Fantasy Baseball Today - BONUS POD: Joe Maddon on Mike Trout, Shohei Ohtani, Stolen Bases & Much More! (3/28 Fantasy Baseball Podcast)

Episode Date: March 28, 2024

Three-time Manager of the Year and World Series champion Joe Maddon joins the show (1:50)! ... Will Mike Trout run more this year (3:25)? ... Can Shohei Ohtani be an even better hitter in 2024 (9:00)? ... Did Joe ever use stats like Stuff+ (14:00)? ... How can the Rays get over the hump (17:50)? ... Maddon is partnering up with Sage (21:40). Fantasy Baseball Today is available for free on the Audacy app as well as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher and wherever else you listen to podcasts.  Subscribe to our YouTube channel: youtube.com/FantasyBaseballToday Download and Follow Fantasy Baseball Today on Spotify: https://sptfy.com/QiKv Get awesome Fantasy Baseball Today merch here: http://bit.ly/3y8dUqi Follow FBT on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@fbtpod?_t=8WyMkPdKOJ1&_r=1 Follow our FBT team on Twitter: @FBTPod, @CTowersCBS, @CBSScottWhite, @Roto_Frank Join our Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/fantasybaseballtoday Sign up for the FBT Newsletter at https://www.cbssports.com/newsletters/fantasy-baseball-today/ For more fantasy baseball coverage from CBS Sports, visit https://www.cbssports.com/fantasy/baseball/ To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ You can listen to Fantasy Baseball Today on your smart speakers! Simply say "Alexa, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast" or "Hey Google, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast." To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Now here's Frank Scott and Chris. Welcome into a bonus edition of Fantasy Baseball today on Thursday, March 28th. Frank Stamphle joined by Chris Towers and a very special guest, one that has racked up 1,382 managerial wins, three-time manager of the year, two-time pennant winner, and 2016 World Series champion. Welcome to the show, Joe Madden. What's going on, Joe? I, Frank and Chris. All good, man.

I'm in Pennsylvania, not far from you guys. opening day. Excited about this like you guys are. So I'm having a good old time and now I'll start watching the games a bit later today too. Yep. We were talking beforehand. Unfortunately, no early games because of the weather.

But thank you so much for taking the time. Happy opening day to you as well. Kind of feels like it should be a national holiday, right? No one has to work. No one has to go to school. Just watch baseball all day, right? It used to be like that when Cincinnati was the opening day back in the days. It was all about the Reds.

And it was pretty certain that the kids got off from school. It was a big event. There was a parade, all that kind of good stuff. I mean, we've gone away from some traditions. I understand the impact of having everybody play today and what that's all about, et cetera. But there was something cool about that when the Reds used to open up the season. You knew baseball season was officially open when the Cincinnati Reds versus whomever played in Cincinnati and everything shut down. I think we need like three extra national holidays right at the beginning of the year.

We need the day after the Super Bowl, the first day of the NCAA turn. tournament and opening day of baseball. Let's just get one in February, March, and April. Let's do it. Nothing wrong with that. I mean, those are really deserving kind of days. And I think post-super Super Bowl probably ranks as the most important one, it sounds like. At least productive day of the year, for sure. And I got to get myself together again. I get it. I get it. Totally get it. Joe, we've got some questions for you regarding players that you've managed, different teams that you've managed, some stats, analytics, things like that. But let's start off here. So stolen bases, are very important in fantasy baseball.

Ron Washington wants the Angels to run more this year. We know that you have managed Mike Trout, and he is very fast, certainly fast enough to steal, I would imagine, many bases. But he has just six stolen bases over the past four years. Do you think Mike Trout will run more this year,

or do they maybe need to preserve him so that he could stay on the field more? You know, I would bet that he's not going to run much more if I had a bet. Because then I was with Michael, I mean, he's had a lot of injuries, man. You know, and if you want, yeah, it's wonderful.

I think if it's like obvious that it's a no-brainer goal because there's no chance to get you thrown out or if you have to really work at it, it would be a different thought. So I would say this probably might be an uptick, but not to the level that it's going to be prodigiously different. I think you're going to see a lot of the same. How would you have handled the change in the rules last year? And how would your teams have played if you were managing with, you know, the limitations on pickoffs and all the stuff that we saw last year?

Yeah, I mean, that was really, okay, from an offensive perspective, you would really work on that in the offseason. I mean, in the spring training off season to really try to encourage guys to go more often. Primarily between first and second, obviously, second and third has always been, to me, like somebody that's really slow and definitely a left-hander you want to take advantage up. but trying to steal second base, the fact that you have limited times to throw over. Yeah, I mean, there would be probably some hard and fast rules you would discover during the season that you would want to incorporate with your team to make sure that they did run more often.

So, yes, that would be part of it. Now, from the defensive side, I was surprised it wasn't more pitchouts. That's the one thing I was surprised with. You get to that second time throwover, just to advance scouting and knowing who you're, playing, I think that you would have had, been able to take some guesses regarding pitchouts, especially with guys with command, your pitchers with command, that you weren't really concerned with them giving them a ball, right?

Analytically, that's frowned upon. I know that. But again, I mean, that's a perfect world. We're talking about an imperfect world. If I could dissuade you from trying to steal only because they've thrown over twice, there's some kind of advantage to be gained. from that. So I think offensively, go. And we would definitely try to pinpoint exactly who's going to be brave or is who's going to try different things or not. And once you've determined that, because it's going to hold true. Managers are going to be the same. They're going to adhere to

the same kind of routines. And you're going to know that. And conversely, defensively, I'd have been more aggressive, I think, with a pitch out. Yeah. So we're talking about stolen bases here early on and steals were up last year, kind of pondering whether or not Mike Trout could run more. There were three players with 50 plus stolen bases last year. Ronald Acuna led baseball with 73 steals. You had the pleasure of managing some really fast players yourself. Somebody like Carl Crawford, right, back in the day, how many steals do you think someone like Carl Crawford would have had in this environment? Again, it's about beating up your body too. I mean, that's not even discussed. You know, back when Ricky did it and,

And, you know, Rock Raines did it and to a different level, like even Vince Coleman, of course, there's a lot of beating up of your body going on right there. So that would be a part of the consideration. So my point is, I don't know if Carl would have run more just based because only because his body could withstand so many. And Carl always slid feet first. He wasn't a hit for a slider. So how much of that could your body absorb? How many strawberries? How many?

How hard is the ground in this particular field? then you know that going into it. So am I going to try this or not? So I don't know. I mean, I would say there'd be an uptick. I don't think it would be as significant as you would think. Whatever his biggest number was, maybe add 10 or 15, I think. But you have to consider the physical toll it takes on a guy too and his willingness to keep beating his body up.

Yeah. I mean, that makes me think of like, I was a Marlins fan growing up. I'm still a Marlins fan. I always remember Juan Pierre would hold his batting gloves while he slid head first. And that's one of those things that, you know, for fantasy, we just, just run. Just go, go, go. But there are, you know, those kind of things that we don't necessarily take into account, like trying to stay up right. And that's why I think the Mike Trow question, you know, we've been trying to figure out.

He's still one of the fastest players in the league by all the tracking stats. But it's just how much of it is just, it's harder for him to stay on the field when he's running like that. So, you know, that perspective is interesting. Yeah, to me, that's all it's about. I mean, if he was in his mid-20s and never had all these little maladies, I'm sure this rule, he would have been salivating over this rule, right? But under the circumstances where he's at, you look at it recent last couple years, how much he's not been on the field. And why would he want to contribute to the potential of that happening again, which he is? I mean, by just not only the fact that you're running and sliding, but just starting and stopping, what it does to your legs, to go and I'll, I'll, I'll,

didn't get a good jump and stop. I mean, there's a lot of stuff going on out there that's never accounted for that takes us tall. So I would bet that he might, but not by a lot. On a kind of similar note, you know, you made his show Hey Otani when he was both pitching and hitting. And this season coming back from elbow reconstruction, not Tommy John, do you think there's a chance he can be even better of a hitter this season when he's not having to focus on

pitching once a week? I think the theoretically you would think that, but the part that I would concern me is the fact that he no longer has to split his concentration, thus is he going to think too much about it? Is he going to work too hard on it? Does he not have this other thing to go to when he isn't feeling really well? Again, is he just going to focus too heavily on it? Now, okay, you would think, again, I mean, I think in a perfect world that you would think

that, yeah, he's going to be better because this is all I got to worry about today. but I even have BJ as a possible topic here today. When I had BJ's my first year with the raise, he was coming up. And defense, there was an infielder. So there was a concern like errors, this and that, where are you going to play him? So I thought in order to get his bat rolling and really played his offensive potential, give him several defensive positions to play because he would then focus on that.

And then he would just go hit. He didn't have time to think about it's hitting enough to the point where it's going to get in the way. So actually, I thought the method of, okay, I want you to have a second base glove, a short stock glove, an outfield glove, et cetera. So every day I want you to take ground balls, whatever, all these different places, and then go ahead, of course. So now I'm not going to, he's not going to spend all this an order amount of time worrying about his offense where he's got to think about all these defensive stuff. So I don't know, like, if you just focus on one thing, if that's, that's necessarily going to be better or not. Interesting.

Joe, you had the pleasure of managing both Trout and Otani on the same team, two of the best players of this generation, maybe all time. I'm sorry, but I've got to put you on the spot. If you could build a team around just one of them, Mike Trout or Shohei Otani, who would it be? Well, it is a tough one. I mean, obviously, you know, Shoha is the, everybody used the term unicorn, whatever that is.

The fact that he can win, I don't say 20 games. I don't know that he's going to pitch it often enough innings to win 20 games. But he should be good between, you know, 12 to 15 is a good year for him. And offensively, he's not going to gain you any points on defense necessarily, but offensively you've seen what he's already done. And the part about him that you're going to see if you talk about Trottie's show he's going to run this year, I think. So you're going to see even more benefit from him offensively. from this basing perspective.

So, yeah, I would build it around show. The other thing about show is just say he can't pitch anymore. Just say, just say. Something happens or this guy could be an all-star and Hall of Fame performer on defense. I would say right field. So I think if you really wanted to pair him up, but you got Trottie is an everyday center fielder. Showy's an everyday right fielder.

That's where it becomes interesting, who would you pick? But the fact that show could win 12 to 15 games as a pitcher, I think, bends in his favor. Stats and analytics are evolving constantly, Joe. And Stuff Plus is one that's grown in popularity in recent years. And it attempts to do exactly that. Measure the stuff of certain pitches using various pitch characteristics, whether it's velocity, release points, spin rates. Did you ever have something like that all-encompassing stuff plus?

Or did you ever use anything like that? You find it to be predictive because, well, we're trying to do fantasy baseball podcast. We're trying to predict performance. So what do you think about stats like that? Stats like that, I think would, if you have a platoon especially, offensively, I really like that kind of stuff. I mean, who's sensitive to elevated velocity as an example, as a hitter, who really handles the elevated velocity, who is a big chase guy versus a pitcher that relies on chase. I mean, I think it's very predictive in that regard. And furthermore, to give somebody a day off, a regular day off, you would look into those kind of things to really try to maximize the day off in regards to this is the least good or potentially good matchup.

So this is the day I want to give Mikey off, Trout off or Shohei off. The platoon guy definitely you would read into those kind of things to match them up. Even at the point I might play a right on right or left on left. mean, the reverse split stuff doesn't get spoken about enough. If you remember, we played Romero, the pitcher for the Blue Jays several years ago. He was from Cal State Fullerton, left-hander. I wanted all lefties on him. And then they had Markham, was it Markham, the right-handed pitcher of the guy?

Say opposite. I wanted all righties on him. So I would look at all this stuff, reverse splits as an example. reverse splits, elevated sensitivity, velocity, sensitivity to chase. Talking from an offensive perspective right now, I think that's where you really delve into it. On the pitching side of it, it's more bullpen related, I think, in regards to matchups. Because you're going to pitch your starter regardless.

Although, if you have a chance to, I might start frank today instead of Chris based on stuff, last game of the series, I might choose one of the other based on their lineup versus, your abilities as an example. So yeah, you look at all that stuff all the time. Regular player, everyday player, well rest it. You probably don't even consider any of that. But it's the platoon guy. If you're looking to give somebody a rest, I'll be more delving into that kind of stuff.

And this goes back. This goes back, shoot, with the with the rays in the devil rays. That's what we started doing this stuff. Drew and I and Eric would get together and they would point these things out to me because I did that prior to that when I was at the Angels, but I didn't have the sensitivity of elevated velocity baked into my number or the fact of somebody chased or not. It was primarily reverse split kind of a thing was a big thing for me. I would look a little bit about history, but I knew that there was not necessarily indicative. Although it was prodigious, like it was a guy that just absolutely killed. David Price. I mean, killed him. He was like 12 for 10 against him, right? Something stupid like that. So, oh, it's a small sample size. Why did you want to go down? I'll tell you why. Because when that dude walks in the baddest block, David knows that he beats him up. That matters too. So there's human elements to this matchup stuff that I would not run away from. But when it came out to the mathematical side,

it was absolutely into it. So one thing that that all that makes me think of is like you look at the team like the raise now who, you know, they don't necessarily have like the superstar player. They don't have a showhead Tony. They don't have a Mike Trout. So they sort of approach the regular season as if every game's a playoff game. And, you know, they're I did. We did. Yeah. And that's probably what you have to when you're when you're playing in a small market and you don't have the resources to compete. You've got it. But one thing that I think about with the raise is, you know, there's a lot of talk every year about they go out and they win 90, 96, 100 games in the regular season and then, you know, they've only won one postseason game in the last three years.

And it makes me think of, you know, Billy Bean, the famous quote are, you know, our stuff doesn't work in the playoffs. And I just, I wonder, is that something with the raise where because they're treating every regular season game like the playoffs, are they at a disadvantage when it comes to the playoffs or is it just randomness? I still think it's randomness. I do. We, okay, we, 2008, we go all way to the World Series, right?

That was a good team. We had a really well-balanced team. And we could hit, hit for power run. We had a great defensive team. If anything, we probably, which was our strength, normally is our strength, the pitching was kind of woven together. I mean, we lost Percy. So all of a sudden, bow for and J.P. Howe become your guys. Middle inning closers became popular with us back then.

Offensively, we did do some platooning, but we play some defense, brother. We had some defenders on that team. And that always showed up on a daily basis. So where we built for it, I just think that team had the depth to perform that time of the year. Part of it was that we had to play the Red Sox a lot and beat them. And we had to play the Yankees a lot and beat them. So there's like this competitive thing that you learn how to win in very difficult venues on the road. But then you go back to that.

We couldn't get past the Rangers. Adrian Beltran, three homers in one game, beats us in at. to trot. Okay, I think it was three to two or four to whatever, but you got this superstar dude, this player that just beat you. So I don't know if it comes down to singular performance sometimes that maybe after 2008 we didn't necessarily have that guy. We're in 2008. I mean, look at what BJ did. Look what Longo did. You talked about Carl earlier. Jason Barlett, I'm really good player, Carlos. We had more of that individual talent, I think.

And then you get to the later years, we pitched our butts off men. So the pitching got really good. We caught the ball. But we could not score enough. I mean, with the Cubs, even with the Cubs, we didn't win some playoff games there in 15 and in 17, just because we didn't score enough. I mean, we ran out of offense at some point. So I don't know.

I mean, I don't know if I'm answering your question or not. Yeah. I just think that to say you're built for it or not, that comes up to individuality, man. Do you have Michael Jordan on your team? Do you have Larry Bird on your team? Do you have Derek Jeter on your team?

Do you have that one dude that just pulls you through in some difficult moments? I still believe that is why the Yankees dynasty occurred. More recently, you know, the Dodgers, they're relying on a nice group of guys that the leadership is spread out. It's not just one or two people. So I don't know.

To be built for it or not. And then again, where the Diamondbacks built for it last year, you know? I mean, although I love the way they played. It's just, I don't know. There's no one size fits all. It right on daily, on a year annual basis, it just changes, I think. Joe, let's wrap up with this. I know that you're working with Sage here on opening day,

and I've got a video. Mind if I play this for you? Wow, go ahead. It's really well done. Joe Madden. He came in this morning. He got introduced to talking about money with budgets, things about forecasting, scheduling.

Joe? Hey. Didn't seem to know his way around this environment. He was a little out of his element. I'm a little worried about Joe, but everything's a baseball analogy, and we're a construction company. superintendent's the manager?

Superintendent's your starting pitcher. Okay. Quite frankly, I'm looking at that. I don't really understand that. He can't always get what you want, but you've got to make it work somehow. Right, but the numbers here show you that you can get what you want, and the data allows you get the job done right. Joe, I'm always looking for the right tools and insights so that I can make better decisions

in my business. I'm all into that. I've been a data guy. I still am, but I'm also a heartbeat guy. I've been fortunate to build a team and a lineup of good people. You can't get here without having a good team behind you. Brother, that is absolutely perfect. Very fun stuff.

You're working with Sage Joe, a company that prides itself on increasing efficiency by offering insights and data, which helps you prepare for your day-to-day tasks. Why was this a partnership that you were interested in? Well, they approached me, first of all, and philosophically were very much aligned the union, the marriage between data and the heartbeat. And they understood that about me and I understand that about them. I think in today's game, today's world in general, in industry, all we hear about is information, numbers, and math that we don't hear enough about what's going on in somebody's chest, their tummy, and in their brains. I think it's important. It's vital. It's paramount to morph together both.

Yes, we're just talking about that. I explained to you why or how it would set up matchups based on sensitivities to different issues that I could only know through the, the matrix that I would be receiving, and I'd need to know how that matrix was manufactured. What amount of weight did you put into each element of this? How much was elevated velocity considered? How much was walks over strikeouts considered? And so when I look at this number, I always wanted to know how did you derive this number to?

Just don't give me a number. What was the equation? Who were the analysts that put this together? Because go from one team to another, you're going to get different numbers based on bias of each group. And that's just absolutely true. So you got that. And me as the manager, I have to be able to read the people that are giving me information too. I don't think that's spoken about enough. And then you got me. So I've been doing this since, I don't know, 81. So I've had that many years of experience. And I will rely on field and wisdom and experience to make

judgments or decisions, which I think is, for lack of a better word, wise or sage. right? So I think when you don't, when you just get too heavy-handed, one way that all analytical or all heartbeat, you're missing the point. It's always about balance. And that, when I spoke to the people from Sage, we were absolutely philosophically aligned on that point. And to me, that's the way to go about either running a business or a ball club. Absolutely love that. World Series champion manager, Joe Madden. We appreciate you so much for being here. Happy opening. day, man. Gentlemen, nice to meet you guys. I wish you nothing but the best in the future. That was a lot of fun for me. I appreciate it.

Thanks you, too. We're going to wrap there for Chris and Joe. I am Frank. Thanks as always for tuning into fantasy baseball today and we will be back again later on tonight. Bye-bye.