Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 525: Oakland’s Swoon and the AL West Race

Episode Date: August 29, 2014

Ben and Sam talk to Jason Wojciechowski about how Oakland’s lead evaporated and how the AL West will be won.

Now the race is on and here comes pride in the backstage. Heartaches are going to the inside. My tears are holding back. Try not to fall. My heart's out of the running. To a scratch for another say. The race is on and it looks like heartaches. And the winner loses all.

Good morning and welcome to episode 525 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus presented by the BaseballReference.com Play Index. I am Ben Lindberg of Grantland.com, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Prospectus. Hello. Hi. So there have been some changes in baseball in the standings over the last few weeks. So since I left BP, I have written about how Tim Lincecum was pitching well. I have written about how Tigers kind of had it easy in the AL Central,

not really having to compete with any other team like the A's and the Angels did. And then I wrote an article about the A's and the Angels did. And then I wrote an article about the A's and the Tigers' playoff rotations, mentioning how they were the World Series favorites and they were the most likely teams to win their divisions. So the new job is going great. And we haven't really talked about the changes in the standings over the last few weeks or month or so. And so we're going to talk about one of the major ones now with a frequent guest, Baseball Prospectus annual editor, Baseball Prospectus site editor, Jason Wojciechowski. Hello, Jason.

Hi. Not to grouse about it, but not as frequent as I once was. That's true. Well, I don't know who to blame that on. I invited you tonight, that's all I'm saying. Yeah. I can't dispute that. So, as I recall, you were once a confident man about the Oakland Athletics. I remember hearing you speak to Will Leach about the AL West, and there was not really a note of fear in your voice at that point, and maybe there was no reason for there to be a note of fear in your voice. Is there going to be a note of fear in your voice now? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I can hear it. You have sharp ears, I think, as do, I'm sure, all the listeners.

So what has happened here? What has gone wrong for this team that was on a, not a record run differential pace, but the best run differential pace since, what, the 2001 Mariners at a time when I looked at it, maybe through the All-Star break or something, and had a lead. It wasn't an enormous lead, but there was a bit of a cushion there, and now it's gone. Now they are in second place in the al west how did this happen uh i mean some of it is just um whether you want to credit the angels or credit the luck dragons or

whatever that cause you know what is what is the angel starting rotation it's like four number four starters and then garrett richards um and somehow i don't know how they're winning baseball games. It's not even Garrett Richards anymore either. Well, not anymore, but over the course of the last, you know, whatever it's been, the last six weeks that the Angels have gone on, you know, a run to catch up and now take the lead. You know, Garrett Richards was a big part of that, so you can't take that away from him.

But I mean, the rest of the rotation, Weaver and Wilson, Santiago and Shoemaker, I mean, they call up Wade LeBlanc to replace Richards for one game and then he, you know, is sent on his way. But Wade LeBlanc fits right in with Hector Santiago and Matt Shoemaker. He does not stick out in that rotation. You would not be surprised to see him there. And yet, Santiago and Shoemaker are going to lead them right into the West Division title. I don't know what to say.

The A's have also stopped hitting. I don't know why that is. That's not real deep analysis on my part. But the A's are not hitting like they were, you know, you being the listener, not you two, but you're also two, are smart enough to know that it's not, oh, they traded Cespedes, so they lost all their offense. You know, Cespedes had like a 3-10 on base percentage or something. So this is not the answer. It's not even really part of the answer. It's that the players they have, like Brandon Moss,

have not hit the way that they did for the first 90 games or 80 games or whatever it is of the year before they did for the first 90 games or 80 games or whatever it is of the year before they stopped hitting. And they have some guys hurt? Yeah, Jed Lowry has a busted finger. And he wasn't hitting great, but he's hitting pretty okay for a shortstop. And when you're talking about replacing him at short with, with Eric Sogard, um, you know, Sogard's a nice backup infielder, but you know, that's, he's a backup infielder, um, who is a starter on this team at second base. But, um,

so yeah, you, you have Sogard and you have Andy Perino playing time because of that. Um, you've got now in the last week or so, John Jaso going down with another concussion. So actually like starting to worry about his career. Forget about this year. You have Coco Crisp with the persistent Coco Crisp-ness. Kind of never goes on the DL for the A's anymore, but just, you know, with the persistent Coco Crisp-ness, kind of never goes on the DL for the A's anymore, but just misses every other game type of situation.

You had Craig Gentry hurt for a while, which was more cause them to get Samfold than actually hurts the offense in any particular way, but does make it harder to build a lineup because you can't just say well gentry is our center fielder you have to you have to think about it um i'm not i'm not i i'm not counting this what you just described is not a team that can claim a phenomenal amount of injuries right no no No, no, no. It's not phenomenal. The question is what's different now than what happened in the first half. Nobody was hurt in the first half. Like they had a great – it's more – I mean you could probably say it's kind of a regression to an average level of injury.

I mean Crisp – maybe Crisp missed some time in the first half, but they had a lot of, I don't remember a problematic injury situation in the first half for the A's, much less, you know, two or three that stack up to the point where you do have to worry about Sam Fold. I mean, they did miss Gentry for like the first three weeks of the season or something, why they had Fold the first time around, but they were only missing Gentry. They weren't missing Crisp at the same time. Sam and I have discussed this before,

whether it's reprehensible to feel happy about an opposing player's injury if it's not a serious career-threatening, life-threatening injury, if it's just an injury that most likely just takes a star player for a division rival out in the heat of a pennant race. And Sam and I are of the opinion that it's okay if a fan is okay with that, is pleased to hear that a rival team's best player or star player is removed from the equation. What were your emotions upon hearing about the Garrett Richards injury? I kind of did.

I went through that in an analytical way. Like, I did go through the, like, I wonder whether I should. I wonder whether it's okay if I do get happy. I didn't get particularly happy. I mean, by the time this happened, the A's have been in this kind of slump for a month now. So I'm more focused on being depressed about their inability to, their sudden inability to win baseball games at a, you know, 65% clip. I'd started to take that for granted. And yeah, I, I, I don't know. I don't, yeah,

I don't know that I've necessarily felt one way or the other about Richards. Um, I'm, I'm, uh, I'm going to be even more agnostic than you guys and say that while I'm okay with people feeling that way, I'm also okay with people judging people for feeling richards richards also um isn't even even i and i don't know maybe not ben um because you can hear the sociopathy in ben's voice but even i mean richards ticks off some of the boxes that make it unacceptable to be happy about an injury he's he's young pitcher. We're always a bit more protective of young pitchers. He did appear to be in a lot of pain. Well, I was going to get to that. He's 10 minutes on the field, man. If somebody's on the field lying on the field for 10 minutes,

then it becomes a bit different. I mean, it's not like it was a head injury. It wasn't life threatening or anything like that. But there is something different about a gruesome injury, for instance, an injury where officials have to get involved. People in coats have to come out and take them off the field. And Richards is not guaranteed to be rich for life. That's another thing. So I think that, for instance, if Albert Pujols had pulled a hamstring, Jason would probably have felt happy and that would have been okay. I don't know. I feel pretty – like I don't like pain. pretty like I don't like pain and so I feel pretty um uh empathetic when when people hurt themselves and can't do the things that they like to do like putting aside just putting it putting aside winning because who cares about winning like what are they actually playing for um they

they like playing baseball probably 98% of these guys, although maybe there's some debate around that number. But, you know, and then Albert Pujols suddenly can't play baseball anymore. Or forget about like playing baseball. Their entire life is playing baseball. They don't know how to do anything else. They don't want to do anything else. And suddenly he has to sit at home and just pretend that he's interested in reading books.

I know, but Jason, it's not as though the Angels only get to carry a 24-man roster and every ninth spot in the lineup would just skip. I mean, they play the same amount of baseball. Somebody else has his dream come true. Yeah, but I don't know who that somebody else is unless it's cj cron then i know who that is but i don't i don't i don't know that you know i can't empathize with the with the with the abstract uh replacement player because that's not a real thing i that seems weird to me, that you would say that. Well, we're both monsters, I think, is the takeaway.

So explain to me if there is a conflict or if there's not a conflict between the idea that the A's have all this depth and they have all these multi-position players and they're really good at building in redundancy to their roster and planning for all these contingencies and yet they have had Sogard and Perino and people like this playing more or less every day all year is that does that uh make the the narrative a little less right or not no it just means that you means that you can't be four deep at every position. You know, the deepest teams are not four deep at every position. And the A's weakness was middle infield. They had Lowry. He's good. But they never, you know, if Lowry got hurt,

they were always going to be turning to Sogard. It's not like there's an injury on top of Lowry. they were always going to be turning to Sogard. It's not like there's an injury on top of Lowry. Sogard was the backup shortstop, and Perino is kind of the other backup shortstop. And then once you're looking at that, then you're looking at Cajaspo having to play second base. That's a weakness in itself.

You know, middle infield just doesn't fit that. Middle infield is just, you know, the position that Bean wasn't able to, you know, build up that depth that, you know, there's, there's still limited resources. A lot of teams, you know, you could have an incredibly deep team and you would be perfectly happy calling them a deep team, but they've only got one legit catcher and a regular backup catcher. And I, I don't think people would I don't think it would be wrong to call that not a deep team. It's just even, and it's not even a money issue. It's just, it's probably honestly more of a roster space issue than anything else. When you consider how hard it is to fill out the rest of the 40 with guys with options and everything else.

You can only do so much with a 40-man roster and with a handful of other players. All of this makes the Addison Russell trade that much more interesting. I demand perfection at every position. I think you should expect more. I demand perfection at every position. I think you should expect more. Well, I mean, that was thrown out the window with the fact that Josh Reddick was going to start every day. Yeah, although I guess he's been okay.

Yeah, he's been okay since he came back from his latest injury. He's turned it around a little bit, but I don't have any faith in, there's, you know, I don't do swing analysis. I don't do that kind of thing, but there's something about the way Josh Reddick hits that is kind of, you know, blind squirrel. You know, if the pitch happens to match the only swing plane he has, he's going to hit it 400 feet. And if it doesn't, he's going to strike out. So he seems pretty easily approached by pitchers with even a halfway decent command of one or two pitches. And the pitching has, I guess there's been some cause for concern, but not maybe a ton of cause for concern. There's Scott Casimir not pitching as well as he had before. And there was Sonny Gray who maybe had kind of a bad start.

That happens sometimes. And Jason Hamill has not been so good. But it seems like there's no cause to fret too much about the rotation with Lester. Well, the thing is they still need Kazmir and Gray to be good. I mean, they can get by with Hamill being bad. You can lose, you can not quite punt, but, well, maybe not this bad. You can't actually punt those games. They need him to get his ERA down to maybe five instead of seven.

But I think they still need Kazmir and Gray. And their struggles this late in the season would at least confirm the worries that you would have all along that Kazmir can't hold up and that Gray is young and hasn't built up the stamina yet to go, you know, whatever you're going to wind up going if you go deep in the playoff, 200 and some odd innings, or even without going deep into playoffs, 190 or 200, without going through kind of a rough period in August. So whether that's what happened or not, who knows, but it's certainly close enough to what you would have worried about in April to, I think, make it a present worry as well. It's kind of amazing that this team would have any rotation concerns given the fact that they started the year or you know entered spring

training as one of the teams with what looked like the deepest rotation and the deepest sixth starter and seventh starter probably and then during the course of the year they've traded for three other starters and of course they have lost other starters, which is why they traded for those starters. But also Jesse Chavez came out of nowhere. Right, that too. It kind of makes you think that there should be a saying about how there's never enough pitching. I feel like someone should coin that phrase. There's no such thing as too much pitching?

Is that a phrase? Tins to da. So the standard if the season ended today question. If the season ended today, the A's would be in the wildcard game against a team, either Detroit or Seattle, who right now have identical records, who are five and a half games worse than the A's.

How would you feel about this? Well, I don't like anything involving one game. You know, particularly, I mean, you know, Detroit, you could wind up with David Price. You could wind up with Justin Verlander. That's very rude of me to say that that way about Justin Verlander, but it's hard to be as worried about him as maybe in the past. Seattle, I don't even know what the hell to make of Seattle. I don't understand how they have a run differential that's as good as the Angels like I'm completely baffled like I look at this team

and I don't feel like I should be scared of them at all but that's what I said to Will Leach about the Angels so I kind of learned my lesson on that one a little bit um yeah I I don't I don't know. I would have more apprehension about one game against anybody than one game against any team in particular. It's the one game that is 95% of my anxiety. It could be Texas. I mean, you know, and knowing that you're not going to get Yu Darvish and Chu is shut down and whatever, you can still find a way to lose a game even when you're throwing all the resources you have into that game. You could still find a way to lose to Texas. So given that, I don't particularly care who the wildcard opponent winds up being. I would much rather not have to watch that game. Right.

Well, does the indignity of potentially having to play that game against a far inferior opponent who has a close to even chance of knocking you out of the playoffs, does that grind on you now? Obviously, these are the rules that the teams agreed to play under before the season started. No, the only indignity that's ever ground on me is I think the last time I was on the podcast is the home field advantage thing. I don't really see it. I wouldn't call it an indignity. It's an intentional disadvantage. Or at least it should be read that way, in my opinion.

If you're not good enough to win your division, you're out of luck. Jason. Hi, it's Sam. Wait, who? Is Billy Burns going to be up in September? Oh, I assume so. I mean, what team wouldn't call him up? He's a pinch runner, right? Excellent. I'm happy to hear that. Will Nate Fryman be up in September? Yeah, Nate Fryman's coming back on Tuesday. Will Derek Barton be up in September? I don't think Derek Barton's even on the 40-man, is he? I don't think Derek Barton's on the 40-man.

I think somehow nobody claimed him when they took him off the 40-man. I have no idea how that happened. I can't believe he passed through waivers. Will Drew Pomeranz be starting or relieving? Can I answer that yes, or do you want me to pick one? In September, pick one. Oh, I have to pick one. He will...

I mean, I wouldn't ever... I wouldn't start him. I don't know why you would start him over Jesse Chavez. I wouldn't start him. I don't know why you would start him over Jesse Chavez. Does Johnny Gomes ever get to start against right-handed pitchers because of what he adds to the lineup with his presence? His presence? Yeah, I remember last year.

Does he bring presence to people? With Boston last year, he got to keep playing after platooning all year long he got to keep playing in October because he was so important I'm gonna answer I do vaguely remember this but I'm gonna answer this semi-seriously which is to say that I think Bob Melvin is actually

pretty committed to the ideals that he has either believes or that he has adopted in order to keep his job with the A's. He, you know, fans and even to a certain extent some of the reporters who talk to him every day like to push him on, oh, this guy is so hot. Why doesn't he get more starts against...

He doesn't care. He's like, that guy's job is to hit left-handed pitching. You know, Nate Fryman crushed lefties last year. He wasn't getting starts against righties. He doesn't deserve starts against righties. Not deserve. He didn't. That's not his job. It's just not his job. You know, on the other hand, as I recall, Gomes did actually get more starts than you might prefer against righties when he was in Oakland the last time around. I don't recall whether that was due to injury, whether that was intentional, whether that was giving guys days off, whatever it is. But no, he's not going to start due to his Santa Claus abilities. And if John Jaso comes back, will they be carrying Soto still, or will they remove Soto?

I mean, at this point, he's on the 40, man. I don't see any reason why they would wind up dumping Soto. You know, you may as well just keep him. So with all those questions put together, basically, do the A's go into just this in September when they have their expanded roster? They already have everybody capable of doing seven different things and playing three different positions and switch hitting and switch pitching and doing all these random things. Does September give them so much flexibility that we see like an even hyper advantage that they get out of it?

Or at this point, is everybody overlapping so much that you can't really do much more than they already have done so far as milking platoons and having early game pinch hitting and having guys playing different positions every inning, like it's women's volleyball. Have they kind of maxed that out? or is September going to arguably be where their advantage becomes sort of most apparent? I mean, I think a lot of their flexibility is more theoretical than real in the first place. I mean, I think when you're calling Steven Vogt and Brandon Moss corner outfielders, and even first baseman, you're sort of kidding yourself. Like, yeah, they own gloves, but they're DHs. And Nate Fryman is a DH.

And, you know, they have a number of DHs who sort of play the field. John Jaso is a DH who happens to sometimes put on catching gear and hopefully never again for his sake and the sake of all his pitchers. So, I mean, I guess, you know, you add Billy Burns and that means now you actually have one more legit outfielder compared to the three that they currently have or whatever the number is. I guess they actually have four legit outfielders right now, but Burns can't hit. So what is, I don't know what that gets you. I don't know that the A's, you know, the extra six guys or whatever they're going to have on the bench, probably not even that many, three or four guys, is going to do anything different for them

than for a team that doesn't have the sort of extreme flexibility story. So last thing, how well is this team set up for the future, for beyond 2014? Because it's not really a team that has locked up a lot of guys to extensions. It's not really a super young team because these aren't really homegrown guys for the most part so to stay at this level do they have to keep pulling rabbits out of hats and trading for guys that no one thinks are good and then they become good or can they just kind of keep this team together and compete for a while um yeah no i mean this team to the extent it's set up for the future, is because they have Billy Bean and David Forst and Farhan Saeedi, however you say his name. I've never actually said his name before and never heard it said, so probably killed it. And I mean that in a good way. I'm sure I just said it the best anybody's ever said it.

said it the best anybody's ever said it. So yeah, no, I mean, it's, there, there's some, there's a core of, of, you know, you have kind of Norris and, and, and Redick and Moss is under control for a while, even though he's, you know, 30 plus. And, and then there's the, a percentage of the pitching, particularly if Parker comes back well and then Crisp is signed for like eight more years and Donaldson is not even in arbitration yet, or maybe next year he'll be at arbitration. So there's a little bit of a core there, but there's nothing coming from the minor leagues to replace anything. There was very little coming even before the choice in Russell trades, but there was

at least choice in Russell, and now there's not that. But it is. I think it is going to take more rabbits and more hats, and at some point, I don't know know I don't know even Boston goes through down years apparently two out of every three so I think a down year has to be coming I don't know if it's next year because they'll still have

a Samarja Gray Parker Kazmir rotation and they'll still have a Moss Donaldson, Norris, uh, Redick, you know, offensive core, but they won't have a shortstop. Um, and you know, Chris should, should worry anybody. Um, and you know, you're, you're gonna, they're gonna start adding question marks without being able to address those question marks from the farm system because that's not perpetual. Even, you know, the raised farm system has not turned out to be perpetual.

You know, you can maybe, and I think the days of getting more value in a trade for prospects than, you know, you were actually giving up are coming to a close, if not already over. I mean, we saw, you see a top 10 prospect in the game traded for a guy who up until this year is a number three starter. traded for a guy who up until this year is a number three starter. I don't know what that says about whether teams are still playing the kind of overvalue the prospects game. Okay. So that is our talk on the AL West. What is your confidence level? I won't ask for a prediction, but your probability of an A's division title? How many games do we have left here?

Like 30? I don't know. I don't know what Pocota is saying, but I don't know. Just the fact of two games back against a good rival, a third, two-fifths, something like that. Pakoda, let's see, BP's playoff odds had them at 38.6% to win the division heading into today, and they lost. So I think you're right. Well, we'll see.

Hold on. Game was played under protest, so it's not actually final yet. And, you know, honestly, a reasonable protest from the perspective of the call having been gotten wrong. I hope people who are listening have, you know, read about this before they're listening to this because I'm not going to go through the whole thing. But basically, the call was blown. The question, I think, is going to be on whether there was harm to the outcome of the game because the game was not lost

in the same inning in which the call was blown. So you have to play these games of, well, it screwed up their bullpen. They used three bullpen pitchers when they wouldn't have had to. It's going to come down to that. And I personally, as a commissioner, would not grant, would not uphold protests on those types of grounds because that just seems wrong. It seems incorrect. Yeah, I would not hold my breath and expect any protest to be upheld based on past precedent. Okay, so that— Based on a week ago? Come on, Ben. All right, so that's it for today. Thank you, Jason. You can read Jason on the A's at beanball.org.

You can find him on Twitter, on the A's, and on TV shows, and on everything. Bow ties. Bow ties and natty dressing. At J.L. Woj. At least that's how I say it in my head. You are the only person who pronounces it that way, and I

very much appreciate that. Is that the right way? That's how I say it even yeah yeah well yeah i don't know why anyone wouldn't pronounce it that way jlwoj that's jl woj all right and that is it for the week also so please support our sponsor baseball reference go to baseball reference.com subscribe to the play index using the coupon code bp to the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. Please join the Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectivelywild. And please rate and review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and send us some emails for next week's listener email show at podcast at baseballperspectives.com.

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