Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1012: Rating the Rankings

Episode Date: January 27, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about baseball’s trampoline problem and the future of Andrelton Simmons, then discuss and critique the crowdsourced organizational rankings produced by FanGraphs readers. Audio intro: Camera Obscura, "I Don’t Do Crowds" Audio outro: Smith Westerns, "Weekend" Link to crowdsourced organizational rankings  iTunes Feed (Please rate and review us!)  Sponsor Us on Patreon  Get Our Merch!  Facebook […]

I don't do crimes, everyone's really done to me now I'm off the line, and I'll say that it was sadness Please come, to save me from myself again To shield me to the disguise, when my heart acts a secret And this can make you sigh Hello friends and welcome to episode 1012 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you and brought to us also by our Patreon supporters and by my own overlords at Fangraphs. They have no pull over Ben. Ben is here. I'm talking to him. Ben with the ringer. This is Jeff Sullivan with Fangraphs and we're doing this in the morning, which is uncommon. Good morning, Ben.

Good morning. How are you doing? Doing okay. I too am doing okay. And before we get to what I would like to talk about today, I wanted to mention something that someone, an Effectively Wild listener, had brought to my attention. It might have been two weeks ago at this point, and it's unverified. Let me just put it that way. I was sent a message. I think it was a public message as a matter of fact, but I just started trying to look it up. I couldn't find any proof, but nevertheless,

somebody told me a thing on the internet, so therefore I believe it to be true. And what this fellow, or woman, I don't remember, I'm sorry, said to me was that this individual saw a post of Dodgers utility player Kike Hernandez at a trampoline gym. Now, yeah, so I was just, I know he has an active social media presence, but I couldn't find anything on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter. I don't know, maybe it was a Snapchat. I don't know anything about that one, except that videos are temporary. Although I guess Instagram also has temporary videos now, right? I don't know. Yeah. Who cares? The point is somebody

told me this thing and I have no idea if it's true, but it would be a weird thing to make up, I guess. Yeah. Although you're known for having opinions on trampoline gems. So maybe someone is playing on your, on your interests. Yeah. I think it's not a coincidence that this individual sent this message to me. I don't want to sit here and repeat stories that I've already relayed in a separate podcast. But it was about a year ago I was talking to Carson Sestouli on Fangraphs Audio. And at that point, I was about a month removed from going to an area trampoline gym with my girlfriend and two friends who were a couple. And the long and short of it is I'd never been to a trampoline gym before. It always sounded interesting and appealing.

But we walked in and there's these like a warning advisory videos up on monitors just by the entrance that advertise all the different ways that you could get hurt. But in like a funny way, it was like cartoons showing that you could die in there and then you have to sign a waiver. And we went in and within very literally eight minutes of the four of us just jumping, just jumping, not doing any acrobatics. I hurt my back. A friend's wife hurt her hip and our friend's husband tore his ACL. And so we spent the rest of the day in the emergency room at a nearby hospital where they proceeded to ask, what'd you do?

And he said, trampoline gym. And they said, sky high. We know the one they send people here every week. So since then, since that podcast, people have been sending me very frequently links to stories about people

getting hurt at trampoline gyms or relaying their own stories about getting badly injured at trampoline gyms. Trampoline gyms seem like they are death traps and I'm not, I'm badly injured at trampoline gyms. Trampoline gyms seem like they are death traps. And I'm not out for trampoline gyms. I guess I'm not out for like pro trampoline gyms. But what I do think, and the whole point of this is that there's really no reason why a major league baseball organization should be allowing any of its players to participate in the activities present at a trampoline gym.

its players to participate in the activities present at a trampoline gym. So if it's true that Quique Hernandez was actually at a trampoline gym and actually jumping, either the Dodgers are, they have like a massive blind spot in the contracts that they have players sign, or Quique Hernandez was in very public violation of his contract, or I don't really know what a third option would be be because it seems like incredibly dangerous. And this would have been a few weeks ago. Spring training is like a month away now. So this would have been a month and a half away when this message would have been relayed to me. Yeah. Maybe teams just underestimate the likelihood that a major league player would visit a trampoline gym. I guess you can't write in every eventuality into a player's contract. Maybe there's some sort

of blanket prohibition on all dangerous physical activities. I don't know how specific you have to get with listing individual ones, but we hear about that from time to time. A player gets hurt playing pickup basketball or something like that, and maybe his contract prohibited that. Or like when Jeff Kent was prohibited from riding his motorcycle and he rode his motorcycle anyway and he hurt himself. I think that was the story. And he said that he was washing his truck and broken a bone in his wrist. So, yeah, I would think that if a player got hurt trampolining, he might come up with an excuse for that also. Well, maybe don't post it. I would assume this was posted somewhere if this is actually true.

Sorry, Kiki Hernandez, if it's not true, but whatever. Someone said it to me. Yeah, it sounds dangerous to me. I don't know that I've ever been to a trampoline gym. I've been to trampolines, but not to a gym for trampolines. But just based on your testimony, I will be avoiding them. So I recommend that all baseball players do too. It is not cheap either. I don't remember the specifics. We've all probably seen sample player contracts that have been leaked to the public or voluntarily shown to the public, but there are sections in there that restrict these players from doing any number of activities in the offseason because, of course, the player's health is paramount to the organization.

So there's no possible way to list all of the things you don't want a player to do because there's no possible way to list all of the ways that players could get hurt. Like I could any given morning, I could fall down the stairs when I'm just going down to get my coffee and you can't prevent a player from walking up or down stairs in his own house. But in fact, players have gotten hurt that way, right? Wasn't that the Clint Barmas venison story? Didn't that involve stairs? I don't remember Barmas. There was an excuse that Kazuhiro Sasaki got hurt carrying luggage, I think, downstairs. But that was revealed to not be what happened.

downstairs, but that was revealed to not be what happened. Yeah. Trampoline injury, that would fit right in with the long lineage of just ridiculous baseball injuries. And I don't know how many of those are actually covers for more nefarious activities. I don't know. Sometimes you get a player who hurts himself making a sandwich or something like that, or he sneezes and he strains something and he goes on the DL. There's a long history of baseball injuries. It seems like there are sillier injuries in baseball than in other sports. I don't know if that's necessarily true, but definitely anecdotally true. So trampolining would fit right in. And I guess to Hernandez's credit, I've seen no evidence that he actually is hurt. There is one player. So you might remember a few off seasons ago, there was

some controversy over R.A. Dickey wanted to do, I think, a charity climb of Mount Kilimanjaro. Right. Right. When he was under contract with the Mets and climbing Mount Kilimanjaro is not the most extreme or dangerous activity you could do for a tall mountain that's relatively accessible. But my mom did it. Nice. Kudos, Mama Lindbergh. That's beautiful. It's like takes a week, I think, to get all the way up and acclimate.

Anyway. Yeah. Dickie was under contract with the Mets. He was also very good at that point. And I think the Mets, there was some thought. I don't know if the Mets threatened to void his contract, but there was at least the thought that they could. And that clearly was resolved. Everything was fine. And the Mets wound up with Noah Syndergaard eventually. So it kind of everything worked out for them. But that would

have been one thing that Dickey was in theory prohibited from doing, at least without getting team clearance. It does make me wonder how many players are participating in activities they shouldn't be participating in in the offseason. And I know of one player, one pretty important and highly paid player in the National League, who I'm going to assume he's not supposed to participate in MMA style offseason fighting, but he does. It hasn't affected him to this point. I don't think his, well, I can say I know for a fact his team can't possibly know that he does it, but he does it. It's not the only thing that he does and he can't be the only one. He just happens to be one that I know what's going on. So there's got to be a good number of players

who are violating their contracts at any given week or month in the off season, which means maybe at any given point we could wake up or look at Twitter and see the news that someone has just had their contract voided because of reasons that we had absolutely no idea what they were doing in like the middle of December. And then maybe it turns out you shouldn't be like racing motorcycles in Nepal. I don't know who would be doing that, but maybe that's also an Ari Dickey move. Yeah. Okay. One other quick thing. We got a couple emails in response to something we talked about on a recent listener email show. There was a question about whether Tony Phillips' record for career war without ever having made an all-star team is unbreakable in this era of everyone making all-star teams. And Tony Phillips has something like 50 wars.

making all-star teams and Tony Phillips has something like 50 wars. So a couple of people have pointed out that one possibility would be someone who is a defensive specialist and gets good wars because of his defense, but doesn't get recognized in the way that all-stars get recognized. So someone like Andrelton Simmons, who is at 21.5 career war and is still 27. Seems like he has a shot. I think someone else mentioned Kevin Kiermaier as someone who would fit into that category. So if you're going to do it, if anyone's going to do it, that would be the way, I suppose. And defense still seems unsung and undervalued to a certain extent. There are players who've made the Hall of Fame almost solely because of defense, but it doesn't seem like all that often you make an all-star team

without having also hit pretty well, which Andrelton Simmons doesn't do. So maybe he is the best hope to break the Phillips record. Yeah, he's a good one. Kiermaier could be difficult for one thing. I think he gets recognition for his defense already, and he's on a race team that doesn't really have much in the way of star players obviously there's evan longoria but he's not facing the uh the mike trout cover that andrelton simmons is sort of like the all-star game rain shadow where if the angels need one representative then you know who they're going to take so simmons has a chance but he's also at uh on baseball reference about 22 war on fan graphs less than that there's different defensive metrics that go into those numbers.

But still, the baseball reference number would put Simmons about 30 wins short of Tony Phillips. And I think we can agree Simmons' defense isn't going to get better. So it's going to be a tough road. He's got a shot. If you look at a case like, I don't know, Mark Belanger, I think I'm pronouncing that right. He wound up at a 35 fan graphs war. He played until he was 38. He was also an outstanding defensive infielder who could not hit even a little bit, but he kept playing a really good defense until his like mid thirties. And he was having three, four or five win seasons based on defense, almost alone

until then. So Simmons has a chance. That's a good suggestion. He's probably, in terms of player type, I think that's the best shot at it. But maybe Simmons is going to need to have a couple years where he's like a league average hitter because it won't really draw him too much all-star attention because he still won't be good, but he needs that value to boost himself because to this point he has been very bad. Still won't be good, but he needs that value to boost himself because to this point he has been very bad. Yeah. I think you just really Frenchified that Orioles shortstop's surname.

I don't know what he was referred to in America, but I always feel weird when players just go, like, I don't know, if he was Patrick Roy, like that just wouldn't work very well. Yeah, I think he went by Belanger, but I liked your version. Definitely classier. Belanger. I don't. Yeah. I think he went by Belanger, but I liked your version. Definitely classier. Belanger. I couldn't stand it. Nicknamed the blade. Just call him the blade. Yeah,

that'll work. We'll just call him the blade at all future references. So, topic. Yeah. Want to do some topic? Okay, sure.

So let's, let's, for my own perspective, do a self-serving topic by referring to a post that I did. But it was a postoles. And we, last Friday, compared the Baltimore Orioles to every other team in baseball and tried to figure out which teams would or would not trade everything about themselves for everything about the Orioles. And to that extent, we were trying to figure out sort of where we would rank the Orioles organizationally among the entire baseball landscape. I believe we wound up in the

vicinity of like 23rd, maybe 23rd and a half, because there were a few question marks. So I like projects like that. I like doing that with the Orioles. And I thought to myself, well, what if we could get numbers for every team and every organization in baseball and try to develop a picture of the entire landscape? And I don't want to do that myself. I'm sure you don't want to do that yourself. And one of the best things about writing is that there are people who read what you write and then they can help you out. So long story short on, I think it was Tuesday, maybe it was Monday. It really doesn't matter. I put up 30 polls on fan graphs for the fan graphs audience. And I asked the readership to rate their favorite organization, or in the event that they have two or three favorite organizations, same thing applies,

wanted people to rate their organization on a scale from zero to five based on everything, how good the roster is now, how good the farm system is, the amount of money the team has available, maybe the stadium, maybe the owners of the front office and contract statuses and whatnot. maybe the owners of the front office and contract statuses and whatnot. And so this is crowdsourcing. And I think that we have some very clear examples of where, let's say, crowdsourcing can fail, but there's no great way to do organizational ratings. Fangraphs used to have an annual organizational ranking project that some people remember for not going so well. There was a very famous example of the Mariners being number six and then being, I think, the worst team in baseball for the next few years.

Right. And the thing we ran into is that we just really don't have and didn't have a great means of evaluating front offices, which, of course, matter a lot when it comes to trying to figure out who is great and who is not. So Fangraphs abandoned that. They moved to the positional power rankings. But still, there is no perfect answer out there. So I thought crowdsourcing could do well enough. People should know a lot about their own teams. And even if there is an optimistic bias that fans have toward their own team, maybe every fan base has somewhat the same optimistic bias.

So I thought I could even out. Long story short, results are posted. They're all up on Fangraphs. It's posted on Thursday. And I would like to discuss the ratings with you a little bit to see maybe it's not so interesting to see where we agree with them, but maybe where we disagree with them. And we can at least start with this. I threw out some very obvious troll votes, and this should come as no surprise to anyone, but the organization with the number one rating, Chicago Cubs. They had an average rating of 4.81 out of five, and second place was down at 4.42. That would be the Cleveland Indians. So Cubs, I can't imagine that there's any real disagreement there. Nope, not at all. I was surprised as you were by the

number two team, I think. Just not that the number two team should be any lower than, I don't know, number four at worst, probably. But I think that I would have probably put the Dodgers, as you noted, up there just because of all the institutional advantages that they have. Maybe they are not quite as good as the number two ranked Cleveland Indians in 2017, but they certainly have all of the advantages. They have the payroll, they have the market, they have the ballpark, they have a front office with like six different GMs, and they have almost unlimited resources or as close to that as a baseball team can come. So I would have put them up there. I probably would have put Boston over Cleveland too, just because I think that they're probably better right now and also have some of those other advantages. And I don't know, maybe the farm system has been strip mined enough by Dave Dombrowski that you would bump them down a bit, but those are quibbles and nitpicks. And those are all excellent teams that should all be in that range somewhere.

Yeah, I think if I was doing this based on my own ratings, I would have the Cubs won, the Dodgers very close. And then probably the Red Sox about even with the Astros around third and fourth, where I think the Astros

have less money to spend. The Red Sox have a lot more. But I think the whole Dave Dombrowski front office plus no team of front office analysts kind of moderates or mitigates the Red Sox rating to me. There's a lot of good young talent on the team. Of course, the farm system is not empty and the team right now is incredible. So the Red Sox have way more going for them than not for them. But I think I trust the Astros front office a little more. I think they have a better or at least a comparable long term standing. I was a little surprised by the Dodgers rating. And granted, the Dodgers were in the top four. There was like tier one of those

four teams and the Dodgers were at the bottom of it. But they're basically right there with the Red Sox and kind of the Indians. I was surprised. I know we're probably seeing a bias in here. A little bit of the Cubs just won everything, and the Indians very nearly just won everything. The Indians do not spend that much. I think that is kind of the problem. They have, I guess front office-wise, the Dodgers have as many former GMs as the Indians have future GMs. So everyone who maybe works for the Indians now

will eventually end up working for the Dodgers. But it would be very difficult for me to rationalize putting the Indians ahead of the Dodgers given what the question was about. Just because I think it's going to be more difficult for the Indians to be competitive every single season. I know in the short term they're great. Yeah, I mean they're one of the worst attended teams. They lost Jeff Manship. So that's going to hurt. By the way, I talked to Jeff Manship yesterday. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Actually, I wrote about Jeff Manship. So you can see that

soon. It'll be covering some of the same ground that we talked about earlier this week. So how much of a letdown is this conversation right now from that one? It was pretty good. And yeah, so I think that you are right about that. And maybe perceptions are somewhat skewed by all of the great bullpen stuff they did and Terry Francona and trying to come up with a way that the Dodgers could ever start losing again because it just like it seems hard to imagine and not that they've been a powerhouse really like they've had to compete with other teams in their division over the last couple years although they've won it and they haven't really put together that incredible team, but they also have just built this rotation that has the most DL days ever. And even so, they won the NOS and didn't really have a hard time of it in the end. And I guess they've come up with a novel way to use their resources, which is by taking on all of this risk. And instead of going and getting the ace,

they will just go get 15 pitchers and hope that each of them makes like five starts and they'll just be able to piece together a rotation. And I don't know that that strategy has worked all that well, but it's worked well enough because they can afford to pay Ryu and Brandon McCarthy and Brett Anderson to just sit on the disabled list all season. And

they have prospects and they have resources and they didn't trade all those guys when they had opportunities to trade all those guys like Seager and Urias. So they just seem set. They have an enormous front office with as many analysts as any team, except possibly the Rays, I believe. Yeah. I don't think that you could really put any other team above them. At least I wouldn't. Yeah, and I agree with you. They haven't really been a powerhouse. They haven't had that dominant season like the Cubs just had.

But at the end of the day, the Dodgers have won the National League West four years in a row. They've won no fewer than 91 games. And I think that they've become really what was, I don't know, anticipated or feared, depending on your own perspective, where they've taken a little bit of that like raise or small market mentality to a team that has a bunch of resources where we just saw with the Logan Forsyth trade where they decided, well, we don't want to pay the premium to get Brian Dozer, so we're going to pay a lesser price for a comparable player, maybe a little bit worse. But the Dodgers are in a position where they probably don't need to be that conservative with their prospects. But once you work for an organization like the Rays, I think you can never

forget how important it is to have that sustainable youth. And they have so much of it. There's just so much. And the advantage that they have, the big advantage they have over a team like the Rays is that when you have someone like McCarthy or even Kershaw or Kazmir, all these highly paid players who are on the DL, it just doesn't matter because there are more replacements because they haven't traded away the replacements in the farm system. So when you take sort of the R raised front office mentality and combine it with four times the money, then you get a team that just it's so hard to topple. And to the Cubs credit, they have a juggernaut, but I'm not convinced the Dodgers are much worse. And we probably don't need to keep extolling the virtues of the Dodgers when maybe a more interesting place than the Dodgers being fourth in our ranking is I was a little surprised to see the Yankees in ninth. The Yankees are there effectively tied with the Mets and the Texas Rangers, which I, if I were doing this again, I definitely would not have the Yankees tied with the Texas Rangers. Mets, interesting. Rangers, less interesting as a comparison for the Yankees because the Yankees

have so much money and so much youth in the farm system. Yeah. Well, I guess people are being swayed by the sort of lousy Yankees teams that we've seen lately. Although even at their lousiest, the Yankees are still pretty good and they've managed to do that. Whereas every other team inevitably goes in the tank at some point and has a losing season. The Yankees have not for decades. And that sort of speaks to the resources that they have at their disposal. And possibly they're smart. So they've certainly done some dumb things. And it's hard to attribute that to the front office or ownership because that always seems to be a muddle. And when they make a terrible move, often you hear that it was

not the front office's fault. So I don't know whether people are being overly influenced by that and not remembering that, hey, these are the Yankees and they have not had a losing season for a really, really long time. And they also have, if not the best farm system in baseball, one of the top two or three, which is a frightening prospect for any other team because that is how the Yankees built this never losing team in the first place was by actually holding onto some prospects for a few years and promoting them instead of trading them and just losing them when they signed free agents. So if they do that again, and Brian Cashman seems pretty determined to try to do that,

then as long as some of those guys pan out, there is no reason to think that they could not just continue to win for the foreseeable future. Yeah, the Yankees have not had a below 500 record since, what is it, 1992 when they were 76 to 86? I believe that's correct. So now in one sense, over the last four years, they've actually had three below 500 Pythagorean records. So maybe that makes a difference to some people.

They clearly have not felt like a dominant team. They've missed the playoffs three of the last four years. And the other year they made the Wild Card Game and lost, which is maybe even worse. They're missing the playoffs. I don't know. Last year they did finish fourth in the division. So I think people were a little down on that

because it's embarrassing for the Yankees to be in fourth. They hadn't finished that low since 1992 when the division was bigger. So, you know, fourth place, but still they won 84 games. And I get that the Yankees are not at the top of this list because they don't have the really good team now. Totally understand that. I can see them being behind all of the teams that are in front of them, but it's just, I guess, surprising to me to see them.

The Yankees got an average rating in this poll of 3.24. The Rangers got an average rating of 3.23. Effectively the same. No difference really there. I don't think that the Rangers project to have a much stronger team this year than the Yankees do. I know that their Rangers have flouted the projections a few times in the last few years, so I totally get that. But the Rangers are also in a very delicate position where you Darvish is a free agent next offseason. Jonathan Lucroy is a free agent next offseason. These are probably the Rangers two best players and they could walk because the Rangers keep saying that they don't have that much money. And you know, a team that doesn't run out of money is

the New York Yankees. Right. And based on, I folded in, in the little spreadsheet I put together that I did not send you, I folded in 2017 team projections just based on Steamer. And I also included Keith Law's farm system rankings. Not that, again, Keith Law is the authority on everything, but he is the newest and best source with current farm system rankings that

should not have changed. These rankings just came out last week. And the Rangers were 15th in Law's list, which that's fine. That's exactly average. And the Yankees were second. The only team with a better farm system, according to Keith Law, than the Yankees is the Braves, which that makes total sense. The Braves are terrifying because of all the youth they have that could develop. But the Yankees are terrifying because of all the youth they have that could develop, but the Yankees are terrifying because of all the youth they have that could develop. And also they're the Yankees with the most valuable organization in major league baseball, if not all North American sports, right? Sure. Yeah. So that's, that part is absurd. So the Yankees really good farm, decent product. Now I am surprised a little bit to see them ranked among the teams that they are near.

So the highest ranking for, I think what we can agree is a bad team for the short-term future. That's the Atlanta Braves. The Braves were rated 15th by the, uh, by the fan graphs community. In my experience, Braves fans in the fan graphs community are insane people and they are very enthusiastic about what the Braves are doing. But it's interesting to me to see. So we had the Orioles around 23rd, I believe. And in this case, people ranked the Orioles 16th.

So the Orioles are right there with the Braves and the Brewers. That's where they're sandwiched. But the community a little more optimistic about the Orioles Than we were, but still Slightly less optimistic about the Orioles Than the Atlanta Braves, who are bad Discuss Yeah, I wonder whether People take the rebuild

The tank and the rebuild As more automatic than it Actually is now, just because The Cubs pulled it off so incredibly Flawlessly well And the the Cubs pulled it off so incredibly flawlessly well, and the Astros have pulled it off almost as well. And it's not a sure thing, and it's definitely not a sure thing when a lot of your best prospects are pitchers as the Braves are. So I don't know. I wonder whether people are too confident because of the couple teams we've seen do it recently that if you decide to tear down and trade all your guys and assemble a strong farm system that inevitably of those guys are going to pan out and be good and be cheap,

and then they can supplement with outside players. And I don't know that we know a whole lot about their front office, except that they were good at fleecing the Diamondbacks for a while there. But other than that, I don't know. Maybe it's new ballpark enthusiasm. Maybe it's enthusiasm about the fact that the public is paying for all of their ballparks everywhere, which is, I guess, a helpful thing for an organization. But yeah, it's optimistic.

And I wonder whether people's expectations are skewed somewhat by the rebuilds that we've seen gone really well. And we could probably dig into the history a little bit and come up with examples of rebuilds that did not go so well. It's far from automatic that you will decide to tear everything down and then automatically be the best team in baseball a few years after that. Yeah, I agree with you. I think that it's difficult. We've probably, both of us have thought at some point, probably about going into the history and trying to see how rebuilding teams did. It's challenging to do that because if you go too far back rebuilds just

operated differently of course rules are different now and front offices just operate differently now than they ever have so maybe a rebuild in 1983 would have functioned differently than a rebuild in 2013 but i i do agree that your average rebuild will not and almost cannot go as well as even the Astros to say nothing of the Cubs who became the best team in baseball seemingly overnight. I know it wasn't overnight. They took their lumps, but you know, the Cubs wouldn't be the Cubs if they didn't, I don't want to say luck into Jake Arrieta, but they lucked into Jake Arrieta. Let's be real here. They identified him as an underrated talent, but they didn't think he was going to become

as good as Clayton Kershaw for a stretch there. The Cubs also... Or Hendricks, for that matter. Or Hendricks. Yeah, of course. Hendricks just coming out of almost completely nowhere. And of course, the Cubs wouldn't be the Cubs if the Astros didn't not take Chris Bryant in the draft.

So maybe the difference between the Astros and the Cubs is just that draft pick, where if the Astros had Bryant instead of the Cubs, we'd be talking about them. Yeah. So that gets interesting. And so it, it is relevant to look at the two most recent and most complete rebuilds and see that the Astros and Cubs succeeded ahead of schedule. But you do have teams like, I know when the Mariners brought in their front office, they're like, we want to build a winner and stay a winner by building from within and that was in 2008 and we know what happened there right we have seen i guess the reds rebuild is newer but it's clearly not close the twins have sort of rebuilt i guess they're not close i don't know nobody knows really

what the a's have been doing but they've but they've been moving parts around and they're not close. Maybe that's the thing that the Braves have in common with the Essers and the Cubs is that they have gone about it similarly, methodically. I mean, they went all in on the rebuild. It wasn't like we're going to try to be good and also try to get younger and better at the same time. It was, no, we're going to be terrible. We've decided that we're going to be bad for a few years and going to get rid of almost everyone good and get what we can for them. And if you do that, and maybe that is not something that has happened as often throughout baseball history.

Maybe teams didn't tank as intently as they have recently and just written off a few years. Maybe it was that rebuilding teams didn't actually intend to be so bad while they were rebuilding and now they're going about it in a more systematic way. So if you want to say that the Cubs and the Astros, they are a new kind of rebuilding team and that it's not fair to compare them to previous rebuilding teams that weren't going about it in the same way and you want to connect Atlanta to Houston and Chicago which would be fair then I can accept that argument but I am still reserving judgment

to a certain extent for now yeah here's the thing that troubles me about the Braves and you talked about this already they have Freddie Freeman who's good and he's a he counts as a moderately young position player. They have Dansby Swanson, who they shouldn't have, but they do have him, and he's good, and he's there, and he's in the major leagues. He's a good player, and he's like 23 years old. Okay, great. That's a really good way to build around the position players, and Ender Enciarte is there too, as sort of a poor man's also underrated Kevin Kiermaier. Anyway, the Braves have built around pitching. That's been the talk all along. They've wanted power arms, power arms, power arms is what the Braves wanted, power arms. And they have power arms to be sure, but I don't know if anyone's noticed, but most of them have been bad. They

have a lot of really interesting talent. Obviously, Keith Law is not an idiot. Need to put them first means something. They have a lot of pitching in the system, but this is a team, their pitching is in such a state that they signed Bartolo Colon, R.A. Dickey, and Jaime Garcia all to contracts in the offseason because they just didn't, they couldn't fill out a starting rotation. Julio Tehran is good, I get that, but after him, Matt Whistler, he hasn't been good. Fulton Avitz, he's been interesting, but he hasn't been good. Aaron Blair was awful last year. Williams Prez, I guess he doesn't really count because who cares, but whatever. John Gant is there, and he hasn't been very good, and was awful last year. Williams Prez, I guess he doesn't really count because who cares, but whatever. John Gant is there and he hasn't been very good. And you just go on down the list. I don't love Sean Newcomb as a prospect in the minors. He's got really good

stuff, but he's never not walked people constantly. And I mean, what they got Tyrell Jenkins, I think in the Jason Hayward trade. And then he was really interesting. And now he's just waiver fodder. He's not even with the Braves anymore. So there's just you get cases like Aaron Sanchez, where pitchers just have stuff and then they figure out strikes. But that doesn't happen very often. And then that doesn't even include the injury risk. And so I guess like the Mets are there in the division is sort of a best case outcome. But that's the best case outcome for a team like this.

And yeah, and I don't think you can count on the Braves to develop four or five aces. I'm not convinced you can count on them to develop one from the group that they have. So it just it makes me really uneasy to to put them in such a standing. Yep, agreed. Cool. So what else is there? So going on down the list, it's maybe at this point, it's most interesting to go from the bottom up because people are going to be curious. The Cubs are the first, of course, that makes all the sense in the world. And in last, I adjusted the voting results based on some trolls. So I threw out some obvious negative votes and some obvious positive votes. It didn't really adjust to the end result at all in terms of the order. But the team with the second lowest average rating at 1.17, second worst

average rating separated pretty well from 28th place, San Diego Padres 1.17. Second worst average rating, separated pretty well from 28th place. San Diego Padres, 1.17. And in last place, at 1.16, the Cincinnati Reds. So Padres, bad. Reds, bad. 2017 rosters, I think we all agree, bad. So then it's about what's the farm system look like and what does the front office look like? And the Padres have a more the front office look like and the padres have a more

interesting a front office than the reds the the reds general manager is named dick williams which automatically makes you think he's twice as old as he actually is yep uh it's it's difficult for me to buy a dick williams front office as being like analytically progressive i know that's my own bias but is it really but anyway yeah, yeah, Padres Reds at the very bottom, just clearing the Diamondbacks, Twins, and Athletics. Yeah, I can't argue with that too strenuously. I would have the Reds there, I think, and I can't really quibble with the Padres either. You could make cases for some of these other teams. We don't really know what Oakland is doing, as we've already mentioned, and their farm system isn't particularly impressive. Their

roster isn't particularly impressive. They have a front office that has been smart in the past and not even all that long ago seemed really smart again, but I don't know how they stack up now. It seems like other teams have caught up to them, at least in terms of the number of people employed and surpassed them by quite a bit too. And then there are the Marlins and the Marlins just when you're rating organizations, I think have to be in the discussion for worst, just based on ownership and front office and all sorts of things. So I could see them being there. Other than that, I don't know that anyone has all that strong a case to make here. I think that really the two teams that are down there

and maybe the two teams I just named are the only ones that have a legitimate shot. Yeah. In the Fangraph's comments to this post where i put up the results there was one person who i was okay so i referred to aj preller in the text as an insane general manager which i i do believe with all my heart that aj preller is an insane general manager or i mean the the man's been suspended multiple times by major league Baseball. He is just nonstop. He's extremely excitable and a little bit, a little bit, a lot of bit slimy would be, I think, an appropriate word. But the Padres, so Keith Law ranked the Reds' farm system eighth, which I didn't expect. I was

expecting at least like a one in front of that eight because I don't know anything about the Reds' farm system, but there you go. Called them eighth, but he put the Padres third. at the Reds' farm system, but there you go. Called them eighth, but he put the Padres third. Now, the Padres are interesting because they sort of ruined, or A.J. Preller ruined the Padres a few years ago by making horrible moves that didn't work out. And then, you know, some bad luck happened, like Tyson Ross hurting his shoulder. Who knew that a pitcher who threw 65% sliders would get hurt at some point? But the Padres were bad, and it seemed like it seemed like AJ Preller had tanked them and then they're still bad but they got young really fast again which I guess to Preller's credit he's helped build that firm system back up so maybe they've just sort of treaded water in a very interesting way but

it's also worth reflecting on uh so I'm just going to do this thing I pulled up the Baseball America top 100 mid-season prospects so this is uh I guess up the Baseball America Top 100 Mid-Season Prospects. So this is, I guess, that's self-explanatory. This is from last July, but it's still worthwhile. So I'm just going to do a search. Just going to do Control-F, Padres. Number 15, Anderson Espinoza. He's a Padre.

They got him from the Red Sox. Kudos. Number 39, Manuel Margot. They got him from the Red Sox. Hunter Renfro 66. The Padres developed him 87. Javi Guerra. The Padres got him from the Red Sox.

So those are the top, the four best Padres prospects. According to that list, three of them acquired from the Red Sox within a calendar year. Three of them acquired from, I guess the day of Dombrowski front office in, in a calendar year. And of them acquired from, I guess, the Dave Dombrowski front office in calendar year. And so where would, in the same way that we can say, where would the Braves be if it weren't

for Dave Stewart? Where would the Padres be right now organizationally if it weren't for Dave Dombrowski and their very opposite front office priorities? Because he's really helped them rescue that organization. Yes, that is a very good point. I guess if he weren't around, if he hadn't inherited such a rich system and not at all inherited the desire to preserve it, then yeah, I guess you have to have someone like that because if every team is currently in protect prospect mode, then there's no way that you can, I guess, infuse that sort of youth as quickly as they have managed to do it. So it's been a symbiotic relationship for those two teams, I suppose. Yeah, it's worth remembering, I guess, that, you know, so Anderson Espinosa, a really good young low-level pitcher, came over in the Drew Pomeranz trade.

really good young low level pitcher came over in the Drew Pomeranz trade. And as many of you will recall, Drew Pomeranz was traded with some, let's say, medical uncertainty, although the Red Sox sure felt like things were certain. They were not because the Padres did not reveal certain medical issues with Pomeranz. I forgot what they didn't reveal something about his treatment. He was taking some treatment for, I think, an an elbow thing and they didn't tell the red socks about that so the red socks are like drew pomerans all right and then it was revealed oh drew pomerans oh no but still uh so you'll remember the padres and the marlins worked out a trade that were similarly because adriapreller was a slimy human being he didn't tell the marlins everything then the marlins were given the chance to undo the entire trade that they had made with uh with

the padres but what they did instead was undo part of it. They undid the part with the pitcher who was most clearly hurt. Colin Ray went back to the Padres. Marlins kept Andrew Kaschner. Anyway, Padres traded Drew Pomerantz straight up to the Red Sox for Anderson Espinosa. Really good young prospect. Pomerantz also had not had the extent of his medical issues revealed. Major League Baseball gave the Red Sox a

chance to undo that trade, but they were still happy to do it. But I don't know if I would have felt comfortable still keeping that trade. Maybe that's informed somewhat by hindsight of Pomeranz just being okay with the Red Sox. I know he's got club control, but it would have been that easy for the Padres to end up keeping Kashner and Colin Ray, who I guess they have back, and Drew Pomeranz because AJ Preller was kind of a twat about it. And so they could have not had the prospects that they got. And the Padres now have Carter Capps, right? They got him from the Marlins for no reason because the Marlins just kind of threw him in

as if he's like a throwaway pitcher. So AJ Preller, maybe in the way that a rebuild needs to get kind of lucky, like we've seen the Cubs get, Preller, maybe he hasn't deserved it, but he's been sort of fortunate to get the players that he's gotten to. The Padres are going to be down for a couple more years, I think, but it's at least possible to see them emerging. I don't know if they'll ever have a starting pitcher again, but it's possible to see them getting decent again soon. And I'm not sure Preller deserves it.

I'm not sure he'll be around if and when the Padres are good again, but they have at least from the outside turned things around to the point where they again have an interesting farm system and a bad product, which is kind of what Preller inherited in the first place. So, he made it, everyone.

Nothing else on here looks way out of whack to me. I don't know. Anything else you want to point out and mock and question? Well, okay. So, we have to end this in a few minutes because I got my chat because then I got to do some other... So, the Angels finished

7th lowest. Seventh lowest? Yeah, that sounds right. Angels were given the seventh lowest rating at 1.84. They're sandwiched between the Rays, who are, you know, they try their damnedest, and the Marlins, who I guess have some things in common with the Rays

and some things very much not in common with the Rays. But the Angels are right there in between. They are one of seven teams with an average rating below two. Keith Law gave them the 27th ranked farm system, but Steamer, which is too optimistic, but Steamer gives the Angels the ninth best projected record in the season ahead. When Fangraphs will eventually fold in Zips, Dan Zimborski's projections, and then we'll have like a 50-50 blend. And when that happens, the Angels will look worse than this. They're probably like a 500 baseball team right now. But people are clearly down on the Angels. They spend a decent amount of money. A lot of bad investments are coming off the books. One particular bad investment,

well, not for a while, but you know, that's the way it goes. They don't have much of a farm system, but they do have Mike Trout and they do have what I think to be a decently competitive roster right now. There is young, controllable pitching in the organization. There's three of those starters are healthy now. And then there's also Nick Troppiano, who I think is interesting, who's coming back from Tommy John surgery and Andrew Haney, who's interesting, who's also coming back from Tommy John surgery. And then you've got your Skaggs and Richards and Shoemaker, et cetera. I get why people aren't optimistic about the Angels as an organization. I don't think I would be this pessimistic about the Angels as an organization. Again, Trout, he has to come up, I guess, on every one of our podcasts. But yeah, I guess it just surprises me.

I'm the high guy on the Angels a little bit. I don't know how much higher I would have put them, but seventh lowest feels harsh, even though I don't know where they should go. But we talked about the Orioles last week. I'm not convinced the Angels are in a worse position than the Orioles, but the Orioles are separated here by like nine places. Yeah. Sam wrote an article about how when you have

trout, it's almost inexcusable not to have a good baseball team just because, you know, like it gives you such a headstart to have the best player in baseball, one of the best players ever for a low rate for much of his career. And the fact that they haven't been able to supplement that to build good baseball teams, at least for some of the years that he's been there, is a pretty poor reflection of the way that they at least used to be run. And so it also goes to suggest that they wouldn't have to do all that much work to get good again as long as they do have Trout. And obviously he's getting more expensive now. He's not quite the bargain that he once was, but still having trout means that you are well on your way

to not losing a lot. And so you should be able to build around that, but they haven't been able to do that lately. I see what you're saying though. I just kind of glancing at them they look a little Less hopeless than some of the Teams around them but I don't know the farm system's Still not so hot and Although I guess it's better than It was until recently And I'm probably not quite

As high as you are I suppose So we'll see this will be Your big reputation Making thing for the 2017 season I suppose so we'll see this will be your big reputation making thing for the 2017 season Jeff Sullivan he's the guy who likes the angels so we'll see what happens and you've done

many of these community polls and ratings and crowdsourcing stuff and I guess the Fangraphs community is a pretty good stand in for the Sabermetric community as a whole. And we know that people tend to be over-optimistic about players on their teams and their teams as a whole. And so when you do the fan projection ratings, you kind of adjust them down mentally to account for that. And similar factors are at play, I guess, with the contract predictions.

Similar factors are at play, I guess, with the contract predictions. Do you have any other number of pulls where I've asked people to identify with a favorite team and then click in the appropriate pull. And there's obviously no way for me to cross-check that everyone's doing everything like they're supposed to. But like there's always a lot. Oh, there's so many Blue Jays votes, just constant. Like one in three Fangraphs readers seems to be Canadian. And then you've got obviously a big Red Sox audience, obviously a big Cubs audience. These teams are popular and they've been very good and sabermetrically inclined for the... Anyway, but we have very clearly, there is no Padres audience.

Very clearly, there is no Rockies audience. I wrote a post about the Rockies yesterday. I don't know why I did it because no one is going to read it. We don't really have a Rangers audience, at least not much of one, but I kind of get that because we've basically called the Rangers a paper tiger for the last five years. So I get that. I get why Rangers fans would be turned off, but I don't think we've been anti-Rockies. I think we just can't find a Rockies audience. They must be out there. I know there's like Purple Row, for example, the SB Nation blog about the Rockies. It's not just screaming into a wall. There is a crowd there, but we can't get too many Rockies votes. And other teams that don't have big communities are predictable. The Marlins, they've driven their fans away. And the Rays have only a little more gently driven their fans away.

But yeah, Rockies, man. For an interesting organization, it's really difficult to summon the mental strength to write about them because you just feel like no one's going to read what you do. Yeah, I guess it probably has some correlation with how the team talks and operates, right? Like if you're a Rays fan

or an Indians fan or whoever, and they have a front office that is constantly spouting fan graphs like conclusions and sentences, then maybe you'd be influenced to actually look up what they're talking about. And that will take you to a Jeff Sullivan post eventually, because there are a lot of them out there. So I guess that would have something to do with it.

And if the Rockies have kind of been this old school organization for a long time that hasn't really embraced sabermetric philosophies, at least publicly or vocally, then that could account for some of it. And also just the team not doing all that well, which probably depresses enthusiasm for any organization. I could tell you yesterday afternoon, I did get an email. It was a one line email. From a Rockies person. And the one line read. With an exclamation point. Rockies blowing up on Fangraphs today.

Because there was some Greg Holland content. And also this Rockies pitch framing content. That I wrote about. So there's at least awareness. Within the organization. About Fangraphs. So we'll see if that permeates the fan base. All right.

You've got to go chat with Bork and others. So I will let you do that. All right. Thank you very much, Ben. This has been wonderful. This has been, uh,

I don't, whatever you close it, you do the closing every time. All right. See ya. Bye. You can support the podcast by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild five listeners who have already pledged their support. Danny V,

Benjamin Pensurga, Mark McEachern, tierney calhan and jim beetles thank you you can join our facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild and you can rate and review and subscribe to effectively wild on itunes you can contact me and jeff via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or by messaging us through patreon have a wonderful, and we will talk to end a podcast.