Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 58: How Accurate Have the Postseason Narratives Been So Far?/Not Jim Tracy Returns

Episode Date: October 9, 2012

Ben and Sam talk to Not Jim Tracy about his resignation from the Rockies, then discuss how the narratives surrounding each playoff series have held up over the first few days of games.

His father is the district attorney. Now, if you've listened to the Up and In podcast from Baseball Perspectives, you know our next guest. He's a man who is very much in the news at the moment. It's Not Jim Tracy. Not Jim, thank you for joining us. The news broke over the weekend that you were resigning after nearly four full seasons as the manager of the Rockies. So we wanted to have you on to discuss this. Can you tell us a little bit about what went into your decision

and whether you plan to manage again in the future? Well, Wendy, it's interesting you ask that, because over the course of a period of time in which I managed great franchises of the Colorado Rockies, the great franchises of Vinny Castillo and Kevin Ritz, Troy Tolowitz, and on and on, don't take this shit, Vinny Castillo and Kevin Ritz, Troy Tolowitz, and on and on, don't take a shit. Vinny Castillo, who I already mentioned once,

but he's such a great player, Ben. I have to mention him twice. But the answer to your question would be, am I going to manage again? The answer is yes, I will manage again. I will manage a good ball club next time. I will not manage the Rockies of Colorado, who are an awful ball club, through no fault of my own.

If they were to listen to what I told them, they'd have won. Like everywhere else I've been, when I've lost, it's because they don't listen to me. Well, we're glad to hear that you'll be back, and we're happy to have you on any time. Thank you, Nat Jim. Well, it's my pleasure. And, you know, put in a good word for me, baseball perspectives.

Baseball perspectives, what do you call your website? Maybe I'll go with the Astros. We'll see. Okay, thank you. Good morning and welcome to Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives. We are on episode 58. We are recording this just after the last out of the Orioles-Yball Prospectus. We are on episode 58. We are recording this just after the last out of the Orioles-Yankees game, which I have seen, but I don't believe Ben has. I have not. I am in the sixth inning, and you have permission to spoil it for me.

Excellent. We are going to be doing something a bit differently today because it's the playoffs, and we're going to do something a bit differently, I think, throughout the playoffs. Rather than having two topics that we have not prepared for at all, we will probably have one topic that we will have not prepared for at all. But at least we'll know what the topic is. for at all. But at least we'll know what the topic is. Today, the topic, which is, I don't even know if it's a topic so much as a general direction, which is probably more accurate of a description of what we're going to be doing, is just reviewing what the narratives were heading into each Division series and talking about whether those narratives have held up or been disrupted

by the actual play ben do you think do you think we can pull this off uh yeah there i guess there's at least one series that i don't even know what the narrative was if there was one but maybe we can figure it out which series would that be uh the the-Cardinals series doesn't feel like a real clear narrative or expectation for that one to me. Yeah, I agree. That one is probably the hardest one for me to think of as well. And I think that it could just be that I think the Nationals, despite having won maybe one game more than the Reds, it felt to me like there was a pretty clear consensus heading into this that the Nationals were the strongest team in the National League. Did you sense that as well?

Yeah, I'd agree with that. Which is kind of, in a way, kind of odd because they won one more game than the Reds and they won four more games than the Giants. And I think that they had just a slightly better Pythagorean record than the Cardinals, and they did all that with Strasburg, who's not on the team. So if you adjust for the loss of Strasburg, although I guess you could probably come up with something similar for every team as well if you really wanted to.

Well, no one respects the Reds, you and I included. No one respects the Reds, you and I included. No one respects the Reds, but we're jumping ahead. I mean, that's why I feel like the Nationals have kind of had that reputation as the frontrunner or the class of the NL. I was going to say that it was because they kind of had a comfortable division lead for most of the year. It was pretty clear that they were running away with things early, but I guess you could kind of say the same about the Reds. And of course, the Giants ended up with, both of those teams ended up with much larger leads in their division. So I guess maybe it was because of the just overpowering pitching they had for most of the

season. Yeah, I think when we get to October, people fetishize pitching to an unhealthy degree. And when you say that somebody is the best team heading into the playoffs, what you almost always mean is that they have the most impressive starting rotation. And that's probably not necessarily a great way to get to the truth, but I think that's mostly what people are talking about. So if that was the narrative then, that they would have the best pitching, even without Strasburg, I guess that has not been the case. Yeah, that's the thing. I mean, the offense plays just as much in October as it does in the rest of the year,

and the Cardinals had by far the best offense in the National League. And they scored 12 runs today, yesterday, whenever you're hearing this. And so, yeah, Zimmerman looked terrible. I think Zimmerman had just about one of the worst outings of his career. Yes, maybe they should have shut him down. Instead of Strasburg. Yeah. For the Strasburg. Yeah. For the second straight season.

But yes, I mean, I guess there's at least some speculation that he is fatigued and that that would have something to do with it. Basically, Gio too. I mean, Gio walked seven, I think, which I mean, he's I don't know. There was a lot of talk. I saw a lot of sort of simple theories for why he was shaky. Like, you know, he was nervous because it was postseason or he was he was out of rhythm because he hadn't pitched in eight games and all these sorts of type of things that we latch on to. Somebody walked seven. Right. But that's kind of a geo thing to do. I mean, seven is kind of the that we latch onto. Somebody walked seven, but that's kind of a geo

thing to do. I mean, seven is, um, kind of the upper limit of it. And certainly it's a, a worse start than you expect, but I mean, geo will walk five or six or even seven in a game. And it seems to me, I haven't really looked at this in depth, but it seems to me that the walks tend to be bunched up in innings. And that's more or less what happened to him yesterday, or Saturday. He had, I think, five in the first two innings or something like that, and so it was kind of a little bit of a minor miracle, or maybe it wasn't a miracle. Maybe it was just the fact that Gio also has really amazing stuff, so he can get away with that some of the time and he did get away with it yesterday but yeah i mean you'd have to think that right now that the nationals even though they're going back

home with a home field advantage now and a deep rotation there's probably some nervousness because their two best pitchers both looked shaky and the next two guys even though they both had good years and kind of are part of a strong and deep rotation i don't think anybody has uh nearly the same confidence in detweiler or jackson so and that's really where the strata i mean this is if they lose this because detweiler gets hit hard then that's going to be i mean the strasburg decision is going to be second guest all year if detweiler comes out and throws a three-hit shutout or something, then you probably won't hear much about it for a while. Yeah, I mean, I guess there was always, there was really no way that it was ever not going to be second-guessed

unless they either won the World Series or lost, but lost because they scored one run a game or something. Otherwise, it was always something they were opening themselves up to. But I guess we would say that the series has half-followed the narrative in that the Cardinals have hit as expected, and the Nationals have not pitched as expected. Yeah, I think that it's possible that one sub-narrative of this series might be that the Cardinals, as a wildcard team in this new wildcard format, I think that there might be a little bit more of a tendency to undersell the wildcard winner because there's

this thought that they, even though the Cardinals would have, I mean, it would have been the same, right? Well, actually, the Cardinals would have, I mean, it would have been the same, right? Well, uh, actually the Cardinals would have missed the playoffs in another year, but, um, but basically wildcard teams do just as well in the postseason as anybody else. But, um, with this two wildcard format, it almost feels like, like people think of these wildcard teams as even being weaker now and having, you know, they've already kind of gotten lucky once

by winning their i don't know maybe maybe i'm projecting but there's probably i don't i don't really get the feeling that anybody is taking the cardinals all that seriously as a playoff team but they're just as good as i mean you know they have the same run differential basically as the nationals and they're just as good as anybody else so uh all right so then we have the giants and the reds and the series that you've been writing about the series that i've been writing about and i would say that the overwhelming thing that people talked about in this series is the reds bullpen which is um kind of like if you think the orioles bullpen is good. The Reds' bullpen is like 10 times better. And from the Giants' perspective, it was the question marks and the rotation, but Kane was not supposed to be one of those question marks.

Bumgarner kind of was. I was sort of surprised I noted this in one of the recaps, but heading up and listening to the game yesterday, the pregame, the Giants broadcaster Dave Fleming said that with Bumgarner, there was so much concern about his last six or seven starts that if he got into trouble in the first inning, like if the Reds got a rally in the first inning, that you should expect to see a reliever come in. Like that's how short the leash was, which is amazing because Bumgarner was so good this year up until his last seven starts, and he's been such a huge part of that rotation.

But the Giants rotation is really weird because everybody's role has been completely flipped. Yes, that's true. When it comes to Vogelsang, They had been very up and down. Yeah, and Vogelsang was like, I mean, Vogelsang was, wasn't Vogelsang leading the league in ERA in like July? Yeah, he certainly hadn't really taken a step back at all from his surprising season last year.

And Zito was terrible as always, and now Zito is. Well, Zito, I mean, he started out really, really well, right? Or at least superficially well, and then not so much. And then, yeah, more consistent, at least, if not better, than some of the other members of the rotation. So now he's supposed to start game four. I still am skeptical of that. I think that when Bochy pulled Kane after 75 pitches in game one,

it looked to me pretty likely that if the giants were down, um, in it facing an elimination that they would probably try to bring Kane back on short rest. I don't know if he'll do that, but I think it's certainly a possibility. I think it would certainly a possibility. I think it would be tremendously ironic, or maybe not ironic, probably ironic.

I think it would fit the term, irony. But if Zito, after being left off the postseason roster in 2010 and then kind of rehabilitating his career shockingly this year and being not only on the roster but in the rotation over Tim Lincecum, of all people, if he still manages to not get a start. Do you want to talk about that decision to use him at all, which you wrote about a bit? I was pretty tired when that decision was made, so I don't know if I have total clarity on it, but it was certainly odd to me that they brought Linscombe into a game that they were not going to win and essentially removed any possibility that Linscombe could start or even really piggyback with Vogelsang going in game three. I mean, Linscombe came in without apparently having warmed up and threw two innings. And so that basically takes Linscombe came in without apparently having warmed up and threw two innings. And so that basically takes Linscombe out.

And if they were down, I mean, I could have seen Linscombe pitching in the third when Bumgarner was in trouble or pitching if the Giants were down 2-0 in the sixth. But to be down 4-0, knowing the Reds' bullpen is coming in and likely going to shut things down, to use Linscombe as essentially a mop-up man was it felt weird and I don't I didn't get the sense that they did it because they had no faith in Lincecum I got the sense that they were doing it as a show of faith in Lincecum and yet if you want to show faith in him that's great and it got the crowd fired up but it really limits what you can get out of him now. And so I don't know.

I thought it was odd. Well, I guess the Reds' offense in this series has been something that didn't necessarily fit expectations in that they have scored a lot of runs and hit a lot of home runs in San Francisco, which is difficult to do. runs in San Francisco, which is difficult to do. And they're a team with kind of some, I guess, a couple big names in the lineup, but not really the most deep or well-rounded lineup, or at least it seems, I mean, I guess it was probably the weakest offense of all the playoff teams, would you say? Or certainly was perceived that way?

I think the A's offense is weaker, but the weakest in the National League, yeah. And so they have surpassed expectations, certainly, over the first couple days. I don't know whether you want to blame the Giants pitching more or the Reds offense more. Yeah, I would probably blame the Giants pitching a lot more. Although the Reds, I mean, they certainly haven't missed pitches, and they have hit a lot of line drives, and they did make the Giants pitchers pay. So, I mean, certainly they did their job very well. I mean, Bumgarner was a mess. Bumgarner was great for one inning, and then he was fighting for his release point all

game long after that. Kasia in the ninth inning on the first game was a mess, had no idea where he was throwing it. Kane was not bad, but the pitch to Phillips was certainly bad. It was a curveball or a slider that just completely missed badly over the plate and hung up and didn't do anything. And then Guillermo Mota got a bunch of innings, which, again, like that all was weird too in the first game. I don't know how much I want to get into this, it seems so weird that the giants were down three to one and bocce was using the back end of his bullpen which in a july game makes sense because you're saving you know

you it's maybe it's it's sort of a little bit lower leverage and you don't want to use up your your best relievers when you might have a nine game stretch ahead of you but you're playing two games then you get a day off it seems very weird to me that moto would make an appearance in that game maybe the cassia would make an appearance in that game and that romo and and lopez didn't and um and that gave the reds two insurance runs so uh i don't know it's been i really like the way that bocce manages generally and so um it's been kind of odd to watch some of these pitching moves. And I'm not opposed to the idea that he had great reasons for them and that they were actually really smart, but they weren't apparent to me. And I guess we haven't really seen the

bullpen be as big a factor maybe as we thought it would be just because the second game's score was so lopsided. And then, I mean, it was a factor in the first game, of course, when Cueto got one out. But Latos pitched as much as the rest of the bullpen did combined after that. Not by but close. Yeah, just about. So we haven't, I guess, really seen, uh, so much, uh, a close game in the late innings that you would expect the bullpen to be a big factor. Um, but maybe we will, uh, in the next game or two, should there be more than one? Um, so did you, uh, you don't know the outcome of the Yankees game. I do not.

But the Orioles won the baseball game. Uh-huh. And they won 3-2. Mm-hmm. And so, as you know, that means that the bullpen did their job. Yes. One-run game. One-run game.

It was not an extra inning game, I take it? It was not. Colin points out, though, that their run differential. Their Pythagorean record is now 264. Their winning percentage is now 264 in the postseason. So they are exceeding it. Well, okay, so in the first game, obviously we saw, I wouldn't really say we saw Baltimore's bullpen blow it so much as we saw one member of their bullpen blow it. Most of their relievers pitched very well and were as advertised,

and Jim Johnson had a bad night. So not having seen any of the bullpen's performance in Game 2, I can't say, but I would assume that they performed as expected in that game at least. So there was some sense in game one, maybe, that the Yankees had kind of beaten the Orioles at their best or had triumphed over the aspect of the Orioles that has gotten them as far as they've gotten this year. And that that might have been especially demoralizing for them

to have lost in that manner. But it sounds like they pretty much bounced back from that demoralizing for them to have lost in that manner. But it sounds like they pretty much bounced back from that and won the same way they've been winning all season. Brian Mattis has really turned into quite the thing. Yes, Brian Mattis is very impressive. He's just a sexy thing right now. He might be my favorite thing. He might have replaced Sean Doolittle in my heart. he might be my favorite thing to watch at this moment yeah he's he is

dominant against left-handed hitters they do not hit him at all is it only left-handed that I mean I mean he has no I don't think he's been total loogie uh I don't know actually what his splits are since he's been in the bullpen um but I know just, I mean, looking at his entire year, even if you include his innings as a starter, he has shut down lefties really as well as any situational reliever that you would want. And no, he's not a guy who can only go one out, certainly. And no, he's not a guy who can only go one out, certainly.

So that and Tommy Hunter transforming from sort of a back-of-the-rotation, low-90s guy to a potentially dominant high-90s guy in the bullpen has been one of the best stories about this team, I think, and something that I wonder whether we'll see copycats of and whether it will make other teams more likely to kind of bail on their guys who've been fringy and don't seem to be developing. If they could just turn them into Mattis and Hunter all of a sudden, I think a lot of teams would make that exchange. But, of course, this is not typical. This is not exactly what you would expect most starters to do if they were put in the bullpen. I think it is exactly what I would expect most starters to do.

I mean, kind of. I don't know that I would expect a gain of like five, six miles per hour like Hunter has had. I think that's more than you could expect. I mean, everyone throws harder, everyone pitches better, but it's kind of a moderate better, not a totally transformative improvement. Not a totally transformative improvement. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so Mattis in 13 innings since he came back as a reliever,

47 batters, 19 strikeouts, three walks. So that's a guy who – I don't know. If he turns into – I mean if this is what he is, and let's assume that he's not a – let's say that he never saves 40 games, but he turns into something like Sean Marshall. Do we consider that a success or is he always just going to still be kind of a disappointment based on both his draft pedigree and his early success? Or do we look at the 10.690 RA and just thank baseball gods that they let him salvage something? Right. I think, I don't know, maybe it's sort of a disappointment if you look at the fact that he was rated. I don't know what Kevin had him rated, but he was rated by Baseball America as the fifth best prospect in baseball before the 2010 season. the 2010 season. So in that sense, I guess it's disappointing if the fifth best prospect in baseball turns into a reliever who goes an inning or two at a time. But well, Ben, if I can interrupt,

I believe you're rephrasing what I just said. So I just want to know if you personally will be happy or sad about this at the end of the day. I will be happy about it, but I'm not an Orioles fan who was expecting great things from him. So if I had that background, I would probably be disappointed if he only turned into, say, a 7th or 8th inning guy. But I'll enjoy it.

Yeah. He's fun to watch. All right. And then A's Tigers. A's are. Well, I don't know. I don't know exactly what the narrative was about this one either. I think that there's a couple of things. One is that it was the tight. It was a team of that had the best hitter by, you know, conventional wisdom, if not necessarily total fact but the best hitter in the american league maybe in the major leagues and the best pitcher in the major leagues against a team that was um scrappy and underpaid

but also very deep and uh had a very strong bullpen a sort of flat but effective um rotation and just used all 25 of their roster spots quite well. And then also there was the whole Billy Bean and the Moneyball thing, and could his stuff work in the postseason? So I suppose that from the Tigers' perspective, they've gotten exactly what they had hoped for out of their two stars. Cabrera has hit well, although he's hit well, but I think the only impact moment that he has been in the middle of was the Coco Crisp dropped ball.

And, of course, Verlander was incredible, dominant, and just as good as he could possibly be. So they've gotten the most out of their stars, I would say. Yeah. It is kind of disappointing that the A's are already one game away from being eliminated. I would have liked to see them go a little deeper, both because of how good a story they are this season and, you know, sort of the money ball narrative of losing early in the playoffs, as you mentioned. I guess maybe their rotation was something of a story heading into the playoffs in that it was entirely rookies.

So there's that. Malone pitched very well in game two, and it was kind of the bullpen that blew it. Doolittle, Cook, and Balfour, that late-inning trio that has served them so well all season, all of them gave up a run or two runs. So that was not something we would have expected, I guess. It's weird how, like, it's sort of depressing how I actually do see this series as the continuation of an argument that we were having with people in 2004. We just took it for five or six years. And it's like I don't – I mean I don't – I should not care about winning that argument anymore.

Like it's totally irrelevant and yet there's still a part of me that will kind of take it personally. And the thing that really got me, though, is that yesterday, Sunday, they sacrifice bunted, and the next guy got a hit, and that gave them the go-ahead run. And the thing that it's just like I know now that if I were still arguing with that guy in 2004 and he were looking at this series, even if the A's win this series, I know that he'll go, well, yeah, look. They sacrificed Bunnett. I mean they had to learn how to do that small ball stuff once they got rid of that money ball crap.

Right. And so there's no way to win at this point. There's just no way to win they've they um you know and and that's probably the the point is it was never it never felt like you were um arguing with an intellectually honest person anyway so you will never win the hypothetical argument against the straw man from nine years ago right uh and of course that was always the point that there wasn't necessarily one particular way that the a's were building their teams so much as there was one way that they felt was worth pursuing at the time. And that if that changed and other things became

undervalued, they would change with the market. And they have. They don't draft like they used to and they don't build their teams like they used to. So yes, you're right. I guess either way, So yes, you're right. I guess either way, that anti-AIDS narrative probably would have – you could have twisted it in such a way that their either success or failure confirmed what we thought before or what someone did. And it will continue to depending on what happens in the next few days. Let's end it and we'll see how the action goes tomorrow. All right. That's all.