Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 795: The State of the Central Address

Episode Date: January 12, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about BP’s new catcher-defense stats, then discuss the AL Central’s offseason.

I'm central to nowhere, thinking of sweeping it clean. When we choose to go, we're losing more than just our surroundings. I've gone around the starts of this universe as it stands Outside the limits of all existence Well, I'd never end Good morning and welcome to episode 795 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from BaseballPerspectives.com. I'm Sam Miller along with Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight. Hi, Ben.

Hello. How are you? Great, and looking forward to this cornucopia of catcher defense articles at BP. Oh, yeah. And I'm going to read as soon as we finish recording. Yeah, it... This is like a day for me. It was designed for me. Yeah, why didn't you do this day when you were in charge?

I tried. Interesting. Yeah. We, you're right. As you noted, or as you're alluding to baseball prospectus, very, very, very vastly expanded the offerings of our catcher defense metrics. We already had rolled them out, but primarily for very, very modern years only because they relied on, you know, either pitch effects data or, you know, play-by-play data that was easily accessible. And as our stat team has worked on expanding it in the last six months or year, they've been able to, what, it's catcher framing data going back to 1988. Yep.

Which is the beginning of pitch-by-pitch data in the big 1988. Yep. Which is the beginning of pitch by pitch data in the big leagues. Exactly. Blocking and throwing data in the majors back to the 1950s. So you can now go find out just how good Yogi Berra was. And minor league framing data, depending on the level in the league, as far back as 2005. So you can go find out, for instance, how good Kenley Jansen was as a catcher. How good was he? Well, I can look it up if you want. I thought maybe you already had.

No, I have it somewhere. Let me see. I never dug into it, but I was... Did he catch at a high enough level? He might not have caught it a high enough level. He did. He caught in AAA. Oh.

All right. So let's see. Kenley Jansen was at AAA. He was a slightly below average framer. Uh-huh. Overall, he was a below average blocker. Overall, he was a below average blocker. He was below average at all three levels that we have him at. A high A, I believe low A, and triple A.

Below average at all three. And it looks like he was a, I'm going to say, let's see. He was slightly above average with the running game. So in his career as a minor league catcher, he saved about a run and a half with his arm, cost his team about a run with his blocking and his framing. We only have for his AAA. So it's, it's hard to say exactly, but he doesn't appear to have been a great framer. So, you know, around an average, maybe worse catcher defensively. All right.

So now you know. It's not wasted as a closer. It's okay. You want to know anybody? You want to know Neil Walker or Jason Mott? I got Josh Willingham here. I've got Will Myers. I've got all the ex-catchers.

Oh, Will Myers. That's interesting. Pablo Sandoval. You want Will Myers? Will Myers did not get high enough to give us framing data. But he was a well below average blocker and a slightly below average thrower. And as a catcher, basically in 2010, the one year that we have this stuff, just with those skills, he cost his team about five runs.

Wow. And presumably not a good framer, but we don't have that data yet. Yeah, five runs, that's a lot for blocking and throwing. Yeah, it is. Let's see. I'm seeing if any of the former catchers are good, were good defensively. Sandoval looks like, again, framing not really, only briefly a part of

Sandoval's data, but Sandoval was a positive contributor with his glove. And Josh Donaldson was about, Josh Donaldson was a positive contributor with his glove. And Jesus Montero, complete disaster. So yeah, there you go. All right. Josh Willingham, bad, bad catcher. Well, I'm glad this stuff exists. Yeah. I will spend hours poring over it. Yeah. Well, you used it, in fact.

I did for the Mike Piazza article. Not for us, though. No, not allowed. In fact, because of that, I didn't, Russell was going to write a Mike Piazza article, but he was so kind that he let you have it. So you actually are actively hurting the site. But all the people I brought to VP with that article. I do like Russell's piece on Russell Martin. That might be my favorite thing up there.

Yeah, looking forward to that too. All right. So speaking of, do you have any banter? Nope, that was it. All right. Speaking of things that appeared on Baseball Perspectives, in November, Matt Trueblood wrote a piece about the AL Central. And this was going into the offseason. It was right after the World Series, right before any signings or trades had happened. And he picked the AL Central because the AL Central was, in a lot of ways,

impossible to predict in the offseason. Not in the season, but a lot of ways, impossible to predict in the offseason. Not in the season, but in the offseason. You can't predict baseball offseason in the AL Central because you could make a case for all five teams to go in one direction or the exact opposite of that direction. So he laid out why it was hard to put each team exactly where they were. it was hard to put each team exactly where they were. I guess the summaries for each team would probably be like, well, that the White Sox had just invested a lot in the short term and saw it as their window and had some aging players and yet also had come off a very poor year

and weren't exactly like a game away from the World Series or anything. The Indians had, in some ways, the most encouraging season in that division by a component standpoint, and especially once they seemed to figure out their defense midseason. However, they're very poor, limited financially, and they only won 81 games.

The Tigers are the rich team, but they also are the team with the most money expended thus into the future, and they were the last place team. The Royals won the World Series, were the talk of the town, and yet were about to lose a whole bunch of key players and didn't seem to be financially positioned to sign them. And then the Twins were the surprise upstart team and are sort of seeing the fruits of their farm system, which was considered elite a couple years ago, pay off. And yet their successful, surprisingly successful season was also, in a lot of ways, a house of cards built on perhaps good luck.

Is that a pretty good summary of the five teams? Yeah. It is now January 12th, and a bunch of players have been signed. And more notably, in fact, a bunch of players have not been signed. Still no movement, Ben. Nope. Still no Justin Upton. Still no Chris Davis.

Not even really rumors. No? I mean, it's like Chris Davis will Not even really rumors. It's like Chris Davis will decide someday. That's about what we get. It's crazy. I read a report that Scott Boris is trying to sell him as a corner outfielder. I don't know if that qualifies as a rumor.

That qualifies. That's a rumor. I wouldn't think he wasn't a corner outfielder. Do you really need to sell him? He has played corner outfield. Right. What do you need to sell him for? I mean, I guess you can say he's willing to do it. If you asked him to do it, he would have a great attitude and be excited for the challenge. I don't know.

Are there any teams out there that are considering Chris Davis that hadn't already thought how would he handle the outfield? Well, the report made it sound as if he was pitching him as a full-time corner outfielder, which he's never been. And I don't know how he's graded out as one. Let's see. Not great, but he hasn't spent a lot of time there. He played 86 innings in left field in 2012 and then about 230 innings in right field that year

and then not again in either field until last season when he played 253 innings in right field. So he'd gone a couple years without doing it at all and hasn't done it much really. But don't you think that teams have already thought this this out though like they've already considered it maybe i don't i don't know that it helps him that much because there's two other corners market not moving what what he i mean what what it seems like what you should be selling him right now as is a premium like a what you want to get people thinking is that he's so good that he's worth

signing as a DH basically. I mean, you know, or a first baseman, but like you want to, it seems to me that you want to really like your messages. This guy is a better hitter than David Ortiz. This guy is a better hitter than Nelson Cruz. This guy is a better hitter than all the DHs. And so if you're one of those teams that wants a DH, don't be thinking, well, we don't really invest in DHs. This is the guy you do. This is the David Ortiz. And that's what, that's how I would be selling him because there's not an equivalent out there. Like I, I, he's a much better, when he's clicking, right. He's a much better hitter than Justin Upton and Cespedes, right? Yes. And so is right yes and so uh if you it seems like you'd

want to find the team that is looking for the best hitter yeah sure and i'll give you my money sell him as a corner outfielder and now he's i don't know i don't know i don't think he's better than justin upton or cesspit as as an outfielder yeah it's just added versatility i suppose right yeah which then just goes back to the like like, this is pretty common sense stuff. It's sort of insulting to a team that you have to remind them. Scott Porras would insult a team's intelligence about a free agent? That doesn't sound like him. Yeah.

Anyway, so that is just to say that we can, I think that you can now talk about the AL Central in a different way because we know what they've each done this offseason. And also because there is still work to be done. And it's interesting to see whether, or it might be interesting to think about whether any of these teams is the team that will sign Upton, Cespedes, Chris Davis, Wei-Yin Chen, Dexter Fowler, Howie Kendrick, Ian Desmond, or one of the other many free agents available, Giovanni Gallardo, probably others. All right, so let's start with the White Sox.

The White Sox were last year's surprise spender. They got David Robertson, Adam LaRoche, Melky Cabrera. They traded for Jeff Samarja. They were the—who was that team this year? I forget. The Diamondbacks. Is it the Diamondbacks? Yeah, that's probably the closest.

So yeah, they were, they were the, they were, they would have been the team that, that everybody remembered for quote unquote winning the off season if it weren't for AJ Preller. But then that team, which had a great, great core. I mean, I think you could make the case that the core of Sale, Abreu, Eaton was the best, maybe one of the best, certainly one of the best young cores in baseball. And then they won 78 games and finished 19 games out. So this off they traded for Brett Laurie, they traded for Todd Frazier, they signed Alex Avila, and they declined the option on Alexi Ramirez. And that's been their offseason, correct? Yes.

So does this, to you, seem like a team that is aggressively pursuing a crown? Or does it seem like a team that kind of split the difference? I wouldn't call this offseason especially aggressive. They targeted the weak point from last year, which was the infield. That was the concern coming into the year after they'd spent all that money was that they still didn't really have a player at like half of the positions where you have to have players and really for the white socks the infield has been the weak point for like 15 years yeah especially second base but also frequently third base so they address that

i mean frazier is a three or four win player, and they're upgrading from replacement level-ish last year probably, and Laurie is competent compared to what they had last year. So that's good. That's progress, and they get a full season of Carlos Rodon, who was very good down the stretch. That's a positive thing also, who was very good down the stretch that's a positive thing also but it's not an overwhelmingly impressive team i don't think they haven't really blown it out yeah and they still have um you know they they still have serious holes in their starting rotation i think most significantly

and they now no longer they no longer really have a shortstop. Nope. Tyler Saladino. Yeah. Let me see what we project Tyler Saladino to be. Yeah, we project, actually, we project not bad things from Tyler Saladino. I will say in their defense that we project at least a better than replacement level player. Not a good one, bad hitter, decent defense, at a premium position, good base running, not a disaster, not Gordon Beckham levels in the infield. So yeah, there is that.

I don't know exactly where this puts their payroll, but one of the things that was interesting about last year's is that as kind of with the Padres, they were able to acquire a lot of players without really going that high with their payroll. The White Sox had $115 million payroll last year, which put them behind the Reds and behind the Blue Jays and behind the Mariners and behind half the league. So, you know, you still do hear rumors about them. They seem to be maybe one of the teams that's slightly more likely to make a move going forward because you do still hear rumors. I mean, I don't get the feeling that they are a particularly daunting contender right now. Like if I had to pick, I would put them around 500, maybe slightly below and not really a threat to the existing baseball power

structure. I would agree with that. And so then that's a kind of a disappointing off season. Yeah, a little bit. Okay. The Tigers who finished in last place last year and had the fourth highest payroll in baseball.

And they got Jordan Zimmerman in one of the first big moves of the offseason and then after that have been notably frugal i've heard them linked to cespedes loosely but uh rather than go after one of these big offensive free agents they got cameron mabin who was kind of the bargain option, to play center field. And then they moved Anthony Gose to left, presumably. And so this is a team that... Hicks and bullpen moves.

Francisco Rodriguez and Justin Wilson. Oh, yeah, that's right. They did. So I guess if in a normal world, you might think that the Tigers would be the team that was most linked to these three remaining free agents because uh they have been a team that has well for one thing they have been a team that has signed big contracts late in the offseason not many the later you get into the offseason the fewer teams actually really have the flexibility to add 25 million dollars of payroll

the tigers the tigers uh owner seems to be very comfortable doing that in a way that a lot of owners are not, and he has given his GMs the freedom and flexibility to do that in a way that other owners have not. However, the thing about the Tigers is that they are pushing right up against the luxury tax, and it does seem that they don't want to go over that and that that is a barrier to them going forward yes that's all that's all i got to say okay well they could certainly use justin upton in left field uh-huh yeah and so really have a their left fielder is tyler collins on the depth

chart right now so a left fielder a cesspedes would be a pretty decent upgrade for them. Yeah. So the question is whether they are a 74 win team that should, that is actually much closer to winning the division or not. And I mean, in a sense, this is kind of the classic example of a team that is probably not that close. They're, you know, they're not, well, okay, let me rephrase that. They're not right on the cusp of winning 96 games or anything like that.

You could make the case that they're a team that has a slim chance of winning the division next year. However, given the makeup of their roster, it's not as though 2017 is going to be any better or 2018 is going to be any better. And so this might be the last best chance for such a thing. And so, you know, I don't know. I don't know how much the feeling is that this is the last chance to win in the Miguel Cabrera, Justin Verlander window, but neither of those guys is likely to be better in two years and they are going to be more expensive in two years so yeah and they've clearly gone part of the I

mean they've they've tried to make themselves better this offseason I think they could have gone the other way like they could have continued to do what they did at last year's trading deadline where they got rid of price and cesspitous. They could have tried to trade other people, could have traded JD Martinez or someone like that who has trade value. A lot of their people don't have trade value, which is a problem, but they could have tried to offload some people and they didn't. They brought in people. So it seems that they are at least hedging their bets for next year, or maybe trying to do more than that. And that's part of what makes all the teams, you know, uncertain positions, even more uncertain is that you don't actually know what their competition is going to be.

Like they don't know what it's going to take to win the central. They don't know how many teams are going to be, uh, you know, chasing 94 wins that it might be that it might be that 84 gets it next year, or it might be that at least 84 gets you within striking distance at the trade deadline. And it doesn't seem particularly likely at this point, given what we know about each team's offseason that any team is going to run away and win 100.. Uh, and so even if you thought that you weren't in a great competitive position in November, if you're the tigers, uh, every day that passes, it makes it sort of more compelling. The race seems a little bit closer. And if I'm, I think I would feel that way, maybe especially if I were the white socks,, because the White Sox have watched the Tigers

not really improve all that much, and that might have been the big threat. I guess you could argue that the Royals held more talent than you would have expected as the offseason began, and they were going to lose Ryan Madsen and Alex Gordon and Ben Zobrist, and they managed to keep Alex.

And Cueto. And Cueto, yeah yeah of course cueto although cueto added very little to their team last year uh and uh they they ultimately kept alex gordon which means that rather than losing you know eight or nine wins from their roster they lost like four or so uh four or five and so they they actually end up being, in a way, a team that is probably better than I expected them to be at this point because they kept Gordon. On the other hand, it's also somewhat depressing to think that the Royals

are in a position where they can win a World Series and still not really have any extra margins to act like a top half team. Now, we're somewhat underestimating what the Royals spend. The Royals had the same payroll last year, basically, as the White Sox. They were a median payroll team last year. So it is not as though the Royals are walking around carrying a bottom five payroll despite success. That would be the Indians, who seem to be in a lot of ways the team, other than maybe the Rays and maybe the Marlins,

with the most structural disadvantages in their market right now in the current era. And so they were the team that I know even in September, And so they were the team that I know even in September, our playoff odds were a few guys free and moving a couple guys to different positions and promoting a couple of guys. And the Indians, I don't know. I mean, if I had asked you if the season had reset at 0-0 on September 1st, my guess is that you would have picked the Indians for the AL Central. Yes. And so I think earlier in the offseason, I think you did pick the Indians for next year. I did.

And they, since you made that pick, and I don't know what you were expecting from their offseason, but since you made that prediction, they added Mike Napoli, and that's the whole story. And I don't know, does that change what you think at all? Or were you expecting, I mean, is it like, and they got Mike Napoli? Is it more like that? Yeah, it was mainly based on the talent they already had, more so than projecting them to do lots of stuff. I still think they're the best team in the division. They could definitely be better if they spent a little money because they're missing Michael Brantley for a good chunk of the season, some percentage of the season.

for a good chunk of the season, some percentage of the season. And so if they were to add a corner guy or a first base guy or something that would make them better, that would lengthen their lineup, it's an okay lineup as it is, but they're probably more of a pitching team still. And it helps that they can actually field now since that was really sapping the pitching before. But they could definitely benefit if they were to sign one of these remaining guys. But even if they don't, I think they are still, on paper, the class of this division. And why do you think that?

I mean, it's hard to say why a team is better than another team. Well, they have more good players, in my opinion. But do you? I mean, I assume that there are people who think, wait a minute, the Royals, you know, won 14 more games than them last year. Uh, and that's the second year in a row that the Royals have not only been much better than the Indians, but have, uh, or at least won many more games news, but outperformed their third order winning percentage to a significant degree. I assume your position of the Indians over the Royals is third order related, which is to say that given the number of hits and everything else that the Indians got and allowed, they looked like a team that should win about 93 games while the Royals looked like a team that should win about 86 games.

I assume that's the basis of your position, but is it more nuanced than that? If you, you can look at it that way, or if you just look at projections, they're projected to be better. And I wonder how much we will, we'll kind of bump up our Royals, our mental Royals projections for this year based on what happened last year, just because we were all so far off on the Royals that this year, if the projection says whatever it says, well, I wonder how many wins we'll take over that just because of what happened last year. So yeah, I don't think it's a huge difference, but I did think the Indians were a lot better than their record showed last year. And they brought back pretty much their whole team. And it would be nice if they added

to it a little bit, but I think even as is, they are a strong contender. It's interesting because the Indians are, you know, there, there's not a huge, one way of looking at it is there's not a huge difference between their payroll and, you know, say the league average payroll. It's like, you know, $25, $30 million a year usually. And that's partly because baseball props up the floor with revenue sharing. But, you know, $30 million seems like an interesting amount, but it's not a huge deal relative to, for instance, the difference between the top teams and the middle, which now you're looking at 70 million, 80 million, or if you go to the very top

teams, you know, 150 million between the median and the Dodgers, more than 100 million between the Yankees and the median. And that gap is much, much bigger. And so in one way of thinking about it, you go, okay, well, the fact that they're a bottom five payroll overstates it. But I think you really see it where teams like the Indians are concerned, where they're in a position where this is absolutely the point where you would spend money. They are in that sweet spot where every win is excessively more valuable than the average win or than a win in a vacuum. Because they are going to be right there somewhere between 84 and 88 in a division where somewhere between 87 and 90 probably gets it done. It's sort of a sweet little window for them. If they were a team that could carry the median

payroll, like the White Sox or like the Padres or like the Orioles, teams that we think of as not particularly advantaged, but slightly above the Indians, well, this would be the offseason where they go out and they make that one big move, like the Mariners. This would be the year that they would go out and they

get the one big player or maybe the Mariners, for instance. This would be the year that they would go out and they'd get the one big player or maybe the two big players or maybe three medium players. And the Indians just can't do that. And if you look at an off season like this, where they were last year, where they are going into this year, if they can't go bump up

and add 25 million for this year and go from 85 to 110, then it's just never going to happen, probably. Yeah, right. And I think the last news on Brantley was over a month ago, but there was a report that he might be out until June. That lineup looks a lot better with Brantley, and if he's not going to be in it for a good chunk of the year

and since he's coming back from shoulder stuff, who knows if he'll be quite his old self immediately. If you could add Cespedes or Upton to that lineup and just, I don't know, Platoon Davis and Almonte or something or figure it out, that would look a lot better and that would be a good place and a good time to spend. So yeah, the fact that they haven't suggests that they just can't or they're not willing to and they're not going to be.

And finally, we have the Twins who don't get, I mean, we don't generally praise the Twins front office a ton around here. And when we had Aaron Gleeman on last year we sort of talked about whether the Twins front office was going to be smart enough to see through their season to some degree we they they didn't have a season that convinced you that they were a great team already and that they should go all in last year or even this year and I kind of thought that I mean the I think that the way that we talked about them going into this offseason is that they would they would probably overshoot that they would think that they had a better team than they did and instead of being really patient they would go do something maybe not that farsighted and in fact they were if anything maybe passive to a fault this offseason

maybe I don't know. You could argue that. But they certainly didn't take last season and say, we're there. This is not the 2009, I think, Mariners, for instance, where they had kind of a fluky good season and then went out and spent a ton of money on some long-term deals that immediately turned bad. The Twins essentially got Byung-ho Park, and that's it. That's their entire off-season, which I think is probably better than the alternative. There are a lot of alternatives, of course, but it's better than the alternative of going out and sinking a lot of money into a couple of deals that really hamstring them in the future and make their 2017, 2018, 2019 projects harder to complete. So, you know, I think that it's sort of an admirably patient approach. I would not be

surprised if they sneak into a couple of rumors going forward. And at this point, I wouldn't begrudge them a move, another move. But it sort of seems like a team that is willing to take it a little bit slow, see where they are in July, and keep their window open for four or five years instead of just one or two. Yeah, I would think of them as more of a 2017 team. They still have a very twinsy rotation, and I think it's hard to build a great team with that kind of rotation. But you get a full season of Miguel Sano and that should be fun. And I guess

you get a full season of Byron Buxton. I don't know exactly what he'll be right now, but it should be entertaining to watch at least. And if they are good, if they have a first half that exceeds expectations, then I think people won't begrudge them mid-season trades the way that they did when we talked about them last July. So there's some upside. The flip side to this discussion is that they're in a lot of ways in a similar place to the Royals before 2014, before the James Shields trade, I should say. And we,

in a way, what we're saying is good job not doing that Royals trade that we all ripped at the time. And that, of course, we, in retrospect, were wrong about. Yeah. So I don't know. I don't know that you should listen to us. No, probably not. All mauer makes me sad does he joe mauer was want him to be better yeah i know joe mauer was just like the joe mauer is gonna be pretty close he's he's gonna and i think he'll be pretty close to the best player through age 30 that doesn't make the hall of fame yeah like he's i don't know if he will get there, but he was a 45 win player through age 30 as a catcher, which the,

like we talked about the standard for catchers and jaws and hall of fame standards are lower because they don't play for as long and they don't play as much. So he was basically, you know, two, three good years from being an easy Hall of Famer. And now I just, he's not really like, I, I, I don't think he's going to get there anymore.

No, people used to make Jason Kendall comps with him just because he had had a heavy workload and he was an on base guy. So there were fears that maybe he would age like jason kendall and i guess he kind of is except that because of the concussion he couldn't and shouldn't catch and that means he has to play first base and jason kendall as a first baseman would not have lasted very long yeah joe marr was was absolutely one of the great viewing experiences i think of of the era and probably not i mean certainly not enough credit in minnesota it doesn't sound like but but i don't know we've it's only been two years since his prime and i've already kind of forgotten about it but okay so

war war through age 30 for catchers by baseball reference. Maurer is number six all time ahead of Mike Piazza, ahead of Carlton Fisk, ahead of Buster Posey, who's actually not 30 yet. So that's a little bit of a cheat, but he's going to be ahead of Buster Posey probably when all is said and done, you know, ahead of everybody except Bench, Carter, Pudge, Torrey, and Ted Simmons.

That's good. All right. So we got an impromptu play index here under the wire. Okay. You can send us emails for tomorrow, most likely, at podcast at baseballperspectives.com. Join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. Rate and review and subscribe to the show on iTunes. And support our sponsor that Sam just used, playindexatbaseballreference.com.

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