Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 15: Cat Fight

Episode Date: August 7, 2012

Ben and Sam talk about the presents, futures, and contracts of two starters having interesting seasons: Cliff Lee and Ben Sheets.

Good morning, and welcome to Effectively Wild, the Baseball Perspectives Daily Podcast. The date is August 7th, the episode is 15, and your hosts, as always, or as usual, because I missed an episode and therefore will never be able to say as always, are Ben Lindberg in Manhattan and Sam Miller in Long Beach. Good morning, Sam. Good morning, Ben. What's your topic? My topic is my amazing streak of not missing any podcasts ever.

What's your real topic? My real topic is my amazing streak of not missing any podcasts ever. What's your real topic? My real topic is Cliff Lee. And my real topic is Ben Sheets. Oh, okay. Wow. Yeah. Okay. All right. Two starters. I'll start with my starter.

Okay. So I'm going to just talk around Cliff Lee for a bit and then we'll be done. Okay. So I'm going to just talk around Cliff Lee for a bit, and then we'll be done. I guess the peg is that Cliff Lee was put on waivers, as all players are, and he was claimed, as many players are, and then he was not moved during the period where the Phillies could have worked out a trade. And what's interesting to me is that, um, before we heard there was a claim, uh, there were reports that, um, baseball executives expected him to go unclaimed entirely.

And, um, for, you know, for the past few days, it's, it's really been odd to me to see how different, uh, people's reactions to the situation have been. Uh, I read a lot of people, um, noting how courageous the Dodgers were to put a claim in when they might get stuck with Cliff Lee's contract. And then the flip side is that, in fact, the Phillies didn't want to stick them with this contract. So it's weird to me. The whole thing is weird where we just don't really have any idea what Cliff Lee's actual value is.

The idea being that 29 teams were, according to baseball executives, poised to let him go through waivers because they didn't want to get stuck with a contract. But, in fact, the contract was deemed to be a valuable property by the Phillies and not moved. So that's weird to me. The whole thing is weird to me. And I guess the question I have is how much do you think Cliff Lee is worth? And the second question is if Tim Lincecum were a free agent today, how much do you think Tim Lincecum would be worth?

Well, for the first question, all right, so Lee signed before the 2011 season. Before last season, he signed with the Phillies for five years, 120. 125, I think 125, but maybe 120, but yes, and a vesting option that seems likely to vest. Okay, so he signed through 2015 with that vesting option for 2016. And it seems to me that he hasn't... I mean, that contract, I don't think it wasn't widely criticized as a terrible deal at the time. I think there was some concern because Lee doesn't fit the power pitcher mold. And so there was some

concern about the fact that he was already over 30 and seemed to be a guy who might suffer disproportionately from losing a mile or two per hour compared to someone who throws very hard. But it seems to me that he hasn't done a whole lot to decrease his value since then or or to scare anyone um i mean in that he had a great year last year uh and this year he is more or less pitching the same except for the win-loss record which is maybe what a lot of that disparity in the reactions has to, I mean, maybe you can trace it to how people feel about win-loss record and the people who are seeing that he's 2-6 and think he's having a terrible year maybe would think that it would be a risk to claim him.

I thought about that, but I don't think, I mean, most of my exposure tends to come through the tweets that I see on my timeline. And I don't think that I actually follow anybody who pays that much attention to his win-loss record. I mean, I think there's a possibility that there's some psychological effect. And if he uh six and two instead of two and six as he easily could be it might be that that would sway people um uh somewhat but i i mean he is also his era is is much higher he has a uh an era that is basically uh league average um right now and he's given up uh as many home runs this year as he gave up all of last year and I believe last year was the most he had given up since he got good again so he is giving up a lot of home runs I mean it's not his best year by any

means it and and also I mean he's striking out five batters for every walk but I mean there was a time where he was striking out 10 yes uh which is one of the great joys of my life. And he doesn't quite do that. But like you say, he's actually pitching quite on the surface, quite similarly to the way that he pitched last year. Last year was an exceptional season, a Cy Young caliber season. And I mean, I agree. I think that when he signed that contract, far from being criticized, as I recall, the phrase that came up a lot was that Cliff Lee had left money on the table. Right, because there was all that talk about a seven-year deal, and then he ended up signing for five, maybe six.

Yeah, there was an article by Forbes at the beginning of that off-season that predicted he was going to get six years and $200 million, which is kind of crazy. But, I mean, since then, we've seen, particularly in the last few months, or maybe the last eight months or so, it seems to me that we've seen signs definitely pointing towards salary inflation. And I don't know. I mean, to me, taking Cliff Lee's deal and cutting it, I mean, yes, you're getting now the four, the four last years of the deal instead of the, you know, instead of the, the, the, the younger years of the deal, but four years for a pitcher of Lee's

caliber to me seems like a steal. I'm surprised that, uh, I'm surprised that there weren't 20 teams that put in claims for that contract. Yeah. I mean, $25 million a year for the next three years, those are the guaranteed years, doesn't seem like a stretch really, given what some other guys have gone for annually on longer-term deals. Like it would be within the Dodgers means the way they're spending these days and with the money that they seem to have, it doesn't seem like making that kind of commitment would be a rash thing for them to do. Since he signed that deal, he's been better than Cole Hamels, who just signed a $144 million extension, and better than Matt Cain, who just signed a $112 million extension. Of course, he's several years extension. And so, you know.

Of course, he's several years older. But yes, I think. He's not that much older, though. I mean, he is several years older, but he's only 33. And I've completely avoided your Tim Lincecum question. We'll just make it real quick. I mean, we'll do lightning round if you can. What do you think he would get? We'll do lightning round if you can.

What do you think he would get? If he accepted the biggest offer, if he was now looking for a pillow contract. I think the maximum length of the deal, of the offer that he would get now would be considerably shorter than it would have been at the start of the season, say. I can't imagine a team going more than man four years for him right now um and maybe looking to do uh kind of a higher dollar value but even so i i can't see him getting

to like the the 20 million dollar level certainly given all the doubts about his season now. I mean, four years and 65. Okay, that's fine. I haven't put any thought into this. My first instinct was five and 90, but that seems high. I could see it happening, but I don't know. It'd be an interesting question for, I don't know, Goldstein to do one of his GM columns. All right, let's talk about yours. Okay, so Ben Sheets is a pitcher who is making almost no money this year. He's making, we don't know the exact terms, I don't think they've been released,

but the Braves have said that it's just over the minimum or pretty close to the minimum. He worked out for a bunch of teams in March and no one was interested. He was coming off Tommy John surgery after getting hurt pitching for Oakland in 2010. And then he worked out for teams again in June, and at that point there was more interest,

and the Braves signed him about July 1st, I think. And so he pitched today. It was his fifth start, and he has a 1.41 ERA in 32 innings. So the Braves have probably already gotten their money's worth at this point. And he didn't strike out a batter. He did not strike out a batter. And so that was part of what I wanted to talk about, is that I'm not sure I'm buying this, really.

It's a nice story. But I don't think I would count on him to to be i mean obviously he won't be this good but i don't know that i would count on him even to be average going forward i'm not sure it's just i mean i've always he's he's always been kind of or for several years now he's been part of that sort of honorary Rich Harden, Eric Bedard, one-year contract club where you sign them hoping that they'll stay healthy, and they never do, but they generally pitch well while they're pitching, and then they just fall apart.

Now he's, I mean, the ERA looks great, but there's just, and he's not a crazy low-babbitt guy or anything, but his fastball's down, which is understandable. He hasn't pitched in a while, but still he's only throwing, and he's sitting around 90, averaging around 90 these days. And his strikeout rate is down, he but well it's down now it wasn't before this start right uh and he was about a strike running before this yeah he's not walking anyone he's he's got about he's walking about two batters per nine and yet his first pitch strike percentage is well below average um so i wonder if that's sustainable. He's not getting a lot of swings outside the zone. And he's got kind of a crazy runners on bases empty split

with men in scoring position, batters are hitting 150 off him. And so he has a really crazy strand rate um so i don't know i i wonder what he is i mean i i think i think it's sort of surprising that there wasn't more interest in him maybe than there was uh he's he's really been a boon to the breves rotation which which has already lost Tommy Hansen and Brandon Beachy and Jurgens. So I don't know. If I have a question, I guess it's do you think he's for real? I haven't seen – this is going to sound like an answer from a Joe Morgan chat from like four years ago, but I have not seen him pitch this year, so it's hard for me to say what he looks like or anything like that.

All I'm going on is the basic numbers that we've just talked about. I mean, obviously, losing three or four miles an hour from your peak fastball is something that is always dangerous and that pitchers have to, you know, it's a multi-year process usually to develop other pitches and learn how to pitch with less of a fastball. And I don't know if Sheets' inactivity over the past three years makes that um a difficult i mean basically what i'm saying is to lose your fastball almost all at once in in terms of when he was last on the mound to now uh it might be hard for him to have learned all the things he needs to get batters out yeah

if that makes sense that was a rambling thought it hasn't been really a steep drop. I was actually surprised to look back. I sort of thought of Sheets as a flamethrower type in his prime. But if you trust the stats for fastball velocity that are out there for early last decade, he was really only like a 93-mile-per-hour-ish guy. he was really only like a 93 mile per hour ish guy um and so he hasn't really totally fallen off the table this year it's been more of a like you know he lost a mile per hour here and then he was off for a couple years lost a mile per hour there and now he's lost another mile per hour since the last time he pitched so i don't know if he's a completely different pitcher or not from the last time he

pitched. But then again, I guess he wasn't all that good the last time he pitched either. When he was with Oakland, he was not the sort of overpowering guy we'd seen before. He was like a 4.5 ERA guy. So I sort of think that's still what he is just looking at his pitch selection if this can all be trusted he is hardly throwing fastball compared to what you might have expected from him four or five years ago he's only throwing it about half his pitches and he was more in the two-thirds range when he was at his peak and so that suggests that he is maybe has moved quite comfortably into a little bit more of a junk baller, junk balling veteran kind of mode. Yeah, possibly. He's going to be in the playoff rotation. That's crazy. I don't know if you would ask me when we did our playoff

rotation pitcher test the other day. I'm not sure what I would have said about Ben Sheets. I guess. I think you, yeah, you would Sheets. I think you would have said no. I probably would have said no. Yeah. I think I would have probably said no. I'm skeptical, but maybe I should have watched tonight. Maybe we should start talking about our topics so that I can do research.

Well, I don't know if a zero strikeout game would have convinced you that he's for real. No, it would have been fun, though. Zero strikeout games are always fun to watch. All right, so let's wrap that up here. We have discussed two starting pitchers, and we have discussed everything there was to discuss about those two starting pitchers.

You now know everything about Ben Sheets and Cliff Lee. We will be back on Wednesday with episode 16. Thank you, Sam. Thank you, Ben.