Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 104: Our Least-Favorite Offseason Signings So Far

Episode Date: December 18, 2012

Ben and Sam discuss what they see as the worst signings so far this winter.

Ugh, you're the worst. You're the worst. You're the worst. You're the worst. You are the worst! Hey! You do not get to call Britta the worst. Yeah!

Good morning and welcome to episode 104 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus. I'm Sam Miller, still in Tyler, Texas, in case you're wondering. And in New York, New York is Ben Lindberg. How are you, Ben? All right. How was day two in Tyler? The same.

So Russell Carlton wrote a piece for us on Monday called There Is No Unicorn, and it was about what he perceives to be a pervasive negativeness by baseball fans toward every move that their team ever makes um he sums it up i think uh with perhaps my favorite sentence which is uh well i don't know where it is you've not committed it to memory no i'm gonna just read a paragraph. The sentence that I like ends this paragraph. What fascinates me is that when teams make the big or little move, it's rare to find any fans of the team who are happy and content about the move.

What's even more interesting is that for the trades that have gone down, it seems that both sides are sad about their team's relative position afterward. Had the four-way deal that was supposed to happen at the winter meetings happened, most baseball fans would be an inconsolable mess at this point. I have asked you to come up with your three least favorite moves this year, limited to free agent signings or player extensions, because I want to see whether we agree. And because I think it's a good time to do that.

We're midway through the offseason, and I figure we will otherwise talk about whether we agree with the impression that Russell has and whether there's any reason for it. I personally will start, though, by saying that I think that he exaggerates the problem somewhat. I think that – Yeah. I mean I really like the article and all the arguments that he came up with that I have seen used before. But yeah, I mean there have certainly been recent trades that people have been happy about.

been recent trades that people have been happy about. I mean, I'm sure you can find some fans on each side of most deals that aren't happy with them. But I've certainly spoken to people who are happy about transactions that have taken place this winter. I guess maybe the fact that the market has changed as far as how much people are getting paid has kind of affected people's reactions a bit. If their expectations for salaries haven't kind of inflated along with the market, then there might be a tendency to think that every move is an overpay, which is probably not the case. Because if every move is an overpay, then you just kind of have to adjust your expectations. I would imagine that that's probably though been a case for many years where the public perception never quite catches up to baseball inflation.

There was a nice period in the mid-aughts when inflation seemed to stop for a few years. And at that point, it seemed like there were a lot more good moves being made in the public opinion. And then around, I don't know, maybe 2000, well, I guess by about 2009, maybe the people had started to get a little too greedy and it seemed like, once again, every move was being ripped. Although maybe that was just the case that Twitter had come on by then. I think that last year it seemed to me that there was a more knee-jerk negative reaction to moves than there is this year. It seems like this year there's been a backlash to the backlash, and so I haven't felt quite so scolded by people who are

against everything um last year i thought there were um a lot of moves that were criticized and i was baffled because i could only think of one move i didn't like last year which was the aaron harangue signing by the dodgers and i particularly remember the day that the Dodgers signed Chris Capuano for, I believe, two years and $9 million or something like that. And the outrage was very loud and seemed to be quite unanimous, and I couldn't figure out why, because Capuano was being paid to replicate something like a quarter of what he had done the previous year, which seems like a fair thing to do.

I think that that is maybe the largest, I don't know, maybe the single largest reason for people to react negatively to trades is the idea that teams are paying for the player's best year. that teams are paying for the player's best year. And I don't think that that usually happens. Even if the player had an out-of-his-norm good year the previous season, you rarely get paid, I think, full value for that last season. I think that there's a fear, for instance, that Kyle Loge is going to get paid based on this year exclusively,

and what he's actually going to get paid is probably like 60% of his value from this year. So anyway, are we ready to pick our, pick our, to Rick? Yeah, sure. Do you have three moves? Yes. All right. I do too. So what's, what's your number three?

Well, I feel like the first one is kind of a gimme. We've, we've talked about it before, but the Brandon league deal well that was my number one okay yeah i figured we just get that out of the way uh and i don't know if that fits exactly under any of russell's uh archetypical arguments i mean he has the uh if your team just signed a decent reliever, you can always point out that your team needs a proven closer argument, which is, I mean, that's not exactly the argument that we have against the Brandon League deal. But in a way it is, because we're basically saying that he is not so good that he should be paid like a proven closer, I suppose, which he was pretty much. Yeah, I think the devastating thing about the league move is that, well, it was signed very early in the offseason as though it were anticipating great salary inflation or something like that.

And I think that what's been devastating for it is- As though it's the Dodgers and they just don't care. Yeah, well, that too. Since then, a number of relievers have signed for much more reasonable deals we talked to uhara i think mike adams signing this uh weekend for two years and 12 million puts the league move in stark contrast i mean mike adams has just been so much so much better than League over the last few years. And to sign for a shorter commitment and for less dollars per is, you know, that's a big deal.

And Santiago Casillas just signed an extension. He's not a free agent, and he won't be for another year, but he just signed an extension that's considerably less than League as well. And he's also, I would say, outpitched league over the past few years. And so I think that it might be often unfair to criticize reliever contracts, but in this case, I don't think it is. Okay, so that's one. I guess my second one, which I wrote about last week, is Kevin Crea.

Hey, that's mine too. Okay. Yeah, so Kevin Correa signing for two years and $10 million with the Twins, which just, I mean, Kevin Correa is just not very good. I don't know how much deeper we have to get into it. He's a pitcher who, for his career, according to our numbers, has been replacement level, has been below replacement level for the past three seasons. This is the most money that he has ever made for a season. His last contract was for two years and $8 million, and then he was just not very good for either of those seasons, and yet he got another two-year deal for even more money.

So, I mean, I guess if you're the Twins, you kind of just need someone to start because you will forfeit otherwise. But just why Kevin Correa? I guess he just, I mean, he is the typical Twins pitcher who doesn't strike out anyone and has decent control and doesn't throw hard and is a veteran guy. But I just, I don't know. I don't see it, why you would kind of well-understood idea that players who were kind of in that Kevin Correa middle level where they're like veterans but they're only

worth a win or two are kind of always overpaid because they're so close to replacement level that you really, with a little creativity, you really should be able to find something like that for free. And Correa is actually below that. I mean, I would imagine that there are probably, I don't know, 40 starters in AAA who are like journeyman starters who are as good as Kevin Correa right now. It's amazing. Who cares? Right.

Yeah. You don't want to sign Kevin Correa and have him walk away after a year. I mean, once you get your claws in Kevin Correa, you can't let go. Right. Yeah. When the Pirates signed him, I was baffled then as well. And the explanation at the time was that he was going to provide good mentorship for their young pitchers, which was amusing because at the time they didn't seem to really have a lot of young pitchers who had any sort of upside, although maybe that's why Correa was a nice fit for them because he also didn't have much.

He could counsel them in saving their money, for instance, and taking advantage of the per diem because you have this forever. So I don't know. Maybe it's possible that Kevin Correa has some incredible reputation within the game. Maybe he's a pitching coach in training or something, and everybody knows this, but we don't. So I guess that's a possibility. I think it was interesting that you noted in the transaction analysis that Correa was being sort of actively shopped by pirates who were trying to win for once and and we're ad pitching right and so as they were trying to add pitching they were also

trying to dump correct and they couldn't um yeah so it seems to me that every offseason there's at least one case where there's a guy who in July at the trade deadline or maybe in August during the waiver claim period has absolutely no interest at all. No team wants him. He clears waivers. He's just considered dead weight. And then he becomes a free agent and all of a sudden he gets like three.

Yeah. He has struck out a batter every other inning for the last couple seasons. I guess he gets some grounders, but I don't know. There's nothing to recommend Kevin Correa to me. He was an all-star, in 2011 he was yeah the uh there's an entire there's absolutely certainly a entire topic idea in uh in pirates all-stars yeah right you know because it's a spectacular list do you know who? Or should we actually do a topic on that? Or do you happen to know some of the other ones?

I feel like it's pretty good relievers some years. Yeah, or pretty bad ones. Yeah. I actually do have a list. Are you ready? I am ready, yes. All right. So this is since 1994, okay?

Okay. So I'm going to start. I'll start going. Oh, wow. This is the great. I feel like you might have misstated this, actually, in the transaction analysis. Korea actually was one of three all-stars for the Pirates. Oh, yeah?

I didn't even look. I just said it's good to be a pirate yeah and to be an all-star i didn't realize he wasn't the only one though yeah no so in fact they have only had multiple all from 1994 to 2010 they only had multiple all-stars three times that's a 17 year period where they had one all-star career so this year was Hanrahan and McCutcheon last year was Hanrahan, McCutcheon and Correa

2010 Evan Meek 2009 Zach Duke and Freddie Sanchez 2007 Freddie Sanchez 2006 Bay and Sanchez this is kind of their golden era Jason Bay 2004, Jack Wilson

2003, Mike Wilson I believe that was the year he had the 7 ERA 2002 did I say Mike Wilson? yes you did of course I meant Mike Williams 2002, Mike Williams 2001, Brian Giles.

2000, Jason Kendall. 1999, Ed Sprague. 1998, Jason Kendall. 1997, Tony Womack. That is a distinguished company. Danny Mayfield. And 1994, Carlos Garcia. The funny part was that, well, one of the funny parts was that Correa wasn't even good

in that first half. It wasn't like he had some fluky first half that gets him into the All-Star game and then he fell apart. He had a 4 ERA and struck out under five guys per inning. And I haven't looked, but I'm assuming he was like a replacement for a replacement for a replacement or something he was probably there to to mentor the young right he was charting pitches or something oh the list i just read of players i i wonder if you actually looked at i mean bay and giles kind of mess up the the numbers a little bit i wonder if you turn that

into a team and and only included the all-star numbers that they had. I wonder if that team would be like an 87 team. I look forward to your unfiltered post on that topic. The Kevin Correa disastrous signing easily made fun of. Yes, and there aren't that many easily made fun of signings anymore i feel like or at least you and i kind of go out of our way to try to figure out what a team was thinking or in what way it might have made sense uh so we don't often do the just knee jerk that was stupid reaction but uh once in a while there's a Kevin Correa where I feel pretty comfortable

saying that that was a mistake. Yeah. Do you feel the same way, just out of curiosity? I mean, I certainly don't, but how do you feel about Mike Pelfrey? Yeah, I don't feel quite the same way. What were the terms? Well well it was one year and i don't know let me do all right well i mean the one year thing four million wow less than uh less than kevin gray uh so when the angels signed jared weaver to the extension like there was this fear that they could never sign anybody more expensive than weaver and like weaver's cost was actually like he took a hometown discount it's like they had to get cj wilson like just under the wire and like would they be able to give zach cranky enough without offending jerry so maybe kevin correa is like now the can't insult in minnesota yeah i don't know

it's not it's not much better in that he when healthy was kind of a Correa like pitcher who didn't strike out anyone and had not bad control and got some grounders but coming off of Tommy John surgery I guess that could be the reason why he didn't get a Correa contract and maybe he would have otherwise. So I don't know. I don't like that one exactly, but it doesn't quite provoke the same mockery. All right. So what's your last bad move?

My last one, which I don't think we ever talked about, was the Shane Victorino deal. Oh, yeah. To the Red Sox. Um, yeah. And I don't even know how much to get into it right now because we got a good podcast question, uh, about what the Red Sox have done this off season,

which I wanted to get to. And probably tomorrow we will get to because it's the email show. Um, unless you want to get to it now, but that was just a deal that, I mean, I guess it fit into Russell's first thing. If your team has signed a free agent, remember that the free agent is probably old in baseball terms. He's likely on the wrong side of 30 and past his prime or in decline. Ignore the fact that past his prime and useless are not the same thing. The fact that he will not repeat his glory years

means that the world is about to end. So, yeah, he's, what, 32-ish and coming off a pretty lousy year and is basically a platoon guy. And unless Ellsbury is traded, he will be playing a corner where his bat will look even worse and they gave him three years and 39 million which kind of kind of seems like a lot and confused me because I'm not sure what their philosophy is right now but that is a longer topic yeah well i mean yeah i could see that and and i think the thing that is a bit damning for that is that it really felt like the market value i mean we don't know these discussions but it really felt like there weren't other teams lining up to give him

close to that like there was a there maybe an Indians offer for four years and $40 million. Yeah. Well, and I guess what I mean to say is not that they had – I mean, maybe they had to bid that. Maybe they bid a penny more than the second-best team. But, I mean, it seemed like there were kind of baseball insiders who after that move were kind of baffled and said, you know,

I wouldn't have given him, you know, half that or whatever. Like, like there was a, uh, I, I got the sense that there were,

uh, many opinions within the game that thought that that was crazy. And so that was sort of a significant thing to me. But, um, you know, I mean, Victorino is,

uh, he is not a guy who was bad before this year. No. He was pretty good in 2011. Yeah. I mean, I feel like part of what Russell was getting at is also kind of shows up in the way that if you sign somebody who had a good year, you're buying high. And if you're signing somebody who had a bad year, you're signing a guy who's trending downward. Either way, you lose.

Victorino, a year ago, this would have been a great move. Why isn't this just buying low? I guess because of his age. I do feel like late bloomers worry me because I think they tend to be a little bit earlier. Like the later you bloom, I think the shorter your career parabola is. So I mean it wouldn't surprise me if Victorino was out of the game by the end of this contract. But I mean there's certainly a track record of success.

I don't hate it. Did I just ruin email Wednesday? No. I think we can talk about that tomorrow. So we actually have a different third move. So what's yours? But I'm not that confident about it. My third move would just be Josh Hamilton. I mean, I was waiting to be flabbergasted by some team giving him as much as the Angels gave him.

And some team did. And it surprises me. It feels like Hamilton is a combination of both overrating what he's done and underrating the amount of risk he carries with him. And it just feels to me like one of those things like every fantasy owner knows, like the idea that you can't win your draft in the first round, but you can lose it.

And it just seems like there's so much downside here hamilton is just have i been saying hamilton i feel like i might have said cranky uh i don't think i heard you say cranky all right okay good uh anyway hamilton just feels like a guy who's uh he's sort of the rare guy who has more you know downside than upside that you're spending all that money on. But I'm not totally convinced about that, and I'm not totally convinced that it matters for the Angels. Right. But I like it. It's a move I dislike. Okay. Yeah.

I guess, I don't know, maybe my expectations for Hamilton were anchored by his initial rumored demands to such an extent that when I started hearing that teams were going to hold the line at four years, I don't know, it just, it didn't shock me that he got that much. And in fact, probably I would have predicted that he would get more in years, at least at the beginning of the winter maybe or certainly during the season. So I don't love it. I've written about how I don't think Hamilton is that great a bet to age well as has everyone else in the world. So I don't love it but I guess I kind of don't hate it just in the sense that if the angels can afford it and really want to compete right now, then it helps them do that. And maybe it doesn't even matter, as you wrote in your transaction analysis, that they probably overpaid.

But yeah, I guess I dislike it for the same reasons that you do yeah it's not a uh it's not a move where i would you know call for the gm to be fired or anything like that it's just it's just not a move i like i mean we we talked i think early on we both predicted or we didn't predict uh we both said what we would be comfortable giving hamilton and so you might have been anchored by the seven and 175 that he was demanding i think i was kind been anchored by the 7-175 that he was demanding. I think I was kind of anchored by the number that we had, which were something like 70 million guaranteed. And anything over that, we were going to be worried. And so it's a lot more than that. But there are certain signings that leave you with a good feeling about the signing and some that don't.

And that was just one that never was going to for pretty much whatever he was going to go for. You just weren't going to feel good about that or you weren't going to feel like, I mean, not that free agency is about getting undervalued players or about getting good deals. It's usually about paying a lot of money for people. But sometimes with some players,

you just get the feeling that they're going to go for less than they're worth or more than they're worth, and you're just not going to like the move regardless of who actually signs the player. And even if they have a lot of money to sign the player, you're just not going to feel like it was good. And Hamilton was one that just was never going to leave uh sabermetric sort of people feeling good about the deal that his new team got you know next year we should we should

find like a sample of 50 people and uh like ask them before the offseason whether you know they think that he'll be overpaid or something like that and then ask them afterward whether they think the guy was overpaid i don't really know i haven't formulated this survey yet but i yeah like i imagine that a lot of times what you're really just reflecting is that you have a negative opinion about the guy yeah and you just sort of carry that negative opinion until he signs yes um and And Victorino probably last year, like another reason that last year this signing would have been okay

is that people liked Victorino a year ago. And he just kind of got old this year. Anyway, all right, so that's our three, four, or four, those are our four bad moves that we are willing to say were bad. Everybody else was... Yes. All right, well, we'll willing to say were bad. Everybody else was... Yes.

All right. Well, that will do it for Episode 104. We'll be back tomorrow. Send your emails to podcast at baseballperspectives.com, and we will answer them.