Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 460: Nelson Cruz, Ryan Braun, and the Post-PED Good Life

Episode Date: May 30, 2014

Ben and Sam banter about the Royals, then catch up with the boys of Biogenesis.

I got no strife, I'm loving life Could you say the same? You don't have to move to move So come on up and see me But leave that judge behind Cause I'm loving life Good morning and welcome to episode 460 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball

Perspectus, presented by the BaseballReference.com Play Index. I am Ben Lindberg, joined as always by Sam Miller. You know, if I Google Edwin to get Edwin Encarnacion's B-Reference player page, I mean, I'm a baseball, I mean, everything I look up is baseball, so my Google results are pretty good. I very rarely get, for instance, I very rarely get the country singer Chris Young as the top result anymore, even though he's more famous than either of the other Chris Youngs. Like, my wife gets the country singer Chris Young, I get the baseball player Chris Young, right? I get, for instance, if I search Ted Williams, I get Ted Williams, the baseball player.

On my mother-in-law's Google, she gets the homeless man with the voice. It's actually like six of the first eight results are the golden-voiced homeless man, Ted Williams, which is bananas. I'm actually surprised, Ted. I know, and this was years after. This was a recent search. Anyway, I look up Edwin, and I expect it to fill in Edwin Encarnacion. That seems just like without a doubt, right? Yeah.

He's the fourth Edwin on my results. Is Edwin Jackson one of the Edwins? He's not. Can you name a non-ball player Edwin? Edwin Starr? That's actually not a bad guess. He's not there either. He's not top five. Who are the

top Edwins? Okay, so tell me if you know any of these Edwins and then maybe we'll look them up. Edwin Watts? Nope. Edwin Escobar? Nope. Edwin McCain? Nope. Edwin Hubble? That's not. Edwin Hubble.

That's not the astronomer Hubble, right? It could be. Yeah, it is, right? Okay, so I know that Hubble. Also, no Edwin Collins, which sort of surprised me. The spelling is different, but I didn't think that would bother Google. Edwin Watts is a golf apparel. Edwin Escobar, ball player.

Really? He's a ball player, yeah. He apparently is a minor leaguer who the Giants acquired in 2010. And let's see. Edwin Escobar, 22 years old, triple-A starter for the Fresno Giants. 5'2", 5 ERA. Never been on a... Oh, actually.

Oh, this is embarrassing, I guess. I guess this is embarrassing for us. Oh, okay. Because he's a prospect. He's legit. He's ranked number 56 prospect by Baseball America, but was not a top 100 for BP. That's the one I edited. I don't have time to do deep reads on multiple top 100s.

It's the one I edit. But yeah, okay, so Edwin Escobar, legit prospect. Disappointing for us. Sorry. Before we started recording, we were talking about the popularity of prospect content. So this just goes to show that Google has the same preferences. Google is more interested in prospects

who might one day be productive major leaguers than it is in the multiple major leaguers who are currently productive players. And Edwin McCain, we actually both definitely know Edwin McCain. I don't know why this didn't ring a bell, but Edwin McCain is the guy who wrote and at least recorded the song I'll Be from about the year 1999, which was the prom staple of that year. Do you know this song? I'm not going to sing it, but it's the I'll be your crying shoulder. I'll be love suicide. You know that song? That was like Lou Reed singing it. No, you don't know it? That was before my prom time. All right. Well, we've done several minutes on Edwins here.

But that's not what we're talking about, is it? No. Did we say who we're sponsored by? Yes. All right. That's what we're talking about, Ben. Well, I wanted to mention just the daily Tommy John update. Chris Withrow is the latest victim.

So Blue Shield of California loses one of its members that one actually hurts me more than any any of them this year but jose fernandez i have a soft spot for relievers who you know dominate and withrow was a guy i really liked he was a guy that the high strikeout high walk guys too he was a guy that i had been touting before the year started in certain forums. And he also is a guy who I liked his BP player comment, which noted that he is the only player in baseball, in the majors, with the word throw in his name. Right.

So he's like Josh Outman or something. Well, yeah, I was a withro fan also i missed out on him in our reliever league draft just by a couple picks i pushed it too far i really wanted to get him and i thought i could leave it one more round and he was selected and i was very upset about that so that has kind of cushioned the blow here because now i'm not upset about that anymore um and then the other the other thing was that the the royals have a new hitting coach we talked about royals hitting coaches quite a bit last year because this is this is now i think the what the sixth royals hitting coach since 2012 starting to think it might not be the hitting coaches. No.

So what does this say about anything? Does this say something? What does this say more about? Okay. So does this say more about Yost, more the nature of hitting coaches themselves, or the Royals hitters? the nature of hitting coaches themselves or the Royals hitters? I think it's, my first inclination would be to say it says something about the people who are hiring the hitting coaches, right?

Are you counting the George Brett? I think that's counted in that total, Yeah, so that doesn't really count maybe, but it's still a lot of hitting coaches. So would you say that a hitting coach is somebody who... Okay, I'm going to back up. So there are certain skills that are apparent within a few minutes. Like you can basically, if you're a scout, you can get a good read on a guy's speed,

like literally the first time he runs to first base. Um, and then there are other things that take, you know, years of statistics to really get a good handle on, uh, like, like, you know, arguably, uh, you know, maybe defense or, uh, you know, certain parts of defense or, or whatever. Uh, and then, you know, a lot of things are in the middle of, you know, half a season or whatever. Um, but to get a player's true talent level, you would generally want a couple years before you would really say definitively. But with a hitting coach, would you think that this is something where you can't really get a read on how good he is for a few years? Sort of like a GM, where you have to give his work a lot of time to develop. his work a lot of time the cut to develop because he's basically working on guys

uh... you know uh... with with uh... you know development in mind he's working on attitudes working on getting them to be good learners needs getting them that we're going to be hard workers and and all these things that should should really flourish many years down the line meaning you could make maybe make a case it would be three or four years until you get really say anything that I mean, you could maybe make a case that it wouldn't be three or four years until you could really say a hitting coach had failed.

Or you could say, well, being around him, it's clear that he's just sort of socially awkward and he's not relating to these guys. And we picked a guy who just got off on the wrong foot with these hitters and he's probably never going to get that back. And so within like a month, you know whether you made a mistake. So would you guess that hitting coach is a within a month you made a mistake or within three years you start to feel confident you made a mistake?

Well, the various methods that people have used to look at these guys statistically, I think, suggest that there's like almost no sample that we can use to tell whether they're good just from looking at whether players are better with them and without them. Russell Carlton has written about that in the past and the guys who show up as good, but he wrote a couple of weeks ago about how random those results are. And he noted that we have to be careful about the pitching or hitting coach who gets the genius tag after a couple of his pitchers or hitters have a good year he might very well be a genius but these results suggest that going

forward the chances that he'll repeat that work are random so it seems like statistically we can't tell you'd think that the team could tell i would think i would think probably pretty quickly um and on the on the last episode of fringe, Mike Farron was talking about hitting coaches. He talked about Jeff Pentland, who's a former hitting coach, and how he clicked with certain players. Sammy Sosa, you know, and how hitting coaches generally do that. Or you'll hear stories of how certain players say that one hitting coach finally got through to them with something. Certain players say that one hitting coach finally got through to them with something. I would think you could tell pretty quickly whether the guy is a good communicator or a good fit for that team. I mean, you could tell, are players going to him for advice?

Are they going for extra sessions in BP or whatever? That seems like something you could tell pretty quickly. And if he's taking a really long time to get to know everyone, then that's probably not a good sign. Yeah, they talk a lot about with NBA coaches about whether the – it's sort of seen as a bad thing if the players are able to – are kind of seen as running the team. Like if they can get a coach fired, that's sort of seen as a bad thing. You shouldn't let the players run the team, that kind of seen as running the team like if they can get a coach fired that sort of scene is a you know like a bad thing you shouldn't let the players run the team that kind of a thing

with a hitting coach though i mean the guy is not necessarily like he's he's you know he's a middle manager and and his primary job is to get players to to trust him and work with him and be confident with him and it really seems like even if even if it's totally unfair and unjust and the players he's working with are monsters and immature children or whatever, like he just got a bad group. If they're basically saying after a week, we don't like this guy, well, you know, maybe it's not the hitting coach's fault, but you just sort of have to get rid of that guy. I don't know if that's what happened in Kansas City or if it's ever what's happened in Kansas City. It feels like you could do a performance review from the players after a couple weeks and pretty much say whether he did the job or is going to do the job well going forward. Yeah. Maybe.

So I have a quick question about the Royals. in the past about what seems to be a tendency toward verbal gaffes from their, from their leaders, from their hitting coach manager, GM, where they seem to, they say something that is sort of mockable and seems to not really understand either how baseball works or how reality works. And I just wondered if this, this one,

I don't have the direct quote in front of me, but, um, Ned Yost a couple of days ago, uh, said that, you know, he was confident in his team's power because he sees them hitting a lot of home runs in batting practice.

He says something like, I'm confident we can hit home runs because we hit a lot of home runs in batting practice. Does this rise to the level of Royals' verbal gaffe to you? Not among the worst ones we've discussed. I mean, maybe he was just saying that they have the raw power and they need to find a way to translate it, but clearly they aren't translating it at all. So it seems like something that is worrisome, even if they are hitting batting practice home runs. So it wouldn't reassure me. I don't think it's near the top of the list going back to last year where we were talking about the park effects.

And I mean, last year he wasn't concerned about the power because it sounded like he didn't want power, right? That was the last quote. So this is an improvement over that one. Speaking of that, there was, I think, Dayton Moore a couple a couple days ago this was in a ken rosenthal column he he said that their their problem uh was not producing with runners in scoring position and that doesn't appear to be the case at all i'm just looking at that now they have hit better with runners in scoring position than they have with the bases empty. They've hit better with men on than they have with the bases empty. So that really doesn't seem to be the case at all.

They haven't hit well with runners in scoring position because they haven't hit well in any situation. But they certainly haven't been markedly worse or worse at all in that case. So that's the kind of thing that makes you worry because, you know, maybe he's just saying that because it's something to say. But if he actually believes that, then that's problematic, right? If he doesn't realize that the problem is not runners in scoring position, but just all situations, the team not getting on base. That's sort of scary. The quote is, just sit back and watch our BP. If you can drive balls out of the park in BP,

you can surely do it in the game. So I think you could if you wanted to turn that into a gaffe. I mean, there's certainly that... I don't think that Yost... Basically, you'd have to give Yost no benefit of the doubt. And you'd have to sort of want to vilify him and be like, he doesn't know anything about baseball. And that's clearly not true. So you, I wouldn't turn it into a gaffe. I'm agreeing with you.

This is very low on the Royals gaffe meter. Very low. I'm going to put more, I'm going to put more runner's inspiring position comment on the board somewhere. Not the top of the board, but it's there. All right. So our nominal topic today, after we discussed every Ed Wynn in history, is post-PED players, post-Biogenesis players specifically. I suppose Nelson Cruz, Ryan Braun, Johnny Peralta. players specifically, I suppose, Nelson Cruz, Ryan Braun, Johnny Peralta, and the fact that they are producing, particularly Cruz, who is having what seems like a career year. And the fact that

they have sort of, if not been embraced, they really haven't been vilified any further. We've talked in the past about how teams have, you know, not punished PED guys, really. There haven't been a whole lot of guys who have lost a ton of money because of a suspension. I mean, Melky Cabrera probably belongs on that list, and he's another guy who is producing this year. But, you know, we saw Johnny Peralta get a big deal this year. Cruz, of course, did not, but that may have had just as much to do with the draft pick, if not more. And then not only have these guys been embraced, but, you know, Craig Calcaterra wrote about Ryan Braun and his all-star ballot results. He is getting lots and lots of fan support in the all-star balloting and so he suggests that that is evidence that fans don't care about this that uh

oh it's the outfield ballot too so he's he's up against every other outfielder not just is he leading i'm not looking at it i don't Oh, okay. Well, so the suggestion then is that fans don't care, that writers care, certain writers care, and that they make too much of it. They are out of step with the fan base in general. And there have been polls that suggest that that's not the case. I'm looking at some comments on Tom Tango's blog and there have been some polls that suggest that people do care about it at least when they are asked

when they are surveyed about it they say that they care but maybe they don't act as if they care, maybe they don't care enough to do anything about it maybe they will still vote for a PED guy who's having a good year, or they'll still go to games to see one, or they won't stay away from

games because one is playing. They won't boycott. They won't change their actions. As we talked about with Jeff Luno and the Astros the other day, it's not what you think necessarily that that's the most important thing, or your feelings, but whether you act on

them. And it, it sort of seems as if fins are not acting on any anti PED sentiments. Uh, wasn't, I can't, I'm not a hundred percent sure that I'm remembering this correctly, but I, as I remember the, the dead spin hall of fame ballot, which people could vote on, uh, bonds and Clemens were, were on that ballot, but only because their threshold was 50% instead of 75% to get on the ballot. Actually, it wasn't even that. It was the top 10 names. So Bonds and Clemens were the top 10 names. But they did not, they actually, I think that we talked about this at the time, it was sort of interesting that even Deadspin voters wouldn't have elected bonds and clemens into into the hall of fame they

they only 65 put bonds and only 66 put clemens which is a bit higher than the writers did but certainly not it's like twice as high isn't it um are they in the 30s or something i thought they're in the 40s but i'll i'll look it up. But it's not the unanimity that, for instance, BP's staff ballot had one person left them on, left them off. So Bonds got 36% his first time. So it is significantly higher, but also it's sort of right in the middle of where the BP ballot and the actual ballot were. So to me, that's an indication that they're actually... Because that's the deadspin ballot.

I mean, those are radicals and anarchists. Those are people who are young generally and I would say more stat-heavy than the average fan, and certainly engaged, and maybe, I don't know, maybe this is stretching, but a bit rebellious, and even they significantly penalized the steroids users. And even Giambi failed to make it on their ballot. He failed to get 75%. So I don't know that it's necessarily... Giambi. Giambi failed to make it on their ballot. He failed to get 75%. So I don't know that it's necessarily... Giambi?

Giambi. Bagwell. Yeah, right. Okay. So even... So I don't know that it's necessarily that fans don't care about this. I mean, I think that fans have... They have sort of... They have short memories,

and I'm not using that term figuratively. Like, I'm not saying, like, oh, they get... not like closers have short memories where they're able to come back after blowing a save and still be tough and strong. They literally have short memories. They don't really remember who did steroids or who that guy is. It's a lot of people in the crowd, especially I would think that a lot of people are voting who barely know what happened. Braun, it is kind of surprising.

I don't quite know how to square this with the fact that I do think that people generally know that Braun, I mean, Braun was pretty high profile. Not quite as high profile. For a broker. Yeah, well, I mean, he didn pretty high profile. Not quite as high profile. For a broker. Yeah, well, I mean, he didn't break any records. I think if he'd broken a record. Won the MVP, though. But he did win the MVP, yeah. It's tough.

It's tough to put these guys. I mean, because the way that the public treats these guys is so, everyone is on a different place on the graph. With Bonds, it's the very far side because he broke records. And with Francisco Cervelli, it's on the far other side because he didn't break records. Nobody cares about that. Or Antonio Bastardo, nobody cares about that. But it's not like you're one or the other. There's this whole chart,

and you don't know where everybody quite fits. And so I don't know where Braun fits exactly. I don't get the feeling that any fan in the world cared about... Nelson Cruz, for instance, would have been very near the left-hand side because he has no black ink, he has no hardware, he's not famous. So I actually, what is exciting to me is what Cruz is doing because I really am hoping that he will do something insane this year, like 62 home runs or something like that. How great would

it be if he hit 62 home runs? Because then it would be this weird reaction that everybody would have to sort through and this like cognitive dissonance can they hold it against him that he did he did peds before like is that can you can you put an asterisk like well people will call for asterisks you know like that that will be fun to me because because i don't i'm not sure how rational any of this is and i feel like this would be a good place to test even the barest minimum rationality of how people are going to react to nelson cruz so far it hasn't happened i mean i haven't seen any i haven't seen any particular backlash. I don't even really see it brought up very often. Yeah. Well, our friend of the podcast, Michael Bauman, wrote about it at Grantland,

more or less about the same thing that we are talking about, just about how these guys seem to have assimilated and what that means. One more thing about the all-star ballots. I mean, certainly we should not treat all-star balloting as scientific or necessarily representative of anything. For all I know, the Brewers have just been incredibly efficient at getting out the vote or something. I mean, you'd think that if anything, he'd be at a disadvantage because they have one of the smaller fan bases. That's a lie. Ben, that's a lie.

They have one of the smaller markets. They don't have one of the smaller fan bases. that's a lie they don't have they don't have they have one of the smaller markets they don't have one of the smaller fan bases they do very well um especially when they're competitive they do very well they they they i would say for size of market they might be the best drawing team in bit like relative relative to the size of the market. I mean, they don't draw like a small market team. Just so you know. Yeah, so that's always the thing I wonder with PED guys is, are they more or less likely to take them again? Because I think probably the reaction if Cruz did hit 62 home runs, a lot of people would say that he's probably just taking something else now. He's demonstrated that he is willing to take something. He doesn't have such strong moral qualms about it that would stop him from doing it.

So we know he's shown his stripes. We know that he's capable. He's willing to do it. So he must have just and and he beat the test before right he he found a way to to do that so presumably then he must be doing it again he it didn't uh it didn't didn't hurt him so much that that he's no longer in the league or anything so so he went ahead and he found a different way to do it is what a lot of people would say and i always wonder whether that's true, whether we should assume that it's more or less likely that someone who has already been caught will be not caught again, but will do something again.

Because there's a lot of disincentive for someone who's been caught to do it again. You get tested much more often, which, I mean, I guess if the test is incapable of catching whatever you're taking, then it doesn't matter how often you're tested. But if it's some sort of routine where you have to finesse it to make sure that your levels are not high at a particular time, then once you're getting tested a ton and it's random, that would be harder to maintain. And of course, the penalty is much steeper the second time, especially now. So you'd think that that would cause someone to think twice about it. So I don't know.

And then, of course, you could have people say, well, he still retains some of the whatever skill boost or talent boost he got as a result of taking those things. He built up some muscle and he still has it, that sort of thing, which I don't know whether that is really scientifically sound. I don't even know if he has it. Right, while he's taking it, yeah. Half of this stuff seems to be placebo anyway.

Right. Well, okay, look, we certainly know that a person who has been in jail for you know for stealing a car is much more likely to steal a car than you know you or i or anybody who's never been in jail for it i mean that's that's pretty like that's a pretty easy thing to walk through um and you know all the same things you said about the disincentives i mean the guy's on parole he's got a parole officer officer, his penalties are stiffer if he goes back. All these things are true for him too. The question is whether we think that steroid use is, you know, an example of sort of antisocial, immoral behavior, or whether it is, you know, I mean, I don't know.

It's an irrational decision. Yeah, and I don't know if the same thing I just said about the car thief, it probably is, but I don't know if it's also true for a speeding ticket. Like, I don't know if a person who's busted for speeding on Monday is more likely than a person who isn't to be busted on Tuesday. I got the speeding ticket once. And just for the record, it was a mistake by the cop. I was on cruise control going 71 in a 65.

So I was speeding and therefore I couldn't fight it. But he clocked me at 86. Wow. So I ended up getting a very steep. But I couldn't go into the judge and be like, no, I was speeding but only by six miles an hour. So I just had to take it. The gun was juiced. And so, I mean, I was, it was a Plymouth Colt, but, uh, nobody gets a ticket for going 71 in a 65. So I still feel like it was a bad break, but, uh, I don't know. Anyway, the point is, um, that, yeah, I, my, I, I, I don't think most of us feel the same way about PEDs as car theft.

I disapprove of it. I'm fine disapproving of it. I like that they are trying to fight it. But I don't know that I consider it a deep moral wrong that is likely to manifest itself in repeated instance. However, that said, while I want to give the benefit of the doubt to these guys, I would guess that the answer is yes. And then do you think that you would get any traction talking to someone who's convinced that PEDs are, you know, a miracle drug and make

every player who takes them amazing? And I'm not in the total, you know, they don't do anything camp either. I'm not really sure what they do. It's very hard to say. And it probably varies by player. But I'm not of the belief that, you know, you can take them and suddenly become a slugger because we've seen that that's not really the case. And even when we know that someone was taking something, I'm not positive that if he was having a good year that it was because of that. Like you look at Melky Cabrera's year when he was caught and it just, you know, it was like a super high BABIP and lots of singles falling in. And is that PEDs?

You know, maybe. It's kind of hard to say. Most people would say, oh, well, he's hitting a lot of home runs now. That's PEDs. And that wasn't Melky's offensive profile that year at all so it's sort of hard to say and so i wonder whether a clean nelson cruz or a presumably clean nelson cruz breaking out and having a career year would convince anyone of anything convince them that that maybe you know if he's better presumably not taking anything, than he was when he was taking something,

is that convincing to anyone? Or probably not. Probably not. I do like, though, that there was all this conversation in the offseason, especially after Johnny Peralta signed his deal, which was probably fair compensation for him, maybe an overpay even, about how it was unfair and they

need to do something and there should be a cap on how much he can earn. It's just not fair that he can profit on this. And we disagreed with that. We thought that was silly that teams were able to price this information into their math. And if anything, it should, if teams think that steroids did something for him, they won't offer him as much, and that it would be dumb to give the teams a discount, that doesn't make any sense. Anyway, the point is that now you look at it, and so Peralta is clearly worth his contract at this point. I mean, he's been very good this year.

Cruz, clearly, clearly, clearly worth his contract. I mean, this is a guy that nobody wanted their team to sign. I mean, he was the joke of the off season in a lot of cities, uh, when there, when there would be rumors tying them, uh, to him and he has been, uh, you know, a huge, huge win for the Poros. Well, you know, at, at the, at the numbers that were being thrown around for him, he was a joke. I think when he, when he signed with the Orioles, a lot of people said that was a good decision. And yeah, but I mean, anything, any contract he would have signed would look good right now. And then Melke, he had a down year last year. He's having a very good year this year.

So that contract, I would say, probably will turn out looking pretty okay, because Blue Day's got a good deal on him. that Blue Day's got a good deal on him. And Marlon Bird, if I have my chronology right, was suspended in 2012 and was one of the great signings for 2013 by the Mets. And is there anybody I'm missing who was suspended just before free agency? I mean, we don't have to go that far back, but these guys are, right now, they're starting to look like the undervalued commodity. It seems like a market inefficiency. You should go get all the steroids, guys. And that they're underpaid relative to their worth compared to weather free agents and that they're all getting- Bartolo Cologne, I guess maybe you could say.

Bartolo Cologne, perfect. Yes, Bartolo Cologne, perfect one. Also extremely good value for the A's after his suspension. So yeah, it's really interesting that relative to their peers, this seems to be a decision that has... I don't know if it's cost them money, because I don't know if... I mean, you can't use what they did afterward to say what they would have gotten paid, but they've been worth more than they've been paid, and not many free agents can say that. I will also note that the Brewers are currently 11th in per-game attendance. They are ahead of the Nationals. They are ahead of, I lost the tab, but they're ahead of a bunch of teams that you think of as pretty big-sized markets. They're basically tied with the Tigers.

And I will also say, of course a Honda Fit can go 71. But can it go 86? That was my question. Oh, can it go 86? I don't know. You've never tried because you don't speed. I don't speed, but I bet it could, but it would get a little shaky. All right. I don't speak, but I bet it could, but it would get a little shaky. All right.

Bron, by the way, is the third leading vote-getter in the National League right now. All right. So that is it for this episode. That is it for this week. We will be back with a new show on Monday. Please rate and review us and subscribe to us on iTunes. Please join the Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild please brave phillies braves mets reds orioles all drawing less than the brewers of course the brewers have been a have been a better ticket this year than many

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