Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 42: Breaking Down Baltimore’s Latest Extra-Inning Win/Should Rafael Soriano Opt Out?

Episode Date: September 14, 2012

Ben and Sam discuss the Orioles’ exciting 14-inning victory over Tampa Bay, then break down Rafael Soriano’s season and his upcoming opt-out decision.

Good morning and welcome to episode 42 of Effectively Wild, the Baseball Perspectives Daily Podcast in New York, New York, where if you strain your ears, you may be able to detect the faint chirping of Stephen Colbert. I am Ben Lindbergh and in Long Beach, California, where you can almost certainly detect the faint chirping of crickets, you are Sam Miller. Hello, Sam, the Orioles 101 run game again. We should talk about it. It's kind of like Groundhog Day at this point. We should just start every podcast. It should

just be our standard intro. Good morning, the Orioles won a one-run game. It will be true more often than not. Yep. What do you want to talk about? The Orioles winning a one-run game, actually. Really? Yeah, not specifically that. I want to talk about that game, though. Okay, and I want to talk about Rafael Soriano.

The Mets. I mean, the Yankees closer. The one and only. So did you see the Rays and Orioles play at all? Did you follow that at all, or were you asleep? I don't know if I was asleep, but I didn't follow it, no. It was bananas. It was a crazy game it was one of the craziest games i think i've seen all year long um and um i wanted to just talk a little bit about managing and particularly the final play of the game and just talk a little bit about managing in general.

It was a crazy, crazy game. The Rays used, I think, 26 players. They had Chris Archer go about 80 pitches in relief. He got out of the bases loaded. Nobody out jam in the 13th after falling behind 3 3-0 on matt weeders with the bases loaded uh the rays did the five-man infield and they actually brought in a defensive switch uh to get an even better infielder for the fifth infielder um he uh joe madden pinch hit with a pitcher when one of his hitters got injured m mitted bat. It was just all crazy,

crazy. And so at the end, Archer was facing Manny Machado with two outs, runners on first and second, bottom of the 14th. And so I guess I don't quite know how to frame this, but what interests me a little bit is about how managerial decisions are so they can just go either way. it's so hard to evaluate these decisions because it's, you know, they like, it really is a, like a 50, 50.1% chance of going right or 50.1% chance of going wrong. And yet only one version plays out. And so in this case, Manny Machado got a base hit. And the interesting thing about that is that Buck Showalter let him swing away on 3-0 and to me this seems like a insane move letting Machado swing on 3-0 there

and I'm wondering whether you can think of a reason to justify it besides the fact that it worked. And I asked RJ about Archer being left in, and RJ kind of made the case for leaving him in. So I wouldn't have seen a good argument for Archer being left in there until I talked to RJ. So maybe there's a really good one for letting Machado swing 3-0. The great irony of it is that he swung at ball four probably, but got a hit. And the hit was, I mean, I have seen, I'm kind of surprised that it wasn't, I've seen fielders sell catches that they didn't make less convincingly than that catch.

Yeah, I kind of thought so. I mean, that was the kind of thing where usually you pretend you caught it and you spring up and you show the ball to the umpire and no one really believes you, usually. believes you usually uh but yeah i've seen people pretend to have done that and look less like they did that um then on that final play of the game it was very very close to being caught um so it was and it probably it probably actually it probably would have been caught if sam fold had been in the game but sam fold was taken out of the game so that reed Brignac could be the fifth infielder in the five-man infield, which is interesting because that was a good play that ended up costing the Rays by an inch. So it was first and second, two outs, and who was on deck or coming up? Mark Reynolds was on deck, and Machado was batting.

Mark Reynolds was on deck and Machado was batting. Well, is it possible that the 3-0 swing is kind of an underutilized tactic generally? I mean, with two outs, the guy is already in scoring position. The benefit of moving him over to third is not enormous. And you pretty much know you're getting a fat pitch. Machado was locked in perhaps or seeing the pitcher well or whatever those sort of things that managers supposedly see that we don't. I guess it wasn't crazy. Yeah, I think that probably the 3- bases loaded and two outs than – I mean, basically what I'm saying is that Mark Reynolds on base percentage is much better than Manny Machado's batting average. So the odds of Mark Reynolds singling or walking or being hit by a pitch remain much greater than the odds of Machado getting a single in a vacuum. Right.

Now, as for whether a 3-0 count is a significant advantage, it is. And the league hits 360 when they put the ball in play on 3-0. Now, that has to be taken back somewhat because only the best hitters get to swing on 3-0 generally. But when they put the ball in play, they hit 360, which means that when they put the ball in play, they also have a 360 on-base percentage. So that's what you're expecting if you swing. After 3-1, once you get to a 3-1 count, the league hits 283. So it's much less likely, it's about 8% less likely that you'll get a single. However,

the on-base percentage shoots up to 582 after a 3-1 count. So it's much more likely that Machado would have gotten on base, and then you have the superior situation where all you need is anything out of Mark Reynolds

to push the winning run in. Machado has walked twice in 124 plate appearances. Yeah, he's not exactly the guy that you would expect. He would be very prudent, looking for only a pitch down the middle because he swings at everything, and he swung at what was outside the strike zone. It might have been called a strike because of the 3-0 tendencies of umpires, but it was pretty clearly outside of the strike zone. And the other thing is that I think this is true.

I just glanced at it. But the big edge in 3-0 is really that you get more power. I think the slugging percentage on 3-0 is like 200 and some points, 250, 150 points or something like that better than after 3-1. But power is not really a benefit in this case. All you need is a single or a couple of walks. And Archer was not – he didn't look good. He didn't look like he was really necessarily capable of throwing a lot of strikes in a row. He had fallen behind 3-0 to Machado. He had fallen behind 2-0 to the previous batter, and I think it was Andy

Chavez who singled on a borderline pitch. He had walked the batter before that, Adam Jones. He had thrown 24 pitches before Machado's at-bat began in that inning, and he was coming up on 80 for the game. So I think there were all sorts of reasons to let Archer work himself into trouble. But because of the decision that Showalter made, he won, and it's interesting how that works. The other interesting way in which these managerial decisions are hard, in a way, they are probably very hard to make and a little bit arbitrary. There was a discussion on D-Rays Bay, the blog, about how Joe Maddon –

in the previous game, people were upset that Joe Maddon had not pinch hit for Ben Francisco with a lefty against Darren O'Day. Yes, I saw that on Twitter. And they also were upset that he had not used Fernando Rodney in the bottom of the ninth in a tie game. And today he did the exact opposite in both cases. So it is hard. I'm sure it's hard for them to, the managers, to make these decisions.

And it's actually, I mean, in one sense you think, well, geez, why isn't he consistent? If it makes rational sense to do it once, why wouldn't he do it twice? But on the other hand, uh, it's kind of nice that he wouldn't be so rigid and, uh,

he would accept the uncertainty about these moves. It, I guess it just depends which way you want to go and how generous you want to be. Another chapter in the Orioles charmed season, I suppose. Uh, yeah. Oh yeah, one last thing. 13 straight X-training wins.

Odds of that happening by chance are about 1 in 8,000. Uh-huh. And yet, it's actually happened twice in the last 17 years, so. Yeah, and not that either of us would say it's necessarily by chance in this case. either of us would say it's necessarily by chance in this case. Maybe it is partially bullpen and show Walter and all those other factors, but even so it is improbable under any circumstances. Yeah. Even if you allowed that, maybe the Orioles are 60% favorites because they're just so good in extra innings, which is generous. But even if they were a 600 team by true talent, then you're still talking about one in 1,000, which is a lot less. So this is episode 42.

42 is the number that Mariano Rivera wears. Rafael Soriano replaced Mariano Rivera. Thank you. So I feel bad because your topic was all zeitgeisty and pennant race and exciting. And mine is almost more of an offseason topic, although it involves a player who is in a pennant race. So today, John Heyman wrote something, or yesterday, John Heyman wrote something about how Soriano is likely to exercise his opt-out clause at the end of the season. He is signed through next season, and he's signed through next season at a rate of

$14 million for 2013, which is a lot of money. Um, but he does have an opt out clause. He has a 1.5 million buyout and the speculation or, uh, what Heyman heard from the proverbial people familiar with the situation said that he is likely to exercise it because he would be hoping for a multi-year deal from the Yankees possibly, or he would want to make sure that he closes somewhere. And of course, if Mariano Rivera returns next year and is healthy, he would kind of walk back onto that role.

As good as Soriano has been, because he has, and I may be about to piss off some Yankee fans, but he has basically had a very Mariano Rivera-like season. if you switched his numbers this season with almost any season in Mariano Rivera's career no one would really bat an eye he's you know the same rates the same sort of ERA three blown saves which is sort of a an average Rivera total in a season. So I guess when Rivera went down, there was a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth when the Yankees were 10 games up. There was a lot of, hey, remember when everyone said losing Mariano Rivera was going to be so bad? It hasn't really hurt them. Lately, I've heard now that the Yankees are tied, people have been talking about how much they've missed Rivera again. Although Soriano has basically been a very capable replacement for him. So, I don't know, do you think Soriano should opt out,

given that he has quite a lucrative deal for next year alone? Or should he just kind of bank on that? And does he really need to find a way out of New York when the only competition for the closer role is really Mariano Rivera, who is a 42-year-old coming off a major injury? He could kind of just lock this closer role up for himself for a while. I don't know, what would you do if he were Soriano this offseason? Well, would you assume that he has

some sort of inside information from Rivera about Rivera's intentions? I mean, as far as I know, Rivera's intentions are to return, but that's far from a sure thing. Of course, as dependable as he has been at his age, he is old. Well, you've got to figure, I mean, there's no way he's, your implication that since he's been as good as Rivera and Rivera's really old that Soriano is somehow going to take the job, unless you're not really making that implication, but that's not going to happen. No, I don't think he would take the job over a healthy, effective Rivera. Certainly not.

Yeah, well, then probably, I mean, I don't know how effective Rivera really has to be. Yes, he would have to be bad. He would have to be bad. I mean, Derek Jeter is playing shortstop for the Yankees. So, yeah, so he's not going to close unless Rivera isn't healthy. And, I mean, yeah, it's weird. I mean, unless I've kind of missed the shift away from this, saves still do play on the free agent market.

away from this, saves still do play on the free agent market. And I mean, Frankie Rodriguez lost the closer's role for like two months and didn't get the offers that he wanted in free agency. So I imagine that if Soriano were to lose the closer's role next year, which he almost certainly would, would probably be the difference between three years 33 and maybe three years 21 um and uh so if he's due 14 next year um and he's potentially costing himself you know four or five million a year into the future and you want to lock it down now before he has another bad year like he did in 2011, it seems perfectly rational. I think that an opt-out is a fairly easy call. Has anyone not opted out when they had the opportunity to opt out? It seems almost a given, whether it's Sabathia or Drew or whoever it is.

I can't really remember an instance of a player having an opt-out clause and deciding not to use it. Or I guess Vernon Wells is an exception. Yeah, well, I mean, like the decision Soriano made two years ago is pretty much the exact same situation. He was arbitration eligible and he opted in, right? He opted not to be a free agent. He accepted the Braves arbitration offer and took a one-year deal. So that's pretty much the same, right? Yeah, I guess so. And I wonder how Brian Cashman feels about what happened before last season

where he was sort of overruled by ownership and pretty publicly made his feelings felt about that or made his feelings known. He was not happy about being overruled. It seemed that he did not want to pay that much for a reliever. And the rationale that supposedly ownership has or had at the time was that Rivera is very old and typically has some sort of minor injury every year. And if at some point he had a more major injury, they wanted to make sure that there was a capable replacement. And that has worked out exactly as they thought it would, I suppose. So, of course, we don't know what Brian Cashman would have done as an alternative if that hadn't been forced on him.

Maybe he would have made some other brilliant bullpen move, bringing in someone just as good for a third of the money. But I wonder whether he is sort of relieved at this point that he was overruled on that decision. Yeah, I mean, certainly this year, especially because David Robertson hasn't been all that great. I mean, it was only like four months ago, five months ago, that Soriano was a massive disappointment in New York. I mean, he wasn't even pitching the eighth inning last year. And I mean, he's very, that, that is very recent history for him. Um, so I mean, it's not like it's been a slam dunk success for the Yankees, although I'm sure they're probably happy because

they got the slam dunk part of it when they needed it. Um, but I don't know. I think it's probably best for everybody to end this while it's been reasonably successful. This is a time for everybody to declare victory and fly away. Well, we could say the same about this episode of the podcast. We will end it while it's been reasonably successful. And we will be back next week, I guess. Man, I'm just segueing all over the place this episode. This is impressive. We'll be back on Monday with episode 43.