Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 90: The Cheapskate Approach to Aroldis Chapman/The Phillies and Framing/Ranking Baseball Figures By Historical Importance

Episode Date: November 28, 2012

Ben and Sam answer listener emails about how the Reds might save some money on Aroldis Chapman, whether certain teams might benefit more from framing than others, and where we would rank Marvin Miller in the pantheon of important historical baseball figures.

Good morning and welcome to Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus. It is episode 90. Ben, if we stop recording for the week, we can end this week. Yeah, but as you said, we will probably miss some days soon for upcoming holidays, and then we'll be off kilter again. Not if we skip those weeks. Yes, we could just skip strategically. People will understand because of my fixation on that. because of my fixation on that. It is email Wednesday.

We have some emails. Well, we have some emails. Did we say who we are and what we're doing here? Well, I said the name of the podcast. Okay, that's enough. All right. So we have some emails. We have chosen a few that we will read almost for the first time.

Yeah. And we will answer them as best we can. Do you want to read a question? I do. This first question is from Scott from Cincinnati, and he says, I was wondering if moving Chapman to the rotation is the best move for the Reds. Obviously, there is no debate on starter innings versus reliever innings, but I'm looking at this more from the financial standpoint. And what is better for the Reds specifically? I believe Chapman has three years left on his deal. Being left-handed, I am sure he would get a huge deal as a starter,

even if he wouldn't meet expectations. That probably puts the Reds out where they could be in the mix to make him a top-paid closer. So my question is, would it be better for the Reds to have three seasons of Chapman starting or another eight or so years of him closing? So now we are going to talk about the Reds. And a starter reliever conversion question. Yes.

Well, I think that specifically he just wants to know whether – if I'm understanding the question right, he's suggesting that perhaps the Reds could in a way sort of sabotage his value and therefore keep him longer. Or sabotage his earning potential, I guess. I think it was more his value, but there would be two sort of ideas maybe that could be incorporated into that. One is that he would make less in arbitration if he were a reliever, and also that he would make less on the open market if he were seen as a reliever. I think that that is probably not a strategy that teams would be well to follow because the Reds want to get as much value out of him as they can while they have him. And that's probably their primary goal. There's probably, I would say, if he thought that he was going to be a starter

and the Reds refused to let him, he would actually be more likely to leave after he reached free agency so that he could become a starter elsewhere. And so I would say that the Reds should concern themselves with getting as much value out of him as they can before he goes and becomes a Dodger in years. So it's like a bait- switch basically we're we're paying him to be a closer and then we will make him a starter finally once he's making closer money i mean

they could make him a right fielder and then he would be really terrible like he probably wouldn't be worth like even like a million dollars at that point so you could sign him forever if you were right fielder uh i mean if you if you if you made him be a catcher he probably would like just imagine how bad or all this chapman would be but he would still i mean would he make less money because he would still have the potential to be the pitcher it's not like anyone is like oh i guess he's a catcher now i guess he can't play any other position i think that's exactly right i think that it would just be well i don't know i mean um okay so to to i mean i i think that we're basically dismissing the idea but just to to to at least talk about it can you think of um uh are there pitchers who have gone through the starter slash reliever dance at a young age

and then after just like five or six years made the switch? I guess CJ Wilson always wanted to start, and he finally got to with his team. And maybe like Carlos Villanueva right now is wanting to be signed as a starter. But, you know, It does seem like once you kind of get set, like Papelbon. Nobody's talking about Papelbon as a starter. Maybe that gave you one

example. Maybe one example is nothing. Yeah, well I guess it took Feliz a while but he was still under team control and everything and I guess he didn't have the arbitration. Yeah, and it took him a year and a half. Yeah.

All right. Well, okay, so we're going to come down against the idea of deceiving Earl Dischapman into paying him less money. Yeah. All right. Hopefully we understood that question correctly. Yes, and if if not we will never Cincinnati is probably thinking why are they making fun of me Scott in Cincinnati is wondering why we're making fun of him when that's not even what he was asking right it's not a bad question

we just we uh we just object to talking about the reds in general. Yes. Okay, next question. Let's see, maybe this will be kind of a quick one. I've been thinking a lot about the Jose Molina discussion a few weeks back in relation... This is not going to be a quick one. I think it might be. It's Ben Lindberg plus Jose Molina. I'm going to leave.

I'm checking out. This is from Joel by the way I've been thinking a lot about the Jose Molina discussion A few weeks back in relation to the Phillies The team I most closely follow Watching their starting staff They are also reliant on command And getting calls on the corners for success

Whether it's Halliday, Hamels or Lee Or even Kendrick or Worley All five pitchers excel when they are getting calls I'm sure this is true of most pitchers in baseball, no doubt about it, but it does feel particularly unique to this staff, or maybe it's myopic view as I watch more Phillies games than any other team. Anyway, I guess the question is this. How much better could a great framing catcher add to a staff like this?

Carlos Ruiz has a great reputation in the Phillies clubhouse for game calling and handling of the staff, but what if you added Molina-like framing to his arsenal? Is he saving 50 runs as a catcher with any staff, or is it possible that number goes up when he's catching pitchers more reliant on this skill set? So I guess— Well, can I answer a little bit, and then you can talk forever? Well, I only just wanted to point out that Carlos Ruiz apparently is good at this already.

He's really good at it. But that's what I was going to say is I wonder whether he – I wonder whether a catcher who catches these type of pitchers actually would be in a position to accumulate a lot more positive value by our metrics because of it. I mean we talked a little bit about who gets the credit for this. And I think you lean definitely toward the catcher, and I lean mostly toward the catcher. But, you know, I don't know that – it doesn't seem to me that Rui's ever had that reputation before we started measuring it. No. Well, I don't even know that he's been that great in previous years it seems like i was just looking at max's numbers and he didn't seem to be that great for previous

years but this year he was like 30 runs compared to molina's yeah which is really good uh and he missed all that time i think when i looked at one point i thought he was leading baseball and then he missed all that time. Yeah. I wonder if catching, for instance, I wonder if catching Cliff Lee and Roy Halladay is like the equivalent of like playing right field in AT&T Park, where you just like, you get turbo boosted numbers. But I also wonder, I don't know. I mean, I think with my general impression of pitchers is they're very bad at locating pitches.

What you think of as a pitcher with good command misses by six inches every time instead of by eight inches every time. As you said, Ian Kennedy can just stand at the plate and walk all the time. Yeah, exactly. And so I'm a little, I have to admit, even though we talked about it with Molina, I'm a little skeptical of the idea that there are many pitchers who are actually able to carve off, you know, an inch at a time the way that, you know, that a catcher like this might really be deployed effectively. But if anybody can, I mean, it would certainly be Cliff Lee and Roy Halladay and, you know, a little bit of Hamill. I mean, like we noted before, I think they had the lowest walk rate in baseball this year. And so they are those kind of pitchers. I guess in the abstract, the less able you are to get swinging strikes, possibly the more you would benefit from having a good framing catcher i suppose if you are

more reliant on called strikes as a as a percentage of your total strikes uh david robertson is as i've mentioned one of my favorite people also and he is notable for getting a ton of called strikes he gets more called strikes than I think any pitcher except Carlos Marmel as a percentage of strikes. So called strikes over total strikes. And I wonder how much of that has been the fact that he has had good framing catchers for basically his entire career. I'm sure that has something to do with it, although I think it has a lot to do with his deception, but that is an entire other podcast topic. I would not have guessed Carlos Marmo.

You should have. Yeah, I think it is Carlos Marmo because, yeah, I don't know. I guess we should have done a 20 minute podcast of you just throwing that out there and me guessing pitchers. All right. I'll edit it out. OK, well, I'm going to now I'll guess it now i know yeah uh and okay and there was other carlos ruiz news last night but i guess we won't get into that um did you have anything else to say about jose melina etc or are we moving on i think we should probably move on if i start the marvin

do the marvin miller one all right start the marvin miller do the marvin miller one all right uh the marvin miller one is chris from durham north carolina rank in order of importance to the history of baseball marvin miller jackie robinson branch ricky tennessee mountain landis bud selig rob deer so um the i mean i i'm not gonna rank them i don't really know how to rank them but i when i saw that question um what it sparked in my mind is the i mean it's everybody who i follow uh is you know are they're all big fans of marvin mill I'm a big fan of Marvin Miller. He was extremely good at his job. I think that the skill that he used in bringing these changes to baseball showed, you know, I mean, he was just a remarkable strategist,

very disciplined man, and clearly was on, you know, the right side, I think. It was as far as fairness and equity and just being right. I don't think there's really any way to dispute that the players were being mistreated and that the way that baseball was run was for the benefit of only a few at the expense of fairness and justice. So I have absolutely no disputing that. Great man should be in the hall of fame. But I just wonder, do you think that an argument could be made, um, as to whether he was actually good for baseball? He was clearly good for baseball players, but do you think an argument can be made that he was bad for baseball or the baseball right watching experience? Uh, yeah, I guess in the sense that there's more turnover on rosters now

and people tend to like players staying put, even if it was because of the reserve clause. So I guess in that sense, I don't know that the question necessarily requires that the person made baseball better. No, certainly not. I'd read it as just impact one way or another. So I don't know.

I guess, I mean, how much of an impact has Marvin Miller had on the game, on the field itself, do you think? I mean, the actual playing of the game i guess he has obviously changed the salaries and change change player patterns moving from one team to another and changed all sorts of off the field issues um but how much does that change the actual game um i don't know that's yeah that's a spectacular? I don't know. Yeah, that's a spectacular question. I don't know, but I mean, you could, somebody could write many words about that question. I don't really know the answer. And I was kind of thinking of it in terms of what would have happened if not, if these

people hadn't come along at the time that they did, you figure that some of the changes that these people have been responsible for would have happened anyway. Possibly not too long after they did, if there had been an alternate history. If there had been no Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson, I mean, maybe baseball would have been integrated a year later by Bill Veck and Larry Doby or something. And I don't know that they would have been as good candidates to do it. And possibly it wouldn't have worked out as well. And there could have been setbacks and it would have have uh it would have backfired in some sense so there's that i don't think you can argue that that jackie robinson was kind of the perfect person to be the first um but it's not as if we would still have segregated baseball today if not for jackie rob At some point, it would have happened.

Whereas if you look at someone like Bud Selig, for instance, the changes that he has made have not certainly been universally as good as that one. But maybe some of the things that he's done wouldn't have happened if not for him. Stuff like the wild card or interleague play or all-star games ending in ties would not have happened. Spider-Man ads on the bases.

Right. So in that sense, in the changing the course of history sense, maybe Bud Selig in a way has had even a greater impact, if not necessarily a better impact. Although Branch Rickey did many, many other things besides integration that changed the game quite a bit. Do you think that the changes to the game that came from Babe Ruth would have happened anyway? That is an excellent question. I don't know. It has always kind of fascinated me that he was such an outlier for quite a while.

Do you ever feel like Babe Ruth was maybe not actually real? Like when you look at it, it doesn't really hold up, you know? Like, it doesn't really pass the sniff test. No. You kind of wonder whether, like, maybe this was just a hoax that got out of hand. It's hard to believe because he couldn't have been that much more gifted than everyone else, I don't think. And you hear people say, well, he just had a different style. People weren't trying to hit home runs.

Which is bananas. Right. I mean, it never occurred to anyone that it would possibly be a good idea to just score easily. I don't know. So I don't know. But I guess he changed tons of stuff and the ball changed. And I mean, stylistically, as far as game to game and tactics and just what the rhythm of the game looks like, I guess it would be hard to beat him. And then I guess there's Landis who kind of put the game back on a sort of more respectable footing after the Black Sox scandal

and then did his best to make sure integration didn't happen for the next 25 years. I don't know whether it would have happened sooner if not for Landis or not, possibly. And then there's Rob Deere. There's Rob Deere, who I guess that was in there because he's going to be a hitting coach. So with Miller, I think that there are maybe three areas where I think that you could argue that it either was a net gain for the experience of following baseball or a net loss, depending on your perspective. One is that thanks to, and I mean, I say Miller, but basically what I'm, what we mean is, you know, the end of the reserve class.

Baseball is, as you know, writing about it is is no longer confined to a six-month schedule. It is a year-long thing. Without free agency, we would not have the hot stove. And I don't think that you can really – I mean, the hot stove is an amazing thing. It really – baseball is such a daily experience that we live through, and it's a rhythm that you get into. The hot stove – I mean, the term predates free agency. Oh, shut up. I mean, when they had stoves and sat around them.

So there is some stuff going on. Yeah, okay. I don't know. And if there had been more going on, it would have been harder to follow with no Twitter. All right. Okay, anyway. So I think that's a net gain for following baseball, to have something in the newspaper about baseball every day.

I mean, not that you read the newspaper, but when you did. So that's one thing. I think that the experience... I actually have been going back and forth on this in my head. I don't know whether it's more fun to watch baseball players knowing that they make 500 times more than you or not. I think that it might actually be more fun because then it puts them in this kind of larger than life realm that you could never hope to be in. And it kind of creates a little bit of a more legendary, you know, a legendary feel about them.

You know, it feels like you're watching guys who are like great, greater than you, you know, like you want to root for kind of heroes. And if they were making, you know, if Miguel Cabrera like was delivering your mail right now in the offseason season like he might have been 60 years ago I don't know you know like I could see that kind of going either way yeah I mean you're totally distant from them you you can't relate to them at all because they live a life totally unlike yours so it could go like I said it could go either way yeah I mean you certainly hear like old Brooklyn Dodgers fans talking about how the Dodgers would play stickball with kids in

the streets and they were just kind of part of the neighborhood and you identified even more closely with the team because there wasn't a separate stratosphere um but yeah I see what you're saying I'm not sure which way I'd go I think right now at the very at the moment I think that it's worse for the experience of watching baseball. But in a few minutes, I might change my mind. And then the last thing, of course, is just the idea of the competitive balance between teams. It seems, given the last 20 years and given how the payroll disparity is so obvious and visible, and I think with these TV contracts, it's coming up again. But it's so it seems as though free agency has has made it harder to compete. But I think

that the I think that's wrong. I think if I understand it correctly, it's actually the case is that that the reserve clause sort of protected dynasties in a way because players, you know, you didn't really have a way to build. And right now, I mean, obviously the Royals, for instance, are at a disadvantage in signing players and in trying to get, you know, big money contracts out there and everything. But they are technically able to go out and sign every player, you know, every few years.

They could go sign Zach Greinke right now. They could sign Josh Hamilton right now. player every few years. They could go sign Zach Greinke right now. They could sign Josh Hamilton right now. And so Tim Marchman wrote about this about six years ago for, oh, I don't even remember where he wrote it, but this was useful to me. Miller didn't just help players become incomprehensibly rich. As he knew all along, the fight over the balance of power between labor and management is never a zero-sum game. It's one that everyone can win. His assault on baseball's futile structure led to a vastly improved and much more competitive game, which led to more fans being willing to spend money on it, which led to owners making greater

profits and baseball becoming an ever more integral part of the culture. So I think that in that case, Miller is victorious. All right. So I think I need to end, Miller is victorious. All right. All right. So I think I need to end. Do you have a question about Marvin Miller or the other names that were brought up? I don't think so. Okay.

So that was Email Wednesday. We'll be back tomorrow with Episode 91 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives.