Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 10: Splash

Episode Date: July 31, 2012

Ben and Sam discuss whether the Orioles should be buyers and what teams mean when they dub a prospect “untouchable.”

Good day. This is Effectively Wild, the daily podcast on Baseball Perspectives. I'm Sam Miller. I'm with Ben Lindberg, who is coming to us from Vancouver, British Columbia. We are coming to you as games wrap up on the West Coast on Monday evening. We thank you for joining us. Ben, how are you doing? Well, I'm not in Vancouver for one thing. Goodness gracious, where are you? I am back home in New York. I spoke to you this morning in Vancouver and then I flew and it turns out it takes four and a half hours these days to fly from California

to New York. So I'm now in New York. Well, I don't like you sneaking around, but I'm glad you're home safe. Thank you. I'm glad to be here. Do you have a topic? Have you had a chance to follow any baseball today? Not really, or at least I haven't seen any baseball today, but I have read about things that happened in baseball today. And I would like to just make a quick point about the untouchability of prospects. The untouchability of prospects. That might actually dovetail into – it might not. I don't want to make any promises.

But it might dovetail into my topic, which is the Baltimore Orioles. Wow. People are going to think we script this thing, but we really put no planning into this. I do not think anybody is going to think we script this thing. Who should start, Ben? My point is quick, so I should probably start. Okay. So the Cubs just traded Reed Johnson and Paul Mahalem.

You thought that Reed Johnson would be untouchable? To the Braves for Aratus Viscaino, who is sort of the headliner of the package. And this time last year, Viscaino was untouchable. And people say that certain prospects are untouchable every year, and there's always some price at which they can be touched. But it seemed like Frank Renn was especially adamant about his big three or big four pitching prospects at the time being totally off the table in discussions for almost anyone.

being totally off the table in discussions for almost anyone. So now a year later, not only are those guys not untouchable, but they're seemingly pretty expendable. Earlier this month, we thought that Randall Delgado, who was one of those top guys, was going to be traded for Ryan Dempster. As it turns out, it doesn't look like that's going to happen. Instead, the Braves got Paul Mahalem, who is not Ryan Dempster. He is sort of serviceable, I guess, is the adjective you might use for Paul Mahalem. He's kind of a maybe league average-ish guy with no real upside from that. And Vizcaino, his value is obviously way

down because he had Tommy John surgery. And there are concerns now that he is probably going to be a reliever full time. So it just sort of was a reminder to me that when you hold on to these guys, sometimes even in a single year, their value can fall by quite a bit where instead of getting one of the top pitchers on the market for this prospect, you're getting Paul Mahalon. I've heard the Angels are willing to listen to offers on Brandon Wood. Yeah, well, Bill Stoneman was another guy who it seemed like every prospect was untouchable for a few years there. And a lot of those guys seemed to decrease in value when he held on to them a little past their expiration date. Well, I think that I have two quick points, I guess, on this, two quick thoughts.

One is that it's always a little bit dangerous to bring fantasy baseball in as insight for real baseball. But you see this in fantasy baseball where people overvalue their own players and it can make it difficult to make trades. But I do understand the idea behind Untouchable, which is that you do sometimes know that you value your player at a certain level and you don't expect that anybody else values him at that level. I mean, you drafted him for a reason at that spot where nobody else had drafted him. And because of that, you have a sense that, uh, nobody else is likely to give you as much value as you would place on the player. And it's not technically untouchable. Like, you know, everybody is touchable, but it's just sort of a realistic understanding of the value that you put on a guy versus what other people are willing to put on the guy.

On the other hand, I think that almost always, maybe not almost always, I think that often familiarity does create a certain kind of affection for players that isn't particularly rational. particularly irrational. There's probably a case to be made that the correlation between smart front offices and I guess the negative correlation between untouchable players and intelligence in a front office is pretty strong. Boy, did I just bump. I would say that not having untouchable players is a sign of a good front office because you recognize that your evaluations of a player aren't necessarily 100% accurate and always being willing to listen is a good idea. Yeah. Well, maybe it's mostly a language thing or a way that people tend to refer to their prospects. I don't know that

any team necessarily does have untouchable guys. I mean, maybe they do, but maybe it's just sort of a semantic thing where some teams will describe a prospect as untouchable, but in reality, it's not really any difference in price from what another team that doesn't use that word might describe to its top guys. Yeah, I mean, if you have Dylan Bundy, you would probably trade him for Mike Trout. But you know that you've been a GM for, or you know, you've been in baseball for decades, and guys like Mike Trout have never been made available to you. So you just don't really consider Mike Trout to be an option.

And when you think about the guys who do get offered to you, none of them worth dylan bundy i think you're right it's a language thing so segue smoothly into your orioles topic so the orioles uh right now they beat the yankees tonight uh five to four because they always beat teams five to four um and they now are two games out of both, I believe, both wildcard spots, at least one wildcard spot, and they are 3% likely to make the playoffs, which is worse than they were at the beginning of the year when they were basically given no chance to make the playoffs and they were 4% likely, according to our odds. So that's weird to start with, but it's the trade deadline.

The Orioles are linked to a number of players. They don't seem to be super linked to any great players. I think that if you're familiar with Breaking Bad and the episode Half Measure, this might be what Mike was talking about when he described Half Measures. I just interrupted Breaking Bad to record this podcast. Was it that episode? It was the latest episode. Please don't spoil it for me.

No, I'm going to spoil season three for everybody else. I just wonder, though, what do you think the Orioles should do? Should they be buyers or should they be sellers? Before you answer that, they're a really bad team. I think that it's hysterical how bad they are when you think about it. If I can get away with referencing baseball references model for Winslow replacement for a second because it's convenient. They have 10 players in positive territory right now and 11 players in negative territory right now. They have exactly three players who are on pace to be average this year

on the position side. And it's virtually impossible that they'll have anybody who reaches five or probably even four wins. And they have a run differential of negative 68, I think. I think. I think they've played their way into that zone where they're almost forced to be nominal buyers just to placate their fans. Sort of in a 2011 Pirates situation where the team's been bad for so long and is now surprisingly successful, at least record-wise. And so it would be sort of a PR problem not to do anything or to sell.

But at the same time, I think the people in charge aren't really under any illusions about the quality of this team. So, I mean, the guys that they've been linked to, the last Orioles rumor I saw was like Joe Blanton. A lot of Joe Blanton out there. Yeah, so I mean. A lot of Juan Pierre. Yeah. Some Jonathan Broxton. So no one who resembles a difference maker in any way.

So I think it's sort of a last year's pirate situation where they'll bring in a Derek Lee equivalent and point to that and say, hey, look, we're buyers. Perhaps Derek Lee. and I guess have great powers of self-deception and managed to convince themselves that this team is as good as all the other teams with equivalent records, will not revolt and stop going to Camden Yards or start going in even smaller numbers than they have been. So I think it's sort of a face-saving buy situation. So I think it's sort of a face-saving buy situation. They won't do anything where they'll put themselves in any kind of worse position going forward. Though I guess just in the sense that there's an opportunity cost there in not dealing certain veterans whom you could deal for prospects, you're potentially hurting yourself as much as you could be by buying someone you shouldn't.

So that's a risk to it, I guess. But I don't know. I mean, today or yesterday, if you're listening to this, on Tuesday, Dan Evans wrote about how marketing and promotion is a real factor and how if you signal to a fan base and to the media in your area that you're a seller, you still have a third of your schedule left and there are other sports starting and other people competing for attention. And so that's a real effect that you have to factor in

just as much as your on-field future. That's an effect that somebody should probably study because I wonder whether non-sellers who are also nine games out in August also see a similar drop. I'm not calling Dan a liar at all, but I would be interested to see how strong that effect is because I'm sure there is an effect and I'd be interested to see how strong it is. I'm going to quickly just make the case that I think that the Orioles should just absolutely go all in um completely mortgage the future uh do whatever it takes to get all the uh game changers

they can get um from my and I mean I don't know if I totally believe this. This is a thought that I've had for 45 seconds. But they're not going to make the playoffs any time in the next five years. They're probably not going to make the playoffs beyond that. The structural difficulties that they face make it extremely unlikely that they're going to make the playoffs during, you know, really probably during any of Manny Machado's pre-arbitration years, maybe pre-free agency years. So I think that when you're two games out and you're the Orioles, you are probably facing, you're probably in the best chance you can hope for in the foreseeable future. I don't really buy the 3%, not for any rational reason.

Rational thought has gone into that number, and I'm arguing from a weak position. But I would say that maybe I would give them 15% chance of making the playoffs if they made a decent upgrade, and maybe better if they made more than that. And I would probably take a bet that says that they are less than 15% likely to make the playoffs in any of the next five seasons. So I say do it. And, you know, I mean, I don't know that I'm necessarily saying

that they have to trade Machado or Bundy to do this. They have a pretty shallow system with basically two really good guys at the top and then a couple of sort of decent younger guys below that, but not really. But you figure if you really put it out there that Machado is available, I mean, it's not like you have to trade him for, um, for a year and a half of Hunter Pence. I mean, you could theoretically put together, uh, or have a team like the Phillies or have a team like the Red Sox put together a really good package that includes prospects coming back. And, uh, as well as veterans, as well as the type of veterans that maybe the Orioles would

have a hard time signing. Um, so I don't know. I the type of veterans that maybe the Orioles would have a hard time signing. So I don't know. I think it's worth exploring from the Orioles' perspective. That's a bleak outlook to think that… It's not a bleak outlook. It's not a mystic outlook. It's an outlook that says that we're here right now. We're living life. And the girl is in front of you, so just go ask her out. The girl is in front of you, so just go ask her out. So you're saying that a team that has a negative 70-ish run differential has the best shot at the playoffs of any team,

of any Orioles team for the next, say, six seasons of making the playoffs? I think when you're two games out in August, yeah. I think, you know, run differential gets less important the smaller the season that's left, the smaller the amount of season that's left. And, I mean, yeah, I don't know. I mean, maybe. Maybe. I'm only willing to go as far as maybe.

The Orioles haven't exactly executed this rebuilding thing as smoothly as one would have hoped. It's sort of been high ceiling guys and no ceiling guys kind of arriving at the same time. And for a while it was all pitchers and there weren't any position players and then the pitchers mostly haven't panned out and it's just kind of they're young ish but it's hard to project them to really come together in a in a way that will lead to any sort of powerhouse like there's no there's no royals-esque projectability to this team.

If this were the Blue Jays two games out or the Padres two games out, I wouldn't say this because I do think that those teams have futures. And you can envision a not-too-unlikely scenario where those teams are competitive and somewhat similar to the Rays for a three or four or five year window. The Orioles though don't have a great system. They don't really have any good players. They have Adam Jones. They have two really good teenagers and

they have an extremely difficult division that they're going to be competing in. So even if, and obviously they have weeders, so even if they have a whole lot break right for them, they're still looking at a division where three teams and maybe four are going to be pushing 90 to 100 wins every time. So I don't know. I just don't think that the Orioles have a long-term outlook that they're sacrificing. All right, so maybe come Wednesday morning we'll be discussing how the Phillies and Orioles swapped rosters at the deadline.

It would be interesting to... I mean, it would not be interesting because fake trades are never interesting. But I would actually be interested to hear... I mean, if you could ever actually get GMs to tell you this, I'd be interested to hear what sort of a package Dylan Bundy would get from a team like the Phillies or the Red Sox. All right. Well, we talked too long again. Doggone it.

You want to take us home? Oh, yes. I'm hosting today. Thank you for tuning in and we'll be back tomorrow. So check us out. So long. Bye.