Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1241: Midsummer Snubs and the Deal with the Deadline

Episode Date: July 10, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about an old “Umpire Day,” the Mariners’ run-differential defiance, and the Royals’ extreme struggles and possibly unprecedented amateur signing, then discuss how to define an All-Star, the All-Star Game’s fading significance, the All-Star selection process, and the perennial conversation surrounding “snubs,” as well as the trade deadline in the […]

Hello and welcome to episode 1241 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs, presented Constellation of this podcast. No talk about William Sestadio and his origin story or any of the other strange stories that we get fixated on unless they come up organically. But we could just talk about what Joe Baseball Fan is talking about these days, namely the All-Star Game and the trade deadline. But is there anything that you wanted to get to before then? Well, based on that intro, I'm out. I'll be back Wednesdaynesday there's no there's no place for me here okay so i did see something this is just something that was retweeted by tacoma rainiers triple a announcer mike curdo he uh he retweeted something from the the account minor league stories anyway on this day this uh referring to i guess monday july 9th on this day

in 1911 a state representative declared it Umpire Day in Washington so that Tacoma Tigers showered an umpire with praise and flowers from the Eugene Guard. I will just read these two paragraphs from the newspaper. Tacoma observes first Umpire Day. Official showered with roses and praise instead of abuse. Tacoma, Washington, July 12th. July 12th, I guess. For the first time in the history of baseball,

an umpire day has been celebrated. Sunday afternoon, 5,000 persons turned out to the ballpark to feat Fett? I guess I don't actually know which one it is. Feet? Fett? I think Fett. I would say Fett. We'll go with Fett. Umpire Jake Baumgarten, and show him that baseball can be played under conditions

where the umpire is not even questioned. Baumgarten was showered with roses, and a score or more mammoth bouquets were presented to him. Throughout the contest between Tacoma and Vancouver, nothing but words of commendation and praise were heard about the umpire. At the close of the game, Baumgarten took his station at the grandstand gate and presented roses to the women who had attended the game. Oh, how nice. Yeah, I thought so.

Yeah. How many umpires are there in that town that were able to benefit from this? Not that many. I mean, this is the entire state, I guess. Okay. But other than that, how many teams were in Washington at that point? Well, good for Baumgartner. Baumgarten?

Baumgarten, I guess. The type, I'm looking at this, this is a copy of an old newspaper. The type is not very clear. I'm not that bad of a reader. Well, that's a nice idea. It'd be great if it could be more inclusive. Maybe every state can have an umpire appreciation day just so they can all feel the love because they've all felt the abuse over the years. The only other thing I think I have, but I would just point this out because I had noticed looking over the standings since your last talk. So just picking an arbitrary date we'll go with june 5th since june 5th the seattle mariners are 19 and 12 they have been outscored by six runs so for i had

seen many allusions to the idea that the mariners run differential was misleading because they had been worse early in the season and no no, no, they're just, they're just lucky all of the time. So that is what's going on with the Mariners. They have the same record since June 5th as the Cleveland Indians who have outscored their opponents by 50 runs. Yeah, it never stops. You'd think once we noticed this, it would immediately reverse itself and they'd start losing, but instead, no, which makes you think, well, is there something to it? Is it real? Is it sustainable? It has been sustained, but doesn't seem sustainable. So I don't know what's going on, but it's a fun story. I think people in your area are enjoying it.

When did we first bring up the idea of a team winning fewer games and its manager is years old? It was a couple of weeks ago i think okay well just just to restate for the record ned yost will turn 64 in august buck show walter has already turned 62 and the royals are still stuck at 25 wins and the orioles are at 24. I was looking over. I can't figure out the perfect starting point to really drive home how terrible it's been for the Royals. But we can just go with, I don't know, the end of May. So starting on June 1st, the Royals have gone 5-28. And not even just 5-28. Their Pythagorean winning percentage.

They've been outscored by 107 runs since then. Their Pythagorean winning percentage. They've been outscored by 107 runs since then. Their Pythagorean winning percentage since then is 175. The second worst is 318 in baseball. 175. I've never seen a Pythagorean record so bad. Over like a fifth of the season. The Royals are so bad. We played the Marlins roster game.

But do you know the Royals starting rotation right now? Because I am in charge of the depth charts at Fangraphs and I don't. Is it Kaito Yuki, the 16-year-old Japanese high school player that they signed this week? Probably should be. Yeah, I wanted to bring him up. I want to learn more about that situation, but that is a pretty intriguing signing. The Royals, I think, became the first major league club to sign a Japanese high school player, again, Kaito Yuki, and he signed to a minor league deal like any other domestic minor league player. It's a $322,500 signing bonus, and he is thought to be, according to the AP, the first Japanese junior high school player to sign with a major league club, which is pretty interesting because usually to sign with a major league club as a Japanese player, you have to have been a professional for years and years before you can finally be posted or persuade your team to post you.

And Yuki is just entirely circumventing that system and he is bypassing the end of his high school career, which is apparently legal and permissible. And apparently there was some kind of connection where the Royals international scout, their Pacific Rim coordinator was an advisor for his little league club. So there was a connection there and he felt comfortable doing this. And I know there have been players in Japan who've considered doing this before, but I don't think anyone has, at least to my knowledge. And I don't know whether this will start a trend. It would be pretty fascinating if it did, but I can't imagine that that many players are willing to do this at that age. He's 16 years old. That is tough. That is obviously what a lot of players in Latin America do just as a routine, as a matter of course.

But this is not typical for Japan. So I wonder whether it will be a trendsetting signing. Yeah, I didn't get very much of a chance to read about this. I was gone all weekend. I remember that a few years ago there was that kerfuffle over the Orioles sort of like illicitly scouting a number of, what was it, Taiwanese players or Korean? I think so. Somewhere on the Pacific Rim. The Orioles were scouting a number of what was it taiwanese players or i think so korean somewhere on the pacific rim the orioles were scouting very young players i know that like shinsu chu just wound up in the mariners farm system he didn't i don't think play professionally in korea but yeah it was korea that the the oriole scouts were banned from okay and i i don't remember all of the circumstances there that was complicated and i don't know if they're allowed to return we should

talk to some people over there because they would know a lot more than we would off the top of our head. But I do wonder if you were the Royals, if you have to scout far off teenagers because that way you might find people who are unaware of how bad you've become. Right. Yeah. I think in Korea there was a rule against the unrestricted signing of amateur players by foreign clubs. I don't know if it was an enforceable or legal rule, but it was a rule against the unrestricted signing of amateur players by foreign clubs. I don't know if it was an enforceable or legal rule, but it was a rule. And I don't think there's an actual rule in NPB. Maybe there was an unwritten rule to a certain degree. But anyway, it's a lot to ask of a player to come over here and not know the language and be 16 and have to face this kind of competition.

But obviously, lots of international players have to do this. And he is 6'2", and he has already been clocked in the high 80s. So he is a pretty impressive pitcher, apparently. And maybe it will catch on. I don't know. I also wanted to mention there's a Royals fun fact that I was going to save for the email show. But since you brought up how bad the Royals are and that I was going to save for the email show, but since you brought up how bad the Royals are, and

since it's timely now, I'll read it. This came from an email from listener Luke, who says, I was pulling up the box score from the recently finished 15-4 route of the Red Sox over the Royals and noticed an oddity. Every single player who batted for the Red Sox had at least one run batted in,

and there were 11 batters. And Luke continues, I assume that this has happened before, but I can't recall ever seeing another box score like it. How often does this occur? What's the highest number of batters a team has sent up where all of them had runs batted in? I'm curious as to whether this is a noteworthy accomplishment or not. So I sent this to Dan Hirsch, as always, of the Baseball Gauge, and he was able to research this, and he said, nice eye by Luke, because this looks to be the record for the years in which we have data. I only counted players that had a plate appearance

in the game, so some top teams had a defensive replacement that didn't reach the plate. Also, I didn't include any games that were missing, run batted in data. But yeah, it is the only game on record where every batter who had a plate appearance for a team had a run batted in and that many batters batted. I 11 batters in a game and all of them have driven in a run. The previous high was 10, offensive stats. There were, by the way, some other games that did have 11 different players drive in a run. It just wasn't every player in those games that had a plate appearance. And there were three games that had 12 players drive in a run. And one of them was an Orioles game back in 1955. And then there was a 1948 and a 1912. So this is rare and unprecedented if you define it sort of narrowly. So Royals are bad. Teams that play the Royals are good.

I can't believe how bad the Royals are. And I feel like they're so bad. This is, it's really fortunate for the Orioles and the Royals that maybe we already mentioned this, but that they're doing this at the same time because this is like really. And how much better is this for the White Sox, who have been a catastrophe? I mean, you might remember when we were talking to Jason Benetti during the season previews, he thought that, I forgot his exact number, but he thought they would be pretty close to 500. And instead of being close to 500, they do have 50% more losses than wins right now. Or I should say, nope, that's they do have 50 more losses than wins right now or i should say

nope that's wrong 100 more losses than wins it's double the number 30 and 60 but you have a team like the white socks has been so disastrous but then you also have the orioles who've who had the worst first impression because they were so bad in in april and then the royals have really come on strong to take over the worst team in baseball mantle. But the fact that there are just these teams all doing it at the same time, I think in a way sort of alleviates the burden on all of them, because it's almost, it's hard to keep your attention focused on how bad one of them is, when you can just kind of like look for a fun fact about the other one. The Orioles are 37 games out of first place. Yeah, whenever you're doing something embarrassing or shameful,

it's less embarrassing and shameful when other people around you are doing the same thing and you just kind of blend into the crowd of people who are doing something embarrassing. So yeah, it's nice for them to have company and not be alone in their historic awfulness. It is strange that they are this bad. I wonder whether it has to do with just how good the good teams in the AL are this year, because it's not like, I mean, when I look at the Orioles and Royals, we expected them to be bad. It's not surprising that they're bad, but it hasn't been that long since they were good or at least competent. And it's not like they've done the most, you know, strip it down to the studs kind of rebuild tear down tank

whatever you want to call it like the royals just kind of aged out of their core and they lost a bunch of free agents and that's what happens and the orioles just have done a really bad job of acquiring and developing talent and so this is what happens but i didn't really foresee either of them being one of the worst teams ever this year. So maybe that just has to do with how stratified the AL is right now. Yeah, and it doesn't really help when you have Danny Duffy, you turn into a problem, and Alex Gordon had that brief little flit of looking interesting earlier in the season, but I really don't want to go over the Royals bit by bit.

They do have an all-star. Everyone has an all-star. They have an all-star we could talk about, but even their all-star is bad, which is the mark of a bad team. But, yeah, I know that during the offseason, you go get Lucas Duda, John Jay, they re-sign Mike Misakis, and you think, well, at least they're trying, right? At least they're not tanking. They're spending a little bit of money putting some veterans around the core. If there is a core. It turns out there is no core.

LCD's Escobar just had his play every single day streak end but looking at his numbers that streak should have ended like a year ago maybe before it began i don't know i don't know how much it matters i don't know how much it matters for the royals to have dropped so deep because we all know it's going to be a long time before they return so maybe it doesn't matter to them if they lose 100 or 110 or 120, but it's, wow, it's going to be a long time. By the way, it's pronounced either fate or fet. Evidently, both are acceptable. I'm going to go with fet because fate is a word and fet is just a bounty hunter.

So I'm going with fet. You can't say feet. I guess feet is probably not permissible. That is already a different word. Okay. So I got my first pronunciation was not correct either way. So I went, there were two options. I went for the incorrect number three. It's FET, but there was no little diacritic over the E, so I was thrown off. Yeah. All right. So you were just joking. I know it wasn't really a joke, but I'm going to say it was a joke about taking the rest of this episode off because we're talking about the All-Star Game and the trade deadline.

I know it's not really our brand. We're the people who talk about the weird, whimsical aspects of baseball, but we also talk about the big news and the current events. We try to do a little bit of something for everyone. So right now, these are the big topics in baseball, and I have a few things to say about them. So I think that we have all kind of fallen into the rut of bashing the All-Star game and saying that we don't really care about the All-Star game. And there are good reasons not to care about the All-Star game. There's just no intrigue to the idea of players from opposing leagues facing each other, because opposing leagues oppose each other

every day of the season. We have MLB TV. We can watch these guys whenever we want. There isn't really much of a rivalry when it comes to AL versus NL anymore. And the whole thing is sort of silly and meaningless. And even MLB is not pretending that there is any meaning or significance here. There's no this time it counts and that's fine. So I'm not excited for the All-Star Game. I don't wish any ill upon the All-Star Game. I don't dislike it or wish it would go away. I think it's more entertaining than no baseball and probably more entertaining than most baseball games in the middle of July. It's fine. You get to see the best players in baseball and also Joe Jimenez face each other. And that's great. And you get to see them hang out on the field and there's kind of a social aspect to it that is enjoyable.

There's no other game really, unless, I don't know, the Yankees are playing the Astros where it's like every single matchup is pretty compelling. So I'm fine with the All-Star game, even though it's not as intriguing as it once was. And there's no way to make it as intriguing. And everyone talks about how do we fix the All-Star game? How do we save the All-Star game? There's no way to do it. I think there are things you could do that would make it more entertaining at this point. I would definitely rather see, you know, U.S. versus the world or young players versus old players or some other distinction between these teams other than AL versus NL.

I think that would make me at least marginally more excited than I am. But whatever. All-Star Game's fun. I'm not here to be a John Smoltz about it and tell you how terrible it is. So that's fine. But this is the week when everyone talks about snubs and you've got to talk about snubs and who should have been on the team and who isn't on the team and why. And it's always sort of a silly debate because for one thing, by the time they actually play the All-Star game, everyone is on the All-Star team. Like we're still a week away or whatever it is. And there's almost

no point in saying that this guy should be on the roster Or that guy should be on the roster because He will be by the time they actually play The thing guys will have been scratched They will have pulled themselves out of the team You'll have replacements And reserves and it'll be fine Almost everyone who deserves to be there

Should be there and that's fine And there's just no perfect system I don't think for electing all-stars because for one thing there's just no agreed upon definition of what an all-star is to the extent that you care and i know that's not a great extent how would you define an all-star are you in the it says stars so we put the stars in the game camp or are you in the, it says stars, so we put the stars in the game camp, or are you in the, it's a celebration of the players who are currently having the best season, so if you have a great first half, you should be in the game camp. year to year because if you're talking about stars then it legitimately is just a popularity contest and it's not completely divorced from production but i mean you you look at the fans and i don't know maybe the fans lead the way here maybe they're showing us exactly what should be

happening and what wilson ramos i think led american league catchers in votes right i i'm not i'm not gonna lie to you i have not looked at anything that has to do with the all-star voting results aside from what i could avoid on Twitter. But I remember at least seeing that Wilson Ramos was leading in votes at Ketcher. And I don't know how that would happen because he plays for the Rays and he's not Gary Sanchez. So it's a little confusing to me. But the fans have at least indicated that they do care about production the the fan voting has through the lens of thinking about in-season production the fan voting has seemingly improved over the last several years as fans become more and more aware of of what the numbers are anyway to get back to the point i do think that there

should be a a significant influence from from current performance but you can't just have it be all like the best players from the first half because while that still is a reward part of what i think is the reward of going to the all-star game is that as a player if you're selected you've been selected to hang out with the actual quote-unquote stars you've been selected to be among them say what you will about joe jimenez and by the way i'll just point out joe jimenez this season has allowed a Woba of 267. He's an all-star. Salvador Perez has hit for a Woba of 273. He's also an all-star. So way to go, Joe Jimenez.

You've turned every opponent into an all-star, I guess. I don't know how. Well, that's not very flattering. Anyway, Salvador Perez has been bad. Joe Jimenez has been good. So I guess if you wanted to compromise, I sort of like to think of it as my All-Stars would be who's been the best mostly over the past calendar year.

So that sort of, I think that works as sort of folding in both the true talent star level and also the who's been really, really good in the first half. But I don't think I would want an All-Star game where someone like Max Muncy's weird-ass performance each year wouldn't get selected right i think that something like

that needs to go in i don't care i know i know people talk about brian laher that one year but i don't care that's fun i like that that happened he does like he probably deserved it i don't remember the case offhand yeah yeah i mean brian laher he's the the quintessential example of the why was that guy an all-star. But I think he had some ridiculously high BABIP that first half. And of course, his career was basically like one full season in total. And you look back and it's, yeah, why is Brian LaHare there? I'm sure no one was super excited to see Brian LaHare there except Brian LaHare's friends and family. And so I used to be more of a hardliner about this.

And I think that if you had a good first half, you should be an all-star. And it was all about, you know, I wasn't thinking of it in wins above replacement terms then. But nowadays, if you just looked at a first half wins above replacement leaderboard and just average the wars or whatever you want to do and just took the top people, that would be the most fair way to do it. And in a sense it is, but I think it's a marketing event. It's a publicity event. You want the stars in the All-Star game. There is some logic to that. I think it's just a way to promote the game, and the best way to do that is to have the famous players everyone knows in this event.

do that is to have the famous players everyone knows in this event. And I agree, it should be a blend because you don't just want everyone kind of grandfathered in so that it's exactly the same names and faces year in and year out. I think it's great if you have some guys who are there every year, but it's nice to have some new blood too. And I wouldn't want someone who is skilled and also clearly performing better to be banned from this game because he's a rookie or he's a fluke or he's coming out of nowhere. I guess we could make a distinction for flukes. Like if you look at someone who's just got some massive ERA FIP gap or some sky-high BABIP and you just know he's not actually good, but he's just had some good results this year. I'm not going to pound the desk for that guy, really. But if you've been legitimately good, and this is the first time you've been legitimately good,

I think you deserve to be in there. And it's a special thing for the player. And there can be contract incentives that are triggered when a guy gets in. And it's like a lifelong thing. Players are described by, oh, he was a two-time all-star, like, for the rest of his career, even if he wasn't that great a player. So I think there's something to that, and guys who don't have the incredible history should get to go to the games. So I'm okay with that. Anyway, I just think that there's no way to make everyone happy with this, because A a people disagree about what an all-star should look like and then b the system is just changing all the time and you have these three different groups i guess that have some input here so i haven't even really kept track of who is voting for what anymore but

i think the managers used to have a more prominent role, and now they don't. The players have a very prominent role as of, what, last year maybe? And then there is the fan vote for the starters, and then there is the MLB final vote candidates who were kind of snuck in there. I think Travis Sachik has a post on this that will be up by the time you are hearing this. And so I think that fans vote on the starters. Players select the 17 reserves and 16 in the NL. So players are taking more than half of the all-star spots. And then there are the starters that the fans are voting on, then the commissioner's office for the final vote guys. fans are voting on than the commissioner's office for the final vote guys. And I don't know whether it's atypical or not, but there's been a big outcry from some of the players this year who are launching their own campaigns and criticizing some of their peers for voting in some guys or not voting in other guys. And yeah, it is sort of silly when you look and Sal Perez, who has just not been good, is an all-star and, you know,

you name the snub is not or is not a starter. Everyone's mad about Blake Snell or Max Muncy or Trey Turner, Brandon Belt, Ross Stripling, Charlie Morton, Eddie Rosario. I mean, the list goes on and on. And again, most of these people will be all-stars by the time it's all said and done. But you have the need to have someone from every team on the roster, which is always going to kind of compromise the integrity of the process. And I'm fine with that because again, it's a meaningless game. And I know that when I was watching all-star games as a kid, I was always sort of excited to see players from my team. Now, I grew up as a Yankees fan, so there's no shortage of players from my team. But if you are a Tigers fan and you're happy to see Joe Jimenez on the roster this year, that's great and that's fine.

And I think there should be someone there for everyone. But when you're going to give most of this process to players, you just have to be ready, I think, for them not to put that much thought or research into voting. Plus, apparently they're still voting by paper ballot and envelope like weeks ago. So Justin Verlander was tweeting like we vote way too early. He said we could easily punch in our votes on an iPad a couple days before instead of the old school envelope weeks before. And I've always thought it was silly to start all-star voting months ahead of time, but I guess there's probably a financial incentive for MLB there because the all-star vote is sponsored. And so they don't care if you vote a hundred times for a guy because they probably get some money every time you click. Why would the players, like you said, there's the incentive,

but I don't know why the players would be asked to vote so far in advance. Their all-star vote isn't sponsored. I don't know why they're doing it the way that they're doing either, but, I mean, having now submitted a few Baseball Writers Association of America votes, I know that voting is just a little backwards, where it's at least not cut up to where you think it would be. Ferdlander's right, of course, about the iPad. i don't think anyone would hack them even if they did i don't know if anyone care i do wonder when we talk about this every single year how much you think of the

people who who talk about the snubs and how things could be optimized or should be better and i don't know if i don't know if any of those people are really who the all-star game is is for it seems like it's mostly for the players and their families and then the the people who used to feel alive inside like you and i when we were kids you know not uh not the the fully employed adults it's the kids who just want to sit down and watch a baseball game wait for their favorite players and cheer the players on the team and then boo the players who aren't on the team or on the rivals and and i remember enjoying all-star games i remember enjoying home run derbies and then i I grew out of it.

I don't think that's anyone's fault. It's just not something that is produced there for me. Now, I know that the All-Star Game is not the only event that is, I think, geared toward younger people. You can consider, for example, the Kids' Choice Awards, which is, by the way, not run by kids. There's a lot of adults who are in whatever room it is. I don't know. I shouldn't have started talking about the Kids' Choice Awards, which is, by the way, not run by kids. There's a lot of adults who are in whatever room it is. I don't know.

I shouldn't have started talking about the Kids' Choice Awards because I don't know anything about it. But you have a lot of adults who are making production decisions for a thing that ultimately is not for them. And so I think that's a little what this is. But at the end of the day here, I am dissatisfied with the number number with the weight given to player votes because i think every single player who plays major league baseball i'll step back many players who play major league baseball are very smart about baseball and could have a a good insightful long conversation about the nuances of their individual game and some of them are very aware of the good players who play elsewhere some of them are very aware of the good players who play elsewhere. Some of them are huge baseball fans.

They'll watch highlights. They'll go home and they'll watch games on off days. There's Zach Granke who scouts freaking amateurs during spring training because he just can't get enough of it. Guys like Zach Granke or Joey Votto are rare. They are the exception. And so it's like the old gold glove voting that coaches would do where it's, you know, they would like delegate it to some other guy or they would just write down a vote because they remember the play some guy made three years ago. Like, of course, Salvador Perez made the All-Star game. How many people are paying him any attention? Once you won one gold glove, it seemed like you'd win every year until you were just totally lame and unable to move.

And that would be a good example of why you need to have fresh blood coming into the All-Star Game. Because if you have people grandfathered in, obviously the gold gloves became very unpopular when it was the same people over and over and over again who didn't always deserve it. Now, Mark Burley did always deserve it, but he was special. Most players went hot in Mark Burley. always deserve it but he was special most players were not mark burley so i don't know why the players have been given so much power for an event that i i know that it is for them but i think that just like the hall of fame is players receiving an award because other people voted for them and then saw their saw their ability and their for their careers i think that other people should be voting for this. I don't know why players have a say at all.

Certainly not such an outsized say. Let fans choose the backups. They're just fine. The players don't need to do it. I think the players have abdicated their responsibility here. Yeah, they have better things to do, really, than look at leaderboards all day like we do because they're Major League Baseball players.

So, yeah, I think this is kind of what we do. We follow the game. We analyze the game and players play their own game and optimize their own performance. And right. Some of them pay attention and are very knowledgeable about the league and others aren't, but they are not employed for their ability to analyze the performance of other players. That's just not really in their job description. And obviously they have some idea, but you're always going to get some,

I'll say bad picks and reputation based picks. I mean, there's no great Royals all-star candidate this year. We were just talking about the Royals. There's no budding MVP on that roster right now, but you can find better players than Sal Perez. You could find, I don't know, Whit Merrifield or someone would be a better all-star selection, I suppose, than Sal Perez. And you're not going to get Whit Merrifield chosen because the players know Sal Perez and he's been around and he's been in the game before and he's respected. And so that's the kind of selection you're going to get and that's if you design the system this way you're always going to get quote-unquote snubs and so it's really not worth getting upset about i guess unless you want to just get upset about the system itself and

try to change that but i don't know that it's important enough to devote that much of our mental energy to what if what if we've talked about ways to spice it up, and it's the skills competition. It should be the skills competition. We will continue to talk about that until they actually implement it. But what if they changed the All-Star game to have a team voted on by the fans against a team voted on by the players? Now, there would be some overlap, you know, the obvious guys. And I don't know what you would do about those. Maybe you split them up or you put them on whichever team gave them the most support i don't know there's there are ways to narrow that

down but ultimately the fans and the players would disagree on presumably a number of players because the players doing the voting don't care or wouldn't be putting a whole lot of thought into it so it'd probably end up being a little more of a uh a young versus old but not entirely kind of situation and then you can have the fans or the players feeling kind of smug after every single result. And that would be a little, I would be at least inclined to check the box score more than once every year if that were the format. Yeah. And I know that there was a new system that I think MLB wanted that the union rejected.

Jill Sherman reported this in the Post in May, I think. So I'll quote from him here. MLB proposed essentially a primary system and a general election for the fan voting. There would be an initial wave of voting in the standard way with a player from each team represented at the position. Then around mid-June, there would be a cutoff and the top three vote getters at each position would be in a runoff starting from zero votes again, with the winner starting at that position. The hope was that players would take to social media to push candidacies, and that that would excite fans to further participate and then watch the game.

And the union didn't want to do it because, gosh, I don't even know. I think, let's see, MLB made its initial proposal in early April with no additional compensation for the players before ultimately offering $1.1 million of inducements that would be spread among those who finished in the top three of voting, the participants in the Home Run Derby and the winning All-Star team. The union said it would only consider accepting if MLB agreed to not only the $1.1 million, but also an equal share of revenue derived from this new process. And also there wouldn't be a separate sponsorship for the voting, and so there would be less money coming in. Anyway, the union didn't like it, and so that was dead. And I don't know, I guess that would help in some degree, but still wouldn't take a lot of the power away from the players, so it wouldn't really be all that different, and we'd still get selections that people are upset about. So that's that. I

don't know what you do. I guess you could just put the players on the back burner here and give more selections to the fans, but you'd still get some weird ones, and of course you would get fan bases that just are better at mobilizing themselves, voting their own players in, as we saw with the Royals a few years ago. And as it seemed like we were seeing with the Braves this year, sort of. So that's always going to kind of compromise the process. Also, by the way, congratulations to Nick Markakis, who is officially an All-Star. who is officially an All-Star. So good for him and bad for the fun fact in that he is no longer the best player ever

to have never received an All-Star selection or an MVP vote. And as much as I love or loved the dearly departed Nick Markeikis fun fact, I can't get my head around the fact that Matt Kemp is an All-Star starter in this season. I know that this isn't anything surprising, right? This has been coming on for months. As long as it hit, he was always going to be wildly popular in a gigantic baseball market. But just the very fact that Matt Kemp was completely and utterly unwanted

as recently as four months ago, he's an all-star starter, and he deserves it. That's just, I don't even know what to do with baseball anymore. I honestly don't. What do you think? What do you think? What do you think? I know this deviates from the subject a little bit, but we're talking about Matt Kemp, so let's just keep talking about Matt Kemp. He's had an All-Star first half.

You look at baseball references, wins above replacement is 1.7. That's not great, but that's actually pretty good. Puts him on pace for something like three. How many wins above replacement positive or negative do you think matt camp will be worth in the second half or i should say from this point forward zero roughly i also think zero what's his projection i will uh i'll pull that up right now his projection is oh it's 0.5 he's projected to be a a comfortably above average hitter and the defense is well it's it's not comfortably anything but he is he's projected at 0.5 so according to fan graphs he will end at

2.5 wins above replacement this season and that trade was still just an accounting trade it was still just an exchange of future money and present money. I don't care what actually ended up happening. I really don't think that even the teams involved foresaw any of this happening. I'm sure that the Dodgers are happy that they've gotten something out of Matt Kemp, but I don't think even they, with their powers of prognostication and player development, ever envisioned getting this sort of value out of him. absolutely not there are there are things that happen in the game very often where if a player if something happens to the player then credit will immediately go to both the player and the team that he plays for like yeah i i saw that you wrote about lorenzo kane for example over the over the weekend a welcome to the party and

lorenzo kane has uh he's like doubled his uh his his walk rate he's become a lot more disciplined now what we what we know is that lorenzo kane has changed something meaningful about his approach and he now plays for the brewers what we don't actually know is what the connection is if there's any so not the pinpoint lorenzo kane is just a recent example matt camp being the-star it's relevant yeah yeah sure we'll only talk about all-stars and also maybe former all-stars because by the way Jordan Zimmerman looks good again we'll talk about that later but it's so easy to just say well this guy is on this team he's doing well this team deserves credit for seeing that but it's just

not how it always works the teams love it when they get credit for things like that but I think with Kemp it was so transparent that even the Dodgers can't fake that they saw this. I think maybe Dave Roberts could. You know, he's the on-field manager, and he saw Matt Kemp firsthand. When he would show up, he was in shape in spring training. Roberts was always the one offering these encouraging quotes. But I think even the Dodgers front office wouldn't be able to say, yeah, that wasn't just moving money around trade. We

definitely wanted the guy who's been a below replacement level player and just like a malcontent for the last three years. Even at the time, I don't think they pretended otherwise, right? I mean, they were pretty frank about what the purpose was and what the future or non-future of Kemp was with that team. So I don't think anyone was really under any illusions about what the plan was there. It's a little like I saw over the weekend that the Rangers technically traded for Austin Jackson, but really just took on money for a prospect. And the Rangers have already said, you know, Austin, you probably shouldn't even bother reporting. We're going to try to do something else. Like you're not really a part of this team. We're just taking your money.

And incidentally, I wonder, are we yet to the point where trades? So for anyone who wasn't paying attention, the Rangers made a trade with the Giants where the Rangers took on Austin Jackson and Corey Guerin. And they got a pitching prospect in exchange for I don't even know what they gave up. Basically nothing. in exchange for, I don't even know what they gave up, basically nothing. The idea was that the Rangers are taking on money from the Giants and getting a prospect in return because the Giants are trying to stay under the luxury tax threshold in case they need to upgrade this second half. So are we yet to the point where these trades don't require that kind of explanation?

We've seen the Padres do this with Brian Mitchell and Chase Headley. They did it with Phil Hughes. The Dodgers basically made a money trade with Matt Kemp and the Braves, the Dodgers made that Hector Oliveira money trade before. Do people get it yet or how much longer is it going to take? Because the trades are so far beyond just talking about the players at this point. Yeah. Yeah. When the Dodgers Braves trade happened over the winter, I wrote kind of an explainer style post about it and just laid it all out. Like this is a baseball trade that's kind to be snobby, but I don't think that most people are evaluating trades that way. I think probably when they're seeing this, they're saying, oh, hey, Austin Jackson, I've heard of him. Or, you know, why didn't we get more for this guy or whatever?

So I don't know. I think that everyone's explaining this. Like if you're just reading your local paper or whatever, you're going to figure out what the point was. So we're probably getting there, but I don't think most people are already at the point where they understand necessarily that there is present value and future value and prospects are worth this much because they're cost controlled and here's the luxury tax limit and here's where the team is. I think there are some subtleties there that baseball fans aren't really used to evaluating and are kind of a headache to evaluate, even if you know you have to. So I think that's probably still the case. So why is it that basketball fans seem to be so comfortable with these trades? They pick it up immediately. They know exactly what's going on. And these trades are complicated, but I mean,

if they get it, no reason baseball fans can't. Well, yeah, I guess they're just more used to it. There's more of a history of that sort of thing. And there are tools that are built for that purpose, right? Like analyzing whether you're going to go over the salary cap and, you know, mid-level exceptions and all of these wonky terms that people know. And I don't know that the average fan understands them all fully, but there are people who do and can that people know. And I don't know that the average fan understands them all fully, but there are people who do and can break them down. And I guess it's just a greater part of sports with salary caps as opposed to soft caps, which is sort of what baseball has at this point.

No. All right. So I guess that's all I have to say about the All-Star Game. It's a strange event that feels sort of extraneous at this point in baseball history. And the game itself is weird because you're trying to get all the players into the game, which again, I don't think is a bad thing because it's nice for fans to see their players in this game. But it's also just, it makes for kind of a disjointed contest and you never really get to appreciate anyone for

very long and pitchers are coming in and out like a parade of relievers and you know usually the pitching is pretty dominant I think because of that and so it's a it's a strange experience and it's not like real baseball and it's also not all that much more exciting than real baseball anymore but it's an institution it has some promotional value some charity value I anymore. But it's an institution. It has some promotional value, some charity value, I'm sure. And it's not a bad thing for baseball. So don't get too worked up about snubs. Don't get too excited about guys who are in the game. Just appreciate it or ignore it for what it is.

I think it's fine. It's always a little strange to me, and this happens multiple times a year when I understand the Hall of Fame a little better, but you think of the end of season awards, and obviously those generate a lot of attention, the MVP, the Cy Young, the Rookie of the Year. And I remember when I was writing about the Mariners,

the team-centric blog, having to cover those things and, you know, writing celebratory posts when Felix Hernandez won and then writing anti-celebratory posts when he didn't but it always felt a little weird to me and maybe you can help me connect these these things one of the things that my fiancee doesn't quite understand about the the nature of sports and and talking about sports when you're just hanging out with your friends or your podcast co-hosts is that we're talking about these things that are happening on the field that are completely disconnected from us.

Their achievements have nothing to do with us, and we celebrate when they do things that make them happy and rich, which is kind of weird, but, you know, we get paid for it far less than they do. So when you're watching your favorite team and it's making the playoffs, it's in the playoffs, it wins the championship, obviously you're excited. You don't want to stare at it it too deeply it just takes some of the fun out of it but it's i i understand that even when a team does really well and you are not on the team none of us are on the team it doesn't matter because we are here to watch your favorite team succeed but i have understood sports for a long time i've loved sports since i was a child

that's when most of us started and it never seemed weird to me to root for a team of strangers to do well but with with the year-end awards and then i guess that's connected to the all-star game the individual recognition i just i've never i've never cared and i could never i could never quite figure out why because i always told myself what why do I care whether a stranger wins an award or gets nominated for something or not? But then why do I care if strangers win a championship? And so I haven't been able to actually reconcile the two. But have you ever given this a whole lot of thought? Well, I don't totally understand why I love sports or even whether I do because I don't really if the sport isn't baseball for whatever reason,

I kind of like or respect or admire other sports, but I've never followed them in nearly the same way. And with baseball, I think it's largely the history and the stats and kind of some of the ancillary stuff that still keeps me interested in the game, as well as the fact that it's part of my job. But yeah, I do think that more and more I have realized that it just shouldn't or doesn't matter that much what the awards say. It doesn't change anything that happened on the field. If you're a player and you have some financial stake in the

outcome, I can understand why you would care. But for me personally, I don't really care if so-and-so wins an MVP award or doesn't. There are times when I think those debates are kind of a proxy for some larger philosophical debate. So when it was Mike Trout versus Miguel Cabrera, for instance, before that became incredibly tiresome and we were all tired of talking about it, that was, I think, a meaningful thing. Not so much because we were glorifying trout's accomplishments as because it was like two different schools of thought and here's why we value trout more than cabrera and why don't you understand that and here's what you're missing and so there was kind of a larger battle that was playing out via this semi-insignificant battle. So I think that's part of it.

It's not so much about who wins or who doesn't but what it means when someone wins or doesn't and the frustration that you might feel because people don't agree with you or don't evaluate things the same way that you do, which maybe is not a frustration you should feel, but is a frustration that a lot of us feel. That is one of those, we'll get emails every so often and someone will be like, well, I was having this conversation with someone at a bar. How would you explain to someone at a bar that their idea of this sport or this player is wrong?

What would you say to that person to convince them? And I think you and I have talked before about, well, just don't even bother. Who actually is engaging in these things? But maybe we're just very sheltered and we live in a barless bubble. Yes, I think that's true. All right. That was longer than I intended to spend on the All-Star Game. Here's what I wanted to say about the trade deadline since we're now just a few weeks away and everyone is writing their rumors posts and here are the trade candidates and here's the likely destinations and on and on.

It's a whole kind of cottage industry to itself. So Joshian made this point in a recent edition of his newsletter, and he argued that the nature of the trade deadline has changed in recent years because of the second wild card and because of the way the league, or at least the American League, is currently very stratified, we don't really talk about the trade deadline as a means of making the playoffs anymore. With very few exceptions, it's really just all about the playoffs and not getting there, but what you're going to do once you're there and strengthening your roster with October in mind. And I think this has changed to a certain extent. I don't know. I'm thinking back to past deadlines and there would be exciting races that teams would be

restocking themselves for the second half of the season. And now it seems like you don't have that as much because A, teams aren't really willing to give up all that much for a rental. I think that's partly because teams are just smarter about evaluating what players are worth now and in the future. And so you're not going to give up your top prospects for two months of a guy. And that's part of it. It's also that in many cases, the teams that are contending are contending for a 50% chance of getting to the division series. And that's just not that great a prize. You're not going to give

up that much knowing that you might be giving it up for one game that might be on the road, and that will be that. So I think that Joe argued in his post that the most recent, I'll just read from it, you have to go back to 2015 to find the last time a team made a huge trade deadline deal on spec. The Blue Jays acquired Troy Tulewitzki and David Price in separate trades and ripped off a huge two months to win the AL East. The Mets dealt Michael Fulmer for UNS Cespedes on their way to stealing the NL East from the Matt Williams Nationals. Both teams, it should be said, Another thing that might be happening here is that every team has a pretty realistic outlook, I think, on its chances of making the playoffs and doing well once it's there. Because in the past, maybe you had teams that could kind of convince themselves that they were contenders when if we had had today's modern playoff odds, we would have known that

their odds were like single digits or something. And technically they were in contention, but they were just so much worse that they weren't really going to make it. And now we have year round playoff odds at Fangraphs. And I don't think we can really underestimate how much that's changed the way that we talk about and consume the sport, because there's just no such thing as like, well, does this team have a chance this year? I mean, you can look at any point in the calendar and assess what that team's chances are with a greater degree of precision than probably any individual person can reliably

produce. And so there's really no pretending that you're a contender or convincing yourself that you are because the stats are right there and they're hard to ignore. And if you're making these franchise altering decisions, you're going to look to ignore. And if you're making these franchise-altering decisions, you're going to look at that, and every team has its own version of that. And so I think teams are generally pretty realistic about where they are and what they're willing to give up. And so you do see maybe fewer ill-advised moves that made the trade deadline more fun at points in the past.

We had a company meeting on Monday, just on Slack, talking about upcoming trade deadline coverage and thinking about is this going to be like an interesting deadline or is it not? And I'm pretty—you can never really know these things for sure, but unless the Mets decide they are going to trade Jacob deGrom or Noah Syndergaard, it seems like it's going to be mostly a stinker. You know, Manny Machado could go any day now, although the Orioles just beat the Yankees 5-4,

so maybe they're going to make a run for it. It's back to 36.5 games out of first place. But I think otherwise, you look at this. Part of this, I think, is the way that we've written about these things in the past. So much of what gets traded around the deadline is relievers. The emphasis has been on trading for relievers because, of course, we know relievers become so important in the playoffs. You can use them almost every game. You can use them for multiple innings. trading for relievers because, of course, we know relievers become so important in the playoffs. You can use them almost every game.

You can use them for multiple innings. Everybody wants relievers. Relievers, relievers, relievers. Deep bullpens, no starting pitchers, whatever you want. Everything out of the bullpen. And when you're talking about those things, ultimately, a reliever down the stretch is not going to make that much of a difference. I know people talk about what a role this Chapman meant to the Cubs in 2016 down the stretch, but I don't think he really did that much for them down the stretch. It was mostly about the playoffs, where actually he wasn't quite that valuable for them.

That's a different conversation. So when you see a reliever move to the deadline, you would expect a reliever over the second half, a really good one to be worth maybe one win above replacement. More realistically, you're getting like a situational guy, maybe a half win. That doesn't really matter. So inevitably, the conversation turns into, well doesn't really matter. So inevitably the conversation turns into, well, here's how much more they could use him in the playoffs. Or if you trade for a good starting pitcher, look, all of a sudden you get to the playoffs, it's a three or four man

rotation. You can really lean on this guy. And so that is a lot of what gets talked about. That does sort of, I think maybe we do take the playoff odds a little for for granted because of course you look at what the situation is now the mariners are in great playoff position but before the season no one would have thought that they would be they weren't supposed to be here they're a little a little fluky or you can look at how the nationals lost like 10 games of ground to some of their competition over the course of a month or even just a few weeks quite recently these things can and do move around pretty dramatically. But ultimately, I do think that for front offices,

there is some sort of... There is a difference between getting the chance to play maybe as few as one playoff game and maybe as few as three because even the old format, there was no guarantee you'd be around for long. But making a series just feels so much more worth it than making a game so i think that is a big change in in the mental calculus so those teams are less inclined to make a huge blockbuster yeah and there are some teams particularly in the

national league this year that are in interesting races and could make interesting trades obviously the brewers have been connected to hitters and pitchers, and they're very much in the position where they could benefit from an extra winner three down the stretch. But I think, yeah, there's also a greater appreciation of what players are worth, I think. And there's been a lot of research on, okay, what were the moves that made the most impact at the deadline? And it's pretty rare that you can go back and say, this team made the playoffs because they traded for this guy instead of keeping that guy. Like, it's very rare that the margin of victory is so small that you can point to someone's

war and say that his two wins above replacement in the second half of the season, which is not even a full half of the season, actually made the difference between that team being eliminated and making the playoffs. It just doesn't happen that often. And so on the one hand, I guess the players you acquire can make a greater impact because I think there's a greater recognition that you should manage a little bit differently in the postseason than you do in regular season. And you can ride your starters and your relievers harder, and you can concentrate more of your innings in their hands. And so there is a bigger benefit to having an Aroldis Chapman or Andrew Miller if you were going to use that Andrew Miller for many innings in the playoffs.

So there's something to be said for that. But particularly right now, and again, I don't think that the league as it's currently constructed and the standings the way they are today, I don't think that's a permanent state of affairs. I think we're in a bit of a blip here where a bunch of teams were rebuilding at the same time. And so it's strange and you have great teams and terrible teams, but that's not going to be a permanent condition.

So for right now, you just in the AL, it's like any team that's going to be a buyer is basically guaranteed to be a playoff team at this point. So you really have to look to the NL for any kind of interesting trade that could actually swing a race in the second half of the season. It will be interesting to see how much teams care about trying to avoid that wildcard game, because in the American League, I don't think either one of us believes the Mariners will actually push the Astros, but you do have the Red Sox and Yankees who are tight at the top of their division. One of those teams will win the wildcard game. Now you look at, go to the wildcard game, you look at the National League and all three divisions are tight. The

Dodgers right now are one game back of the Diamondbacks. The Cubs are a game and a half back of the Brewers. The Braves and Phillies are tied with the Nationals lurking five behind. So there are a number of teams in there who maybe they're not going to look to make a trade because they're trying to make the playoffs, and that's what their focus is on. I think, well, let me walk that back. Of course they're all going to make a trade trying to make the playoffs. All of them are in somewhat vulnerable spots. But also it's not just about making the playoffs,

but about avoiding that, call it coin flip game. Even if you have an ace starting pitcher, maybe it's a 60-40 kind of game where, you know, you think, were the 2017 Twins a success? Were the 2017 Rockies a success? I don't know how the fans really feel about having made it ever so briefly, put up a quick fight. The Twins had a three-run lead once.

It lasted about three batters and that was it and then from that point forward it was a twins yikes game in new york you knew it was over so i don't know how that feels but it's so abrupt no single team want if you make the playoffs there's a difference i think but maybe this is where the calculus is you make the playoffs right now as a wild card you have a game and it's for half the teams it's on the road to make a series you know you're going to have at least one playoff home game and maybe that's what does it you just want to be able to give that to the fans and maybe i don't think the mariners for example are in position to make a big splash but if they could

do anything to get ahead of the astros then they could say well at least this way we don't have to go through Chris Sale or Louis Severino in Fenway or Yankee Stadium so it will as little talent as there is available right now it seems like at the deadline it's going to be interesting to see what the team's fighting for first place do because they are strongly incentivized to do something and you know Jay Happ is not nearly as interesting as he was made out to be in april so whatever there josh johnson is gone and zach britain hasn't looked very good but we know manny machado's there we know brad hand is there i just wrote about nathan yovaldi who i think has made himself really really interesting and what maryfield if he's available that's a that's a quiet one but not even all-star how did they not make

i don't care i i can't tell if i would have thought whit maryfield would have like more player support than the fan recognition because you know as a player you think like oh that guy yeah he's always in the middle of everything or whatever yeah right yeah didn't you say in your chat last week am i imagining this that machado maybe is one of the best players ever to be available at a deadline? Yeah. Yeah, so you have this contrast between like the ultimate prize and then maybe kind of a weak rest of the class. I think that there have been really good rental pitchers. I mean, we just talked to Randy Johnson. Randy Johnson was an excellent rental pitcher when he was available, but as far as rental position players are concerned, I can't think.

Now, this isn't just my idea. I think Ken Rosenthal wrote about this like a month ago, but he couldn't. I can't think of a better position player who was moved in the middle of the year. JD Martinez was a really, really great hitter, but obviously he has flaws. And Machado is probably like a six or seven win player. I don't know exactly where he is right now. 3.2 half the season. That makes sense. Six win player, M And Machado is probably like a 6 or 7 win player. I don't know exactly where he is right now. 3.2 half the season. That makes sense.

6 win player, Manny Machado. And who like this has ever been moved in the middle of the year when he's a rental? And I don't know. I think this is one of the reasons why the Orioles are having so much trouble finding a trading partner because no one really knows what the right price is. I would assume the Orioles' idea is a little too high. And it will eventually become more realistic. And I could be wrong. what the right price is, I would assume the Orioles idea is a little too high and it'll eventually become more realistic.

But I could be wrong, but I can't think of anything. I can't think of a single player who's been this good and moved. Yeah, I haven't thought about it a lot, but offhand, I don't know. But you mentioned JD Martinez and last year, of course, when he was traded from the Tigers to the Diamondbacks, he didn't bring back much. And I think, you know, if teams had known that he would increase his production in the second half of last year and be—was he the best hitter in baseball in the second half of last year? I mean, probably. If he wasn't, he had to be very close. He hit 29 homers after that trade, and even despite his lack of defense and base running,

he was still worth a couple wins. So if you could have guaranteed that he would be worth that, maybe he would have brought back more. But Machado, better player than that, but still, same principle applies in that he's about to be a free agent, and there are only so many teams that I think benefit from him hugely in that lots of teams are locked into playoff spots more or less already. So I don't want to put anything past the Orioles because the fact that they've held on to him this long is almost incomprehensible. I mean, they should have dealt him long before the Orioles turned into one of the worst teams ever. You can kind of understand how it happened, but not approve of how it happened. There's no way that they actually hold on to him for the rest of this year is it i mean on the one hand maybe the

qualifying offer and the compensation you get is not that much worse than what you get from him at the deadline but it's got to be sort of worse and geez just like mercy rule let him go somewhere and win this is just bleak it's yeah i uh i don't know i was trying to think of uh of another example position player we got moved with the deadline but i can't think of a single the compensation uh do we really need to even have this conversation i mean of course the compensation is worse than what you get in a trade there's absolutely no question machado would i don't know if he'd be furious i don't know if that's the right word but there's i he would not feel good about it he would have a horrible taste in his mouth probably would slump down the stretch because he doesn't really want to play for the orioles what's he playing

for he's already done enough in the first half i the the best example switching gears a little bit i i had forgotten that after 2015 u.n a cesspitous became a free agent and he was of course traded in the in the middle of that year from the tigers to the mets maybe that's the best recent example because he could also play defense then he was traded from the tigers with a war of 3.3 over the second half quote unquote with the mets he was worth 2.6 so he was a six win player in 2015 and he was traded for louis setza and michael fulmer two major league caliber starting pitchers one of them a very good starting pitcher. So that would make sense as some sort of model here. Machado is a different kind of player.

He's a younger player, but same kind of rental. Cespedes was not yet injury prone at that point. So there's something there that supports the prevailing idea I've had that Machado will get moved for two young starting pitchers. Look for something like that. But, I mean, have you been reading any of these follow-up articles will get moved for two young starting pitchers look for something like that but i mean i i have you been reading any of these these follow-up articles about the current state of the orioles front office because it's really depressing isn't the right word but it's so bad and complicated yeah a little bit i think what for the umpteenth year in a row they refuse to sign declined to sign

an international amateur free agent yet again, as they do every year. It's really their own fault that they don't have more young talent than they do if they're not going to make any effort to acquire that talent. So yeah, it doesn't sound like a good situation. I mean, there's Brady Anderson is kind of in charge, but Dan Duquette is in charge, except the Angelos family is in charge, but it's not necessarily always Peter. And then Buck Showalter kind of wants to be a GM but he's also a manager who

might be on the out so I just can't imagine what it's like to be trying to trade with this team although I should say that there was a tweet last week that said so far like this trade deadline the Orioles have seemed more focused than usual which is kind of a backhanded compliment I guess but it also at least means the Orioles have known they were going to be sellers of the deadline for about two and a half months, so maybe they've just had more time to get their heads on straight. Yeah, and there were reports that they wanted to trade him early to get more value back, and at this point, that ship has already sailed. I don't want to bring up our ship and sailing debate from last week again, but it's already almost mid-July here, so you're not really going to get more value for Manny Machado than you would trading him at the actual deadline

right now. So they've kind of dragged their feet, I guess, or, you know, maybe teams have been slow submitting offers. I don't know, but it would be really, I mean, almost unforgivable if they don't deal him somewhere because there's plenty of interest. You've got to get something. You've got to kickstart this rebuild. I know that they've had unrealistic expectations and evaluations in the past and as good as Machado has been you don't just want to deal him for like a couple I don't know a ball pitchers no one's ever heard of who might not ever make it you want something concrete to show for that trade but I think fans are smart enough now to understand that you have to make these kind of painful moves sometimes if you want to compete and I don't think any Orioles fans are really enjoying Orioles baseball right now with Manny Machado. So I don't know that there's all that much of a difference really with or without him. Remember when you wrote your article about eliminating pitchers

batting and introducing the universal DH and you said how strange it was to write with an opinion. And I agree because it's so uncommon to be able to take a hard stance. And I think that we can both say that if the Orioles fail to trade Manny Machado and Manny Machado is not on the disabled list with a nasty case of death or paralysis as of tomorrow, then you and I will both be in position to write very opinionated articles about how the Orioles have done something ever so clearly wrong. Because, like I said, there is no excuse. There's none at all. Yeah. All right. So we'll be talking about specific moves and rumors and returns in the coming weeks, but we have set the scene.

Consider this your trade deadline primer, I suppose, and we'll get into the specifics in the rest of this month. So I guess we can leave it there. I said that we were not going to talk about Williams-Estadio today, but I received a tweet while we were recording this podcast from Derek Wetmore, who works for an ESPN radio station. And he said that I would appreciate knowing that Williams-Estadillo put a couple balls in the third deck during batting practice at Target Field today. No kidding. So Estadio flashing his newfound power potential to which side of the field that i don't know astadio so far 14 plate appearances he's only batted well zero times since july 3rd hasn't started hasn't pinched it but still yeah no walks no strikeouts yes yeah i'm fine with him just kind of being on the bench for the rest of the season

as long as that fact is preserved that he has no strikeouts and no walks. That's all right. And I apologize to any all-star snubs I snubbed in this episode by not even mentioning that they were snubbed, because I know that there were some. James Paxton, snubbed. Nick Castellanos, snubbed. Anna Maravino, snubbed. Many more snubs. Jesus Aguilar, snubbed. I don't know. Lots of snubs out there, but many won't be snubs. How often do you use the word snub under any other circumstance? Almost no other context. Yeah. Right?

This is pretty much it. Hall of Fame snubs, award snubs, all-star snubs. Pretty much the only snub that I will utter in the course of a year. Yeah. It's like copious. I only ever hear copious when people are talking about like copious amounts of alcohol. It's never like, I went to the grocery store and picked up copious apples. It's just always like one. I don't know how those things

get stuck. But anyway, everybody, if you're out there, here's your homework for Tuesday. Use the word snub in some other context and make it work. Let us know. Or don't. We record copious podcasts. Oh, one more thing I wanted to mention. My wife went bouldering this weekend, which I know. Yeah, that's something you do regularly. And I was not able to accompany her this time, but I would like to because she really enjoyed it and it sounded fun. But she came back with her fingers looking like Rich Hill after a 60% curveball day.

It's like skin is all over the place. It looks very painful. Is there a way around this, or is this just one of those things where you have to punish yourself repeatedly until you build up some resistance? Did she go indoor or outdoor bouldering? Indoor. We don't have outdoors here. Well, there's the huge boulder in Central Park, I'm given to understand.

Yeah, yeah. Has she ever done this before? No. Okay. How often does she use her hands for any sort of like exercise or something beyond? Does she do like manual labor ever? Yeah, she, I mean, she goes to the gym and she lifts things,

but I don't know that she has done that enough to build up calluses. I have calluses that I hope would protect me in this situation, but it was still kind of intimidating to look at her hands and think about whether I would suffer the same fate, because

I definitely want to do this. Now, are we talking about like the fingers near the base or in the palm or like the fingertips? Kind of looked like everywhere. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So it does get better. Now, look, when I come back from the bouldering gym, and I go a few times a week, so I have like disgusting hands, except the skin is is mostly together they're just like unpleasant to look at you know but i'll come back with like aching hands and some calluses rip off but mostly for me it's like my legs just end up covered in bruises from collisions i don't even remember which is fine because i'm i mostly wear long pants i'm not a shorts kind of guy in part because of the bruises but it's it is it is a very fun

exercise it is the the reason i find it so appealing is it's like the first upper body exercise i've ever found that i enjoy so it's it's like mentally therapeutic but also fun working out but it is objectively a stupid thing to do your body people just get hurt all the time yeah she was telling me about how you had told her that there's almost a puzzle element to it and that you have to figure out how to climb and where your next handhold or foothold is going to be and she said she enjoyed that so i look forward to it both for that and for the exercise but i i hope that i've built up enough calluses that i won't come back looking like that because uh it looked pretty painful are climbing gloves a thing or does that preclude you're actually getting a grip on something?

Yeah. No, no gloves. Generally, you'll see tape. People will tape up their hands or fingers if they get wounded, but you just kind of climb through it. Or if you're not competing, you don't and you just give yourself time to heal because at the end of the day, who are we trying to impress? Yeah.

I need my hands. This is my livelihood. I have to type. No, no, no. You can. I have never, I've never been hurt my fingers so much bouldering that I haven livelihood i have to type no no you can i have never i've never been hurt my fingers so much bouldering that i haven't been able to type it just kind of like and you know the bleeding the bleeding stops at the gym you know it's like if you're if you if you're

bleeding at the gym and it's still bleeding when you're home you have a different disease that you might want to address but yeah it's you kind of look mangled but the for me the pain has never been has never been like oh i can't press a keyboard it's more like oh it's hard to open jars okay all right well i will boulder and i'll report back i look forward to hearing about it update on the jacob de grom wins watch following yet another excellent but winless start this weekend five old school wins 5.4 wins above replacement. He's still doing it. So that will do it for today. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. All of our Patreon supporters are all stars to me.

No snubs here. The following five people have already pledged their support by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild and signing up to pledge some small monthly amount. Hey, look who's at the top of the list here. The aforementioned Joe Sheehan of the Joe Sheehan newsletter. Also, a Patreon supporter of ours. Go subscribe to his newsletter. Also, Dan Osterhout, Jeremy Bernfeld, James Smith, and Frederick Hines.

Thanks to all of you. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance, as always. Please keep your questions and comments coming for me and Jeff via podcast at fangraphs.com or the Patreon messaging system. If you're a supporter, we will likely answer your questions next time. Thanks for listening and we will talk to you soon. And the sky, if it's true, they're no longer alive anymore. Can they still keep on shining their light so that I might find my way home tonight When the fire is dead

How can it be that the sparks still fly? The ghost you left in my bed The stars you stole from my empty sky still shine in my head