Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 113: Three Trade Rumors We Read This Weekend

Episode Date: January 7, 2013

Ben and Sam break down three trade rumors that surfaced over the weekend.

Come war and peace, Downton still stands and the crawly still in it. Good morning and welcome to episode 113 of Effectively Wild, the Baseball Perspectives Daily Podcast. In New York, New York, I am Ben Lindberg and in Long Beach, California, where he is giddy with anticipation for the Downton Abbey season three premiere uh Sam Miller I'm so unhappy I hate it it's the worst I feel like we watch the same shows but you don't like those shows uh except for Freaks and Geeks we both like but right Freaks and Geeks is my favorite show ever yeah but I like um I like plenty of shows I just don't like if I remember right

you liked Denton originally and then you felt it got too soapy in season 2 was that how it went? yeah I did, that's mainly it I didn't flip for the first season but I enjoyed it and I would have been happy enjoying something that much forever

but I felt like all the storylines got stale. None of the characters are really doing much. The only storyline that I'm at all interested in is Matthew and Mary. And it feels like the whole show is padded in order to keep that one going forward. And I dread when they cut away from it to show some other characters doing some other dumb things. And now your wife is making you watch it, I imagine. She's not making me, but that is why I'm watching it. I mean, it's a show that I watch with her and I am not a quitter. I mean, this is why I don't like to do things because once I start doing them,

I have a very hard time breaking the routine. And so, you know, if it's not a thing I'm already committed to, I'm very loathe to attempt it. Well, I have seen season three and I will tell you that you're going to be glad to be back with the Granthams. It's not quite as soapy. There's some serious, serious stuff going on this season there's uh weighty issues and it's like it's the vietnam war

they're getting there uh i might be thinking of mad men right um so you brought a topic which i did i did but first i want to just mention something that I just saw two seconds ago at River Avenue Blues. Plenty – it seems that a number of teams have called Chipper Jones this offseason. Oh, yeah. I saw that note too. To work for them. I wonder – that would be great, but I wonder what it would be like if he came back now. I mean I know that there is a long history of people retiring and unretiring but yeah the dude did like a you can't do a farewell tour

i mean he would be i think much maligned if he came back after that and i wouldn't really blame him because he was so good that if i were chipper jones i wouldn't have retired in the first place um but he kind of locked himself into it by announcing it before the season and then doing his farewell tour. He would have to give back all his weird gifts that he got. I wonder, yeah, like how long, I mean, it sort of comes up every once in a while when you go to a wedding and then the couple gets, you know, divorced like four days later and you've given them a present and so I wonder how long

Chipper needs to stay retired in order to keep his retirement gifts. If he came back in three years everybody would pretty much forget the tour and it would be like oh look who's back. When Brett Favre did it or

Roger Clemens did it, was there a tour? It was more just like I'll see how I feel after the offseason and I'll make a decision and then they would just waffle for a while. But there wasn't quite a victory lap like there was with Chipper. Or was there? I don't know. I don't watch football. I don't either. We talked about this at one point. Yeah, we talked about who would be the most likely to have the next farewell tour. I think we talked about who had been the last ones who had done the farewell tour.

Yeah. Well, maybe Chipper will be the most likely to do it next because he'll come back and do it again. Do it again next year. I mean, all that cool swag, he's just going to string us along. I can write a sequel to my story. You could. You could. And somebody, one of the beat writers could tweet it to him and never.

Yeah, fortunately. As far as I know, he never read that story. All right. So anyway, my topic actually is three pie-in-the-sky trade rumors that were bandied about the internet this weekend. I just thought we would talk about each of them briefly. As we know, as we've talked about with Kevin Goldstein on this show, most trade rumors don't have a whole lot of truth to them and most actual trades that are happening often are below the surface and don't get reported. So we're not going to present these as

are below the surface and don't get reported. So we're not going to present these as factual. I mean, I personally think that they will all look silly at some point in the future, but for now, they're interesting, and maybe they tell us a little something about the teams that are involved or the players involved, and they're all interesting to me. So the first one is the marlins and the padres talking about jean-carlos stanton right and then i think i saw i didn't really see the but the initial rumor were their names mentioned or was it just uh talking wait what you just cut out and then

you came back and all i heard oh uh the the only the thing i saw was that they had talked i didn't see actual names were their names um no they're only speculated by the writer who talked about this and then it i think that was refuted by a later article which i don't know whether it was more credible or not but supposedly the Marlins have not had any internal talks about Stanton. But anyway. The Marlins also this weekend declared that Stanton will be a Marlin, that he is not going to be traded, and that anything contrary to that is a lie. But of course, you know how it is. Yes.

So anyway, I guess, so why so why the padres do you think like like of all that presumably want sean carlos stanton uh why would it be that the padres would be uh would make more sense than the other uh well i guess well i think of an answer by the way you are doing the cutting in and out thing a little bit so i don't know if you can fix that somehow but i guess uh there is the fact that the padres have maybe the best farm system or one of the best farm systems in baseball and so presumably they would match up okay, or they would at least have the prospects to get Stanton, which is certainly not the case for every team. As much as every team's fan base seems to think that it's capable of getting Stanton,

that is probably not the case. And I don't know, I guess there's the fact that they have Will Venable in the outfield and Carlos Quentin and other than I guess Maben in center they don't really have a guy who's in the majors already and is kind of a long-term solution it's's more like Denorphias and Venables. And so I guess they can upgrade and maybe they feel like they are better than people think and they could take a big step forward with Stanton and they have the guys to get him, I guess. Do you think that the Padres are going, I mean, the Padres haven't really been shopping for big free agents for many years. But we've heard from the Giants and the Mariners that it's been very hard for them to attract free agent hitters because of the park.

And that it's particularly... The park particularly seems to affect your ability to recruit hitters if they think of it as a stat-crushing park. So I wonder if the Padres just feel like it's going to be hard for them to ever get. I mean, obviously, it's hard for anybody to get a guy like Stanton, but if they think it's going to be particularly hard for a team like them to get a guy like him. By the way, Will Venable's good. Yeah, no, I like Will Venable, but I don't know.

I like DeNorfi is okay, too, but I guess VanVleet is like 30 and he's not like a franchise cornerstone type who you wouldn't – I mean, Stanton would be an upgrade over just about anyone really. Quinton, by the way, is signed through 2016. Well, he'll probably get hurt. He is hurt probably. Yeah. I saw a picture someone tweeted

of Petco's new fence under construction. I have no idea whether it's been hard for them to recruit hitters, but if I were a hitter, I would probably do my best not to go there. Somebody I know, a friend of mine recently asked me if I thought that Stanton or A-Rod was more likely to break Barry Bond's record, home run record.

And then later asked me if I thought that Harper was more likely than both of them or less likely than both of them. And my thought with Stanton was that, I mean, obviously he's so far away and everything needs to go right for like 15 years for him to have a chance. But even if everything goes right, it seems sort of impossible to imagine unless he gets into a ballpark in probably an era like Bonds was in the era. in probably an era like bonds you know was in the era so i wonder if stanton would be unhappy in a park like that already thinking about what it does for his legacy or i mean i i will say that it would kind of make me mad like you know i wrote about that uh how colorado has never really had an elite

power hitter yes they've had incredible opportunity to entertain us and they've never once bothered to get the best home run hitter in the game and so in a way putting stanton in petco would just be kind of a bummer because stanton would hit like 36 home runs and it would be like park adjusted amazing but right there yeah well i guess we'll see how big a difference the the fence move makes. But yes, I'm sure it won't be a hitter's park suddenly. So yeah, it would be fun to see him go somewhere where he could just hit 500-foot home runs all the time. That'd be fun.

I guess there's also sort of a school of thought with Stanton that he's just so strong and hits balls so far that park factors don't apply to him because he can just hit balls out of every park. And maybe there's a little truth to that, but he would certainly still hit more home runs in cores than he would in Petco. So who is more likely to break Bond's home run record? I would still go with A-Rod, I think. Not that I am at all optimistic about his future,

but he's got 647, and the odds that Stanton or Harper will get there are low. As much as I like both of them and as promising a power prospect they are, the odds are they're not going to get as far as A-Rod has already gotten, let alone 100 homers farther. Totally. Okay, so then second pie-in-the-sky trade rumor is that the Cubs might be trading Matt Garza before the season begins.

This didn't come out of nowhere. I think when they signed Edwin Jackson, giving them six starters, people wondered whether that freed them up to trade one. And it's obviously they're not going to trade one of the four that they just signed. And so I guess the question is, why would they want to trade? Why would they sign all these guys just to trade Garza? What is it about Garza that makes him so much more valuable to another team compared to the other four guys they signed who are apparently more valuable to the Cubs? Well, I guess the thing with, I mean, Garza's a free agent after this season, right?

He is, just like Scott Feldman and Scott Baker will be. Okay, but those guys are cheap. And I guess, I mean, the thing with Jackson, his signing didn't make a whole lot of sense to a lot of people because they figured the Cubs are maybe two years away from being a good team. Why do they need to go get someone like Edwin Jackson? And I guess the thought was they have some financial resources, although they haven't been successful lately,

they are a team that can afford to spend. And he was signed for long enough that he will conceivably still be on the team when the Cubs are good. And the free agent market next winter looks awful, really bad, and will probably get worse before then as some players sign extensions with their current teams. So there was the thought that I guess they could sign him now and he would still be around for the next good Cubs team. And maybe that's not true with Garza. If he's just there for one more year, if they've decided that they don't want to extend him and keep him around for a long time, I guess he has decent trade value.

And the guys that they got this winter were just kind of cheap and good values. So it sort of makes sense. I don't know. We've seen Garza trade rumors for, I don't know how long've seen Garza trade rumors for, I don't know how long, a year, two years. I'm not sure he should have that much trade value at this point. I think he did last offseason. But, you know, he's, I mean, he's going to, he was a super two. So he's going

to make, he made almost 10 million this year. You figure he'll make $12 or $13 next year. And, you know, he's basically been a two-win pitcher the last three years. I mean, maybe slightly better than that. And he's, you know, I don't know. I mean, in a way, he's almost, I feel like he's maybe kind of a, he's like a fit pitcher, you know, a guy that you look at his strike-out-to-walk ratio, and he seems like he should be really good. And those are attractive indicators to some GMs right now.

I think, like, Jerry DiPoto, for instance, seems to be signing guys based on that. And I just, I don't know. His career fit is actually higher than his career ERA. Well, that's surprising. Yeah. Yeah, and it wasn't very good this season either. Wow, shocked. Yeah.

So there goes that theory. There goes that theory. Well, what other theories could be out there? I mean, he had pitched a lot of innings a bunch of years in a row until this past year uh 184 203 204 198 he is not old he is pretty consistently better than league average is he gonna get a qualifying offer next year Man, I think possibly if the market is as weak as I think it will be, maybe. I don't know. I mean, I guess he's not that different a pitcher from Edwin Jackson, really.

And Edwin Jackson didn't. Yeah, I guess, you know, I kind of wonder whether, I mean, I could see him being a guy who gets a qualifying offer. And so from the Cubs' perspective, you're thinking, well, we're not just going to let him walk at the end of the year. We're going to try to trade him before he leaves, you know. So he's a guy that in the past, before last year, would have been traded at the trade deadline. But now, if you're traded at the trade deadline, your team doesn't get a draft pick when you walk

away. Maybe they're thinking that he has a lot more value now in July because he comes with a draft pick now. Maybe that's why they sign Feldman and Baker and all that so that they free him up now instead of freeing him up in July. That makes sense. All right. And what's the last one? The last one is Chase Headley for Justin Upton. That would be a,

that would be a big one intra division too yeah it'd be a hot and sexy trade rumor yeah so Upton's got three years left Hedley's got two years left is the rumor I think it was Rosenthal

reported it and suggested that the Padres would have to give more than just Headley for Upton. But, and I think that's, that's probably true because it's three years for two and because Upton is, you know, signed to a pretty reasonable deal. Uh, but who's a better player right now? Uh, well, last year Headley was certainly, um, going forward. I don't know I might go with Hedley yeah I think I

I mean I don't know if I'm just burnt out on Justin Upton trade rumors and not only Justin Upton trade rumors like I mean this is probably the sixth round yeah four rounds of this where it's like the Diamondbacks say oh he's not

getting traded and then a week later he's out there again yeah they're like the the killer in scream movies or something every time it's just definitely over and he's gonna be a diamondback uh a week later it's back and yet nobody has gotten him which makes me think that not only are the diamondbacks like obviously sort of sour on him. I mean, I'm sure that they think he's a fine player, but they obviously think that he could bring in more in trade than to them. And yet he can't bring in more in trade than he can to them. And so therefore, we actually have like 30 teams all simultaneously telling us just enough to not as good as you all think like and i think that's maybe that's

reasonable i i don't think that that's a an unfair position upton has had um you know one great year and i think one really good year out of like you know four if you ignore his his super super young years um you know even i don't know even the the great ones they weren't uh like they were kind of they were rbi mvp seasons but they weren't war mvp seasons you know what i mean yeah and they would look a lot different if they had been ordered differently um if if the the very good one and the even better one had been his last two seasons, and he were, I guess he's 25 now, that would be very encouraging.

But instead it was really, I guess, his second full season, or really his first truly full season, was very good, and then he had a down year, and then he had a really good year, And then he had a down year and then he had a really good year and then he had another down year. So there's no clear upward trajectory, I guess.

And that kind of makes it makes people more pessimistic maybe. So I would take, I think I'd take Headley. Yeah. That would be a nice upgrade for Arizona over, I guess, Chris Johnson and Eric Chavez and Eric Hinsky and every other infielder they have. Five outfielders, so.

Right. Yeah, that would make sense for them roster-wise. Good team. Mm-hmm. That's not a bad team. Alright. Talked about trades that aren't going to happen. Okay. Enjoy Downton.

Tomorrow you can give us your thoughts on the premiere. The funny thing is that I'm only going to watch like 20 minutes of it. No, you'll get pulled in. You'll get hooked. Okay, we'll see. Alright. Talk to you tomorrow.