Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1250: Too Many Trades

Episode Date: August 1, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan break down (almost) all the trade-deadline deals by (almost) every team, with special attention to the Chris Archer trade between the Pirates and Rays, the Nationals’ non-trades and their competitors’ improvements, the Orioles’ many moves, the Yankees, Red Sox, and Dodgers, the Brewers’ remade infield, the Astros and Roberto Osuna, […]

It's over. It's over. It's over. I'm going home. It's over. It's over. And I thank you. It's better than you than I feel right now because we're recording a few hours after the trade deadline. We've been writing or podcasting or both since the trade deadline and before and during the trade deadline. And I don't even know what happened in baseball today. How are we going to do this? I've never been more daunted by the prospect of a podcast than I am right now. How do we organize this thing? I understand now, I guess, why people do winners and losers, because how else are you supposed to talk about the dozens of trades that have happened since the last time we talked? I need to pull up the MLB standings to

remind myself what teams there are, because there are games today. Why even are there games today? There are games today. Why even are there games today? That's just cruel. I mean, okay, let's walk through this. I'm just going to go down some teams here, and we'll say whether or not the team made a trade deadline or close to the trade deadline trade. Red Sox, yes.

Yes. Yankees? Sure. Rays? Yes, very much so. Blue Jays? Yes, John Exford. Oh, yeah, John Exford, right. And Jay H Yes, very much so. Blue Jays? Yes, John Exford. Oh, yeah, John Exford, right.

And Jay Happ, that counts. Oh, sure, yeah, okay. And the other one. Oh, right, of course, Roberto Osuna, which, by the way, was Monday. That's yesterday. That seems like a year ago, but we'll get to that. We'll talk about that, yeah. Indians.

Yes. Twins. Yes. Tigers. Did they? Yeah, they did. Yeah, Le. Did they? Yeah, they did. Yeah, Leona's 14. Right, they did.

Yeah, it's hard to keep the sellers straight because who cares? Still doing this. White Sox. Yeah. Joe Camsoria. Yes. Okay. Royals.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yep. Boustakis. Yeah, sure. Yeah, right. Boustakis.

I missed that one. Astros. Yep. Mariners. Yep. Oh, yeah. Yep. A's.

Well, they got Duras Familia. That counts. Yeah, they almost got Mike Fiers and then they didn't, but I think it counts. Oh, God. What a boring room that was. Angels, yes. Rangers. Yes.

Yes. They traded Kayla, right? Good Lord. Are we going to go 30 for 30? Phillies. I think we are, right? Yes. Phillies, definitely.

Yeah. Cabrera and Wilson Ramos. Braves. Oh, yeah. Lots of Braves moves. Nationals. Kinsler. Yes. Yes. Yes,

they just barely. I guess they got their Herrera trade out of the way early and then they mostly sat on their hands throughout July. But yes, they did technically make a trade. Mets. Well, Familia, right? Herrera. Oh yeah, okay. Herrera too. We're definitely going 30 for 30. Marlins. Oh. Yes, Cameron Mabin, going 30 for 30. Marlins. Oh. Yes, Cameron Mabin, Brad Ziegler. Cubs. Oh, Cameron. Who could forget Cameron Mabin trade? That was a big one. Starting out good right now.

Cubs got Kintzler. And Hamels. And Cole Hamels, yes. Yep. And more, I think. Brewers, yes. Oh, yeah. Lots of Brewers moves.

Pirates, that's a YARP. Oh, yeah. Cardinals. Yes, they traded Tommy Pham fam oddly oh wait reds yes adam duvall yes okay i almost forgot that one dodgers home stretcher plenty of dodgers diamondbacks they got like seven relievers and edward escuar and edward escuar yep rockies they did something they added someone they got oh that was i think the only thing they did, but that counts. Who was it? Oh, yeah.

Oh, you got it. Yes. Giants. Oh. Oh, wait. Okay. Elite challenger emerges. I think.

Did the Giants do nothing? I don't know. I think the Giants might have done nothing. I think they did nothing. All right. I think they were caught in between. Hold on. Let's all double check here.

I'm looking at Grant Brisby's recap of the trade deadline if anyone would know whether the giants did something it would be grant and he has acquired nope traded nah so uh well hmm do we care about the cory gear in austin jackson trade from earlier i don't how long ago was that july 8th. I don't think so. Yeah, that's out. Padres, last team. They did make a move. That was bread hand.

Yes. I don't remember if they did anything else. So 29 out of 30. Yes. So every team made a trade in July at least, but almost every team made a trade in late July that we are still trying to keep straight. So, yeah, I kind of feel like, I don't know, 5% of the league just changed teams all of a sudden.

It's kind of hard to keep track of where everyone is right now and who went where. So we're going to do our best. And I don't know, we don't have a plan exactly. I'm hoping that we will just organically skip from trade to trade and manage to cover most of the big ones. I'm sure that we will just organically skip from trade to trade and manage to cover most of the big ones. I'm sure that we will give short shrift to some. So apologies if we don't dwell on your team's trade. As we just discussed, there were a lot of trades and every team did something.

So we can't really spend a whole lot of time on everyone. But I don't know. Is there anywhere you want to start? I guess we should start just with the overview, which is that a lot of trades happened. We were just talking about that, but I am writing about that as well for The Ringer. And that is a somewhat newish feature of the trade deadline. I mean, obviously, I'll waste the time when lots of trades happen. But in the past four deadlines, including this one, there's been a big uptick in the number of trades

that have happened. So Dan Hirsch, one of my go-to resources for baseball research, proprietor of the Baseball Gauge, he looked up the number of trades. He's probably number one right now, but there are a few contenders. But yeah, the number of trades have climbed in the past few years. The number of total year-to-date war that has been traded has climbed in the past few years. A lot of this is relievers, as one would expect. Relievers have been traded much more often than ever before, both in terms of quantity and quality. So that is part of it. and quality. So that is part of it. But I think probably also part of it is the second wildcard and the evolving way in which teams have treated that and just kind of the shape of the competitive

picture. Like this year, there were a lot of haves and a lot of have-nots. And so almost everyone was either in position to buy or sell. Like there wasn't a whole lot of, just weren't a lot of teams that were kind of caught in the middle, like, what are we? Are we buyers or sellers? There were a lot of teams that knew what they were and knew with some notice going into the deadline. And I think that is partly reflected in this and just the number of teams that are in contention, not in the AL so much, but in the NL with 10 playoff teams, you're going to get more teams that are interested in upgrading. So we've seen just more and more activity in recent trade deadlines, which is a feature if you're a fan, maybe a bug if you're someone who has to blog

about all the trades that are happening. But we have big staffs who are helping us out with that task. I just said that we have big staffs. I mean, in terms of our coworkers who are tirelessly plugging away at their own trade reactions. So that is kind of my overview. As we've discussed, lots of trades, and I think there are reasons for that. Let it not be suggested that you and I, the hosts of this podcast, have our own big staffs. We most seriously do not, which is why we're doing this podcast. have our own big staffs.

We most seriously do not, which is why we're doing this podcast. I think it, I'm glad that you're reading the numbers on the recent trades because I know that this one felt particularly frenzied. I remember it was just, it was quaint,

just quite recently on this podcast after Matrata was traded and Hand was traded. We were like, well, trade deadline's over. Nothing's going to happen. Couldn't be more wrong. Everything happened.

It does feel like half the league changed teams. And when did, when did they move the deadline from midnight Eastern to four? Because thank God for whoever dreamed up that idea. Yes, that was good. Sometimes you get the weekend deadline. This is the weekday deadline, which is probably much more exciting for people who are at work and trying to distract themselves with baseball news. So that's probably a good thing. And yeah, so just lots of activity and we've covered the reasons for

that. And as you said, I mean, we did kind of get the biggest move out of the way early. I mean, nothing compared to Machado in terms of the quality of the player moved at least in the short term. So there's that. I think I saw a note from someone on Twitter, and I apologize for not remembering who, but there were also a lot of tweets about trades. But I think the highest fan graphs were of anyone who changed teams, at least when that tweet was sent, which was close to the deadline, was Leonis Martin, who I think has like two war,

basically, according to fanraphs this year. So I think that's, you know, I mean, there were bigger names who were moved, certainly, like Chris Archer, obviously a bigger name. We'll talk about that and maybe some others that are debatably bigger than Leonis Martin, certainly. But there weren't like superstars changing teams. It was just that everyone was buying or selling and people were going somewhere at all times. So it was busy and in some cases made a major impact, I think. But

in terms of the deadline day transactions, not a whole lot of marquee players changing teams. And if we're going to start going down these one by one, we should probably start with the most impactful trade of the day. The Chicago Cubs picked up aaron loop from the blue jays bullpen in exchange for i don't know someone who has a dream and a hope of one day making the majors but i uh i think that might that might be the one trade of a major leaguer that isn't going to get a single word written about it on fan graphs it just uh it just got lost because there was the frenzy toward the end where kevin gosman and brian dozer and chris arthur there's just so much that happened in the half hour up until the deadline you'd think yeah i think i think meg rowley has talked about this before and probably several

people have talked about this before but you think the teams would be better about not procrastinating until the deadline i know that having a deadline there does introduce a sense of urgency and there's leverage when you're waiting all the way up until the deadline to see what you can exact but i mean for god just if you could if teams could spread it out then we could dedicate 800 words to aaron loop and maybe half of a podcast episode but instead here we are and this is probably the only mention he's uh he's gonna get i don't what the two teams at this deadline who felt to me like they were most stuck in the middle were the Nationals and Giants. And maybe it's not a coincidence that combined all they did was trade Brandon Kintzler.

But as I look at things, it's funny. The Nationals are 52 and 53 and the Giants, they won. So they're 55 and 54. They're pretty much right there with the Pirates and Cardinals. And the Pirates, they made the biggest splash or at least the biggest deadline day splash the biggest splash of the last week not a machado level splash necessarily but to get chris archer i would not have expected a team out of the playoff position to trade for a player like that but i don't know is this is was this a segue are we talking about

archer now is that what i just did sure we can start there yeah the the giants i think i don't know what they should have done or could have done. I don't know that they're really in a position where a deadline move would have made a difference for this year. And I don't know if they're in a position to start rebuilding quite yet, or maybe they should be, but they probably aren't. So I understand that. The Nationals, I understand less. We can talk about that. But Chris Archer obviously has been one of the most trade-rumored players in baseball now for, what, two years at least?

I mean, just partly because he is a successful player on the race. And so that will always lead to trade rumors. And, of course, he's been signed to a great contract. I am not sure how good Chris Archer is. I'm not sure how good Chris Archer is. I'm curious about your opinion because depending on the stat you're looking at, it will tell a very different story about Chris Archer. He's basically been a league average pitcher in terms of runs allowed now for a couple years at least, right? And there have been some pretty big gaps between his ERAs and his fielding independent pitching metrics. And so I don't know there was a

time when he was an ace and a top of the rotation guy is he still that before we even get to what the pirates are thinking here well okay so thankfully i wrote about this so i have all the numbers fresh in my head i can tell you over the past three calendar years let's just start here the tampa bay rays as a team have allowed a batting average in balls and play of 288 pretty good chris archer has allowed a batting average in balls and play over that same span of 318 over the three years out of every pitcher who with at least 300 innings and he's exceeded that easily chris archer ranks in the 40th percentile in park adjusted era however if you want to go with park adjust fip or xfip we can go with xfip just because whatever he's up in the 87th percentile he his strikeouts are high his walks are not very high

and and what really sets him apart here is that he's had the third worst hard hit rate over that span of time and i don't know my my working theory is that he's he's good at missing bats out of the zone because of his slider and so that balls and play that he allows are mostly strikes and then of course strikes get hit harder so that's what i what i have to go on now i don't know if that's true i don't know if that actually makes good sense but i do i would do wonder if chris archer is sort of in in the vein of say javier vasquez or or ricky nolasco or michaela. These are pitchers of varying talent, but pitchers whose ERAs never really matched up with their numbers. And it is interesting. I know that he's pitched in the American League East,

and that's the best division in the better league. And that is something that you have to fold in with Chris Archer. But I do wonder if he is one of those guys who's just, I don't know, 5% worse than you think he is based on his strikeout and walk numbers. And I can tell you, I'll give you one more fact before you interject with what your thought is. Because Chris Archer, mostly fastball slider pitcher, right? And he throws a slider a bunch. He's like Luis Severino.

And from 2015, 2016, and 2017, we have pitch-type run values. You can look up how good a pitch has been. They're not perfect, but they work. Chris Archer, dominant slider each of the past three seasons and this year no it's run values about zero i don't know what that means or why that would happen but at least this season through 96 innings or whatever chris archer is thrown his slider has not been very good for him and so i wonder if this is the raise at least partially thinking they can get away from chris archer before people start to realize oh actually this guy isn't what we thought that he was anymore.

Yeah, I understand what the Rays did. I mean, we've probably led all baseball podcasts in time devoted to talking about the Tampa Bay Rays this year, because I think we're both impressed by how they have kind of managed to thread the needle between not contending and contending or not spending and contending. They've worked within the constraints that they seem to have imposed on themselves and done a good job at that. So they have been one of the best teams in baseball this year if you look at certain underlying metrics. And they have managed to acquire prospects. They've really rebuilt the farm system. And they are competitive now.

And so they made these moves here today that I think are kind of emblematic of that looking forward and looking short-term approach because they got Tommy Pham from the Cardinals. That was unexpected, I think. I wasn't really expecting Tommy Pham from the Cardinals. That was unexpected, I think. I wasn't really expecting Tommy Pham to be moved. There had been some news about how he wasn't thrilled with Cardinals management earlier this year, and he doesn't have the surface stats that he had last year, but has been pretty good if you just look at underlying metrics, you know, how hard he's hitting the ball,

not all that different from last year, so perhaps some sort of rebound coming there, but you know, he's more of a veteran guy. And then of course they traded Archer and they have now restocked their system more and they've gotten two guys who are ready for the big leagues, but are young in Tyler Glasnow and Austin Meadows, who of course have been glimpsed playing for the Pirates, but have not fulfilled the potential that they've been thought to have in recent years when they've been among that organization's top prospects. So they've just locked in guys who are really signed for quite a while and I guess still have some sort of ceiling. So I get why they do this and maybe they figure the Yankees are pretty

unbeatable right now. The Red Sox are pretty unbeatable right now. Maybe we should have a better record than we actually do, but that's the way that these things happen. And so we might as well cash in on Archer, particularly if, as you're saying, perhaps he is slipping in some way. So I get it from the Rays' perspective. Then there is the Pirates' perspective, which is somewhat more perplexing just because of the trajectory that they've taken recently, right? They, like the Rays, were the small market or unwilling-to-spend team that was trying to cut costs this past offseason, and nonetheless, they've ended up being competitive this year, and they recently reeled off 11 wins in a row, and that kind of thrust them back into the heart of the wildcard race. And now they have acquired Chris Archer, despite the fact that over the winter they traded Garrett Cole and Andrew McCutcheon. I don't know that doing both of those things is indicative of not having a plan or being confused in a plan, but that is, I think, the criticism that is being levied against them. So what say you? I think it is interesting to see the Pirates and Rays doing this

because I think we both kind of think of them as being in similar positions as organizations. They have similar operating philosophies, and they're usually in about the same place in the standings. And so it's interesting to have these teams make a move like this, where you look just three and a half weeks ago, and both these teams were about 10 or 11 games out of a playoff spot. Then the Pirates got hot. They won 10 or 11 games in a row.

They've gone 15 and four since then, and it's changed their entire path. Instead of the Pirates trading maybe Felipe Vasquez and some other pieces, now they've added Keone Keeler and Chris Archer. So I know when the Pirates traded McCutcheon and when they traded Cole, Neil Huntington, maybe he had to do it, but he came out and he said, I know that these are painful moves,

but we think that we can still be competitive in 2018. And that was the Pirates making very raised kinds of moves where they know that they had value in Cole and McCutcheon, but they exchanged that value over shorter team control years for a lot of team control years, whether that's Kyle Crick and the other prospect they got from the Giants or Joe Musgrove and Colin Moran and et cetera that they got from the Astros. Those were very Rays' style of moves.

Maybe I shouldn't be giving the Rays credit for the label. They're probably not the team that invented this, but the Pirates took a very modest step back in the offseason if they took a step back at all but they left themselves in position to be something like a 500 baseball team which is exactly what they are right now when you are a 500 or slightly better baseball team around the trade deadline then you are in position to push some chips forward provided the wild cards aren't running away like they are in the american league so fear the pirates i it's bold to make a move like this especially given that chris archer might not be as good as as his reputation is but at least pirates fans can say well it's not like this team never goes for it and you know they probably are understandably frustrated trying to get tyler

glasnow to throw strikes and they have a kid in jordan luplo luplow i don't know we'll find out soon who seems like he might be just about as good as austin meadows so they've got a lot of outfielders coming a lot of young outfielders meadows might have been somewhat expendable and so you could look at this if you wanted to you could look at this as a trade with three familiar player names all of whom could be about to enter a period where people recognize their value is not what it was perceived to be now i can throw you one more one more tweet this is from rob beer temple and i'll quote him this is from tuesday afternoon the pirates traded glasnow fires traded matters the pirates also traded a player to be named later. And so here's Rob Beer Temple. Team Source told me the player to be named later to Tampa Bay will be, quote,

significant, the kind of player who our fans already know his name. I don't know what that means. Pirates fans know a lot of names. Some of the players are bad. But still, there could be a third piece of value that the Pirates are giving up, which just, you look at the trade the Pirates made with Garrett Cole, and they got so much team control back. They prioritize, like, average players who are under control for a while.

Archer is the opposite of that, and they have to hit on this because they need those internal reinforcements. That's how the Pirates operate. That's how they're successful. And so if Archer disappoints, then they're really going to be in a bind. But I guess you can't just be conservative forever, right? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, if the Pirates had done nothing, would we be criticizing the Pirates for doing nothing, despite being within striking distance, at least theoretically? I mean, I don't think that they are the favorites or even that Archer makes them the favorites, but at least he's not a rental. But it is kind of confusing to see them whipsaw from looking long term and trading someone like Cole.

Now, I don't know, maybe they just figured that Cole needed a change of scenery. And, you know, there were many articles written at the time about how Cole was going to be better elsewhere, which is strange. Like that everyone knew that, including just all of us. Like, we just knew that, oh, well, Cole's going to go to the Astros and he's going to change his pitch mix because he'll be with the Astros and not with the Pirates and he'll be better. And that has happened. So you'd think that when all of us were predicting that, the Pirates could have predicted that and thus just made those changes themselves and not even have to have made this move so it is a little perplexing that they went back and forth i guess good that they're

going for it not sure that this is the time to go for it but i don't know maybe there won't be a better time in the next year or two i'll point out that chris archer he's not just under contract through next year he also has two club options after that. So he's actually controlled for a while. So if he's still good, and he's only ever been on the major league disabled list one time, and that was for an abdominal strain. So his arm is held up to this point despite all the velocity and all the sliders. So I don't know. You could look at it and think the Pirates just got a new Garrett Cole except for longer,

and that would work out if Glasnow never throws strikes and if Meadows doesn't stay healthy or hit for enough power. But it's pretty easy to see. After 2012, the Rays and the Royals made the famous James Shields trade. That was a trade where the Royals gave up Will Myers, their top position player prospect. The Rays went from winning 90 games with James Shields to trading him and winning 92 games,

in part because they got to play Will Myers a whole lot, and he was a very good rookie so it's a it's easy for me to see how that could happen for the Rays again because Austin Meadows could be an everyday corner outfielder next season they could have an outfield of Meadows, Pham, and Kevin Kiermaier and that would that would be pretty fun so I think you can look at this and say oh the Rays traded Chris Archer they always are trading away good players and they're never going to be good but I i don't think that this actually removes the raise from their opening competitive window and that that's where fam also fits in there's so many trades to talk about yeah we've probably

devoted enough time to the rays and the pirates we have to to get to almost everyone else so should we just go uh big market should we just talk, you know, Yankees, Dodgers, Red Sox? There's some red meat out there for the many fans of those teams. I guess the last time that we talked about, well, baseball, we talked a lot about the AL East because that was where all the news was at that time. And now there's more news. And when we talked about the last Yankees trade, the Zach Britton trade, I think I said something to the effect of who needs starters because the bullpen is unbelievable and unbeatable and was perhaps the best even before Britton turns out that they also need starters or they

wanted starters so now they have starters and the bullpen They have now acquired Lance Lynn and Jay Happ, and certainly Lance Lynn's full season numbers are not going to impress anyone, although I understand that he has pitched better, and Jay Happ is fine and good, and both of these guys just seem like just depth for the rest of the stretch run in their attempt to catch the Red Sox, and then once you get to the playoffs, the stretch run in their attempt to catch the Red Sox. And then once you get to the playoffs, insurance for Sabathia, Tanaka, guys who you can throw out there who can pitch three or four innings and turn it over to the bullpen if needed. Neither of these guys is probably going to be on the mound in a playoff game in the sixth inning or beyond, and they probably shouldn't be. But I think they fill a useful role. I can't go from talking about a Chris Archer trade to a Lance Lynn trade.

I just can't do it, not back and forth. I didn't understand the Lance Lynn trade when it happened, not that I think it's terrible because Tyler Austin isn't that good. I just don't get it, I guess. I don't get why Lance Lynn is in any way appealing to anyone, and I get it from the Twins' perspective. You don't need to keep Lance Lynn. He's bad. He's a rental, rental so what does it matter but the yankees seem to have enough starters and like you said you don't really want lynn pitching almost any innings that that matter but i i guess i could

be underestimating how fragile their pitching staff might be because for now severino gray sabathia tanaka hap throw sessa in there there's there's enough hand foot and mouth disease so that's just going around in new york i'm very worried that yeah you should be yeah my hands and my feet and my mouth i'm watching them very carefully but uh who knows that might spread to the rest of the staff maybe that's why you need lancelin but that's what they did the red socks i don't know that they necessarily matched or held serve, I mean Did we, we talked about the Nathan Ivaldi trade, right, that was our

Last episode, and they did not Have an active deadline day Particularly, I think people probably expected Them to make a bullpen move or two That they didn't make, I mean They are very set up, and they acquired Ian Kinsler, who can play Second base, because Dustin Pedroia Apparently cannot, so That's nice, and they set up, and they acquired Ian Kinsler, who can play second base because Dustin Pedroia apparently cannot.

So that's nice, and they're good, and they needed to do that. What they did do is put Chris Sale on the disabled list. So that was a big deadline mover, although that seems to be minor. I can't help but notice that we're just bypassing the fact that the Brewers moved Travis Shaw to second base and then traded for Jonathan Scope. So let's just move on to Milwaukee. Because they got Mike Moustakas. This happened while I was away last weekend. I was hiking and climbing.

So I came back and I felt guilty because I missed like seven trades. Little did I know that was a fraction of what would happen leading up to the deadline. But I thought the Mike Moustakas trade was a little weird for the Brewers. And then they made it all the weirder by getting Jonathanathan scope i'm not saying it's not going to work i just am saying i don't know what they're going to do about their infield because it's so crowded and

who's going to play shortstop is it scope who hasn't played jordan forever or shaw who i think has never played shortstop and i don't know the answer to that. Yeah, I would guess it would be Scope with Shaw in more of a utility-type role, or Shaw at second and Moustakis at third. It is kind of confusing. I mean, those guys are better than what they had, and pushing Shaw or someone else to the bench just, you know, bumps off someone else who would be worse than taking up that roster spot. So it makes them better. And I guess they did more than the Cubs did, right? Because the Cubs

got Kintzler and they got Cole Hamels, and it's not clear how much help Cole Hamels is right now. So if anything, they kept pace. Maybe they even gained some ground on the Cubs and they really could have used a starter but I don't know that they evidently weren't willing to give up what it would have taken to get someone like Archer let alone one of the Mets options who didn't end up moving so I guess they just deemed that it would be better to shore up the offense because the right rotation option wasn't out there for them it's going to be fun because we know that musaki is going to play third that's all he can do well that and dh i guess we know that the first

base is settled so they're either going to have travis shaw at shortstop and jonathan scope at second and shaw was a first baseman and third baseman so not shortstop and we'll see how that goes or they're going to be like jonathan scope is a better athlete so we're going to have shot second and scope it short and then we'll have two players out of familiar position down the stretch and i don't know which is better and which is worse i look forward to seeing it and maybe maybe i mean you you looked freddie prada a lot of strikeouts bullpen a lot of strikeouts maybe the infield defense isn't going to matter that much and we've talked about how shifts reduce the need for range and all that stuff foot speed in the infield because you can put people all over wherever

you want and they don't have to move around so much maybe that's the brewers idea but i like that they got mike misogas and then just doubled down on the weird this is it's well we all knew the brewers are going to make some moves but i don't think we all knew they were going to make these particular moves right yeah yeah and i'm somewhat surprised that they didn't pick up some pitching. It's August, right? There is time to still make moves if you want to. Justin Verlander was traded last August, so it's not as if activity is over. So they may still make a move there, or maybe they'll get someone back from injury.

They've been waiting for a few guys to return. So there's that. I mean, I don't think they closed the gap between them and the Cubs, but they made it slightly more plausible that they could hang in this race and even pull off the upset. So I think they kind of did what they do, which to this point, at least, I mean, they made the big free agent acquisitions over the winter. They got Jelic, but like last deadline for instance they were more contending than I think anyone expected them to and they made some minor moves but they didn't

break the bank for anyone and they didn't do that this year either so I don't know I don't know what we get to next but it is kind of funny to me that years ago the Dodgers were trying to trade for Brian Dozier the twins were driving too hard a, so the Dodgers went to get Brian Dozier late in Logan Forsyth, and today the Dodgers traded Logan Forsyth for Brian Dozier. I don't know if this trade is as interesting as it seems. Yeah. You had a post last year, I think, that was entitled Dodgers trade for Brian Dozier, basically,

which was about the Logan Forsyth trade. Yeah. And now they have traded for the actual Brian Dozier, who is not what he was at that time. But we have seen him have some really, really, really hot second halves in the past couple of years. So you never know. Maybe he'll have another one in him.

But it's kind of Justin Turner insurance, right? Because Turner is hurt again. And now you can stick Dozier at second, who is better than Forsyth better than Utley and has been a really excellent player in the not too distant past I do wonder here I was sort of expecting the Dodgers to make another move Justin Turner is supposed to be back this weekend so if we if we just try to do this here the Dodgers their catcher's situation is settled first base is sort of max muncy and cody bellinger second base is going to be brian dozer almost every day shortstop manny machado

almost every day third base justin turner then somewhere you have to find room for chris taylor so then maybe chris taylor is playing centerfield but then if chris taylor is playing centerfield that eats into cody bellinger's playing time and you have yelsey el puig in right field which means you have jock peterson and matt kemp trying, which means you have Jock Peterson and Matt Kemp trying to share time on left, but there's also Alex Verdugo and Andrew Tolles, who's good. There's too much. There are too many good players that the Dodgers have and Matt Kemp,

and you need to play Max Muncy every day. I know that there are platoon situations going on, but I was expecting there to be one more move where maybe the Dodgers package three good players for one more really good one, because right now there are just so many moving parts which is fun but as someone who's in charge of trying to arrange the fan graphs depth charts this is a nightmare oh man that is not the day to have that job i mean pity you i hope you have some help yeah i i expected maybe more of a bullpen move there too They did get Axford, who is a big bullpen move

In that he is a big man But not so much as a pitcher at this point So I don't know whether that's because They expect to move some starters into that role They don't really have the rotation depth That they have had in some recent years So I don't know what they end up doing there But semi-surprised that they didn't

make one of the many many many bullpen moves that were made well what next i guess we should talk about monday's big big conversation trade yes we should so on monday the astros acquired roberto osuna from the blue jays they also picked up ryan pres, which did not cause nearly such consternation, nor should it have. Osuna, of course, has been a very effective closer for years now. That's why the Astros wanted him. They traded their own formerly and sometimes still effective closer, Ken Giles, and other players for Osuna. And that's the baseball side of things, but that is kind of an afterthought in this case because, of course, Osuna is currently suspended for a violation of the domestic violence policy,

or at least was suspended pending the investigation. MLB did its own investigation. He is still awaiting his court date, so we don't exactly know what the outcome of that will be. We don't know all the details of what he was accused of, but from everything I've read and understand, it was pretty brutal and pretty terrible, allegedly. So they have now acquired him, and people are making the comparison, of course, to the Cubs acquiring Roldis Chapman at the deadline a couple years ago. And there is quite a parallel there, obviously, except that, you know, in both cases, it's, well, you're willing to bring on a guy who has this history that people are very quick to condemn, as they should be, because he's good at baseball and because he makes your team better at baseball.

In the Cubs case, of course, they were trying to end their endless drought. Whether that made it more acceptable to you or not, I suppose it made it more understandable in a certain sense. They were willing to do whatever they had to do to get that title. The Astros, of course, are coming off a title. They are the defending World Series champions. They also happen to have, if not the best bullpen in baseball, maybe the second best bullpen in baseball. So just purely from a PR standpoint, which is not the most important one, it's odd that

the Astros would want to bring this upon themselves, given that it doesn't seem as if it's a move that they had to make. But then the way that they justified it, and Jeff Lunau justified it in a conference call after the trade, where he tried to just double up into knots and turn himself into a pretzel explaining how the Astros could have a zero-tolerance policy for domestic violence for their own players and yet trade for a guy who is still suspended and has not even faced his court date yet. And the explanation was that having a zero-tolerance policy does not preclude giving a guy a second chance.

So evidently, if you commit a domestic violence violation for another team, it's okay to bring you in. But if it's while you're with the Astros, then it's unacceptable. And so now the Astros players, some of whom have been outspoken about this in the past because the Astros had a player who the video came out of him assaulting his then girlfriend, and they were very quick to condemn it. Justin Verlander, Lance McCullers, now they're in this position of sort of, you know, not approving of the move, but not condemning it because they have to share a clubhouse with this guy. It's an ugly situation on top of the hater tweets that we've talked about and the subsequent Sean Newcomb and Trey Turner tweets, very bad stories for baseball. This is just piling on top of that. so i don't understand why they felt they needed to make this move and it it kind of casts a pall over their season to a certain extent yeah i've seen people just link this is all bad publicity for baseball with the tweets and then the astros making this trade but of course and i don't need to tell any of you this there's a difference between firing off offensive tweets when you're 18 and assaulting a woman when you're a grown human being which i again we know none of the details of suna has been found neither guilty

nor not guilty but we do know that major league baseball investigated as much as it could and saw right reason to issue the second longest suspension at the time under its domestic violence policy short only i think hector olivera had a longer suspension but that was it i think the the probability is that something very bad happened that what gives me causes me troubled here is that the astros are right in their calculation that this will blow over because that's just how these things work no no no fan base no group has ever protested a team's decision for so long that the team like dropped a player or i don't know folded or something like the astros aren't going to fold because some number of people who pay close attention to baseball are upset for

for them sacrificing their moral integrity here and i know that it's also you don't you shouldn't go into professional sports looking to moralize about the business decisions teams make anyway because i mean at the heart almost all these teams are vacant like these are soulless businesses just trying to win games and make money criticize the blue jays for hanging on to osuna as a trade chip instead of letting him go i mean it's not as if this is a move that no other team would make. We've seen other teams make this move, which doesn't, you know, let the Astros off the hook, but it kind of just puts everyone else on the hook. Absolutely. I remember years, when I was younger and when the Mariners traded for Milton Bradley, I had a different outlook on that. Now,

I had not fully developed as a person yet, and I just wasn't so, I wasn't decently versed in these conversations. But I thought, oh, look at the Mariners finding maybe a misunderstood player who could be good for them and getting him on the cheap. And I'm not going to say that I regret the way that I somewhat supported the Milton Bradley exhibition then because I just didn't know enough. But there is an element here of some fans just haven't had to think about these things very much and as as writers you and I have to think about these things in some detail and I don't know what to do from here like you could say and I don't think that you would be wrong to say okay the Blue Jays should have cut Roberto Osuna as soon as he was suspended or you could say maybe the Blue Jays should have cut Osuna if he were found guilty or something in his day in court. That hadn't happened yet.

I don't know. But for the Astros to just go get him while he's suspended, I don't know how to affect any change. And I don't know if there are enough people who would want change. I don't even know what that change would look like. All i know is that this particular trade sucked it sucked to see it sucked to see lunao tried to defend it he would have been better off saying nothing at all because he just made himself look like an ass right the way that he was like like we did our dual diligence and we talked to roberto and you know i got a sense of where his head's at or whatever. I mean, what could he possibly have said, you know, unless he protested his innocence

and Lunau believed him or something, which seems somewhat naive unless there's something they know that we don't know. I mean, what can someone who is still currently suspended for a domestic violence incident say to set your mind at ease. It's, you know, I'm not saying there's no such thing as second chances and that, you know, he should be banned from future employment or even baseball for all time. But I think it's a little soon to start saying, well, doesn't he deserve a second chance? He is still suspended currently.

He hasn't even served the full suspension yet. So I think it's a little soon to say that you are giving a guy another chance. It's just not the appropriate time for that. So May 8th is when the incident took place. And he was traded on July 30th. That's less than three months. When people go to a counselor, they go to a therapist. I've been to a therapist.

I went for anxiety. It wasn't something that was like three sessions and I'm better. It's a work in progress over the rest of your life. And changes take years, especially for grown adult humans. So it's one thing to say that Roberto Osuna could earn a second chance

to end the line if he shows sufficient remorse and he dedicates himself to certain agencies and the right causes. But less than three months, it's unforgivable. Yeah, I don't know why they felt they needed to make this move just from a baseball perspective. But, I mean, forget about that. forget about that. I don't know what percentage of Astros fans are outraged by this move or what percentage of Cubs fans were outraged by the Chapman move. I think probably the thinking on this sort of thing hopefully has evolved somewhat even in the two years since the Chapman trade. But just looking at our Facebook group, which is certainly not representative of fans as a whole, there are a lot of Astros fans in there who are very upset, and some of them are doing something constructive about

it, like, you know, pledging to donate to charitable foundations every time Mosuna gets a strikeout or something. I know there are people who did that when Chapman was acquired by the Cubs as well. And so, you know, you have this prospect of the marquee moment for baseball, the World Series, and the guy closing out the big playoff game is going to be the guy who was very recently suspended for a domestic violence incident. And I don't know how many Cubs fans feel that that World Series is tarnished because Chapman was there. Chapman didn't even really help them win

the World Series necessarily when it came down to it and his performance in the playoffs and Joe Maddon's too. But for me, at least, it would, if I were a fan of that team, bother me quite a bit. And it bothers me quite a bit as it is. I can't believe that the team executive would come out and issue a statement where he's trying to justify this. And he talks about due diligence and a zero-tolerance policy to explain trading for a suspended player. The easiest way to do your due diligence and have a zero-tolerance policy is to just not trade for the player suspended for domestic violence. There are so many relievers who are good, maybe not as good as Osuna, but let's face it.

Look, you know who the best Astros reliever was last year? Ken Giles. You know who closed the World Series? Brad freaking Peacock. So, you don't really know how this is going to work out, but Jeff Luno just comes out and speaks all this bullshit that only... It doesn't make it worse because the trade enough...

The trade is enough on its own. Like, it already sent the message that Luno basically came out and just said explicitly anyway. We already know where the Astros priorities are. I haven't been involved in this kind of conversation long enough to have thought all the way through it to know what the right response should be. is to just make sure that we talk about these things when they come up so that hopefully, gradually over time, the conversation just shifts and more fans are able to understand that when you're watching sports, maybe you can try to separate the players and the performers

from the people that you're actually watching, but it doesn't have to be that way. And thankfully, well, not thankfully, but baseball is not the only sport that has these incidents. while that is of course a bad thing it also means that we don't have to have this conversation on our own this is something that's happening the world around the country around with professional athletes with celebrities and and so at least we're all hopefully growing and and i don't know maybe maybe in time this astros trade will stand out as being particularly egregious i don't know yeah and maybe if there's Astros trade will stand out as being particularly egregious. I, you know, if it has to be just because they're worried about what the backlash

will be, that's better than nothing. So that would represent some sort of progress. So we can move on, I guess, to trades that do not come with terrible baggage. So where should we go next? The Orioles picked up more international slot money. They're changing. It's a different organization. Yeah, no, they actually are. It's much too soon to say credit to them because they haven't really done anything except actually make moves that they probably should have made years ago.

But hey, at least they've made those moves. So they traded all of their good players, basically, except Adam Jones, who they wanted to trade, but didn't want to be traded. So they traded Machado, of course. They traded Scope. They traded Gossman.

They traded Brad Brock. Am I missing anyone? Yeah, I guess that's it. So I just wrote an article for The Ringer about what would happen if you combined the remaining Royals and Orioles into one roster because I was curious to see if you could actually form a competent team

out of those two teams. No. And nope. No, you can't. That's how bad the Royals and the Orioles are. Take their best players, put them on the same roster. Still a bad baseball team. But, you know, the Royals and the Orioles, we've talked about both of them and how they got to this point. Some extent, it's mismanagement, some extent it's failures of player development, and to some extent it's just the natural aging process of teams and most teams other than the Yankees and the Dodgers maybe not being able to succeed every single year. So that's going to happen and it's belated that they actually made the decision to do this, but overdue. They finally did it.

It seems like they are at least intending to do the things that they should have been doing for quite some time now. Yeah, I'm a little surprised that they still have Dylan Bundy, but, you know, that's something you can revisit in the offseason. They don't have to strip all the way down immediately, but the Orioles are awful. But you know what? The Orioles were already awful. I know that we talked to Britt Giroli this year during the season preview episode, and she, I think, projected the Orioles to be somewhere around like 80 wins.

I don't remember exactly what it was, but that they would be competitive and, you know, no, that didn't happen. So it's good to see them. I didn't think they'd be anywhere close to where they are. No. Yeah, both they and the Royals are currently the worst teams since the 2003 Tigers

and you have to go, I think, all the way back to the 62 Mets before that to find teams with worse winning percentages. So I didn't see that coming. Definitely not. Right. Now you look at the Royals, they got a lot of talent, they got a lot of players that they traded for but in the short term, this team is going to be

really quite dreadful. And you know there's that can be as a fan that can be kind of almost fun because if you go in you know the team's gonna suck on any sucky team there are still going to be overachievers and there's going to be things to root for so the orioles fans will go in that's going to be impossible for anyone to be disappointed by how the orioles do over the next two months or or how they do in 2019 because people are going to expect them to win like 40 games. And, you know, people talk about this year's Marlins as being maybe the worst team they've ever seen. And the Marlins are not even the worst team in the National League. So the players will overachieve.

The hardest part for the Orioles has already started. You could say the hardest part is already over when they traded Machado and they just tore the roster down. So now it gets easier even though it's going to get worse uh but if I if I could just go up the freeway a little bit I know we talked about the Nationals on this podcast several weeks ago we were talking about how the Nationals were in a bad spot because not only were they around 500 but they were losing to the Marlins nine to nothing while we were podcasting the Marlins the Nationals of course came back and won that game, and it launched them into a hot streak where they won as many games as they lost after that.

But how did the Nationals respond to not being blown up at the trade deadline? As we speak, it is the fifth inning. They are leading the Mets, not 13, not 14, not 15, but 16 to no runs. It is 16 to nothing. Washington Nationals over the Mets. Do you think the Nationals will make the playoffs this season? Man, yeah, this is the battle of the teams that didn't blow themselves up, the Mets and the Nationals.

I think I would probably lean toward no Nationals in the playoffs right now. And I think it's close. and my mind might have been changed if they had been more active at the deadline so I am kind of confused about their inactivity clearly they were considering a Harper trade and I think there were probably ways in which they could have traded Harper and maybe not even hurt themselves all that much for the rest of the season I think Ken Rosenthal wrote a column to that effect, but ultimately they didn't do that. Maybe it was vetoed by ownership. Maybe just the right package wasn't out there, but they could use some help because the Braves and the Phillies both got better and are pretty good teams and are both in the Nationals way in that division.

And of course it's a very, very wild card field so i don't know i mean i i tend to stick with what i thought pre-season and what the projection said pre-season for a very long time because if you do that usually you'll be right but the nationals are getting to the point now where it's getting hard to believe in them and and they have closed the gap somewhat right i mean it was what seven games or so that they were out maybe the last time we talked about them and more i think the gap has been closed for them it's been little of their own work but like the phillies i think have lost four in a row pending a game against the red sox right now yeah and both of the teams

ahead of them have gotten better and there's concern about the clubhouse now. That is the discussion about whether the clubhouse is or isn't terrible and whether Davey Martinez is or is not losing the clubhouse. There seem to be conflicting accounts about that. Maybe we'll find out more when the season is over, but it doesn't seem like an ideal situation. So who knows how that's affecting things. Doesn't seem like an ideal situation, so who knows how that's affecting things. I would have liked to see them do a little more, I think, because as it is, I mean, I don't know. It's not like they should have blown it up, I don't think.

They could have considered trading Harper. We talked about trading Harper before the season or early in the season, and it was preposterous at the time. We entertained it. it was preposterous at the time. We entertained it. We talked about it not that long ago, and we talked about how it would play in the clubhouse and how maybe it would make sense from a baseball perspective, but how it would just be so hard to sell to the players. And I don't know, maybe that is ultimately what prevented them from doing it, or maybe they thought they had a chance. But if they do think that they have a chance, I would like to see them be a little more proactive. I would think that with the player of Harper's standing, the Nationals have a particularly involved ownership. And I would think that ownership just would—I saw tweets to the effect—I don't know if it's true, but I did see tweets to the effect of ownership basically just said, no, we're not trading Harper.

And, of course, Bryce Harper is, according to Jim Jeffries, the best player in baseball. So, therefore, how could a team ever trade a player so valuable? I look at this team and I still see the potential in them. And I know that the Nationals actually have a better run differential than the Phillies do right now. The Nationals are at plus 38. The Phillies are at plus 21. Braves are at plus 64. That's pretty good.

Phillies got a catcher. Everyone got better. The Nationals got a little worse. But I look at this team and I got to tell you, I know it's a cop-out, but I think it's a coin flip. I wonder if you want to talk about how the Nationals have a bad clubhouse, and they probably do. I mean, they're a very disappointing baseball team with a lot of veterans. This team would want to be doing better than it is, and I'm sure they're all frustrated, but I wonder if we're going to talk about turning points, and I know there's really no such thing as a turning point, but we're doing this anyway anyway i wonder if the fact that they came into the trade deadline day and

didn't subtract in any meaningful way i i wonder if that could sort of drive a little energy and this isn't just about the fact that the nationals are beating them at 16 to nothing i did not factor that into the run differential point i just made right so speaking of the team ahead of them the braves i mean they were active they acquired some ex-Orioles. They got Gossman. They got Brock. They made other moves. It's really hard to keep track as we're talking on a podcast and remember who did what.

They also made other moves. What did the Braves do? Oh, they got Adam Duvall, of course. Yeah. And I'm missing one more, right? They did something else. Darren O'Day is after the season, but he was involved in the Gosman trade. And they also got, well, they got Johnny Venters.

Venters, Venters. Yes, that's it. Right. Yeah. So they were pretty busy and they've been a pretty good team. So if there was a gap between them and the Nationals, they widened it. And if there wasn't one, maybe they created one. Yep.

I don't really have anything. The Duval trade was an interesting one because you look at Lucas Sims and Matt Wessler who were in there going to the Reds, and these are two former top 100 pitching prospects. It was sort of part of the Braves' first wave of young pitching as their rebuild was built around young pitching. And then they traded those players for a maybe average like 30 year old corner outfielder and i was reading that sims and whistler just weren't on the braves plans anymore which is true but it also it's sort of a it's a reminder of two things one that the braves pitching is advanced and they have new talent but

also how dangerous it is to build around pitching because players just become almost irrelevant very quickly all right what haven't we covered we haven't talked about the indians should we talk about the indians there's no rhyme or reason to this uh madness without method here i'm mixing sayings but the indians are another front runner that didn't really have to do much for the rest of this regular season we've already talked about the hand and simber trade and then they added leonis martin on deadline day was there anything that they should have done in addition to that or are they okay now it seems like cory kluber perhaps is straightened out. There was concern about him. He had probably the roughest stretch of five or six starts since Corey Kluber became Corey Kluber. And he had a knee

problem and there were mechanical issues, but his most recent start was very successful. So maybe he's back on track. Maybe that reduced some of the pressure to make a move. I like, I mean, hand and simmer that happened a while ago. I likedonis martin as as a pickup i thought it was smart by the way it's now 19 to nothing nationals over the nets that's 19 to zero i liked the leonis martin pickup because he's he's still a good defensive center fielder and quietly he's he's kind of a launch angle guy he's put more balls in the air he's hit for more power he's had a a good, even despite he's been playing in the worst division in memory. So, you know, maybe that's been a factor. I was a little surprised because I didn't think that Tommy Pham would be out there. I thought if the Indians were looking for an outfielder,

that would have been a good direction to go. And he's cost controlled for another three years of arbitration. He seems like he's good now. He can play center field, which is what the Indians want. But at the same time, Linus Martin was pretty affordable. They didn't have to give up a whole lot to get him. So I understand, but I was only a little bit surprised. But really, I don't think that they did poorly here. It's just that Pham is a little bit better than Linus Martin, a little bit more reliable. And that's really it.

He's good. Like you said, he's got the highest fan gross award of anybody traded. Staying in Ohio for a second, I think maybe the most surprising move or non-move of the deadline was the fact that Matt Harvey is still a Cincinnati Red. Were you as surprised by that as I was? I guess he could still go somewhere, but it is odd that they didn't try to profit from having picked him up and turned him into a moderately useful starter. I don't know if he's anyone that a playoff team would want starting in the playoffs. So maybe there just wasn't a whole lot of interest out there.

Right. I mean, at the end of the day, the best the Reds were going to do was sort of the Jaime Garcia trade from last year. Pick one, either one. It doesn't really matter. Like, Harvey went to the Reds and he was throwing harder. His stuff looked better, which that's good for him. But at the end of the day, he still wasn't getting any strikeouts. He still had below-average ERA, FIP, XFIP. Everything was below average for him with the Reds, and, you know, obviously, if you're going to trade for Matt Harvey,

you know there's a little bit of baggage that comes with him. You don't know how content he's going to be in whatever new locale. Now, of course, he's seemingly done well in Cincinnati of all places, so that's credit to him. But I don't know. There's nothing really there that would put a team over the top to think, I need to go get this guy. So it's weird because now the Reds just kind of have Matt Harvey for two months.

And I don't know, like maybe Harvey was feeling a little incentivized to pitch better with the Reds because he thought he could join a contender. And now I don't know what it's like to be in Matt Harvey's brain space, but he's also going to be a free agent soon. So there's still some money to earn, right? It's just weird to be here. Devin Masarocco, Matt Harvey, and I don't know what that trade did. Yeah. Should we also talk about the Mets non-moves? We were all wondering whether the Mets would actually blow things up and ultimately they decided not to and have declared that they are contenders for 2019 or at least intend to be so I don't know whether

it is a win in the sense that they recognized that maybe this would be a bad time to try to make these franchise altering moves I mean it's not impossible to talk yourself into seeing the Mets as a contending team next season. I mean, we saw them as potential contenders this year, and I think when they got out of the gate really fast and had the best record through the middle of April, no one was totally shocked that they were doing well. Of course, they have collapsed since.

But there was lots of talk of potential Wheeler trades and DeGrom trades, and none of that happened. An Astroble Cabrera trade happened. So of course they were working with three GMs in Sandy Alderson's absence, and the Wilpons are always a factor. So I don't know. My concern with them was that they would make the move and it would be the wrong move, and that would be a bigger setback than not having made a move at all yeah i didn't think they were going to go there i thought it would be too difficult to have this team try to trade de grom or cinder guard i mean even zach wheeler i could have seen but one of the one of the big time players i just didn't think that this front office was in position to try to do it not in under these circumstances not in a season like

this i think that if you were if you're the, it's probably very difficult to justify tearing down. And you could sort of try to reload by trading one of those guys. But again, you can look at DeGrom, Syndergaard, Wheeler and see the makings of a good rotation for next season. As you just said, it seems like the pieces should be there. They've been horribly disappointing two seasons in a row. But I don't think that means that they should be ruled out. And I was not surprised to not see a move made. I thought that given what happened after the Familia move and everything

that was written about how that came to be, it didn't seem like this team was ready to make a move like that. Should we talk about the AL wildcard race a little bit. The A's and the Mariners, we've talked a bunch about how tight that race is, and neither one made a real difference-making move. Of course, the A's, Juris Familia, we talked about that. Didn't do anything else at deadline day. Mariners made some minor moves. Jerry DiPoto, of course, was a part of deadline day, but not a major part. Are you surprised? I mean, i don't know who the mariners possibly could have traded to acquire anyone at this point so not shocking i guess that they didn't make some major impact move and the a's are not known for making that type of move

anyway so here we are and these teams are pretty much the same as they were before and it's still a real race yeah a little bit i mean the mariners few of the mariners you know robinson can i was coming back so he's probably gonna at least for a few months take the place of ryan healy somewhat regularly you look around they got cameron mabin who's basically guillermo heredia but maybe a little bit better so they replaced guillermo heredia with kind of himself but someone who's not been horribly sloppy and then you look at the pitching staff. There have been changes.

They got Sam. Oh, I've never said this one out loud. Help me out here. They got Sam. Tuivaya. Oh, no. I've never said this one before. So I'm just going to.

Okay. Thank you, Baseball Reference reference They got Sam Tuivailola Tuivailola Tuivailola, okay Submitted to memory, they got him, they got Adam Warren They got Zach Duke, that's a lot They did make over the bullpen A little bit, they just added depth

Upon depth, upon depth Because they know they're starting rotation outside of James Paxton And Marco Gonzalez is pretty bad. So the Mariners were busy, just not in any impactful way, which they didn't really have the capability of doing to begin with. But the A's, they almost got Mike Fiers, man. It would have been the blockbuster to end all blockbusters. Oh, yeah. All right.

What have we not covered? I'm checking off our list of teams here. I think we've talked about most of them, except for some of the sellers who are not currently contending for anything. But have we neglected anyone? Who's going to tweet at us and say, you talked about every other team but my team? Our Marlins fan friend might say that we didn't talk enough about the Brad Ziegler trade. Yes, he might, but i'm okay with that no there's nothing really that i care about it's still out there kirby yates and craig stamina are still padres i guess but i mean let's let's be honest here who cares i think we've done it we sprinted through just about every trade or major trade

and uh talked about just about every team apologies to I don't know the Tigers the White Sox did we sorry sorry guys but you haven't put yourselves in a position to be talked about currently so that's that I don't know is there is there a favorite move of yours or favorite deadline by a team that you want to single out i so i i know that i i write up at the raise a lot i don't think the raise made necessarily the the best moves or had the best deadline but i think they did have the most interesting deadline or at least the most interesting month the pirates of course are there because of the archer move i really liked the raise getting tommy fam i think that's clever i am a little surprised but i guess the cardinals

just kind of ran out of patience and i know that things maybe started going off the rails when the cardinals played matt adams in the outfield instead of tommy fam we talked about that a year and a half ago so i was surprised the rays got tommy fam for what they did i think that was a smart investment but i'm i'm gonna be honest with you man there were a lot of trades and i did not write about almost all of them. So I don't really know what the Dodgers—I haven't looked at what the Dodgers gave up. Like for Brian Dozier, maybe that was a steal. Probably it wasn't.

Dozier hasn't been very good, but I just don't know. Yeah, no, there's no way to keep all the prospects straight. I mean, there weren't like—no top, top, top prospect was traded because no top, top player was traded. I mean, Austin Meadows and Glassnow, those guys have been top prospects not too long ago. But, you know, you weren't seeing the very like top five type prospects moving at this deadline because— Well, I'll interrupt you right there. Francisco Mejia. Oh, yeah. Well, we've talked about that one.

So, yeah, we don't need to revisit that. But, yeah, even he, I guess, you know, had seen his prospect luster tarnished somewhat recently. So no major prospect that we probably need to discuss. Although, you know, I mean, the Orioles, in trading as many players as they did, I think they acquired like half a farm system just because they traded so many guys and got so many guys back. And that's what they needed. They didn't get anyone ranked as high as they did in the Machado trade when they got Diaz back. But they just got depth and they needed depth.

So I think they probably did well without being intimately familiar with all of the prospects that they acquired. But kudos to them, I guess, for finally deciding to do this and actually doing it and acquiring some international slot money with the intent to spend it, presumably, instead of trading it to someone else. It's about time. It would be a little funny if they just hoarded it and then never spent it because that way then no one could invest in the process i don't think that's what they're doing but i can't prove that it's not yeah so you know i like what the braves did i think i also like what the rays did i kind of like what the yankees did we dislike what the astros did for non-on-field reasons mostly and we dislike dislike, I don't know, what the Nationals did or didn't do, maybe. But, you know, I guess one team we didn't really talk about is the Diamondbacks,

and they did things worth discussing, perhaps, right? Eduardo Escobar, he's a real player, and they also acquired multiple relievers. They got Ziegler, they got Jake Diekman, right? So that's not nothing. And as we speak, they are half a game back of the Dodgers still. It felt like the Dodgers were about to run away with this thing, especially after they got Machado, and that hasn't quite happened yet. Yep, they also got Matt Andrees. So, you know, whatever they added to their bullpen, they still have Clay Buchholz starting.

The Diamondbacks are pretty good i was surprised to see how poor their hitting numbers had gotten for the season as a team they've really not been able to hit very well at all but i liked the the escobar move i was uh i was away for that one but there's not a clear example of a guy benefiting from hitting the ball in the air than eduardo escobar who's just been kind of i don't know know, almost pulling an old Brian Dozier sort of move, where he doesn't have good power, but he has just enough power. So I thought that was a clever little move for the Diamondbacks to patch up any number of positions.

And hopefully, with Dozier gone and with Eduardo Escobar gone, the Twins might find it in their hearts to repromote Williams' F2DO. Yes, they would be the deadline winners if they did that. That's all it takes. All right. Is there anything we need to say about the cubs is cole hamels done he's not done but he's not good i guess he's better than you darvish currently is which is not saying much because he's not pitching so i can uh i can tell you that also john lester has not been very good yeah he's uh got another three walk three strikeout performance with four runs on Tuesday. So there's a lot of name value in the Cubs pitching staff.

Just not a whole lot of, what's the word? Regular value. Right. Yeah. One other winner of the trade deadline, I guess, is Sean Doolittle, who was on the team that we just kind of declared a loser. But he personally was a winner for his tweet thread about terrible tweets. Go check that out if you haven't. Hopefully everyone has seen that by now, but he's been

very outspoken about the issue, and it's good to have someone who is outspoken and well-spoken about these subjects and is actually good enough at baseball to be respected by his peers, so good for him. Brewers manager Craig Council told reporters Tuesday that Jonathan Scope will likely get starts at shortstop. I do think you'll see him at shortstop, Council said. It's something that we've thought of.

That's a possibility for sure. Travis Shaw, second baseman, Jonathan Scope, shortstop. Pennant race. Why not? See what happens. All right. Should we close the book

on this grueling deadline day? Yes. Okay. We will be back next time, maybe with some emails, maybe something a little more laid back. We will not have to talk about dozens of trades in a single episode. Apologies for anything we overlooked. We didn't even talk about some trades that happened over the weekend while you were gone. Eh, it's over. We did the best we could. Hope you enjoyed it. Sorry, Aaron Loop.

All right. Barely took a breath throughout that whole podcast. The Nationals ended up winning that game 25 to 4. Jose Reyes allowed six runs in the eighth, which reminds me, speaking of players who've been suspended under the domestic violence policy, Jeff mentioned that Robinson Cano is about to return from his suspension under the joint drug agreement, and he is not eligible for the playoffs. Roberto Osuna is, which also doesn't send the greatest message. I understand why MLB makes that distinction. Getting suspended for PED use theoretically affects the game on the field in a way that domestic violence doesn't, but I feel dirty even saying that sentence. In the grand scheme of things, I think one offense is more serious, and even though in theory that offense shouldn't fall to sports leagues to punish,

oftentimes it does. If they're going to be in the business of punishing it, it seems somewhat strange to welcome those guys back with open arms in October, whereas someone like Canoe would have an additional penalty to serve. Similarly, most players who are on the suspended list for a PED violation no longer accrue service time during that suspension, whereas I believe that players like Osuna do, but perhaps this is a topic we will revisit on another episode. And speaking of other episodes, you can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild and signing up, pledging some small monthly amount, keep the show going. The following five listeners have done just that recently.

Doug Lemoine, Brandon Halverson, Matt Paradise, Mike Carlucci, and William123. Thank you to all of you. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectivelywild. And you can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes or your podcast platform of choice. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. I know he was also offering editing assistance at Fangraphs with all of the many trade deadline posts. So if you've been reading some of those reactions, you can thank him for that too. Please keep your questions and comments coming for me and Jeff via email at podcastfangraphs.com or via

the Patreon messaging system. We will be back very soon to talk just maybe about something other than traits. We gotta dance and be We gotta dance and be