Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 55: Shrinking Safeco/The Unpredictability of Japanese Players

Episode Date: October 3, 2012

Ben and Sam discuss the Mariners’ decision to bring in (and lower) Safeco Field’s fences, then talk about what the seasons of Tsuyoshi Nishioka and Norichika Aoki say about the difficulty of projecting the performance of Japanese imports.

Which of us is starting today? It's your turn. Are you sure? I think it's yours. I think I closed it yesterday. Well, anyway, what number are we on? We're on 55. Welcome to episode 55 of Effectively Wild is the name of the show, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives. I'm Sam Miller. I'm with Ben Lindberg in New York, New York. Ben, how are you doing? I'm

doing pretty well. Great. I feel like considering how this has gone, we should maybe just watch the A's game or something. And people can listen to us do that. I was literally watching the A's game. Yeah. And that's part of the reason that this happened. This interrupted us. Do you have any announcements? I have one.

Announcements? No, I don't think so. Announcements? No, I don't think so. I got a note from an employee of the Texas Rangers who told me that they have had crickets that just shorted out two of their PCs in the ballpark. So crickets have moved beyond the dugout. They are now taking over the front office as well. Yeah, my interpretation of that was that the PCs had shorted out the crickets. Crickets have shorted out. The real tragedy here is the cricket deaths. Computers can be replaced. So that's the cricket news for the day. Do you have baseball news for the day?

Yeah, I thought we could talk a little bit about the Seiko field changes. And I will talk about Japanese players. Okay. Go ahead. Okay. So the Mariners, after years of whispers or stories about whether they would consider changing the dimensions of Safeco Field, are going to change the dimensions of Safeco Field are going to change the dimensions of Safeco Field. And this is something we've seen in Citi Field and at Comerica and at other large ballparks. There's just sort of a pressure to conform. If a ballpark is too hitter friendly or too

pitcher friendly, it's like the weird kid at school who dresses funny and listens to strange music and everyone feels uncomfortable and wishes that they would just be more like everyone else. And so Safeco is the latest ballpark to undergo this process, or it will for the 2013 season. And basically the changes, right field is pretty much staying the same, but the fences are moving in a minimum of 4 feet and a maximum of 17 feet. The scoreboard that's in left and is in play will be relocated, and the fence height in left will be dropped from 16 feet to 8 feet. The fence height in left will be dropped from 16 feet to 8 feet.

And so this will change the profile of the park considerably. The power alley, which is kind of a misnomer in this case, in left field, in left center, has long been the bane of right-handed batters in Safeco and will now be less so. You can't really tell exactly what these changes will do, but it seems like Safeco will probably still lean towards pitchers, but not as dramatically as it has in the past. So up until now, it's kind of been maybe second only to Petco in terms of pitcher friendliness.

And I mean, I asked Colin Wires earlier tonight to at some point write about this in a more rigorous way. But I thought we could just kind of wing it and talk about whether you think it's something that makes sense in the Mariners' case or in the abstract. It seems so weird that extreme ballparks have not translated into a bigger home field advantage. And I'm not sure why a team hasn't really figured out a way to engineer their ballpark in a successful way. It seems like they should. It seems as though generally you hear it talked about as though they do. But when you look at teams with the biggest home field advantage over the course of a number of years, you really don't find a consistency with the extremeness of the park and the team's advantage.

I don't know why that is. And so that's just one thing. I personally like the idea of having more extreme ballparks, but you want it to be recognizable as baseball. I think Safeco was. recognizable as baseball i think safeco was i think probably a bit much well i guess i don't know that i totally want to say this conclusively because maybe i mean the mariners do know a lot more than i do but i think a bit much has been made of the mariners uh park factor this year in which they are um their split their home road split rivals the Padres typical road home split. And so that is sort of taken as evidence that Safeco has gotten more pitcher friendly and that it has become a

real problem. And I don't think I accept that. As far as I can tell, well, for one thing, I don't think anything has changed other than maybe some weather patterns. But the Mariners last year were last in the American League in home OPS. They were last in the American League in road OPS. This year, they are last in the American League in home OPS, and they have become sort of shockingly league average on the road. And to me, this is probably more likely. The fluke is how they've done on the road because they haven't really reconstructed their offense in any significant way. It doesn't seem like they're a better offense in any significant way.

And teams do sometimes. I mean, even a year is not enough to smooth out all the fluctuation of these sorts of splits. So my guess is that this might be, to some degree, a response to a problem that wasn't really there. Safeco is, of course, a very hitter, unfriendly park. And, I mean, it's sort of, I was thinking, I think about this actually a lot, but there was a multiple year period where we all thought not we all but most of the world thought that adrian beltrate was bad at baseball and that's kind of uh and mike cameron yeah um yeah mike cameron as well so anyway uh i don't know i i can't speak to how it's going to change things i

know that i think it was Colin, and I think that's probably why you brought him up, was talking about how he thought the changes were fairly subtle. So maybe they are. So maybe we won't even really be talking about this next year. But, yeah. Yeah, and Jeff Sullivan pointed out that the city field changes that were made before this season and were also fairly subtle, city field scoring is down this year despite those changes to make it

slightly more hitter-friendly. And so yeah, I don't know that you can necessarily anticipate how it will play over one year. I also saw a recent story that claimed at least that the Mets opponents had benefited more from those changes than the Mets had, just kind of by looking at home runs that wouldn't have been home runs in the previous alignment of the park and saying that the visiting team's number outnumbered the Mets number. and saying that the visiting team's number outnumbered the Mets' number. I guess, I mean, the thing that always comes up, and why this is always talked about,

and why the Padres are still talking about it, and I bet we'll eventually do the same thing, is that hitters complain about it, and they don't like seeing long fly balls that would be home runs in other parks not go out in their park. And so there's the fear that there's some sort of psychological effect and that either that psychological effect will compound the pitcher friendliness of the park and in some way make those hitters discouraged in a way that would affect their approach at the plate and make them less likely to hit home runs or hit other types of hits uh even above and beyond the construction of the park uh and there's the fear that it will be harder to keep those players or

be harder to attract players to your park, which I guess are legitimate concerns. Sullivan's point or his belief is that it would help in roster construction because the Mariners kind of have more options now in what kind of hitter they can target. They don't have to focus so much on lefty hitters, and maybe they would find right-handed hitters more receptive to coming to the Mariners. So I guess there could be something to that. Of course, you don't really know whether it's a zero-sum game,

and if you're correcting some psychological effect for your hitters, maybe you're just doing the opposite for your pitchers. Yeah, you would think that would be the case, and you would think that for every disgruntled hitter you'd have a happy pitcher, and of course everybody's going to be happy when they're winning. But when we used to go backpacking when I was a kid, my dad would point out that the amount of frustration of going uphill is always much greater than the amount of

relief going downhill. And so even if pitchers are aware of their happiness, they're probably not going to be quite so vocal in their happiness as the hitters are vocal in their unhappiness. And so, yeah, probably if you're simply worried about making people happy, the equation will probably always shift toward negative when you go out on the extremes. Well, I guess my inclination or gut feeling is that these sort of changes don't have a huge effect and that they're not going to make a bad team good or a good team bad. And at most, it's just kind of a minor change and that i don't know i i would say if you don't think it's gonna make a major difference in how your team does i think maybe it's worth it just to kind of take the specter of the pitcher's park away and not have hitters worrying about it and not have people

writing about it and just not have it in the back of anyone's mind. Um, yes. Although I am sorry to lose the extreme parks because extreme parks are fun. And one of the things that sets baseball apart for most other sports is that the parks are shaped differently and the playing surfaces are shaped differently, which is really, really strange when you stop to think about it. But it is definitely part of the appeal for me. Not that anyone is necessarily fooled by park factors anymore, or not to the extent maybe that they once were, but it's still kind of fun. It adds another layer of analysis and just kind of adds another wrinkle, I guess, that you can consider how a park might have affected someone's stats. I would be sorry if we did end up in some version of baseball

where every park was more or less neutral in the same dimension. That would be disappointing. Let's talk about mine now. Okay. So two Japanese position players are currently in the news. Tsuyoshi Nishioka voluntarily walked away from the third year of his contract with the Twins, which is a nice thing to do because he was involuntarily not being allowed to play baseball for them any longer. And Nori Aoki is a Rookie of the Year contender in his, obviously, first year with the Brewers. And the pairing, the reason that I paired them, is that this is

totally against expectations for what each of them was supposed to do. Nishioka had a pretty good amount of, I don't know, hype might be a little bit overselling it. He was well regarded coming over. He was supposed to be a very useful middle infielder in the American League. The thought was that he was going to have a high batting average and a lot of steals, and he was a trendy fantasy pick before 2011, and he has actually been maybe the worst player in baseball over those two years, and he has been the worst japanese position player um by baseball references model uh ever um whereas ioki was an afterthought and um i think we mentioned it on the show before

rj once wrote about the circumstances of signing him and it kind of appears that the brewers accidentally got him they bid without intent, and they were surprised when he ended up on their team. He wasn't a starter coming out of spring training, and he has had a great year. And in fact, he is arguably the third best Japanese player ever already. I guess one way of looking at it, he has the highest season of war by any Japanese player not named Ichiro or Matsui. That gives him the 13th best season ever by a Japanese-born player because Matsui and Ichiro have had plenty of good seasons. But nonetheless, it is a very good season. And you can also look at, if you wanted to, you could find a similar sort of extreme in the pitching side where Kei Igawa, who the Yankees spent about $50 million to get, is possibly the worst Japanese-born pitcher ever.

And Takashi Saito, who was signed for $1 million by the Dodgers, is probably the third best pitcher ever to come over from Japan. And so the reason that I bring it is I just want to know whether you think that it's just typical classic can't predict baseballness. Or if you think that there's something just vexingly impossible about scouting Japanese players. And if it's something that we need to, um, a factor into the math when we, uh, when we scout or sign or project these players,

um, because the thing is that Japanese baseball is, uh, somewhere between triple a level and major league level. As far as talent, it should be extremely easy to scout. It should be extremely easy to project. And yet it really is not unless my anecdotes are cherry-picked and not representative which I don't think they are although I haven't done the I haven't done the

spreadsheet I will do the spreadsheet at some point but I have not done it yet and then of course there's Kawasaki who you didn't even bring up but who is hitting 196 255 206 for the mariners this year in 112 plate appearances um in safeco of course in the pre-fence moving safeco uh how did nishioka and aoki's numbers compare in japan do you know just sort of of roughly, I mean. Yeah. Well, okay. So Nishioka in, um, in his last year in Japan, he was 25 in his final year in Japan and he hit 346, 423, 482. Um, that was his best year by far, but he was a, he was about an 800 OPS guy before that. He hit 11 home runs in his final year. And Aoki, who is 30 this year, so he was 29 last year, in his final year in Japan, he hit 292, 358, 360,

358, 360, which is to say he hit a little bit worse than he's doing this year, about 70 points of sluggings than he is this year in the majors. So he has improved his numbers. He has improved, yes. Well, I can't imagine that you would ever predict someone to come from the MPB to MLB and improve at age 30 or so. I don't know, certainly looking just at the stats and doing a pure translation, this is exactly the opposite of what you would have projected for these players. So I guess it, I mean, it comes down to scouting, of course. I mean, if it's somewhere

between AAA level and MLB, then of course you could come up with examples of AAA hitters who hit really well in AAA and never hit in the majors. Or, uh, I guess you could probably find examples of guys who improved at some point after their promotion. You could, but doesn't, I mean, isn't my gut feeling, again, without having done the spreadsheet, my gut feeling, and isn't it your gut feeling that these guys almost seem to follow no pattern? That whether you sign for a million or seven million

or whatever, you have basically no better shot or worse shot of becoming an impact player it does sort of seem like that um again anecdotally anecdotally uh i guess i mean the thing with darvish at least when he came over uh was that he had the stuff that convinced everyone that his skills would translate to the majors, that he threw hard enough and had the secondary pitches and wasn't just based on deception or things that might work in the Japanese league that might not work in the majors. He was clearly, I guess you could say, an American-style player.

I guess you could say an American-style player. And I don't know, I guess with the hitters, there's always the concern that they won't be able to handle Major League fastballs, and perhaps if they have the sort of batting stance where they kind of start running before they hit, which has obviously worked very well for Ichiro, but maybe doesn't work so well for someone without Ichiro's speed or bat control. There's always the concern that it will translate. And I don't know.

I mean, certainly I think the amount of money that a team is willing to pay for a player is tied directly to their scouting reports on him and how they believe it will translate. And yeah, as you say, there have been certainly many examples of highly touted players not panning out and vice versa. So I asked Jason Parks about this, and I wanted to know whether scouting is much more difficult than it should be given the talent level. And I asked him specifically whether the sort of different philosophy of Japanese hitters and pitchers, a very low walks, low strikeouts philosophy, makes the game too different to really compare in a way that AAA and baseball are not different from each other. And he says, the style issues you mentioned are legit.

It's a different game over there played a different way with different philosophies. It's very difficult to play a game a certain way for years and then have to change it against superior athletes at a superior level. Age is a big issue. against superior athletes at a superior level. Age is a big issue. It's next to impossible to teach a seasoned adult anything at a high level that requires cognitive abilities developed as children slash adolescents. He also said most Japanese hitters have tremendous back control and hand-eye coordination,

and given the heavy dose of breaking balls they see in Japan, most have good pitch recognition and reaction skills. Strength is often an issue, as are the sweepy swings that allow for slap contact, but not much pop. And, you know, I was watching, I mean, I'm certainly not the expert on this, so this was just sort of my reaction, but when I was watching Yu Darvish, particularly in the first half,

you could sort of project on him this background where he was not facing pitchers or batters who were willing to take a walk and so he could you know he could really pitch without having to go anywhere near the center of the strike zone or he preferred to pitch that way and major league hitters seem to to be perfectly happy to take a walk, and especially now in this era, in this generation, they want to take walks, they want to work counts, and it seems to me that Darvish's second half, in a lot of ways, the difference is that he now does not work around the edges, he trusts his stuff, he throws strikes, and

he knows that batters are going to take pitches if he's on the edges. He trusts his stuff. He throws strikes and he knows that batters are going to take pitches if he's, um, if he's, if he's on the edges. And I just wonder how much that matters, um, for all pitchers, knowing that the game plan is going to be totally different, that, um, you're going to have a difference. Uh, I mean, you're just, it's a, it's a different game. It's, uh, it's probably more different than we give it credit for, and I imagine that for scouts that translation is also hard to factor in. Yeah, and we've talked, I think, before on the podcast about Kevin Goldstein's objection to minor league equivalencies

or translations of minor league stats, that it's just a completely different game and that something that works on one level might not work on the next. So, I mean, if you're a hitter in Japan who has possibly never seen a high 90s fastball, except for maybe Darvish. If you've never seen one, it can maybe be hard to say how you'll do when you do see one. And so that could be an issue. And I guess there's maybe something to be said for the culture shock of coming from Japan to the United States and maybe your level of comfort and familiarity with that culture and with that change, um, could be something that other guys handle better than, than other guys. And, uh, that is

not necessarily something that you can project either. So there's that. There's that. Uh, and that's that we're going to end it now. We're going to be back tomorrow with a very special episode that you guys will be informed of. So that's it. See ya.