Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 305: Reevaluating Verlander/More Listener Emails

Episode Date: October 11, 2013

Ben and Sam discuss Justin Verlander in the wake of his ALDS performance, then answer some listener emails.

There's a bear over there, there's a bear over there, there's a bear over there. Lee Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg. And Ben, you'll never guess what I saw today. You saw a wild cat in a tree. I saw three bears. I've never seen a bear in my entire life. Like, I've known that there are bears in the area, but I've never once seen a bear. And today, I ran into three bears while I was hiking. I've seen bears bears so did they just leave you alone you just went your separate ways they didn't see me i happened to i saw them and immediately grabbed my family sprinted into a cabin we were very near the cabin they were like

kind of like right at the base of the trail and we sort of ran into the cabin, freaked out, thinking that they were probably going to come inside the house and kill us. And then we watched them as they hung around for about 15 minutes, like 50 feet away from us. And it was pretty amazing. They were black bears. It was a mom and two cubs. They were big.

And then I went on the internet and found out that there's not much danger from black bears so uh well i saw jeff at amador today which is not much different from seeing a bear how big was he he's six four and he's listed at least on the roster that I had, as 215, which is, I think, probably the most misleading figure I've ever seen on a roster. And I've seen some pretty misleading ones, but Amador being 215 is, gosh, I want to say it's got to be at least 60 pounds light and maybe more. He is enormous i wonder why they why do they list i mean if if it's not going to be if it's not going to be reliable why do they do it like who's clamoring for that in the general population i think they're like why can i why is it that i can look up mickey lolich's height and weight?

How is that... If it's reliable, then that's useful, but Mickey Lulich is listed on Baseball Reference at 6'170". Mickey Lulich is pretty widely reputed to be the fattest guy of his generation.

It's not like I would have ever thought to go look up Mickey Lulich's Titan Wade, except that I know it's going to be there, so I see it. But it does me no good if it's not reliable, and it really does me no good if it is reliable. So why do we...

It doesn't feel like that's the best use of our nation's internet column inches. It could do some good if it were reliable. Yeah, if it were reliable, but it's not. It's not, no. Every now and then, like, I've run across a few teams down here with rosters where the weight numbers are very precise.

Like, they're not multiples of 5 or 10. They're just, they're like, you know, 211, 213. And so I was inclined to believe them and think maybe they just actually weighed in this fall or something, and they're up-to-date and accurate. But yeah, I don't know. I can understand. I wonder how they come up with these numbers.

What's the origin of 215 for Amador? Was that his weight when he was yeah when he was i don't know 16 on his first high school baseball team or something maybe he weighed 215 uh and it just never changed and i could get it i mean i understand why you know a player who's 5'9 wants to be listed at 5'10 just like a 5'9 person will sometimes describe himself as 5'10 or I could see if Amador wanted to take off 10 or 20 pounds and maybe maybe people would be persuaded by that but uh no one is persuaded by 2'15 that just that just makes you seem even even heavier because it's so outrageous so uh he is the biggest baseball player I've ever seen.

And he got a ground ball at first base and it just, it went through his legs and he didn't really even move towards it or make any effort to field it. He's just too big to bend down, really. So he's just standing there for catching throws from other infielders, I guess. But when it comes to bending down or making any motion toward a ground ball, that's kind of out of the question. So that was fun to watch. I heard a baseball broadcaster this week describe Prince Fielder as a good fielding first baseman.

Hmm. For his size, I suppose. They said he's not the quickest guy, but he makes good decisions. He's a good first baseman. Well, that seems like a stretch. He's the worst first baseman in history, according to baseball reference. He's much better than Amador. So,

do you have anything to say about the playoffs? I guess you have. Yeah, I do. First, I would just, I mean, I know that there are a handful of people who listen to this who actually know where the height and weight figures come from and why they're listed and you know, what use they're supposed to be.

So, if anybody has any inside information, we probably would appreciate an email. So I have something to admit. About, I don't know, two months or so ago, I thought about writing a piece about how Justin Verlander is basically Tim Lincecum from like two and a half years ago, and that what we were seeing was the sort of unrecognized but inevitable slope into mediocrity. And

I thought about writing it, and then I kept looking into it, and I couldn't really make it work. I couldn't find the evidence or, you know, the compelling things to say about it. And so I didn't write that. And so I guess you could say that the system worked, right? There was nothing to back up that proposition. And so the piece was not written, even though it would have been provocative. And when you say there was nothing to back it up, do you mean, what did you look at that suggested that he was not in decline? Because his results were clearly not up to his prior standards. Yeah, no, I have no idea. I have no idea what I looked at. But it wasn't that I was saying that he was pitching worse than he had the year before,

but rather that, like Tim Lincecum, there was an inevitability to his becoming bad quickly. And again, like I said, it was an idea I had. I looked into it. It didn't work out. I moved on. But in my head, I still kind of thought it to be true, which I guess is the system not working. And so with great embarrassment, I admit to this now. And I repent. I repent. Well, I was thinking that didn't we talk about, at some point we talked about the extension

and how in retrospect it already wasn't looking so great, I think. So that was kind of the same thing. looking so great, I think. Yeah, we did. So that was kind of the same thing. I think, I don't know, fastball velocity is probably one of those things that you and I aren't really qualified to know what is significant. You know, like you and I don't know how to.

I've been to scout school. I don't know about you. Yeah, but, like, we don't know why guys get faster all of a sudden. I don't have any idea why Justin Verlander's fastball velocity came back. When I see a guy lose velocity, I think the safe bet is that it's not coming back, and so I always assume it's not coming back. And that's a very, very substantial piece of evidence that he's not going to be as good a pitcher anymore. And so it's like this mysterious resurgence is actually not that mysterious.

He throws harder than he did like two months ago. That's pretty much the entire thing. Maybe his whole season was just kind of a larger version of his individual starts where he conserves energy in the middle of the start and then he throws 99 in the eighth inning there was a lot of talk about uh during this postseason about how he has become a pitcher yeah i just heard that but half an hour ago kind of it's weird to cite that during his worst season. It's not as though he's gotten progressively better.

If he had become... If you said that about maybe, I don't know, Adam Wainwright or something, then you'd be making a point. But with Justin Verlander, you're going... You're giving the explanation for his worst season.

That's not the spirit that it's given in. Yes, he should have remained a thrower. He should have. Throwing was working. Yeah. Okay. So anyway, now I think Justin Verlander. Okay, so Verlander or Scherzer.

I don't want to flip-flop after like a week, but I kind of feel like doing that. He really looked good tonight. I only saw the last two or maybe three innings of his outing, but he looked like vintage Orlandoer which is pretty good so I don't know not that Scherzer looked bad but I guess I guess I'd go with Verlander and someone in the Facebook group mentioned

that we probably snubbed Adam Wainwright in our discussion of that yeah I think that's probably right sorry about that I'm not sure why we did well I think I know why we did I think I actually probably right. Sorry about that. I'm not sure why we did. No. Well, I think I know why we did. I think I actually had thought of it.

No, I think I had actually thought of Adam Wainwright in like the hour before the show, and I thought, well, I can't bring him up because that will just end the conversation. So I was definitely avoiding him. Uh-huh. But now it's Verlander, right? Now it goes Kershaw and then Verlander, right? I mean, you are willing to flip-flop. Two starts is enough for you. Yeah, having to watch that, yeah, I think that's enough.

I mean, pitchers aren't hitters. We've talked about this. Yes. I don't know if two starts is enough. Probably not. But, I mean, it means a lot more to see a pitcher do that for two starts. I mean, it's been since September, so a pitcher do that for two starts than, or, I guess, I mean, it's been since September, so it's been like

nine starts or eight starts. Eight or nine starts for a pitcher might be, I'm not entirely sure that eight or nine starts for a pitcher isn't, if you're looking at the right stats, I'm not entirely sure that it's not the most predictive thing for the next eight or nine starts. Okay.

Well, that's our playoff talk, I guess. One more thing. One more thing. So thinking about how we talked a couple days ago about my idea that your ace should start game two and game five so that your number two starter can start game one and then come back on nearly full rest for relief in game four, and you can maximize that.

Then I started thinking about the Tigers, and I think you could do this. You have game one is your number two starter, so pick a rotation. We'll say the rotation is, just for simplicity, we'll say the rotation is Verlander number one, Scherzer two, Sanchez three, Pfister four. So you have Scherzer start game one, and then Sanchez work in relief. And then you have Verlander start game two, and Pfister work in relief. And then you have Sanchez start game three, and Scherzer, no, nobody works in relief. I think that game Sanchez is all alone.

And then you have Pfister start game four, and Scherzer works in relief. And then you have Verlander start game five. And in that situation, you don't have any starter pitching in relief with fewer than two days in between a start. And, in fact, I think it's three days. No, it's two days, yeah. And I don't know if that works, but I feel like it could work. If you get one or two innings out of those starters, I feel like they could have gone into this playoffs with eight pitchers.

Those four starters, Benoit, Smiley, and then two random guys just in case. Yeah, that would be a pretty high percentage of your innings accounted for by your best pitchers, which is a good thing. Now I'm done. Okay. I guess you didn't see Miguel Cabrera's home run Did I see Miguel Cabrera's home run

No Well he hit one Against Lenny Gray Yes Not that that Invalidates anything That we were talking about The other day

Cause What was it like Tell me about it. It didn't go as far as I thought it would off the bat. He pulled it, and it was not over the fence by a whole lot. It wasn't one of his bigger blasts, and it didn't look like his smoothest swing either. Just kind of muscled it over the fence.

What was the pitch? I think it was an inside fastball. It was definitely inside. I'd have to check. So, anyway. That's interesting, because they don't, they've been, they've been staying away. Yeah. One of the broadcasters, when I tuned in, I wasn't able to watch at that point, but I saw it later mention the fact that it was like the first pitch they had thrown him inside, and he made them regret that.

Okay, so we have some listener emails to talk about in part two of our listener email show for this week. This one is Kershaw-related, sort of. John from Montreal asks, My question is about the value of innings pitched. What would you prefer? Clayton Kershaw's season this year, or A. A pitcher with the same war for the year, but who somehow pitched three times the innings as Kershaw's season this year, or A, a pitcher with the same war for the year, but who somehow pitched three times the innings as Kershaw, or B, a pitcher with the same war,

but with only a third of the innings Kershaw pitched. I understand nobody without regenerating limbs is going to throw 600 innings, but still. So a guy who pitches a third of the innings, but is three times better in those innings, or a guy who pitches three times as many innings, but is a third as efficient or productive in those innings. So when I was thinking about how to use the Tigers pitchers efficiently as starters slash relievers and so that you would only have to carry, you know, eight pitchers on the staff,

one of the things that made this less exciting was, like, I was fantasizing about whether you could do it with six and then you could use your entire roster for position players. But then I realized, well, there's just not that many good position players. Like, once you get Pat, I mean, as it is, I think they had Hernan Perez on their bench, which is like a completely useless use of the, you know, piece on the bench. I don't think they used him.

I think last year in the postseason they used like 21 players out of 25. And, I mean, the 600 innings thing seems really cool because then you're like oh you don't have to carry two extra pitchers but it's not like there's just a billion good position players out there and you would carry them because you don't have room on the roster like to some degree that's true like to some degree it probably would be nice to be able to have like a extra you know an extra bench guy to you know have a put to an advantage in late innings or something like that but like there just aren't that many good players in the world but i mean this question is basically asking maybe that there could be maybe if you

if you were able to plan for having those roster spots right i mean in the in the playoffs you don't uh you don't automatically have five good position players to load onto the roster because you haven't had them all season, and it's not like they're just sitting in AAA all year. But if you had this guy who pitched 600 innings, and you knew you could count on him for that amount of innings, then you could plan on that over the offseason. You could put together a really, really deep bench, possibly. Yeah, I have to think about that. I'll take your word for it.

Yeah, so I don't know. So if you have this guy going 600 innings, at the very least, you could cut out... I feel like this would be easier if we did 400 innings, at the very least, you would have, you could cut out, I mean. I feel like this would be easier if we did 400 innings, because it's slightly more realistic. Okay. All right. So if you do that, then the extra, you know, 170 innings or whatever it is that you're saving would basically just come out of the back of your bullpen, right? So you'd give those innings to... You'd just take those innings away from your worst relievers, ideally?

I guess you couldn't not relieve. Well, I mean, if you're actually pitching 400 innings, you're starting 50 games. And then you put a starter in the bullpen. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, then you'd have starter in the bullpen. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, then you'd have to, presumably it wouldn't work. I mean, realistically, as realistically as this question is going to be, realistically it wouldn't work because that guy, in order to get 50 starts,

he would have to be on something like three-slash-four days of rest, you know, three-slash-four-man rotation. And then I guess the rest of the staff would have to be that, unless you're using his frequency to give everybody else extra days off, which might actually be useful. That might, in theory, might be a good idea. But, I mean, isn't the question basically coming down to whether you think replacement level is accurate or understates the difficulty of finding replacement players or overstates the difficulty of finding replacement players? I mean, at its heart, that's what this question is, right?

Yeah. Yeah, sort of. So what do you think? Wasn't there an article by Colin a while back about how I think the impact of starters stress on relievers or minimizing the innings that have to be pitched by bad relievers. There was something to that, I think, where there was some extra bonus effect to having starters who pitch a lot of innings that wasn't necessarily reflected in their wins above replacement. Yeah, I think it's also Russell's position that that is underrated.

Yeah. So, yeah, there might be something to that. I feel like, I think that replacement level is, that it's probably, okay, so here's my guess, is that it's actually easy to find guys who are better than replacement level if you're planning a season, like in the offseason it is. And it's harder to find replacement levels once the season has begun. So if you can count on this guy to throw 440 innings, and you can make that, you're you know this in november

and you can make decisions for your season when 700 players are available um and you can invite like you know four dozen of them to spring training then i would guess that that would be useful um or wait i might have gotten it backwards. Yeah, so in that case, you actually want the 100-inning guy. You figure you can fill the next 300 innings with something slightly better than a replacement level. Whereas if it's midseason, you know, like you're probably, like, there would, well, yeah, you know what I'm getting at. Yeah.

Right. So I would say I would rather have, I would say I'd rather have the 100-inning guy. I think that I would rather have Chris Medlin last year. I don't know. I'm not sure. I would rather have Chris Medlin last year than most pitchers. But I guess he wasn't... Well, I don't know what his work was. But Chris Medlin last year was pretty phenomenalers. But I guess he wasn't. Well, I don't know. I don't know what his work was. But Chris had him last year.

It was pretty phenomenal. Yes. Good question. This is a good question. I predict Russell will listen to this and write an article about it. Okay. This one is related to the Tigers rotation stuff we were just talking about. And I guess it came in actually before we talked about that.

John asks, why don't more teams utilize their starters scheduled bullpen sessions in actual games? Scherzer is pitching in the eighth inning of game four right now. That's in this email. It seems like a logical way to get 30 more innings out of your best pitchers each season while also potentially freeing up a roster spot that wouldn't necessarily need to be used on another bullpen arm.

So that's related to what we've been talking about. And that does seem like something that teams could kind of leverage a little more, doesn't it? I mean, it used to be done more often, I believe. Will Carroll answered this in the chat about maybe seven years ago. You're never going to find the answer. Yeah, I don't remember. Can you tell me? I don't remember it.

I think, as I recall, the answer had something to do with the fact that throwing a bullpen is just not the same stress as throwing in an inning. That's true, certainly. Throwing in the majors, and you can't just swap them out and think that it's the same effect. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure that's true. But I don't know. The other thing is that guys, a lot of times,

I mean, I don't know that they have to do this, but a lot of guys' throw days are before the game. So, like, well, I guess it wouldn't really matter, though. I know that there have been instances where, like, well, I guess it wouldn't really matter, though. I know that there have been instances where, like, a manager has been asked why he didn't go to his starter in the eighth inning. If it was his throw day in the postseason, the manager has said, well, he actually did his bullpen before the game, so he'd already done it. But maybe that wouldn't – I mean, if you wanted to make this a strategy,

then you just wouldn't do that. You'd have them either throw in the game or you'd have them throw right after the game. Maybe they don't want to. Maybe they don't want to do their bullpen at 11 o'clock at night. Why would they want to do their bullpen at 11 o'clock at night? Although I guess they could do it during the game. They could do it during, like, the seventh inning,

and if they're not needed in the seventh inning, they could just do it anyway. And you could put some strict pitch limit on them if you thought that it's more stressful than a bullpen, which I'm sure it is. You'd say, well, you leave them until they allow their first base runner, or just leave them in to face three batters no matter what happens with those three batters, or something like that where you could minimize the amount of stress and still get a few extra outs out of them, you know, something like that where you could minimize the amount of stress and still get a few extra outs out of them. It doesn't seem like a bad idea.

Ten years from now, is it happening or is it not happening? I feel like there is going to be some bounce back in reliever innings totals. I think I could be completely wrong about that because the trend has been in the opposite direction for decades now. Relievers pitching fewer and fewer innings and just having more and more of them. I'd like to think that it's getting to a point where enough people are talking about how little sense that makes. And we talked about Kimbrell the other day, and maybe that will influence how managers use their closers if there's a lot of backlash every time they don't bring them in in a crucial situation because they can only pitch one inning. I'd like to think that the industry will realize

that it's gone too far, if it has, which I guess you could argue that it hasn't because strikeouts keep going up and that seems somewhat related to the use of relievers in the specialization in the bullpen. But this is a long-winded way of saying that I think someone will try it. Yeah. I don't think it'll be something every team does as a matter of course, but I think there will be teams that do it semi-regularly at some point in the next decade. I think it's so obvious that the fact that it's not being done suggests that it won't be done. I mean, I go back to this a lot in my life, but I watched that movie 127 Hours,

where the guy gets his arm caught in the rock and has to cut it off. And the entire time I was watching it, my brain kept going, oh, come on, he could get it out. And I had to then immediately remind myself, no, he can't. If he could, he would. The incentives are there for him to take his it out. And I had to then immediately remind myself, no, he can't. If he could, he would. Like, the incentives are there for him to take his arm out. So the fact that he is not is all the evidence I need that he can't. Like, even though I can't imagine why it would be so hard to move that rock,

it is a verified fact that it is impossible to move that rock because he cut his arm off. And I feel like this is just not, like, it is impossible to move that rock because he cut his arm up and i feel like this is just not like it is not a clever idea like we've all thought this we every team knows this is a possibility nobody's doing it you know nobody's even trying it so i would say that that answers the question however that assumes that pitcher usage stays the same overall. I think if you see starters move down to, say, five innings being the norm, which I could see happening within 10 or 15 years, if a pitcher is only throwing five innings for the purposes of, you know,

not letting the lineup see him three times or more and, you know, just capitalizing on the strength of relievers in general, hard throwing relievers in general, I could see if starters were only going five innings, then it makes it a lot easier to imagine them coming in on their throw day and throwing two. That's my answer. I have to go, Ben.

You do? Okay. Yeah, I've got to Ben. You do? Okay. Yeah, I gotta move. Bear coming? I actually can't hear you. There's a bear coming. Are you still there? I'm still here.

Can you hear me? Yes. You there, Ben? I'm here. I'm here. Yeah. No, you're not. I'm here I'm here yeah no you're not I actually hear you like the voice of God

every once in a while echoing here here here and that is the extent of what I hear it has gotten pretty bad in the last few minutes okay then we will cut this short and you can go back to nature. Did you hear me saying,

do you hear me? Yes. Because that's embarrassing. Good podcasting. Yeah, I heard that. I could edit that out, but I probably won't. Okay, so then we'll call it quits here.

We'll be back next week with more shows send us emails at podcast at baseball perspectives.com uh rate and review us on itunes and subscribe to us and join our facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild and enjoy playoff baseball over the weekend we'll be back on monday