Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 73: Did the Dodgers Overpay for Brandon League?/Are Gold Glove Voters and Defensive Stats Learning to get Along?

Episode Date: October 31, 2012

Ben and Sam discuss the three-year deal the Dodgers gave Brandon League and reliever salaries in general, then talk about whether Gold Glove voters and advanced defensive stats agree more often than they used to.

That's gold, Jerry. Gold! Good morning and welcome to episode 73 of Effectively Wild, the Baseball Prospectus daily podcast. In New York, where the waters have receded, at least in my area, I am Ben Lindberg. And in Long Beach, California, in the Honda Fit, it is Sam Miller. Good evening, Sam. Or good morning, Sam. Hi, Ben. We have to do an errors and omissions segment because most of you may not believe this, but occasionally we will make a factual mistake. And the day that we chose to set up a podcast email address, which is podcast at baseball perspectives.com was also the day that we made a very silly and obvious mistake. So we received several emails and I would say about half

of them were about the silly mistake that we made. And that mistake was forgetting that the Astros were moving to the AL West next season when we were doing our preseason picks. Speaking for myself, at least, I immediately went to look at the 2012 standings when you told me that we were going to be predicting next season's winners and losers, and that's how I made that silly mistake. And speaking for myself, I actually still think that the Astros could finish in last place in the NL Central. I think they are that bad. So I'm going to stick with my prediction, but now that my memory has been jogged, I'm also going to pick the Astros to finish first in the AL West. Okay, so when we review the predictions as we said we would, you have officially predicted that the Astros will finish last in the NL Central and first in the AL West.

Yeah, but just to cover my bases, I will also say that the Pirates will finish last in the NL Central as well. will finish last in the NL Central as well. And I also, nobody emailed us on this, which really disappoints me. I don't know that anybody follows baseball if they didn't pick up on this, but when I was listing the various postseason appearances the Giants have made in the last 18 or so years, I included 2001.

They did not make it in 2001. So we'll reset our counter of shows without effectual mistake to zero. It was probably at one or two, or I guess it was at zero yesterday because we made a mistake the day before that. So maybe it was at one or two before that, and we'll see if we can get to, I don't know, three this time before we say something else that is obviously incorrect. So what are you going to talk about today? I guess Brandon League.

Yeah, okay. That was my runner-up topic. And my actual topic is sort of of related to the gold gloves and the fielding bible awards oh well i know that's going to be a great conversation so much has not been said about gold glove voting just so much still to be said yep i hope rafael palmeiro's name comes up at least eight or nine times. So do you want to get that out of the way first? No.

Okay. So Brandon League signed, re-signed with the Dodgers for three years and I guess like something like $22 million with a vesting option for a fourth year. I imagine that you think that that is bananas? I don't know. I guess it's more than I would want to pay for Brandon League if I were the Dodgers. I wasn't completely shocked because, I don't know, it seems like every offseason there are at least a couple of contracts

for relievers that make everyone say what a terrible move it was. And maybe the fact that this was one of the first moves of the offseason makes it more memorable or makes us think that it might be more significant and set the market, and more significant and set the market. And maybe it will set the market. I don't know. But I don't know if it's the worst reliever contract that's been handed out in the last few years. But what is? I don't know. I'm trying to think of some memorable ones. I guess like

there was the Brandon Lyon one that was big. Yeah. I don't know if there was the Soriano one, I guess, although that was more of a – Keith Bell. Yeah. Keith Bell was an interesting one. I remember the reaction to the Joaquin Benoit one was, um, as exercised as, as any that I can remember. And, uh, that was for three years, 16.5 million. And it was also really early in the off season.

Um, I think, or at least it was early in the kind of Tigers, um, spending spree that winter. um spending spree that winter and um that one three years 16.5 million and benoit was a different case than lee because he had really only pitched um you know one he had that one hell one amazing year with tampa and before that he had missed the entire season before that he had never really been a particularly good um but benoit also had a 1.3 ERA that year. He struck out 75 and walked 11. I mean, he was probably one of the three or four best relievers in baseball. League is an interesting guy to sign because, well, before I say that, I mean, I think that there's a tendency that anytime a reliever gets signed, particularly a reliever that has a bunch of saves, that everybody kind of blows up and goes, oh, come on, crazy. Because you look at the dollar value and you look at the war and you do the division and you think that's crazy.

And the fact is that there are 30 Major League Baseball teams that all value these relief innings more highly than we all do. And it's sort of naive to think that we're definitely right and that teams are definitely wrong. I mean, I think that it's fair to conclude that the teams do want to have some stability in their bullpen. They pay a different price for a win from a reliever than they would pay for a left fielder, and that's fair. I don't really generally have a problem with that, and I'm usually surprised by these reliever deals, but they don't bother me that much. It's hard to get worked up every time one happens, although some people do. It's actually easy. It's apparently based on my Twitter feed.

Yes. Well, it's hard for me too because, I mean, right, by this point, it's clear that teams, most teams if not all teams, don't agree that relievers are worth what our publicly available stats say they should be worth. And so this is going to keep happening. Yeah, I mean, Billy Bean signed Brian Fuentes for two years and $10.5 million. And I mean, that's just as bananas, I think, as the Brandon League move. But I think that what's – the thing is, though, that Brandon League is – it's not that it's a lot of money for a reliever, which is the reaction when, like,

Papelbon signs for a lot of money or whatever. It's that Brandon League is really incredibly unspecial. There's just nothing notable about him. It's very odd to think that this would be the first move, or I guess technically the second move, of the offseason when he is just absolutely not the name you would circle on the free agent market. And it is a lot of money. on the free agent market, and it is a lot of money. And I guess there's a way of looking at it,

which is that the Dodgers have a really good reliever in Kenley Jansen, but maybe they don't know how reliable his health is because of the heart thing. Or just in general, maybe they just don't know how reliable he is and so they want to have kind of a uh a second closer sort of guy in the bullpen and you don't want to give 45 million dollars to that guy and go get you know a jonathan papelbon but you you do want to have one guy that you trust to get saved and so there's there's sort of if you told me that the dodgers went out and got got overpaid for a really great setup man or gave $21 million to like a Mike Adams type or a Jason Grilly type, I think Twitter would still freak out, but it wouldn't bother me. But Brandon League is nothing.

There's just really nothing interesting about him. Over the last three years, he has a three point one four ERA. And that's slightly better than his peripherals. But it's you know, it's it's a fair number for him in good in good pitchers ballparks. There were ninety four relievers this year who had three point one four ERA or better. It is really easy to get relievers right now. The world is just flooded with good relievers. I wrote about this early in the year,

but this is just absolutely the age of the dominant reliever. You cannot, every team has three of them, and Brandon League is not one of them, and the idea that he's going to be one for the Dodgers, that seems to be the problem. The problem is not that the Dodgers spent a lot of money on this part. The problem seems to be sort of similar to, I felt like, kind of some of their moves during the season

is that they were just getting the wrong guy. Yeah, well, it definitely fits into the sort of narrative that we've talked about before with the Dodgers maybe overspending. And I think maybe some of the negative reaction was based on the perception, which seems reasonable, that the Dodgers overpaid based on the 27 innings or so that he pitched for them this season when he had a 2.3 ERA and he struck out a batter per inning, which is something that he really only did in one previous season and basically didn't pitch like Brandon League ever has in any full season except one.

Also, strange walk rate and strange ground ball rate Both of those were worse It's correct to say that he didn't pitch like Brandon Link Because it was sort of an unusual performance all the way around for him Unless they did something to him Unless they did something, yeah But overall his peripherals were not great And I guess the fact that people freak out about relief contracts,

I was kind of making light of it a minute ago, but I don't know, do you think that it means that teams are right about what relievers are worth? I mean, I guess you could say that in the past, teams overpaid for certain aspects of production, whether it was runs batted in or whatever. And at the time, if we had been around and freaking out about it, we maybe would have been more right than the teams were about what that was worth. So I guess conceivably, at least, you could say that maybe we're right now and they're

wrong and will eventually be proven to be less correct. Or you could say, well, they know more than we do. Um, so I don't know which way to go with that. If, if it is that we are more correct about that for, for, for whatever reason, then I guess it's legitimate to keep freaking out about it because eventually it will change. Yeah, I think that I still have a hard time thinking that it is right to pay for these contracts. And so I still tend to think it's weird and hold out kind of hope that the internet-etti position is the correct one. But I think probably if you're talking about signing one or two guys for a bullpen to give a,

I don't know, to create at least a little bit of firewall to a bullpen collapse, I don't really have a problem with that. I think that if that's the only way you develop relievers or if you've got three or four of those guys there was a period where the angels had four of those guys at once and they were all crumbling and getting released and I think if you have to

do that more than once a year, if you have more than one multi-year contract for a reliever or maybe more than two, then you're probably not doing a great job. But if you only have one or two, I mean, $7 million is a rounding error for a lot of teams. So you just don't want to have a few of those. Well, it will be interesting to see whether that does set the market in some

way, or whether relievers who are better than Brandon Lee get better than Brandon Lee money so we'll follow that I guess and speaking of a another thing that tends to provoke the the same reaction Raphael Palmeiro year after year after year on Twitter and on the internet the gold glove awards were announced, and I don't even really want to talk about who won them because, I don't know, I never really understood why it is that people get so upset about them because getting upset about them sort of validates them in a way. And if you feel that they're incorrect, then getting mad about them only kind of gives them the authority to make you mad about them. But what surprised me this year, I pretty much completely insulated myself from the reaction, or so I thought.

I was not on Twitter. I was not talking to anyone about who won the gold gloves. I didn't even hear about who won the gold gloves immediately. But despite my best efforts, I got sort of a secondary reaction from people who were telling me about the reaction. So I gather that there was considerable acrimony about the results as usual. as usual um but just looking at them to me it it doesn't seem like they deviate all that much from kind of the conventional internet wisdom uh you can certainly well and darwin barney is i feel like darwin bernard barney is such a i mean yeah he he, he won because of his, his, his plus minus, which is like, exactly. That's, so that's what interests me about it. Cause last week the fielding Bible awards were announced, which were basically, they're like the internet, the sabermetric

alternative to the gold gloves. And on the panel of the fielding Bible awards, you have people like Bill James and Rob Nair and Joe Posnanski and Mark Simon at ESPN and the fans who vote in Tom Tango's poll and the Baseball Information Solutions video scouts. So these are kind of the people who would traditionally maybe take issue with the Gold Gloves, and they voted on the Gold Gloves. So the fielding bible awards are just one player per position they don't do by league so they picked nine players and seven of those players won gold gloves um so it seems to me like these are very closely aligned uh the players who did not win uh gold, who did win Fielding Bible Awards, were I think Mike Trout, which he seems like maybe he would have been a better candidate than

Adam Jones, who won the gold glove. But not necessarily better than Austin Jackson. No. Yeah. And Austin Jackson also brendan ryan won at shortstop jj hardy he did oh for the fielding yeah and jj hardy won the gold glove uh jj hardy actually leads all shortstops in fielding runs above average um so anyway it seems to me like these lists are more closely aligned and i haven't gone back to see, uh, how closely they compared in past years, but it seems to me that they look a lot more similar than they have in past

years. Um, which I guess hasn't stopped some people from being upset about them, but I wonder whether this does reflect a change at all. Uh, because as you said, Darwin Barney is a guy who kind of got internet famous for being a good fielder according to UZR and according to FRA and all these various fielding systems. But is not sort of the traditional gold glove winner who tends to be a good hitter and kind of a star level player aside from the defense and with usually three or four years of that reputation yeah and he doesn't have that

right and on a good team maybe um and so can i ask you a question real quick you you probably don't know one of us it would be great if one of us did but i can't find i haven't found it uh so now they for the last two years they've been doing this thing where they announce the finalists and then they announce the winners. Do you know if the finalists are simply the top three vote-getters and then the winner is simply the top vote-getter? Or is this a two-tiered voting system? And do you know if the finalists are actually named by some sort of panel and then the coaches, managers, et cetera, only vote on the finalists because if it were the latter, that would explain – it seems like that would explain a lot of it.

If you only gave the managers and coaches three pretty good options, they're going to do a lot better than if you give them 16 options plus Rafael Palmeiro. But I don't know if that's the way they do it. I don't know how they come up with those finalists. Maybe I can find it quickly. Well, I've been trying to find it quickly. Maybe I'm better at finding things quickly. You're definitely better at typing loudly so that we can all hear it.

So I wonder whether – I guess there are three options here. There's the – or three possibilities. There's the possibility that the internet people have, or let's say that the managers and coaches who vote on the gold gloves have been the best at determining which are the best fielders all along and that the internet people have now caught up and are almost as good as determining that. Or it could be the other way around, that the internet people's influence has filtered down to those coaches and managers in some way. Either they're reading the things that the internet people are saying, or they're looking at the same stats. looking at the same stats. Or the third possibility, I guess, is that this is just one year and maybe Derek Jeter will win the AL Gold Glove in 2013 and there will be no accord between

the two systems. This St. Louis Post-Dispatch says that the finalists reflect the top three vote-getters at each position. Okay. So then that's not the explanation. That is not, yeah. So out of those three options, would you like to pick one? Do you think one of them is closest to the truth? Oh, gosh.

I don't think I can speak to that. Okay. I really don't. I don't have an answer for you. Um, okay. I, I guess I would say that, I don't know. I would suspect that some appreciation for, uh, what the internet people think has filtered down somehow.

Yeah, I think it could. I think that it certainly filters through the media, I think. And so if the media is asking questions about certain players' defense, I think that that probably helps. I mean, managers and coaches are voting on guys that they might have only seen five or six times a year so I think that there's probably definitely it is

much more information comes from managers to us but there's definitely information that gets through them as well through various layers so I think there's probably some of that and I guess one thing we didn't mention about Darwin Barney through various layers. So I think there's probably some of that. And I guess one thing we didn't mention about Darwin Barney is that he also had a pretty widely reported errorless streak.

So he was three outs away from breaking Placido Polanco's major league record for consecutive errorless games at second base. And then he had a throwing error on the last day of the season or one of the last days of the season to snap that streak. Yeah, maybe that's the answer. I don't know that it's necessarily that coaches and managers are looking at Darwin Varney's UZR so much as it is that they looked at that errorless streak. And, of course, the errorless streak is something

that went into his positive fielding statistics, that it counts. Not messing up is important. Well, I guarantee they're not looking at his UZR, but they are picking up through osmosis this something in the ether that says a guy is good or bad. Okay. So that's it for today.

Hopefully we didn't say anything that will make us do an errors and correction segment in the next show. But if we did, please let us know. And if you want to contact us about anything else, email us at podcast at baseball perspectives dot com.