Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 187: More About Velocity Loss/Baseball Players and Appendectomies

Episode Date: April 23, 2013

Ben and Sam discuss the velocity losses of some of baseball’s best starters, then talk about whether players should have prophylactic appendectomies.

Well, there's no doubt about it. They have to come out. Oh, for sure. Check them into the hospital before six Friday afternoon. Them? Us? Well, Mrs. Brady, your tonsils are almost as bad as Cindy's. Good morning and welcome to episode 187 of Effectively Wild,

the daily podcast from BaseballPerspectives.com. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg. Our email address is podcast. Wait, say it again. Podcast. Yes. It's a lot to remember. Podcast at baseball.

Just singular. Just one podcast. We are only one podcast at baseballperspectives.com. All right. Yes. So email us because tomorrow we'll be answering questions for email Wednesday. We might as well get podcasts at baseballperspectives.com. You might as well.

You think a lot of people are trying to email podcasts and having their emails bounce back? Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm not sure a lot of people are, but I bet it's the best questions. I bet those are the best questions. So we're here, though, to talk about our own topics today. Ben, what are you going to talk about? I wanted to talk about appendectomies. Mm-hmm. Naturally. But before that, can we just mention that Casper Wells is now an Oakland Athletic? Of course we can.

Following up on yesterday's topic about the Blue Jays claiming everyone. So the Blue Jays traded him to the A's for cash considerations. And I wonder whether the cash that they got back for trading Casper Wells is more or less than the cash that they had to spend to claim him. Yeah, I wonder that as well. The cash considerations. It's a big difference either way. Well, yeah.

I mean, what if... I don't know how much it is, though, right? I mean, there's a big difference. There's probably... Yeah, it's not going to be a lot, because it's the A's, etc. Right. But I'm still sort of trying to figure out where the Blue Jays' profit is in these moves. So the cash considerations are somewhat intriguing, because at least it might be where's profit is in these moves. So the cash considerations are somewhat intriguing

because at least it might be where the profit is, but it's very unlikely. I assume that the cash considerations are probably, yeah, maybe it's their way of the cost. And one other thing, we talked about shortening games on, I guess it was Friday, and whether umpires should limit the amount of time and strictly limit the amount of time that pitchers have between pitches. And Zachary Levine, BP author, was listening to that episode,

and he sent me an article yesterday about the Atlantic League trying to speed up games. And this is from about a week ago. And the Atlantic League has put some of these things into effect. They switched to the 12 seconds between pitches. It was 20 seconds. So they hadn't switched to that yet. The major leagues have. And then they've also put into place 90 seconds can pass between each

half inning. There will be restrictions on the number of mound visits that coaches and players can make. And then umpires will also limit the number of times that batters can step in and out of the batter's box. And it sounds like they are actually going to strictly monitor this. There is going to be an umpire with a stopwatch who will monitor the pace of play and enforce the rules. And then the best part and Zach's favorite part and also my favorite part is, if a game takes longer than two hours, 45 minutes to complete,

managers and general managers of the teams involved and the umpires of that game must fill out a report explaining why. So that's fun. I think that might be the best motivation. Like the report might actually be the one thing that might work. Because people hate paperwork. Yeah, I mean, I guess the goal is simply that you want people to think about this and to actually feel like they have some incentive to speed the game up.

Basically those two things, incentive and focus, keeping it kind of in the front of their mind. And I think that that little paperwork probably does it. Yeah, so there was a little complaining in the article by players and managers about how they won't be able to go to the mound and they won't be able to settle the pitcher down and all of that. But it'll be interesting to see how that works. The thing is, though, that the report, I mean, it seems to me that any time it goes longer than two hours and 45 minutes, the report is simply going to be like, oh, well, it was seven to six.

Probably. So maybe what it should be although i guess this makes it too complicated and takes away some of the elegance of the simplicity um is it should be time per basically time per pitch you take the time take the number of minutes in the game take the number of pitches in the game divide them up and if it's you know over a certain certain pace yeah then that's what they have to explain. That would make more sense. It would make more sense. What's your topic?

I'm repeating a topic from a week ago, but I just want to talk about fastball velocity for pitchers, starting pitchers again. Okay. You want to do that? Yeah, what's your topic? The appendectomy thing. Oh, that's right, the appendectomy thing. Yeah, that explains why you were asking me. All right, so it's just another, I don't know, it's a week or two later.

Since last time we talked about Felix Hernandez and Roy Halladay and CeCe Sabathia, et cetera, losing velocity. And Jeff Passan wrote about this yesterday, Monday. And Jeff Passan is always very good. So, again, Jeff Passon is good and writes about Verlander and Felix Hernandez and Sabathia and Weaver and Chris Sale and Ubaldo Jimenez and a whole bunch of pitchers. And he noted one thing that interested me is that the velocity is actually down league wide this year uh compared to last year and it might not what data was he using for that do you remember um because sometimes there can be classification things like i don't know if if people were lumping in cutters before or something sometimes you'll you'll see an article that, I don't know,

Colin Wires was talking to me recently about an article that claimed that fastball speed had been rising, but it was clear when you look deeper at the data that it was really more of a classification change and that there were just fewer pitch types being included in fastball. Yes, right, because especially the removal of the cutter, I would think from fastballs, for instance, historically from like 2006 to 2009 would have seen a big increase.

I don't know what he used. He does note that a lot of ballparks were kind of, I guess, recalibrated this year to try to get more accurate readings, and so that could be an issue. Although that probably wouldn't be an issue if he were using Brooks. I'm sorry, I don't know what he's using. I don't know how well he adjusted it, et cetera. But it would be interesting if that were true, not because there would be anything interesting about that in particular,

so much as the fact that strikeouts are up again. And you wouldn't expect those two things to happen simultaneously necessarily. So if both of those things ended up pacing out to be true for the season, that would be interesting. But Felix Hernandez pitched on Monday and pitched well but he has been pitching well but he he was averaging 92 point sorry 93.1 with his four steamer and 93.0 with his sinker which are like legit Felix Hernandez fastball speeds. In fact, faster than his average fastball last year was. So he had been like around, I think, 89.6 or something like that going into that start. And boom, here comes all the velocity back, which I think took me by surprise. And CeCe Sabathia pitched as well on Monday, and he pitched quite poorly.

He gave up, I think, three home runs, a couple of them to Ryan Roberts, and his velocity was also higher than it had been. He was averaging about 92 miles an hour on Monday, which is about a mile more. And so those are things I wanted to note for the record. Sabathia also, in in passan's piece he talks about how sabathia has actually already changed his pitching style around this new velocity that uh he's not he's not in the dark about it that he's totally aware of it and he's already um uh he's basically quit throwing his his back foot slider to righties uh and is staying on the outer edge much more than he ever did before, which is an interesting thing. Dan Heron talked to me about velocity loss once,

and he said that it's sort of depressing being a pitcher because you lose stuff from day one. You're constantly getting weaker. And that he knows that he's not as good but in one way of looking at it he knows he's not as good as he used to be this was when he was still really good when he was this was 2011 he told me this said he knows he's not as good as he used to be in the in the sense that he can't blow blow pitches past people anymore and it's depressing and it feels makes him feel like an old man. And so it just becomes all about adjusting and that's all the pitching is over the long haul,

is just adjusting for your reduced velocity. So Sabathia, it's interesting to see how quickly Sabathia made adjustments and we'll see if he keeps those adjustments or if the velocity comes back. And then lastly, nobody has really talked as much about Verlander's velocity loss because Verlander has been really good still. It's been noted. But it hasn't been a big deal because he's still getting guys out really well. And there's a quote about Felix in this piece, I, uh, where one general manager says, I think he's evolving less power, more pitcher. And I wonder if Verlander, uh, is, well, I'm not speculating that he is intentionally keeping his, his velocity down, but I just

wonder if there's anything that you would look at in the statistics um to look for a guy who is maybe intentionally throwing less hard if you think if you think that it there would have there were there are cases where pitchers intentionally uh reduce their velocity in order to become a different type of pitcher when when they're when they are hard throwers and what you would look for to sort of see indications that it's intentional and not simply natural aging? Well, I wouldn't guess that there are many who do it, at least if they've been around for a while.

I could see maybe, I guess I think Aroldis Chapman doesn't throw quite as hard anymore. And maybe with him, it's kind of a, he wants to throw strikes thing. I think I wrote something about Perlander at some point and how he, he lost a little velocity last season, but it seemed like his peak velocity was the same. And so I thought maybe it was less worrisome because he's always been a guy who kind of gains velocity as the game goes on uh which is strange but but he has that ability

seemingly where um in the ninth inning he will or eighth inning he will be throwing as hard as he was at the beginning or be or harder uh and so it seems like he kind of saves something and in reserve sometimes and so with him uh given that he was still sort of hitting the same maximum speeds um it it kind of suggested to me that maybe he was taking a little something off intentionally just to save his arm because he's thrown so many pitches in so many innings. So I guess I would be more inclined to believe that about him. I would think that in most cases of velocity loss, there's also a peak loss, I would think, right?

I mean, it's not just your ability to do it over and over again. It's also your ability to do it ever. And it seems in his case and i don't i haven't looked this season but he was throwing sometimes as as hard as he ever had and that suggested to me that he had that ability uh still and that maybe it was kind of a conscious choice but i don't know it's hard to say um i almost brought up Sabathia. He was almost my topic last week because after his last start where he didn't throw very hard, he just had some really, really frank quotes about it. And he said, I'm hoping more velocity comes back, but if not, then we'll work with this. It's the reality. I've been pitching for a long time. Eventually this was going to happen. There's nothing I can do about it. I can't throw any harder. And it just kind of became resigned to it more quickly than most pitchers, I guess. And I wonder if that is a key to maintaining your effectiveness once you've lost some velocity

is not pretending that it's going to come back or not pitching as if you still had it and just adjusting quickly. So as you said, and as Passon wrote, it seems like he has kind of done that, even if maybe a little of his velocity is coming back. So I guess it has something to do with just what your repertoire is. If you're, I mean, if Sean Doolittle suddenly lost five miles per hour on his fastball or something, he would, he would have nothing else to throw. I guess he would just break in my heart. Just, I don't even want to think about it. It's hard to think about, but a guy who throws a fastball every time is, I would think, I mean, more vulnerable if he loses some velocity than someone who has a bunch of secondary pitches and has great

command and all of those other things so that's a big part of of how you can stay effective despite losing velocity and i guess that's something that that felix has done but i wonder how much of it is a mental adjustment also and just coming to terms with your your new velocity and just working around it. So, Sabathia, Felix, Verlander, and if you wanted, you can lump Weaver in, have been four of the most durable pitchers in baseball. All but Weaver have been hard throwers. Sabathia, Hernandez, and Verlander have led baseball in innings pitched going back to 2008. Just curious, what do you think are the odds

that one of them has Tommy John surgery within the next 365 days? Well, we know Felix has some sort of elbow issue of some kind that was written into his new extension. I don't know what the league-wide rate is for pitchers. I would guess that these guys are more vulnerable than the typical pitcher just because of their workload. But then again, the fact that they've stayed healthy for the most part is a good indicator. So I don't know.

One of them in the next year will have Tommy John surgery, I guess, like 20%. Okay. Seems right. All right. Let's talk about appendectomy. Okay. So this is something I've wondered about before. Jason Hayward had an appendectomy on Monday night, very late, I think. And so now he is out for a while. And the typical recovery time for an appendectomy used to be like two to three weeks. And lately, it has not been that long. Because there's this new laparoscopic procedure, which is less invasive.

I guess they don't have to completely cut you open. So that seems to be what most athletes have now. And Matt Holliday and Adam Dunn had this, I think in 2011, they had this procedure and came back in about a week or so. And I think it was done, struggled for a while after and holiday was fine right away. So even if you assume that it's just going to cost players a week now and that they will come back mostly at full strength right away, I've always kind of wondered whether it would make sense to just have uh just have an appendectomy over the off season or something just just i mean so you don't have everybody get it out of the way yeah just just get it out of the way vaccines right so smallpox parties so i looked it up so

from what i quickly googled nine percent of of males have appendectomies at some point in their lives. So almost one out of 10 baseball players presumably is going to have one at some point. And there is some kind of disagreement in the medical community about whether the appendix actually does anything. It's kind of hard to say. It doesn't really seem to have any side effects for people who have it removed, and they don't seem to do any worse after having it removed. But some people think there is still some sort of purpose it serves, maybe with your immune system or something. But so there is a thing called a prophylactic appendectomy, which is just

just a preventative one, just having it done before you need to have it done. And they're kind of urban legends about astronauts having it before they go up to space because you wouldn't want to have appendicitis in space. Apparently, that has not actually been done, but would be done on a like on a mission to Mars or something, which was much longer, but, but it has been done in some cases for say scientists who are spending the winter in the Arctic or something. And it would be a lot of trouble to fly them out if they had an emergency. So they just have their appendix out, um, preventatively to, to, so I wonder for a baseball baseball player whether that kind of makes sense if there's a one in ten chance that you are going to have it out at some point and you're making millions of dollars. Now Jason Hayward is not making that many millions of dollars right now but he will

at some point and he is at least worth millions of dollars to his, but he will at some point, and he is at least worth millions of dollars to his team. So I wonder whether it would be worth it for someone to just have their appendix out over the winter when you have months to recover, and then you don't have to risk missing a week or more than a week at some point during the season and costing your team however much that costs um i don't know it would be kind of interesting if someone did that and probably we should talk to a doctor or something to see if that actually makes sense but uh i don't know i guess if i were a team maybe i would float the idea for a player to do that just in case um i remember an episode of the brady bunch where i think one of the characters needed to have her tonsils out i think

and it was a very anxious thing because even though it was a very routine procedure, all surgery can be dangerous and all surgery can kill you. And I don't know what the mortality rate or the fatality rate for appendectomies are. It looks here that there are various risks involved and about 3% lead to some complications, although I would imagine that many, many, many, many, many, many fewer lead to death. But basically bleeding and infection are risks in about 3% of cases when the appendix is healthy. So I don't know if that would matter. I mean, you certainly wouldn't want to have 3% of baseball players having unnecessary surgeries that lead to complications that then affect them later. But I would imagine that most of these complications are probably extremely small and would only lead to an extra couple of days in the hospital.

And baseball players would have the best doctors available and maybe their rates would be lower than the typical person. I don't know. Maybe. Yeah. All right. Sure, though. There's all sorts of unnecessary surgeries that baseball players could probably be having to prevent these sorts of things. Yeah. I don't know. I was just reading a paper that said, in conclusion, in the presence of optimal conditions, prophylactic appendectomy can be performed safely. I don't know. I don't know. It seems like maybe it's worth exploring if you're paying someone 20 plus million dollars a year and you're a close race, and every win is worth millions of dollars to you. And losing a guy for a week at the wrong time could cost you a win. And I don't know. Maybe. Well, Ben, write it up.

This might be your chance to leave a lasting impact on the game. Write up a nice firm position paper. Make your case. And who knows? Maybe in 20 years it'll be known as Lindbergh surgery. I'll get right on that. All right.

We'll be back tomorrow. Email us, please, at podcast at baseballperspectives.com and have a pleasant day.