Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 914: State of the Standings: NL East

Episode Date: June 28, 2016

As the regular season’s midpoint approaches, Ben talks to Joe Sheehan and Rany Jazayerli about the state of the NL East.

Wild Eats! Wild Eats! Wild Eats! Wild Eats! Wild Eats! Wild Eats! Wild Eats! Wild and strong, wild and strong host Sam Miller is on vacation this week and since the midpoint of the regular season is fast approaching I decided to do a sort of state of the season conversation with Rani Jazerly and Joe

Sheehan. Rani of course is an author for theringer.com. Joe writes the Joe Sheehan newsletter at joesheehan.com and also contributes to SI and The Athletic Chicago. We started this conversation yesterday talking about the NL West and the AL Central, and today you will hear the next installment of the very long discussion we had, which concerns the NL East. Just one quick note, in the course of this conversation, we did discuss the possibility of the Nationals calling up Lucas Giolito. After we talked, the team announced that they would be calling him up, and he'll be starting tonight if you're listening to this on Tuesday. That's the problem with pre-recording podcasts, but now you know. So we'll pick it up right now with some Mets and Nationals talk. All right, so let's move to the NL East,

where I guess things are not going too differently from what people expected. I don't know whether you guys were Mets are going to win this thing or Nationals are going to win this thing going into the spring, not that there's really that much separation between these two teams so you know tons of things have gone wrong for the mets obviously do you think that they can close this small gap over the rest of the season they unfortunately they can't trade for you and assess but it's and just have him be on fire for the second half because they've already played that card for the first half so where do they go from here?

Do you see this sliver of a lead holding up? I had them as the best team in baseball, and I thought they had the highest upside in baseball just because that run prevention could just be amazing. And the rotation has been. The rotation has basically gone step for step with the Cubs. The offense, obviously, and its injuries, that happens. And it happens more when you've paid $138 million to a third baseman who returns out of spinal stenosis and a host of other problems. But yeah, they're 40-33 with really the offense has been a disaster. And I kind of still feel like this is a team that could go out

and allow 55 runs in a month. And we just – we still – it feels like we haven't seen the rotation do that yet. We haven't seen the rotation just go out and step on people's necks. We'll see what happens with the Syndergaard thing. Every one of the four starters, aside from Colon, is at some kind of health scare to one extent or another. But they've all stayed in the rotation. They're supposed to get Zach Wheeler back. And Wheeler, I think, would be – I don't know if he'll be an upgrade on what Colon has produced for them.

I think he'll be an upgrade certainly in terms of talent. I would mind seeing Wheeler in the bullpen. I think Wheeler could be a ridiculous six-out weapon, but teams just don't do that anymore. But I still, I look at this team and just, I do think, and I've said this long, I think they end up winning the division. Nationals, again, it's, I see, what are they getting out of Wirth? What are they getting out of Zimmerman? What are they getting out of, you know, Danny Espinosa's worked out, but all that's done is kept a better player in AAA. And Dusty Baker is still sitting there, and I just don't have a lot of faith in Dusty Baker's managerial ability. See, this is where I kind of – I actually disagree with you, Joe.

No, this is where, huh, after all these years? We do agree more than we disagree, I think. But, I think. But, I mean, look, the Mets absolutely could win the division. It's what, two and a half game edge or whatever, and they have the crazy rotation. And especially because Bartolo Colon, at 43 years old, is still an effective starting pitcher. And everybody else in that rotation has had the word phenom attached to them at some point or another. And I can't prove this because, like you, Ben, I didn't actually do preseason projections, but I would have had the Nationals winning the division if I had.

And the reason for that is because of the guy who's not here, and that's Matt Williams. And, you know, evaluating managers, we know it's really difficult, but I do believe that managers have an effect on the performance of their players. We know how to evaluate technical decisions, but when it comes to the whole clubhouse effect, we don't have a great way of measuring it. But I do believe that having a manager that runs a quote-unquote good clubhouse, it is going to manifest itself in the performance of his players. And I also believe that Matt Williams in 2015, he was like the 2002 Nefi Perez of managers.

It was one of the all-time worst manager seasons we have ever seen. I think the Washington Post, I believe, had kind of an autopsy of his performance late in the year. It was an autopsy done on a live patient, which is probably appropriate. But the stories that you heard about, the decisions he was making and the way he had basically alienated everybody on that team were just epic.

So just getting rid of him, I felt like had to result in improvement somehow. Even if I didn't know exactly who was going to get better, I figured on a team-wide basis, it would improve the team. Dusty Baker, all of Dusty Baker's, you know, well-documented quirks. This is where he has supposedly excelled over the years, which is getting, you know, establishing a clubhouse where especially veteran players are able to perform at their best. I just thought he was a

really good fit for this team. If he was going to come back and manage, you know, after the whole Bud Black thing, you know, fell apart, I thought this was a good team for him. Great. I'm with all of that. Show me where it's happened. Wilson Ramos is hitting.342. That's one. With a.550 OPS.

Daniel Murphy. Who wasn't here last year. Okay. That's fine. But the point is Daniel Murphy was brought in as an average – like you could not – before October 1st, 2015, if you want to have a picture, a dictionary definition of average major league player, Daniel Murphy would be one of the pictures you would consider. No, there were some well-documented changes to Daniel Murphy in the last two months of

last year. Okay, but how many times does that actually hold over until the next year? It hasn't. I'll even grant you Murphy, but if you want to defend Baker, you've got to explain Zimmerman, you've got to explain Wirth, you've got to explain Rendon, you've got to explain Max Scherzer. The Nationals have more veterans

not overperforming last year's performance, and let's not ever try to diagram that sentence, than they have guys that you can say, yeah, I'll give you Ramos, and if you want to take Murphy, I'll give you Murphy. Steven Strasburg's finally having a year commensurate with his talent. Tanner Roark coming. He's actually basically pitching as well as he did last year. But the ERA is reflecting the results. Joe Ross has been good.

Wait a minute. You want to give Baker credit for Babib or something? Come on now. You're saying that Dusty Baker gets no credit for the fact that – I mean, again, part of it is it's not Dusty Baker. It's not Matt Williams. OK. Well, Strasburg insurers are canceled out. I'm saying that your argument is what – that I basically made the day he was hired. I said as long as it's not – I said not Matt Williams is going to be the manager of the year next year. I'm saying that if you – but if you're going to give Baker some kind of mystical

credit for the veterans, you've got to actually note that the veterans aren't playing all that well. They have at least been playing, which is one thing. I don't know whether you can credit Baker for that. I mean, no one has choked anyone that we know of, which seems like an improvement, but it is hard to point to. They've just learned to keep that behavior off camera. Right.

Please choke players inside the clubhouse. I think it's Dusty Baker is 20%. It's 60% not Matt Williams, and maybe the other 20% is better health and better luck. Anthony Rendon has been mostly healthy. Yeah, Wirth and Zimmerman, those guys have been in the lineup. And he's had 94 OPS+. Look at what they had last year. There's value in being slightly below

average. I'm going to put that on a business card. Right. Just not having to fill out half a lineup every day with someone who wasn't projected to be in the opening day lineup helps, even though those guys haven't actually played as well as you would have liked them to play. And, of course, now Strasburg goes on the DL, which is sort of a shame. Would have been nice to see him actually pitch up to his talent for a full season, but that's something he just doesn't really do very often. Are we going to see Giolito now, or are the struggles that he's had going to keep him from being the guy that replaces him?

Is he in AA? I know he was having command issues. Right, yeah. So, yeah, he's walked four per nine or something, and he'd have to bypass AAA. So, I don't know. They've been pretty cautious with him to this point. Just plug Petit in and see what happens. Yeah.

But, yeah, I don't know. I keep kind of waiting for the old Zimmerman or Wirth or Rendon to return, and maybe that's just not going to happen at this point. I don't know. Rendon seemed like he was going to be one of those hurt or great guys, and now he's sort of settled into healthy and average, or not even that, which is a disappointment. So, I mean, without Daniel Murphy, which was a move that you know i know you didn't like joe and i didn't i didn't love it either

without him they'd be in a in a pretty tough spot and i don't know what you guys think of bryce harper's last two months or so and of course even in you know what qualifies for a slump for harper he's had something like a 400 on base or something because guys keep walking him. But it seems like he hasn't quite figured out how to make pitchers pay for pitching around him, or maybe that's partially on the rest of the lineup for not making them pay also. Just a little blip before Harper figures everything out and goes back to being the best hitter in baseball? Or is there a real change here that might last as long as the Nationals can't put together a good lineup? I'm concerned, but only in the short term. I could see this being – he ends up the year hitting 270, 380, 480 or something, which we're actually going to call a tough year for a 23-year-old. 80 or something, which we're actually going to call a tough year for a 23-year-old.

But yeah, the transition, he certainly, just in watching him, and I am not a scout, it seems like we're seeing a player trying to figure out, can I comfortably just take all these pitches and walk 170 times, or do I have to chase some of them? And Joey Votto is the example of a guy who said, if you want to walk me, walk me. And there are plenty of people in Cincinnati, some of them with really good jobs, high-profile jobs will tell you that was a bad decision. I think Harper's eventually got to figure out that no matter how many times Ryan Zimmerman leaves the bases loaded, I got to swing. I got to take, I should say. Yeah, I agree with you. Long-term, in the context of his career, I have no concern.

He's 23 years old. We agree that Bryce Harper's going to be a very good baseball player. Hot takes today. But you do wonder if – you look at great players. They'll have maybe that one year in their career that's kind of a blip. And I wonder how much that six-walk game against the Cubs – did he get into his head a little bit, this idea that I can't keep – I took six walks and I scored one run and we lost the game in the extra innings or whatever. I have to start swinging, change my swing pattern.

It may take him some time to get out of that. I do think the second half of the season, though, he'll probably be back to the Bryce Harper that we saw in April or most of last year. Ben, you and Sam are always bigger on kind of – you delve into the mental stuff a little more than I think Randy and I ever did. It's certainly not an area of last year. Ben, you and Sam are always bigger on kind of, you delve into the mental stuff a little more than I think Randy and I ever did. And it's certainly not an area of the game I'm comfortable with,

largely because I just think that doing it from the outside is a bad idea. Yeah. But let me ask you, since you guys are willing to entertain stuff like this, I know you have Russell Carlton on

and I love Russell's work. Yeah. If the Cubs, the Nationals had won that game, do you think it would have been easier for Harper to embrace what happened to him? The fact that he lost kind of made it, oh, this is wrong and bad and I have to do something about it.

Yeah, I do. The simple fact that if the Cubs win that game – if the Nationals win that game, he can say, I did my job. And so he's then a guy who's so comfortable in his own skin that he can take pitches and not feel that he has anything to prove. not feel that he has anything to prove. That's possible. Of course, being the MVP of the league and being acknowledged as one of the, say, two best players in baseball, you'd think that would do a lot

for your self-confidence. One would hope, right? And I mean, this is why Joe and I think try to avoid the whole psychological stuff is because we're not there. Maybe it got into Bryce's head. For all we know, maybe Dusty Baker pulled him aside after the game and told him, hey, you've got to be more aggressive. We need you to swing the bat.

This is the Dusty Baker you love so much. I'm saying it's possible. We don't know. And that's the sort of stuff that I would love to have more information, more data about. We are just speculating. But I think on some level, that game does feel like a bit of a tipping point. And that's not to say it won't tip back here in the next few weeks. I expect that it probably will, but that's probably been

part of the reason for his struggles the last month. Do you think if they recall the player who's never made it out in the major leagues, that would help as well? I understand the argument for waiting with Trey Turner. I guess it's not, unfortunately for them, it's not their most pressing area of need. It would be nice if he played a different position perhaps. But yeah, you'd think that we'll see him again. And he did make outs last year, Joe. That's not exactly.

That's true. I forgot he was called up at the end of last year. Okay. And I guess for the Mets, I mean, the good news is that you could upgrade almost anywhere at this point. And even if the market isn't all that strong at every position, you need a first baseman.

You need a third baseman. You need almost everything at this point. Michael Conforto is now a minor leaguer. David Wright is likely gone for the season. Who knows when Lucas Duda will be back. So this is a team that could, you know, take almost any available offensive player and plug him in somewhere. And props to you, Joe, for basically calling the whole Michael Conforto thing before the season.

It didn't happen exactly the way you thought it would, but you sensed that the Mets might find a way to turn him into less than an everyday player. And I feel like that's played out to some degree. Yeah, I'm going to be working on something that has to do with Conforto. The pattern of his playing time versus how well he hit. There's a bit of a chicken and egg thing. Did he start playing less because he wasn't hitting or did he stop hitting because he was playing less? There's no question the two things happened at the same

time. I've always advocated that the worst thing for a young player, as I mentioned with Buxton earlier, was to just not... The in and out of the lineup will just break a young player before anything else. And Conforto, once they started having to get Conforto out of the lineup to work in Ligares or because they didn't think he could hit lefties, this all began. And I know that everyone has been fitting Danny Valencia for a Mets uniform for a while now.

Someone like Zach Cozart would probably fit in there somewhere. What a horrifying statement that is. It would have been, but yeah, there seems to be a new Zach Cozart, which is not something that I would have expected two years ago. So this team will make a move, maybe multiple moves, and maybe that will be enough as long as Cinderguard's elbow just is sore and not actually torn, know he can pitch through whatever scary underlying issue is present there then you know this team will be in contention and you get lagares back and you make a couple moves to just you know take a replacement level offensive position to an

average offensive position then maybe that's enough at least certainly enough for a wild card so there's no reason to be too dismayed about the Mets. If anything, you could be happy that they are where they are, even though so many things have gone wrong. All right. So the Marlins also, you know, I was kind of mocking before the season how they were sort of a popular surprise team pick. I think they were one of yours also, Joe. And it seems like that's been the case for a few years now, that Marlins kind of are always this popular pick as surprise team, maybe because they always have some superstars. They have Fernandez, they have Stanton, they have these guys who you could say, well, if Jelic turns into what we thought Jelic was going to be, well, if whoever Ozuna

turns into Ozuna, they can build a good team around those two cornerstones of the roster. And of course, one of those cornerstones has been abysmal, but enough of those other things have gone right that the Marlins are on track to be the team that you thought they would be. Yeah. I mean, you mentioned Stanton being abysmal. And again, I think it's important to separate out. We kind of start carving guys' seasons up into the last seven weeks in the case of Conforto or Stanton's incredible slump. On the whole, he's 319, 443. It's an average – a little above average hitter. I'm not saying he hasn't been in a terrible slump, but we kind of got to keep perspective on we're halfway through a season and he's basically a middle league average hitter.

You say this for a while. They replaced Gordon with Dietrich. That's worked out. Martin Prado is just going to hit 300 for the rest of his life, apparently. It's the guys around the Stanton Fernandez core that have really had these great years. You know, Christian Jelic, finally, how many years were we all talking about Christian Jelic is finally going to hit? And it's basically been the type of hitter we expect them to be. It's going to be average and doubles and, you know, maybe it's 15 home runs. Great. I was really high on Justin Boer at the start of the

year. I took him a couple of drafts. One was a mock draft, one was a score sheet draft. This is, I think, one of the big guys for them because they needed that second power guy. That second guy who might actually slug 500. He's done better than that. He's slugging 550 or so. He beat up the Cubs over the weekend. That's been a real key element for them. The offense

has worked out. The pitching, it's Jose Fernandez and a bunch of guys who pitch in the major leagues. I know that the Fangraphs guys, Paul Spohr, Eno Saris, they've been all over Adam Conley. And Conley's turned into what they thought we and Chen was going to be. So that's been a key guy for them. And then the bullpen, even with Carter Capps out for the year, Bearclaw and Phelps have just been amazing in front of AJ Ramos.

So pretty good offense. A couple of starters. Deep bullpen. All of a sudden you have the 2015 – I'm sorry. No, you have the 2016 Marlins. Yeah, don't go there. Because talk about my head versus my heart. I mean, there's no team in, you know, the majors where my heart wants to see fail more than a team owned by Jeffrey Loria, right?

I mean, sorry for all the Marlins fans out there, but your owner sucks and is a blight on humanity. You just lost like three people, Ben. So, you know, from that perspective, yeah, I'm not looking forward to this team going to the playoffs, especially because, of course, this is a team that has literally never lost a playoff series, right? That has yet to win a division but has two world championships that I feel like have been completely, like, wasted on a fan base that was small to begin with and, for good reasons, has not really grown over the years.

But you look at the team, the one thing that stands out, of the eight guys in their lineup, seven of the eight guys in their lineup have an OPS plus over 100. If you're just looking at the baseball reference page, like, if they could find a shortstop who could hit, this is a team, the entire outfield is hitting well. Ichiro Suzuki

is having a... Can we talk about this? Ichiro has 17 walks. Yeah, it's incredible, and he never strikes out still. Yeah, 10 strikeouts. He's got better than one and a half to one walk to strikeout. He's never been that guy. Right.

Never. So we're going to have like the fourth age of Suzuki where now he's going to spend the next four years as like Pete Rose at the end of his career where he was like a singles hitter who drew walks and not corrupted in his soul. Yeah. Well, yeah, I'm enjoying it. I hope it continues. But yeah, I mean it continues. possibility happening again this year. All right. And probably the less said about the Phillies and the Braves, the better. But any takeaways, anything that has, I mean, certainly with the Phillies, there are things that have gone better than anyone could have expected. The Braves are basically the Braves. So anything that you've seen that has changed what you thought the timeline was to the

next competitive Phillies or Braves team coming into the year? Well, I was just amused by, you know, how the Phillies' ridiculous record in one-run games early in the year had people thinking, wow, maybe this team is, you know, ahead of the, you know, the rebuilding curve. And here we are, they're 32-44, which means that they are, what, like I think 10-29 in the last 39 games. So they have some talent there. I mean, you know, Odoble Herrera's incredible acquisition

of on-base skills is, I know you guys have talked about it, I think before on the podcast, but it's still one of the more remarkable transformations we've seen from a player who's young enough for it to actually be real. You know, Aaron Nola, I think has been better than

a lot of people expected him coming out of the draft. You know, I thought he was a polished college starter. I didn't think he would have been necessarily the kind of upside he's had. The curveball's been incredible. The Braves, you know, the less about the major league team, the better. But to me, it's just that, you know, they have been collecting. It's a very cynical ploy.

I mean, they basically take the Astros strategy and then throw in a stadium extortion into the mix. But, you know, as we've seen with the Astros, it could be very effective. I actually think two years from now, the Braves will be a competitive team, and it'll probably be faster than it would have been had they been a little less extreme about the rebuilding process. As much of a bad taste as it's left in the mouth of a lot of people, I think from a purely baseball perspective, I endorse what the Braves have done.

Until they change the rules. Right. You won't be able to get to the ballpark to see them play. Yeah, well, exactly. Right. I just want to ask you guys this. Yeah. Who of those two teams, who wins the NL East next and who wins the World Championship next?

Huh. Are those really – do you really – is the thought process behind those two answers going to be different? I guess not. I guess not. I guess not. I mean, it's a good question. Who's going to win that division next?

I would probably say the Phillies, if only because I'm more confident that they're going to be willing to spend money to supplement the core when the time comes. They play in that market. They've shown a willingness to harbor payrolls that are rather large in the past. I don't have the same conviction that the Braves' ownership will do that. So that would be my cop-out answer. Yeah, I'd probably say the Phillies, but I'd probably bank on the Braves sustaining it longer when they do manage to build themselves up again. It's a strange conflict because you read their comments. comments and, you know, John Cappellella did his Twitter Q and A the other day, which is kind of a cool

thing. And he was very frank, except that, you know, you'll see Braves people saying, oh, we want to win every game. And, you know, drafting one, one is an embarrassment and no one wants to do that. And, and there, I, you know, there must be a part of those guys when they go to the ballpark every day, they don't want to see the team lose. They feel bad when they see the team lose. And I don't know in baseball whether it makes that much of a difference whether you draft 1-1 or 1-2 or 1-3. I don't know whether – you have to tear it down to – Randy can answer that question.

Well, I mean it's different now because, of course, you don't draft 1-1. You draft 1-1 and you get $1.5 million more than the number two pick. That's the chief advantage of drafting 1 versus 3. The difference between 1 and 4 is like bigger than the difference between like 4 and 20 in terms of just draft dollars. You think the biggest benefit though probably comes from the talent that you bring back by selling all your players, right? I mean that's the big payoff and then the draft is is a nice bonus a nice perk also but once you've traded all the players who made your team a winner you know only three years ago in the braves case that's what you're you're really banking on those guys panning out and then what you get in the draft is is great and you know you need to hit on some of those guys too. But if you actually win 65 games instead of 58 games or something,

it's not going to derail the plan in the way that it might if you are, say, the 76ers. All right. Well, we are losing Ranny at this point, who has to go live his life. So I'm glad that I could reunite you guys for a couple podcasts. I've not deleted the RSS feed for the Randy and Joe show from my phone. Just in case someday you get back together, do an episode, it will automatically download. I'm sure I'm not the only one. Ben, I sent flowers.

I sent cards. I sent candies. Of course, you can continue to read Randy at TheRinger and follow him on Twitter at Jazerly. So, Rani, thanks for joining us. And I would wish you a happy Game of Thrones finale. But by the time people listen to this, they will already have watched it. So enjoy the rest of your day. Thanks for coming on.

Thank you. This was fun. We should do this again, Joe. Don't get me started. Five years. No. All right. Take care, guys.

Later. All right. That is it for today. Thanks to Rani and Joe. Joe is running a special newsletter offer for Effectively Wild listeners. If you email him at SheehanNewsletter at gmail.com with the subject line Sam, you can get free access to his writing through the All-Star Break, which might very well be enough to convince you to subscribe, as Sam and I already do, and recommend that everyone else does.

You can also find Joe on Twitter at Joe underscore Sheehan. You can support this podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Today's five listeners who have already pledged their support are Tom Rezzo, PJ Locascio, Michael Cohen, John Wybe, and Jeremy Paranto. Thank you. You can also buy our book, The Only Rule Is It Has to Work, our wild experiment building a new kind of baseball team. Go to our website at theonlyruleisithastowork.com for reviews and interviews and excerpts and op-eds, as well as stats and photos and videos that you'll enjoy if you've read the book.

If you have finished it and you liked it, please leave us a review at Amazon and Goodreads. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectivelywild, and you can rate and review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. Send us emails at podcast of baseball perspectives.com or by messaging us through Patreon. You can get the discounted price of $30 on a one year subscription to the play index by going to baseball reference.com and signing up using the coupon code BP. We will be back tomorrow to continue this series.

It'll just be me and Joe this time. and we'll be discussing the way things change. And they said goodbye like two old friends. Oh, no, I'm a Taylor Swift hipster.