to not to not i mean he's he's like i mean he's like a half a warp in his career forget about being that close he was in the majors at 20 uh hitting 317 in 130 something plate appearances and then finishing second and rookie of the Year voting the next year, although he wasn't really that great that year, but for a 21-year-old was pretty good, decent. He has more plate appearances in his career than Russell Branion already. He has more than Kelly Gruber.

I was looking at the list of people who he has more than, and there are a number of famous people who you think had long careers. I mean, Kelly Gruber. He's only 26. Well, he's 27. He's 27 in one month, and he's terrible, and he has more career plate appearances than Shane Mack, who was worth 20 warp in his career.

I wonder how long he'll be with us. Not on the earth, but in the majors. Yeah, well... What career will he have when Tulsa... That's a good question. Who's a comp for him? I mean, who is a comp for him? I mean, even...

The first name that comes to my mind is Francoeur, and there are some things that you can compare. But Francoeur does play a respectable outfield. He does still do some things. He's a lousy hitter, but he plays enough defense that when he has a good year of his, he's actually not totally unvaluable. Maybe he's like a Jeffrey Hammonds sort of. He was a top prospect in an early first round pick and then ended up kind of just being a league average hitter. Yeah, he has more plate appearances than Jeffrey Hammonds. Oh, wow.

In his career jeffrey hammonds played 13 seasons um and jeffrey hammonds in his 13 seasons was about seven wins so uh yeah you know there's well you know 98 fps plus versus so yes plus wellond's had a nice little Colorado pick-me-up in the middle of his career and made an all-star game when he was 29. So maybe Young finds his way to Colorado and has an accidentally good year and that buys him a little bit more time. But, yeah, I don't really know. I mean, he's going to be 27 next year. And after that, people, you you know when you hit 28 people start treating you differently

and not they probably shouldn't but or they shouldn't treat you as differently as they do but he's going to have I think he's going to have a hard time when he's 28 convincing anybody that he's still a post hype breakout candidate

Delman Young will Delman Young be in the league in five years post-hype breakout candidate. Delman Young. Will Delman Young be in the league in five years? It's hard to say. It's really hard to say, isn't it? Probably. Yeah, I would say probably. It could seem.

Will Delman Young have a legitimately good year in the next five years? Does Delman Young ever have? Well, I mean, he's never going to be a good defender. So that kind of limits how good a year he can have I guess. Or he's never going to really add a whole lot apart from his hitting. Yeah, but like Jermaine Dye had good years. Yeah, I don't think he's going to have a Jermaine Dye good year. I mean he had – 2010 was was pretty good yeah yeah i would if you asked me to set the line for what a good year was i would have set the line

roughly where 2010 is and since then he has gone backwards seemingly yeah he might actually have gone backwards because he forgot how to move forward he might it would not shock me if delvin young hit a ball into the gap and started backpedaling into the on deck zone one trip for his own or just didn't run like last night yeah uh his i have to say i do have to say that his throw was terrible i've seen but it was it was yeah it was not nearly the gif miracle that people treated it as i mean it bounced eight times it wasn't it wasn't a good throw but he he made it into the infield he didn't really spike it yeah what's the classic gif is it like gabania's yeah so yeah it wasn't in that league at all it wasn't in that league although remember

remember the time remember the time manny ramirez cut that cut that for a while yes i don't know i guess as bad as we are at uh seriously trying to predict a short series, I guess maybe we're just as bad at making takeaways from one game and trying to find something from one game that will impact subsequent games. Is there, I mean, aside, I'm not talking about momentum or anything is there anything from this game that makes you think any differently about the subsequent games in this series than you would have before this game i guess for me the only thing is that we can now rule out yeah we can rule out a valverde uh high appearance. Not that he was all that bad, I didn't think.

Oh, I did. He kind of got, I mean, there was the Scudero hit was just kind of a weak grounder that got through the hole. And then there was another kind of blooper. I thought he looked terrible. I wouldn't go to home regardless i don't think no he won't be trusted with anything yeah so i mean yeah that matters and it doesn't matter a ton because it's not like he was mariano rivera in the bullpen nope you know in their in their ninth inning but it's one less arm and it moves everybody up notch, or at least it moves Koch out of his role. And so what is that?

Like, Smiley is their loogie now? Yeah, I guess. So that will matter because, you know, that keeps them from being able to throw anything at Belt. It keeps them from being able to turn around Sandoval. Although they have so many switch hitters in their lineup that it's hard to play lefty-righty against them. Belt and maybe Sandoval, although they have so many switch hitters in their lineup that it's hard to play lefty-righty against them. Belt and maybe Sandoval.

Probably just Belt are the only ones really worth doing that to. But that matters. I would say that the Tigers' bullpen isn't quite the liability that I think people are saying it is or are going to say it is. They are a little—they're certainly weaker than the average team in the ninth. Benoit and Dottel are both very strong. I think if they had, yeah, it's not a good bullpen. And it's gotten worse.

I wouldn't say that it's certainly going to be the cause of their undoing any more than Johnny Peralta's defense has been the cause of their undoing or anything like that. It's a weakness that could show up. Do you think Valverde will be back as a budget closer for some team next year and be fine? He'll be basically what he was before? Is he a free agent?

I think he is. Let me check, but I think so. I don't know. Maybe he might just be the guy that you sign knowing that you can trade him kind of a thing. Uh-huh. Yeah. Astros, $4 million. Uh-huh.

Blue Jays, $4 million, something like that. Oh, definitely Blue Jays because they never miss a chance to add a right-handed reliever, it seems. Yeah, right-handed reliever and bad hit catcher. Okay, I guess we're done. It sounds like you have contracted a cold from your— No, I think I just woke up like a second ago. Okay, well— Sorry. up like a second ago okay well sorry you can take it easy tonight and i will write a recap and we

will reconvene uh for episode 70 tomorrow everybody everybody come to my chat i'm chatting at 10 oh yes you want to do that 10 my time which is like in a couple hours or so yep see ya okay