Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 694: Adjudicating an All-Royals All-Star Game

Episode Date: June 15, 2015

Ben and Sam banter about clothing choices, Albert Pujols, and a defensive play, then discuss the threat of a Royals-heavy American League All-Star team.

Take up your pen, you won't regret it. You never met such an opportunity. For the people who are in the way, make a new election day. Vote for me, vote for me, sign across the line. Vote for me, vote for me, we can overtake the world. dot com. I'm Sam Miller, along with Ben Lindberg of Grantland. Hi, Ben. How are you? All right. Good. Do you have anything you want to say? Well, after we talked about Pat Vendetti last Friday, he went on the DL. And after we talked

about top prospect promotions, the two best prospects in baseball got promoted. So those are updates. All right. What's Pat Vendetti's injury? I believe he has a strained shoulder i guess i should specify which shoulder but i don't have that information in front of me i am about to okay i'll wait and maybe it surprises people that he would go on the dl with an injury to one side but yeah the other way well could, could you... Can you carry... I wonder if you can carry him.

It's a right shoulder strain. I mean, so the thing about... Yeah, I don't think you can probably carry him if he's not able to throw with both. I mean, you might. Well, we don't know exactly how good he is, but the assumption is that if he was just barely good enough to get called up doing the switch pitching thing,

then he probably wouldn't be able to survive a league where he has to face not just his nemesis switch hitters, but any old pinch hitter with platoon advantage that they decide to send up there. Right. And he was better against lefties as a minor leaguer, but I don't know if he's good enough to be a lefty specialist if you wanted to keep him around in that role. Yeah. All right. So, Ben. Yeah. I want to talk about my clothes.

Okay. My wardrobe. Uh-huh. You say that I wear the same thing every day like a cartoon character. Yeah. I was thinking of Doug. Oh, interesting. I also am aware of this, by the way.

I'm aware that I do this. And I think of it not as a cartoon character, but I think of myself as a tenenbaum. Okay. Specifically, I interviewed Wes Anderson back just before the Royal Tenenbaums came out. Really? And I talked to him about wardrobe choices. And he talked about how he thinks that, well, basically like cartoon characters. He likes to have the, basically what he likes is he likes the clothing to be the same every day so that when you make a change, it means something. So if a guy changes his wardrobe, you know, to go to a funeral or to go to a wedding or to, you know, do whatever he's doing, whatever changes in his life causes him to change into a new outfit, it pops, it hits.

And I don't think of my clothes as self-representation particularly, but I do – clothes are very – they're very comfortable. The clothes that we choose are often very comfortable. that we choose are often very comfortable and it does add a little excitement to my life when say the work week ends and i can ditch my work corduroy and hoodie and put on my weekend corduroy and hoodie like different colors or different hoodies or uh you know i do i have about you know i have seven hoodies so a hoodie switch is significant uh you did wear jeans one day what did that mean that meant well which day would do you remember which day that was a that was the san quentin day i did yeah you're right but that was because it was our first day of non non it was our it was a new location we'd had spring training at the same field, and so then we had a new location, and I just, it was an adventure.

Jeans are adventure clothes. I see. Okay. Anyway. It does make it convenient because I can scan a crowd and pick you out instantly. Like when I was in the dugout last night, I was looking to see if you were in the stands, and I calibrated my eyes for a black hoodie and the same stoppers hat and some corduroys. So here's the other thing, though, is that what you see me wearing, because I wear a sweatshirt all the time, even when it's 98 degrees in a California summer, you don't actually see

my wardrobe choices. Like when I see what you're wearing, I see your pants and your shirt, right? And a hoodie is like a jacket and people will wear the same jacket whenever they need a jacket, but you don't generally focus on the jacket. But because you only see my sweatshirt, you don't know that I am changing my shirt. I do change my shirt every day. As far as the pants and the sweatshirt, those are both clothes that you don't wash. I mean, you probably wear a pair of pants 20 times before you wash it and a sweatshirt 20 times before you watch it wash it i just choose to make those i do i mean there's nothing wrong with that but i definitely don't do that oh i i do i mean i i think a lot of people do i do i certainly do and i just choose to

to have those 20 days be in a row okay so a lot of people will wear the spread those 20 days out but it's the same it's the same effect effect. I'm clumping them together. I like clusters. Probably saves you some closet time. Like when I was in grammar school up until I was 14, we had a uniform and I liked it because I never had to worry about what I was going to wear. I was always going to wear a jacket and some slacks, and it was always going to be the same. Didn't have to worry about what the cool clothes were. Everybody has, literally everybody has sent us the Smash Mouth. Yeah. So congrats. Thank you. Smash Mouth front man had a meltdown.

Yeah, thank you to every single one of you. Everyone, thank you. The great thing is that they were trying to play all star as this meltdown was going on the great thing is that we got to hear basically smash mouths hold music like they like we get to hear what it sounds like when they're just playing their like please hold until the the tirade is over and like that was what i was focusing on it was delightful to just hear them kind of just play that same little loop over and over halfheartedly. And I enjoyed that. Like I enjoyed, I don't know what it was, but there was something hysterical about hearing that song not for a song, but as a stalling act to just hear them kind of noodling around with an all-star with an instrumental version of all-star

yeah okay a couple other things quickly has albert pujols turned a corner can you turn a corner when you're already a hall of famer and you're 35 years old you absolutely can uh there's i've always felt like albert Pujols was going to have he'd have his sort of predictable decline and he would be a pretty good hitter for a while but not a star but tucked in would be the one MVP year and I don't think that MVP year would be because he turned a corner

it would be a combination of better than usual health and lots of dice rolls going his way at the same time. But it feels like all these guys, these kind of big sluggers who have their typical decline in their 30s, they all seem to manage to have one massive year at some point in there. Like Jermaine Dye, the year that jermaine die was pretty much washed up and then suddenly hit 315 385 622 and finished high in mvp voting and then you know frank thomas was basically like let go by the white sox because his career was toast and then

he finished fourth in mvp voting and i i like these seasons because i don't think there's anything significant about them and i don't think there's anything significant about them and i don't think albert has turned a corner although i think he's i think probably you know he he's probably somewhat he feels a little bit better health-wise than he did you know last month and then he will next month and so he's probably or last year and next year but i just like the reminder that seasons are that the careers are completely non-smooth, that you have bad seasons in the middle of them and great seasons in the middle of the bad parts, and that they just don't always tell you that much,

that careers are very long, and every player, even the predictable careers, even like Mike Trout is going to predictably be a Hall of Famer, and yet there will be lots of seasons that surprise us for being much better or worse than the one before it. And it's a good reminder, I think, that even for established players, these fluctuations happen and mean very little.

And so for non-established players, these fluctuations happen and you have to remember not to overreact to them. Let's see, picking an arbitrary date to make it sound like a real hot streak. He is hitting, over his last 62 plate appearances and 16 games, he has hit 10 home runs. He's hitting.387,.433,.903, or a.1336 OPS.

10 homers and 62 plate appearances. Yeah. That's pretty good. That's pretty good and 62 plate appearances. Yeah. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. 62 plate appearances. We were hearing about how he was worse than he was even in his worst year with the Angels up to that point. Yeah, that's right. And then the last thing, did you see the Joey Votto flip?

No. All right, then it's time for an episode of... Oh, I did. I did. No, it's not time. Okay, well, what did you think? Because we've... Flips have been... First base flips have been divisive for us in the past.

Very strong. Yeah, this was a really good one. I agree. I think it's the best flip that you've shown me. That's a really hard flip because the movement of that ball is going to be very hard to control and you could see it trying to get away from him a little bit he almost pulled mike leake off the bag but

that really i remember when i was a kid i became obsessed with mastering this one shot in basketball that isn't a very useful shot where i would be kind of running like from one side of the free throw line to the other. So I was going like left to right and then shooting as I went. And so, so like you'd kind of like almost like you were jumping horizontally past the, like you're an oscillating fan in the, the baskets view and uh and then you'd shoot as you'd go and of course your momentum creates this kind of tail on the on the basketball and so you have to really like master the how much break you leave for that for that ball and um and i shot a lot of these for for some reason thinking that that was going to be my signature shot.

I wanted a signature shot. But you have to calibrate it. And I feel like this is not a play that anybody has practiced. And so it's hard to calibrate what the break is going to be on that throw, on that flip. So like Victor Martinez, it was basically just, he just flung it straight back. And it happened to go to the guy. But this one required aim, in my opinion, and an understanding of physics. Yeah.

And that has what to do with Joey Votto? He was moving? Well, his had the, his, he had to sort of throw it as he was moving in another direction. It wasn't a straight throw. Like, Martinez was a straight throw. direction. It wasn't a straight throw. Martinez was a straight throw. This was not a straight throw. His body was moving in a different direction than the throw was going and therefore it created a tail on the throw. The release was so fast. He scooped it. He scooped it through

in one motion. It was really impressive. I will scooped it. He scooped it through in one motion. It was really impressive. I will link to it so people can watch what we're talking about. Alright, I'm done. So I want to talk about the Royals and the All-Star game. The Royals as everybody has heard have managed to get seven

of their position players atop the All-Star voting standings if those are standings, to start the All-Star game. And so we're looking atop the all-star voting standings if those are standings to start the all star game and so uh we're looking at potentially an all-star game in a month in which willie wilson is going to be starting uh greg gagney is currently on pace to start johnny giavatella luis alicea luis alisea is going to be starting. I don't actually, is Omar Infante still at the top? I don't know.

All right. Anyway, the point is that the Royals have stacked the ballots, or stacked the ballots, whatever they've done. They've stuffed. Stuffed ballots. Royals fans have stuffed the ballots. And so this has created a situation where a few things have happened. One is a bunch of the not best players in baseball are going to be starting a game or might be starting a game, which, you know, in a sense, some people think counts. Two, a bunch of not very entertaining players will be starting the same game, a game that exists solely mostly for entertainment three the voting process itself which is boring and generally predictable has become worth discussing uh and perhaps not boring and unpredictable and four we get another question about whether the royals are lovable or have

become heels and or just annoying okay so i guess first off what is your what is your history as an all-star voter very limited i vote late and vote once and that that's pretty much the maximum there are years when i probably haven't voted at all, but just by principle, I wait until the last possible moment so that I can fairly judge who should be an all-star. Because I do probably put more weight on current season performance than some people. And I vote once, and then I completely forget about it. Why do you vote once? Why do you even do that well i don't always but i just kind of do to familiarize myself with who the best person is that at each position i guess more than anything else i i don't know there's no real purpose for doing it i could just look at a leaderboard but yeah and are you trying to get

the the best player on that day or are you trying to reward the best season to date trying to reward the best season to date with some reward the best season to date with some preference for players who've been good in previous seasons and does uh do you consider like a fifth era differential would you are you a saber voter or do you if a guy's if a guy's 12 and 0 with a 4.75 would you vote for him do you become a traditionalist no probably not all right and as a child what was your what was your strategy as a child i guess i'd vote when i was at a game and i think early on i would just vote for home team players and i don't know later on i stopped doing that okay my experience My experience is somewhat similar.

I would, I did love the ballots and I would do the, uh, I would do, you know, a couple hundred ballots the days that I would go, I would do mostly local guys, but I did appreciate that at some point it became a farce.

And so I would probably would do like on average, let's say I would do 200 ballots and on maybe a hundred of them, it would be straight down the line, you know, just the local ticket. And then on the other hundred, it would be maybe half local and then half the best players. Did you try to sabotage the opposing league? No, I don't think I, I don't think I took it that seriously. I would, uh, I would try to sabotage the opposing league, which if I had, I mean, if I cared that much, seriously I would uh I would try to sabotage the opposing league which if I had won I mean if I cared that much then I would have not voted for the local guys in the first

place but at the time it didn't mean anything right so well it didn't and yet you had to you still thought it meant something right did you root would you root for the all-star in the all-star game when you were a boy of 12 a little bit yeah i wasn't i didn't take it very seriously it was it was i think after the time when it was considered a real rivalry or at least i i didn't consider it that okay omar infante by the way is second behind jose altuve he has 93 as many votes as altuve does omar infante currently hitting 204, 213, 284 with an OPS plus smaller than an Altuve. 32 strikeouts and three walks for Omar Infante. So yeah, all right. So I guess what I'm saying is that as a person who was also a child at one point, I definitely appreciate the dumb ballot stuffing aspect of voting.

I had no issue with that. I am still the person who had no issue with that, merely transported by time into a later generation. And so therefore, I can't judge. We can't judge, Ben. Wearing the same hoodie now that you were when you stuffed the ballots probably uh so uh all right so what and and i think that it's probably fair to say that every person as a child feels that way we were not unusual children well i don't know maybe i don't think we're in this respect i don't think we're pretty

unusual now and so why do you suppose we react disfavorably toward the local team stuffing a ballot i mean what what is it that is so aggravating about it if we are in favor of the game of doing it? I don't react unfavorably. I don't know. I've come across 20 stories about this and I haven't clicked on any of them because my apathy about the All-Star game is so deep or so shallow. I don't know what apathy is. But when it works this this well it didn't work that well when we were kids doing a few ballots probably but when it's this kind of effective coordinated campaign and it threatens to make the all-star game very one city centric then it kind of threatens what is regarded as one of baseball's jewel events i don't know that it is really seen that way by

baseball fans now or baseball ratings wise just the all-star game is not really that exciting anymore because we see these players all the time in person and whenever we want to click on the little video icon next to their team's name but it kind of you know it it has worked too well basically it is that right it's the equivalent of how nobody really cares that much that a player does steroids until they do steroids so well that they start breaking things yeah kind of and and also so tell me about the coordination is there there coordination? I don't know. I was going to ask you. There must be coordination, right? There must be a campaign.

I haven't really paid attention to it. I don't know to what extent the team has driven that campaign. I don't know whether it's mostly fan-led or not, but this can't be completely random, right? It can't just be that Royals fans on their own are all more dedicated and into the all-star game than any other fan base by far there has to be some kind of promotional effort for this yeah there was uh didn't did we talk about did we write about there a couple years ago there was a little controversy about some coordinated efforts where they were where some teams were like the brewers were dissing the cardinals or it was like a luke roy melina thing oh they where they were where some teams were like the brewers were dissing

the cardinals or it was like a luke roy melina thing oh they were they were they had mlb but that was mlb that was that was just basically like that was the right that was like the cut four corner of mlb that was making i thought it was team specific i thought it was a team that was kind of bashing another team's catcher and i thought there was a team that was kind of bashing another team's catcher. I thought there was a team rivalry aspect to it. I think that, as I recall, it was clearly meme bait and it was produced. I mean, this was, it was an attack ad, right? It was a joke ad.

I mean, it's not like Jonathan Luke Roy woke up and said, I'm really going hard after Yachty or Melina. Like some, a producer came up with a funny idea and then they got a camera and gave them a script, right? So I don't know that I count that as real. I'm thinking that the Giants used to give away bobbleheads or something like that.

Like they would, if you turned in, oh, I think it was if you turned in a brick, which was like 250 ballots, then you would get like a leftover bobblehead. And I don't remember if this was a thing or if I just sat and wondered whether it was a thing. Yeah, the Molina thing, it was an ad, like a fake political attack ad that ran on Fox Sports Wisconsin. that ran on Fox Sports Wisconsin. So it was the team doing it, and it said, you know,

like it ended with, most importantly, he's not a St. Louis Cardinal. So it was kind of Brewers versus Cardinals. Oh, so this is, I have a, well, doggone it, this link doesn't work. But I have, I found a reference to June 2012 when they were giving away the previous year's bobbleheads if you turned in a big enough stack at giant teams. And so that's somewhat coordinated. So there is coordinated. I mean, coordinated efforts to get teams voting is also not unusual.

It is. I haven't seen what the – like I've just, in the time we've been talking, I've clicked on like 15 of these things, and not one has explained why they've been so effective this year. Which is odd. Maybe Royals fans were just more excited about this sort of thing. I don't know.

They're new to being a good team in the last few decades now, and they really like this team, and they like winning, and the national stage and everything so maybe they care more or more enthusiastic than most other fan bases but i don't know there must be there must be some kind of campaign right yeah and so then that's the other thing is that i mean there's a lot of things that we like as kids but once adults start doing then it it looks kind of like trying too hard and like

playing baseball like like autograph seeking for instance is another thing where kids can be pests to seek autographs adults generally we nobody really likes those guys that much yeah so maybe this is just that it feels once it gets effective, it feels like adults are doing a thing. That doesn't matter, but I don't know. I guess they're – I mean it matters to kids, so why not do it? I don't know. I don't quite know what to think about any of this, Ben, because it's a – so somebody – some baseball player tweeted that it's bad because the all-star game isn't a popularity contest right and it and then somebody else said you know except that it's literally you know a popularity contest that's literally what it is uh and so on the one hand you can say well hey the

votes win that's good but the nobody thinks that these are the most popular players. Nobody outside. I mean, even Kansas City probably doesn't really want to see Omar Infante. They probably don't want to see Omar Infante on the Royals, let alone the All-Star team. Exactly. And so, I don't know. I mean, it's not fun. In a sense, it's not fun. In another sense, it is fun because they're pulling a little heist, right? This is a bank robbery.

They've got some sort of scheme, and they're enacting it, and then they're watching all of us go dizzy trying to make sense of it. And so that's fun. That turns a thing that is meaningless and repetitive into something that is fun. I don't know. I just can't decide what i think about the royals in in general but particularly well no i don't ben i don't have anything to say let's delete you can delete that oh god it's sort of like when eric sogard was winning the face of

mlb thing but but worse all right so yeah okay so it is like that and but that was about a thing that meant nothing nothing right yeah nobody was paying attention to that except for baseball twitter nerds it only existed within the baseball twitter nerd sphere my mom wasn't going to find out about it it wasn't going to be on anybody's baseball reference page and i'm not talking about the this time it counts stuff because i don't really care about that it doesn't count as far as i'm concerned but there is still something about this feels like vandalism in a little bit of a way yeah there was a maybe a closer equivalent in last year's hockey all-star game voting right or for this year's hockey all-star game but the voting was in

december or something when the latvian player zemgus gergensons was the top vote getter i believe because like he just got a ton of support from his home country like over 80 percent of his votes were from latvia um and 80 percent were from sabres fans and he was on the Sabres. And so it was him and he was not a big star and then big stars below him. And that was maybe kind of a feel good story more than anything else, just because he was this somewhat obscure guy who was just getting a ton of support from his native country and it wasn't it wasn't going to have the same sort of destabilizing effect that a lineup full of royals would have what if omar infante had retired two weeks ago and he were still and and he were first like is there a point

where we care more more like we care to the point where we we just demand that the royals be kicked out of the league it feels a little underhanded because you have to you have to really it's not like they just mobilized the fan base better and they're getting just a higher participation from their total fans available to them to get this many, they must have sort of gamed the system a little bit. Like, you're allowed 35 votes per person, which is sort of silly. I mean, there's no reason why anyone should get to vote 35 times, really. You know, it's maybe ad-driven because you see an ad every time you click on the All-Star ballot. But you can, I'm sure, get around that.

I don't know how they determine the the limit whether it's an email address or a ip address or what but you can always get around those things whether it's by masking your ip or creating a new email address or whatever so so they must have done that a lot of people must have done that for the royals to have such a huge presence because it's not like Kansas City is the largest metropolitan area or anything so that feels a little I don't know just feels a little artificial cheap if you're doing that yeah and the somewhat smug somewhat smug uh attitude of well hey you should vote more if you don't want this to happen, also feels a little insincere because it's not like the Royals are leading the league in attendance or have

a famously huge fan base or anything like that. This is not a city that is famous for supporting its team in great volume. So it also feels just somewhat unearned that it's the royals if that makes sense too they've got a reputation for for being dedicated when when the royals are good at least i mean no no city would be that dedicated to a team that lost for two decades but like last year in the postseason it was there was a lot of excitement there yeah and they are their fifth in the league in the american league in attendance which is i guess proves neither side of the point. A couple years ago, there was an effort to get, I don't know if you remember this, to get Lasting Millage voted in.

I don't remember that. And that's because he wasn't on the team anymore. Let's see, it was that I guess he had been demoted he was he had been demoted to triple a he was with washington at the time he had been demoted to triple a and red sox fans decided that they wanted to get him to get him uh elected and i think that the reason that they wanted to get him elected or the reason that some people wanted to get him elected was that it was deemed to be an injustice that he was in the minor leagues. I mean, he certainly wasn't an all-star, but there was a sort of storyline that Millage had been picked on by professional teams

and not been given the credit he deserved as a very good ballplayer or potential ballplayer that he had been, you know, youth shamed, I guess. And so there was an effort to humiliate the Nationals by getting their demoted player elected to the All-Star game. And that is very clearly vandalism. But it's upfront about it. It's very open about it. And it's also not in any way self-serving and so i was pro that i was also younger than i had a little bit more of a rebellious streak but i i was pro really really really far out stupid idea uh and i guess that's also another way that so guard was different so guard is not just you know you know not the face of MLB, but he's probably like the 700th or 800th best player in his fall,

but he looks funny. And so it was extreme. It would have been like the difference between, you say, going for Eric Sogard and then like having a team really rally behind, you know, like Aaron Hill or something because they're Diamondbacks fans and they really want Aaron Hill hill and aaron hill's just not that good right so anyway i am coming around to this this is what i'm going to say ben okay i support the royals entirely in this oh okay and i also think that i hope they fail. I hope they come up just short. I hope there's a push because it will not be fun for me. I will not get a giddy sense of rebellion, a giddy feeling of rebellion if this is completed.

This is the case where I support them for doing the thing that I would have done as a kid, I would have done as a kid and that is community-based and kind of fun and specific to the year and reflective of how they're in a sort of a tiny little mini golden age. So I support them and for their sakes, I hope they keep doing it and I hope they win. I also will get no pleasure out of it, which is a little bit disappointing because like if they if they really put their efforts into something absurd i would get some pleasure out of it if if they somehow like if for instance there was a coordinated effort to have only japanese players starting and every japanese like aoki was starting and totally be behind that and tataguchi was starting and max suzuki was starting that i would be completely in favor of. Like if you had,

if this was an art project and it was a one-time thing, then I'd support it and I would root for it. I'm not that interested in seeing Alex Rios start the all-star game though. I don't think there's any larger message. I don't think there's any particular irony to it. It's just a bunch of guys figuring out a way around the IP address blocks. And so therefore, I support the Royals and root against them. I agree. Alright, so emails for later this week.

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Three, two, one. Two, one. I'm glad the counting has happened. I can just start whenever I want to. Yep. I don't need to wait for counting. Mike is live. Yes, sir.

The counting has happened.