Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1091: The Deadline Dust Settles

Episode Date: August 2, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Salina, skateboarding, and Albert Pujols, then break down all the big (and modest) trade-deadline deals and non-deals, paying particular attention to the Dodgers, the Yankees, and the competitive landscape with two months remaining in the regular season. Audio intro: XV, "Boy From Kansas" Audio outro: Fabolous (Feat. Jagged Edge), "Trade […]

I'm just a boy from Kansas, no matter where you go, don't forget where you're from, when the heart is in your home, you know just let me know, you're the only one I've got, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters in Salina, Kansas. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined in Portland as always by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello. Hello. We have the American Association to thank for your current location. It's funny how a tweet that was directed at us essentially led us to that game with the Winnebago Gold Eyes, which then led us to Baseball Reference, which led us to the Salinas Stockade, which led me to J.D. Droty, which led you to

Salina, Kansas. Yeah, that is the crazy thing about this podcast. It keeps contributing to things that I never would have expected. The book came out of this podcast. It keeps contributing to things that I never would have expected. The book came out of this podcast. My wedding proposal or marriage proposal came out of this podcast in a way, or at least the way that I did it. And yeah, my current location in an America's best value in where the house cleaning person comes around with a shopping cart from a grocery store and the pool is empty and just a pit. It's like a pit that Sam Miller would have liked to see on a field.

It's not the best place, but it doesn't claim to be. It just claims to be a good value and that it is. And yeah, I have seen the Salinas stockade lose once. After we record, I will be seeing them play a doubleheader. And J.D. Draughty himself spent over an hour on the couch right next to me now talking to me about his life story yesterday. So it's amazing. Dreams can come true. I figure that one hour going over J.D. Draughty's life story probably accounts for about one quarter of the years that he's been alive. Yeah, it's been a very busy life.

I also talked to him for quite a while before a baseball game and probably will talk to him some more. Yeah, there is a lot of ground to cover, but I will get to all of that in the story, perhaps next week. Fantastic. I look forward to it. Have you considered that maybe it's America's best value in, does not have a pool, but does have a skateboard park? That's true. Yeah. I didn't come equipped for the amenities that it actually does offer. So I have probably said this before in the podcast, but I don't know if I've ever seen a skateboarder land a trick.

Have you ever seen it? I know professional skateboarders can do it, but amateurs just on the street at the park, whatever, like the race doing tricks and one of them was just jumping off some steps. It wasn't even really that difficult a trick. It didn't look like it anyway. He wasn't flipping the board or anything. He was just jumping off some steps and trying to land. And I saw him wipe out three times. And the third time he tried it, and of course his friends were filming it just to capture the amazing trick that he never landed. But the third time he did it, his skateboard went skidding off the pier and into the Hudson River, which everyone watching was laughing at him. And he was reacting with some distress.

But that seemed like a fitting punishment to me for attempting something that, to my knowledge and experience, no one has ever succeeded in doing. I guess I can't recall actually seeing a skateboarder land a trick, but maybe that makes it all the more appealing to attempt because it feels like you're chasing the impossible. And so that's why you see them trying it everywhere and just in street corners and in front of libraries and city halls. I don't know which one to pluralize. They're just chasing the impossible dream of landing a 360. Yeah. But I mean, it's worse than trampolining, right? I don't know how the fun compares, but at least with trampolining, you're on a springy surface and maybe there are some

pads around. And obviously, we know that that will not protect you. And we've discussed that at some length, too. But this is like trying to do trampoline tricks on cement surfaces, which seems even more ill-advised. So I don't know if maybe that's why it's so prevalent among people who are at the age where risk-taking behavior is maybe most common. So anyway, if trampolining is your thing, maybe skateboarding is my thing. I think the advantage that is inherent within skateboarding is that it is also potentially a means of transportation. Now, the people who are attempting these tricks, they are not going from point A to point B.

They are going from top of the stairs to head cracked open middle of the way down the stairs. But that would be the one advantage. Otherwise, yeah, it does seem quite a bit more dangerous. Now, in theory, skateboarders wear helmets and padding. Oftentimes, they do not. But padding does exist to protect the average American skateboarder.

You don't go into a trampoline gym and receive any sort of safety measures. As a matter of fact, you are obligated to sign a piece of paper that says, you might die here and that's not our fault. Yeah. So that seems like that would be another point in trampolining's disfavor. Yeah. Even as a means of transportation, though, I find it to be very effortful. Like if you are going uphill at all on a skateboard, it is not saving you any time.

It's not helping you. It doesn't seem to me. There are many other methods of transportation, like even if you want to take a scooter or something, maybe it doesn't look quite as cool, but I would argue that it is a more efficient means of transportation. Anyway, I really have it out for skateboarding, although skateboarding video games are fun because you can't get hurt. So is there any baseball banter that you wanted to share before we get into presumably some trade deadline talk? Yeah, I didn't know if I had anything specific baseball bantery, although I should note that I noticed last night that officially Albert Pujols has achieved some gold ink on his baseball reference page. He has grounded into his 350th career double play thereby tying

Cal Ripken for most all time as I talk about this out loud I feel like there's a decent chance I might be writing about this very shortly because whatever the day after the trade deadline why not write about a guy who hits into a lot of double plays but Pujols now is I would say probably a matter of minutes away from taking sole possession of first place and as we talked about last week this is one of those good stats that is disguised as a bad stat Pujols has three times led the major leagues in double plays granted into he has of course four times led the major leagues in total bases and all these other good offensive categories so yeah something to watch I guess no one is ever really that thrilled by the prospect of watching a double play, but at least Albert Pujols' next double play will be history in the making. step of the dugout and applaud his achievement and he will doff his cap. It's probably not that

sort of thing, but I think it is worth recognizing both the good and the bad sides of it. And let's see, it came against the Blue Jays in a game in which Bud Norris allowed his second walk-off grand slam in a week. Steve Pierce hit his second walk-off grand slam in three days. There have been four walk-off Grand Slams this season. Steve Pierce is now tied for the, I believe, the second most career walk-off Grand Slams in baseball history, having done so in a weekend. So pretty remarkable on his part.

I have no further point to make about walk-off Grand Slams. One thing I did stumble upon, I was reading Jeff Passon's latest article, which was talking about the Dodgers frenzied however many minutes going up into the trade deadline. And he has a sort of a throwaway sentence, or at least a sentence that is not the focus of anything further. It's an article talking about how you Darvish wound up with the Dodgers, which is a big feature article considering the pitcher in question has an ERA over four. But nevertheless, he's talking about how there wasn't necessarily a huge market for Darvish, which is maybe kind of surprising, but probably not.

And one paragraph, you might think that the Astros fit as a Darvish match, but one paragraph begins, quote, while the Astros and Rangers organizations share a mutual dislike bordering on contempt. It didn't prevent the sides from talking about Darvish. There is no further detail. i wish that there were yeah yeah i'd like to know a little bit more about that i don't know what the origins of that are so yeah well the the darvish deal is is interesting obviously just because it's darvish but also because it seemed like the Dodgers,

I mean, we talked about whether they needed to get someone like Darvish. There was a lot of discussion about whether they had to go acquire a replacement for Clayton Kershaw when we don't really know if they need a replacement for Clayton Kershaw yet, but they couldn't really afford to wait and find out that he was hurt worse than he seems to be because then it would be too late to get someone like Darvish. So, I mean, they're already looking like one of the best regular season teams ever. And now they have added Darvish and Tony Watson and Tony Singrani, I guess, also. And I think the initial reaction was that they had an amazing deal because they didn't give up Verdugo or their very top prospects, the guys they said they didn't want to trade. And yet they still got probably the best player available on deadline day. And so, yeah, since then, there have been some explanations of how and why that happened.

explanations of how and why that happened. And you mentioned Jeff's and Dave Cameron has a Fangraphs post up also about how there just wasn't that big a market because really you only had the Yankees and the Dodgers who were interested in a top tier starter enough to give up what they had to give up. And you had two top tier starters available. So demand didn't really outstrip supply. your starters available so demand didn't really outstrip supply and then you have questions about whether darvish is really his old self because of the era and the strikeout rate and the home run rate and all of that and you put those two together and maybe you revise your thoughts on willie calhoun whom dave points out has excellent stats and is maybe not physically the profile of a top prospect, but the Cato system at Fangraphs likes him a lot, which is just based on your performance mostly. And so maybe he's better than some of the prospect rankers say.

And if that's the case, then it really is a deal that makes sense. But what were the other details in Jeff's report? deal that makes sense but what were the other details in Jeff's report because Dave mentioned in his post that he heard that the Dodgers were kind of calling around right up until the half hour or so before the deadline to see whether other teams were interested which I guess explains why it was done at the last second and Ken Rosenthal broke the news that he was traded somewhere without specifying where or for whom after the deadline had actually passed a very dramatic tweet with one yes i believe it was what sources or reports darvish yeah darvish capitalized traded all caps yeah yeah well okay so in in fairness i

have not yet completed jeff basson's article i was i opened it with about four minutes to go pre-podcast time but But yeah, the Rangers were calling around going up until the deadline. They had reached some sort of, I guess you could call it an impasse with the Dodgers leading up because the Dodgers didn't want to give up Walker Buehler or Alex Padugo, who are two elite upper-gear young prospects in the system. And one figured the Dodgers were not going to want to do that and one could have figured that the Rangers would find a very good prospect somewhere on the market and so that's why I didn't think the Dodgers made that much sense as a fit because I didn't think

that they would be willing to pay the price that the Rangers were looking for well yeah it turns out that rentals this season didn't really go for the prices that one might have assumed so Darvish was available for less than I think a lot of people figured. I don't know what effect his July had on that, but it came true anyway. There were not a lot of other potential fits. I don't know who you could have tried to force. Obviously, teams are usually acting in their own best interests, and maybe the Astros are the only team out there that could have fit. But again, apparently the two teams despise one another. I'd like to talk about that one a little more if we could come up with anything.

You talked about how teams don't like to trade within the division, and it's hard to come up with good reasons for why that might be. I know, obviously, the Astros and the Rangers are in the same state. They can have some sort of, what is it, the golden boot? Is that the rivalry, the trophy that they play for? Yeah, that sounds familiar. Something like that. Maybe I just made that up.

But I can tell you the last trade the Astros and the Rangers made, it involved two players. Akeem Bostic was one of them, and Carlos Corporan was the other. So that's not very interesting. Previous to that, the Astros traded Travis Blackley to the Rangers for a player to be named later and cash. Oh, that's interesting. Usually it's a player to be named later and and cash oh that's interesting usually it's a player to be named later or cash yeah Rangers putting a high value

on Travis Blackley previous to that the Texas Rangers sent Jalen Peguero to the Houston Astros as part of a conditional deal maybe that condition was please don't call us again and most notably I guess in August 2009 the Astros traded Ivan Rodriguez to the Rangers for a player to be named later and Matt Navarez. And that player to be named later became Jose Vallejo. So not an extended history of moves between the Astros and the Rangers before Ivan Rodriguez. There hadn't been a move between the two teams for 14 years. So clearly, as you could imagine, when you look up two divisional rivals well actually no these were not divisional rivals until more recently so they have actually only

made two exchanges since being in the same division and that was blackley and colos corporan so not a lot going on in the front offices have changed i would like a sort of i don't know a spin-off article that jeff patrick did right now that the trade deadline is gone just go into august be like why do they hate each other? I get why teams might be kind of like turned off by the Astros operating method, but I would like some more details. Yeah, or I could see why teams would not have liked the Rangers while A.J. Preller was there because teams seem not to like A.J. Preller and the teams that he works for. But that is no longer the case. So, yeah, I don't know.

Weird one. So yeah, well, you mentioned that you didn't think the Dodgers would make a move like this because of the cost that we assumed it would incur. And this is really one of the first times we've seen the Friedman Dodgers go out and just get the best guy available, right? Like they have had the ability to sign the best guy available and get David Price as a free agent or anyone who's been at the top of the market in the last few years, but they have not done that really. They've kept their own guys. They've re-signed Justin Turner and Kenley Jansen, but they haven't really been the one handing out the huge free agent contracts or trading their top prospects for rentals or guys at the deadline or even over

the winter because they have depth and they seem to really prize keeping their young players so that they can set up this never-ending cycle where they keep winning and hopefully get the payroll down in the long term. And so this is maybe like the first time that we've seen them go and just get the best player. And at the same time, this is the first time we've seen the Yankees act like the Yankees in a few years because they too have kind of been keeping their powder dry and keeping their prospects dry. And both of these teams are sort of waiting for the excessive contracts handed out some time ago to come off the board. And some of them have, some of them still are on there, but are coming off sometime soon.

And so we now have seen the Dodgers go get the best guy, even though they were already the best team. And they've set up just the potential for a ridiculous rotation if everyone is healthy come October and maybe even have enhanced their odds of getting Shohei Otani if they are both interested in that over the offseason, if they do retain Darvish. And obviously they're on the West Coast already, so that is always a selling point for players from NPB. So there's the potential for just a dream rotation that would be not only the best, but the most entertaining and watchable. But both they and the Yankees essentially acted like you would expect the two richest teams to act on deadline

day. And we just haven't seen that in a few years. And you wrote about the Yankees getting Sonny Gray. So have you any points to make about that? Well, so let's see. First of all, I will point out that the Dodgers are currently on pace for 114 wins. So the Mariners' record is within their reach, technically. I don't know why they would continue to try to win so many games down the stretch when it is utterly useless to them to do so. But it seems like they just can't

lose even if they try. They haven't lost since Clayton Kershaw got hurt. So I don't know exactly what the Dodgers are doing, but they are an extremely, extremely good baseball team. It's a pity for the Arizona Diamondbacks. Second in the National League in run differential, 14 games worse than the Dodgers. So you've got three teams in the National League West who have, I would say, significantly better records than the defending world champion, best team in recent history, Chicago Cubs. Fun times. Anyway, not about the Dodgers, who traded Willie Calhoun, who is probably about 5'6 and 205 pounds.

But this is about also the New York Yankees, who went out, paid the higher price to get Sonny Gray, who, unlike Dar Darvish is not a rental. I think kind of like with the Dodgers getting Darvish, there was just not a huge market for Sonny Gray out there. Again, you didn't have a team like the Indians that was likely to go in and pay for Gray. That's not how they operate. The Brewers might have made more sense a few weeks ago before they gave away their entire division lead and then some.

So now their priorities have shifted. So I think the Brewers had a very short window where maybe Sonny Gray could have fit. So it was kind of the Yankees because the Dodgers weren't going to go get Gray. I don't think they weren't going to give up Buehler or Verdugo almost no matter what. And so it came down to the Yankees being the obvious fit. They have the most to gain down the stretch this year because they are in a tight race. And I think they have the most to gain in the next few years as well. Of course, they're going to lose a lot of their starting rotation,

possibly or probably this offseason. I don't know what Tanaka is going to do. He could opt out of his last three years. Maybe he won't. He has a very high ERA for someone who'd be giving up tens of millions of dollars. But you know, baseball doesn't operate around ERA anymore. I think as you sort of map the future of the divisions, I know this is always a dangerous game. But National League West, Dodgers seem like the clear favorites for a while. National League Central, probably the Cubs for a while. National League East, I don't know how the Mets are going to rebound, but the Nationals are clearly the best team in there for a while. AL West, the Astros, and no one else is close. AL Central, no matter what you think about the Royals,

they're going to lose a lot of talent this winter. So it seems like the Indians are set there for a while. It seems like five of the divisions, there are at least obvious medium-term favorites to me. That doesn't mean everything is going to go the way that we imagine. Just look at this year's National League Central in the first half. Now, on the other hand, look at this year's National League Central since the end of the first half, where the Cubs have reemerged and taken things over. It seems like it's the AL East that will once again remain the most competitive division, if only because there are the Yankees

and the Red Sox both in there. So I think that you have the probability that the AL East will remain tighter down the stretch, which further incentivizes the Yankees to make a move like this to get an impact player that will help them for hopefully the next two years after this one. And they paid. I get the sense from the way people have talked about this trade, like the Yankees got off really well because they held on to their very top prospects. But they gave up a lot of talent to get Sonny Gray from the A's.

I think the A's should be ecstatic with the return that they got. I understand that. A lot of injured talent, right? Yeah, 67% of the players involved have had season-ending surgery, but still, that aside, you don't have to go too far back to where Jorge Mateo and James Kaprilian and Dustin Fowler were all very highly ranked prospects. Fowler, the knee injury, that's troublesome.

I don't know what the usual return is from a knee injury, but at least he did not damage his ACL. And Kaprilian, of course, Tommy John surgery. You can take nothing for granted when it comes to Tommy John rehab, but hopefully this will put his two injury-plagued years behind him and he can come out. There was talk just even this past spring that if caprillion were healthy that he could make the yankees in 2017 and so it seems like if he comes

back and he's throwing somewhere around 100 maybe 95 he could be a quick mover so i don't know if i guess the a's must be officially in a rebuild because they brought up a lot of young players their team consists almost exclusively of young players now and Rajay Davis. So they have turned the page and they have embraced the rebuild that they were trying to put off for a while. Their actions of losing seven All-Stars be damned. But I think this is exciting. They have not had a whole lot of high upside in their system and now they have that in Caprillion. And I don't know if mateo counts as a high upside prospect as much as he is a really really fast guy who does things that fast guys do but fowler seems like he could be really useful really quick he could be their center fielder next year so

you know we can talk about the a's and maybe maybe next year we can dream on them as a potential 500 team again as there are these three other teams in the American League trying to win 110 games. So how good is Gray? That is something I've been confused about because we've seen him be very good. We've seen him be very bad and hurt. And right now, I mean, he strikes out a decent number of hitters. He gets a lot of ground balls. He doesn't walk too many guys.

He does all the good things that you want good pitchers to do, but doesn't have a really extensive track record of doing those things. And of course, there've been injury concerns. So, I mean, with both of these guys, Darvish and Gray, they have been excellent, but there are enough uncertainties about them that may also have depressed their market somewhat, although Gray has pitched better than Darvish to this point this season. So how do you think of him? How is it appropriate to think of him? Is it like number two starter, whatever that means? Yeah. So Sonny Gray has obviously been the ace of the A's for a while. I know obviously last year he was not good. He was hurt and he was not

good. So that doesn't really count. But he's been the number one in Oakland. He's been sort of the de facto number one. But I think that it's probably safer to think of him as, I don't know how people think of number ones, I guess, because in theory there are 30 of them out there. But I don't think that's the right way to do it because then you're putting Clayton Kershaw on the same level as like, I don't know, Scott Feldman or whoever the hell is number one in Cincinnati. I think that you can think of him as sort of a lower half number one, but I prefer

to think of him as a good number two. I have fallen in tentative love, I guess. I don't know. I have a crush on, you could say, the expected WOBA metric that you can find a baseball savant, which assigns sort of the weighted on base average that you would expect a pitcher to have allowed based on his walks strikeouts and his batted balls sunny gray is someone that people have talked about for a while as being a pitcher who can control the quality of batted balls against them blah blah blah you don't need to know all this there have been 136 starting pitchers in the sample that i pulled up and i sorted them all by expected. Woba the season's Sonny Gray ranks 27th, which puts him sort of, again, toward the bottom of that number one tier, or maybe upper,

upper number two tier. I like to think of him as a number two starter, because I don't think that he has quite the strikeouts and walks I'd be looking for, but he's a very good ground ball pitcher. He's tied with two other starting pitchers there, Michael Fulmer and Michael Waka. So, I don't know, however you think of Fulmer and Waka, you can also think of Sonny Gray. Now, I didn't expect to see someone named Trevor Williams one point below Sonny Gray. I know that he pitches for the Pirates. I believe we talked about him with one of the Such Is Life quotes. Was he one of the Pirates who issued one of those quotes? I think so. Okay. So so he's there so now I like Trevor Williams a lot based on that recollection but Sonny Gray

is down there interestingly enough he's also two points behind Dan Straley who I wasn't expecting to see high on this list I will also point out the top five of this list actually I'll just go top six because it really drives home the point that James Paxton is amazing Max Scherzer, Chris Sale, James

Paxton, Clayton Kershaw, Corey Kluber, Zach Greinke. James Paxton third on the list list. I'm happy to just have a podcast that turns to being about James Paxton now. But Sonny Gray, anyway, I think of him as a number two. I don't know how much more room he has to grow beyond what he is now. His signature breaking ball has not been as effective this year as it was pre-injury. So that seems like a point against him. But on the other hand, he does have his best strikeout rate since he was a rookie. So things are going okay. I think I would, I would, and the Yankees would probably like him better if he were left-handed, but that's not really something that you can do unless you were

pitching against the Winnipeg Gold Eyes. Yeah, right. So where do you think the AL East race stands? How would you handicap that now? Because as we speak, the Yankees are half a game ahead of the Red Sox, but two in the loss column. And I think based on preseason expectations, we would expect the Red Sox to be better based on perhaps even projections. I don't know what the Fangraphs playoff odds say right now, but I would guess that if you use the pre you know, preseason projections version of those or updated projections version of those, I would guess they still say the Red Sox have an edge, but certainly in season to date performance, the Yankees have

been better if you look at things like base runs. And if you look at what those two teams did at the deadline, the Yankees clearly made the bigger upgrade. We have already kind of talked about the Eduardo Nunez trade to the extent that we were interested in doing so. And then they added Addison Reed also, who is really excellent, but is a reliever. Meanwhile, the Yankees added multiple good relievers in Robertson and Canely. They added Tom Frazier. They added Sonny Gray. They added Jaime Garcia. So you could probably say that the Yankees did the most at the deadline or improved by the most or plugged the most holes or however you want to say that. The Yankees probably did it. And the Red Sox were comparatively inactive. So has that swung the race or the expected outcome of the race one way or another for you? So according to the Fangraphs playoff odds, currently the Yankees are expected to end up behind the Red Sox by a win and a half. So the Red Sox are projected better the rest of the way.

I don't buy that. I think the Yankees are a little better than their projection. I think the Red Sox are worse. I don't know what kind of shape David Price is going to be in if he's able to come back this season. And his absence is a significant one. So I think the Yankees really put themselves in a good position to win this division. I obviously am sort of the high guy on Tommy Canely, who despite being the worst teammate that Latroy Hawkins has ever had, is also one of the best relievers that baseball has seen all season long. Adding him and Robertson really helps to relieve some of the

stress that might have been on Delon DeTantis. I think that even though getting Jaime Garcia isn't a big deal, I like that he's going to be a lefty, keeping lefties quiet in Yankee Stadium. And he also helps to push Jordan Montgomery to the bullpen if that's something they want, which just further adds to their incredible, incredible bullpen depth. So the Yankees have built themselves up to really be ready to go to the World Series and try to win it this season. The trouble is that maybe these trades help the Yankees catch up to the Astros, who are great. I think the Indians are great. And then, of course, over in the National League, the Nationals made their bullpen significantly better.

The Cubs made their pitching staff significantly better. And the Dodgers made their pitching staff significantly better. And also, they're maybe the best team that we've ever seen. So it's going to be difficult because now there are, I don't know, six or seven teams that you could perhaps consider elite. And that is great for the quality of playoff competition, I suppose. But like all these teams had to think about making moves just to try to keep up with the other teams who are really good, which has got to be frustrating. Yeah, I talked to Neil Payne on the Ringer podcast last week, and he was talking about how this is a historic season. If you look at 538's ratings of team strength, like the eliteness of this year's elite teams,

whether you look at just the top two with the Astros and the Dodgers or like the top six is, I forget whether it's unprecedented or at least without recent precedent. So yeah, I mean, that will be a fun playoff field because probably the teams that are there, we will feel like they deserve to be there and they earn their shot and there won't be a lot of clear-cut series favorites. And yeah, I mean, every team kind of made its bullpen better. You mentioned that the Red Sox made a bullpen move, the Indians made a bullpen move, the Nationals made its bullpen better. You mentioned that the Red Sox made a bullpen move, the Indians made a bullpen move, the Nationals made another bullpen move after the two that they had already made with the A's and Doolittle and Madsen. So there were a lot of relievers

changing teams, Justin Wilson to the Cubs, of course, also. And Travis wrote today at Fangraphs about the two relievers who did not change teams, who everyone expected to, Zach Britton and Brad Hand. And it seemed like in both of those cases, maybe their teams were just asking a lot and were kind of undercut by the fact that there were a lot of other good relievers available who maybe were just rentals and wouldn't command as high a price. And the Orioles have to impress Peter Angelos with any package that they receive in return. So they can't just make a regular trade. It has to be a flashy one. And maybe the Padres overreached a little with Brad Hand, but there were just so many other quality relievers who have changed teams and just about everyone who needed or wanted one seemed to get one. So there's only so much you can say about any team getting any reliever. I mean, you can point out that, say, the Dodgers had a good bullpen but needed a lefty. And so they got one. And the Cubs perhaps also needed a lefty to deal with the Dodgers and the Nationals' lefty bats in the playoffs. and they got one. So everyone got one. And Joe Sheehan did a thing in his newsletter the other day where he looked back at the relievers traded at the

deadline over the last few years. And he started off that exercise with a hypothesis that it would show that like trading for relievers is really risky and they're just as likely to be bad after you pick them up as they are to be good. And he had to change his conclusion in the midst of that post because he found that for the most part, teams were good at targeting relievers. And that actually more of the relievers improved, at least in a runs allowed level after the deadline, after the trade than relative to before. the trade than relative to before. So it seemed like teams are actually doing a good job of identifying good relievers to target for contenders and that maybe there's still even some buy low options out there and relievers who have fluky high ERAs over a half of a season and 30 innings or whatever reliever pitches. So that was kind of just what we expected to see, but that is the standard thing at the deadline in this era, especially when teams, it seems, have grasped the true impact of a late inning reliever in the playoffs when you can use those guys in almost every game if you want and use them for multiple innings, maybe. And everyone added one or more of those types of players. I am kind of floored that Brad Hand is still in San Diego.

I'm not because A.J. Preller is the guy in charge of where he goes. And I think that teams are loathe to attempt to negotiate with said general manager in hand does have two more years of team control. He can continue to demonstrate that he is elite. Maybe he will get even better if he mixes up his pitch usage in a way that I don't need to get into. But he's not doing it right. He could be doing things better brad hand and his catcher so it baffles me a little bit that hand is still where he is it of course does not mean that the

podgers did everything wrong they will have opportunities to trade hand down the stretch but i have adopted a philosophy that i don't have a catchy acronym for it i just have the acronym that it is but that acronym refers to the expression, always be trading relievers. Always be trading relievers if you are a bad team, because they fall apart. And the example, the Brewers have traded Tyler Thornburg, who immediately got hurt. They've traded Will Smith, who immediately got hurt. They traded, who's the other one? Jeremy Jeff Jeffress who immediately was not very good and then had a recurrence of some off the field issues so the Brewers made three somewhat high profile reliever trades and they did great because they got good returns and the relievers were immediately

bad so no one would argue that the Brewers should have kept those guys even though they had cost control and of course that's sort of the worst case scenario with any reliever but they are just so volatile and it would only be fitting if Zach Britton, I know Zach Britton has another year left with the Orioles if he gets the chance to pitch for them. But it's only fitting that his tenure with the Orioles could have burned so bright and then ended with his not being used and then not being turned into optimal value. Just failing to squeeze the most out of Zach Britton in two different ways is going to really color how this Orioles presumed rebuild goes from this point forward

because they have only so many valuable pieces to move. And it's not their fault that Zach Britton wound up hurt and that teams didn't trust him. I understand why Britton wasn't moved to this deadline because his stock was simply too far down. And the Orioles probably figure if he has a strong second half, they can turn him into something better over the winter. I get that, but there are no guarantees. He's coming off forearm-related absence. And the Orioles continue to confound.

I was surprised they added Jeremy Hellickson, but whatever. They are technically still alive. And Tim Beckham. That was also unusual. I did not expect that move to be made. The Rays, I guess, made two moves with teams that they are technically competing against for the wildcard. I understand they probably did not value Beckham that highly, but still, they did kind of give him away to a team that needed a shortstop because I believe they were playing Ruben Tejada.

Yeah, right. So, yeah, well, were there any non-moves? We've talked about hand, we've talked about Britain or teams that did less than you expected should have done more than you expected. I've seen criticisms of the Red Sox because they did not go get a starter, even despite the uncertainty about David Price. And I've seen criticisms of the Cardinals for essentially doing nothing. I've seen criticisms of the Orioles for adding instead of selling. And I don't know what other teams would come in for that kind of criticism about things done or not done. There are some teams that sort of were in that middle ground, like the Blue Jays traded Liriano and traded Joe Smith but didn't do anything major and maybe that was the appropriate course for them because they do still hope to continue competing or maybe the Astros even who acquired Liriano evidently they're planning on converting him to relief but that's a team that despite their regular season success perhaps could have used a starter you put their

rotation up against say the Dodgers for instance and well every team's rotation is going to pale in comparison to the Dodgers but you can say that about the Astros certainly so I don't know were there any like glaring weaknesses on any contending teams that were not addressed that you were surprised to see I don't know I guess I look at the wild card contending teams that were not addressed that you were surprised to see? I don't know. I guess I look at the wildcard contending teams and I think, why bother almost? Because there are so many good teams. I know there was the talk last week that the Mariners are going to go for it and try to get Sonny Gray, but they didn't, which for one thing, I'm not entirely convinced they had the pieces to do that in the first place. But what good does

he do to them when they would still be vastly inferior to these other teams trying to go to the playoffs I look at the Red Sox and I think the Red Sox could use a starting pitcher given the David Price uncertainty but I just I don't know who that starting pitcher could or would have been I mean sure they could have gotten like Andrew Kashner from the Rangers for a song but he's terrible so what benefit would that give the Red Sox really there's just not a whole lot out there this is the wrong time to be buying a starting pitcher the White Sox were selling but all of theirs are bad and I mean there's still the chance of course Justin Verlander has had I think three pretty good starts in a row and there's still the chance he could be moved this month so nothing is

done nothing has been decided this will be a busy August because the Mets have some players like Jay Bruce and Curtis Granderson they could move in case anybody gets injured somewhere else I think yeah I mean the Orioles in theory they could have sold but this you don't want to trade Manny Machado in the middle of the season when there's not much demand for a player like him at his position and you couldn't really move Zach Britton you couldn't force teams to pay what Britton would have been worth when he was better so I don't see a lot So I don't see a lot. Honestly, I don't see a lot that could have gone that differently or that I think should have gone differently.

Yeah, I mean, you could say the Red Sox could have used just a dependable innings year type like Garcia as a hedge against injury to price. And I mean, they have traded so many prospects, of course, that they have put themselves at a disadvantage now when trying to acquire players at the top of the market, just because Dombrowski has burned through the Charrington era prospect stockpile. And I guess they got Addison Reed without giving up any one major, but they don't have as many major prospects remaining at this point. So it is tough to make a deal under those circumstances when you are competing with

teams like the Dodgers and the Yankees who have those prospects that they've managed to hold on to while Dombrowski has not even really tried to hold on to the prospects he inherited for good reasons and bad reasons sometimes. But this is, I guess, their third attempt at getting someone to pair with Craig Kimbrell, who is really a shutdown reliever. And Reid is a very different type of shutdown reliever than Carson Smith and Tyler Thornburg are slash were. But he has been very effective in a really interesting way.

As you detailed in your post, he just throws tons and tons and tons of strikes, and occasionally that will backfire, but for the most part, it has served him very well. And another guy you wrote about doesn't have huge playoff implications or anything, but is fascinating to us, and we've talked about him on this podcast before, so we don't have to talk about him at length, but the Jonathan Lucroy trade, Lucroy going to the Rockies, just, you know, coming a year after he was maybe the best player traded at the deadline or the most coveted player at the deadline. And now he is an afterthought, someone we have not even talked about, you know, 40 minutes our our trade deadline recap and for a good reason because he just has been a bad baseball player this year in ways that have surprised us his complete framing breakdown

but also his offensive breakdown and as you detailed in your post he's hitting tons of grounders he's just not hitting the ball hard so it is just a really rapid and strange decline. And as he pointed out, he might still potentially help the Rockies and rebuild some of his value heading into free agency. But it has been a very quick fall from grace for Lucre. Lucre going to Colorado was interesting. It's really fascinating to see that they got him for a player to be named later or cash considerations, which is just absurd, given that a year ago, Luke Roy was moved to the Rangers in a package that, granted, included Jeremy Jeffress, but got two top 100 prospects in return. Louis Brinson was in the top 50, I believe, at the time of the trade. So it's just such a rapid fall from grace for Jonathan Luke Roy, who I think we've both written about before as a potential MVP candidate. I don't need to rehash this.

I know Ben just said he didn't need to rehash all this. We've both talked about this before. Travis Sawchuk has written about this recently. Lucroy's decline has been so stark and so sudden, it leads one to believe or assume there's got to be something kind of physically wrong. His defense has gotten markedly worse, and at the the plate he's hitting far more ground balls than ever. He's had easily the biggest increase in ground ball rate in baseball relative to last season and even though he's gotten better at hitting the ball his contact rate has bounced back considerably. It's like his whole

game plan is just putting the ball in play for the sake of putting the ball in play which is weird and kind of concerning. This is a guy who has had power before. And of course, this is in now a year and a little era where every player is trying to hit for more power because they can. It's not like Luke Roy is just trying to hit grounders because he can't hit the ball over the fence anymore unless he actually can't, which would be stunning. So I don't know what kind of explanation there might be for Lucroy's decline, but it sure seems to hint at something physical. I know you wrote about this in some amount of depth, but of course, Lucroy isn't going to open up about anything that might

be bothering him. But I don't know another explanation unless he was just some sort of extremely unhappy in Texas, which of course wouldn't make any sense. I'm willing to understand that maybe the pitch framing metrics that are out there still don't do a good enough job of correcting for the pitchers who are throwing the pitches. But on the contrary to that, Luke Roy's catching teammate Robinson Chirinos has rated as a positive pitch framer this year with the Texas Rangers. So it is a fascinating case where Luke Roy has just tanked his own free agent market. His is a case where he will end up having been dramatically underpaid relative to what

he was at his peak in his career. But nevertheless, he's going to the Rockies who have had Tony Walters and Ryan Hannigan and Tom Murphy and Dustin Garneau. And none of these players are good, at least not right now. So even though Jonathan Lucroy is a shell of his former self, he is probably about as good a Major League Baseball player now as he was when he was, I don't know, 19, at which case maybe he could have done the same thing.

That's being overly dramatic, but he's still, he's not good and he's better for the Rockies. So it's kind of a one man's trash is another man's treasure situation. I don't want to refer to Jonathan LeCroy as a one man's trash is another man's treasure situation. I don't want to refer to Jonathan Lucroy as trash because that's hurtful to both him and me and you. But still, I would think that the upside here, one of the upsides here for Colorado was that Lucroy is such a good contact hitter that in Coors Field, all you really need to do is put the ball in play and you can have a certain amount of success just because the field is so big. But a point that I was talking to Dave Cameron about this over the weekend, I actually went

down and spent the weekend with Dave Cameron in Central Oregon under the assumption that, well, it's going to be a busy baseball weekend. I'm going to be such a poor company at home. I should just go put myself in a situation where I can just work and be kind of work social. Well, nothing happened. Nothing happened at all. all and i came home but that's when luke roy got moved and dave raised the point that just from luke roy's market perspective now that he's going to colorado even if he hits for these final two two plus months teams aren't going to give him full credit for that because he's in colorado so in a sense it's kind of a lose lose situation for him because even if his offense rebounds people will blame it on the park and if his offense doesn't rebound they'll think wow that guy

couldn't even hit in Colorado so yeah interesting free agency case for Luke Roy coming up because you could have figured if he kept playing well he could have been in line for some kind of approximate if lesser than the Russell Martin contract yeah definitely it's one of those cases where timing just completely screws over a player and I know that some people don't have a ton of sympathy for baseball players who are making, you know, 5 million instead of more millions or whatever. in. He would have gotten a long-term deal. And if he had managed to leverage the Indians into giving him an extension at the trade deadline last year or voiding his option or something instead of what happened, which is just that they said no and he vetoed the trade, which was understandable. But then he ended up getting dealt to the Rangers who were not on his no trade list. And that was that. So there was nothing else he could do except play well, I guess. And he did not do that. So he is now looking at a tremendous

loss of potential could have been earnings, which is a shame for him and a shame for us because I enjoyed watching Luke Roy when he was at his best. And I just got an email from a Yes Network PR person. And normally I don't like to just read PR emails because I feel like I am being manipulated. They want us to talk about what the email says. That's why they emailed it. But it is kind of interesting that this email says that Monday night's Tigers-Yankees game was the highest rated, most viewed program on Yes Network in almost three years, the most viewed program since Derek Jeter's last game at Yankee Stadium. And it says that the peak audience was during the seventh inning, which is when Frazier and Judge were hitting, and it had a

5.01 average household rating in the New York area, 446,000 total viewers, best Yankees rating in quite a while. This was the Yankees' best July ratings in five years. So it seems as if Yankees fans, based on this, are excited about the Yankees again. And the Yankees making all these deadline moves and kind of acting Yankee-like here in the middle of the season again is probably only enhancing that. So you can see that that's another reason why maybe they would be motivated to do something is that it seems as if their fans are connecting to this team. Officially, if we assume this is the end of the Yankees' weird little transition period, they will have done that and re-ascended toward the top of the American League without ever dropping below 84 wins in a season. So yeah, that is pretty remarkable. The Yankees have only made the playoffs once in the last four years, and that's when they lost

a wildcard game to the Astros. So that it's still been a drought for Yankees fans to be sure, but they have been able to manage this better than any other team reasonably could have. And as much crap as the Yankees have gotten for maybe not acting so aggressively, it is it's clearly all worked out. And I don't think it's being too hasty to say that it's 100 percent to the credit of Aaron Judge for turning the Yankees around. He's done everything. Congratulations to them. I know we're about out of time, so I just wanted to throw one thing out there that has nothing to do with the trade deadline, but I was looking over the standings, blah, blah, blah. I don't need to explain myself.

Freddie Freeman, he was a story. The Braves were a story when Freeman was coming off the disabled list, as you'll recall, because the Braves were anxious to make room for Matt Adams in their everyday lineup, which, well, I mean, whatever. We've gone through a lot of phases this season, and that was one of them. But Freddie Freeman has played several games at third base. He's played 16 games. He started 16 games as a third baseman for the Braves. He's played 136 innings. That doesn't mean very much. He's committed one error. His defensive runs saved at third base is plus two. His UCR is an even

zero. So Freddie Freeman, small sample, has been fine as a defensive third baseman. And if that is something that holds true over the next few months, that really makes the Braves, well, I still don't buy Matt Adams so much as a long-term first baseman, but it's just nice to have options. How well has Adams hit since Freeman came back? Because there was some speculation that maybe they were hoping they could just move Adams at the deadline by playing him and that did not happen. So has he kept up his hitting since then? Okay, so I'm going to tell you the answer. You can guess the answer. The answer is no. So Matt Adams in June had a WRC plus of 160 in July. It has been roughly half of that. His hitting has dropped off as you would imagine. He's struck out more. He's walked less. He's hit for less power. Matt Adams is still a fine hitter.

And you know, you can start him. He's probably something like an average player. He's a fine player to have on your team. He was never someone that you wanted to build around or necessarily move a franchise icon for, but the Braves did it. And you know what? If they find out that Freddie Freeman can actually play a third base, not only does that provide more options for them, but I wonder if that might in part help or push other teams to think about moving players up the defensive spectrum, because it's not something that you think about doing. It's a little bit worrisome. I don't know if Freeman's going to keep this up, but it would be bold. I don't know off the top of my head, other players you might think about doing this with, it wouldn't be too hard. You

could think about, I guess, moving Manny Machado back to shortstop would be the first obvious one. But outside of that, I don't know. I'll kind of poke around the rest of the major leagues, but it's something that you could see done with some other players if Freeman makes it work. All right. Well, we can stop there. We talked about Adrian Beltre a bit on the last show of last week, and I mentioned that

I'd probably be writing about him, and I did, and I found him even more fascinating as I wrote that piece, just because the way that he has come out of nowhere to be a certain Hall of Famer after no one really talking about him in that way is fascinating to me. And as I mentioned on the last show, he really kind of, not only did he get better at an age when players usually get worse, which is one way you can really cement your Hall of Fame case, but also the world has just gotten smarter about recognizing the ways in which he was great to begin with. And so I compared him to the trajectory of other Hall of Famers in that piece,

which went up Sunday after his 3000th hit, and also talked a bit about how he compares to other Hall of Famers in ways like not making an All-Star team until his age 31 season, which I believe is unprecedented among Hall of Famers who played in the All-Star game era and were not primarily Negro leaguers. So I think that is just emblematic of the way in which he flew under the radar for a long time and now has suddenly made himself a big blip on that radar. So I'll link to that piece. You can go check it out if you're interested. And we are on a strange schedule this week because of the trade deadline and because of my travel and my trip to Salina. So this will be up and then we will do an email show late in the week.

And then we are doing a live show at Saber Seminar on Saturday. So I think we will make that the third show of this week, so to speak, even if it's not posted till late Saturday, early Sunday. And then, of course,

we have another live show coming up in Brooklyn on Monday, which you can still get tickets to at Ticketfly.com. Use the promo code Fangraphs or The Ringer and get a discount on that. So we have a kind of unusual couple weeks here because of travel and trades and live podcasts. But we will ultimately bring you the usual number of podcasts just in a strange configuration. Only thing I'll point out is because we get emails about this somewhat frequently,

I wonder now if that 2004 Beltre season is the best season ever for a non-All-Star. Yeah, maybe. Right. Yeah. And I don't know the story of how he wasn't an All-Star that year, because he did have a better second half than first half, but he still had a really excellent first half that was totally All-Star worthy. And yeah, he ended up, I think, second in MVP voting. So it's strange that he didn't make the All-Star team, but I'd have to go back and see what the story was there. I don't know if it's just that he didn't have the reputation of an All-Star and people thought it was fluky or something, but it's weird in retrospect. Agreed. Yeah, that would be something to examine.

I don't know. I don't know when. Maybe that would have been better to think about putting in an article that's already written, but whatever. It'll be there forever. If you can, you could probably actually just ask your, who is it, Hans von Sluten, your baseball reference contact. You could probably ask him to pull up the best non-All-Star seasons

and see if he'll be at the top. All right. Okay. Well, we will be back soon. You can support the him to pull up the best non-All-Star seasons and see if he'll get to the top. All right. Okay. Well, we will be back soon. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Five listeners who have already pledged their support include Paul Baker, Alex Stace, Paul Sakamoto, Jennifer Dow, and Jesse Severet. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild.

And you can rate and review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance. You can get more trade deadline breakdowns on the latest episode of the Ringer MLB show, which is also up now. And you can send me and Jeff your questions and comments via email at podcastfangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. And we will talk to you all soon after I'm back in New York. Until then, go Salinas.cage. Outro Music