Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 191: The Significance of the Blue Jays’ Slow Start/Justin Upton and Internet Gloating

Episode Date: April 29, 2013

Ben and Sam discuss how deep a hole the Blue Jays have dug, then talk about whether it’s fair for people to gloat about the Diamondbacks’ decision to trade Justin Upton based on what’s happened so far this season.

So this is what I like to call my told you so dance. I told you so, I told you so, I told you so, I told you so, I told you so, I told you so. Good morning and welcome to episode 191 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from BaseballPerspectives.com. I'm Sam Miller and with Ben Lindberg. Ben, how are you doing? I'm well. How was your trip? It was okay. What did you guys talk about? Man, I don't know. We talked about...

You have not caught up on the podcast yet, is what you're telling me. I'm still listening to them in order. I'm still at episode 94. I'll get there. Well, we talked about Chad Billingsley and elbow injuries with Corey Dawkins. And we talked about the Mariners and Brendan Ryan being benched with Paul Sporer. And then on Friday, I talked to Will Woods about the Mets and Ike Davis and whether there are any prospects that you would trade straight up

or that you wouldn't trade straight up for Stanton like a single prospect and one prospect yes we were riffing on a note in a Jason Stark article where he the Mets the Wheeler and Darnot

and the GM who said it'd be he would he would yeah it was one of them it was an lx that's so beautiful yeah you know i wrote that piece about six months ago about that i don't know it wasn't even six months ago it's maybe four months ago about the gms that jerry krasnick talks to every offseason who who make predictions for him on who's going to sign where and who's a better player between two sort of similar free agents and found that they have almost exactly a 50% success rate in predicting things that should be coin flips. So I don't know what that says because I do assume the GMs are smarter than us and yet there's something about asking

people to make predictions that makes them, I don't know, so wrong. I don't know if they're sabotaging themselves or what. But if a GM tells you something, if a GM is quoted in the media as saying something, well, for one thing, there's a huge bias toward only the craziest GMs getting reported or execs getting reported. I mean, Jason Stark presumably didn't call 29 other guys asking. Yes, we mentioned that. He may have emailed 30 people and they all said something completely reasonable and then that one guy didn't or one person didn't. So that's the one he reported. Exactly.

There's always a scout who will tell you that Uniesky Betancourt has better tools than Troy Dulewitski and he's going to break out this year. I mean, you can always find one. But yeah, that was crazy. And you wonder why that exec said that. It's hard to imagine. I mean, it's got to be a philosophical thing, right? That guy just must have some weird idea about player value or something.

Because otherwise... Yeah, so what do you want to talk about today? Last place Toronto Blue Jays. And I'll talk about Justin Upton. Okay. I thought we should update people on Casper Wells. We should probably have a Casper Wells transaction of the day. So he was...

A Casper Wells transaction Tumblr. Yeah. So he was... A Casper Wells transaction tumbler. Yeah. So he was designated for assignment by the A's. And I think the last time we recorded, I guess it was, we talked about how the Blue Jays had traded him to the A's. Now he is designated for assignment from the A's.

He played, though. Didn't he play a game for them? He could have sworn... Yeah, he did. He played three games and got five played though. Didn't he play a game for them? I don't know. Yeah, he did. He played three games and got five played appearances. So they actually used him. He went 0 for 5 with a strikeout. That was all they needed to see.

That's crazy, crazy. I mean, what could they have seen? I don't know. Was it just a temporary roster need or something? I don't know. Was it just a temporary roster need or something? I don't know. Well, now it might be a 40-man thing. They need the 40-man spot now. I don't know.

I haven't looked. But that's crazy. Now I'm starting to feel bad for the guys. So that's three orgs in the last three weeks or so and a total of five played appearances. And, in fact, a total of five played appearances total. No minor league play this year so far. Yeah, so I'm interested to see where he ends up next.

I'm sure it will be somewhere. And another update on a player of interest to podcast people, Kevin Correa. Still doing crazy Kevin Correa things. He went eight shutout innings today, Sunday. So he has now, he has a 2.23 ERA in five starts and 36 in the third innings. And I was watching Quick Pitch on MLB Network, just the highlight show, and they described Kevin Correa as dominant and on fire. Is this going to be a clips show? We're just going to talk about, we're going to review, we're going to sort of fade off into blurry memories of previous podcasts?

Yeah, normally you'd do that on a milestone show. We should have saved that for 200 and we could just have clips from prior shows. So tell me about the Toronto Blue Jays, Ben. Okay. I don't have that much to say about them except that they have not been good so far.

They just got swept by the Yankees in I think it was a four game series. So they have struggled and we're getting to the point of the season where that starts to mean something. I mean, I mean, the longer the season goes on, obviously, and the worse your start is, the more it means. goes on obviously and the worse your start is the more it means um but i i just kind of think back to a series that uh renny giserely did at bp some years ago um in which he kind of looked at when a and it was it was actually like 10 years ago uh and he looked at kind of when a a hot start or a slow start starts to really mean something,

when you should really start to believe in it, because that was the year that the Royals started out well. And he kind of picked 30 games as the cutoff kind of for when you should. I mean, he said that sort of certain thresholds of games played or record kind of had more predictive value than others, that it wasn't just a smooth climb to predictiveness the more games you play. And I think Jay Jaffe looked at it just a couple of years ago and the results had held pretty steady up until then. years ago and the results had held pretty steady up until then. So the Jays are now, they're not quite at that 30 game mark, but they are 9-17. Well, even if there's four games left, even if they win the next four games, they're 13-17 and they would pass whatever threshold for sucking through 30. 30 uh yeah and i i mean before before sunday's loss their playoff odds were down to i think 8.9

and and they started a little below 30 which i think most people myself included thought seemed a little a little low um but pakoda wasn't a wasn't really a huge believer in the blue Jays. And, and now you probably figure there, I don't know, they lost another game to a division rival. So they're probably not too much above 5% now as we, as we get to the end of April and, and you figured that it would be a close division. It's, it's always seemed like it would be a division that kind of came down to the end and every team is kind of good, or you can make an argument that they could be kind of good.

And the Blue Jays have started much worse than any other team in that division. They've started worse than every other team except the Astros and Marlins actually. Uh, and so even if they are as good from, from here on out as a lot of people expected them to be, um, they could, they could still kind of be in, in such a deep hole now if, if every other team in the division is, is competent that they might not be able to climb out of it. Yeah. So what, uh, does the division help them or hurt them? Do you think, I mean the, on the one the one hand, they're going to basically have to play hard teams for the rest of the season.

And also, the odds are that of the four quality teams ahead of them, probably one will vastly outplay their potential. You know, if there's four teams, you only need one to vastly outplay their potential to run away with the division. But on the other hand, their opponents are going to be beating up on each other a lot and if they could somehow uh you know time it perfectly where a lot of their wins from this point on come against division rivals they could be making up a lot of ground while uh a lot of other teams are splitting three games well you can't split but you know what I mean. Splitting a home and road series against each other. I mean, I guess the question is, is it better to be in this situation

because 86, 87 might win in a sort of packed parity division, or is it worse because they've got four very good teams to make up ground on I don't know, I mean later in the season wow really? I hate autoplay on websites

what website were you going to? that was ESPN so yeah, I don't know, when it's later in the season certainly you don't like to see a lot of teams ahead of you that you kind of have to climb over at this point in the season. I don't know. Probably still that, but I see what you're saying.

So let's say they need 88 to win this. So they would need to go 88 and 74. So they would need to go 79 and 57 against this division. So that's 79. Hang on, I'm doing some math here. Are you looking for being presented at doing some math 581 581 yeah so they would basically need to win at a 94 win

clip for the rest of the season in order to reach what did I say 88 yeah that is tough I didn't have him win in 94 when the season started I had him win in like 88 and I was a lot more optimistic on him than the computer

and of course Reyes is hurt and Josh Johnson was scratched started i had him winning like 88 and i was a lot more optimistic on him than the computer yeah and of course reyes is hurt and josh johnson was scratched from his last start so let's say they finish uh i mean like basically what we're talking about right now so far i mean i'm not i'm not writing off the blue days but what we're talking about right now is almost exactly what the marlins did last year and they you know bought everybody. It became a very rational pick to go from the bottom of the division to the top.

They were terrible in April. They never got good. They sold off a bunch of parts and baseball in Florida was dead forever. Do you think there's long-term consequences to this if the Blue Jays finish somehow in last place this year? Yeah, I don't know.

I was going to ask what you thought the narrative would be around this. I mean it's too early to say, but if that were to happen, how would the mainstream people explain it? John Farrell. Man, John Farrell is going to come out of this looking really good. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, there would have to be some sort of consequences because this is – we did an episode I think towards the end of last season or over the off season

about kind of how the honeymoon period seemed to be over for Alex Anthopoulos. Like there were some people who were getting a little impatient with him or there was, I don't remember what the impetus was, there was some article or some local Toronto broadcaster or something was kind of talking about how he'd been there for a few years and they hadn't won anything yet. And yeah, I mean, this was kind of the offseason where he went from tinkering and from making little moves to strengthen the organization and everything

to kind of trading from the strength that he had built up and all the prospects that he had acquired and making a run for it. And if that run were to backfire spectacularly, which we're not saying that it will, but if it were to happen, then I don't know, maybe his job is in danger. Maybe Blue Jays fans are so disillusioned that they don't come back for a while.

I don't know. Have you looked at their pitching stats recently? Nope. This is their rotation. Their run differential, by the way, is exactly what you would expect. They're right on that. So Dickey, 4-6-6 ERA. Burley, 6-3-5.

Morrow, 5-2-7. Josh Johnson, 6-8-6. The only pitcher worth a darn in that rotation so far is Jay Happ. The other four are combined. Didn't seem to have a rotation spot in the spring. Right. So the other four are basically just a little bit below 6

combined. And that's supposed to be a really good rotation. I mean, in a way, what you're seeing right now is what happened to the Angels last year, where they have a way, what you're seeing right now is what happened to the Angels last year, where they have what should be a really good rotation completely misfiring all at once. It's hard to predict that. I don't really know what his reputation is in Toronto, so this might just be the convenient national narrative,

but Brett Lawry seems like kind of a tough guy to get along with maybe. And I wonder if they lose, if they disappoint this season, I wonder if this ends up being at all about him. And I also, because he's not playing very well. He's not playing well at all. Um, and also I wonder if he, if they sort of did go into any sort of fire sale this summer,

uh, you'll Laurie wouldn't be the kind of guy who you would expect to get moved. But if he were available on trade right now, I wonder what sort of package he'd bring back. Yeah. I don't know. I, I,

I have the sense that he's pretty popular there, but he is certainly very intense. So I guess maybe that doesn't play so well on a losing team. He's on a Gordon Beckham trajectory right now. Yeah, well, that's an extreme trajectory. I wouldn't expect that to continue. I mean, I liked him too entering the season. Beckham or Lowry? Lowry. Yeah.

So you've noticed that I've mispronounced Lowry's name six times? I don't know. Maybe I have. Let's see. Oh, my goodness. They don't actually have a pronunciation guide. It's so obvious. The one that we've been, yeah. I actually have a pronunciation guide. Because it's so obvious. The one that we've been.

Yeah. I think you're right. I think it's Laurie. I think I've known that I've been mispronouncing it for years and I've never adjusted. Took me a long time to get Robin Yount. Yeah. What did you say? What did you say?

Yount. Yount. Yeah. Yeah, I was a child. yunt uh yunt yeah yeah i was a child sometimes you you mispronounce things something one time as a child and and it just becomes so ingrained and then you realize as an adult that you've been doing it the whole time uh-huh yeah or just doing things wrong like you just realize that you have personal flaws that were never addressed when you were six yeah i have a lot of those i was at uh well no i'm not gonna get into that i know i was at a bp event yeah yesterday yeah it was really fun and i was carrying two bags of

of cracker jack that were like they were just on the table. They were free. I was walking into the game and one of them fell out of my pocket. I didn't know it fell out of my pocket. A guy came over, picked it up and brought it to me. Very nice. Very friendly. I was kind of flustered. I'm always flustered in social situations. I don't know what I'm doing. I have a combination of way too much filter and no filter. And so it just – my head gets all like kind of cloudy and I'm not good. I do poorly. And so he gives me the Cracker Jack and I say something like, that's not something I want. I don't know why. I mean he was so nice and I did not – it's not like I was actually thinking like –

Was it someone at the event? It was, yeah. It was such a terrible thing. He's not going to renew his subscription. It was not only was it a terrible thing but it was like – it was just me mangling words. It was just like I didn't – I wasn't intending to get that across, like that dismissive thing. I don't know what I was trying to say but I was trying – like I was – I think I was trying to make fun of myself for grabbing Cracker Jack that Iive thing across. I don't know what I was trying to say, but I think I was trying to make fun of myself for grabbing Cracker Jack that I didn't want.

That's what it was. I had grabbed like a big handful of Cracker Jack that I had no intention of eating and I was embarrassed that they were falling off me like stench off a hobo. And so I was just trying to kind of mock myself for leaving a trail of Cracker Jack. And I totally mangled it. And for the rest of the evening, I was thinking, like, do I need to address this?

So, I mean, if anybody saw it, please don't. That's not me. Would you like to apologize to the man who picked up your Cracker Jack if he's listening? I feel like I'm doing that. Aren't I doing that? Yeah, I guess so. All right. So Justin Upton, I think I can do this fairly quickly

because I don't have much to say about it. But Justin Upton, of course, is having a huge start to the season. And I've noticed a – I don't want to put this in a negative way. I'm not trying to create a straw man or anything. But I feel like I've noticed a little bit of a celebratory aspect to some of the people I follow on Twitter who ripped the move at the time and are now kind of saying like,

God, can you believe they made that trade? It looks even worse now and so on and so forth. And I just want to know if you think that it's fair, and I'm not trying to start from a position that it's obviously not fair, but do you think it's fair to, I mean, given how much of the narrative around Justin Upton was, change of scenery, immense talent, going to explode if he gets in a position where he's appreciated and then sure enough he's doing it is this enough uh do you think to conclude that the diamondbacks made a mistake is it fair is it fair to be i mean i know that normally you don't you know

confirmation bias and april stats and small samples and all that but is is there any is there any part of this that you think is an exception uh Yeah, well, I've seen that too. I mean, I've seen the odd tweet about how Martin Prado is hitting in comparison to Upton, which is not well. I guess, I mean, I didn't like the trade either, or especially the lead-up to the trade, which we've talked about and how it seemed like they sort of went out of their way almost to deflate his value before trading him. I mean, I guess in the sense that, I don't know, that the concern about Upton was that he didn't hit for as much power as anticipated last year and he had the, I don't the, the wrist or the finger issue or whatever it was.

And, and so there was kind of a, a sense that he had underperformed, but there was also a competing sense that it was just a, an injury thing and that his power would be back this season, uh, which clearly it is. I guess it's not too soon to say that Justin Upton's power is, I mean, you don't see a lot of players hit 12 home runs in a month, in any month of the season, especially April, I guess. So I don't know. I mean, I guess if you didn't like the trade before

it I guess it's legitimate to to say it looks a little bit worse now I mean I don't know that I guess ideally you're you're judging a trade by what you know at the time. And so if you want to be really strict about that, then you just kind of stop judging the trade after it happens, right? I mean, and then nothing that takes place after that has any bearing on how you think the trade was? Yeah, that's always been my philosophy. And particularly when it comes to prospects who hit or miss, it just seems like it's completely unfair to think that you have any extra insight into prospects and which ones are likely to pan out than the conventional wisdom. Upton's not a prospect, though, of course. probably it's best that um that nobody who talks or writes about baseball for a living ever pats themselves on the back or or even alludes to to to patting themselves on the back uh because i think i think we're all fairly honest about our limitations um when it comes to predicting

baseball um most people i follow i feel, are fairly humble about that. Sometimes that humility gets a little bit lost when you're excited about something you said being true. I remember when you hear reporters asked about whether they still root for a team, they always say, no, no., writers only root for stories. And when I switched over from being a fan to writing about baseball, what I found is actually that you root for all your predictions to come true because you're just so embarrassed of the ones that don't come true, especially at first. Well, now we've just about stopped making them to the extent that we can.

We have, yeah. to the extent that we can. We have, yeah. Although even still, if I write a piece about somebody for a few months, I'm really kind of hoping that they don't collapse completely because it's sort of embarrassing. But yeah, I mean, I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I don't know.

I don't know. First off, I think that even if this trade is going, you know, it's going exactly the way Atlanta obviously wanted. But I don't know that it's necessarily fair to then take that the next step and say that the Diamondbacks now regret it extra lot. I mean, I think the Diamondbacks came to the conclusion that that probably wasn't going to happen when he was in Arizona for whatever reason. There was something about the situation that they were unlikely to reap that. I think they were happy to get the guys that they got. They would have been more happy to get the guys that they would have gotten from Seattle, and they probably would have liked to get more from other teams. But I mean, we have to basically assume that they had, you know, that they got the best offer that they could get. And that they figured that Justin Upton, even if you risk the embarrassment of him doing this somewhere else, that he was unlikely to do that for them. And it's hard to prove that they're wrong.

It's awfully hard for them to prove that they're right. But that's kind of the nature of the beast. And the other thing is that, I mean, Chris Johnson's hitting 380, 405, 535 right now, which should put a lot of this into perspective. I mean, I heard, what actually got me thinking about this was when I heard some announcer yesterday talking about the trade and like, you believe that they got a an awesome three hitter and an awesome five hitter or four hitter wherever chris johnson was batting yesterday and i thought well i mean if you're using chris johnson as any sort of evidence in this um it

should pretty much tell you what you're doing um nobody i don't think nobody i follow would be saying can you believe the diamond bags gave up ch gave up Chris Johnson at this point in the season? And, you know, there's a big element of that with Upton too. I mean, Upton has had months like this in his career, not for home runs specifically, but he's had, you know, five or six months where he's been essentially this productive at the plate. And those months sometimes dissipate. So it's not like it's any sort of lock that he's going to be an MVP for the next three years. But yeah, clearly the Braves were happy

that they got him and congratulations to them. They got the guy they wanted and he's performing and the Diamondbacks didn't want him and they're doing kind of okay to do a last night check. They're doing just fine. Yeah, what are they in like second place? I think they're tied for first. Yeah, so bless everybody's hearts it's a big day for winners wanted to write about change of scenery guys once and it was just such

a headache to like trying to come up with guys who were change of scenery candidates and and look at how they did after their changes of scenery it was kind of impossible. But I would like to see some sort of study on that, if there were any kind of way to do it scientifically. Well, I'll tell you what, BJ, I've been sitting 151, 229, 291 right now, and I would be happy to bet anybody that there is at least one month this season that he has a higher OPS than his brother. Seems reasonable. And if that month happened to be April, then we'd be saying a lot of different things. All right. Let's end it.S. than his brother. Seems reasonable. And if that month happened to be April, then we'd be saying a lot different things.

All right. Let's end it. Okay. You end it. See ya. It's the end of the show. Yeah. Email us, podcast at baseballperspectives.com.

That's the end of the show.