Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 736: Mike Trout, Albert Pujols, and the Angels’ Attempt to Stay Alive

Episode Date: October 1, 2015

Ben and Sam talk to OC Register writer Pedro Moura about the odd career paths of Mike Trout and Albert Pujols, the Angels’ recent resurgence, and the team’s search for a new GM.

The sacred heart is bleeding, go tell the Holy Ghost That the junkie is cheating, to get the things he needs the most Lady Luck has got me covered, keeping her watchful eyes over me The lovers are discovered, The charge is first degree. Good morning and welcome to episode 736 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus presented by The Play Index at baseballreference.com. I am Ben Lindberg of Grantland, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Prospectus. Hello. Hello. at picking an AL playoff team this year. They're the only lifeline I have right now.

And Sam and I have talked before about how we don't really root for teams, but sometimes you end up rooting for your own predictions. And I'm far past the point of salvaging most of my preseason predictions, but the Angels are the one AL team that I've still got a shot at getting. And they have won seven games in a row. predictions, but the Angels are the one AL team that I've still got a shot at getting, and they have won seven games in a row. We are talking to you before Wednesday's game, which you couldn't really ask for a more favorable matchup. I don't know in the post-Rich Hill world whether you can really ever count on anything, but they have a home game with Garrett Richards going against

Barry Zito, so that's the best you can really hope for in any given game. And they are, as we speak, a playoff team. So how did they get here? They got here by being okay all season long, by never straying too far from 500, and then going on a crazy run of one-run outcomes in September. They've won 10 straight one-run games. They have by far the best one-run record in the major leagues.

I think it's 33-16. No one else has more than 26 one-run wins. You win a lot of close games, and you will be good. It's what the Baltimore Orioles rode to success a couple years ago, and it's what the Angels have ridden this year. Like you, Ben, I am also somewhat hoping that they make it because it will prove my predictions right. I had the Nationals and Mariners in the World Series, so I'm doing well. I had both of those teams in the playoffs and one of them in the World Series, so I'm right

with you. I had the Blue Jays. I had the Angels and the Blue Jays, not in the World Series, but in the playoffs. By the way, I am looking at my Rookie of the Year candidates, and in the greatest year for rookies like ever, my three Rookie of the Year candidates in the American League have produced 1.4 wins. I picked Steven Souza. Yeah, I did too. I also had Ruzny Castillo and Dylan Bundy.

Nice. A couple years ago, I picked Aaron Hicks. So I think he produced negative war. I think he's still eligible. Yes. You can't really do much worse than that. But I did have Troughton Harper as the MVP, so I'm happy with that. So they're 10-0 in one-run games in the last 20 days or 20 games you tweeted, which is crazy.

Does it feel like that to everyone or does it feel like they are actually hot and good or does it feel like they're just on an incredible run of luck all of a sudden of course when you're when you're a baseball player on a team that is having that sort of success you don't think that you're just getting lucky but i think that yeah i think that they feel that they're that they're good i think they felt that they're good all year long when you have the expectations that come with winning 98 games the year before, you're going to keep that self-belief in all year long. The crazy thing about the one-run games is that they've done a good portion of it

without their two best relievers, Joe Smith and Houston Street. In a span of seven days, they lost their eighth and ninth inning men, which doesn't really happen very often. So there is, I don't know how to phrase it other than, you know, they're pretty good, clearly. And they've gotten lucky and played well in the most important time of the season. And now they're in position to make the playoffs. But it's still, I think, as we stand right now, it's like a 53% chance according to BP's odds that they're in.

So it can swing either way. They could win the division. They could win the wild card. They could play 163 on Monday. They could play in four cities in the next eight days. It's all up in the air. And they've been outscored only by six runs or so. But we did a show not long ago about the Twins and the Rangers who had both been outscored at that point and were still contending. And in both of those teams' cases, it seemed like they were better than that currently, that that was still reflecting what they were in the first half of the season

and that they had upgraded. And is the same true for the Angels? Because they haven't traded for Cole Hamels or called up Miguel Sano or anything. So are they still that team or have they improved in other ways? Yeah, I don't know. It's funny. Right at the deadline, right before the deadline was when they were the hottest they were all year, I think on July 26th, they made like three trades.

And at that point, their playoff odds were really high. They had a couple game lead in division. And then they just started losing after that, after they acquired David Murphy, David DeJesus, and Shane Victorino all to play left field, which didn't make much sense at the time and still doesn't make all that much sense because maybe one of them will make the playoff field, which didn't make much sense at the time and still doesn't make all that much sense because maybe one of them will make the playoff roster, maybe two. So no, you can't really say, I can't sit here and tell you that they've made obvious improvements. And it is interesting that their run differential

is about 100 runs worse than the Astros right now. For most of the season, Oakland has had a better differential than the Angels. I think until about two weeks ago, that's how it was. But that's, you know, Oakland and the Angels have essentially had opposite luck in one run games or opposite performance. So no, they're not demonstrably better than they were. They didn't add Cole Hamels, like you said. And I thought when the Rangers added Hamels, I thought it didn't make very much sense because they didn't have it. I think you guys talked about it on your podcast, actually, about the Rangers were overpaying for Hamels because everybody else could value him for the remaining two months of the season,

and the Rangers couldn't so much. But it turns out that maybe they were valuing him the right way, in the right manner, because they were getting surplus value from him this year. But the Angels don't have anyone like that. David Murphy's the biggest acquisition they made, and he's right around 100 OPS plus. The Angels, by the the way on the trade deadline at the trade deadline the Angels playoff odds were 73 percent and the Rangers playoff odds were

5.6 percent yeah is it worth mentioning is it worth bringing up taking seriously the fact perhaps fun fact that Mike Socha is gonna outperform Pathag for the 11th year in 12? Yeah, it's worth it. It's a continuous discussion, continuous mystery, however you want to put it, that his teams continue to outperform their expectations. Maybe it's just that I've realized it recently that I've been covering the team the last three years, but there's so much criticism of him by the team's fan base. I think baseball fans just love to criticize their own manager.

At least it's hard to escape that feeling. But yeah, I don't see any reason that he is a below average manager. I've seen no evidence. I wrote last year that he had adopted some sabermetric principles. Jerry DiPoto helped drill those into him. And I think that he's retained them. He's batted Mike Trout second for some of this year. He's shown a willingness to—he's not outwardly disobeying anything

that would make you think that he doesn't know what he's doing, if that makes sense. Everything's within reason. But there's no narrative that he's a genius like there was with the Orioles that you brought up, where it was the bullpen's the best and Buck Showalter's the best and they bring up tons of guys from AAA so they always have a full pen and there were all these explanations for why they were winning all these one-run games.

Is there any equivalent? By the way, or like there was with Mike Socha for a while when he was winning all these one-run games with, you know, Ben Weber and that other guy, Brendan Donley. Yeah, no, I don't see any genius theories. I don't hear them at least.

I always thought it was so great about Buck because wasn't Buck Showalter kind of, didn't people not really think he did a good job at his previous manager jobs? I guess the rap on him was that he just wore out his welcome every time as he was about to build a good team and people got sick of him because he was a control freak and maybe he's mellowed but yeah in baltimore he has certainly gotten more credit than he did before i think although he was i think he was regarded as a good tactical manager i don't think that there is a rightful genius narrative around socia um other the only the most remarkable narrative thing around him is this,

that he's been on this job for so long, for 16 years since Mike Trout was six. How good was Mike Trout when he was six, I wonder? Probably better than David Murphy. What was his text punctuation like back then? That's a good question. We would actually like to know that. That's not even a joke. We'd like to know that. Since we're talking about Trout, we got a question from a listener named eric and he says i don't understand mike trout's career arc so far his stats seem to me to indicate that he has evolved into a guy in his early 30s more power less running worse defense could mike trout secretly be 32 what do you think are the odds that he's already had his best season?

I think that I'm amazed by my Trout's career arc, both in the fact that it's been so endlessly good and in the fact that, like your questioner said, the speed, the changes he's gone from power to speed, or from speed to power, I should say, is incredible. I mean, this guy basically hasn't stolen, he's stolen one base in the second half of this season our schools have stolen four and so that he doesn't try to anymore and he's he's essentially a full-fledged power hitter but in encouraging signs the strikeouts have gone down this year the walks have gone up uh he's he's shown a willingness to adjust when pitchers get a book on him earlier this year he showed that he could hit the high fastball recently he started swinging more first pitches uh and got a bunch a bunch of extra base hits on them, or like four or five. He swung at five first pitches and he had extra base hits on four of them. And I think that his career arc confounds

me in some way that we never thought. I would have never predicted that his value would come almost entirely from his power. Last year, he was below average defensively according to the metrics. This year, he's right around average around average even so his value is coming strictly from the power and i really wonder what he's going to be like when he's 29 is it going to be even more of this i mean he's you know he can't really steal any less he can't have he can't derive less value from his speed than he is right now but when people look at his numbers i get a lot of questions about like because of the way he lost all his speed and he's not and he's not trying to he can't steal. But that's not really what it is, because if you watch his defense, I think he's he's almost as fast or he's lost maybe 10 percent of his first step in the outfield or anything like that.

It's just that he's simply not trying to steal bases. And that's a whole nother topic where whether Albert Pujols wants him to when he's batting it when he's on base in front of him. But it's not that he's slow. He's not he's not a slow baseball player he's incredibly fast he just uh he just is not trying to steal bases and he's simply focusing on hitting for power does albert pools not want him to when he's on base in front of albert pools does albert pool say that he say publicly that he does not want him to know that are indications that yes interesting yeah because i remember that came up last year when his stolen bases went down and people were asking him why. And he said something about that, just about not wanting to run into outs or, you know, wanting to let those guys concentrate or something. But it's so extreme. It's unusual to see someone who has that aspect of his game just completely abandoned it because of the preference of another player if that's what it is yeah he was 49 for 54 in stolen bases like three years ago and this year he's he's 10 for 17 it doesn't make it it's it's incredible right yes he's been caught

more times with one-fifth as many steals yeah that is crazy and we we got another question about his defense just from watching him i mean every now and then you see the play, like from the other night where he robs a home run. It's not even every now and then. It's like three times a season or something he does that. And yet he still has sort of middling defensive ratings every year except 2012. Does that jibe with what you see, or do you think the stats miss something with him? No, I don't think the stats, you know, I don't pretend to be a scout, but I don't think the

stats are obviously missing something. I think he's in the range of an average defensive center fielder, which is not a criticism, you know, that's a huge praise. I mean, I've watched Kevin Kiermaier a little bit this year, and Lorenzo Cain, and those guys are, I think, clearly better. Kevin Kiermaier is an incredible defensive center fielder, and you can notice it in just a couple games watching him. I don't think – yeah, I think Trout will stay in center field for several years to come, and I think he's fine at the position. He's just not a gold glover.

And Pujols' season is almost as strange, really. It's strange in a number of ways. If you look at just his home run totals, it looks like Cardinals Pujols is back, kind of. And then you look elsewhere in his stat line, and of course he hasn't walked like he did in St. Louis for years. He still doesn't really strike out, but when he puts the ball in play now, nothing good happens. I mean, I guess it's partially that he's hitting more home runs and those don't count towards a bad bit, but as you tweeted, it's like one of the couple lowest bad bits in the last 30 years or so. Is that just speed? Is he just painfully slow or is it bad luck or is it something else?

Yeah, if you were going to percentile it out or group it out some of it would be the speed right he's one of the slowest players in baseball he's on the jose molina level speed but he's still faster than me um and uh the harder hit rate has gone down some not not a huge amount not not to it not enough to make the difference between the 265 bad that he had last year and the 215 this year. And I think some of it is just pure bad luck that we come to expect when you see that low of a BABIP. The ISO is good, though. He's hitting for a lot of power. And I think the biggest problem with his season is just, like you said, that he's not walking. The last two years

of the Angels, his walk rate is like 7% cumulative, which is just when you consider what he put up year after year in St. Louis. I expected that he would lose some of his power and that his average would go down these years in Anaheim, but I did not expect that he would start walking at this low of a rate with the Angels this early in the contract. Does he inspire confidence and or fear, or does he seem like someone who's exploitable now? That's actually a great question. Something I've been pursuing these last couple weeks,

looking at if you're a hitter like that, you get it in postgame quotes all the time. The manager of the opposing team will talk about Pujols and how he's still a feared hitter and one of the best hitters in the major leagues, air quotes. And yeah, I think there's probably something to that. Probably is a little bit to it. And that gets into that erstwhile topic of lineup protection which i i don't know it's so hard to to talk about definitively here's what i will say he's not the

angels second best hitter that's cole calhoun cole calhoun is actually their second most valuable player which is kind of remarkable if they get to the playoffs they're going to be i was looking at this they're going to be the the first team in three years to make it with only two three-win players in Trout and Calhoun. Nobody else on their team is even close. I think Richards is just over two wins. And so it's just, this is not a formula that usually works. But, you know, the formula doesn't usually involve the best player in the American League

and maybe the best player in the majors. I don't know how much insight is required to answer this. So maybe nobody knows. But I'm wondering about whether there's going to start being pressure on Trout at some point to be a leader, to be more vocal. Right now, Trout still seems to me to be very kidlike, fairly deferential and not really aspiring to be a leader in any particular way. And I don't know if at some point as he is older, more experienced, but also continues to be the best player on his team by far. And as Pujols and Weaver become a bit more marginalized by age, if there's going to be pressure to put him into a role that isn't really naturally suited for his temperament, He's always kind of wherever he's gone in his life, been the young kid, the young

guy, the deferential guy. Do you feel like there's any pressure on him to be anything? He's not in the clubhouse right now. Do you feel like this is a clubhouse that will demand more from him in the next couple of years? And do you think that that presents any sort of conflict for his career going forward? That's interesting, Sam. I think you're right. You're totally right in your assessment. From my perspective, you're right in your assessment of his character. He doesn't really show much interest in being any more of a leader than he is now,

which is to say the classic lead by example type. The good thing for him is that Albert Pujols is going to be here for a long time, and Albert Pujols is more than happy to fulfill that role on the team. And I think some of that role is more in words than it is in actions, I think, or at least in reality. I don't know. I'm not in their dining room. I'm not on their team flight, all that sort of thing.

But I think Albert Pujols is more than happy to be their leader. And they have actually a lot of vocal veterans on the team. Houston Street is a guy who's made that sort of his MO over the course of the last five years or so. I don't know that Trout will ever be a vocal leader with the Angels in the next five or six years on his deal. I don't think so. Have you gotten an interesting quote out of him yet? Has anyone? No. The funniest thing about him, his interviews, is that, and I really love this now that I noticed it, but I think about 60% of the time he will answer a question. His first two words will be, yeah, no.

And then he'll answer it. And it's really wonderful. I've never heard this from anyone else. Someone told me this might be a New Jersey thing, but I haven't heard that from any other Jerseyans that I know. So I'm not sure, but he, he starts the majority of his answers with, yeah, no. That's as good as it gets. You can't really have a better, a better tick than that.

As far as I'm concerned. I think it shows deep complexity of thought and character. He's sees both sides and everything. When he was younger, he, the first two words for every question were it's neat i love that i love that because athletes use that word and they never in interviews and they never use it in any other context so last year this team came into the postseason as the best regular season team in the league probably and there was a sense that it was very vulnerable i think just because they had lost richards and they were kind of patching the rotation together and now you kind of get the

same sense i mean you never got the sense that they were as intimidating as they were last year but if they do get in like is there anything about them that doesn't make them a stereotypically bad postseason team? It just seems like, given the injuries in the bullpen and the thinness of the rotation, maybe they just seem like the sort of team that fit every description of a team that doesn't do well in the playoffs, whether that is actually true or not. So do they have some sort of postseason weapon that I'm not paying attention to? No, or unless I'm not paying attention to it as well. If you were a believer in late season performance indicating playoff success, then maybe they

would have something. But the evidence seems to show that that does not really have any predictive ability. And so, no, I don't think so. Not really. I mean, they have the best player in the American League, and I guess that's got to be worth something. I think Garrett, one thing I will say is I think Garrett Richards has the potential to be one of the best starters in a given outing.

He is visibly one of the best pitchers in the American League. He just hasn't really performed like it for a good portion of the season. But last year, scouts would tell me again and again that he was one of their favorite guys, one of the best guys that they saw all year long. And so if he pitches like that today and maybe on Sunday or in the wildcard game, then, yeah, that could be incredibly valuable. Like you guys were saying the other day with the one player taken away from – with the RIP player type deal.

Having an ace, having a guy who can pitch like an ace is a huge asset. The Angels are extremely lacking in starting pitching relative to the rest of the league, but they do have one guy who could potentially pitch like the best. That's about all they have going for them. They've got Matt Latos finishing games. Yes, Matt Latos, who has a one-fifth chance, if the Angels make it, of getting a World Series ring, right? That's true, I guess, right. Last year, as I recall, with Richards injured, they went with a three-man rotation in the playoffs because they just didn't have— and of those three, one was C.J. Wilson, who had like an 80 ERA plus or something.

I know that Mike Socha won't tell you who's starting tomorrow, even when everybody knows it. But do you have any sense of what kind of rotation they would have? Would it be four? Who gets left out? Is Heaney in it? Who starts game two? And so on and so forth. Yeah, I have some sense.

It's a good question. Good to get into it now. So here's what it sort of looks like. On Sunday, Garrett Richards, I think, based on what Socha has said, is more likely than not going to start on short rest in Texas in the regular season finale if it helps the Angels, if winning that game can assure them a chance at the wild card or the division title. If it can't, then he doesn't start. And then he starts the first game of the playoffs or he starts opening day next year if they lose. And then the next best choice is Heaney and then Weaver and then probably Hector Santiago if they go to a four-man staff. And if not, then they have Garrett Richards start on short rest or Andrew Heaney. Of note here is

that neither Garrett Richards nor Andrew Heaney has ever started on short rest before in their lives. And so they will be doing something unprecedented and the Angels are going to be shorthanded incredibly in their starting pitching. They just don't have, I think their best pitcher in this, Heaney is definitively their best pitcher in the second half and everyone else has had like a 3.8 ERA or above. It's just not, they have not had a lot of success from the staff. And where do you think the GM search stands? Are they sitting on someone and waiting to announce? Are they still actively interviewing people? Yeah, they are actively interviewing people. I think the favorite, at least as of this week, they had been interviewing people. The favorite from everything I've heard remains Billy Epler, the assistant GM for the Yankees. And one reason that's sort of been floated as to why they haven't decided officially on him

is because of the possibility, the likely possibility, that they'll have to play the Yankees on Tuesday in the wildcard game. And it would be a little weird, a little, I don't know, a little colluding, collusion-esque to name a GM am like a couple days before your team your teams play each other so they might be waiting until after that or it could be a red herring and they couldn't i'm not sure it seems very likely that they're going to name someone who does not have gm experience which which fits with what we've expected for a while now since depoto resigned that uh that the angels would have trouble attracting someone who has a lot of experience doing this job

because of the potential clash with Mike Socha. So you think it is, as everyone has said, it's sort of a potential problem waiting to happen in that we just saw the problem happen and the cause of the problem didn't really go away unless the cause of the problem was Jerry DiPoto, but it seems like it's still ripe for the same thing to happen again. Or do you think that they will manage to

find someone who is prepared coming in and doesn't rock the boat? Well, I actually have a little bit different opinion on this than some others do. And it's only somewhat backed in truth and some of it's just backed in conjecture. I think that the bigger problem or at least the bigger reason for what happened in late June or late July with DePoto and Socia is actually the Angels owner, Artie Moreno,

and how he has meddled in the organization in recent years. I don't think anything got really that much worse with DePoto and Socia until just the very last couple days before they all went down. I think the bigger problem is that Depodo felt like he was being saddled with these decisions that he didn't make and Socia didn't make. So essentially, both of them felt like they were compromising, if that makes sense, on something that the other

wasn't benefiting from. Because it was Moreno's idea to sign Pujols, Moreno's idea to sign Hamilton, Moreno's idea to sign CJujols, Moreno's idea to sign Hamilton, Moreno's idea to sign C.J. Wilson. All three players whose contracts have become sort of burdens for the team here and not here in Hamilton's case. And so I think that really, and if you read into what Jerry DiPoto said yesterday at his press conference in Seattle,

where he for the first time openly said that Moreno was the deciding factor in the Hamilton and Pujols signings. I think it hints at the fact that maybe the problem is at the top and not near the top. And if so, then I don't know. Speculating on how someone like Billy Epler would work with Artie Moreno is tough to do. But I don't know that the problem is so much with Socia and more so with the owner. So a more traditional baseball problem than what we maybe thought we had. When Baltimore had a GM opening a few years ago, as I recall, there were some GM candidates who wouldn't even interview. DePoto might have been one of them. I can't remember. But anyway,

some guys wouldn't even interview because they just said, well, you know, I'm not going to take the job as Peter Angelos' GM. And after DiPoto left, there was some speculation that it was going to be a similar situation with the Angels that nobody would want to go to a front office where, you know, this guy that everybody really respected and who had this, you know, seemingly calm deportment cracked and left in the middle of a year. Has that been at all an issue that you've heard? Do you know if they have had any fewer candidates than they would have had in any other situation? Or are there any GM candidates who were just seen as non-starters because they didn't want to work for Artie or work over Socha? Yeah, I think that it's tough because you're sort of getting into some back-channeling type deals.

But I think there were definitely some candidates or some people that could have been candidates that they didn't even reach out to because of that. Because there was a mutual understanding that there was an interest in this. I know I've heard that Thad Levine wasn't interested in this job for probably parts of those reasons. And you're right, Sam. I also recall seeing something about DePoto in Baltimore and not wanting that job because of that. So, yeah, with something like this, there's so much speculation because as much as I would like to,

I don't know exactly what led to the DePoto resignation. And I think it's one of the more fascinating stories of this season is that here's a team who immediately went on to success right after that and is more likely than not to make the playoffs. And they lost their constructor midway through this year who immediately got hired somewhere else. So he didn't lose that much stature. And a lot of the pieces that have come into play this season for the Angels were DePoto acquisitions. And he made, from my perspective, a lot of good moves in his years here. And the Angels are going to replace him

with someone who's unproven, but from the same ilk. So, all right. Well, I'm enjoying Angels devil magic. And they've definitely made the last week of the season more exciting than I expected it to be. So at the very least, there's that.

Thanks for joining us. Everyone can follow Pedro on Twitter at Pedro Mora. Find him at the OC Register, there's that. Thanks for joining us. Everyone can follow Pedro on Twitter at Pedro Mora. Find him at the OC Register, ocregister.com. Thank you, Pedro. Thank you guys for having me. All right. And our Facebook groups at facebook.com slash groups slash Effectively Wild.

You can send us emails at podcast at baseballperspectives.com. Rate, review, and subscribe to the show on itunes and support our sponsor the play index by going to baseballreference.com and using the coupon code bp get the discounted price of 30 on a one-year subscription and we'll be back tomorrow hey everyone quick episode postscript from an older, wiser me. Naturally, the Garrett Richards-led Angels lost to the Barry Zito-led A's. Not only that, but they lost 8-7, which made it a one-run win for the A's and a one-run loss for the Angels. Also, Mike Trout stole a base.

The Angels are now half a game behind the Astros in the AL wildcard race. In conclusion, baseball is stupid, and I don't know why we like it. Talk to you tomorrow.