Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 179: Extending Barry Zito/The First-Place Royals

Episode Date: April 11, 2013

Ben and Sam discuss the situation surrounding Barry Zito’s contract for 2014, and the Royals’ hot, small-sample start.

was without a doubt the worst episode ever. Rest assured that I was on the internet within minutes registering my disgust throughout the world. Good morning and welcome to episode 179 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus. I am Ben Lindberg with Sam Miller. Sam Miller has a topic that we are going to talk about. I have not been apprised of this topic

What's the topic? Barry Zito and why he should sign an extension Ah, okay This is related to a question we got? Maybe? Possibly? It's related to something in the ether Okay Alright, go

Do you not have a topic? Oh i are we doing two topics i mean i thought that's what we do i don't know ben what are we gonna what are we gonna do what are we gonna do about this show uh should we figure we should hash out what the show is gonna be yeah probably uh what do you think do you like the two topic idea the two topic format did you enjoy it last year uh i mean it's more pressure on both of us to have to think of a topic every day and we both enjoy not having to do that but it's see my theory on the the whole show my theory from the beginning was that if we have a a show that is short enough that there's not too much pressure to talk deeply about any one topic, that it actually takes the pressure off. That basically, it's like instead of running a long race where you have to pace yourself,

you're running one lap and you can go all out. You can leave it all on the field because everybody can run one lap about anything right and so if we're doing two topics then that's half as much time that we need to actually talk about any one topic and true yeah somehow we have managed to do one topic shows that are as long as the two topic shows were uh i don't know why we've done that, but it's probably my fault. I guess we can do two. We should probably do two. People would like two. Do you think people would like two?

Yeah. We should probably just do a couple more episodes on what we're going to do because that would be interesting. Yeah, let's do two. All right. So I'll talk about the Royals. All right. The I'll talk about the Royals. million buyout there was very little chance that the giants would ever consider picking up that option and i don't know there might still be very little chance that the giants would consider picking up that option however that option fully vests if barry zito throws 200 innings and uh so barry zito might throw 200 innings he has not yet thrown 200 innings as a Giant, which is kind of incredible and tells you a lot about Barry Zito. But he has thrown 199 innings.

And he's, I don't know, you sort of get the sense that this year he could do it. He's off to another hot start. He's in a much less deep rotation. So there's not really a way to kick him out of the rotation if he struggles. And it just seems like the difference between $199 and $201 is small enough that you could really envision him reaching it, and then the Giants would have to pay the entire $18 million. So I think that it's time right now for the Giants and Barry Zito to sit down and figure out an extension for 2014 that guarantees him a contract in the neighborhood of maybe $15 million or something

like that. Because I think it's going to turn into a real messy thing if Barry Zito starts getting close to $200 million. I think fans generally in the Bay Area, they like Barry Zito as a person. They like the way he's handled things. He's been a good teammate. He's been a humble teammate. He's more or less done what's asked of him. But he's a disgusting, toxic asset to have around. And it's been really depressing to have him around all these years.

It's been really depressing to have him around all these years. And I think that if you start getting to the point where that option looks like it's going to vest, it's going to be a really distracting thing. People aren't going to want that thing around. And it could be an ugly August. And you don't want to necessarily incentivize the Giants to screw around with Barry Zito's innings. If you need him to pitch, then you don't want the Giants to be second-guessing themselves. If you don't need him to pitch, if you find that Barry Zito is pitching poorly and you want him out of the rotation,

then you don't want to have this weird extension situation look like it might be driving it. Because then Barry Zito gets mad and starts squawking i mean the giants started barry zito in game one of the world series last year so it seems like it would be hard for them to say a few months later well we just we lost faith in you completely naturally and it has nothing to do with this contract option. So I think one way or the other, it could be a sort of awkward summer. So you might as well take care of it now. Now, it seems like there's a pretty good chance he's going to reach 200 innings anyway. And so the Giants are probably going to be stuck overpaying some for Barry Zito. It also seems like maybe Barry Zito at what is essentially $11 million as is for one year,

because the buyout is a sunk cost. So $11 million as is is not actually the worst thing in the world. And the Giants might actually like the idea. I mean, they clearly like Barry Zito more than the general public does because they let Barry Zito start Game 1 of the World Series, etc. But, I mean, if you're talking about paying for a two-win pitcher in a free agent market next year that looks really, really, really shallow for starters and for a team like the Giants that has really no option beyond Zito and Lincecum,

I mean, they're very shallow in the upper levels for starting pitching. It might not actually be a thing that they would hate to do. So yeah, I think it'd be a nice way to handle things. Yeah. It's kind of incredible that we're talking about this. I guess, I mean, this would have been, when is the last point at which this conversation would have been inconceivable or unpredictable? I mean, probably before, what, before the playoffs last year? Would we have thought that this is something that the Giants would consider? I mean, or I guess before kind of the downfall of Tim Lincecum

and the pretty okay performance of Barry Zito lately, it would have been a lot harder to imagine, I guess. Yeah, I think certainly like September 1st of 2012, it would have been unthinkable. There was no idea that he was going to be back in the club's good graces at this point. There was probably really no shot that he'd get 200 innings, I think, at that point. I mean, the thing about Zito is that to get 200 innings is not all that easy. With most starters, 200 innings just means stay healthy

and start 32 games. But Zito is a combination of bad and pitch inefficient. And so it actually takes two things happening, maybe three things happening for Zito to get to 200 innings. And so it wouldn't have really looked like a realistic threat. I mean, if he couldn't throw 200 innings when he was 29, it didn't seem like he was going to throw 200 innings when he was 35. So are we putting too much weight on his recent performance then, possibly? I mean, is there that much? I mean, he's had, what, two starts and hasn't allowed a run yet, and he pitched well at the end of last year. But if we're saying that basically six weeks or so of pitching ago, we wouldn't have considered this or we wouldn't have thought the Giants would consider it.

And if he hasn't reached that point, I don't know. I mean, I guess I see what you are saying, certainly about wanting to diffuse a potentially awkward conversation that could be, or a situation that could become distracting but i guess i don't know maybe we're kind of overrating the odds that he will actually make it to that point uh yeah i and i don't want to suggest that i think barry azito is any better now than he was three years ago i think he's still he's still terrible um and he's not a pitcher I would particularly want to have around.

I just think that right now one of the shifts is that his role in the rotation is more secure than it's been for a few years. And partly it's a better pitching environment than the league as a whole was a few years ago. I mean, probably. Who knows how this year will play. But it's a better pitching environment, which might, you know, if it's easier to pitch, you get a couple more innings. That's the difference between 199 and 200. Or between 197, which he threw in his first season, and 200.

200 or between 197, which he threw in his first season, and 200. And so it just seems to me that the odds are not bad that he'll get to 200, whether he's better or not. And in fact, if I had to put the odds at something right now, especially, I mean, you know, seven and seven in his first two starts, obviously it's a long way to 200, but it's a good step along the way. I mean, I probably would put the odds at something like 60% that he gets to 200 this year. Well, we know that if the Giants score, what, four or five runs for him in a game? Yeah, he's 5,000 in his career. So that will help. Who's the next guy on the rotation depth chart if Lincecum continues to be bad

or if Zito starts being awful? Who's the next guy who gets the call? Seriously, I honestly don't totally know. But I think it's Yusmaro Petit. Yeah, so someone will have to be pretty bad to get knocked out of that rotation. Exactly. Well, and Lincecum might get knocked out first too. I mean, there's very, very, very little chance that he gets knocked out of the rotation at this point. So unless he gets hurt or, well, honestly, that might be the end of that sentence yeah so if you're giving him 32

or 33 starts uh between now and the end of the year i don't know okay it's just weird it's so weird to think that i'm proposing and and and it's weird too because there's like you see dodgers fans now that are kind of like excitedly looking at the possibility that cito might get his contract uh vested and uh yet it could end up being a thing that the giants are like you know sort of happy about anyway all right that's all uh okay well i don't have that much to say about the royals. The Royals are in first place as we are recording right now. They are six and three. They have scored 43 runs. They have allowed 28 runs. And I was feeling optimistic about the Royals before the season started. I picked them to

finish second in the Central just sort of because I felt like they had more upside than any of the non-Tigers teams. And that given their age and the number of guys that they've had who maybe were projected to ultimately be better than they have been so far, I thought maybe they could take a sizable step or at least were more likely to than the other non-Tigers teams in the division. So, so far, things have gone according to plan, or according to Dayton Moore's plan. Kinda, though? Well, I mean, the offense is basically a Royals offense right now. Well, I mean, the offense is basically a Royals offense right now.

It has one of the lowest on-base percentages and one of the highest batting averages. That is kind of what we've seen from the Royals in recent years. But they've pitched pretty well. I mean, the guys that they were depending on to pitch pretty well, who no one really except the Royals seem to believe would pitch very well, have pitched very well so far. Wade Davis has made a couple starts and has looked pretty good. Irvin Santana has made a couple starts, and I guess one was not so good and one was very good. So on the whole, he is looking very good. Jeremy Guthrie has had a couple solid starts, so has Shields. And Luis Mendoza has had one good start. So I don't know. There's not a whole lot to say about that. It's, I don't know, 50 innings or so probably between all five of those guys. And there's no particular

reason to expect that to continue or to be more confident that it will continue than we were two weeks ago. But so far, the Royals are kind of following the blueprint for how a Royals team would compete. Except that, well, I mean, there's Moustakas is not really hitting and Hasbro is not really hitting. Salperez is not really hitting. Yeah, so this is a question maybe that I would have about this. And let's imagine, obviously right now we're talking about samples that are too small to draw any conclusions from. So let's just imagine that we're having this conversation in May. And everybody's numbers are basically the same as they are now and the Royals are in first place.

And everybody's numbers are basically the same as they are now, and the Royals are in first place. But they're doing it with good pitching from pitchers that we didn't really believe in, and they're not getting any of those breakout offensive performances from the hitters that we thought might get breakout offensive performances. It seems to me that the plan for the Royals was to get just barely adequate pitching and have a whole bunch of hitters break out at once. was to get just barely adequate pitching and have a whole bunch of hitters break out at once. So if that's not the way that they're winning, does that make it less sustainable to you? Or does it not matter? Does the composition of their victory matter

in terms of analyzing how real it is? I guess it does, but I guess there's always the possibility that it will start happening at any point. So if it hasn't happened a month from now and the Royals have managed to win anyway just by kind of getting better than expected pitching or maybe fluky pitching and the offense has just been kind of okay, the guys who I sort of expected or thought there was a decent chance would improve significantly this season could conceivably do that, could still start doing that at any point.

I mean, basically, I'm going to believe that players like Moustakis and Hosmer and Perez, I mean, Perez really hasn't struggled offensively in the past. He's just sort of been hurt. But I'm basically going to believe that those guys are on the verge of an improvement until we've seen otherwise for maybe a couple more seasons. So I'm still going to be kind of optimistic about those guys taking a step forward. So if we get to midseason and they haven't done that yet, but they've managed to remain competitive with some fluky pitching, then I guess, I don't know, I guess it would be more likely that the pitching would reg out and either improve or stay consistent for the rest of the season. But I don't know. I just kind of have a feeling of optimism about the Royals. And I don't know, when you looked at, what team did you look at with the number one farm system and you looked several years ahead? Yeah, the 2004 Brewers.

Yeah, and it was, I mean, you only looked at that one team, so we don't know what the typical return for a number one farm system is. We don't know that that Brewers team that had a number of players become stars or very productive players, We don't know that that's typical, but just looking at what you did and looking at that team compared to the bad Astros farm system that you also studied, it just makes me optimistic that a team with that kind of farm system will ultimately get a lot of production out of it. Not necessarily this season, but I am still sort of a believer that this group as a whole

will become a competitive team. And I don't know, I guess I'm slightly more optimistic about that than I was two weeks ago, which I probably shouldn't be. I'm just falling into the trap that we were talking about last week. Yeah. I feel mostly like you do about the Royals, except I don't find their start to be particularly encouraging for the reasons that I kind of hinted at.

If they were staying on the path that seemed likely to lead to victory at this point, like if Hosmer and Moustakas had four home runs each and they were winning even though Santana had been pretty mediocre and Wade Davis had been mediocre, then I would be like, yep, this is how they win. And I would think that it was probably reasonably likely to continue. At this point, I don't know that there's any relevant information that we've learned, except that Hosmer and Moustakas have not come out gangbusters. But they're as good a shot as anybody.

So quick Chris Carter update. Okay. So Chris Carter, when we recorded our show two nights ago, through seven games, had a 192 slugging percentage and a 340 OPS. 36 hours later, he has a 568 slugging percentage and an 857 OPS. Almost like these early season stats don't mean that much. Yeah, almost. All right, so we'll be back tomorrow with the last show of the week and two new topics.