Peavy and Podcast Personas

Jake Peavy made yet another start without issue today. Which proves one thing: he’s not hurt yet. Jake himself says that he’s been going through the same routine as the rest of the starters, and he’s slotted in to be the 5th starter in the rotation so that he has some extra time to recover. I’ve already mentioned that he’s ahead of schedule, but if he really starts the season with everyone else, well, that’s pretty darn impressive.

The White Sox edition of 30 Clubs 30 Days aired today on MLB Network. It’s a fun thing to watch, if only because they do talk Sox for an hour minus commercials. It’s not incredibly in-depth but nice in the spirit of Spring Training and just seeing players in action and listening to everybody talk about how ready they are to play and how confident they are about the season. Things re-learned: Omar Vizquel is old with good hands; Peavy is a competitor; Buehrle pitches a ton of innings; Adam Dunn is a monster. Also re-learned is how much Harold Reynolds talks out of his ass. It’s pretty amazing. More amazing is that I still like him. I don’t know what it is that makes him so likeable. Does somebody not like Harold Reynolds? He’s the Tom Hanks of baseball commentary. Anyway, I do suggest that you watch if you have the chance. They’ll surely replay it a ton before the season starts.

I spent a couple of good hours today in the company of Kevin Goldstein (host of the best podcast available), Colin Wyers and Ken Funck of Baseball Prospectus along with a pretty good amount of us regular folk for the BP 2011 Book Tour. Being as the book is full of many many numbers, and not really conducive to a “reading,” the majority of the event was Q & A.

The discussion ranged from prospects to current major league situations to SABR issues. I wasn’t sitting in with a tape recorder and I wasn’t transcribing as it went on. My memory only grabs a certain amount of details so I’ll just share a little something that each of the panelists discussed.

My first question, directed towards Kevin, was how often the team is to blame for the failing of a prospect. He felt that rarely, if ever, is it actually a team’s fault. Prospects fail for a multitude of reasons, mostly failure to make necessary adjustments or mental makeup. I expanded on the question, asking if perhaps a team didn’t have proper resources in place to shield a young player from the poor influences in certain minor league environments. For instance, in the California League playing in Bakersfield which is a pretty meth heavy area. Just keeping a guy from going out and getting into trouble. He wasn’t sure what certain teams might have in place to keep players from delving into meth or associating with prostitutes, but that measures were indeed taken, especially for specific players. He had a great story about Manny Ramirez. Apparently ManRam got such shielded treatment as a prospect coming up with the Indians. When the Indians drafted Manny, Kevin explained, they already knew he was batshit crazy. He had to have a keeper with him at all times, just to keep him from getting into trouble. In the off-season wasn’t allowed to go back to NY, where he had attended high school, for fear that his crazy would have too much room to shine. He also mentioned that there are players in every team’s minor league ranks, who are on the team simply to be good influences. The choosing of roommates for young prospects arriving to camp is not random. They are teamed up with the good influences so that there is help to keep behavior in check.

Ken fielded a couple of questions on a subject that I touched on the other day here, which is bullpen usage. It was agreed by all 3 gentleman in front that bullpens are being misused by clubs. Ken pointed out the White Sox specifically citing how they benefited from having Bobby Jenks as the closer, freeing up Matt Thornton, the better pitcher, to go to work in the high leverage situations, when he is more valuable. He went a bit further than I did, by saying that the 9th inning is rarely the highest leverage situation for a reliever. I asked him if he thought that any team had ever knowingly assigned a closer of lesser value than the rest of the relievers, so that the better pitcher was available for when the game was truly on the line. That was received by scoffs across the board. No. No team has done that. However Kevin mentioned that he thinks teams will eventually start using the bullpens in a smarter way. Having the most effective pitcher come in during the high leverage situations, and stay in the game throughout to close. Basically revert to how closers were used back in the 70’s.

Colin, the stat guru, spoke about his disappointment in defensive metrics. Too many variables, he thinks, are unaccounted for. The problem with many of them is the way that people look at them and accept them. Those that crunch the numbers understand that a minor tweak somewhere in the line can greatly affect what comes out on the other side. Essentially what he was getting at is with so many different algorithms being used to evaluate player value, you have to be wary of the garbage in, garbage out.

There were many other good topics discussed, of course and surprisingly little local talk. Sox and Cubs weren’t brought up a bunch, which I appreciated. It was nice to have a somewhat impartial discussion about all things baseball without anybody getting too emotional. I’m definitely glad that I attended. I was worried going in about the format. I didn’t want to show up to watch people get their books signed.