Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 345: Roy Halladay and Mark Prior Retire

Episode Date: December 10, 2013

Ben and Sam discuss Roy Halladay, Mark Prior, rumors from the Winter Meetings, and more.

I guess I could come out of retirement. No. No need. Just a recommendation will do. Alright. I'll do it. You know, you're just not what we're looking for. You sly son of a bitch. You always knew how to push my buttons. I'm in. Not you, Decker!

Good morning and welcome to episode 345 of Effectively Wild, Not you, Decker. I feel like this is an off-season ritual, sort of, where we look at pictures of Pablo Sandoval looking skinny, and then at some point during the season he no longer looks that way. But yes, for the moment, looking good. Yeah, well, I mean, it's a lot of sitting, being a Major League Baseball player, right? I mean, he's got to fly a lot. He's got to, you know, I mean, a lot of their job is just sitting around waiting for games to start. In the offseason, he can work out. In the regular season, it's just sitting around and eating, eating the spread.

No working out. Eating cookies, a lot of cookies. Not allowed to work out during the regular season. How do you feel not being in the winter meetings this year? Do you feel like after last year that that is your place? Sort of. I did go last year but I don't know. I mean... I mean you went last year and all we talked about is how pointless it was and why we didn't

understand why you were there. Right. But on the other hand, I do wonder if that's the new normal, and now you're feeling like you're actually missing things. I'm missing socializing with other baseball writers. I feel like that's sort of the reason that a lot of people go, is just to catch up with other people, because there's no reason to fly somewhere so you can sit in a big room and write about a trade or a signing, which so far hasn't really even happened.

So, I don't know. You kind of go to be there, to be seen, it seems to me. I'm sure I'll go to winter meetings again in the future. Really? It didn't happen this year. That is a bold statement of confidence in your future yeah i guess it is i'm i'm 97 sure that i will be unemployed by the next winter well i might go as a job seeker that's true uh all right so uh this is not what we're going to

talk about but um one of the only bits of news that came out of it today, it wasn't even news, but it was a rumor so well established, so well sourced offer of Tyler Skaggs for Mark Trumbo an obvious trade or it's an obvious horrible trade. And I guess more people are thinking that this is a dumb thing for the Angels to turn down, that this is exactly the sort of youthful pitcher that they need. They have essentially no youth in their pitching staff and no youthful pitchers in their farm system. It's the obvious flaw in their organization right now. And Skaggs has got four seconds of service time and he's a recent elite prospect and he's cheap and they're trying to also get cheap. So do you think it's as obvious as I guess more people than don't think it is? Yeah, it seems odd to me.

It doesn't seem as odd as the one we talked about last year the the brett anderson non-trade oh i know i was just thinking about that i was just thinking about that yeah what was that the ace it was supposedly right right it was after after shields uh passin said that they had turned down anderson for will myers uh-huh yeah so, that's, I guess, harder to understand, but, but yeah, you'd, you'd think that, that the angels would want Skaggs. I mean, sort of a major league ready guy that they could plug in and he's 22 and Trumbo, you know, cause I've never really fit perfectly there, and he's kind of moved around,

and DiPoto has traded for Tyler Skaggs before, so he must have liked him at one time. It's a little surprising to me. But Skaggs hasn't done anything good in the big leagues yet. I mean, he's only 22, so maybe that's irrelevant, but on the other hand, a lot of times pitchers' best stuff is when they're 22. And he had a poor year this year in the minors. He had something like a 5 ERA in AAA, and his velocity is down. His velocity never really even, if I'm not mistaken,

his velocity never even really got to where it was kind of projected to be. He was a long, lanky guy with a lot of projection when he was in A-ball, and there was this idea that he was going to be up at 95 when he reached maturity, and he never really did. If I'm not mistaken, I think he's around 89-90 right now. Yes, he was drafted in our soft-tossing starters draft. Oh, right, exactly. And so 89-90 for a pitching prospect is kind of the equivalent of DH prospect.

You know, he's in AAA and he's already a DH. There's nowhere to go for him but down. It's practically impossible that he... Left-handed, but still. Yeah, no, I mean, right, and a DH could be Edgar Martinez. It's just that it has to work out exactly perfectly, and that's when you start getting, you know, the comps that Goldstein would get super mad at,

the Burley or the Moyer comps, where it's like, yeah, there's 9 billion left-handers throwing 89, and, you know, one of them turns out to be a career guy. So I don't know. I sort of wonder whether we're too slow to pick up the decline in pitchers. That we, I don't know, that we just are constantly thinking, well, they've established a level of talent, and it's an easy fix to get back to that level of talent.

I'm thinking about this partly because of Roy Halladay, which is what we're going to talk about. But I wonder if instead of looking at Skaggs and seeing what he was in 2012, I wonder if 90% of what we should be thinking about a pitcher is the last four months. And we just don't nearly weight the recency enough. I don't know. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see where he rates on prospect lists. He was between 10 and 20 on, I think, just about every list last year. He was 17 on the baseball prospectus list and i think lower on some of the

others um i think he might be out of prospect innings uh yeah you're right yeah he's yeah okay um so nick viacoro um had a tweet where he basically said you know uh the angels have one bullet and if they used it on a guy who's a potential flameout, they would have no bullets. And that makes a lot of sense to me. It's not as though they have four starters and they're looking for an upside guy. They have two starters. Last year, they tried to go with the kind of gamble moves,

and it really turned out terribly. I mean, they need innings. They need competent innings. They basically need Jason Vargas. If they could trade Trumbo for Jason Vargas, that's probably what they should do, which would be a weird trade to make. Yeah, he's under contract with another team.

Yeah, yeah. It's an obstacle. He signed like 40. Yeah yeah like maybe just signed uh anyway roy halliday mark prior both retired today i went looking through the bp archives trying to find an article that talked about both of them at the same time around 2003 i couldn't find one i was disappointed i thought it would be it would make for a nice little thing but i there actually were a lot of articles that mentioned them both, but never in the same sentence. But what was, this is not that interesting, but what was slightly interesting is that, like in 2003, 2004, they kept coming up in Under the Knife columns, Will Carroll's injuries columns. in Under the Knife columns, Will Carroll's injuries columns.

And I mean, you know that Pryor was like, things were just starting to unravel for him physically in 2004. And it was kind of interesting to see that at the time, Halliday was dealing with shoulder injuries. Pryor had this kind of elbow thing that the Cubs were waving off and saying, oh, if we needed him today, he could pitch. And it's not a big deal. We don't exactly know what it is, but it's not a big deal. It's not all these other things that we were worried about, so everything's good.

And reading those, you would have had the sense at the time that Pryor was a lot better bet to throw 2,000 more innings than Halliday. And in fact, I believe, oh, no, I guess they both were considered good mechanics guys at the time and efficient. So yeah, anyway, so Halliday retired at the end of something like a Hall of Fame career and probably retired at the end of the saddest, most disappointing career, this side of Brian Taylor. Yeah, that was quite a quite a an end to to it he really just sort of played out the string in a series of minor league appearances and seasons where he didn't really appear and kind of it would have been nice if he had gotten back just

briefly even um after putting in all that time, but it didn't happen. So now apparently he's going to be a front office guy. I am surprised he didn't make it back in any capacity in the majors over the last four years because he kept working, and he had a few months where he was healthy and he was in the bullpen. So it's the sort of thing where he could have stepped into a big league bullpen on 10 minutes notice.

It's not like you don't have to do much to be worth a spot in a major league bullpen for a day. And I don't know. I guess I would have thought that maybe some team would have done it partly out of curiosity and partly out of upside and partly because they genuinely needed a reliever for a day and partly just like to do a good thing you know like it would have i feel like it would have been kind of a good thing if prior had gotten one game back in fact now that i'm saying this i actually think the league let him down. That dude worked like crazy.

I mean, it was actually more depressing that he was trying and working hard because I don't try and work that hard at anything. And the fact that he kept persevering for this sort of sad hopelessness that went nowhere, I feel like he deserves a day. If that guy on the Marlins got an at-bat. I was just going to say, yeah, if Adam Greenberg can get an at-bat, then why not Mark Pryor? Why not Mark Pryor?

In 2012, he pitched 25 innings for Pawtucket and struck out 38 guys. And I wonder, I don't remember, but it looks like he pitched his last minor league game that year on August 15th. Maybe he got hurt right before rosters expanded. And if he had been healthy in September, maybe he would have gotten a shot. I don't know what the timing was there. Yeah. But yeah, clearly he had something left when he was on the mound.

He was still striking out guys. 2011, he pitched 12 innings and struck out 15 guys and walked four over various levels in the Yankees organization. And yeah, I mean, 2010, 11, 12, and 13, he pitched professionally and was somewhat effective when he did. So, yeah, it is sort of surprising that he didn't get a shot. So that was seven years. He worked seven years after his last major league appearance to try to come back.

And every game he pitched, he had to be the sad focus of everybody's attention. I mean, it's not just that he did the workouts. And I mean, everything pitchers tell you is coming back from surgery, coming back from any injury, it's like it's really brutal rehab. I mean, it's a lot of work. It's hard work. It's boring work. It's lonely work.

And it's painful work. And he did that repeatedly. But also, every time he stepped on a mound, it was just people being sad for him. boring work it's lonely work and it's painful work and he did that repeatedly but also every time he stepped on a mound it was just people being sad for him in front you know like to his face and that's hard too i mean i imagine that's the hardest you know probably the hardest part of it in a lot of ways and uh so yeah i guess i didn't realize that he pitched in uh louisville this year that that's news to me i knew about patucket, but I had no idea he was even in the Reds. How does he not get a call-up?

How do the Reds not call him up for just a look at least? I mean, the Reds probably went through 37 guys this year. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, he only pitched nine and two-thirds innings. Maybe whatever stretch that he was healthy coincided with a time when they just didn't have a spot on the 40-man. I don't know. Yeah, it's sort of too bad. So, Hall of Famer or no? Prior, I don't think so.

But Halladay, yes, I think. I think so. Well, everything has gotten so screwed up. Halladay five years ago would have been a no-doubter. We wouldn't have thought twice. But, I mean, I'm in a place where I've talked myself out of Craig Biggio. And, you know, I mean, I would say that I would probably i would definitely pick kevin brown over holiday as it stands and i would probably pick musina over holiday as it as it stands and brown didn't even get five percent in his first vote and musina is like sort of near the bottom

of a crowded ballot right now so holiday seems like a no-brainer to me until I start comparing him to other guys that aren't in the hall of fame and so it kind of has messed things up yeah he has the he has the higher peak I would think um than who Mussina uh probably than either of those guys right I I don't know. Maybe not, but he won a couple Cy Young awards. He had three eight-win seasons, and Brown had two eight-win seasons. Uh-huh. Neither one had a nine-win season.

And Messina, did he have any? I don't know. I'll let you know. Okay. Yeah, I don't know. I'll let you know. Okay. Yeah, I don't know. I feel like I'm almost more of a peak value guy than a career value guy when it comes to pitchers. I don't know. I would be the opposite. For a hitter, I definitely would be.

For a pitcher, I'm not sure I would. For a pitcher, it just seems like that innings are so valuable, and it actually feels to me like I would be more surprised, or I guess I would be less surprised to find out that our standard win value metrics undervalue innings, then overvalue them. Because of the cascade kind of effects. I mean, for all you know,

if you think about it, if you think about the things that aren't incorporated, let's say, and maybe it's a stretch, but I'm just spitballing here. Every inning you throw is an inning that another pitcher doesn't have to throw, is an inning that another pitcher doesn't have to throw and every inning that another pitcher throws is an inning he's more likely to get hurt so you know

for all we know chris carpenter i don't know if the timing works but for all we know chris carpenter had surgery because when he was in the blue jay system roy halliday was terrible and therefore couldn't pitch those innings and chris carpenter had to pitch those innings and missed two years or whatever. I have no – none of that's going to line up. Don't fact check that. But I'm just trying to make a point that innings are really valuable. They're super valuable like on their own and they might even be more valuable than we give them credit for.

So for me, a longevity argument for a pitcher is pretty strong. Okay. Did you look up Messina yet? One eight-win season. But also, goodness gracious, 83 wins to Halliday's 65. Yeah. So huge gap. Yeah.

He should be in. I like Mike Messina. That's the difference between Larry Walker and Ray Durham. Yeah, it's a big difference. Or so, roughly. So anyway, the point I was making earlier, the last time I wrote about Halliday was in summer of 2012, late in the year, when I wrote about his zero complete game season

and how it was this sort of singular quality of Roy Halliday that he threw more complete games than any team in baseball. And even though he was having, in some ways, a good year, this one thing about him had just completely disappeared. And I don't know. I use that to say that, you know, we had seen the end of Roy Halladay as the, you know, Hall of Fame ace that we had come to know. He was probably just going to be really good.

But at the end, I say he's still a really good pitcher. He might even be a great pitcher. And like looking back, I mean, that was wrong was wrong he was not he was not that at all he was bad uh he was a bad pitcher he was one he was maybe the worst pitcher in baseball this year for the second time in his career that's one of the weirdest things about being about his hall of fame careers this might have been the second time in his career that he was the worst pitcher in baseball. And so it got me thinking about how quickly it went south. And of course, this can happen with any pitcher. Every pitch could be the one that does something to your arm. But when I was looking at Halliday at the time, I saw

a guy who had a good fit and all of his numbers had shown some decrease and his ERA was much higher. But I thought, ah, he's got a good fit. And guys with good fits are still good pitchers. And I kind of think that when guys are on the decline, I have a hypothesis that when guys are declining, their fit might actually lag some of their other indicators. their fit might actually lag some of their other indicators that there might be an intermediate step in an intermediate stage whereby they're able to do things that fool us and maybe it's just a sample size thing i mean samples the fit is as prone to fluctuation or it's still prone to fluctuation as anything else and so uh just as a guy's era could be flukishly high his fit could be flukishly low even if he's not as good as his fit says he is he might have actually produced

those stats but not be that good um but um i mean you know fit is you can pitch to fit there are there are certain ways that you can basically be a better fit pitcher than an era pitcher if you don't care about getting hit basically and uh I wonder whether on the decline slope that guys have, the particular way that they stay relevant in the league as they hold on to their last few innings leads to better fits than ERAs. Just a hypothesis. You should look into that. Someday, I'm sure you will maybe some now tomorrow russell will yeah probably before the end of the day we'll have

an answer to that uh yeah maybe well lincecum is the one that i thought of when you said that i don't know whether he's at that stage yet but but maybe and joe blanton joe blanton is a guy like that yeah and it's a particular type of pitcher who does it and it's usually a guy who has uh some experience and some you might say i don't know you might say guts or something, but not as much stuff. And that describes a lot of guys in the decline, right? They know how to pitch. They're pitching for their career.

They think that they're better than they are maybe even, but they don't have the stuff anymore. Yeah, it's possible. Mm-hmm. All right. Finish? End of the show. All right. We'll be back with another one tomorrow.

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