Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 771: Trout-Harper Redux, and the Week in Clubhouse Gossip

Episode Date: November 20, 2015

Ben and Sam discuss the latest gossip about the Mariners and Marlins, then do another career comparison of Mike Trout and Bryce Harper.

Everybody hears what they want to hear Makes them feel so big, secrets in their ear Gossip gonna get you down You can't stop me Flying through the town Good morning and welcome to episode 771 of Effectively Wild, a daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, presented by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I am Ben Lindberg of Fiveindberg of 538 joined by

sam miller baseball prospectus sitting in the stomper's office in sonoma california yo first time we've ever recorded a show from there anything you want to say uh no what are you talking about today i think a few things i wanted to know what you're talking about before i know whether we're going to go on to what we're talking about. Okay. Some Harper and Trout. Oh, good. I was good.

I want to do like a three-minute draft that is Harper and Trout related. Probably even less than that. No explanation needed. Rapid fire. We could probably do it in 80 seconds. Okay. So tell me when we're ready. All right.

Well, I want to talk about that. I want to talk about some baseball dirt and gossip that we've heard the last couple of days. That's been kind of fun. And I don't know, maybe something else, but if you want to start with Harper and Trout, we could do that. Well, why don't we do something else? Because it takes a slight amount of work on my end to get this ready. Ah, okay. All right. Well, the most enjoyable thing about yesterday was the Andy Vents-like interview on CBS Radio in St. Louis. And he went on and he dished a bunch of dirt on a few different people.

bunch of dirt on a few different people. There was some Yasiel Puig stuff that seemed like it probably came from his son, Scott Van Slyke, who has been a teammate of Yasiel Puig. And he told a story about the highest paid person on the Dodgers demanding that or asking or suggesting that Puig be traded. And he was very specific about who that person was. He said it was the highest paid player. And then the host said, oh, is this an Adrian Gonzalez story? And he said, nope, highest paid player. And then the host said Clayton Kershaw. And then Vince said, I didn't say that.

So that was pretty great. And I what scott thought when he heard that that's probably going to be somewhat awkward if he told that story in confidence anyway vince like has been he was obviously a former player he's been a coach and you just don't tend to hear this sort of thing from people in baseball and it's fun in a way when we do when we get these rare glimpses much of what he said was about robinson cano and vance like was a mariners coach and he did not have nice things to say about robinson cano in fact i believe he said that Cano had like the worst season he's ever seen he said he's the worst everyday player he's ever seen he also said he also said the worst second base defense he's ever seen yes to be fair his defense wasn't it

doesn't look great on metrics after a long career of great metrics and van slijk was clear that he was talking about sort of range and preparation and not not botching airs which is probably good awareness on van slijk's part because uh boy it's hard to say the worst defensive second baseman ever made six airs yeah so he did anticipate your shows the progress of the understanding of defense exactly and yeah he said that he couldn't drive home miss daisy which was like a good line i guess and he basically claimed that cano cost everyone their job like everyone gm hitting coach himself everyone got fired because of robinson you know basically worst worst everyday player he's ever seen and that nelly cruz was the was the best hitter he's ever seen yeah right or

what did he say he said the most dominant or something yeah the most dominant or something like that for four months yeah and as you pointed out the craziest part was that the host actually ended the segment yeah at one point vance likes like oh man how much time do we have left and the host is like three minutes and you can just see the host going no why did i say that yeah this is forever greatest radio and yeah so he did say nice things about some people. So it wasn't like he is just a guy who hates everyone. So and Cano, of course, had like a typical Cano second half. I mean, he was terrible in the first half, but he had some injury stuff going on. And he came back and was fantastic.

He was exactly the sort of guy that they were paying for in the second half. But that apparently didn't improve any Vincelyke's opinion of him at all. And Van Slyke has always been an outspoken guy or a quotable guy, so this isn't necessarily new. But it is new because you never really hear this sort of thing from people in baseball about other people in baseball unless it's anonymous. other people in baseball unless it's anonymous and the mariners have been the source of like the juiciest gossip that we've heard over the last few years with the jeff baker article that came out in the seattle times a couple years that described the dysfunction of the mariners front office and really like no one who is quoted in that article has worked in baseball since then, I don't think. Like the primary sources for that were Tony Bungino and Eric Wedge and Carmen Fusco, the scouting guy.

I'm pretty sure none of those people has had a job in baseball or doesn't have one now. And there could be other reasons for that. Maybe they don't want another job in baseball, but it does sort of support the idea that this is why people don't say interesting things on the record, because maybe you're not going to get another job, because unless you are awesome at whatever you do, no one wants someone who they feel like is a loose cannon or is going to come out and say a bunch of terrible stuff about you when they're gone. But it's fun for us, I guess, to hear this sort of thing, because it's not the sort of thing that we usually hear. And I guess it's a continuation of things that we've heard about Cano.

I mean, when he was in New York, it was always the he doesn't hustle and he doesn't try to beat out base hits. And I did an article on that once about how, you know, it probably only cost him a few hits a year. One of your better articles. Thank you. And if he's, you know, saving himself from a single hamstring pull or something, it's probably worth it to the team, but definitely contributed to a fan perception of him and maybe a front office perception or field staff perception of him. And certainly didn't seem like the Yankees were too broken up about him departing. So I guess this is the Cano reputation, even when he is

awesome. And so when he's not awesome and when he's slumping, then everyone's even quicker to turn on him. But I guess this is why we never hear this sort of stuff. It's because people want to keep their jobs or they want to get new jobs and it's hard to do. And I guess you really have to be pushed far by some sort of front office ownership dysfunction to actually get to the point of saying these things publicly. So that's fun. And then there's lots of Marlins stuff that came out also. And I mean, that is maybe not so surprising because it's the Marlins and they made a GM their manager, which was weird. And you figured there would be some kind of fallout from that. I didn't actually think it sounded that bad. I don't know if you read the report from Andy Slater, who is a local TV guy or radio guy,

and he came out with these stories about the Marlins clubhouse that have kind of been verified or, you know, elaborated on by other people. And it didn't sound that much worse to me than I would imagine a losing team owned by Jeffrey Loria that made a GM the manager would be. Like, you know, there's some negativity and Jeff Baker was like handing out clown noses and playing circus music and stuff, which...

Different Jeff Baker than you previously yes not the seattle times by the way right that guy gets around yeah um and like you know like marlin's owner jeffrey loria implemented a team rule stating that players and coaches are not permitted to wear pullover hoodies during batting practice or in the dugout during a game and then a player source says jose fernandez doesn't care about that rule i mean i'm sure no one would care about that rule so that doesn't really say that much to me about this clubhouse or you know casey mcgee like getting mad at fernandez because fernandez was late to a game or something. I mean, this, you know, this seems like typical rookie veteran stuff. I mean, we saw it this year with David Wright and Noah Sindergaard, right? And that team went to the World Series and both of those players were good.

So that stuff happens on baseball teams and it doesn't necessarily affect the team. And the Marlins played better under jennings than they had under redmond at least record wise they improved slightly after that hiring and i don't know the the stuff about the front office not really liking fernandez or fernandez asking about when he's going to get traded which it's not clear to me whether he's kind of joking like whether that's just gallows humor that you have to have if you're a young player with the marlins because young players with the marlins almost always get traded and that seems like the attitude that i would have if i were a young star with the marlins is when i'm when am i gonna get traded so i don't

know not not like a huge shocker that things aren't great all the time with the Marlins. And not everyone is thrilled to be with the Marlins. But anyway, it's been a good week for baseball gossip. Yeah. I was interested in some of those details, but I was not convinced that there was anything abnormal about that clubhouse or anything like that. Neither was I. there was anything abnormal about that no clubhouse or anything like that neither was i maybe that's a product of being in the stompers clubhouse and seeing the stuff that happens but even if we hadn't done that it just doesn't sound to me like it's so far out of the ordinary the

weird thing is when you start hearing front office people and coaches talk about things that's a little more unusual so so so what is the i i have seen i don't know if they came from the same report but i've seen reports this week referred to that the marlins are worried or you know want to trade or might trade out jose fernandez because of his attitude or they don't like his attitude or whatever about his attitude and that always that sort of struck me as odd because fernandez was considered an elite makeup guy when he was young that was a huge part of his first of all his prospect write-ups but also the fact that he was able to come up when he was you know he had basically never pitched above high a and go straight to the majors it was because he was an elite makeup guy and uh you

know frankly if who cares what your attitude is if you're an elite makeup guy? I mean, it depends what you mean by makeup. And an elite player. Yeah, it depends what you mean by makeup. Usually you mean it either gives you the mental fortitude to make yourself the best person, best player you can possibly be, or you're good around your teammates. And maybe as a prospect, his personality was seen as being very strong in the former. And I don't know, maybe now that he is in a major league clubhouse, they focus more in the former and i don't know maybe now

that he is uh in a major league clubhouse they focus more on the latter i don't really know it's i i'm not i have no position on jose fernandez makeup but it's uh weird to see a guy's behavior sort of the perception of it changed so much within the organization yeah and it's not new for their stars and faces of the franchise to be unhappy with management. I mean, Stanton had his own dissatisfaction and tweets when the Marlins traded everyone, and he ended up signing the long-term extension. So if you're a Marlin, you're going to be unhappy at some point, probably. And the Marlins also, evidently, Jeffrey Loria hates Marcelo Zuna

And Marcelo Zuna probably hates Jeffrey Loria Because of the service time manipulation stuff So standard Marlins I wonder It does sort of feel like every Marlins star For the last 12 years Has had some sort of bump Where they were on the outs with their organization

I wonder if that's true or if i'm selectively remembering why wouldn't you know i mean yeah either if you're a marlin star either you you're frustrated because there aren't enough other good players or you're getting jerked around or you're always the subject of trade rumors or you're not going to get signed and you just want to get it over with so i can understand why marlin's player would be unhappy to be a marlin anyway we can move on to harper and trout all right i sent you a file i see that you got to go real quick because it's a boring draft real quick okay so it's just got to be like this has to be instinct this has to be you know

the blink test okay yes so i've listed harper and trout for each year from now until 2034 and you're going to just pick a year and that year's off the board and then i'm going to pick a year and that year's off the board and we're going to see who gets more warp. Okay. So you're picking the player and the year. All right. For when you think these guys are going to be the most valuable. So there are different philosophies you could have here and I'm not sure what your philosophy will be. We will do it very quickly. Okay. You ready? All right. You go first. Okay, I'll start with Harper 2019. All right, I'll go Trout 2017. All right, Harper 2018.

Okay, I'll go Harper 2016. Okay, Trout 2016. I already took that. Oh, Trout 2017. Okay, I'll take Harper, no, Trout 2018. Okay, Trout 2017 Okay, I'll take Harper No, Trout 2018 Okay, Trout 2019 Ah Harper 2020 Alright

Harper 2021 Oh, interesting Yeah, I'm switching from Trout to Harper Alright, Harper 2017 Ah, is that not taken? That was still on the board? Oops Okay Harper 2022 All right, Harper 2017. Is that not taken? That was still on the board? Oops. Okay.

Harper 2022. Harper 2022. Wow, you're going all Harpers, and you're just going straight up the line, huh? I took one trout in there, but yeah. All right, Harper 2023. All right. Switching trout. What's the soonest I can take?

2020. 2020. Okay. I'll take Harper 2024. All right. Trout 2021. I should say, all right, Trout 2022. Okay.

Harper 2024. Already taken. You can do Trout 23 or Trout 24 or Harper 25. Okay. Trout 23. Okay. taken you can do trout 23 or heart or trout 24 or harper 25 okay trout 23 okay i will take i'm going trouts all the way trout 24 okay so can i just take all the harpers all the way yeah all right okay done great draft yeah i loved it the fire the energy everybody you everybody at home playing along yeah with their spreadsheets furiously written by hand so i guess the interesting thing maybe is that we both switched back and forth a lot i like with no discernible pattern um well and it's interesting

i i went all recency at first like i i'm very i think that 2016 is the best year that you can bet on for either of them i would not expect i would not bank on growth i'd neither i would neither bank on growth nor would i want to absorb that risk okay so yeah so i wanted to bring this up because we periodically do a Harper Trout episode. We did one in episode 282. You know, Ben, this is, by the way, this is a great draft result for me because the odds are that by the end, well, by the end of the first year, I'm going to have a huge lead on you. That's true.

And if I just kill the podcast before the second year, I'll never have to address anything else good point yeah so we did a harper and trout episode in september of 2013 when it was very clearly trout in a landslide and then we did a harper and trout episode 672 and that was early may of this year and we reassessed them then and we talked about how Trout had clearly been ahead since basically the beginning of his first full season and that there hadn't really been any reason to think otherwise in the two years since then and I think I just went back and listened and you thought there would be a 98% chance that Trout would be the better player over the course of their careers. And this was, you know, a month into the season.

Obviously, Harper was having an excellent season. And so that made us reconsider a little bit. But we still hadn't seen enough to switch from our trout first perspective. And you were wondering if there would ever be a period when Harper will be better than trout. And you said that you weren't sure whether a single season would be enough to tell us, but that if a healthy Harper ever has a better year than a healthy trout, then you would be comfortable saying that Harper was better than trout over that single season. would be comfortable saying that harper was better than trout over that single season so i will ask now that harper had a unanimous mvp season and trout had a runner-up mvp season are you comfortable saying that bryce harper was better in 2015 than mike trout who was better it's really close. I mean, by war, it's like half a win basically separating them, Harper ahead.

And all the systems have their own little differences. And there's a margin in the measurement as well as a margin in just the, the, the way that events cluster together. Uh, and it's very, it's very consistent. I mean like fangrass, it's half a win baseball reference. It's half a win BP.

It's actually a full win, 11 wins to 10 wins. Every system had Harper first and trout second by a small amount, like within the margin of error, basically. So I guess you can say that Harper clearly had the better offensive season. I don't think there's any doubt about that. And, you know, they were both valuable in other ways. But basically it just comes down to Trout was, by the metrics, a pretty good center fielder.

And Harper was, by the metrics, a pretty good center fielder and harper was by the metrics a pretty good right fielder and a pretty good center fielder gets more value than a pretty good center fielder so it's just a question of whether you think that overcomes the offensive difference or whether there's a big enough gap there to really say that one was better than the other. And it's really close. So your answer is, am I confident in saying that or something like that? And no, I wouldn't be confident either way. But if you had to pick one? If I had to pick one last year, if I had to take their true talents last year, I would rather have had Bryce Harper. I shouldn't say true talent.

Their demonstrated talent, their performance. I would rather have Bryce Harper than Mike Trout. I think I would too. I'm not sure that I believe there is a big enough difference in their defense that Harper couldn't also play center field. Yeah, he played center for 13 games or something. Right, but I'm saying at a level close enough to Trout that is smaller than the offensive gap.

Uh-huh, okay. Yeah, I mean, Harper had the hottest hot streak ever. We thought that at the time when we talked about him turning the corner he did turn the corner yes he definitely turned the corner and trout was already around the corner and then i looked at that statistically with rob mckeown's help at bp and it really was the hottest hot streak ever over you know spans of 50 or 60 or 70 or whatever play appearances no one had ever been hotter at least in the last 60 or 70 years so it's hard to ignore that just the fact that like for a period of a couple weeks or whatever it was harper was just better than anyone like better than barry bonds

over any couple weeks so hard to that makes a big impression just to see that. But obviously it wasn't confined to just a couple of weeks. So I think I agree that if I could, I mean, yes, the demonstrated ability, and even if I could just replay that season a thousand times, I think I'd probably draft Bryceryce harper right ahead of mike trout i'd rather have the guy who has bryce harper's distribution of value than mike trout's distribution of value it might be look if it's if it's the old like if you had to start a team question uh then maybe uh i'd take trout but again like i think that bryce harper again, I think that Bryce Harper could play center field

if he needed a center fielder. I think he could play center field better than Cespedes. I think he could play center field better than some center fielders do. So even that positional value that Trout brings in roster building isn't necessarily that big an advantage. Are we still talking about this? Yeah. Okay, because I do want to bring up another thing about Trout,

but not until you're done with your rhythm. Well, so if you were, in May, 98% certain that, in the end, Trout would be the better player just over the body of his career than Trout. What percentage are you at now? This was all going forward, right? This is not who will end with more war. Well, we could talk about it two different ways. What was my 98%?

I think 98% was cumulative, was from day one to the last day of both players' careers. So Trout has plus 20 on him right now yeah and one fewer year of life left presumably uh-huh yeah or yeah probably yeah i don't want to forecast their death dates but yes like should we do a draft probably not so what are the odds that bryce harper makes up 20 i mean geez dude he's there's a pretty good chance he's gonna make up seven or so next year and so then he what are the chances he makes up 14 or 12 or somewhere in there uh i mean trout still had like the best start to a career

so trout is still trout still might have been the best player in baseball last year yeah Yeah, right. And I guess I would give Trout like 80%, 70% to 80%, probably 80% chance to win the career war total. Okay. And then from today on total? Like 52%. So you'd still rather start the franchise with trout right now

i would yeah man that's a tough one i don't know 52 is probably about right i don't really know who should be first but yeah i don't know it's those extra pop-ups that trout runs out that harper doesn't. Do you want to know their Pocota projections for next year? Sure. Let me see. I think that I have them. Or their next 10 years. I think I have them.

Trout's comparables this year are John Carlos Stanton, Yasiel Puig, and Frank Thomas, which is very interesting and which will lead into the question that I have for you. So he's a projected 8-warp player next year. Harper is a projected five-warp player. And his comparables, Jason Hayward, Bernie Carbo, and Mike Trout. Wow. I can get next nine years. Uh-huh.

So a six-win player through the next nine years, which will only take him to age 31, by the way. Right. So that's like nothing. And then Trout is like 60 over the next nine years. So, yeah, that's pretty close. I mean, that's about – Pocota would probably say there's a high 50s percentage chance that Trout is better than Harper going forward. But, of course, look, this will be decided. I mean, if you look at a lot of players' careers,

ultimately, whether they get to 160 like Bonds or they get to 90 like Griffey has much less to do with what they do in their 20s and much more to do with what they do in their 30s. And we have no meaningful way of predicting what they're going to do in their thirties, what their careers are going to be. None, zero. It is like, it is like doing, you know, the 10 day weather forecast out to forever, right? You just cannot, at a certain point you cannot do it. And so probably a pretty good bet is just to say it's kind of a

coin flip going forward but with a little edge to who you think is better right now and i think right now that trout is a little better than harper still okay so now can i ask you my trout go ahead trout of course has had as has been noted many times has had four astoundingly good years that are in a lot of ways very different good years uh and all of them are basically nine to 10 win seasons, sometimes getting up to 11 on one metric or as low as seven or eight in another metric. All of them pretty much agree that total is about the same. And he has had the year where he's led the league in steals. He's had the year where he led the

league in slugging this past year. He had the year where he led the league in walks year two, the year where he led the league in strikeouts year three. He's been four very different, well, in some ways, four different players over the course of those four years, all more or less the same value. Which of those players is your favorite trout? Or if you could lock that trout in for 10 years, which would you want? I think the first one.

The one who does everything, who's an elite center fielder, who's an elite base runner, who in mid-August was leading the league in offensive runs, base running runs, and field runs. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. Maybe it's like the first album you hear by a band is your favorite album by that band, that kind of thing. But I think just he was just so good at every single thing.

It was just fun to look at every leaderboard and see him at the top of it, even if he's just as valuable now or pretty close to as valuable now. And I mean, I kind of like the 40 home run hitter trout too like i'm curious to see how far that can go i mean when he gets a little older is is he gonna add even more power is he gonna be a 50 homer guy yeah so i'm i'm fascinated to see where he goes next but i guess it's unlikely that he's going to go all the way back to 2012 trout who just did everything incredibly well i mean i don't i don't know whether he actually was i mean you watched him more regularly than i did i don't know whether his defense that year was so clearly better than his defense since and whether it he really did seem to be like

on the very short list of best defenders in baseball or whether that was more of a you know statistical fluctuation sort of thing but yeah i mean he was just the best at everything except like throwing like people would talk about how he just kind of had an average arm or something and that was like the worst thing you could possibly come up with to say about him so i think that will be the trout that i remember the most yeah his uh it's he's always kind of uh when when he's competing mvp votes and things like that it's always talked about how well he's you know he's such a well-rounded player he's he's good at everything and all that and in a way it it's almost like his bat is just his pure bat has become like tremendously underrated like he's got the eighth highest ops plus in history and he hasn't even hit

like he hasn't hit his decline years that's true but he also hasn't come close to his peak years and he's he's i mean he's essentially hitting he's putting up the numbers that like the best hitters in the 90s were putting up and he's doing it in a pitcher's park in a pitcher's era at 23 i mean he's got his opiate partly this is because it pools has had some of his decline years, but he's a better hitter in his career than Albert Pujols. He's a better hitter in his career than Stan Musial. He's a better hitter in his career than Frank Thomas. He's a better hitter in his career probably than Hank Aaron to this point overall. And that's like kind of, like you're right. If there's's if you put him in a park

that boosted his power a bit if you give if you if the era comes back a little bit to a more you know neutral or hitter friendly era this guy is like uh you know he's a he's potentially a 60 home run hitter which nobody even saw the 30s coming yeah yeah that was kind of what frustrated me about the first trout cabrera debate was that everyone was making the like cabrera is clearly the better hitter but trout makes up for it in all these other ways but like trout was just as good a hitter that year as cabrera was at least park adjusted wise and I mean I guess Cabrera you know played a few more games and had a few more plate appearances and so maybe the the bulk of what he did was better but on a per plate appearance basis rookie Trout was just as

good as Miguel Cabrera that year and you didn't really need like the pace running and the defense and all the other things that made the separation clear with the exception of Cabrera's second MVP which is really a phenomenal I mean that was and that was his best year by far as a hitter with the exception of that basically Trout's four years are Miguel Cabrera's four best years of his career at this point. And yeah, I mean, they were, right, you're right. They were the same hitter and then Trout had a big hitter. Let's talk about the 2012 MVP voting again, forever and ever. All right.

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