Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1156: The Winners and Losers of MLB’s Next Five Years

Episode Date: December 30, 2017

In the last episode of 2017, Ben Lindbergh and guests Joe Sheehan and Rany Jazayerli analyze the Rockies’ Wade Davis signing and offseason attempt to build a super-bullpen, then reprise an old exercise by picking (and dissecting) the teams they think will win the World Series in the next five years and the teams they […]

Sometimes people, we treat you like one-out shoes, but they don't know that you can't lose. Come and be a winner. Come and be a winner. Come and be a winner. Come and be a winner Come and be a winner Hello and welcome to episode 1156 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. joined not today by Jeff Sullivan, who is wisely on vacation, but by two people who joined me around this time last year, two old friends, longtime podcast partners of their own, former founders and still founders, co-founders of Baseball Prospectus. One is Joe Sheehan of the Joe Sheehan Newsletter and The Athletic and Sports Illustrated and

elsewhere. Hello, Joe. Ben, I'm sitting here. Sheehan of the Joe Sheehan newsletter and the athletic and sports illustrated and elsewhere. Hello, Joe. Ben, I'm sitting here. I'm like, talk faster because I always listen to you on one and a half speed. Damn it, Joe. You took my joke away from me. Why is he speaking so slowly?

Yeah. Good to be on. Is Jeff climbing some mountain today? I think so. Yes. Good for him. You'll speak fast enough for the both of us. I know.

So that's, that's good. And the other guest who has already given away his presence here, also of The Ringer sometimes and more regularly, I suppose, of Clear Skin Dermatology and Joe's longtime strat partner as well, Randy Cesarely. Hey, Randy, how are you? I'm good, Ben. And if people out there think that Joe and I sometimes have a mind meld, I don't think we've done anything to disabuse them of that notion because I've been waiting to mention the 1.5x joke all day and Joe just snatched it away from me. So it's very strange talking to you at this speed. Yes, I know.

Well, I'll try to hurry up, but I can only do it so much. So I was on Brian Kenney's show yesterday, Friday, MLB Now, and we were emailing before the show with the producer and we were talking about what are we going to talk about? And no one knew because nothing had happened in baseball. And I've never seen anyone so relieved as the producer of MLB Now when an actual transaction occurred on Friday morning in time for us to talk about it. And I figured we could talk about it briefly too. We have a little something planned for later in the episode, but the Rockies signed Wade Davis to a three-year deal for something like $52 million,

I believe. And Joe, you had something to write a newsletter about for the first time in a while, so you sent one out earlier today. And Randy, you know something to write a newsletter about for the first time in a while. So you sent one out earlier today. And Randy, you know this player pretty well. So Joe, do you want to give your take? I don't disagree with your take, although maybe I'll do a devil's advocate take just for the sake of discussion. But I think that we've all had similar reactions to the Rockies signing relievers over the past few years, and they've done it again. They've done it a few times this offseason alone. LOL Rockies.

LOL Rockies. It's a surprise for, well, a couple of reasons. The signing the relievers thing, they end up, and I think the way the numbers came out, were like they're paying $35, $38 million for the four top guys, which are Davis, McGee, Shaw, and Dunn. And for that money, you could sign Clayton Kershaw or Max Scherzer or I forget who the third guy is. Zach Greinke. And have that money in one player and go find relievers, which is what 22 other teams are

doing. So on that level, I really like it from a planning standpoint. I think at the individual level, because teams need so many innings of relief now because the starters don't go deep into games, I think there is a little more value to signing the Brian Shaws of the world. I've written about it. I think that's not the bad move I would have said it was maybe five, six years ago. But Davis specifically bugs me. I'm really curious to hear what Rene has to say here because Davis is not the guy he was his last two years.

His last 2014-15 with the Royals when he Royals. I'm not going to use the nickname Randy gave him because he stole it from Mariano Rivera. But if you look at him last year, over a two-year period from 15 to 17, he's lost two miles an hour off the fastball. He's lost a lot of command. His only averaging was 50 innings a year the last two years. I think this is a guy who's in sharp decline, which is consistent with the breed. If you look at these top end relievers, the vast majority of them run hot for two or three years and then fall apart. I think the Rockies are going to pay a lot of money for Wade Davis's, the rest of Wade Davis's decline phase. Yeah. Randy, you disagree in any way? I wish I could say that I do, but I mean, but I'm not the person you asked for a sober reasoned analysis of Wade Davis, given that there are only two players in the history of the Kansas City Royals who got the last out of the World Series.

And the other one, Brett Saberhagen, to let you in on a secret, his first name was my first ever pin number when I went to college, was Brett. I'm not using Davis as any kind of password, but I'm not. Yeah, Wade. No, not Wade either. I'm not going to keep answering those questions and isolate it down any more than that. But I'm not somebody who can think of Wade Davis in anything other than the fondest of memories. But his performance last year makes me nervous, too. And I made some snide comment on Twitter earlier today about how him going to Colorado, I mean, he's a fearless pitcher on the mound.

But this might cross the line from being fearless to just being foolhardy. And it got a lot of pushback from people because, yes, park effects matter. And his ERA may rise, but that doesn't mean he's any less effective but my point was sort of that the way he pitched last uh last season both his command weakening and also giving up more home runs twice as many home runs in 2017 as he'd given up in the three years before combined he's a pitcher on the edge right now and and jo Joe's made this point a lot in his writing about how, you know, the best relievers tend to burn bright and then fade out quickly. I mean, that's one of the things that makes a Mariano Rivera so unusual.

There are so many pitchers out there who were absolute unhittable relievers for two or three years, but then they lost a little bit of velocity, a little bit of command, and it fell apart quickly. And I just feel like adding Coors Field into a guy who's pretty clearly in a declined phase right now, that's a lot of risk to take on for three years and $52 million. And that's without even getting into the history of relief pitchers with the last name of Davis signing the highest annual salary contract of any pitcher in history. Every 30 years it has to happen. Every 30 years.

I don't think he'll be Mark Davis bad, or Storm Davis bad for that matter, but I do think that the Rockies are not going to look back on this contract fondly. Right. And there's also a fourth-year vesting option for $15 million if he finishes 30 games in 2020. Although if he's still doing that at that point, I guess the vesting option might not be so bad. Then there's a draft pick that has to be forfeited. And so I think that obviously it's a ton of money for Davis. And I don't know that he's the guy at this point in his career you would want to commit to if you're doing this strategy, but do you see any value in the strategy itself,

particularly for the Rockies, who have a better starting rotation by Rockies' historical standards, certainly? They were actually in the middle of the pack. I think they were right in the middle of the pack in innings pitched last year from their starters after many years of being last or close to last and of course sometimes they would just limit their starters to 75 pitches or whatever and nothing they tried worked because they couldn't develop any starters and now they do have guys like Gray and Hoffman and Bettis and on and on and some of those guys are better than others some had sort of superficially respectable stats last year and aren't really guys you would count on going forward. But if you don't have a strong rotation

and you can get one of these Super Bowl pens that teams seem to be building here in the wake of the Royals having so much success with theirs a few years ago, do you see any value in that? I mean, preferably you don't give Wade Davis all the money. You just find the next Wade Davis who is out there, certainly. And it's easy for us to say, find the next Wade Davis, but you know, some team will. So is there any

merit just to the idea of it's the Rockies, they've had trouble developing starting pitching, there's the altitude, these guys aren't going to go deep into games, maybe it's the Rockies. They've had trouble developing starting pitching. There's the altitude. These guys aren't going to go deep into games. Maybe it's tough to bounce back. So go heavy on relievers, which is a strategy that worked for them at least early in the season last year. It also has worked for them in the past. I want to say, Randy, you're going to remember the strike cards probably better than I will, but maybe.

Like they're 95. Wasn't that the Steve Reed, Darren Holmes? Curtis Laskanik. And this is a team that's going to carry eight relievers. When I broke down their roster today, I had them carrying eight relievers. But Ben, I think this gets into where I just disagree on Davis. I just don't think Davis is that guy. If you told me if this was the Kenley Jansen, and they're going to pay Davis more over the next three years than Jansen or Chapman's going to make in that time. If this was signing Kenley Jansen, I'd probably be a lot more for it

for the reasons you mentioned. But I just don't know that Davis is a whole lot better than what they have. I'm really down on the player. I agree with you, though. They do have seven starters, and you could put Sensatella in the bullpen. I'm with Mike. Mike Petrello had a tweet today talking about, I think, Sensatella could be a heck of a reliever, and I'm with him on that.

So you go Shaw, you've got Adovino, who I don't know how any right-handed hitter even sees the ball. Scott Oberg's back there. Sensatella's back there. I think Jairo Diaz is still floating around back there. He's somebody who could just magically show up and drop a 35% strikeout rate on someone. So I think they have the makings of that kind of bullpen, Ben. And I just, I think Davis is, not only do I not think Davis is going to be worth I don't think he's going to pitch that well. I don't think he's going to be worth the money. And this ties up marginal

money for the Rockies that I think could actually have an effect on them. They're going to be up. Kotz has them now. If you add in the Davis contract, it's like $132 million, which is $5 million above last year. And this is a team that has Ian Desmond at first base, Gerardo Parra, and the ghost of David Dahl in left field, and Rymel Tapia in right field. And that was a horrible offense last year. So again, it's a use

of... If you tell me they're going to go to $160 million and they're going to go get some hitters, I'm for it. I'm a little more for it. But it feels like this marginal $17 million might cut off options. Yeah. I mean, look, I love the idea of trying to paper over a weak rotation with a dominant bullpen. I mean, like you said, just two years ago, the Royals won a World Series that way with an equally mediocre rotation with Wade Davis in the middle of that. The problem here isn't the idea. It's the execution. Because when you think of kind of all of the dominant bullpens, going back to like the nasty boys even, I mean, they're all homegrown. They're all guys who either came through the system or were kind of rejects, guys off the reject pile who were claimed off waivers or whatever. I'm struggling to think of a single team that sort of built a dominant bullpen by spending God's money and actually having it work.

I mean, I'm thinking of the Astros this year. They had gone out a couple of years ago after their bullpen collapsed in 2015. And, you know, they spent a lot of money on Luke Gregerson and I think Pat Neshek for a while. They went out and traded for Ken Giles. And, you know, by the World Series, their bullpen was such a huge gaping mess that A.J. Hinch was, you know, using Lance McCullers and Charlie Morton to close out. Whatever happened to the 2017 Astros? Well, I'm saying they won, but they won despite that strategy. I mean, that's what I'm saying.

They won precisely because A.J. Hinch, you know, and I think it's a maneuver that I don't think gets enough credit in the mainstream yet, but I think will probably grow over time. The gambit that he did, you know, which was a huge risk to use these guys out of the bullpen and won a World Series that way. Give him all the credit in the world for doing that. But he was forced to do it because the Astros' strategy of going out and getting proven relievers was the one flying their ointment going into the playoffs.

So if the Rockies can pull this off with Wade Davis and Jake McGee, Brian Shaw, Adam Adovino, more power to them. But it may be the first time a team has ever really built a dominant bullpen by just throwing money at the problem. I'm very skeptical this is going to work. I mean, Joe mentioned Ian Desmond, the money they're spending at other places. You wonder if they could have taken the way the market's going to shake out. I almost feel like this is one of the few teams that would actually have been

better advised spending money on like an Eric Hosmer, where he's going to end up but eric cosmo would have more value to this team than another reliever that and they just keep stockpiling yeah even the yankees who i guess have taken the super bullpen strategy to its extreme they of course they gave chapman all the money and they had other expensive relievers in that mix david robertson who they traded for but they had Batances, who was a homegrown guy. They had Chad Green, who was a starter convert, and then you had Tommy Canely, who kind of came out of nowhere. He was a guy the Yankees gave away and then reacquired.

So, yeah, you're right. It is rare to just sign the three best relievers available, say, in an offseason and have that be your lights-out bullpen. It's always a mix-and-match sort of situation. So you're right. The Rockies roster has been a conundrum for a few years now, figuring out just what exactly they're trying to do and how these pieces fit together, and often they don't. So they were a good story and a surprise last season.

But I don't know. Do you good story and a surprise last season but i don't know do you guys think that they can repeat that i mean they barely managed to to sustain it through last season but the way that obviously the division they're in they're playing for a wild card from opening day on i think it's very hard to i don't know that they understand that they have a problem they led the led the national league in runs scored with the 12th in WRC Plus, and they were bad. Nothing I've seen indicates to me that they understand that they have

a problem. What was the James thing, Randy? The devil's theory of ballpark effects? We used to talk about the Red Sox and the Cubs with this, but the Rockies are clearly the example. I mean, the problem with the Rockies is trying to build a really good pitching staff. I think you can win with a run prevention approach, but you can't win with the worst offense of any good team in baseball. All right.

So we had some actual baseball to talk about, and that's what we did on MLB Now. We did the A block was this move, and then the B block was all about how the Royals are doomed. Can't you use the TV terms? Yeah. how the Royals are doomed. Can't you use on the TV terms? Yeah, well, I wanted to mention that we talked about how the Royals are doomed just for Rennie,

but we don't have to do, we don't have to repeat that exact structure. You can, the SC's in the red zone. You guys can just tune me out for it. We might very well talk about how the Royals are doomed in just a few minutes here, but it'll come up organically,

maybe, in our discussion today, which is something that was suggested by Baseball Perspectives' Matt Trueblood in an email to the show. And I'll just read that email. He says, in episode 57, this was a long time ago, this was October 2012, Sam went down the list of all 30 teams and asked Ben and our guest that day, SB Nation's Mark Normandin, to say yes or no to them as likely to win a World Series by 2017. All three guests picked five teams, and here are those five. So Sam picked the Rangers, the Nationals, the Angels, the Padres, and the Braves. Mark picked the Rangers, the Red Sox, the Giants, the A's, and the Padres. And I picked the Rangers, the Nationals, the Angels, the Dodgers, and the Yankees

So Sam and I completely struck out And Matt writes, obviously Mark actually got two teams On the other hand, he laughed out loud at the idea of the Cubs and the Astros winning So you guys should bring on a random colleague And try to peg the next five series winners in the same way, even though I guess we proved that this whole exercise is completely fruitless and pointless and impossible the first time we did it. So I actually went back and listened to that episode this week, and I almost picked the Giants. I picked the Giants first, and

then I switched to the Yankees, and I wish I'd stuck with it. But if there was a lesson to be learned from that episode, it's that no one knows anything. And I'm sure that is still true. But we're going to do this again at Matt's request. We're going to pick, I guess, the teams that will win a World Series in the next five years. And then Rainey suggested also picking the teams that will not make the playoffs in the same span or maybe in the next four years. So that's harder. Yeah. And maybe more fun and maybe there'll be more diversity in the answers. I was going to ask you guys, and I guess we'll be able to tell from the answers, but do you think that this is an easier question to answer now than it was in 2012, or maybe not an easier question, but the answer, the consensus

answers are more obvious because it feels to me like, you know, the last time we did this, all three of us picked the Rangers and we were all wrong, obviously, but that was the only team that we all agreed on. And then there were a couple others that two of us picked. And now, you know, we'll know in a few minutes, but it seems to me that maybe there are some more obvious answers here that you almost have to pick just because the game today is so stratified into good teams and not good teams. Although obviously we're talking about a five-year window here, so things can change. Well, I think in the short term, yeah, I mean, just because of where we are starting this five-year stretch at this particular point in time, there's such a clear

divide. But I almost feel like trying to predict four or five years from now might be harder than it was five years ago, simply because even five years ago, there was still a stratification between smart front offices and not smart front offices. And I almost feel like that's gone. I mean, you know, the Phillies, they have a young analytic front office. The Diamondbacks, the Twins. You know, the Marlins and the Reds may be the ones trailing the pack now, but there's 28 out of 30 teams that I feel like just get it.

And once you get to this point, the gap between number one and number 28 is as small as I can ever remember it. So there's going to be a, the gap between number one and number 28 is as small as I can ever remember it. So there's going to be a lot of randomness and variance in this. And you could throw darts in five years from now, and you might be just as accurate as actually trying to predict it. Yeah. I think the major league level, that's true. I think a lot of people are going to point to money, but for me, it's more going to be about you're on the ground scouting, particularly internationally.

Everybody's got the same resources in the draft and internationally now. It's just going to be about identifying those guys because all the value in baseball right now is in the 0-5 guys. So if all the GMs are the same, it's then going to be the director of player development, your scouts. It's the stuff that the three of us aren't really going to be able to see. All right. Well, it doesn't really matter what order we go in here. We're not drafting.

We can all pick the same teams if we want to, and maybe we will. Do you want to start us off, Joe, with the World Series winners? And to be clear, we're picking exactly five teams, correct? Yes, right. Yeah, and of course, one team could win two World Series or three World Series. But yeah, let's pick five teams that have the best teams i misinterpreted the initial the initial thing um i thought we were literally going through every team and doing a yes no on all well we just happened to land on five each yeah that is what we did the first time that was maybe not the most efficient system i don't know

but okay no i it's harder this way because and it's the difference between an auction and a draft where in a draft you have to you don't get access to every single name. In an auction, you're going to hear every single name go by. But yeah, I'm going to say – and this is the thing about it. The top tier of baseball has separated so much now that this is actually a lot easier than you think. So this is the five teams who will, five teams who won't. Yes, right. Or yeah, five teams who will, and then I guess we'll all do our wills first, and then we'll circle around and take turns with the ones.

I think if we don't have all the same, I'll be kind of surprised. Dodgers, Cubs, Indians, Astros. I guess I'll go with the Yankees. Astros I guess I'll go with the Yankees all right well I think I have four the same as you I think I I will also take the Astros the Dodgers the Cubs the Yankees and then I attempted to take the Indians but I think I might go I think I might go with the Cardinals as my fifth. I don't know. The Cardinals, the Indians, maybe the Nationals, they're all kind of in the same sort of range for me. But with the Cardinals... That's interesting. Yeah.

Because I think the access to the brackets is the biggest reason I would take the Indians. I don't think anybody's going to challenge them. Certainly in 18 and probably in 19. And then the Cardinals have the Cubs in the way. Yeah do. But yeah, they also have the Brewers. But I would think that in this timeframe, you have the Twins and the White Sox maybe mounting serious challenges here. I threw in some wild cards here to spice it up. So maybe next round. So yeah, I have the Cubs and the Dodgers. I have two teams I just figure are ready to win now.

I've got the Yankees as the big money team. And then looking down the line, though, like three, four years from now, the correlation between winning percentage in year X versus year X plus four is so small that I just decided, you know what, I'll throw a couple of darts at teams that I think are going to be in a really good spot in about two years. One of those is the White Sox. It pains me to admit as a Royals fan, but I just love what they've done for the last 18 months. And then, kind of strangely, I'm actually going to pick the Braves.

Because I almost feel like John Capolella's departure there may have eliminated... I mean, they've got a lot of talent there. The Shelby Miller trade alone, you know, brought in so much talent. But I just feel like he was probably the wrong guy to, there were a lot of things that were going on in Atlanta that I did not agree with. And with him out of the picture now,

I actually have, you know, higher expectations for that front office going forward. And, you know, four years from now, I think there'll be a very good team. And I mean, all you need is a shot. And once they're in the playoffs, anything can happen. So I figure in five years, we're all going to look back and laugh at our list. But at least if I hit on one big, then I'll look a lot more pressured than the two of you picking the Astros or the Indians.

Yeah, that's a good strategy, at least for looking smart. So yeah, I think my only concern about the Braves maybe is that their rebuild has been so pitching-centric relative to the Astros's a position player. So there's that too. But the arms scare me a little bit, even though some of them have shown a lot of promise. I'm interested to hear that, if I heard this correctly, neither one of you took the Indians. Yeah, I didn't. And, you know, I mean— To me, it's two things. One, I don't think the Twins and White Sox are going to come as quickly as you guys think.

And that's just a different opinion. That could happen either way. But I'm valuing what we can see, 18-19, over that which we can't in 21-22. So I think that's why I'm picking it. And also, too, there was another point. Oh, I really trust that Indians front office. I don't think they're going to get through kind of their current core and fall apart.

I mean, you talk about front offices and teams that we like. I mean, I'll put, you know, Antonetti and his guys up against, you know, Hahn and his group in Chicago and Falvey and his group in Minnesota. I think they're all strong. But, I mean, I'll take the one right now that has the team in place. I'm just surprised to hear you guys taking, you know, Randy, particularly, I'm surprised you're taking the White Sox. I think that's shown a lot of confidence

in their ability to get Kopeck and guys like that to the majors. Yeah, I mean, look, it's a bit of an esoteric pick, but I just feel like I didn't want to just go all chalk, and I just think the window of contention for the Cubs and the Dodgers is going to be a lot longer than the Indians. I just think they they got two years. I don't see – I don't have the confidence that in 2020 the Indians are going to be clearly the best team in the division, whereas the Cubs and the Dodgers, you know,

are probably odds on even now to win their division. Right now I would still take – if I had to blindly pick a team, I would probably take the Indians over the field in the Central for 2020. And I think the White Sox – I'm not convinced on the Twins yet. The Tigers and Royals are going to be – they're going to be a while. But the White Sox are just kind of my team right now. Yeah, I'm pretty bullish on the White Sox too. I wouldn't take them for something like this just because you're ruling out 2018 and maybe 2019 and you're banking on the last few years of this window, whereas,

as Joe's saying, the Indians can win starting immediately. So I would take them in that respect. I guess the only reason why I wouldn't take them over some other contender for this spot, just, you know, I worry about the attendance issues, the payroll issues. They have this really great rotation right now, which could go south quickly. We've seen that happen to other great rotations, which is not to say that they don't have other pieces there that are locked up for a while, too, whether it's Lindor and Ramirez. Those guys are young and will be there. But I just think the pitching-centric nature of the roster, coupled with the attendance and payroll concerns, we have seen the Indians go through down cycles, even with this front office, whereas we haven't really seen that with the Cardinals. And so my Cardinals pick, I'm placing a lot of faith in the front office, too. Wait, really? Based on my Twitter feed, the Cardinals have lost 100 games three years ago.

I'm not sure that's representative of actual results, but yeah, so I think both of these are kind of votes for front office and votes for quality teams in the present day. And Joe, I think you're probably even higher on the Cardinals than I am for 2018 because you have said that you see them as the fourth best team in the league right now. I do, which is really kind of a vote against the Brewers, Rockies, Mets, Giants,

whoever else you might want to throw into that group. I think there's a lot more question marks. And part of this is, you know, it's December 29th, 30th, and we're still waiting to see what a lot of these teams are going to do. Yep. I mean, I think this should change by the time we get to February 15th, and we'll have a better sense. But, I mean, what's the biggest move?

All the teams I just mentioned, what's the biggest move they've made? The Brewers signing Chassin? Yeah, right. The Giants getting Longoria? I mean, it's really been an unimpressive winter for a group of teams that had to get better. Yeah, so we all have, what, three teams in common. We all took the Dodgers and the Cubs and the Yankees, right? So that sets this apart a bit from when

we did this exercise five years ago and we all took only one team in common and we were all wrong about that team, which is instructive. I mean, remember how set up the Rangers seemed in 2012? And obviously the success hasn't been there. And now they're a team that you talk about, well, they should start thinking about tearing it down or rebuilding or retooling at least. And, you know, you can't see them coming clearly when we talked about this. It was injuries, right? They had those just horrendous injury years where everyone got hurt, record-setting DL days, and then they had a wave of younger players, the profars and the like, who didn't really pan out the way they were supposed to, and then all of a sudden guys get old and here they are, where they're kind of looking through a long tunnel here and I don't know exactly where they go from here

so that's how quickly it can turn with any of these teams but when you look at the ones that we all picked today it just seems so hard to envision that scenario playing out with them just because of just I mean the Dodgers the Yankees not only do they

have the payroll, but now they're spending wisely, they're holding onto their prospects. It's so difficult to imagine their downfall. Right. Well, to me, I mean, the key to picking all three of those teams is it's not just the talent, but specifically young hitting talent, right? I mean, the Dodgers with, with Belander and Corey Seager, and then the Cubs with just about everybody on that team. You know, the Yankees were, you know, even Giancarlo Stanton's like 28 or something, Judge and everybody else. So to me, that's the difference. I mean, I think if you look back at the Rangers towards the end of their run, you know, the 2000, what you said was 2012. I mean, that's after they had already been to back-to-back World Series. You know,

it wasn't a particularly young lineup. I mean, Elvis Andrus they had already been to back-to-back World Series. You know, it wasn't a particularly young lineup. I mean, Elvis Andrus was the only guy in that lineup under the age of 26, and Mitch Moreland was the only other guy under the age of 30. So, you know, they were definitely a team at their peak, but that's why, for instance, I didn't pick the Nationals, because, you know, especially once Bryce Harper leaves, I mean, they've got a lot of pitching talent, but I can much more easily envision a scenario where that great rotation falls apart than a lineup where a bunch of guys who are in their mid-20s.

Also, it kind of paraphrases the argument against the Indians as well. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Okay. Well, I figured there would be more agreement in this than there was the last time. And I don't know whether that's a good thing for baseball, a bad thing for baseball, or neither. Well, Ben's got me now, Randy, because that's the question I was going to ask. Okay. Well, I think it's probably a bad thing if we're right. Let's put it that way. You know, I mean, the great thing about baseball is, you know, for good or for bad, you know, any team that makes the playoffs is actually capable of winning. So there's a very easy scenario where the Angels win the World Series next year, or the Rockies, or the Twins. There are no easy scenarios in which any of those

things happen. There are scenarios. There are scenarios. Well, I mean, there's no easy scenario in which anything happens, because even if you are a dominant team, you've got a slightly better than one in eight chance of going on from the League Division Series to World Championship. So that is, it's maybe, it's either a feature or a bug depending on your perspective, but that's how baseball operates. But I think from the perspective of worrying about having two or three super teams that dominate every year, I think having the expanded postseason is a feature because it certainly opens up the possibility that we're not going to get chalk. And I think that's probably more interesting.

I agree with that. And for me, I'm going to look at the whole picture. I know the focus is going to be on the, quote, super teams, the smart teams with money. But I also think part of baseball's problem now is just having all of these teams that just don't have to win. They can go into these four-year cycles of not doing anything. There were just 12 teams in Major League Baseball above 500 last year. And I think that number's soft. It could go down. It can legitimately go down this year. And I just, I think there are a lot of teams right now who, because of all the central fund money,

because of the BAM money, because of aggressive revenue sharing, you just, we go into seasons where already, you know, the whole thing, you know, hope and faith 10 years ago was 15 years ago now. Oh, everybody's got to be able to compete well now we've got all these mechanisms and every year 10 teams are just like no we'll see you next year so i think that's as much as the teams at the top might be a problem the team's the next tier down and i also i i kind of want to hear better about this really we talk about this on the uh on the podcast have teams now are they valuing the wild card actually correctly in that instead of seeing it as a playoff spot, they're seeing it as half a playoff spot and therefore not worth chasing? that there are so many teams that seemed set the day last season ended.

Like, you know, you could have started 2018 with the roster that they had, and they still could have waltzed to the playoffs. I think Jeff and I talked during the playoffs, like, which of these teams is not going to be back? And we couldn't really come up with one. I mean, you know, maybe the wildcard teams, the Rockies, the Twins, maybe things don't go quite as well for them. Well, the Yankees probably or may flip spots with the Red Sox.

Right. But if I tell you the other five division winners will be exactly the same. Yeah, sure. No, they're certainly the favorites and they were the second the playoffs ended. So if you're the Indians, are you feeling a lot of pressure to go out and spend and sign a bunch of free agents this winter? No, not really. If you're the Astros, I mean, you know, maybe the Angels are trying to push them a little,

but even after all they've done, I don't think they're in the same class. And, you know, you can go down the line, Dodgers, Cubs, these teams, you know, Nationals. I don't think they should feel a whole lot of pressure to go out and sign the big money free agent because... But this is where I kind of want to get to, whereas if you know that you can't get to 95 wins isn't your incentive to get to 90 significantly diminished now i think we're seeing some of that play out in in the sense that

not only are the top tier teams not not feeling the heat to add to their dominance but those teams that are on the bubble are not bubble have not been nearly as active. I mean, that's sort of what makes the Rockies move today such an anomaly is that here's a team that is basically fighting for a wildcard spot. And I feel like we saw this year, going into the season, I think teams are willing to keep their powder dry. And then they're waiting to see at the trade deadline, are they in a position? At that point, you don't have to necessarily give up as much. You've got more teams selling. You're just paying for a two-month a position? At that point, you don't have to necessarily give up as much. You've got more teams selling. You're just paying for a two-month rental.

And at that point, okay, they have the wild cards going after them. You saw what the Yankees did. They nearly caught the Red Sox, but I feel like all along their plan was, even if they ended up hosting the wild card, they were in a good position to move on. And they went out and added to their bullpen and tried to create a, a playoff friendly roster, which worked actually, you know, very well for them. So I do think teams are, are valuing it appropriately. Like you said, like half a

playoff spot and that they're not, it's not their incentive. There's not, they're not incentivized to do it in, in the off season, but come mid season it's, you know, it comes into play more. Yeah. And, you know, Joe, you mentioned how many teams are just not trying to win in the short term. I was counting them earlier today. It's something at least seven are kind of in the teardown rebuild mode. And then another handful are either right at the beginning of it or probably should be. Do you think that that's a response to the Cubs and the Astros doing that and winning and maybe having more success than you can realistically expect a team that pursues that strategy to have? I mean, it may still be the way to win, but it's not an automatic way to win the way that the Cubs and the Astros have made it look, particularly if there are seven teams doing it at the same time. A, you're not going to get the top draft pick. You're going to have to fight six other teams that are trying to do the same thing you are.

And B, it's a buyer's market maybe because you have seven teams that are selling that are, you know, looking toward 2020 or whenever it is. And so you're not going to be the lone team that is out there selling the veterans the way that the Astros and the Cubs were. So inevitably, one of these teams that is rebuilding is just not going to come out the other side looking that great. Maybe they'll be better than they were before the rebuild, but they're not going to be a perennial division winner. They're not going to be a World Series winner. Do you think that that will dampen the enthusiasm for this strategy at all? Is this a short-term response to the Cubs and the Astros having it work beyond anyone's wildest dreams and other teams trying to copy that? Or if you were running a team, would you say, no, this is still the smart way to do it, even with the CBA kind of, you know,

decreasing the incentives and payoffs for pursuing this strategy? Well, the CBA is at least dampening the incentives to lose, but it hasn't done anything about the fact that the zero to five players are just where you make all your money. So until that changes with a higher minimum, with stepped salary gains, something that starts to shift the payroll structure to the guys who are actually producing the value, this is still going to be the best strategy for winning championships.

Now, I think it's easier to sell it because of the Cubs and Astros. And I think it was Will Leach wrote a piece a couple weeks ago, talked about how fans are just so much smarter now, not in my Twitter feed, but everywhere else. And they like to say like, you know, oh, you're going to go into one of those Cubs type rebuilds? Go ahead. Well, we'll wait. We'll wait two or three years.

He used to say you could never do that. Now, and I think that's one of the things, and Ben, I want to say you wrote this and talked about it. The interesting thing about the Brewers is that the Brewers never really bottomed out. Yeah. And some of that was they just got so much value from like nothing on the road. Like all these, Eric Timmons was a $5 million player who was like a one-win player last year. They just had a whole bunch of these guys who should have been zero-win players ended up being one-win players.

And I don't know if that magic trick will continue into the future, but I'm kind of wandering off point here. But no, I think that under the current rule set, the only real way to build a championship is to draft, trade for, win their prospects, or sign internationally players who are going to be produce 15 to 20 wins before they reach free agency. That is literally all. You can't free agent your way to a championship anymore. There just aren't enough superstars reaching free

agency. And I understand I'm saying that a year before we might see Kershaw, Machado, and Harper. But the reason we're talking about Kershaw, Machado, and Harper is just because of how unusual that actually is. Yeah. I agree with that to a point. But one thing I'll say is that there's always a competitive advantage to zigging when everyone else is zagging. The problem with having so many well-run teams is obviously those inefficiencies have been diminished, but we're seeing this almost hyper-vigilance on spending money on free agent. This market is dead. Here we are two days before the new year, and I think, Joe, you pointed this out. Nobody has signed a four... No free agent has gotten a four-year

contract. That wasn't me. I want to say that was Buster only. Okay. Maybe you were commenting onto that. But yeah, I mean, that's... To me, I almost feel like if prices have diminished to this point, we're already expecting a lot of players to get contracts that they had no expectation they'd have to settle for before this offseason began. I think there is, and with the revenue, the way it is in the game and teams are as profitable as they've ever been, I think there's absolutely an opportunity here for teams in that mid-range to, you know, and who are maybe willing to take a chance knowing that their upside may be getting into a wildcard game and having a 50-50 shot of moving on. But I think there's definitely some value there.

I mean, I think you look at what, say, the Angels have done, and obviously so much of what the Angels have done has been predicated on just winning the Otani lottery. There's no skill there other than the skill of developing relationships with him over the years. But all the other little moves that they've made and players that they've added, you know, someone like a Zach Cozart. I mean, Zach Cozart, if what he did last year is anything close to what he can, I mean, yes, it was kind of an out of context of his career. But Joe, you've made this point in the past that so much of what a free agent gets is based on just his performance in the past season. In any other, you know, free agent market, a shortstop who just hit 297, 385, 548

at his age would have gotten a five-year $80 million contract or whatever. He got a very reasonable contract if his performance in 2017 was a legitimate step forward. Even if he regresses to the midway point of what he did last year and the year before, you're looking at a shortstop with a 115 OPS plus. That's a hell of a valuable player and i think what is richard that that that touche that that's a good that's a good counter example but i mean you know what three years i'm not saying zach cozart being a 900 ops guy no zach cozart as a two-win player at third base for the Angels, exactly what they need to do. They need two-win players all around the diamond.

Right. And what they're paying him, two-win players, he's getting less than market value for a two-win player based on what we know. You don't have to sell them. But my point is that he's doing that, and I think in part because I think a lot of teams are almost too conservative with their dollars. And part of that is, like I said,

there are so many teams that are kind of at this moment in time choosing to just rebuild and sit out the free agent market entirely. And there is a law of diminishing returns that applies there because they're all trying to sell into the same market. You know, it's funny as a Royals fan, you know, thinking that the team is finally committed to this full rebuild and going into the offseason with all this optimism. And that plan is suddenly, I feel like it's wavering, not because the team is wavering, but because they're not even sure they're going to get a first round pick from Mike Moustakis now. And no one knows what Eric Hosmer's contract is going to be.

And it's kind of hard to go out there and trade away guys like Danny Duffy or Whit Merrifield or whatever, when you've got suddenly, the Rays have decided it's time to reboot and they've traded off Evan Longoria. And and the marlins you just traded young cards stand like there's so many teams that are suddenly saying we're throwing our cards down and trading away every player with present value that it's very much a buyer's market and suddenly it doesn't it's not as valuable to to try and rebuild and like you said you end up winning 75 games and you'll have the eighth pick in the draft that's's also not that valuable. So it's a very weird time to try to be rebuilding. And I think there's definitely a market opportunity for a team that's close to 500 to be aggressive

and sneak into a wildcard spot. So speaking of some of those teams that are rebuilding, probably all of them, even the ones that have just recently embarked on their rebuild, probably they're telling themselves, well, we can make it back to the playoffs in five years. This is our five-year plan. But which are the teams that we think are not going to make it back to the playoffs? Randy, you suggested four years. Is that just because, you know,

10 teams make the playoffs now? And yeah, it's... Yeah, I think it's just, I mean, it's a lot easier to pick a, a lot harder to pick a team in the Cineworld Series. Okay. So let's just say five teams again. These are the teams that we think will not make the playoffs in any way, shape or form in the next four seasons. Randy, you want to lead off this time? Sure. So yeah, so I'm going to, I'm going to pick the obvious team first, even though I'm a fan, nobody can accuse me of being a homer. Well, okay.

Everybody can accuse me of being a homer, but not this time. So yeah, I put the Royals on the list. I also have the Tigers in that division. I have the Reds. I have the Marlins. And then the fifth team was tough. And it breaks my heart to say this one because I hope I'm wrong, but I'm going to pick the Mariners as my fifth team

because I just feel like they're not rebuilding yet, but I feel like they're 18 months away from staring at the abyss. And I can see bizarre scenarios. I think of the A's and the Orioles as very high variance teams with their strategy. Baltimore looks hopeless, but Dan Duquette is the kind of guy who his GM, he was a very much a groundbreaking GM 15, 20 years ago and always found talent in weird places. I still believe in Buck Showalter as a manager when he's not picking a closer in a winner-take-all elimination game against a team that plays north of the 43rd parallel. And I don't see the Orioles doing a 2014 or 2016 Orioles scenario, but like a 2012 Orioles scenario where there are basically a 500 team that through luck, managerial acumen, and bullpen has a great record in one-run games. I could see a scenario where the Orioles make the playoffs. I just feel like the Mariners,

they got this one shot. They lost out on Otani, which is crushing for them. And the Angels have leapfrogged ahead of them. And I just feel like they're going to have to rebuild here in about a year or so. All right. Well, I'll just say, I guess I had four of the same teams. I had the Marlins, I had the Royals, I had the Tigers, the Reds, and then I did take the Orioles instead of the Mariners. It seems to me that they're staring down the same barrel that the Mariners are and maybe have even less of a chance in this coming season when the Mariners at least have a theoretical chance. I'm not sure I can even see the Royals getting there this year, given the other additions at the top of that division. Now, Joe, I'm guessing your list is going to be pretty similar, but go ahead.

I want to take a side before I do my list and say, have I missed something with the Reds? At the start of the podcast, Randy said, there's 28 good front offices, and I don't know about the Marlins and Reds. And I don't feel like Dick Williams has earned that. And I don't feel like that organization has earned that. I mean, they've got some young talent wrapped around. I mean, Joey Votto predates his front office, but they've got some young talent coming through.

I would not have them on this list just because I really do think they could have a team that could have the why not year. It's probably to me the Reds, not saying it's going to have an 18. But I think they're doing a lot of good things. They haven't made up. I'm hard pressed to think of a bad move they made since maybe the Frazier dump. It's funny that you say that because I read every one of your newsletters and I generally agree with everything you say. And I have found that the one place where sometimes I disagree is on the Reds

because you tend to be, I think, higher on them than I have been. And with me, it's not so much a front office thing. I think, you know, their front office is turned over quite a bit. And as far as I know, is as competent as any other. They're pretty tight lipped. They don't talk a whole lot about what they do.

But to me, it's just the utter lack of pitching. And, you know, I know there are a couple guys, but we're coming off back-to-back years here where they had historically awful pitching staffs. And, you know, Jeff has gotten a lot of mileage out of writing periodic updates on how terrible and sub-replacement level the Reds pitching staff is.

And I just, I don't really see the foundations of the next good Reds team yet. There are pieces there. And it seemed like with a few remnants, vestiges of the last successful Reds team, whether it was Todd Frazier or, I don't know, Jay Bruce, it seemed like they held on to those guys a little long and didn't get a whole lot back in return for them. So, you know, maybe it's just this podcast's longstanding, not entirely serious bias against the Reds. You don't talk about the Reds, right? Well, see, to me, though, if you take Joey Votto off that team, I don't see – I can't see any argument for this team being in a good place anytime soon.

Okay, Joey Votto's great, but he's also, like I said, he predates pretty much everybody in that organization. And the organization, or at least their broadcasters, seem to spend every waking moment tearing him down. I feel like the Reds appreciate Joey Votto less than basically every other baseball organization on the planet. I think you're underestimating their offense. Scooter Gannett's not going to repeat. Leave that alone. Daniel Suarez, Nick Senzel coming through, Jesse Winker, a devolved Shebbler platoon. If you take Votto out of it completely,

it's probably an average-ish offense. I'm not even sure it's that good. Especially with Cozart being gone now. Their second best hitter with Cozart gone from this past year was Scooter Gannett, and God loves Scooter Gannett. I think Suarez out-hitted him, didn't he? Gannett had slightly better numbers, according to what I'm looking at, but I mean, okay, Suarez, I mean, these are

good players, these are not middle-of-the-line guys. Yeah, well, fine. They're decent hitters that are not nearly good enough to make up for, like Ben said, just an absolutely terrible pitching staff, and this is an organization that has not done a very good job with developing pitchers, and that seems to be a skill, and this is anecdotal, but it just seems to be a skill that is fairly repeatable. Some organizations, the Orioles obviously being another classic example, just do not develop young pitching well.

And it just seems to linger from year to year. This is where I brought up the why not Orioles. They can just fall in. I mean, they have Hamilton in place. You fall into a plus-plus defense. Maybe. And all of a sudden, the Robert Stevens. Hamilton could be going somewhere san francisco any second now i i don't know what the giants could actually trade for billy hamilton though it makes sense for the reds

that farm system is terrible yeah anyway um the giants are the giants are kind of a dark horse to be on this list i mean everyone's acting like oh they'll bounce back they lost 98 games last year i mean like you have to bounce back a long way just to get back to mediocrity. It gets to their core, I think, with Bumgarner, Posey, and then the tertiary guys, Crawford, Belt, around them. And also that softness of the NL. I just don't know that I can rule out almost any of the five through 11 teams in the National League from being that second wild card.

That might be the best argument for the Reds. Yeah, it's the National League. Again, I certainly agree. I definitely agree. If you were talking about a team that could just have that completely, you know, unexpected playoff run. I mean, we almost thought with the Brewers last year. I think I made the point when they were, you know,

leading that division for a while, that if they had made the playoffs, they might have been the least likely playoff team, you know, based on just preseason odds, at least since probably the 91. We had that conversation and the Cubs won like 73 in a row. Yeah, exactly. They didn't work out. But the point is like, you know, but one of the ingredients for a season like that is just a very weak division.

I mean, that helped the 89 Orioles almost go to the playoffs. And that's going to be the case, you know, with any of these national league divisions. Well, I look at the top team. The Reds could be the 2017 Twins. I'm not saying it's going to happen, but if it happens, that's what it's going to look like. They're going to prevent a lot more runs than anybody expected them to prevent. I don't see a Byron Buxton here, though. I don't see the Barrios, the Buxton.

Well, Hamilton's the National League version, isn't he? Well, on defense. Well, yeah, on defense. I mean, I'm not saying just defensively. That's what I'm talking about. Plus, he stays on the field who's your five joe four american league teams which again as renny mentioned that's the reason to stay away from the national league the orioles who i just i guess it could happen this year but if it doesn't i think the two the next six seven years are going to be pretty bad the tigers as you both mentioned i've got the blue jays on my list

and in part that's because of this division the Yankees and Red Sox at the top. You're basically playing for one playoff spot the next couple of years. I think they've got to go through a whole cycle now. They've got to move into that. They've got to trade Donaldson. And I don't think they want to just yet. But if it doesn't happen in 18, again, it's not going to happen for a while. I put the Royals on this list.

And I really, if it was five years, I don't know that I would. But the Royals are on this list for me. And then I'm going to make some friends. friends the New York Mets I thought about them I'm kind of running out of teams at this point and essentially you know we've seen they built this team around these young pitchers and I believe the most they've ever gotten out of the young homegrown pitchers in a single season was like 98 starts in every every other year, it's been significantly less than that. Now we've got performance issues. And of course, the offense is getting old.

The defense has been, they just put some horrific defense on the field the last couple of years, which is fine if you're going to strike out 1,500 guys, but it doesn't seem like they're going to be able to do that anymore. So I would have the Mets as my fifth team on this list. Two years ago, I picked the Mets to win 103 games and win the division, and that didn't happen. And it's another team where if it doesn't happen this year, I just don't know when it's going to happen.

Honestly, Ben, half the reason I didn't put the Orioles on the list was I just listened to you talking with Mallory. It just broke my heart too much to not give her an ounce of hope. Realistically, it's going to be hard. Do you see a path where the Marlins could contend

at some point in this window then? Do you have enough faith in this ownership group and in what they're doing that you would not put them above your five? They could. And again, we're talking about that four-year program where they're going to draft high the next two years. They still have Jelic. They still have Riomuno. So they have the opportunity to actually make some baseball trades. But all they've done so far is make these really bad money trades.

Maybe at this point if they were to make a baseball trade. So I'm kind of giving them a little bit of credit for things that have not happened yet. Mets versus Marlins is interesting. In looking at the teams, I just, yeah, maybe it should be the Marlins. You guys might be able to talk me into it. I mean, some of it is proximity to it. The Mets haven't done anything. And the Marlins have been the game's joke for the last eight weeks.

So I think I'm kind of trying to avoid falling into the trap of recency bias. Admit it, Joe. You're just a Jeter fanboy. I'll be honest with you. I wonder if this is going to be – I wonder if Jeter is in it like Nolan Ryan, where he gets eventually kind of pushed aside, and then that starts them on the path

to where they need to be. Yeah, maybe. I'm still looking for the John Daniels in that organization though. Right, well, everybody is. And this is the Marlins, as you mentioned earlier, probably the one team that doesn't have a good GM. I mean, Michael Hill just hasn't done a very good job.

I guess he's got the title. You know, when we say GM now, I don't know what it means anymore. But they're the one team where I think that's the weak chair. That's the, if you can't spot the sucker in your first 15 minutes to share. Yeah, I don't know what it means anymore. But they're the ones here. That's the weak chair. If you can't spot the sucker, your first 15 minutes to share. Yeah, I don't know if you can even evaluate. It's so hard to.

Right, exactly. How do you know where the GM starts and just ownership meddling comes in? So it's a toxic situation. I just don't know who's responsible for it. Well, I guess the Royals, we're winding down here, and I'm bringing up the Royals, which is dangerous, I know, with the show. But it just seems like, you know, they are one of our consensus teams on this list. And yet, maybe they're also the team on this list that you with the scenario where they aren't on this list or because they won so recently and because they had this speed and defense and contact hitting team that you always figured maybe had a short shelf life. And also because they put together this incredible farm system, but then it took longer than usual for those top prospects to become productive players, whether it was Gordon or Moustakis or Hosmer or Kane, all these guys took their time blossoming. So by the time they finally did,

they were already approaching free agency and you could kind of see this coming a couple of years in advance. And it just kind of feels like, well, they did it quote unquote the right way. And this is what happens on the other side of that. Unless you're really lucky or really, really smart or really, really rich, this is what happens on the other side of that. Unless you're really lucky or really, really smart or really, really rich, this is what happens. You put together a team,

you win for a while, they made the most of the period where they were winning, and now they're not winning. And that's that. And even if they were able to keep some of these guys, and even if they weren't free agents, I wouldn't be all that optimistic about their outlook for the next four years that we're talking about here. It just seems like they had this all-time collection of prospects and they didn't follow it with another wave of prospects. And it's not like a lack of spending because they've spent. They've gone for it. They traded prospects for veterans when they were making runs and they've had top 10 payrolls in the last couple of years. So it's, it's almost just, well, it's hard to have a kind of perpetual motion machine that makes the playoffs every year. Often it's just a cyclical thing and now they're at the

down cycle and you just hope it won't be a 25 year down cycle again. Yeah. You've got to go all the way to the other team in the state to find a team that does that. Stop harshing my buzz, Joe. I think you make the point. Dude, they won a championship. They won a championship. They did it with five top five picks on the roster. I know they did it with Special Royals Magic.

They did it with five top five picks on the roster. And this is what happens on the other side of it. I mean, it's good that they got the one year, finally. One year where they were all healthy and they all stayed on the field and they won a championship with them. And this is the other side of it. I mean, it's good that they got the one year finally. One year where they were all healthy and they all stayed on the field and they won a championship with them. And this is the other side of it. I think they've got to do, I mean, they've done a pretty poor job. That next group of prospects that came through

didn't really work, as Ben says. So they're going to have plenty of time now to try to draft and develop. And I just don't think the talent on the field is going to support a playoff team. I do think that by 2021, which is what we're talking about here, you'll at least be able to see the sunrise.

You're talking to a guy who's sitting in his home office with a copy of the Kansas City Star dated November 2, 2015 on his wall, a picture, actually a painting of Kauffman Stadium with the words 2015 World Champions on it, and by rotating

screensaver right now is a shot of eric cosmer hitting a home run uh to beat the angels in game two of the 2014 albs so when you edit this mix in so yeah so you're not going to hear me have any complaints about what's happened i mean the complaint is certainly not where the royals are now. I think I can have very legitimate complaints about the fact that they were not competitive this past season in 2016. But I mean, we knew in late 2011, I was talking about how this core of this team is together until 2017. And it turned out to be even more so than I thought at the time, in part because Lorenzo Cain, who was not an elite prospect like Hosmer and Moustakas were, turned into a better player than either of those guys. And his free agency was set up for this season.

But we knew six years ago, the way the Royals gained the service time of Hosmer and Moustakas, they were going to be free agents at the same time. Whatever happened for those six and a half years they had that core together, there was going to be a reckoning. And the reckoning was going to be now. So we knew this reckoning was coming. And I have no regrets, obviously, because what they accomplished was worth the hype and the anticipation. Obviously, there's some luck involved in that because they made the playoffs one and a half times and somehow got two World Series and one championship out of it.

But where they are now, I'm comfortable with what they accomplished. I'm ready to move forward and ready to sort of start over, knowing that they're starting from a sort of a higher base than they did when Dayton Moore was hired in 2006. And knowing that he made a lot of mistakes the first time around, which is why it took them eight years to get to the playoffs. There's no team situation in modern history, I think, where a team is so bad that you should reasonably expect eight years to get to being a playoff caliber team, at least a wildcard caliber team. So, you know, that's why the only reason I said four years is I feel like it's very hard. Five years out, almost any team can compete. I think the Royals in 2022, I think there's a very good chance that they'll be competitive. But I do think four years, where they are right now,

the fact that their most recent draft was very high school heavy, because I think that they are kind of thinking of doing this the way they did the last time, which is sort of have all of these players crest at the same time. So the first draft in that rebuilding process, you start younger, you focus more high school guys, you mix in the college guys as you go, hoping that these guys will all sort of hit at the same time and come up together three or four years later when they're all 22, 23 years old. And then they need a year or two to adjust to the major leagues and then you start winning. I think that's the concept here and I'm comfortable with that. And I can be very sober and say this team is not going to win

for the next four years. But the bitterness that characterized my relationship with this organization for the better part of 20 years, it would take another five to 10 years of sucking for me to really get to that point again, I think. Well, Bubba Starling's only 25. We've been talking for an hour and USC didn't score once during that entire hour. I'm glad we've been talking this long because I was worried. Not that worried because I figured get the two of you together. You were worried, Ben.

You were honestly worried. I thought that this topic we chose, we're all going to pick the same five teams on each list and we kind of did, but we still managed to talk for quite a while. Where the differences were, we're actually interested. Yeah, right. yeah right so anyway i think this is you know what's not interesting 413 yards of offense one offensive touchdown that's that's not interesting well i think seven points four turnovers it's been a good picture of where baseball is today i think just in the agreement

that we had on on both of lists, I expected a lot. And I don't know if that would have been the case if we'd done this a few years ago. And I don't know if it would be the case if we did it a few years from now. It seems to go in cycles where one year we're all writing the article about how, you know, there's incredible parity and payroll doesn't matter anymore. And then wait a few years and suddenly payroll matters. And there is still a correlation between spending and winning and so I don't know how long this will last but this is a snapshot of baseball at the end of 2017 so I am as always happy to have both of you on I'm glad to get you guys together

whenever I can and just listen in it's just a bonus that I get to participate to. And people can find Rani writing at The Ringer from time to time and on Twitter at Giserely. And if you're in the Chicago area and you have skin, you can find her. I take all major insurance plans. Come by and see me. CSkinder.com. And if you're the aliens from V, come on in. Yeah. Is the baseball thing an asset as a dermatologist?

Do people choose you over another doctor because they want to just talk baseball while you're examining their moles? Every now and then I will get a patient who came to see me because they know me from Twitter or my writings. But more, I think it's just, you know, a lot of, especially a lot of my older patients, you know, we'll start talking baseball and, you know, I'll mention, you know, we'll start talking history and I'll mention we'll start talking history and I'll mention Nellie Fox or Luis Aparicio

and suddenly their eyes light up and it's like wow, this guy's legitimate. Or he's just a lot older than he looks. But it's also dangerous because I can't spend an hour with every patient as much as I would enjoy talking baseball for an hour with you guys.

Joe, you want to tell the people, want to plug all the places they can find you? At Joe underscore Sheehan is the best place to find out everything I'm doing. I have a Facebook page. It's for me. And I promote the newsletter through that. Facebook.com slash Sheehan newsletter. If you want to read about Mike Messina or Trevor Hoffman

and why one should be a Hall of Famer and the other not, joshianbaseball.blogspot.com. I haven't written that much for Sports Illustrated, but there's always a chance I'll pop in there. I'll tweet that out when it happens. Same thing for The Athletic. I tend to write for them during the season, not in the offseason, but The Athletic, big fan of all the work that they're doing. They're into 14 markets now, plus they've got the verticals for MLb and uh and college sports that have been really popular so check that out as well and uh if you happen to be wandering the streets of yonkers and you have a question just shout it out yeah i'm i'm a subscriber to the newsletter for years it's great highly recommend it and plugged it on this podcast before but if you haven't signed

up yet get on that so guys thank you very much much for coming on the last podcast of the year, helping me fill these dead weeks without baseball and without Jeff. It has been a pleasure. Ben, thanks for having us. Thank you for still thinking of me when you think of baseball. I'm not sure how much longer that will last, but it's good to still be wanted. Yes. You wrote a baseball article this year. I did. I did. One. You kept your eligibility as a baseballer. You just got to get one a year in there. I did. I got an email about that from Zach Cram, my ringer colleague, who was one of the guests on the first episode this week. He points out, the luxury tax circumvention scenario you discussed on yesterday's episode,

in which a team offers a player a few extra low salary years at the end of a contract to reduce the average annual value for competitive balance tax purposes, actually happened in hockey a few years ago. I vaguely remember this now. In the summer of 2010, the New Jersey Devils signed star goal scorer Ilya Kovalchuk to a 17-year, $102 million contract that would have kept him in uniform until he was 44 years old. Despite the middle years of the contract, including salaries in the eight figures, the average annual value was just $6 million, as 97% of the money would have gone to Kovalchuk within the first 11 years. The NHL voided the deal because the attempt to circumvent the salary cap was so transparent, and an arbitrator later ruled in the league's favor.

In addition to having to re-sign Kovalchuk to a contract less favorable for cap purposes, the Devils were punished with a fine and the loss of draft picks, though the harshest part of the penalty, forfeiture of a future first round pick, was later lifted. I'm not sure if MLB would respond in the same way or a team to try the same thing with Harper or Machado, but there is recent precedent for sports leagues not reacting kindly to such shenanigans. Thank you, Zach. A couple people have mentioned Max Scherzer's contract with the Nationals. They gave him $210 million over seven years, but it's really over 14 years because half of the amount in each year is deferred. But for luxury tax purposes, evidently, it's not the same thing. It's been reported that the average annual value of Scherzer's contract for luxury tax purposes is $28.7 million.

So in his case, it seems the deferral was more about just the value of the contract, being able to give him a bigger number, but because of inflation and the time value of money, not having to give him as much money in present day terms. So that seems not to be a case of trying to circumvent the luxury tax rules. If you'd like to keep this podcast going into 2018 and beyond, the best way to do that is to support us on Patreon. Go to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Sign up for some small monthly amount and five listeners who have already done that include kevin dynan seth resnick timothy cullen ben lenartz and lane maddox so thank you to all of you and thanks to everyone for listening to the show throughout 2017 it has been a pleasure

to do it for you and with you enjoy your new year's eve and your new year's day have a happy new year i hope you'll spend that year with us too. Another way you can spend time with us is in our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. You can also show your gratitude for the show or appreciation for the show if you have any by going to iTunes and giving us a rating and a review. Helps us climb the lists and attract new listeners. also gives us a little ego boosts just takes a minute thank you to dylan higgins for his editing assistance on this episode and all episodes this year please keep your questions and comments coming for me and jeff or in the coming week i believe me and sam can email us at podcast at fangraphs.com

or send us a message through the patreon messaging system. Have a wonderful weekend. I will talk to you in 2018.