Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 70: World Series Game Two/Protective Gear for Pitchers

Episode Date: October 26, 2012

Ben and Sam discuss all the notable events from World Series Game Two, including Madison Bumgarner’s impressive outing, the line drive off of Doug Fister’s head, and Jim Leyland’s decision to play the infield back in the seventh, then assess the odds of a comeback by the Tigers.

Good morning and welcome to episode 70 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives. In Long Beach, California, I'm Sam Miller in New York, New York. He is Ben Lindberg. Ben, how are you doing this morning? I'm very well, thank you. And I'm excited that we're now ending a week on an episode that's a multiple of five. I've been looking forward to this since we started. Maybe I shouldn't have admitted that, but I've been looking forward to the day when we would miss an episode or we would have a vacation day

and we would start on a one and finish on a five because it appeals to my sense of symmetry. So we can never miss a day again, is what I'm saying. Unless we miss a whole week, which I would be just fine with. Before we start, can I read a whole bunch of words to you? Yes, please. So I've been thinking for the last few days, for various reasons about why I hate predictions and why I hate sort of A, having to make them and B, why I hate myself for so consistently dodging them.

finally have gotten to the end of it, which is that I find that there's very little value added to them. Most of them either reflect the conventional wisdom and therefore don't say much, or they're based on not very much evidence that they're just sort of trying to be interesting. And the writers who make these generally, I think, know this. And so they bolster them with so much enthusiasm that they become sort of too provocative, too bold, and the sense that you get from them then becomes even more disconnected to truth. So anyway, so my favorite prediction piece though, I've had it open on it as a tab for three days and it is finally officially wrong. So I'm just going to read a whole bunch of it because it's really beautiful. It's by Bob Nightingale. Oh, I saw this. I was going to send this to you the other day because it was so over the top. It's so good.

So, okay. So I'm going to read – I'll just excerpt it but uh i'll start about four paragraphs in the tigers are sorry to ruin the ending to this charming show but the giant season is over detroit will win the world series in five games there may be more suspense watching the giants grab a razor this winter and shaving those black beards thick enough to hold wildlife than viewing this public thrashing. The Giants haven't seen a team this powerful all year, and by this time next week, they won't know what hit them.

The Tigers, like a caged boxer, know they are about to deliver an ugly whoopin', but will refrain from providing clubhouse fodder. You see, they don't talk a lot. They don't bother with cute quotes. They are silent killers. They will come out and cold-heartedly bludgeon the Giants. They simply have too much power, too much starting pitching, too much sheer talent, they're silent killers they will come out and cold-heartedly bludgeon the giants they simply have too much power too much starting pitching too much sheer talent do we really need to go into specifics it's like performing an autopsy while the body is still breathing okay do you

want to talk about starting pitching this will be a mismatch the new york yankees are absolutely clueless about the tigers rotation so can you imagine how the Tigers will destroy the Giants pea shooters this rotation stat stat stats now they'll be facing the weakest lineup they've seen all year I like that one that was the best one with not a single left-handed slugger available to counteract the Tigers right-handed staff it's true that how will the Giants ever get a home run from a left-handed hitter, Ben? Everyone knows that well-rested ace Justin Verlander is the best pitcher on the planet. Once Verlander pitches his shutout in game one, there's a deadly arsenal right behind him. The Tigers won't have ace Matt Cain available until game four. You want to talk about power? Really? Do you want to go there? The Tigers have the most lethal one-two punch since Aaron and

Matthews. The two combined for 74 home runs. The the giants had just one player who hit more than 12 take away milky cabrera and they had only two players who hit more than seven we're not making this up oh there's no denying the tigers bullpen stinks blah blah yes the defense can be shank shaky and the giants plan to test it bunting like demons if they must. Anyway, the Giants' glorious wine and cheese party with Tony Bennett crooning in the background is over. So there you go. Yeah, I didn't know. Giants, Tigers, and Five.

I didn't know what to think of that. It was like a WWE-style promo or something. And Bob Nightingale is normally just kind of a serious reporter type, isn't he? Yeah. From what I've seen. I mean, I assume. He unpacked a lot of adjectives that I don't think he's used before. I assume they told him to just make, to use that sort of voice or something.

I don't know. It was weird. But i enjoyed it quite a bit yeah it's delightful anyway so last night they played a game yeah and i wrote a recap of it and every thought i had about the game i put in the recap so you could just go read it if you want instead of listening to me drone on about it, and I wouldn't blame you. I guess, I mean, obviously the most notable thing was Madison Bumgarner's performance. He was excellent. He had struggled with his command in his first two starts of the postseason, but did not struggle at all with it last night.

but did not struggle at all with it last night. He was hitting corners. He was getting called strikes on the outside corner, getting foul strikes on the inside corner, just completely avoiding the middle of the strike zone, really. Even if you look at a plot of his pitches to lefties and righties combined, there's still just a big empty circle in the middle where he threw no pitches at all, which is, I guess, generally a good strategy if you can do it.

So that was impressive. We talked about him the other day and about whether he was an ace and whether we trusted him, and the Giants did, and they were right. Yeah, they were. And yet, also, and the Giants did, and they were right. Yeah, they were. And yet also I think that, well, to be honest, I always have a little bit of a hard time evaluating Bumgarner's stuff

because our angle of it is so different than the hitter's angle, and I think it's probably really hard to actually appreciate how the ball looks coming out of his hand. And so whenever I watch him, I have to admit, it always surprises me how bad he can make hitters look. The stuff does sort of look a little flatter than most good pitchers, and I think that that's an illusion based on the camera angle. It looks to me almost like he's giving people a good look at the ball I didn't I mean I can't tell these things but

his arm is just kind of out to the side and it's sort of a almost like he's dart throwing a little bit um but yeah I don't know it works Neither pitcher threw a pitch that was 91 miles per hour, I think. They were both just soft tossing, but very precise. And that's low for him. I mean, that's low for Bumgarner. I think generally the consensus was that he actually didn't have very good stuff, that he had a tremendous command. His stuff may have still reflected. I mean, as far as I could tell, the Giants were kind of concerned about two things.

One was that his mechanics had become completely messed up, and two was that he was probably tired. And those two things might have been related. They might not have been. But it seems to me that they certainly fixed the mechanical issue. His command was as good as it can be, and I thought that the strike zone plot that you had in your recap was tremendous. And I think that with pitchers generally,

I think that with pitchers generally, you would rather maybe have a guy with stuff than command in the big picture. If you could pick the command guy or the stuff guy, you'd pick the stuff guy. But in a single start, I think you would always rather have the command than the stuff. And it's just hard to – even for command pitchers, it's hard to consistently have that command even from inning to inning it can be hard and so i think that's maybe why you consider those guys a little bit um a little bit less reliable but within a start if you can have the command you can get away with a lot and you know zito doesn't have the stuff but he had the command for a night bum garner right now doesn't quite have i don't think quite have the stuff and i mean i would still be nervous about him in game six doesn't quite have, I don't think quite have the stuff. And I mean,

I would still be nervous about him in game six. I don't think that, I don't think he's necessarily fixed yet. He was certainly fixed for a start. He had a good start. He had great command, but you know, two miles an hour less off his fastball and just, I don't know, it didn't really look all that crisp to me. Um, it was just well-placed and that's a big part of pitching. Yeah and I thought it was a well called game by the umpire Dan Iasonia behind the plate. I thought did a good job and really if you look at the plot only missed a few pitches and we're so close that most umpires would miss those pitches. So he wasn't really getting a whole lot of extra calls on the corners. He was just really placing them perfectly.

And Pfister was not quite as sharp probably, but was also quite good. And I guess the thing that you remember most about his start is the line drive he took off his head which ricocheted all the way out into centerfield and was really about as hard hit as a ball can be that I mean that's a line drive up the middle it was scary for a second because we've seen a lot of bad things happen on plays like that and imagined even worse things happening. And he was completely fine.

He took a couple of warm-up pitches and showed absolutely no sign that it had affected him at all. What did you think about the Tigers' decision to leave him out there? I mean, I guess you pretty much have to trust him if he says he's okay. I mean, I don't know if you can always tell if you have a concussion or something right away. But I guess if he says he's okay and could throw pitches, fine. I don't know. I guess you leave him in until you see otherwise. Tim McCarver said immediately after the replay that he thinks that we need helmets for pitchers

and maybe we could have them as soon as next season, I think he said. Do you think that's something that we'll see ever or soon? that's something that we'll see ever or soon? I think that it's hard to make predictions in sort of future landscapes. I don't think that it's something that is imminent right now in baseball. In a few years, it might be. But to me, it's not a story that people spend much time talking about. There doesn't seem to be a lot of momentum in favor of it. I think that it's probably a few steps of safety down the line.

I think there are other things that they would want to probably focus on before that. So my guess is that it isn't going to necessarily be on Bud Selig's agenda at any point. But in two years or in six years or something, it could be the case that it's the number one story we talk about and then it will probably happen. I think once things get talked about a lot, they happen. Right now, it just doesn't get talked about all that much. Well, I think you should write a Bob Nightingale-style column with your predictions about the helmet. I found it – I don't know. It was hard for me to decide whether I thought that they – whether that's a situation where you use an abundance of caution or not.

And I was thinking about if it had happened to me in my life, if I had been hit in the head by something real hard, I wouldn't have gone to the doctor if I felt okay. And there wouldn't have been anybody probably telling me to go to the doctor. And if something kind of tragic had happened to me, then, um, it would have been, obviously it would have been, you know, it would be sad if something tragic happened to me. I died of a head injury, but, um, you just sort of, you know, you don just sort of – as a person who has to pay for their own health insurance and all of those sorts of things, you do kind of try to – you let these things sort of slide. And I don't think I would have gone – I've been hit in the head and not thought even once to go to the doctor. And I'm sure Doug Pfister – I don't know what it was like for that ball to hit him on the head. I don't know how hard it hit him or anything like that. The Detroit Free Press talked to some brain guys, some brain doctors,

who said that based on how far the ball flew after, you could surmise that it wasn't a real direct hit because so much of the energy of the ball remained for it to go out. But the difference between me and Doug Pfister, though, I think is that if I died of a head injury or if I had some serious complications from a head injury, it would be a tragedy for my family. I think that there's a little bit more danger with Fister because we all watched it. You don't want that to be something that we all watch. It would be kind of more tragic if something happened on a baseball field because it's sort of a shared experience.

So maybe you're more cautious because of that. I don't know. I'm kind of just rambling well but people talk about the helmet possibility in and around the time when someone gets hit in the head and then not in between head hits which tends to be most of the time uh which is i guess similar to people talking about something needing to be done about broken bats every now and then someone gets impaled with a bat shard or almost gets impaled with a bat shard. And we talk about how, uh, a tragedy is inevitable and we should do something before it happens. Um, I don't know, I guess I can see the argument that if there's even a possibility, then you need to do something about it.

But at the same time, baseball has been played for a very long time without anyone getting killed by a broken bat or a line drive up the middle, it seems. It seems so. I mean, I don't know. I guess it's either you can approach it as a probability thing and say, well, the odds are very low. And we don't know how it will affect a pitcher to wear some sort of helmet on his head, which you'd think would disrupt pitchers since pitching is such a delicate balance and so many things can go wrong. pitchers since pitching is such a delicate balance and so many things can go wrong. Or you could just say if there's any chance at all, then you just do it and worry about the consequences after that. I don't know which camp I'm in exactly, but I think, I don't know. The fact that a tragedy hasn't happened so far is maybe not the best reason not to do anything but maybe it is kind of a persuasive reason not to do anything i don't know uh yeah i don't know i don't think it's a persuasive reason not to do anything i i i would love for them to get i mean

all the things that are kind of dangerous in a ballpark i would love for them to get ahead of them and sort of make them not dangerous the tricky tricky thing though is that, um, I don't, it's always hard to make something not dangerous. And a lot of times there are kind of unintended consequences to safety measures. Uh, like if you, um, there's a study about, um, bicyclists who wear helmets and, um, it actually turns out that, out that if you wear a bike helmet while you're bicycling, cars don't give you as much space because they think that you know what you're doing and that you're safe because you have a helmet. So cars actually will come much closer to you. And so there's some idea with a lot of safety measures like this. Certainly the same kind of controversy exists over football padding

and football helmets where the safer you make it, there can be unintended consequences that make it less safe. And I don't know what the unintended consequences of something on a pitcher's head would be. I don't know if it would change the way that they play defense or if it would change their – I mean, I really don't know if it would change the way that they play defense or if it would change their – I mean, I really don't know. That's why they're unintended. But there's always that risk.

But I don't know. I think that if you can make it safer, nobody's against that. And it's usually – I mean, almost every safety measure that you take, it's hard to convince that generation. But after a couple of years years it just becomes common sense i mean seatbelts for instance uh when i was growing up um seatbelts were just part of life when my parents were growing up even though they were in the car nobody wore them they just they rebelled against them for no good reason so um i guess the other notable thing from the game that I wrote about was Jim Leland's decision not to play the infield in with the bases loaded and no outs in the bottom of the seventh. Um, he let the infielders play back and they did get a double play, which was the goal, but, uh, a run scored on the double play, um, which proved to be the winning run. a run scored on the double play, which proved to be the winning run.

So there was some controversy about that. And I don't know, someone asked me about it late last night, what I thought about it. And I didn't have a very clear opinion because it almost seems like you'd think there would be a very clear by the book way to approach infield in or out. But I don't know. I don't know that there even was really a book on what you do in that situation. I guess I sort of would expect most managers to play the infield in in that situation, I think. the infield in in that situation I think but it's not really a given or a no-brainer that you automatically make that move and make yourself immune to criticism so I talked to Colin Wires about it for 20 minutes or so kind of asking him how you would even go about figuring out whether it was the right move and there are just so many variables to consider the pitcher, the hitter, who's up next, what

the likelihood of a bunt is. It's different if the bases are loaded than it is if there are men on first and third. And it's hard to say exactly what the effect on the likelihood of each outcome is. It's hard to say exactly how much playing the infield back influences or makes it more likely that you'll get a double play or how much more likely you are to get a play at home if you play the infield in and also how much more likely it is to to allow a hit so I don't know someone kind of asked me for my gut opinion of whether it was

the right move or not but it seemed to me almost immediately to be just something that my gut was entirely inadequate to make that call. So Colin and I looked at some run expectancy tables and sort of came to the not really firm conclusion that it did make sense to play the infield back, that the Giants' run expectancy was higher in that situation with one out and the bases still loaded than it would have been with two outs and a man on third and a run already in. So there's that. I had some issues with that, though, in the way that you did it. I think, first off, though,

in the most simplistic way you could possibly look at this, which I think gets you almost to the answer, you look at the best case scenario of each place. And the best case scenario, of course, is with the infield back, you get a double play, which they got. And with the infield in, you get the runner out at home. So you assume that. In your run expectancy tables, the advantage goes to playing back. So you have half of the equation as best case scenario. And then in the worst case scenario, you have a more likely chance of getting a base hit with the infield in, theoretically. I guess there's always the liner or something. I don't know.

It's not totally 100% foolproof to say that, but that's why you don't play the infield in because it's more likely that they get a base hit. So if the best-case scenario favors infield back and the worst-case scenario favors infield back, then it seems pretty simple that you play infield back. My issue with you using run expectancy, though, is that you showed that there are more runs scored in the best case scenario with the infield in than with the infield back.

You found that the run expectancy with bases loaded and one out is 1.3 runs. And the run expectancy after a double play would be 1.3 runs and the run expectancy with after a double play would be 1.5 runs uh sorry vice versa right yeah vice versa yeah so the lower number is for the double play but the running i don't think run expectancy is the right thing to do that late i was thinking that too because i mean you you care about the first run the value of the first run is so much greater than the value of the second run when you're talking about that late in the game. And I think if you had looked at win expectancy, I don't know what you would have found.

Yeah, I don't know exactly where the, I guess, how you decide whether win expectancy or run expectancy is what you want to use, where exactly, what point in the game that is. Because, I don't know, it's not like a 1-0 game in the 7th is, or really in the top of the 8th is out of hand or anything. It's not out of hand, but most of the time you're going to lose that game. When you fall behind by one, most of the time you're not getting that run back. Yeah.

Yeah. Well. Yeah. Well, anyway. Isn't that right? I mean, I could be wrong about that. I guess that's, well, I don't know. If you score, if you average five runs a game or whatever it is. Yeah, but against relievers. You're talking about against relievers who are going to have mid-two ZRAs.

Yeah. Well, anyway, I think it's hard to have a very definitive answer, and so I would be inclined not to blame Leland too much either way. No, I wouldn't either. I was surprised at how the numbers seemed to justify him, and I thought that it was a complicated issue. But, I mean, you convinced me probably with your running frequencies. I'm not sure that's the best way to do it,

but it was pretty convincing to me as well. And I was surprised. Actually, I wouldn't have thought that that would have been so. And so is he – do you know if he has been criticized much for it uh i don't know because i i was watching the game on a delay so i wasn't on twitter and didn't see the reaction um but a few people asked me what i thought of it so i assumed that there was some level of of controversy or discussion about it um and and on the, they talked about it immediately after the play, almost anticipating that people would wonder why he had decided to do that.

So I'm sure some people questioned it. So let's imagine that they, and this actually might have been the case, I didn't see a full view of the field, but imagine that the ball had gone to the shortstop, and at that point, the shortstop actually had a choice, throw home or turn two. And I would bet that just about every shortstop every time would throw home in that situation.

Yeah, I would think so. But that doesn't mean they're right. My instinct was to play the infield in too. So maybe it's just an instinct thing that you fear that run. But yeah, I think that almost without fail, like if that ball had been chopped to the third baseman or to the first baseman, I think almost without fail, they go home. Yeah, I agree. without fail they go home yeah i agree um maybe that's just people being too risk averse or not being one or not wanting to be blamed for allowing that run to score or something yeah um but maybe

not maybe they're right i don't know that was my kind of gut feeling too but i didn't trust it um so the giants i think by my simplistic calculations, which are probably wrong, I think are now like something like 82% likely to win the series. That would match up very well with the empirical results for a team that went up two games in the World Series, which is 79% went on to win. So the odds of coming back are about the same as filling your flush on the last card that you get in Texas Hold'em. So that happens every day. That happens constantly. So the Tigers are not out of it.

And I would raise the odds a little for the Tigers just compared to what I imagine that group of losing teams was. I would guess the Tigers have a better shot than the average team that's going to lose. Than the 1998 Padres, for instance. Probably not in the same class. Probably not. All right. Well, we'll be back on Monday.

And, in fact, on Monday we might actually know. Well, we'll be back on Monday. And in fact, on Monday, we might actually know. Yes, we might be discussing the end. It could be over. Don't let anybody forget that I predicted a 50% chance of a giant sweep. Okay. We'll be back with 71 on Monday.