Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1135: Players Seeking Salaries

Episode Date: November 10, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the latest Shohei Otani news, the contract requests of free agents J.D. Martinez and Jay Bruce, the Tigers’ MLB-worst World Series odds, and changes in catcher-framing stats, then review the results of Jeff’s survey on 2017 fan satisfaction. Audio intro: Colin Blunstone, "Pay Me Later" Audio outro: The Rolling Stones, […]

If you want me to listen to you now, oh boy, you're gonna have to pay me later. If you want me to listen to you now, oh boy, you're gonna have to pay me later. Hello and welcome to episode one of today, but episode 1135 of the Factory Wild Fangraphs Baseball Podcast, brought to you by our Patreon supporters, my Fangraphs, and the internet, and this recording technology I'm Jeff Sullivan. The Fangraphs, joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Hello.

Hello. That was new. You switched things up a little bit. Decided that we needed a little bit of paper. New format. New format, yeah. So episode two of today will be brought to you next Monday when it will actually be episode one of today. We only ever record one podcast at a time.

More importantly, Shoei Otani is going to be posted. So this brings the lifespan of the rumor that he would not come over to, what was it, like four days? Maybe four days that there was chatter. Right. So the actual news here is that his team, the fighters, will allow him to be posted, right? So it's not totally, totally official.

They still have to sort out the rules that will govern that move, as MLB trade rumors put it. So I think this mostly resolves it. Otani did hire an MLB Players Association certified agent, which seemed to be a sticking point. And there's some sort of framework in place, but it's not 100% done and sealed and signed. But it's an important, I think, juncture in this and put some pressure on people to resolve any remaining difficulties so it certainly makes it look like it will be happening so where would you put your mental odds on the chances that shaheo tani signs a contract with

the major league team this offseason gosh it's gonna be if. If it's not 100%, how much lower is it? It's got to be a 90 at least, right? I mean, the potential hurdles here, I suppose there's still some possibility that everyone involved could back out because the terms have not been completely finalized. I mean, it sounds like now that his team has announced that they will allow him to be posted, that removes really any leverage they might have had, I suppose. They'd have to go back on their word here to back out of this. And so that probably won't happen. I guess there's still the Players Association has to agree to this, but it seems unlikely that they would not, given that it would reflect very poorly on them, I think, for helping bring about the system that evidently they are not happy with. So I think he'll almost certainly be posted, and then obviously every team would want to sign him. I guess there's some slight chance that when faced with the actual moment of putting his name on the dotted line

for a lot less money than he would be worth on the open market. He could balk. He could feel bad about it. He could decide to do something different. But after all this, it seems like very, very low probability that that will happen. So I don't know. Some small single digits number. Oh, my God. How great would that be where he's posted and then teams put in their money and then he decides, actually, I don't want to do this.

Not a lot of money. Years, years of work. I think one of my favorite, I shouldn't say favorite, but one of the unique quirks to this saga is that because he's going to sign such a small contract, we don't need to cover this old territory. It's going to happen. There are no other ways out. He's going to sign a tiny contract, at least relative to what he's worth. And that means that he will instantly become just like a winning lottery ticket for a baseball team. There's so much value that even if Shea Ohtani was like,

I don't know, I don't know what he does, but let's say he hunts. Even if he fell out of a tree and injured his arm or his shoulder, or if he accidentally shot himself in the foot, I don't know, if he sustained some sort of traumatic injury that wasn't life or career threatening, maybe career delaying, it wouldn't matter. Teams would still love to sign him. Shohei Otani could be diagnosed with a torn shoulder labrum today.

And every single team in baseball would still, they'd offer, they would value him less, but they would offer him or value him way north of the league minimum rookie contract. Yeah, he could never pitch during the life of whatever contract he signs and probably still be worth it even just for like the publicity value of signing him and having him associated with the team, I would think, and the international dollars that result from that. So yeah, I mean, he's going to be like a Mike Trout as a rookie level kind of surplus value, presumably. How strong would the uproar be if Otani signs with the team and then that team decides, we want you to start the year in AAA. And then he comes up two or three weeks later and they do the usual service on manipulation.

I would say probably not any more than, say, Chris Bryant and the Cubs survived that. I think you could maybe sell it just based on the fact that he hasn't pitched in America before. And maybe there's the cultural adjustment. There's, you know, whatever spring training is not enough to get used to the hitters. He's coming off surgery and ankle problems. So maybe you say it's just making sure he's healthy. And I don't know, I think you could get away with it. I mean, people would be angry. People are always angry in those instances and would be even more so with Otani, who's everyone is just, you know, really eager to see. But, you know, I think in the end, probably the benefits outweigh the costs,

which they usually do, which is why teams always do this when they can. And no Cubs fan is upset now that the Cubs did that. They're all probably happy that the Cubs did that. No one except Chris Bryant cares anymore that that happened. Do you think it's more than 50% likely that this does happen, or do you think Otani starts with whatever team he makes? I guess it depends a little bit on his spring training, right? Like if he does struggle in spring training, especially if he's doing something that no other player is trying to do, if the team that signs him is letting him try to be

a two-way player, which seems fairly likely to me just because that could be a big factor in his decision where to sign since we know it won't be the money difference that makes up his mind. I'm thinking, hoping, that it will be the team that will give him the biggest shot to do what he wants to do on the field. So if he has a slow start in spring training, you know, he's coming back from injury, he's learning a new league a new country he's gonna be I mean just just the preparation alone right just having to get ready for the season as both a pitcher and a hitter you could I think sell it right I mean if he doesn't hit right out of the gate in spring training if his pitching is not perfect then

you say you know hey he's trying to do two jobs at once so he needs a little more preparation than typical player and so yeah I could see it happening I mean there'd be a enormous I think public pressure obviously to have him on the opening day roster and if he has a good spring training I don't think you could get away with it because it's not like he's a prospect I mean he is but he's also been the best pitcher and best hitter in Japan simultaneously and we know that that league is better than AAA based on everything we can tell from guys going back and forth so I think probably if he has struggles in spring training you could get away with it if he doesn't you can't so I don't know what the probability of him having a somewhat rocky spring training is, but whatever that is. He might be the only player in baseball next year

who actually needs spring training to be like six weeks long. I know. Just such a waste otherwise. And I guess if he started in the minors, even for just a few weeks, probably the local media wouldn't be – they wouldn't express too much surprise relative to just a normal Bryant star level minor league prospect. But the Japanese media would probably be its version of infuriated. And I don't know the last time a major league organization was hounded by the Japanese media, but that could be something fun to watch. Maybe Kei Agawa, right, who just got buried in the minors. Oh, right. Good memory. Yeah, although he obviously didn't do a whole lot to justify being in the majors for most of that time,

but that's a situation where the Yankees signed a guy to a... What was his contract? Can you quickly look that up? I sure can. Remember that? Looks like $5 and $20 million. Right, and... Something like that? a what how many what was his contract can you quickly look that up unless you remember that looks like five and 20 million right and yeah and uh you know he he pitched very very briefly he made 12 starts 14 appearances for the inky's in 2007 and then four more innings the next year and that was that and you know he was pitching in AAA, I guess, for, what, three seasons before he went back to Japan. So, or four, I guess.

Was he there the whole time? So he just got buried for the latter two and really almost three years of that deal. So that's probably a precedent. Obviously, he was not the player that Otani is. Man, I got to tell you, I had completely forgotten about Kei Goa, much like I guess the Yankees did. Yeah, I can't blame you. Yeah, he then went back to Japan and actually pitched, well, until 2014, I guess. And at that point, he was 34.

He has not pitched since. But yeah, I mean, that was a bust in the sense of his on-field performance. But it wasn't such a huge contract that the Yankees actually felt the impact of that. If you ever want to have a good understanding of human greed and how we get used to our circumstances very abruptly, you can think about, again, the team that signs Otani will be winning a lottery ticket. They will be getting, they will be receiving a winning lottery ticket, I should say. And still, look, I don't want to accuse the team

of service time manipulation already because he doesn't even have a contract, let alone a team or a trip to the minors. But as soon as a team has Otani, it will just get used to the fact that, okay, now we have Otani. Oh, but now if we put him in the minors, we can have Otani for even an extra long amount of time. So even though he is just such a value immediately, still, I would say, now that I think about it, I used to think the odds were about 5% or 10% he would start in AAA, but the more that I think about it,

I mean, Otani will have no leverage. The team's going to be like, what? The league wants us to treat you like a normal prospect, So we're going to treat you like a normal prospect. And the team teams do this with almost every single good prospect. It's rare that you have. I don't know who's the Mariners brought Michael Pineda up. I guess he was on the roster out of spring training his rookie year. So they didn't manipulate his service time. That does happen. But it's rare. Yeah. And and then now and now I think it's rare yeah and uh and then yeah now and now i think it's going to be like 60 to 70 percent if not even higher maybe maybe i'm being dumb maybe

it's 95 odds that atani starts in triple a because the team has all the excuses that it needs he needs to get used to hitting and pitching he needs to get used to a five-day rotation instead of starting every week and yeah it's just such a cultural transition that there's no way he could have gotten used to it in spring training. And we just want to, you have everything that you would need in order to justify it because the, look, the bar is low for teams to justify keeping or sending a guy to AAA. Teams have been doing it forever. And yeah, yeah. 95% chance he begins in AAA. That's what I put it. Yeah. Well, that'll be a big story, I'm sure, in spring training, too. So many aspects of this will be big stories. I'm looking forward to all of them.

So one other hot stove story that broke this week that I wanted to just touch on quickly. Reportedly, the early asking price for J.D. Martinez is somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 million. This is via ESPN's Jerry Krasnick, via teams that have spoken to Scott Boris about J.D. Martinez. So that's, you know, we don't know that Boris actually said, yes, I want $200 million. But this is the reported sense that teams have gotten. sense that teams have gotten. And we know from Sam Miller's research almost exactly a year ago, he looked into the players asking for phenomenon. He looked back at almost a decade of free agents. I think there were 78 free agents who were seeking something and he looked back to see what they actually ended up getting. And he found that the answer is 87.5% both in dollars and years. So

whatever number of years they were reportedly supposed to be asking, the median free agent got 87.5% of that. And the same with dollars, which would suggest that JD Martinez is in line for $175 million this winter. Do you buy that? Does that sound possible? See, if you hadn't brought this up, I was going to bring up the same thing with almost nearly the exact same words. I was going to run the number by you

and refer to Sam's piece and talk about the 87.5. So yeah, now you've flipped it around. Okay, no, but maybe? it's still in the back of my head there's just the the lingering thought of okay this is this is jd martinez right he's he's not that but he just had the highest luck in percentage since barry bonds like he slugged 690 this year and i don't look i don't think he can sustain 690 that was the best in baseball by like i don't know 50 points or something slug sustain 690 that was the best in baseball by like i don't know 50 points or something he slugged way better than aaron judge but if you think about it he's

he's walking more than he used to he doesn't have a huge strikeout problem and he's just like the most extreme fly ball hitter who i mean this side of like ryan schimpf but like the most extreme good i guess fly ball hitter he hits the ball out everywhere i was looking at his hard hit rates and they're like basically 50 to all three fields fields, like middle. I think he led the league in that last year. Yeah. Now, granted, there were some weird calibration issues with hard hit rate and Tigers hitters. We don't need to talk about that. That's weird. But nevertheless, he's I mean, look, there's so many players who seem like they're made for this era of the ball being so lively. And it's because it's true when the ball is lively. Many hitters're made for this era of the ball being so lively and it's because it's true when

the ball is lively many hitters are made for the era but jd martinez puts everything in the air and he hits everything hard look i don't think he's gonna slug 690 again but how much does he need to slug to be valuable i mean he's clearly one of the best hitters in baseball just since his reinvention 2014 that's four seasons now if minimum 1,000 play appearances over those four years, he has been the fifth best hitter in baseball. It's going by weighted runs created plus, I guess, technically tied with Paul Goldschmidt, but he's ranked above him. I assume that means that if you go out to some decimal place, he is actually fifth. It's just Trout, Votto, Stanton, Harper, actually fifth. It's just Trout, Votto, Stanton, Harper, and J.D. Martinez, number five. I think probably a lot of fans don't think of him in that class, but he is in that class, and he's coming

off a really torrid second half with the Diamondbacks, and sure, it's Chase Field and dry air, but still, he was really something. And the thing that makes you think that this would not be, I mean, if he were just average at everything on top of that, then sure, he'd be getting a deal like this. The thing that makes you think he won't is, A, he's 30 years old. He turned 30 in August. And I don't know what a 175, how many years do you think that would be? Probably what, at least like... Seven. Yeah, probably at least seven.

So you're talking about getting him into his late 30s. Teams are always wary of doing that. And, you know, I don't know if they'd be concerned about like the fact that he blossomed late and reinvented himself. I think at this point point the sample is large enough that you're looking at just as many years with J.D. Martinez as you would be for most players you're evaluating. But he doesn't do anything except hit, obviously.

He's a lousy base runner, at least by the stats, and a lousy fielder, doesn't play a premium position and is not good at the position he does play. So I think given that, doesn't play a premium position and is not good at the position he does play. So I think given that, it's maybe hard to see him getting quite to that number, but the bat is great, and he's hitting free agency at the right time because he's coming off his best offensive season. Yeah, he feels, I guess I hadn't drawn this comparison directly before, but he feels a little Nelson Cruz-y, I guess.

Now, Nelson Cruz, of course, is like seven years older than J.D. Martinez is, so go back a little Nelson Cruz-y, I guess. Now, Nelson Cruz, of course, is like seven years older than J.D. Martinez is, so go back a little while. Still really good. Yeah, right. But he's not a great defender, as you pointed out. Doesn't really run the bases so well. You don't think of J.D. Martinez as being this big, slow, hulking dude, and that's not him. He just doesn't really have the other fundamentals in place. I will say that Steamer, which is the only projection system we have access to right now, doesn't love him. They project him to be a 2.5 win player. I don't buy him being that low.

But on the other hand, last year, he was a 1.8 win player. So, I don't know. Where would you guess J.D. Martinez's next season would end up in terms of wins above replacement? 3? 3.5? would end up in terms of wins above replacement three three and a half yeah so he's been as high as five and as low as about two during this four-year stretch that he's had here he's coming off his best offensive season but was still at roughly four just because of the base running and the defense so i mean given that he's at the age where you certainly wouldn't project him to be better, although probably would have said that last year too, and he did get better. But I would say probably the

safe expectation, I'll put it at maybe 3.5 or, I mean, maybe I'd go to four just because he missed time this year. He only played 119 games and he still got to four wins because of the offense. Of course, he only played 120 games the year before that. So maybe he's just not the most durable player and you shouldn't project him to be, but certainly possible that he plays more games. In 2014, he played 123 games. So three out of the past four years, three out of the four years that he's been good, he's played about 120 games. So that's something of a concern, I guess. But if you expect any bounce back there, it could overcome some of the regression that he might have. So I'll say in the four win range. But once we get to the end of that contract it's scary obviously it's scary for

anyone when you're talking about seven years and a guy being 37 at the end of it but you know he's not going to be giving you anything especially like you know a national league team i don't know where a national league team would want to saddle itself with jd martinez in his late 30s. He seems like a DH candidate not that far from now. So that would be somewhat concerning. Yeah. Although now, on the other hand, Nelson Cruz was just a four-win player after being a four-win player, after being a five-win player. You can't really ever tell. But let's say, so I'm using Fangraphs' little contract estimation tool. So this is a tool that estimates contracts, much like it's titled. So I plugged in J.D. Martinez, put him at four wins per your estimate,

gave him a seven year contract, and I decided to value a window buffer placement for this coming offseason at eight and a half million per war. That sounds roughly fine, right? Sure. So anyway, it has a little aging curve built into this. He's 30, so he's probably not getting better. You never really know. But when I look at seven years, that spits out $164.4 million for a seven-year contract. That doesn't include any opt-out clauses. Now, if you use the steamer projection, which is just two and a half wins, probably too low, but just for fun, that puts him at seven years and $69.2 million. So Scott Forrest certainly not pitching his player as meeting the projections. Steenbridge regresses players pretty hard to me. I would like to see the Boris binder for JD Martinez.

I'd imagine that there's some creative stats work going on there. But OK, so if you say he's a four win player now, you could get him to 175. Like if you say teams are spending $9 million per win, which is not unreasonable. I don't know what the latest figures are, but hey, it's a new offseason. So maybe it's $9 million a year and that would get him there. So, you know, if it happens, it wouldn't be the craziest contract ever handed out but i think you know i think he probably falls a bit short but all it takes is boris talking one owner into making not the most judicious investment yep or if you can really with a player like this he's he's starting so good martin is clearly a great hitter if you just

manage to somehow sell him as a player who's going to age better than average which you know who can ever predict that in the first place? But if you, this contract estimation tool has four inputs where you're talking about the aging curve. You can have a normal aging curve based on whatever empirical research is taking place to go into this. You have someone who ages poorly, someone who ages well, and then you have a manual entry. I'm not going to mess around with the manual entry, but if you have Martinez aging normally, as said, that's seven years, about $164 million. But if you select ages well, that pumps them up to seven years and $218 million. So, you know, maybe when I first saw this rumor, as usual, I laughed at it.

I thought, that's dumb. Who would give J.D. Martinez $200 million? But I think maybe I just always forget how much money is in the game. Like, you don't need to be a great player to sign a $200 million contract anymore, which is why when Bryce Harper signs his contract as a free agent, people are going to faint and go to the hospital because it's going to be such an inconceivable amount of money that he's going to get, and it's going to make sense.

Yeah, no, that's probably true. Yeah. What does that aging projection or the projection we were just talking about say for him at the end of that seven-year contract? Is he a replacement level player at that point? If you start, if you put it at four wins above replacement to begin. Yeah, and just, you know, standard aging. Yeah, that knocks him all the way down to one win above replacement at 36. I'm not, look, I'm not sold on the aging uh, the aging curve that goes into this tool. I think

that's, uh, maybe a little simplistic, but whatever you can never really know. It would be really easy to convince yourself Martinez will be a big blob and nothing in seven years. And then it would be no more difficult to convince yourself. Well, just like Nelson Cruz, he can still be a great hitter when he, uh, when he gets older. I don't know much about JD Martinez's workout habits and discipline, but in order to be what he is, he's got to be pretty driven. Yeah. Okay. By the way, ESPN published these sports book odds, the, let's see, Westgate Las Vegas Superbook as of November 1st. And the only thing that really stands out to me, they have the Dodgers with the best odds, then indians and the astros the nationals nothing too surprising at the top at the bottom though the second worst

odds there's a a tie a several way tie actually they have the marlins the pirates the twins the royals the a's the phillies the reds and the padres all at 80-1. That's an interesting group of teams to have, I guess, I mean, to have like the Royals lumped in with the, I mean, the Reds and the Padres with the same odds as the Twins. One of those teams just made the playoffs. I know. Like, you know, there might be some correction coming there potentially for 2018,

but that seems odd to have the Twins and the Padres and Reds all in the same group. But the even more notable thing is that all those teams, many-way tie at 80-1 for second worst. Then Detroit Tigers last place 300-1. Oh, God. Should we put our money on the tigers is it irrational to have any team that much worse than all the other teams when i mean the tigers are are bad sure and they're heading into a scary period but are they that much worse than the reds in 2018 or the padres or any of these teams probably probably not, right? I don't know.

Okay. Podcast topic shift. How do we make the Tigers into a World Series champion this year? I mean, the Tigers did have a really terrible stretch in the second half, right? Post-Verlander, I forget. Did you write about it? I ended up doing it. Yeah, right. They had traded some guys and they've had like one of the worst stretches in some sample of games of all time, I think. So I guess I see where this is coming from. I mean, I certainly had a hard time concocting any scenario where the Tigers win the World Series, but 301 is harsh if you have the other worst teams at 80 to 1. Anyway, odd, odd odds. I guess, I don't know, they're maybe anticipating what the action will be and thinking that no one's going to be betting on the Tigers. Maybe they're thinking that the Tigers will trade more people this winter

and other teams will get better and the Tigers will not. So there's some projection built in here. But yeah, that's harsh. Okay, I kind of had forgot about this i don't think i wrote about this because who would want to read about the horrible tigers but a baseball season 162 games it's divided cleanly into three thirds it's a third's work of 54 games right so in the tigers first stretch of 54 games they went to 26 and 28 okay that's fine basically good enough for an American League wildcard spot.

Who knows? Who cares? So second stretch of 54 games, they went 25 and 29. So again, not good, but you know, you're sort of typical American League fourth place finisher, I guess. And in their last stretch of 54 games, they went 13-41. The Tigers just fell on their faces.

They were nine and a half games worse than the next worst team in the American League over that stretch. They were seven and a half games worse than the next worst baseball team over that stretch. That team being the Mets. Boy, the Tigers are just disgusting down the stretch. Yeah, no, maybe 300 to 1 is too generous. Maybe so. Okay. This team is revolting.

Okay, so there was another contract speculation rumor thing I saw on Twitter that I wanted to bring up after J.D. Martinez, which you helpfully brought up. And there's one that might be even sillier. I don't know. You probably saw it. So J.D. Martinez is reportedly looking for $200 million. J. Bruce is reportedly looking for $80 to $90 million. And look, J. Bruce coming off his best year in some amount of time. He had a rough stretch in there where he was playing through something, I guess, or he just wasn't that good. Jay Bruce, not a very talented defensive player.

Nope. Not much of a beach runner. He's been better, right? Like he had the injury and he was bad before that, but then has been somewhat better, at least according to the stats. Is that the way that it's gone? I mean. Oh, yeah.

Look at that. Yeah. Who knew? Yeah. Okay. I don't know if he's good, but he's, yeah, he's better. He's been above average in some seasons, according to the stats in recent Yeah. Okay. I don't know if he's good, but he's, yeah, he's better. He's been above average in some seasons, according to the stats in recent years. Okay.

So Jay Bruce last season, according to Fangraphs, he was worth 2.7 wins above replacement. However, Jay Bruce over the last four seasons combined has been worth three wins above replacement. So, you know, he's projected by Steamer to be one win above replacement. Maybe that's not very nice. Maybe it's too skeptical like it is with Martinez. I don't know. But here's the deal. Jay Bruce can seek whatever he wants and he'll get a contract. He'll get a starting job. Like not two months ago, I guess it would have been three months ago, but two months ago in regular season terms, Jay Bruce was practically like a giveaway. He was traded by the Mets to the Indians for, look, I bet Ryder Ryan is a lovely son,

a lovely friend, great member of the family, gives terrific gifts, very thoughtful individual, but he's a low minors reliever. And Jay Bruce was traded by the Mets to the Indians on August 9th. So he was an August trade to begin with. You remember that the Mets had trouble. They couldn't even give Bruce away earlier in the season and over the

offseason because teams just didn't want to pick him up at his salary. And that was that would have been a one year commitment for less than whatever annual term Bruce is looking for now. So if Bruce gets it, bully for Jay Bruce, I guess, and his agent. But how does that contract seems like it's even sillier to me. He's no younger than J.D. Martinez and nobody really wanted him recently. Yeah, no, he's five months older than J.D. Martinez. I actually would have guessed that J. Bruce is older than 30. He'll turn 31 right around opening day next year.

But yeah, I mean, he's not remotely the hitter that J.D. Martinez is. And to be fair, he's not seeking remotely the contract. He's seeking less than half of the contract. So maybe that's appropriate. But even this year, which was a good year for him, he hit 36 home runs. He was still only 18% better than the league average major league hitter. So, you know, he's a low average guy, not a particularly high OPP guy. Even if we toss out 2014 and 2015 when he was sub replacement level, basically, and a below average hitter, even if we assume he's the guy he's been the last couple years that's you know a decent hitter a bit above average but not by all that much and you know doesn't really add anything on the bases maybe a decent defensive player at this point but in a corner outfield

position so you know it's it's not really an exciting profile and you don't have to go back far at all to the point where it was not at all an exciting profile. So that's, it's aggressive, but yeah, I don't know. I think that's, that's probably more far-fetched than Didi Martinez, but I mean, what is, what is he projected to be next season not good yeah right so yeah that's that seems like a stretch you when you said that you thought that Jay Bruce is older than uh older than 30 I agree with you and I think it's it probably comes out of the fact that he debuted as a regular when he was 21 right whenever a player comes up that young you always assume that they're a lot older than they are and what what part of you, if any part of you at

all now, thinks of Jay Bruce as a guy who was, going into 2008, the number one overall prospect in baseball. Baseball America had its top 100 list, and the top five that year went to Jay Bruce, Evan Longoria, Jabba Chamberlain, Clay Buchholz, and Colby Rasmus. Clayton Kershaw was number seven on this list. Well, he turned out to be better than all those guys except Longoria. So I guess that sort of made sense. But I mean, I remember him being a prospect, but I did not remember him being the number one overall prospect. So that is surprising to me.

Yeah, right. How long does that, like with a number one prospect, that sticks for a while, even if a player is struggling or you just kind of talk about the upside he might have because of his prospect pedigree. But when in Jay Bruce's career do you figure that that number one ranking didn't matter anymore? The following year, he came up as a 21-year-old and he was about a league average hitter. He finished fifth in the Rookie of the Year voting. Pretty good. But his OPS has never been better than 846. I guess a better way to put it would be that his OPS plus has never been better than 124.

For his career, he's at 110. He's a decade into it now. He's been worth about 19 or 20 wins above replacement as a regular. Solid career, but not what you want out of a number one prospect. It's probably about what you get out of a number one prospect. It's probably about what you get out of a number one prospect. Typically, it's maybe even better than the average return from a number one prospect, but not what you're hoping for, obviously. Yeah, I think that was a helpful reminder. Every so often someone will ask, like, what is what major league player would be the minimum you would want out of?

This is draft picks instead of prospect but like if you had the top overall pick what's the what's who's the worst major league player you would be satisfied getting if you could be certain your player would become that and we got this email question some weeks or months ago and i think the the name i threw out was marcus semien who's like just so boring but yeah competent and you know you you wouldn't be able to sell that in a draft room you wouldn't be like yeah look we're gonna get Marcus Semyon out of this and that's great you never want to do that but you know humans get blinded by by the upside and they don't give enough consideration to the downside I don't know do you does any name

come to your mind of right well in this in this scenario, there is no downside, right? Because you're saying if he'll be Marcus Semyon, he will actually be Marcus Semyon. There's no risk that he won't be Marcus Semyon. So, yeah, I mean, Jay Bruce is in that kind of range, I think, probably, of where you should be pleased with the outcome of a pick. But I guess, I mean, you know, a lot of those 20 wins or part of those 20 wins have come with other teams, not most of them, I guess.

And I suppose the Reds got something back when they traded him, although not much. So, yeah, I mean, it doesn't seem right, but it probably is right anyway. I don't know that he will get there. He had a strange season because you were saying you kind of wondered when he stopped having that luster of number one prospect dumb. And I would guess that, I mean, his first season he came up again. He was young, as mentioned. He was

basically a league average hitter. I don't know that he would have lost a lot of luster from that. The next year, his sophomore season, he actually had a.246 isolated power, which is really great. And yet he was still very slightly a below average hitter because he had a.221 BABIP that year, which is really terrible. 283 so if you took out that weird 221 year probably be close to the average but i wonder if it was maybe then i mean there were probably people who were looking at that and saying hey hit 22 home runs and under one games 387 plate appearances that's impressive but he had a 223 batting average because of lousy low babbit issues man jay bruce is a rookie 35 starts center field didn't remember i i had sent you the J. Bruce baseball reference link earlier in our conversation. We were still talking about J.D. Martinez. But as anyone who's ever browsed a baseball reference page will know,

that when it's available, they will list player nicknames. And there's been an influx of nicknames since Players Weekend. I think a lot of those nicknames got folded in. But, for example, J.D. Martinez's nickname is listed as Flacco. Jake Arrieta, another free agent, his nickname is listed as Snake. And Jay Bruce's nickname is listed as Bruce. That's not a nickname. No, you can't have a nickname that is your name with a vowel that repeats.

Definitely not. This does not meet nickname criteria. That's a longer version of your name. That's something you might say in the stands. But, no, that repeats. Definitely not. Yeah, this does not meet nickname criteria. A longer version of your name. That's something you might say in the stands, but no, that's not a nickname. All right. A terrible nickname. So maybe one more quick bit of banter. Just to follow up, you did write about pitch framing data after we talked about it on the show the other day, and you confirmed what your inkling was while we were talking.

confirmed what your inkling was while we were talking first you confirmed that there was again fairly little variation between teams compared to the early years of the pitch framing era or the pitch tracking era for the past few years there's just been less variation still significant variation but a lot less variation which implies that i think teams are caring about this more, that teams that were terrible have gotten at least decent. And so you don't get the kind of Ryan Domet to Jose Molina gulfs of value of, you know, whatever that was in their best and worst seasons, like 10 wins or something. You don't really get that on a team basis anymore because no one is running Domet out there and it's harder to be Molina because it's all relative to average and the

average is better. So you confirmed that, but you also confirmed that there was an unusually low correlation between 2016 and 2017. So there were a lot of catchers who were fluctuating wildly from good to bad or bad to good. There was just less consistency overall. And I suppose that makes some sense just in this fact that if there is a rising floor and less variation, maybe you'd expect there to be a lower correlation. But there was a pretty big drop off in that respect just in the last two years. So I don't know whether there were data issues there with StatCast and the transition

from PitchFX. But anyway, what you speculated as we were talking turned out to be true. Yep. I still, I think Baseball Prospectus does a great job of handling the numbers. I think they put out a good pitch framing product. But at this point, if one suspects that pretty much every team is on board and it's teaching people how to frame or it's prioritizing framers, then you're just going to get randomness is a much stronger element in the year to year relationship than you will skill. And I think my favorite marker of just this weird contemporary pitch framing absurdity is that three years ago, Chris Iannetta was great. Last year, Chris Iannetta dreadful. This year, Chris Iannetta was great. And it doesn't, I don't know. I don't know what to do with that. He's changed teams a bunch. I doubt that Chris

Iannetta stopped caring about pitch framing last season. It's not like he's been catching awesome pitching staffs or terrible pitching staffs the whole time it's just bizarre but i don't know then what we do with trying to evaluate chris hyandetta's true talent framing skill and you know if wellington castillo is going to be good now it's i don't know it matters it's still an important skill but there's less to be gained i guess because it's so hard to be good it It's more like you just have to make sure that your team isn't bad at framing. But like this year, even Tony Walters didn't score well. And Tony Walters was supposed to be like the the best framer that the Rockies had ever had. And the reason was that he used to be an infielder. And so therefore, his hands were really good and

soft. And he was a great receiver. And probably it's all still true but yet Tony Walters not good on the list he's down there with Wilson Contreras who looks terrible by the eye but also Francisco Cervelli was down there as not a very good framer and that doesn't make any sense because the whole reason that the Pirates have him is because he's a good it's complicated yeah yeah nothing is certain anymore yep and then then there's the whole uncertainty about Jonathan, Luke, Ray. I just don't know what to do with that. Yes. All right.

Well, we have, what, 15 minutes for your actual topic? Perfect. Okay. Because it's, look, it's not a mail-it-in topic, but it's just a season interview topic. And we've done the season interview thing already. But a project I like to run at the end of every season before the offseason gets too deep is on Fangraphs. I run a polling project that just asks fans of all 30 teams how they felt about the season that was. It's just a very simple, very subjective polling project.

But it essentially asks whether, assuming that every fan comes into this with like a favorite team. And I know not every fan comes in with one favorite team or whatever. But I just want to know if fans had a very good experience, pretty good experience, a decent experience, a pretty bad experience or a very bad experience. And so it all comes down to something pretty simple. But I run the results every year. I get thousands of votes and I'm very thankful for all the participation that is included here, because otherwise I would feel pretty embarrassed if nobody participated in my polling projects. But I just published the results of this analysis on Friday at Fangraphs. I like talking about this

because even though in theory it's my post, really this isn't about me. This isn't some sort of self-important podcast topic. This is based on fan feedback. So I'm just the messenger here. So some things are not too surprising. Of course, like the Yankees were the most popular team in terms of poll participation because there's a lot of Yankees fans. And this year the team was good. So there's nothing surprising there. Marlins and the Rays, the fewest. Just can't ever find Marlins or Rays fans.

They don't exist. Finally, we were able to bring some Rockies fans out of the woodwork. It just took them getting decent. Usually the Rockies are around at the bottom of these posts in terms of participation. I was going to say the correlation between good seasons and participation seems strong because maybe if you're a fan of a team that just had a really depressing season, you just wouldn't even click on this because the title says, how was 2017? And you think it was awful and terrible, and I don't want to read this. But I just noticed that the San Francisco Giants had the second highest participation in this poll. Yeah.

Also in the top 10, you have the Mets. The Mariners weren't good. The Blue Jays weren't good. So it's sort of the Yelp effect, right, where people really want to put in their extremely positive or extremely negative feedback. And then in the middle, it's just like, eh, the Royals are fine. We don't really care. So there's that part. And then the real fun, I guess there are a few things that are fun.

The real fun is when you go to calculating the average fan experience rating. And I just give each poll result a number from one through five. And then I calculate the average. It's all very easy. The World Series champion is always sort of by default the team in first place. That's how it should be. I eliminate any sort of negative votes for the World Series champion because, look, between between five and 10 percent of respondents in the champion polls like to troll. I assume that there was no Astros fan who had a pretty bad or very bad season fan experience

with the Astros. Now, I'm not saying that 2017 couldn't have been a very bad experience for people in Houston overall for a number of horrible reasons. But this poll is just about the Astros. And I assume that everybody had at least a decent time. So Astros finished in first place. But what is kind of interesting. A few interesting points here.

Could have just been big Nori Aoki fans. Like I am. Could have been upset that he wasn't there. At the end of the World Series run. And incidentally still. Maybe the best left fielder they had. I don't know. Armageddon did not have the greatest postseason. But he hit that big home run. And incidentally, still, maybe the best left fielder they had I don't know. Armageddon did not have the greatest postseason, but he hit that big home run.

Usually, you get the champion and then the runner-up who finish first and second in this poll. And the league championship series teams are all sort of close to the top in the rating. The Astros were first, and then the Dodgers are back there. The Yankees are actually in

second place for their average fan experience rating. But what I like is that the top five is actually the Astros, the Yankees, the Diamondbacks, the Twins, and the Rockies. And the Diamondbacks were, I guess they were in the playoffs, but the players might not even remember that. And then the Twins and the Rockies were eliminated immediately out of the playoffs. But still, those fans came out to be on average happier or at least more pleased with their season than Dodgers fans, than Indians fans, than the Nationals and Cubs fans, and certainly Red Sox fans who finished even below the Cubs in terms of how much they enjoyed this season. And bringing up the rear, technically, you could say it was a tie between the Mets and the Giants for having the worst experience. But if you go to another decimal place, the Giants finished just a little bit worse.

Giants fans absolutely hated the 2017 season. There's nothing surprising there, of course. As usual, the two biggest drivers of this is not only team success, but also team success relative to expectations. And that's why I think the the Twins and the Diamondbacks were able to finish as high as they did. Same with the Yankees. But one of maybe the most interesting thing that came out of all of this was that I have these ratings for each of the last three years. And so I compared this year's ratings to last year's ratings. And then I also considered how the teams did in terms of improvements in winning percentage.

the teams did in terms of improvements in winning percentage. And there were a few strange points, like, for example, the the Red Sox rating was worse this year, even though the team wasn't worse overall. And it's not like they had a worse time in the playoffs because last year they got swept and this year they won a game. So I don't know. I guess it was just a particularly irritating season for the Red Sox. But the White Sox, on the other hand, their rating surged forward, even though the team got worse. And so, look, this is a polling project that takes place on fan graphs. This is not a representative sample of all White Sox fans, but at least among the fans polled, it seems like the White Sox fans are mostly just happy that the team chose a direction and decided to finally embrace the rebuild. And I wasn't sure what to expect there but it certainly seems at least on average that the fans are happy about it yeah is there a way

that you could have or could crunch the numbers to derive like a enjoyment average on the whole season like we talked about that was this a good season was this a bad season how do you even decide that is there a way maybe to i mean i don't know if it would be exactly the same question if you just sort of added up or took some sort of average of all the team responses but like if more fans were happier with their teams than they were in the previous season or something like that that would be one way i i suppose to evaluate a season well uh let's do this so i have again ratings for each of the last three years so let's start in 2015

okay the average rating so an average rating would be three that would be a decent experience that's given three points so the overall average in 2015 was 3.01. The median was 2.81. Last year, the average was 2.98 and the median was 2.89. And this year... Average slightly lower, median slightly higher than 2015.

Okay. And this year, average 3.07. That's higher. Median 2.67, okay. And this year, average 3.07. That's higher. Median, 2.67. Lower. So maybe— Well, that makes sense, right? Maybe because you had this strange skewed season this year where a handful of teams were great and a lot of teams were lousy.

So maybe that makes sense that median and mean would be different this year than they had been in the past. the teams in the middle this year so the the 15th and 16th place teams in terms of rating were the a's and the phillies so if that's like the average fan experience that seems kind of miserable i guess relative to what could have been this is just a very top heavy season where it's like fans of maybe 10 teams had a good time and there there's a pretty steep drop-off, in fact. So if I look at the ratings, the top 10, the team in 10th place, the Cubs, they finished with an average rating of 3.79. But then it drops off to 3.41 to the Red Sox and then all the way down to 3.01 with the White Sox. So there's just a steep drop-off of almost a full point between 10th and 12th place. off of almost a full point between 10th and 12th place. So yeah, this was a pretty fun season for roughly a third of the teams, and then the rest were just kind of hanging on.

Yeah. Okay. Well, that's what we would have expected, I guess. So yeah, the biggest change in experience rating, 2016 to 2017, the Diamondbacks. When we talked about which team had the most successful season, we talked about which team had the most successful season, we talked about that twice, once during the year, once after the year. Did we say the Diamondbacks? They were, I think we did, right? Yeah. Yeah, right.

So, okay. We agree with the fans. Yeah, we nailed it. We're pretty great. Yeah, so the Diamondbacks finished actually last year with the lowest rating out of any team. They had the worst worst the most negative feedback because well there's there's a few reasons again these are polls run on fan graphs and so fan graphs is not very thrilled with the 2016 arizona diamondbacks direction so all right

that year we're not thrilled with fan graphs right yeah yeah blasting the projections in in a way that turned out to be wrong because the projections were more right but although i think even the projections didn't expect them to be as bad as they were yeah right so the diamondbacks were just a catastrophe in 2016 and the fans felt it which is not surprising and then this year the diamondbacks finished with the the third best rating and the twins are very similar this year they finished with the third best rating. And the Twins are very similar. This year, they finished with the fourth best rating, just a hair behind the Diamondbacks. And last year, the Twins finished with the second lowest rating. So there's been a lot of volatility with the

Twins and the Diamondbacks. But this year, Diamondbacks fans weren't just happy to have a good team. But I think this is a reflection of just how awful 2016 was. So anything better than that was going to feel like a quality product. And you also now as a fan, it's not like the Diamondbacks had a good year and then they got swept and then that's just the end of the chapter. Like the team is going to stay mostly intact.

Moving forward, maybe it's going to add. It's going to have the same rotation for a while and that rotation was the team strength. It's got AJ Pollock still and Paul Goldschmidt still and there's some reason for hope with some other players. Now they're going to lose JD Martinez but they didn't have him for four months so you get to

feel like your team isn't headed for a teardown, some sort of rebuild and even though as evidenced by the White Sox fans you can embrace a rebuild. No one wants to go into that if you can avoid it. I would much rather be in the position of being a Diamondbacks fan and feel like oh, this team is actually kind of good again.

And they credit to those people who responded in the polls because they were not able to take anything for granted. They just embraced, they appreciated their existence and I'm never quite sure how well humans are programmed to appreciate things, but they

nailed it. Yeah. Okay. Well, that was fun. Thanks for doing the polling. Thanks for everyone who answered so that you didn't have depressing poll results and were able to publish a post. So, cool. Yeah. I don't think that there's anything.

I mean, among the stuff that's pretty obvious, of course, the brewers had a better experience. I mean, among the stuff that's pretty obvious, of course, like the Brewers had a better experience. But for anyone wondering, clearly the Giants average rating declined by the third most because they had a terrible year. The Mets rating declined by the second most. They had a terrible year. Blue Jays fans bringing up the rear. Just an all-around awful shift for fans of the Blue Jays where now you have to reckon with a potential change in direction. You just saw the beloved Jose Bautista look like a shell of himself. Aaron Sanchez apparently threw innings this year. I have no recollection of any of them. I just assumed he missed the

whole year with blisters, which I can't imagine that there's a more frustrating way to not have a pitcher pitch. But there you go. Would you rather have one of your best starting pitchers miss a whole chunk of the year because of blisters or miss a chunk of the year because of a dirt bike accident? Probably the blisters, I think, just because, well, I don't know. I can see the argument that either one might be more frustrating. But I think blisters, at least you have the hope that he'll recover and come back from that. And you can't really blame him it's not his fault so you can't get angry at the guy for getting blisters you could

get angry at the ball maybe if you think the ball is causing blisters but yeah i'd go i'd go with probably the blisters although i guess you could say that maybe there's more chance that the blisters will recur in a future season than that the dirt bike accident will agreed all right well you have a chat i think next time maybe we should do a little draft it's been too long since we've done a draft so i think we can do maybe the third annual contract prediction effectively wild draft so what we've done at least twice in the past is we've taken predicted free agent contract values. We did them in the past with Jim Bowden, who had like one amazing year as a free agent contract predictor and had a reputation for

being good at that. And then I don't know if he was actually good at that afterward, but he used to rank all the free agents and have dollar values for them at ESPN. And so we would draft over or unders on the Jim Bowden and then get credit for the amount of over or under if we got the direction right, essentially, and then sum up all the differences there at the end of the winter and see who was best at deviating from the Jim Bowden predictions. We can't use Jim Bowden anymore because I don't think he's currently writing anymore. I think he's a radio person right now. I think that's why we may not have done this last year. But we could use MLB Trade Rumors, I suppose. They have a ranked list of free agents. By the way, they have JD Martinez second on that list.

It's not the greatest class ever, but they have estimated dollar values for all of those signees. So we can just draft overs and unders and see if we're right at estimating the market compared to their own estimates. I look forward to it. Okay. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Five listeners who have already pledged their support include James Eberwine, Thomas Pickles,

Jake Risk, Brian Riley, and Daryl Purpose. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectivelywild. Approaching 7,000 members strong, hot stove discussion never ceases. You can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes.

Your ratings and reviews help us out. Always appreciated. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for editing assistance. We had some technical issues today. Nothing to do with Dylan, but that's why Jeff's track doesn't sound as high quality as usual. Should be back to normal next time.

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