Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 526: The Most Predictable Lineups of 2014

Episode Date: September 2, 2014

Ben and Sam discuss which lineups have deviated from preseason projections by the most, and what it means.

Ben isn't here and we're lacking production, so this is me singing you the introduction. It's effectively wild. Ben isn't here and we're lacking production, so this is me singing you the introduction. Effectively Wild. Good morning and welcome to episode 526 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from BaseballPerspectives.com presented by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg of Grantland. Ben, how are you? Okay. Did you use the Play Index at all this weekend?

No, I was away and didn't really have reliable internet, which is one reason why I let the multiple of five fans down. I was also away and I did not only not have reliable internet. I did not have any internet. I had no internet whatsoever. You still play indexed. However, today was a very busy day of play indexing. Lots and lots of play index. Tons of play index.

Had to get back to the Playindex grind. Did it in a big way. Back to the podcast grind. 5.26 on a Tuesday. It's going to be ages until we get back on multiples of five. You know, I saw that you emailed me somewhere along the weekend

and said that you assumed if it was going to be a multiple of five that you'd have to find somebody to fill in. And I didn't see that email until today. However, if you had gone ahead and found somebody to record on Labor Day just to keep the fives, I would have right then and there declared three days a week from now on. i would have been so upset so we dodged a bullet really yes uh i like the multiples of five but i don't like you i like you i like i like old ben who didn't care about the podcast like i liked the old ben who was who was just as interested you it did you said you were terrified of failure. Well, sure.

To be sure. You wanted to, as I think I always wanted to say good things when we were on the air. I mean, I didn't want to be embarrassed. I didn't want to say things that I would regret or that felt stupid or anything like that. I tried to bring me a game when we hit record. But I also never put a lot of value in things like hitting the quality of the show oh yeah yeah and so uh and and i feel like you were the same way and and now more and more you're you're uh well more and more probably since about episode 80 but still more and more you you you seem to you seem to care a great deal about things like the multiple of five.

Yeah, sorry. Well, I let it go this time. Yeah, I think it's good. Once my mom was cooking for this retreat, there were like 70 people, and she was doing all the food. She would do this every summer for a long time. And she was, you know, this is a very stressful thing. And so she was, you know, stressed out by all the things she had to do. And so some guy at the retreat decided, a friend, a family friend, decided that he was going to do her a favor. And he put her in a boat and he rowed her out into the middle of a lake where she couldn't do anything.

And he thought he was doing this great favor because she was going to decompress and um and it and it just backfired horribly this is the most stressful thing that he could have possibly done and i feel like i me taking away your internet access for a three-day weekend to to get off the multiple of five might have been the equivalent of rowing you out into a middle of a lake. And so I'm glad to, I'm just glad to see that you seem to be in good spirits anyway. Yeah. Okay. So we'll continue. All right. So Ben, do you have anything to banter about or can I just go on? Did you see that Dodgers shift on Friday? No. All right. Let me send you the link. Maybe you didn't see it and you don't know what I'm referring to, but there was the closest thing that we've seen to the wall that was discussed on an early episode of Effectively Wild.

And they brought in Andre Ethier, and they lined up four fielders between first and second base just in a line, not the usual shift where one guy's in short right field or something. They are all in the baseline, essentially. And it looks—it's close to the wall. It was discussed on an early listener email show where someone asked us why baseball defenders don't just do the wall that they do in free kicks in soccer. And, in fact, the link that I just sent you to this play describes it as like the free kick in soccer. So this is the closest we've come. Is this one of the shifts that you wrote about as a possibility for the future of the shift? No, not that I recall this is i mean this is a this is an extra innings five man infield there's that's a situational yes right no i don't

remember that i think i generally remember being interested in the five man infield as a as a more common practice. Um, and, uh, in fact, Tim Marchman, uh, has, uh, suggested a six man infield, uh, which, uh, I hadn't even considered, believe it or not. It makes, makes perfect sense when you think about it. I don't know why nobody's mentioned a seven man. Now that I think about it, uh, seven's better than six. is better than 6 so I was interested in whether a 5 minute infield would work I don't suggest that it would work I suggest that it would be fun to experiment for a year

but no this is just a classic sort of classic move you have to do this right in the 12 know, there's a classic move. You have to do this, right? In the 12th inning. It's a strange sight. It looks different than what I've seen before. Is it the same? I don't know. I mean, it's not, but it's not because it combines the 12th inning strategy

of bringing in a fifth infielder when, you know you're you need to protect against the grounder getting through more than you need to cover a lot of range in the outfield right there's not a lot of use to covering a lot of range in the outfield and you want to have a lot of infielders to stop any ground ball and maybe set up a double play and so on it just combines that with a guy who you would shift against uh the wall itself i don't think it's intended to look like a wall. It's just that they had four guys, and they thought, well, where's he most likely to hit it? If it hadn't been Seth Smith,

I don't think they would have aimed for the wall aesthetic. Nope, probably not. So, I don't know. I think this is scarcely worth our conversation. Okay, let's move on. All right. So I've been thinking about the Angels a little bit, who are, of course, doing amazingly. I've been thinking a few different things about the Angels.

One of the things is that, and we're not going to go into this, but a year ago, Jerry DePoto seemed almost certain to get fired, or if nothing else, his chair was extremely wobbly. And Jack Cerencic also seemed very likely to get fired. And Alex Anthopoulos also seemed quite likely to maybe get fired soon. And now Jerry DePoto will probably be executive of the year. Jack Z has an extension. And Alex Anthopoulos has gone up and then gone down a little bit. But it just goes to show how hard it is to assess GMs and why I don't even know why we try.

But anyway, that's not what I want to talk about. The Angels are really good. And one of the things, oh, the reason i was thinking about the photo is because it seems to me that the angel success uh generally speaking is extremely predictable that that if you look at their team you don't see a bunch of guys who are uh who are dramatically outperforming our expectations uh you see you see some of that in the rotation with Richards and Shoemaker. But for the most part, this is a team that, to me, is a giant collection of non-surprises. This is like the incredibly predictable thing happening, which is that the Angels, which had a great team, are playing great.

And so just to kick this off, I wanted to play a quick little game with you. And this game is going to be pick the angel surprises. So we're each going to look at their baseball reference page. We're only going to look at offensive players for reasons you'll see in a bit. And you are going to pick the biggest surprise, positive or negative. It doesn't matter. And then I'll pick the biggest, and then you'll it doesn't matter and then I'll pick the biggest and then you'll pick the next and I'll pick the next so we'll

do three well we'll each pick three and this can be this is at this is absolute surprise ability so it like I said it can be positive or negative and so to put this in perspective like Steven Pierce we would say would maybe be like a 10 on this and uh dustin ackley who i tweeted today has the exact true average that pakoda projected for him he would be as a one okay and so i would like you to pick your biggest surprise and then give me on a one to ten how surprising that performance is uh this is hard looking at these guys for reasons that you've already hinted at

I guess most surprising maybe maybe the fact that Ionetta is the second best hitter on the team and how surprising is that to you I mean he's always a pretty good hitter on the team. And how surprising is that to you?

I mean, he's always a pretty good hitter. I kind of liked Dianetta for a while, but he's never had a season like this. So I guess it's a seven. Yeah, that would have been my pick as well. And I think seven is just about right. that's a good that would have been my pick as well and i think seven is just about right uh so i will uh i will pick um cole calhoun who has been uh cole calhoun is just i i don't know i mean he never got any real attention when he was hitting extremely well in um high a he wasn't a high draft pick he was playing in a hitter's park and everybody kind of

uh wrote it off as as not much he was a little old for his level and he has just never stopped he's just done that exact thing the entire way up and it turns out that he is a um at least for his peak years something like just a little bit worse than an all-star player and i i didn't see that coming but pakoda i think liked him somewhat i think i'll double check in a minute uh but i didn't particularly think this was coming so i will say that cole calhoun is like a like a five okay and maybe i'll take uh maybe i'll take pool holes next not not even the rate stats so much as the counting stats as the as the 134 games played and 593 plate appearances or or pre or prior to sunday um i guess expecting him to have what looks like it's going to be a full season probably is somewhat surprising.

Not that he's hit fairly well. I don't think that the offensive performance is surprising at all. If you had told me that he was going to stay healthy all year, then I would have guessed that he'd have a decent offensive season, and he has. But the fact that he stayed healthy and stayed in the lineup to the extent that he has, I'll give it a four. It's interesting because he is one of the biggest surprises on the club, but in a negative way, by Pakoda's reckoning. Right, well, Pakoda still thought he was about the best hitter in baseball. One of them, yeah.

I thought he was, I think, one of the ten or something best. All right, I will say Hank Conger, and I'll give him somewhere between a three and a five. Somewhere in there. There is a number between those two numbers. But for negative reasons, I thought he'd be a lot better than this. I thought that he and Ioneta would be

similar players, and in fact, they have averaged out to the player I expected them both to be. So I guess you could say that Conger's been as surprising as Ioneta has been, but it doesn't quite feel that way. But I'd take Conger as surprising. Alright. Cowgill?

If you want. Sure. I don't know. He's just never hit, really, in the past. He's never really played. I but but he's he's gonna double his career high in in plate appearances probably or come close to it and and he's hit pretty well so that qualifies as as a surprise on a team that is not very surprising as we're as we're pointing out here so maybe uh maybe uh yeah um fourth outfielder plays like a pretty good fourth outfielder yeah right it's it's not all that exciting so uh three and i cannot there is not one other performance among a regular that surprises me in in the least

so i will go with grant green who has who has hit some in 84 plate appearances and that's that's as much as i can get out of this group um so uh so now ben let me ask you something else who who do you think who would you think and i know this is a very difficult question to answer uh to to expect you to do the math of 400 players. But who do you think is the least surprising team this year? And what I mean by that is not that Pakoda expected them to win 82 games and they won 82 games, because maybe one guy was Ioneta and one guy was Conger and they averaged out to what Pakoda expected. I mean, across the board, among their hitters, had the least surprises. The average player was the closest to Pakoda's projection for the average player.

Hmm. The Yankees? The Yankees? Yeah. Yeah, all right. It's a good, sure. Have you actually done this match? Yeah.

Wow, okay. Sort of. I mean, it's not easy to do it. Yeah. Wow. Okay. with a team this year. And then I compared their true average to the Pocota vision of their true average. Because I just wanted to see how normal, what a normal amount of variance is and whether the Angels are as predictable as I think or whether this is just sort of normal that Pocota is pretty good at nailing projections.

And Pocota is pretty good at nailing projections. So I didn't know how to put the angels in context. So again, whether they have outperformed or underperformed does not matter. I'm looking at absolute values only. And so the... I no longer like my guests, but I don't have... I don't like any guests right now.

You no longer like your guests, the Yankees? Mm-hmm. How come? What changed when I just described what I did? I just had more time to think about Brian McCann. Uh-huh. Well, let me tell you so let me let me say so mccann has a 282 true average he was projected to have like a like a 311 true average so at at 0.39

uh yes he has he for instance on the angels only raul Abanez, who's barely played, has more of a differential than McCann has. So, yeah, so McCann does skew things. So do you have another? Do you have a new team that you want to say? Brian McCann's at 282? No, you said 240. Sorry, the opposite. Yeah.

The opposite. Yeah, so he was supposed to be 282. He is actually at 243. So sorry. 39 points, but in the other direction. I pivoted on the wrong foot, Ben. The travel. I don't know if I have a better guess.

This is hard to guess. The Royals? That's a good guess. That's actually a very good guess. I know Pocota wasn't a big fan of the Royals offensively, and they haven't been particularly good offensively. That's a good guess that's actually a very good guess pakota wasn't a big fan of the royals offensively and and they haven't been particularly good offensively so that's a good guess i the there's no reason you should be able to guess this guessing is just distracting from our conversation um so i'll just tell you some things uh it's actually the the blue jays are the the most predictable

team um and on average the, the sort of the median differential between a Pakoda projection and real life at this point for all players who have 100 played appearances or more is like about 20 points of true average. So if you're 275, then you're between 255 and 295 on average. And so the average Kansas City Royal has only missed his projection by 14 points of true average. Sorry, no, that's not right. The average Toronto Blue Jay is 14 points. And then the Nationals are next, and then this is not interesting. You don't have to keep this in mind, but the nationals are next and then this is not interesting you don't have to

keep this in mind but the nationals are next and then the marlins and then the royals and then the dodgers and then the a's and then the phillies uh and then the angels oh actually then maybe the yankees and then maybe the angels uh but the angels are up there so um here, is what I do find interesting about this. Generally speaking, the teams with the most predictable performances have done very well. There is a strong correlation. It's about 0.6, a strong negative correlation between missed projection and winning percentage and so if you look at this the ones i named included a few teams that aren't doing that good at the top but for the most part the teams at the bottom of this are all terrible it's the Diamondbacks it's the Rockies it's the twins the Padres it's the

Rangers and the teams at the top generally are the teams that are that are competing I think the only team that's gonna make the playoffs that's really low by this is the Mariners and they might not even make the playoffs maybe the Braves but they're not probably even make the playoffs. Maybe the Braves, but they're not probably going to make the playoffs either. Maybe they will. The Cubs are very low. So this makes perfect sense, I suspect, but I don't know why. So tell me, Ben, why does this matter?

It seems to me that a team that is winning is in the playoffs that has a 610 winning percentage like the angels do or a 570 winning percentage like the nationals do um would have benefited from a lot of players outperforming their projections um like uh ben sharrington talked about at the saver seminar right they want to have their guys outperforming their projections. That's how you win. And yet, that's not the case. The teams that are doing well, they nailed their projections. The players more or less nailed their projections. So why?

Explain to me why this makes sense. I can't quite figure out why it makes sense. Well, it could just be one year, right? Oh, Ben, it's like an hour and a half to do this you're gonna do this for another year sorry uh but that's that's possible right it's very possible otherwise so it doesn't have anything to do with the fact that these guys have actually played right you're just looking at true average You're just looking at their rate stats, and if they didn't get 100 played appearances, you're not counting them.

So it doesn't affect anything if someone gets hurt and they have a replacement player instead? That's correct. We're not looking at performance by position. We're only looking at the players themselves. Right. looking at performance by position we're only looking at the players themselves right and it's not the case that every team goes into the year projected to be good obviously and it's just the the ones that get hurt or whatever that don't end up good there are a lot of teams that are

projected not to be good so it's not not that. Right, like the Astros. For instance, the Astros were projected to be bad, have been bad, and yet they have a huge differential player by player in what they've actually gotten out of their players. They're one of the biggest differentials. It's not like anybody looks at the Astros this year and goes, boy, what a shocking outcome this year has been for them. No, it's not. It's been not record wise, at least. Yeah, not record wise. So could it be

that one one element of being a good team is having predictable players? In that maybe if you're a maybe if you're a younger team, you're more likely to have guys who their stats are not or their projection is not based on a long track record, and so it can vary a lot. It might not be as reliable, perhaps, and you might not be as likely to be a good team because you're built that way

or something like that i'm kind of grasping at straws here but just the the predictability of a player could could be a factor that would help a team be good because could could be i mean maybe it could be it could be that you start with a plan and the more your players allow you to to um have that plan play out the better off you are i mean these guys these parts all it's not a huge deal in baseball the way it is in some other sports but you know these guys are all they all have their different roles on the team on defense in the lineup and so on and um they're not explicit or they're not you know necessarily explicitly replaceable with another guy who's like them because that other guy will have sort

of different skills and so maybe just the idea that you start with this perfect idea of what your team is going to be like, and the more you're able to hew to that, the more the pieces work together, right? Like they're cogs that fit. And the more you are forced to change your cogs out, maybe you lose a little bit of efficiency each one. There's a little bit of extra friction. There's a little bit of extra, you know, wasted motion, you know, all that sort of thing. So maybe that's it. There's a little bit of extra wasted motion, all that sort of thing. So maybe that's it. I should also say it's possible that this is just a methodology thing because if you think about it, say your team has a guy who outperforms his Pocota projection by 50 points of true average through June.

And my team has a guy that underperforms his true average by 50 points through June. Well, my guy is going to get replaced. And in the spreadsheet that I've created, his numbers are going to be set in amber. And he is going to drag down my average. Whereas your guy is going to keep playing and probably regress somewhat. So by the end of August, he's now probably at like 28 points

better than projection or something like that. Whereas my guy is going to be 50 until the end of the year because I kicked him off the island. So that's a possibility too. You might think that it's conceivable that that is all that this is. I don't know. But, yeah, so the angels' point, at least, is well taken.

That they are, you've been, I mean, you've been predicting the Angels juggernaut for a few years now, right? And it's their fault that they haven't followed through on it until now. You were right. They weren't holding up their end of the bargain. Clearly, it was in their power all along. They definitely demonstrated that. I'm going to look at the pitching next. I haven't done that yet that. I'm going to look at the pitching next. I haven't done that yet, but I'm going to look at the pitching next.

So I don't know if you saw. I tweeted this, so I don't know if you saw this, but do you have any idea who the players are who have most missed their projections this year? Maybe some of the players we talked about on our podcast when we talked about the best signings? I don't think so. No? I don't think so, actually. Steven Pearce, by the way, is not, by true average, is not on there. He is very high. He's like top 30 or something like that.

Kazmir? Hitters only, Ben. Hitters only. I'll just tell you because I've been in this situation with you before and I know that it doesn't end well. On the positive side, A.J. Pollock, Devin Messarocco, and Josh Harrison. And on the negative side, Ryan Rayburn, Will Middlebrooks, and Dan Ugla. Jackie Bradley Jr. is one of the negatives.

Steven Drew is one of the negatives. Those guys are all on the same team, Bradley, Drew, and Middlebrooks. Yeah, it's hard to hear. Bradley, Drew, and Middlebrooks. Yeah, part of the year. Mike Karp, also on that team, is on there. Jose Abreu from the good side is on there. Anthony Rizzo is on there. Michael Brantley is on there. JD Martinez is on there.

That's a name we mentioned. Yeah, we talked about Brantley too. Oh, yeah, we did. All right. So anyway, I guess i want to keep thinking about this yeah i'll think about it with you are you writing about this too i don't know when i will have time to be honest you put a lot of work into it for the listeners though yeah for the readers readers the readers haven't earned anything yet the readers should be listeners by this point the listeners should be readers well yes we've made that case before yes all right uh so we need emails for tomorrow's listener email

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