Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 865: 2016 Trend Watch (Reliever Evolution Edition)

Episode Date: April 19, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about Walt Weiss and Nolan Arenado, then continue their discussion of potential 2016 trends with multiple investigations into pitcher usage.

Good morning and welcome to episode 865 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, brought to you by our supporters at Patreon, as well as the Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I'm Sam Miller, along with Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight. Hey, Ben. Hello. How are you? Okay. Good. Hey, do you got anything to talk about? Well, one quick announcement. Sounds like sort of a presumptuous announcement, but I'm going to make it anyway.

Anyone who wants to buy a signed copy of our book signed by both of us, I'm not saying our autographs are worth anything or a valuable item to own in this world. But if our book would be more valuable to you with our signatures in it, you can now buy that. We weren't sure how we were going to work that out because Sam and I are not in the same place and it's difficult to sign the same book when you are not in the same place, but the Sonoma Stompers are selling some signed books and you can get them now. Just go to the Stompers official site, stompersbaseball.com, click on Fan Shop, and it's the first thing listed there. They should ship around the release date, which

is just a couple of weeks away. And if you want us to write something other than our names, you can write a message or something in the notes and instructions box when you check out. And if you pick up a second item of Stomper's merchandise when you buy the book, you can enter the promo code book sale to get $5 off of the book. That's my announcement. Great. Anything else? Well, listener Andrew Patrick, and I believe Patreon supporter Andrew Patrick tweeted at us to call our attention to a Jim Rome tweet, which I thought was amusing. So Jim Rome tweeted something that Rocky's manager, Walt Weiss, had told him. And the tweet is, Walt Weiss told me, quote, I think you can make an argument that Nolan

Arenado's may be the best player in the game right now. And Andrew brought this to our attention because it seemed to fall into a new category. We have talked about rumors that don't reveal anything. And this seems to be a compliment that doesn't reveal anything, or at least Andrew was asking us if it was. And he's asking us that because of how many qualifiers are in the quote. So there is, I think you can make an argument. So he thinks you can make an argument that Arenado is maybe the best player in the game right now. So at least three qualifiers in that compliment. Is that still a compliment?

Well, it is fun to parse. I will acknowledge that once you see, this is like one of those 3D pictures. Once you see it, yes, it is amusing, but you do have to parse it. It scans perfectly fine when you're just hearing it or when you're reading it on first blush. This is, for instance, I would say that this is no less egregious than hundreds of other things that I have said on this podcast. on this podcast, even when I was stating something in what I felt was a bold manner,

it is still quite common, I think, to, I mean, I'm doing it in this sentence. I just said, I think it is still quite common. I think. Yeah. Really every sentence is prefaced by an unspoken, I think. Right. And so while I agree, I'm glad this was pointed out. I applaud Dave Brown, I think is the one who tweeted the number of qualifiers in it. Good work. Good looking out.

But it is a little bit different. I'd say it's significantly different than a non-revelatory rumor because it is mostly an observation about the squishiness of language. I mean, I think is just a verbal tick, right? People start every sentence with I think. You, the second person, personal pronoun, Dave Brown pointed out, and again, perfectly parsed job.

But using the second person, personal pronoun does not literally mean you. I think you could do it. We use you as a synonym for I quite a bit. I just said, you know, see? And so then we've got two more and they're essentially redundant. I don't think that he is layering them on top of each other. I don't think he's intending to multiply the level of doubt or make, or even worse, make the doubt exponential. He's simply saying the same thing twice.

So when they're separated by within the sentence, but it is essentially simply repeating himself. You can maybe make the argument and maybe the best in his mind. I think that he's just repeating himself. So I don't think that it is a, it's amusing. I don't think that it can sustain a genre the same way that non-revelatory rumors do, because those really truly are what we say they are. They are, they are news. They are presented as news and they offer literal nothingness. Yeah. And I think Walt Weiss probably accomplished exactly what he wanted to with this statement.

He wanted to pay a compliment to his player without saying something wrong. I mean, if he had come out and said Nolan Aranato is absolutely, definitely, no doubt the best player in the game, then I don't know, maybe we'd be making fun of him for that statement, because it's probably not the case right now. I do think, though, that you, I have just structured this in exactly the same way that he did. So maybe I'm just sympathetic to him because I have the same affliction. He and I have the same disease. But you can't make that argument. And I think that's maybe the sort of hidden second level of objectionability to this, is that there are four qualifiers in a way to obfuscate the fact that he is saying something absurd. credible. You can absolutely make the case that he is a top five ball player in baseball, which a year ago would have seemed absurd. And you could also make the case that at least at his position,

he, uh, relative to his position, he might be the best defensive player in baseball. He's not as good a defender as Anderson Simmons, but he might be a better third baseman, or he might be as good a third baseman as Simmons is shortstop. If you told me, if you put together a blog post showing me that Nolan Arenado was the third best player in baseball, I would not rule that out. He is absolutely not the best player in baseball. Right. There is no argument for that. You can't do it. I don't think you can do it.

You can't maybe do it. You can't even put together an argument. Probably not. I wouldn't try. Unfortunately. Okay. Being close to something is not the same as maybe being all the way to something. That's true.

You know, sometimes there's uncertainty. You're like, hey, where's that horse off in the distance? Is that horse past the barn or on our side of the barn? And you're like, I can't tell. It's close. He could be either one. But sometimes, like, it doesn't matter how close he is. You can tell that he is not there. For instance, if you are on the horse and you are an inch from the barn, there is no uncertainty. And you can't say, you can make an argument that he's actually to the barn. You can't. No, not unless you want to go down to the quantum level or something.

Yeah. But yes, I know what you mean. It's like whenever, whenever someone is close to that highest level, we say they're in the conversation or something, but they're not really because they're, they're close to being in the conversation, but the conversation is really only they're close to being in the conversation. But the conversation is really only two players. Yes. Okay.

All right. Maybe we should have that conversation later this week. You think we should have a Trout Harper conversation? Maybe. It's been a while. It's about time. I don't have a... We'll see.

I'm not sure I have anything new to add. I don't know. I think Harper may have turned another corner. Can you turn a corner after turning a corner? Sure. You just don't want to turn. Just don't know i think harper may have turned another corner you may can you turn a corner after turning a corner sure you just don't want to turn just don't turn four yeah you don't want to turn all the way around yeah unless you're turning left and right right um we don't have to have that conversation right okay all right so we're going to continue ways baseball is different this year okay um and these are a little bit different than the nature of yesterday's these are a little bit more play indexy and there's three maybe four that i want to talk about to recap sacrifice bunts seem to be way down way down last year shifts seem to be

way up again even more than last year what else intentional walks way down way down and i think that's all strikeouts way up yeah way up not just up way up yeah up would not be news so this one is uh everybody probably should know game score game score is a metric that bill james devised long ago to sort of say in one number how good a pitcher was in a game and it basically basically starts with, you know, every pitcher who starts starts with 50 points, and you get a certain number of points for every out you get, you get docked a certain number of points for every pace runner and run, you get points for strikeouts, and the deeper into the game, the more your points add up. And so like, you know, if if you get 100, you're in the conversation for the greatest game of all time,

the greatest start of all time. But 50 is average. 50 is roughly a quality start. 70 is a great start. So I looked at game scores over 75 this year. I don't know why. I don't know why I thought this is going to lead somewhere, but I did it anyway. I don't know why. I don't know why I thought this is going to lead somewhere, but I did it anyway.

I looked at game scores over 75 through teams' first 10 games. And so 2016, I just went back to 2010. So of course, you know, you want to keep it within your era. And 2016 had the fewest such games since 2010. And the drop from last year was huge. Last year, there were 26 in the team's first 10 games. This year, there were 10. There were only 10 great starts in the first, what is that, 300 games. There were only 10 great starts in the first 300 games, which is, you know, like I just said, it's a drop of 60% from last year. Vince Velasquez's start was worth at least 10. Well, Vince Velasquez is one of the 10.

Vince Velasquez leads, has the highest game score in baseball this year. But the average over the six years preceding was around 20. And last year, there were 26, which it isn't, I don't think it's, well, I wouldn't have said it was a coincidence that last year was higher than the average and that 2014 was higher than the average, too, because you get credit for strikeouts. It's still a pitcher-friendly era still, and it's a strikeout-friendly era. And so I'm trying to figure out if you can come up with any plausible reason why there were only 10 great games in the first 10 days of baseball. Teams being more conservative with pitch counts and innings, not leaving guys in as long.

Yeah, could be. Possible. You do get points for innings completed. But since last year? Well, yeah, that's abrupt. I don't know why it would happen so suddenly. I don't know why either. I'm going to see.

I'm going to update it. I'm going to update it through the first 12 games. And I'll go back further. I'll go back to 2005. Since 2000. Yeah, so through the first 12 games, it's still way lower. It's less than half of what it was last year. It is higher than 2006.

2006 was a trough, but otherwise every other year is quite a bit ahead. It's four behind the next lowest year. And the average now is, you know, 22, 23, uh, and they're only been 14. Uh, so you think it's, it's being more conservative. So how could we search this? Check innings per start. The way we would probably do this is to see if there are more six inning or fewer scoreless starts. All right. That seems like a fair proxy for this search, right? Yeah. Okay. So I'm going to go innings less than or equal to six runs equals zero in team's first 12 games. Everything else is the same. And there are, actually there were more last year. There were more short, great starts last year than there

were this year. There are more this year than there are in the typical year, but very barely. Okay. So it's like basically tied with 2014 tied, but you, but really below 2015, more or less tied with 2007. It's, yeah, there's, I mean, I don't think we're surprised, but if short scoreless appearances is a proxy for teams being more conservative with pitchers throwing a great game, because even if they're more conservative in general, and we're actually going to get to that too, but even if they're more conservative in general, it doesn't really matter.

We don't care if they're more likely to pull you when you've given up three runs through five and a third and your pitch count is getting high we only care if they're going to pull you when you're really dominating because we're looking at the shortage of dominant starts i could do the same thing but instead of innings i could do pitches i could maybe set scoreless innings and i'm going to say pitches at 100 or fewer. How many of those? So the same number, one more this year than last year. There were 34 pitchers who were pulled when they were throwing a shutout and had thrown 100 or fewer pitches.

This year, there were 33 last year. There were actually more in 2008. It's pretty close to the norms. So I don't think we can say that it's that. So I think genuinely we're not seeing as many good starts the six innings thing by the way i've removed relievers and you'd be surprised but in fact that changes the numbers because there are 800 pitchers who threw scoreless appearances in fewer than six innings anyway the point is it's not that big a number. Offense is up a little bit

because last season was kind of a split season almost in terms of scoring. Like at the all-star break, people started hitting home runs. I wrote about that recently and scoring was significantly up. So that raised the overall average from last year. But I think this year's April is higher than last year's April. Okay. So we have one of two answers here. One is that this is nothing that if three more pitchers had happened to throw great starts, I wouldn't have even noticed and mentioned this. The other is that in fact, we are seeing the offense of the second half last year has carried over. And in fact, it is a tougher pitching environment. And these great starts disappearing are the canary. Yeah, I would guess that it's partly offense.

All right. I don't have any idea. Okay. I like those starts, though. And I'd like someone to bring them back. All right. Okay. The third time through the order pitching change.

Okay. So we all know that the third time through the order effect is much more well known than it was five years ago. That some managers last year even seemed to be leaning heavily on it in Tampa and Chicago. Russell Carlton wrote a great piece about the Rays doing it. I think people wrote about how the Cubs had done it and set themselves up well for the postseason when Joe Maddon could pull Jason Hamill without looking weird. So it makes perfect sense that third time through the order pitching changes,

which is essentially when a starter gets pulled after facing 18 batters or close to that, even if he's doing okay, would be up. In fact, they're not up at all. And I was surprised by this. I looked at pitching changes. I looked at starting pitchers who faced 18 or maybe 17 to like 21 batters. All right. Okay. So basically a third time through the order pitching change with a little wiggle room on either side. And there are 44 this year, but there were 42 last year, 43 the year before and 46 the year before that. So it is squarely in the middle. It is in fact the mean of the past four years worth of TTO pitching changes. Okay. That seems weird. Didn't you feel like there was a trend happening? Yeah, there certainly seemed to be.

Last year we were talking about this as though it were absolutely a trend happening. If not sweeping the league, at least clearly there were a couple of teams that were prioritizing this. It had entered the conversation. It was a strategy that essentially did not exist before and that is now fairly close to the mainstream. And that in particular, I feel like front offices would consider it a fairly non-controversial strategy. And we saw that front offices seem to be getting their way with sacrifice bunts and intentional

walks. And yet not on this. A total illusion. No growth. Yeah. Well, I think the Rays were clearly the ones embracing it most fully. I think it was really like the Rays and then a step down to anyone else. And that may have partly been because of the personnel problems that they had. They lost some starting pitchers. They were shoveling forgettable relievers to and forth from AAA. And that seemed to be partly based on not wanting hitters to face the same pitcher

three times, but also just not having pitchers who were good enough to do that. And maybe now they have better pitchers and feel less need to do that. And the Royals were another team that seemed to sort of be doing it last year, but that was also probably, it seemed like, at least as much because of the way their staff was constructed, just having that great bullpen and having a pretty lousy starting rotation for a World Series winning team. than that this year, but it seemed like it was a combination of, it seemed like teams that were in a position to take advantage of it were taking advantage of it, maybe more so than they would have in the past, but it didn't seem to be spreading like wildfire. I would expect it to continue though. So I would have expected more rather than less. Yeah. By the way, just to be clear, the numbers that I gave by year are through teams first 10 games. Yeah. So last year, the Rays over the entire season

led baseball with 26 of these starts, 17 to 20 batters faced 26. The Cubs were right behind them with 24. The Rockies and the Phillies were kind of right behind them, but presumably for different reasons, just because their pitchers were bad. The Rockies at 21 Phillies at 18. And then, yeah, basically then there's almost no separation with the rest of the league. There's a little bit,

I mean, there's a lot, but they're clumped together between, you know, 16 and nine basically instances of this. So then let me see this year. Let me see if the R rays have simply quit doing this so thus far in 2016 the rays have only done it once and the cubs have done it nuns

so that seems to be significant they i probably enough to explain why there is no growth, even though perhaps there is throughout the league, if that makes sense. That maybe all the other 28 teams are sort of nudging up in that direction, but the Cubs and the Rays, as the ones who are carrying the weight have not the brewers have four and in fact the brewers have four and two of them look like they are this that they are once was a five inning one run outing and another was five innings scoreless so maybe the brewers with their new gm and all that maybe the brewers will be the standard bearers this year. I don't know. Would you expect the total this year to eclipse the total of last year?

Well, I probably would have said so if you would ask me a month ago. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, the raise rotation right now is Archer, Odorizzi, Ramirez, Moore, Smiley. At this time last year, I don't know what it was, but it was less impressive. I think if you have those guys, then maybe you're less reluctant to do it. Okay. Yeah. Last year, 387. So yeah, last year was a record. And in fact, I don't, this might just be the general trend that never stops of starters going less deep into games. And also to some degree, throwing more pitches and pitching for strikeouts.

And so having to, even if they throw as many pitches, not going as deep. But if you look at the year by year, last year was a record for these type of starts. The year before that was the previous record. And from 2010, last year uh like a 35 increase over the you know over where it was five years ago so there was movement toward this although we don't know if it's movement by strategy or movement by that's just all pitchers can do these days but it's probably strategy right i mean

i don't know if it's clearly identifying the third time around, although some would argue that it has nothing, that it shouldn't be the third time around, that it's more about fatigue and less about how many times the lineup actually turns around. But let me bring this back around. You say that you would have expected more this year if I'd asked you two weeks ago, but now you're agnostic. Yes. Is that right?

I'm going to say early season fluke of the numbers, and it will break last year's record. Okay. All right. And then somewhat unrelated, somewhat related though, is the four out save. And this is actually more about last year than it is this year. Last year, the four out save came back.

I don't know if you were aware of this. The four out save had been on a very steady decline, four or more outs for years and years and years. And it reached, like there was basically never a year it went up for decades. And it reached its low in 2014. There were something like 70, four out or more saves. And then last year, 2015, all of a sudden, the trend reversed. It went up to 110. There were more than 50% more four out or more saves overnight. And that trend seems to be holding this year. And it seems relevant, especially because we've been talking and at BP, we've been writing about various ways that the closers have been used in less traditional ways this year.

So in Atlanta, Russell Carlton wrote about how in Atlanta their closer, Arodis Fiscaeno, is explicitly not limited to the ninth inning. That he will come into the eighth if that's when the best hitters are coming up. Yeah. inning that he will come into the eighth if that's when the best hitters are coming up yeah and so that basically is a full assault on the notion of your closer being the guy who gets the saves this is what people have been clamoring for forever and it seems like atlanta is at least trying it this early in the season in houston as we talked about the astros took their best reliever presumably i think in most people's views their best reliever Astros took their best reliever, presumably, I think in most people's views, their best reliever, perceived to be their best reliever, and didn't even

make him the closer at all. Kept him in a- Ken Giles. Yes, Ken Giles. Kept him in a more flexible non-closer role. And so that changes the nature of the closer as no longer being your best reliever. And now we have the four-inning save. And so last night, for instance, Craig Kimbrell came in in the eighth inning

to get a four-out save. And this is even though the Red Sox have one of the great, maybe the great, well, one of the great set-up men in baseball, Koji Ohara. But he brought in Craig Kimbrell. He is not alone in this decision. It is roughly tracking with the rate of four out saves that we saw last year, which is up from previous years. And I just wanted to know if this is convincing to you. How much is it up? How much is it up? Well, so I'm just going to tell you,

I'm going to talk about last year's because last year's we have the full year and the trend was already there. So in 2000, there were 280 such games. Drop, drop, drop, drop, drop, drop, drop, drop, drop. In 2010, so a decade later, there were 117 such games. Drop, drop, drop, drop, drop, drop, drop. In 2014, there were 77 such games. And then last year, it went from 77 to 116. So it basically undid five years of drop and went back up to the 2010 levels. It's a little bit noisy this early in the year, because this doesn't include blown saves. It doesn't include situations where the closer is

brought in, in the eighth, but then blows a save. And since we're dealing with such small numbers, brought in in the eighth, but then blows the save. And since we're dealing with such small numbers, one or two of those being converted changes the on pace numbers by a lot. So I don't have an exact number for 2016. But you know, tracking with last year. Uh huh. Well, I think I buy that. It was a trend, a steady trend in the other direction for so long that maybe I should wait for more evidence before saying that it's reversed itself. But then again, it had been so steady, right? It had never come up again. Had it really ever interrupted the downward trend with a year that was up? I think there was a year that was, there was an outlier that, that went so far down that it then kind of regressed a little bit back to its current track,

but it's a fairly straight line down. Well, I'll say real. Okay, so I mean, I agree. I think real as well, but I think the larger question, the more significant question is, we've now seen three models for how teams this year and last year

are chipping away at the closer idea, right? And I think that there's something about the closer idea that is useful for the manager. It's predictable. It accomplishes some things. And there are things that you don't want to throw out. But on the other hand, there are restrictions that it creates that you don't want to have to deal with. So we've seen these three models for how teams are chipping away at that notion. And I wonder which of the three you think is the most compelling going forward and will win the one where you do have a closer, but maybe not a hundred percent of his games have to be safe situations. Maybe like this Cay cayeno it can be like 90 and

he's prepared he walks into the the building on game day prepared for it to be a little different today than it was yesterday he basically knows his role but he's a little more flexible or the giles method where you just don't even put a tag on your best pitcher. You just don't even let the notion of the save pollute his brain. You tell him that every day is going to be an adventure, and let's stay fluid. Or the third one, which is essentially we do everything just like we always have, but we arrest the restriction on how many batters the guy can face basically. And we keep you just a little bit longer. Like you're the same guy, but your arm has to be a little more stretched out. And it's more of basically what it is, is it's more playoff baseball throughout the

year, but otherwise it's the same. So which of those do you think is going to win? Or do you see a way that they can be synthesized into something altogether different? I don't think the Giles Gregerson model will win. Because as Russell Carlton often writes, when he writes about these things, it's sort of the American male culture lends itself toward hierarchies and toward identifying who the best is, who the top dog is. And I think bullpens kind of want that. They kind of want that order. They want that pecking order. They want something to aim for. And so I don't know whether they would go for a situation like that where the best pitcher kind of has an amorphous role and isn't pitching in the highest

profile situations or is pitching at various times. I mean, you could rebrand it as just he's the best, so he comes in whenever we need him. I mean, that's the old school idea. So I guess you could do that, but that seems like it would take a while. That would be the biggest lift, I suppose. So I think probably the path of least resistance is the four out or five out save, right? I mean, that seems like the easiest and fairly efficient, you know, not bad. I mean, getting more out of those guys is a good thing. Everyone can approve of that. And you'd think that would be easier to do. It's still often a save situation, or it's close to one. So that seems to me like the easiest to adopt and a pretty good compromise, pretty good stopgap solution so i could imagine that being more widespread soon on the other hand it counteracts the decades of increasing specialization so that's a powerful force it seems to be the one thing that goes against the reasons that we play the game the way that we do today like Like the flexibility that the Giles model or this Gaeno model offer was not lost by

necessarily by design, but was lost as kind of collateral damage to this notion of having an unstoppable closer at the end of the game. Like you can't have your cake and eat it too. And I think that to some degree, managers simply saw how good Dennis Eckersley was or how good these closers were and wanted that and needed that and were willing to give up the Vizcaino and Giles pursuits in order to have that. And if you could marry that with also a little more flexibility, I think managers would like it. It just, it was too hard to figure out how. The other thing is it's easier to figure out like the Vizcaíno model. You kind of have to

do some mental math or you have, you at least have to look at who's going to be up and, you know, project the batting order and match matchups and that sort of thing. A little bit more than you do if it's just like, well, we're going to bring this guy in in the ninth. So we'll just bring him in and out earlier. I'm not that fond of the Vizcaino method either because I do want my closer or my best reliever. I want my best reliever to be in at the biggest moment of the game. That is true. or I want my best reliever to be in at the biggest moment of the game.

That is true. But it's less about wanting him to face the other team's best players because everybody can do damage. The number eight hitter can still do damage. And if you're letting him bat against a lesser pitcher, it's just more likely that that guy's going to hurt you. And so there is an advantage. I mean, Russell showed mathematically. It was small, very small. Very, very you. And so there is an advantage. I mean, Russell showed mathematically. It was small, very small.

Very, very small, right. There is an advantage. If you actually lay out the matchups, you do clearly want your better pitcher to face the better hitters. There is a mathematical edge, but it's tiny. When I say that I want the best pitcher for the biggest moment,

it is the bases loaded moment. It is the runner on third one out moment. And for me, that's less about who's batting and more about the game situation. And it doesn't seem like that's exactly what the Braves are trying to do. They're more looking at, you know, it's still fresh inning. It's just which fresh inning do we want him to come into? And my desire to have him come into the bases loaded situation, even if it's the sixth, is especially challenging

because then you've got the whole warmup situation. Are you warming him up in the sixth? After you've warmed him up, can you not use him? How long do you have to know? How long does it take for him to warm up, et cetera? And so it really is probably very complicated. And like you say, it's fairly simple to say, oh, well, you know, it's the eighth. I'm starting to get really scared. I think I'll bring in Kimbrough, warm him up. Cause once you warm him up, then you're using him. Yeah. Uh, all right. Um, so that's it. Although I will just very briefly, quickly say that, uh, wild pitches are up and walks are up, uh, which are, uh, the wild pitches. I think we talked about last year makes sense. The better pitchers are the wild pitches I think we talked about last year. Makes sense.

The better pitchers are, the harder they throw, the more movement they have. You would think the more wild pitches, as well as the more they pitch for strikeouts, you would think the more wild pitches. But they are up, just for the record. And walks is surprising. Walks would reverse a trend since walks have been going down.

But walks are going up this year. And I don't know if that's an April thing or not. All right. Okay, so that is it for today. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Today's five listeners who have already done so Christopher von Brecht, Michael Mandelbaum, Mandelbaum, Mandelbaum. I'm sure Michael's never heard that before. Bertil Spolander, Ray Conger, and a man known to me only as Martin. Thank you. You can buy our book. The only rule is it has to work, which comes out May 3rd. If you don't have your calendars handy, that is two weeks from today. As I mentioned, you can get an

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