Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1004: The Joe and Rany Re-Reunion

Episode Date: January 10, 2017

Ben talks to Joe Sheehan and Rany Jazayerli about unsigned free agents, baseball economics, trends to watch in 2017, and the perplexing Royals.

They'll find us here, here, here in the guest room Where we throw money at each other and fry Oh my, we can't stay here We're starting to stay the same We can't stay here We can't stay the same. We can't stay here. We can't stay this way. Hello and welcome to episode 1004 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives and BandGraphs, presented by our Patreon supporters. I'm Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, and we are two episodes away from my incoming co-host Jeff Sullivan

rejoining us from vacation, so we are still having people fill in for him as guest hosts, and today we have two guest hosts, two people I like a lot and miss listening to on a more regular basis, so I am happy when I can have them on here to reunite, and they are of course the former hosts of the baseball show with Rennie and Joe, which also gives away their names. Rennie Giserely, of course, my occasional colleague at The Ringer. Hi, Rennie. Hi, Ben. Yeah, ever more occasionally. Yeah. And Joe Sheehan, author of the Joe Sheehan newsletter, which many of you subscribe to

after the last time he was on a few shows, and many more of you should subscribe to. Hi, Joe. Hey, Ben. Happy New Year. How are you doing? Yeah, I'm doing okay. So we are talking now, this is kind of, it's like the Star Wars line when Luke Skywalker describes Tatooine, and he says, if there's a bright center to the universe, you're on the planet that it's farthest from.

This is sort of, if there's a bright center to the baseball season, January 10th is just about the farthest we could get from that. And we are starved for baseball news right now. So we are going to make our way through this episode with a few different topics. And we're going to get to some of the remaining free agents. We're going to get to things we're looking forward to in the upcoming season. We're going to get to the Royals. We should probably get to the Royals last, just so Ranny can't filibuster the rest of the episode by talking about the Royals. Where did you get that idea from? So let's talk about remaining free agents. And even when all the free agents were remaining, this was kind of a less interesting class than we had seen in some time possibly ever

and I don't know that there's even been like a consistent story to this offseason like sometimes it'll be oh you know prices seem to jump up salaries rose you know just uh drastically in in a single year or peep there's a run on pitchers or a run on hitters or something like that. And I don't even know that there's a theme to this year's transaction. Does either of you have, before we get into the remaining guys, either of you have a signing that you loved or hated? Any favorite or least favorite signing that we have seen so far, whether an overpay or a mismatch between player or team,

anything come to mind? Well, we're going to come back to your friend Luke and his tattoo at some point, right? Because I don't know what that was all about. But no, I think the one I've had the most fun with is Ian Desmond. Because as I said a number of times, the Rockies didn't exist. We have to invent them. Leave aside the first base thing, because I don't think he ends up playing first base. I think they'll end up moving some one of their outfielders, and Desmond will end up in the outfield, but that doesn't make it a whole lot better. Ian Desmond's value is as a middle infielder, and the bat's just not that great as a corner outfielder. He's an incredibly awkward outfielder. I think the numbers show him to be basically an average to plus left fielder and a pretty bad

center fielder. You sign him for his 31 through 35 seasons. He's never been better than really a three-win player at his peak. And now he's going to be playing, likely it's not a corner outfield position. And it's going to look great, right? I mean, he's going to hit 280 with 25 to 30 homers and 20 to 25 steals and a 480 slugging. And the Rockies are still only going to win 73 games because, well, that's what they do. I think that the gap between what's probably going to be the Rockies saying, gosh, we made this good signing. What happened?

And everybody else kind of snickering in the corner, I think kind of makes the offseason. Yeah. And it seemed like there was going to be some sort of follow up move that might make that make more sense. But that move has not been made. They were going to trade Charlie Blackman for a number one starter. Right. That was totally not been made. They were going to trade Charlie Blackwood for a number one starter. Yeah. Right. That was totally going to happen. Uh-huh.

And on the opposite side of the spectrum, anything stand out? A move you loved? Rennie? Have you clicked through? Have you clicked through everything? Well, on the Ian Desmond thing, at least they didn't give up the 11th pick in the draft in order to sign. Oh, wait. They did.

At least they didn't give up the 11th pick in the draft in order to sign. Oh, wait, they did. I just – I think one of my last columns for The Ringer was just talking about how the Cubs winning the World Series is sort of proof that the revolution is sort of over in a sense that every team in baseball seems to have some idea of what they're doing. The Diamondbacks got rid of Dave Stewart and the Phillies and the Twins have overturned their front offices. But I think we might be a little bit jumping the gun with the Rockies because it's the mistakes they make just seem to be so basic. Like how do you give up the 11th pick in the draft for Ian Desmond, let alone given that kind of money and just sticking with the Rockies. I have another favorite worth signing,

which was the signing of Mike Dunn to what was a three years, 19 million for, for a lefty middle reliever. I wouldn't even call him a seventh inning type, maybe a sixth inning type. He's got about a 370 career ERA. I don't think he's ever had – I don't think he's had an ERA under three in like five years. His peripherals don't suggest he'd be any better. And this is the same team that basically did the exact same thing with Boone Logan three years ago.

Gave Boone Logan a ton of money to pitch like 40 not good innings. His contract finally ends, and they make the exact same mistake. I don't know what they are doing in Denver. And they've got a lot of talent because they develop talent pretty well. But it's these sorts of mistakes that are really keeping them from having a chance at contention, I think. Yeah, when you think about how good they've drafted and developed, you look at the core of that organization, Arenado and Gray and LeMay,

who's been a much better player than I ever expected them to be, Story, you know, Gonzalez on the back end of that. You look at Blackman, who's an older version. But, you know, for a team that's been that good at drafting talent to give up the 11th pick in the draft, that's exactly the kind of team that shouldn't be doing it. You know, if the Orioles give up, what do they give up, the 14th pick in the draft last year to get Gallardo? Well, the Orioles don't know what they're doing in the draft anyway.

But the Rockies have shown that they can find talent in the draft. So the cost is greater for them than it would be for an organization that doesn't draft or develop. And so MLB Trade Rumors did a post on the top 10 remaining free agents on Christmas Day. And just to show how slow things have been since then, none of them has signed since that point. So they had Trumbo, Batista, Jason Hamill, Matt Wieters, Michael Saunders, Mike Napoli, Greg Holland, Travis Wood, Neftali Feliz, and Brandon Moss. Not the most exciting crew, but obviously the names at the very top of that list are interesting. And I was on MLB Network a week or so ago,

and they were going through all the guys who hit 40 homers last year and are getting released this year or not being signed, like Trumbo or Chris Carter, and they were saying, what's going on here? Are home runs the new inefficiency or something like that? And, you know, I think it's probably just a product of the fact that everyone hits home runs now. If not 40, then everyone's hitting 20 or 30.

And if you're Chris Carter, even more so than Trumbo and you're limited in what else you can do, you know, if you're carrying tool is you hit home runs, then that's less impressive now relative to the rest of the league. But Jose Bautista has been a pretty interesting story going from the demands for a several-year extension for many, many millions of dollars. And now, of course, he has a qualifying offer and he has draft pick compensation and he's talking about a one-year deal, although it would still have to exceed the qualifying offer amount. What do you guys think? Does he end up going back to the Blue Jays? Will he end up being a good deal, even though we might've looked at him a year or two ago and said, this is going to be a guy that a team regrets signing? I actually think he's probably going to end up back in Toronto, and it may even be a one-year

deal. I want to say that, oh, gee, it's just his personality. Teams just don't want to deal with the headache of it. But one of the reasons why I think he'll end up back there is there's just such a glut of positionless sluggers out there. I mean, Mark Trumbo, you mentioned, and Mike Napoli, and Encarnacion got less than everyone kind of expected. He ended up having to settle for just a three-year deal. Especially right-handed power hitters, the market has just collapsed. Maybe that's because Jack sees no longer in Seattle and can't sign three of them by himself. I don't know. But it really, to me, the market as a whole, the one thing that really stands out to me is how underpriced Pure DH is right now,

especially guys with power, how underpriced they are. I do think that there is an inefficiency here that maybe some people take advantage of. But right now, with that many options out there, I don't know why a team would want to give Batista a three-year, four-year, or even two-year deal and give up a draft pick. So I think he's going to end up back in Toronto. Yeah, I usually say this is an example of just how important the walk here is. Your market value is so often just determined by how well you play in the six months prior

to your free agency. But, you know, Mark Trumbo hit 40XL months, and he's having trouble finding a job. To me, it's, not to go back to this hobby horse, but when you only carry 13, and on some days, 12 position players, it's just harder and harder to have these monodimensional guys.

And, yeah, it works if you're carrying David Ortiz, a 950 OPS guy, but it's harder when it's a trumbo. It's harder when, you know, Randy makes the point that these guys are all right-handed, and I think that's a really good point. You're carrying a guy who's not going to have the platoon advantage much of the time, who maybe can play half a position for you. It's really tough to commit a roster spot and that kind of money

and that kind of organizational investment to that player. Well, I would even argue, I mean, I mentioned right-handed, but I mean, there are left-handed guys who fit this just as well. I mean, Peter Alvarez is still out there. You know, Adam Leend, I mean, he's maybe not quite the same quality, but platooning is just, it's a dead art in baseball now when you've got 12 position players. And Joe and I used to rail about this all the time on our podcast years ago. Nothing's changed.

Teams just are more willing to have that eighth reliever than try and cobble together an inexpensive and effective platoon. And so these guys that don't have value aside from their bat and maybe only from one side just aren't being valued properly, I think. Ben, if you were the Red Sox, would you have gotten in on Encarnacion or would you have done what they did, which is kind of sign Moreland and look towards this Moreland, Ramirez, Sandoval kind of rotation on the corners with the eight spot next to it? with the eight spot next time. Yeah, I mean, I wonder whether they asked about getting Todd Frazier in the Chris Sale deal. I wonder whether that came up at all, just to not have to go into the season

relying on Sandoval to do something. That's obviously not a position that has worked out well for them in the past. So I don't know whether that was like a luxury tax kind of consideration, whether, you know, they traded Buchholz and maybe that helps them get under some threshold that they didn't want to go back over if they were to sign Encarnacion. But, you know, obviously, they'd be a better team with him than not. Can we talk a little about that Mitch Moreland signing? Because I still don't get that. I mean, it was only one year, five and a half million, but he's just not that good a hitter for a guy who plays first base.

And I don't know if they're just trying, you know, with such a potentially dominant lineup around him, so many good hitters in Boston, but replacing Ortiz with Moreland, it's, if I can go old school, it's like replacing Luke Gehrig with Babe Dahlgren on the 39 Yankees or something like you're, you've got all these great hitters at positions that are tough to find offense. and then

you're going to use one of the easiest spots in the lineup to get offense and put a guy who's an average hitter at best and probably not even that. Well, you don't look at it as replacing Moreland so much, replacing Ortiz so much as he's replacing Shaw, right? Yeah, but I feel like for the money,

especially when you look at the bats that are out there right now, did they jump the market a little? I think the Blue Jays jumped the market a little bit with Kendry's Morales. No question. I think it's interesting. Teams that have waited, there's lots of options still out there, and I think some teams are going to get a bargain. Ben brings up the real point. I think this was, they don't want to be over the threshold. You combine everything, not going after Encarnacion, signing Moreland for 5 million, getting rid of book holds for basically nothing.

They're really trying to manage payroll, not just looking towards where they are now, but where they might have to get to in July when they have to trade, have to acquire somebody. And, you know, if Trumbo is, if you believe he's the best free agent remaining, I don't know that I would say that, but if you you think that's the case i mean is the the most likely outcome for him also that he just goes back to baltimore i guess i just i don't see i guess i find it hard to even at last year last year's big stats i don't look at trumbo as somebody who really should be batting impact spots for a team i don't see him as a difference maker so whether he goes back to balt or not, I kind of just shrug my shoulders at the whole thing. I could be wrong. He's a late bloomer, and he is legitimately a 45

home run guy, and that's going to carry his value for a few years. But I really see him hitting 250, 290, 460 next year, and that guy just isn't helping no matter where he plays. I know MLB.com did a thing. I want to say Mike Petrello did a StatCast thing talking about saying that basically if he was a, if they just left him alone to play first base,

he might actually have more value because the difference in defensive value would be made up by his actual defensive performance at the position. So you look around and see if there are teams that could just plug him in at first. Obviously, the Orioles can't do that with Chris Davis, but is there a team with just a straight hole at first base that isn't just pulling guys out of the KBO to play there because they're cheap. Oh, wait, not that I didn't see him whenever he did. Hey, have you seen his projections? I haven't seen it, and that's wonderful and lovely. My understanding is that the KBO is

like playing on the surface of mercury, so I'm taking all of it with a grain of salt. Yeah, I mean, there just really isn't anyone left who makes you do more than shrug your shoulders. I guess the only pitcher who qualifies is perhaps Jason Hamill, whose offseason has not gone the way he would have wanted. Of course, he got the Cubs not to exercise his option as a courtesy to him,

and then he became a free agent, and maybe it turned out not to be a courtesy i don't know i mean i i think i would have done the same thing if i were hamill regardless of whether there was any sort of interpersonal problem between him and madden after the way that he was handled or used or not used late last year but you know independent of that I think Hamill's done enough to suggest that he should have been able to get more than the one year and 12 million or really 10 after his buyout that he was in line to get. I mean, he's obviously not been the most durable pitcher, but he's been about a league average guy for the last few years. that has plenty of value and it seems like there

are a lot of teams that could use him that would upgrade if they were to sign jason hamill and he's changed agencies already once this winter as he tries to find a home so do you have any uh ideal matches for jason hamill i just underlie first if i told that Ivan Novo was going to get $28 million guaranteed, Jason Hamill would be unemployed. Things change. Things change in a hurry. I don't know. I think there are a lot of teams that, if you're just looking for that replacement level,

28 start, 160 inning guy, and if you can get one or one plus option, it fits, what, 22 or 23 teams? Yeah. I mean, that's, on the one hand, there's, you know, a big market for him. On the other hand, there's no team that absolutely has to have him. Like, if there was an elite starter out there, you know, the Astros would be all over that guy right now. That's the one thing that the Astros could really use. And that's just not there on this market.

And even the first day of free agency, that guy really wasn't out there. I mean, this is, what's interesting to me is we've known for, like, two years that this was just going to be on this market and even the first day of free agency, that guy really wasn't out there. What's interesting to me is we've known for like two years that this was just going to be one of the worst free agent classes that we've seen probably in a decade. Until next year. We're all saving up our pennies for two years from now. But that's the thing is that if this market had come along 10 years ago, you would have seen teams because of the scarcity of talent, you would have seen teams falling over themselves, overpaying for guys just to get somebody.

There was a free agent class, God, was it 2000? There was a really weak free agent class like 15 years ago, and you had some of the worst contracts ever come out of it. I'm thinking, was that the Mike Hampton? I would say the Hampton year. Was that also Nagel in that? Yeah, Hampton and Nagel were, I think, the same year. More Rockies shrewdness there. But we've seen teams in the past, teams compensated for a bad market by overspending. And maybe some of these players anticipated the same thing this year. And this is yet another data point.

And baseball teams are much better run as a whole today than they were 10 or 15 years ago. Teams are not willing to overpay. Players maybe haven't adjusted to that new reality and figured the weak market would help them. And if your agents say, look, you're the second or third best starting pitcher in this free agent class, you're going to get paid. Well, you're probably disappointed right now. And this is another one of those reasons why salaries as a percentage of revenue in the game as a whole have dropped so much. You know, players, yes, I think the players have made mistakes in terms of CBA negotiations over the years.

See, it's not fair when your answer goes on so long as to take it to my room. That's never happened before, Joe. But I'll let Joe finish the point. But the point is that, you know, in addition to the structural issues here, I think just smart teams mean more money being saved by ownership because they're not paying for replacement talent. And, you know, you also have five to seven teams a year that just kind of don't really care how many games they win the following season. And even with the new CBA kind of leveling the field on tanking, I wouldn't call them anti-tanking provisions.

They just removed some of the incentives to tank in the new CBA. So even more teams than ever, just kind of throw up their hands and say, yeah, you know, whatever the difference between 70 and 75 wins. This is one of the early things we all talked about 20 years ago is that there's no margin in going from 70 to 75 wins.

I think most teams have internalized that, but to go back to the point, you say, you said, teams years ago, this money would have been spent on players. And I don't understand, guys. They can't spend it internationally, and they can't spend it in a draft. Shouldn't they automatically be spending it on Major League Baseball players?

I'm sorry, Tony Clark just left the room. Can we do the CBA conversation? Or do we not have 17 hours for me to yell? But no, I think Randy's basically right. Teams are just smarter. And the compensation structure of the industry hasn't adjusted to the fact that teams are just smarter now about not paying for service time, not paying for mono-skilled players, not paying for quote-unquote veteran leadership.

Joe, let me ask you a question. Knowing what we know now, like 15 or 20 years ago, whichever negotiation came after the strike negotiation. The 98 one. Yeah, the 98 one. It came within, I think, hours of another work stoppage. And one of the sort of red lines that the players would not cross was the idea of a hard salary cap.

But even when they were offered a salary floor, right, they were philosophically opposed to a salary floor because they believed in the free market. And that was why, you know, it was a principled approach. They're like, you know, if we're going to demand to not have a limit at the top, then we can't ask for a limit at the bottom. Forgetting the philosophical moral arguments here, do you think the players would have as a percentage of the industry gotten more revenue over the last five or ten years? Maybe not going back 20 years, but the last five or ten years if they had swapped a salary cap for a salary floor?

Because all these teams that have no incentive – like if you had a salary floor of, I don't know, 60, 70, 75 million now. We actually have seen more money transferred from owners to players if they had agreed to something, which at the time they were willing to go to war to prevent. The devil is in the details. Where am I setting the floor? And a floor without a cap is, by definition, inflationary. Everybody has to get to a floor. Let's say they agreed to a cap, a hard cap.

Well, then you're just fixing a set of revenues that goes to labor. Yes, because over the last... I want to say, I'm trying to think of when we first started talking about this, maybe five, six years ago. The players have, in that window, been getting 43%, 44%, and then down. There's no question that any negotiated percentage

would be higher than that. Players as a group would have gotten a larger percentage of revenues. that's the thing for all we talk about how the nfl players you know the players union the house union or whatever like they get a higher percentage of of revenue in that sport than baseball players like even if morally maybe it may make you cringe but if all you care about is maximizing the revenue that your constituents get going Going the salary cap, you know, hard percentage of revenues approach may have actually benefited the players. The owners,

without even, you know, without realizing it, got a huge windfall by the players refusal to do that right at the time when the industry was being revolutionized by data and just smart business practice. I think you want to be careful about reaching that conclusion only because you're changing one element of it and saying, okay, now we're going to say players get 48% of revenues and that teams have to have a payroll between 90% of X and 110% of X. And that's all well and good. But once you do that now in a sport like baseball, where tracking the local revenue is such a big issue. Now, how are we defining baseball revenue? And how are we dealing with teams that own their own

networks? And how are we dealing with teams that don't have an arm's length relationship with their broadcast partners? We've seen what Major League Baseball, the lengths that teams will go to, to lie about their finances.. Remember the Blue Ribbon Report? I would be really careful about just saying, well, if we just had a payroll, if we had a payroll scale and a fixed percentage of revenues going to the players, they'd automatically get more raw cash. I think you'd have a far more complicated question than just saying. That's a fair point that a lot of the revenue there might be hidden, but are we 100% certain

that some of that revenue isn't being hidden now? When we talk about 40% of revenue, I'm not sure that includes everything from MLBAM. Right now, the players have no incentive to go look. Fair enough. All of a sudden, now that's on the table. We've seen this in the NFL where a team like the Cowboys wants to cut itself out of the national market.

I'm going back. This is probably a 10-year-ago thing. They didn't want to be part of the NFL marketing program. They basically wanted their own deal so they could keep that money. A lot of these new stadia, I don't know exactly. Again, I'm not an NFL labor expert. We can get Bill Barnwell and guys like that in here to talk about this. I'm just making the point that it is a lot more complicated than just saying, if there were these rules in place, would the players be doing better?

My bigger thing, and I've talked about this, and I know ben we're 9 000 miles from where you wanted to go to that i just i i think that the structure of compensation in major league baseball no longer maps well enough to the structure of value production in major league baseball and that's the problem that to me mlb the union just punted they didn't get anywhere they didn't get within a universe of the conversation they had to have, which is MLB teams want the guys from 23 to

29, and you've got to get to 29 just to get paid, and MLB doesn't want the guys from 29 to 34, speaking of broad strokes here. So until you fix that in some manner or fashion, you're going to continue to see players getting 40% of revenue. Well, especially just since the last CB was signed, the aging curve in baseball has changed

to the point where old players aren't returning the value that they used to, and free agency has become a worse deal. I mean, there were tons of good deals to be had on free agents in their early 30s back in the early 2000s, and those deals just aren't there anymore, and teams aren't willing to pay for it. And they don't have to pay for it because they can win with a bunch of pre-arb and arbitration talent.

And so to me, one of the small, I think very much overlooked failures of the union in the CBA was not getting the minimum salary increased. I think it's like 535 this year. It was 500,000 at the beginning of the last CBA, so I'm not even sure it's gone up with inflation. That is a huge

windfall for the teams when you're getting so much value out of pre-ARP guys. Even guys with 2+, not quite super 2, but 2-plus years are making maybe 600 or 650. There's no incentive for teams to give those guys anything more than nominal raise, and that's a huge part of your constituency.

And like you said, that just exacerbates the inequality between what a player is actually worth and the salary that he's bringing in. And it would change the leverage equation when you talk about the Sal Perez type deals, where if the guy's getting half the amount, if you double the incoming salary and you project that it's going to go up a little bit each year, guys in their second year might make a little more. Plus, you throw in cost of living adjustments to, say, a million dollars a year. All of a sudden, the player who might be more inclined to take that really team-favorable deal might be a little more likely to say, hey, look, I'll take my chances here.

I'll go to arbitration. And like me, you'd have some inflationary pressure on arbitration salaries. It's not a coincidence that so few guys who go in the top 10 picks in the draft who've gotten paid $5 million or $4 million have signed those. Bryce Harper's not signing away arbitration rights. Salvador Perez's. Matt Moore was like a ninth-round pick and got like $50,000 in the draft. He's signing away his years of service to get guaranteed. Danny Machado is going to free. Right, exactly. And so if you've got guys making

the minimum salary were $800 or $1 million or whatever, or you put in a clause where there's a guaranteed minimum increase based on service time, so a second-year player. To me, the problem isn't just the rookies making $535. It's that after an all-star season as a rookie, what's Chris Bryant? What did Chris Bryant make last year, like 650 or something?

Bryant's not the guy we're talking about here because he's got the – But my problem is the point is that no matter how good you are – You can conceivably make – assuming you get your service time next week. Say you come up in June like Correa did. You'll be min, min, min, and then that fourth year is going to be min, too, because you're not our Belgium yet.

You'll have three and two-thirds years of service time, and you possibly might not have made $3 million. $2.5 million is about right. That's what all the profit is made, and the union did absolutely nothing for that class of players, profit is made and the union did absolutely nothing for that class of players

which is by playing time is becoming larger and larger each year so yeah I know we're far afield but this gets into why is the free agent market like this because teams know they can get the value from those guys they can pay $500,000

and get 90% of what they would have to pay $15 million to Jose Bautista for by the way Ben this is why when Joe and I would do a podcast, we'd basically have like two things we might want to talk about before we start, and then we'd end up with an hour and a half anyway. That was a pretty good Randy and Joe segment right there. I know. I was going to say I missed this.

You guys should do a podcast. He's never inviting us back. Jeff Sullivan would never put up with this crap. Well, before we wrap up this primer on baseball economics, just, you know, very quickly, is there one thing that you want to see someone do or someone sign someone or someone figure out some dilemma so that it doesn't linger into the season? Or are we in for another month of complete baseball wasteland? I would like to see if the trade market heats up. It feels like we were supposed to have a really fantastic trade market. And we basically had that for like three days. Yeah. The White Sox made their two big deals.

I think there was one other in that mix. And that was it. And you keep waiting for like, okay, free agents, the free agent market's terrible. Let's see some trades. And we just haven't really gotten there. And I'm kind of still holding out hope

we can get a spurt of some really interesting baseball trades before the offseason's out. All right. Well, quickly, let's talk about 2017. Is there anything that you are looking forward to? I mean, it would be tough to top 2016 for baseball, at least say what you will about the year in a larger sense. Baseball had a great year and baseball probably had the best sports story period, at least in this country, and lots of sentimental, fun stories, whether

it was Vin Scully's retirement tour or David Ortiz's retirement tour. There was a lot of- Oh, Clinton's retirement tour? Sorry. I wouldn't talk that way about your next mayor, Joe. I live in Westchester now, brother. Yeah, my next mayor. Is there anything, I won't say that 2017 could do to top 2016?

I don't know that there is another Cubs story out there right now. But what are you looking forward to, whether it's a team or a trend or a player in the upcoming season? I don't know if it's a positive, but I'm fascinated by the shape of the way baseball is played right now. We are basically a home run spike from being 1968. Right. And I don't know if that's going to, we still haven't quite figured out. I know you're convinced it's the ball and that's the best explanation I've heard, but it's not like we have, say the intelligence community telling us it's the baseball.

So I'm not sure, but I do know that if home run rates were to go back to even what they were in 2013, baseball, which is already kind of edging towards not that watchable on a lot of nights, could become really, really not very entertaining. And I'm concerned about that for the game because I don't know how you fix the singles problem, the ball and play problem. And so if home runs, like home runs are what I'm watching. Home runs continue at this level. It'll mask the underlying problem, at least for a little while. But the game is right now just the home run spike is the only thing propping up offers. Indians and it was a lot of fun, but the postseason is sort of like a vision of what the regular season is going to look like, you know, five years down the road or so. If you look back at past

postseasons, you know, it's slower, there's more time between pitches, there are more pitching changes, et cetera, et cetera, longer ad breaks, longer games, and you wait a few years and by then the regular season starts to look like what the postseason used to look like. So if you look at this postseason's games, which were very long and very slow and fortunately were redeemed by some really compelling totally know where it came from, which means that it could disappear just as suddenly and mysteriously. And I agree that the consequences of that would be pretty significant. They say that you love baseball the way it's played the most, the way it was when you were 12 years old. And for Joe and I, we always talk about how 80s-style baseball, the contrast between power and speed, the fact you had that sweet spot where you could build

a team with speed and defense, you could build a team with some power, and you could have a great full-time, you could rely on the rotation, you could do a lot of different things. We love that era. Of course, when we were 12 years old, I think you were still a zygote. But you've heard of 80s, But I do believe even beyond our biases.

Samu believes nothing happened before 88, right? Right. And that kind of baseball is the type of baseball we love. And we're just so far afield from that now. And of all the changes, it's the strikeout rate that is just the one that drives everything else. If you could cut strikeouts by 25%, you would – I could put up with everything else. I could put up with the overwhelming shift towards bullpen. I mean I think that adds interest to the game to have bullpen.

You'd be able to win a championship without a great rotation if you've got a great bullpen for instance. But strikeouts are not balls in play and balls in play are exciting. And web gems are the things we remember at the end of a season, you know, web gems and home runs basically. And we don't remember the strikeouts unless it's the 20th strikeout in a game or whatever. And I feel like baseball needs to get back to that. Then, you know, it's not something they addressed in the CBA.

It's maybe not a CBA issue. It's something they may address separately. But I do think that baseball is one more evolution in the strikeout rate away from really staring at the abyss. And it's something I know Rob Manfred has talked about a little bit, but I think he really probably needs to get cracking on doing something. All right. We're being pretty negative about baseball, but I guess that's... Well, that's... But I want to make a point here. One of the reasons this is a focus is because we have so much ridiculous talent that doesn't... I want to make a point here. One of the reasons this is a focus is because we have so much ridiculous talent.

I want to watch Andrew Elton Simmons more. I want to watch Kevin Kiermaier. Defensive plays are exciting. A 20-strikeout game is exciting, but Jason Hamill striking out eight guys in five and two-thirds innings isn't. I just feel like I want more opportunities to see Nolan Arenado make a play, to see Francisco Lindor and Jason Kipnis team up on a double play. There's just so much exciting athleticism in the game right now. I want these guys to have more opportunities to play baseball.

That, to me, is – I don't mean, it's not negative because, oh, baseball isn't as good as it was 30 years ago. It's that we're not, the baseball players are better. They just don't have as much to do. All right. Well, we have managed things so that we have about seven minutes to talk about the Royals, which is. Too many.

Let's keep talking about that. That's more than Kansas City is going to talk about the Royals this year. It's, I don't know that Rennie has ever talked about the Royals in seven minutes or less But we will test him here Because he's the one who has to leave at that point So we will ask you I mean, this has been a slow offseason for everyone It's been a very slow offseason for the Royals There was the Wade Davis trade happened

And then there was just the Dyson trade. And boy, that's about all that the Royals have done of interest this offseason. How dare you, sir? They also re-signed Drew Butera. Sorry. Let's give them credit. My apologies to you and Drew. Also, yeah, I mean, we've known for a while that the Royals sort of have an expiration

date, at least this current core of the Royals. And so maybe there was some expectation that they would build up for one last run. And that hasn't really happened. It sure looks like the Indians have a pretty unobstructed path back to the central title. Can you construct a scenario where the Royals are a wildcard contender? Is there anything they can do in the next month to make that more likely? Yeah, it's been a weird offseason because in isolation, I think the way Davis and Gerard Dyson deals are both completely defensible. And you trade Davis for Soler, so now you've got outfield excess, and then you've got outfield excess, and then you turn that outfield excess into a potential starting pitcher,

Nate Carnes, who, if he doesn't work out at the rotation, could be a top-end reliever, maybe that way Davis quality. But you're turning one year of club control on Davis and Dyson into four years. So I get the trade, but the thing that's been lurking over this, or this franchise's head for really four years now is we all knew 2017 was going to be the last year. I mean, we knew Hosmer and Moustakas were both Boris clients.

We knew they weren't going to sign long-term deals from basically the day they were drafted. But the end of the year, you've got Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas, Alcides Escobar, Danny Duffy, Lorenzo Cain, potentially Ian Kennedy if he opts out.

Like you have an enormous – even with Davis and Dyson trading, you have an enormous amount of guys who are going to be free agents at the end of the year. So I think no matter what the Royals do in terms of preparing for 2018-2019, they're probably not going to win in 2018, 2019. So yeah, these trades in isolation make sense. But if you can give up one win in 2017 for three or four wins the years after that, great. But this is the only year, I think, in the next three or four that the Royals have a legitimate playoff shot. So it is a little bit strange that, OK, great, they made these deals that are going to help them go from 70 to 75 wins next year. I don't really care. And I think most Royals fans don't care. If they make the playoffs this year, they take one last run with this core. I think you ask any Royals fan, they'll trade two or three years of sucking after this

for one more playoff run with this core. Maybe you can answer this one. Why did the story here change? Because it felt to me like all along, it's been what you've said all along. 2017 is the last run for the championship world. And then 2018 will be a new team. And then, you know, in 2038, they'll make the World Series again. But why did it change this?

Why are we not seeing the Royals go all in? Why have we not seen the Royals say, this is our last shot. Let's put the best team we can on the field in 2017. I don't know for sure. I mean, some of this is our last shot. Let's put the best team we can on the field in 2017. I don't know for sure. Some of this is probably money. I think David Glass is maxed out or whatever. I can't deny that. You just said David Glass is maxed out.

I'm sorry. He's maxed out. I mean, maxed out psychologically. Obviously, I didn't say he's tapped out. He's got plenty of cash. but he won't spend it. You guys are going to start a Kickstarter for David Glass. What are these days you're going to stop? No, never.

Walmart, dude. The dude ran Walmart. Walmart was one of the most vicious competitors in American history. And he got to baseball, and he's like, give me more of other people's money. You're never going to move me off this position. I'm sorry. It's just not going to happen. And I don't necessarily disagree with that, but the last two or three years, you were skeptical

he would spend a fraction of the money he actually did spend. He did spend a fraction of it. I'm frustrated because even if he wants to be a cheapskate, like, take $20 million out of the 2018 payroll and move it to 2017. Like, for the same reason, and the Royals fans are really going to care if they lose next year $20 million out of the 2018 payroll and move it to 2017. For the same reason, and the Royals fans are really going to care if they lose next year if

they're in the playoffs this year. If they want to cut the payroll down to $75 million next year, it doesn't matter. It may be better for the team in the long term if they lose 95 games and get a high draft pick and get some more money in the draft. That's, I think, the other thing, which is I don't think Dayton Moore subscribes to

the whole tanking idea. He's too gentlemanly, I think. Even when the Royals were bad, he was spending money in 2008, 2009, signing Gil Mesh and Jose Guillen to try and make the team, quote unquote, respectable. And you contrast that with what the Cubs did. And it was like, no, we're clearing house. We're going to lose. And we're going to get the first and second pick in the draft. We're going to draft Chris Bryant. And you know, the Royals are getting the fourth pick

in the draft when the third pick is everybody knows third pick is Manny Machado and the Royals got the fourth pick and took Christian Colon. Well, maybe you think he'd be over this stuff by now, Ben, but he's not. You asked me to explain it. We're finally on a topic that I actually know something about. Yeah, I mean, it's been, what, 10 months since the last Rennie on the Royals epic blog post, so you've been saving all this up all that time.

And again, your daughters have seen a Royals championship. My daughter is going to be seven in April. She's never seen the Yankees win a title. Tell her to pick a better team to root for, Joe. All right. Well, we have managed to wrap this up in roughly the allotted time. So well done by us.

This is great. I have you guys on. You do all the work. I just sit here and it's like listening to one of my favorite podcasts that's no longer around. But I'm glad that I can get you guys back together. And, of course, people can find Rennie on Twitter at Jazerly. They can find Joe on Twitter at Joe underscore Sheehan. And they should, they must subscribe to the Joe Sheehan newsletter at JoeSheehan.com.

And a lot of you did last time he was on. And I have not heard any complaints or regrets. He somehow finds fun and interesting things to write about even when there are no fun and interesting things going on. He even wrote about the Reds recently. So people who are sick of not hearing about the Reds on this podcast can go subscribe to Joe's newsletter. So guys, thanks. I enjoyed it as always, and I will have you on again sometime. Always a pleasure, Ben. Okay, so that will do it for today. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild.

Five listeners who have already done so, Mike Taylor, Paul Harmon, Alex Banwell, Joel Berger, and James Turco. Thank you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectivelywild, and you can rate and review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. I also have a new episode of the Ringer MLB show up. Michael Bauman and I talked to David Rollins, the Cubs pitcher who has changed teams five times in 36 days this winter. We also talked to Nathaniel Groh about a Mike Trout contract hypothetical and Meg Rowley about the Mariners.

You can continue to contact the podcast at podcast at baseball prospectus.com or by messaging us through patreon and as i mentioned at the top of the show jeff sullivan will be back probably travel permitting in time for a friday email show keep in mind that he hasn't been paying close attention to baseball as he's been traveling over the last 10 days or so not that there has really been much baseball to pay attention to over that time but send in some evergreen questions send in some crazy hypotheticals whatever you want to podcast at baseballperspectives.com and we will answer them then. Talk to you soon.