Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1303: Who Says Cano

Episode Date: December 1, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about a busy week in rumored (and completed) transactions, touching on the Mets-Mariners blockbuster revolving around Robinson Cano and Edwin Diaz, the Indians trading Yan Gomes to the Nationals (a rare trade between contenders) and teams opting not to spend, a Craig Kimbrel report, tender/non-tender decisions involving Billy Hamilton, […]

Hello and welcome to episode 1303 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello. Hey, Ben. You've been traveling, which is why we are recording later on a Friday than we typically would. And in your absence, the stove has gotten somewhat warm there are things happening last time we talked we were talking about how nothing was happening and now there's a long list there are about 10 new mlb trade rumors posts just from today and it's interesting because all you really need i know there's there's a bunch of stuff going on and like i don't know the padre signed garrett richards and

maybe that makes a difference but like uh all you need is one trade that is rumored to be close and then it just never effing gets to the finish line and then it feels like things are really, really busy even though it's like the Mets and the Mariners have this trade that it's not like it's stagnant and for all I know, by the time that anyone listens to this, it will have become official.

But like with something like this just kind of hanging over everyone's head, feels like the stove is really, really hot even if nothing else were happening, which I'm sure it is. And I'm sure the Mariners have like seven other moves that they intend to make as soon as this domino falls. Yeah, well, the Mariners did make an actual trade before that trade was completed, right? They traded Alex Colomay to the White Sox for Omar Narvaez. No one is all that interested in that one, although that has a fangrass post of its own. So it was worthy to someone.

Well, I wouldn't dismiss it because Omar Narvaez will be featured in this week's haphazard stat blast for the reasons that made him available, presumably by the White Sox to the Mariners for a contract year mediocre relief bidder. Okay, then Omar Narvaez will be talked about too. But we should talk about the move that is being made as we speak. Has not been finalized. Seems like medicals are still going through and maybe money is being finalized. But it was dominating baseball news this week. And it's hard even to say exactly what the trade looks like. It has changed the way that it looks a number of times. I don't know why this move has been negotiated in such a public fashion, whereas there are a lot of trades and signings that happen with zero warning, and we're all

taken by surprise. And the first time we talk about them, we're talking about the completed transaction, whereas this one, we're going through many permutations of this trade, and it's been a days-long process. So the big takeaway here is that the Mariners seem to be trading Robinson Cano and Edwin Diaz to the New York Mets, and the Mets are then sending back a number of players in this trade. And there's money changing hands too. So I guess we should just say what the latest incarnation of this is, right? Do you have all the names in front of you? Boy, okay. So it's Edwin Diaz and Robinson Cano going to the Mets. That's easy.

And then coming from the Mets to the Mariners. Help me out here because I don't have the names in front of me directly, but we've got Jay Bruce. That's easy. Yes. Garrison Bautista. That's easy. Anthony Swarczak.

That's easy. And then there's a – how are we pronouncing these? Kelenic, I think. Jared Kelenic. Kelenic we'll go with. Kelenic. Kelenic. And Justin Dunn.

I've decided that I think there's three distinct pronunciations of Kilnick, so I'm going to provide all of them. It could be Eastern European, Kelenich, but it's probably not. Jared Kelenich and Justin Dunn would be

the fourth or fifth pieces, but realistically, the first and second pieces in this trade. This is a trade where obviously like Robinson Cano, as baseball players go, is a household name. And he's not the centerpiece of this trade by a long shot. But it is interesting that by acknowledging that, it's easy to miss the fact that Robinson Cano is actually still like super good. So there is a lot here to break down. We could spend an hour talking about this train that isn't even official yet.

I've been trying to wrap my head around it in between travels and everything that I've been up to. But it is, I have gone in so many different, and we don't even know the final structure of the deal because we don't know how much money the Mariners are sending along. Right, which is important. Right?

I would assume just, there was a rumor, I forgot where it came from, but there was a rumor the Mariners were sending like $60 million along with Cano, which was too much. But my best guess is that probably included like the Jay Bruce and Anthony Swarczak dead money, which would mean if you wanted to bump that up to $60 million, then the Mariners were sending like $20 million or $25 million along with Cano. 60 than the Mariners sending like 20 or 25 million along with Cano and I have at different times in the last 24 hours loved the Mariners side of this like the Mets side of this and wound up where I am right now of like this is a really interesting trade that I can't tell if it's like good or bad I have yeah I don't have a hard opinion except for I never expected a trade like this to happen. I never thought that Robinson Cano could be moved. Yeah, this is a really weird one. And I agree in the earlier incarnations of this that we heard of.

I mean, on the ringers slack there, we have a lot of Mets fans and they were up in arms initially. They were revolting just at this trade because it seemed like McNeil was in it. And when he was in it, then it really seemed strange because Jeff McNeil is like basically as good as Robinson Cano at this point or projected to be kind of in the same neighborhood. And he is also 26 and a rookie and cheap. And it just seemed very strange to be sending McNeil and getting Canoe back. But McNeil is not in the trade from what we understand now. So that definitely changes things. And Robinson Canoe, he has five years left on his deal at $24 million per year. So that's a

sizable chunk of money, $120 million. And as you noted, I think the thing that people are maybe not appreciating is just how good Robinson Cano has been, which has made this deal even in the realm of plausibility. Because if this were a total like albatross kind of contract that we've seen with some other guys who have signed similarly long-term deals in their 30s and then fallen off a cliff and you know the albert pujols kind of trade you just really can't move those guys or if you move them then you're not going to get any prospects back it's just going to be all about money and that's not what's happening here remington cano since he signed with seattle he's been there five years now, and it depends

what war you use, but baseball reference war, I think he's at like 23.6 or something over those five seasons. He's a top 20 position player over that span. So that's pretty good because we've seen a lot of really disastrous deals for longer than five years, his deals, 10 years, signed after a player turns 30, that can be just a millstone around a team's neck. And that has not been the case. And of course, people are thinking, well, yeah, because steroids and he was taking this and that. And who knows?

We've seen so many examples of guys who took things and were bad or took things and got suspended and then were just as good afterward. And it's never entirely clear whether their goodness was because of their taking things. So I don't know whether it was in Cano's case anyway, but he missed half of last season because of the suspension. And yet over the life of his contract, he's still been really good. And the second half of the deal will certainly not be as productive as the first half. So that's why he's not the centerpiece. That's not why the Mets are making this move so that they can get the age, what, 37 to 41, 36 to 41 or something portion of Robinson Cano's career.

But the fact that he can contribute something during those years makes this deal doable yeah I I think like last season Cano projected to be like a six-win play over over a full year now I don't think he's actually that good anymore but as you pointed out he's been really good since he signed with the Mariners there were some health issues early on but Robinson Cano according to statcast he does not grade out well in terms of his sprint speed. He's not that fast of a player. And whenever you talk to anyone in the game, around the game, listen to reporters, they'll say like Robinson Cano is not really going to be a second baseman anymore. Yeah, I've heard that from so many people over the past couple of days. Like Cano can't field.

He's got to move. I mean, I haven't watched him on a daily basis but the stats seem solid so there's that yeah i mean he's not he's not daniel murphy who even before the knee surgery was just not a very good defensive second baseman robinson cano at least to this point can play second base now granted on the mets there's something that they have to try to figure out with jeff mcneil and todd frazier and then first base situation i don't know exactly how that alignment is going to go I don't know if Brody Van Wagenen even knows what that alignment is going to look like but Robinson Cano right now can still play second base he can still hit he was one of the better hitters by almost any measure

last season when he played and so I think the the Cano part of this is being a little under build which feels absurd to say out loud now yeah there there is the expectation because of his age that he'll just fall off a cliff I don't know how many tweets or posts you'll read that includes that exact expression but maybe it's just because I feel burned by Nelson Cruz in the opposite way because I and a lot of other people really hated the contract he signed with the Mariners for his age 34 to 37 seasons and he was really good throughout it Nelson Cruz also had had a previous PED suspension in his career didn't seem to hold him back for what a coincidental reason but he continued to be a really really good hitter he's going to get a contract now so of course Cano's age is a concern and of course no one is going to be super excited to have

Robinson Cano on the roster in the year 2023 which by the way is still under the terms of his contract he will be paying 24 million dollars that season but I kind of I think where I am right now is that it's a really interesting and weird trade and I don't dislike it for the Mets even though there's still a lot of work for them to do but the mets aren't in the american league they're not looking up at four super teams right now i mean i think the dodgers are really good but there's not another super team in the national league and the mets could with a few other moves perhaps they could be in position to win the pennant so this is this makes them really interesting for 2019 even if it gets a little weirder after that.

Yeah, and it sounds like this could be a prelude to subsequent moves. There have been rumors and reporting that they're considering trading Noah Sindergaard and then signing a free agent starter so that they would then be—it's really—you know, I don't know exactly how this is going to shake out and how they will look by opening day and whether they will even end up spending much more money than they've been spending. It's hard to say. The big draw here, obviously, is Diaz, and Diaz is really, really good and yet also entered this offseason as the guy that I think everyone kind of looked at as, oh, the Mariners, if they're going to trade anyone, they should trade Edwin Diaz because his value will never be higher. He is a relief pitcher. He's coming off a fantastic

season. He's going to start making more money. And he's been worked pretty hard and there's been some concern i think about how his health will hold up and there's just no way to tell it i had the impression in my mind that he had maybe missed more time than he actually had or or that he had been on the dl with a shoulder thing or something but he hasn't actually, right? He had like a, what, a velocity dip for a while or dead arm or something. And there was some concern that they were just using him too hard, but he hasn't actually had a serious problem that we know about. Right. And he, it is, it's so hard because I think that the, the most obvious way this deal could blow up for the Mets is that Edwin Diaz just comes out and he blows out his arm in spring training.

And there's just this visceral gut feeling I have watching Edwin Diaz pitch that like, oh, God, the next pitch could be it. Like his forearm could literally just fly off of his body and go into the stands and hit a spectator looking at their phone. But I think I don't have any sort of like data to point to. I think I don't have any sort of data to point to. So I could, in whatever post I'm eventually going to have to write about this gargantuan monstrosity of a transaction, I think that there is real injury risk and, of course, real volatility risk. Just last season, Edwin Diaz wasn't that good by his own standard. But I can't prove in any way that he is an elevated injury risk uh not in any way that i think is convincing i got some messages when this trade was first being reported from people in the game were just

like i can't believe the trading for a guy who's just going to blow himself out in a matter of time but i think that's just also that's gut feelings and it's fine to feel that way because he's so little and he throws so hard and so violently but i mean francisco i'm looking at these these player pages right now so francisco rodriguez sort of like edwin diaz a decade and a half earlier if you uh want to think of it that way he eventually started having injury problems when he was like in his 30s he was uh he was pretty durable for for a long time he was a really really good closer through i don't know what year to cut it off like 2011 2012 probably he was even good for a while after that he had those back-to-back all-star seasons with the brewers like a few years ago so he kind of had a resurgence of sorts but

yeah craig kimbrell hasn't or all this chap has had some velocity dips but he hasn't been majorly hurt and craig kimbrell has not been majorly hurt. He's been babied maybe a little more than Diaz has. Diaz pitched a lot this past season. And Kimbrell's always been kind of a one-inning guy. But I think Kimbrell is simultaneously encouraging and discouraging at the same time because he's stayed healthy. His stuff is still great. But, like, Craig Kimbrell in 2017 was basically what Edwin Diaz was in 2018.

And then in 2018, Craig Kimbrell was much worse than he was in 2017. These things just kind of come and go. So Diaz clearly was like the best or second best relief pitcher in baseball this past season. But if you just flip his 2017-2018, then, you know, he's not going to necessarily be that light side moving forward. Yeah. And I guess the Kimbrel trade from November 2015 is one comp you could make here. Or, I don't know, the Ken Giles-Astros-Phillies trade maybe is another along these lines, just a young, really good closer with some team control. So it's really hard to wrap your head around this trade because there are so many pieces.

And what do you think of the guys going back to the Mariners here? I mean, aside from the guys who were just there to balance out the money more or less, but Kelenic, Dunn, have you formed an opinion about these players over the last day? A little bit. I have very little opinion on Batista. He's just a relief prospect who throws hard.

He has like a high scouting grade on his fastball, which, hey, that's great. You better have something else or throw 106 miles per hour. So, you know, Batista, he's a young reliever who throws really hard. So who knows what he could be. Jared Dunn. I haven't done a ton of research on these players yet just because I'm recently back from travels, and I am really, really tired, and nothing has happened yet. But Dunn and Kalanick, have we settled on Kalanick?

We're just going to settle on Kalanick. I don't care. I'm going Kalanick. You can go with, yeah. Okay. Well, good. Then we're covering two of our bases. Kalanick, we can call him. All right. Yeah, go ahead. Kalanick. I understand that it's really uncommon for a team to trade a player who they just drafted really, really highly in the same year, and that's Kalanick, who the Mets took sixth

overall this past summer. I can't imagine how this feels internally. You think of all the scouts and everyone who was responsible for the Kalenic pick and then just welcoming him to the organization. He probably had a press conference in the ballpark where they held his jersey up or something. I don't know. And then the player development people are just so excited to get their hands on Kalenic, and then he's just traded five months later. I know that everybody, as soon as you join an organization, you're an asset, on Kalanick and then he's just traded like five months later.

I know that everybody, as soon as you join an organization, you're an asset, but that probably hurts. But, you know, the Mets are sort of cleaning house in more ways than one with what they've done. And Kalanick, he's toolsy, but he's also far away. He's 19 years old, low minors. Dunn is an interesting pitcher, but he's at this point mostly fastball slider and there's a pretty good chance he ends up a relief pitcher. I've seen enough people already trying to say that Dunn is just going to be the next Edwin Diaz

because look at their similar numbers as starters in AA. But there's a lot of pitchers who were mediocre starters in AA who didn't become the best relief pitcher in baseball. Right. It's sort of like Justice Sheffield is the next Paxton. Well, maybe, but you have to get there. during baseball right it's sort of like justice sheffield is the next paxton well maybe but right and you have to get there and honestly on on justice sheffield i think i like eric swanson almost as much even though he doesn't have that that prospect type so i think uh maybe if if you're a mets fan i'm not a mets fan but if you're a mets fan you've gotten to know kalanick a little bit

you've gotten to know dunn as a prospect bit. You've gotten to know Dunn as a prospect. Mets fans have been excited to sort of rebuild their farm system because there was a time there there was not a whole lot of reinforcement potential on the way. Kalanick and Dunn, they rank third and fourth on the MLB.com Mets ranking right now. So yeah, I don't know where they'll be on the Mariners list, but we can talk about it. We can assume. Well, yeah, probably, yeah. Yeah. I do not see right now a lopsided half of this trade. I think that it's pretty easy to separate it into two trades of just dead money and Cano going back and forth,

and then Diaz being there for Batista and Kalanick and Dunn. And I don't think either of those are too terribly bad depending on of course the money going the other way and you know of course it could be 60-40 one way or 60-40 the other way depending on your evaluation of the prospects but seems pretty fair given all the the volatility in uh in a pitcher like Diaz what are the what do the Padres get for Brad Hand and Adam Simper? They got one prospect in Francisco Mejia who might not even be a catcher. I don't know. I think that's relevant.

Yeah, I'm almost disappointed that it has ended up being one of those 60-40, 40-60s. I know. Because for a while there, it looked like, all right, we've got a new GM who was an agent, and maybe he doesn't know what he's doing and he's coming in and he's making a giant blockbuster maybe for once we'll actually get to say no this is dumb what is he doing this is a silly trade and then as almost always we end up with okay it makes sense for both sides so i hate it oh i was so ready to just fire off some tweet about like, oh, Brody Van Wagenen should probably not unpack his boxes because they'll be fired this weekend. But no, that's when McNeil was in it. But McNeil's not in it. So what are you going to do? have done that might have been just as good and wouldn't have involved giving up these prospects.

Like Craig Edwards in his Instagraphs post at Fangraphs said, well, you know, maybe they could have just signed AJ Pollock and then picked up David Robertson or someone, you know, who can also be a good closer and not given up two of their best prospects. So, you know, you could say that maybe there was something better that they could have done, even if this thing that they are doing seems somewhat reasonable. So I guess that's one critique. Yeah. And I mean, on the Cano side, you know, if you figure Cano right now projects to be a three-win player next season, he's getting older. We already talked about that. Like if the the Mets really wanted, like, an above-average infielder, they're on the market.

Go get DJ LeMayhew. Go sign Daniel Murphy. He can play first base and add similar kind of hitting. So there are alternatives to Cano, and there are alternatives to Diaz. Some of the pitchers you mentioned, Adam Adovino is out there. You could trade for, I don't know, Kirby Yates, for example. Doesn't have any of the Diaz hype or stuff or background or watchability, but he's got some really, really good numbers. So I think there are certainly ways where maybe the Mets could have been like 10% more efficient on either side of this, but they're going to run a pretty high payroll.

Diaz certainly is cheap, and for as much as I do think that he is an injury riskant for as much as relievers are volatile, I do think that he is an injury risk for as much as relievers are volatile. Diaz has turned in basically three complete seasons in the major leagues, and in two of them, he was basically unhittable. And in the other one, he was more hittable, but still good. He struck out 12 batters per nine innings. The stuff is all still there. His fastball-slider combination is lethal. This past season, his contact rate allowed, like,

batters missed with more than a third of all their swing attempts against ds he's just so good yeah and he would get an enormous contract if he were a free agent so i i know that there are other relievers available and i know that all relievers are volatile it's uncomfortable to bet on someone like edwin diaz because when you have like a really good starter like jacob degram there are more elements i think propping him up in his greatness than with edwin diaz because if one thing goes wrong with edwin diaz then the whole thing collapses right he has a season that maybe even best case it looks like 2017 so you understand that there's some volatility there but they're trying to win the division

And I don't think it's that much of a long shot So God help them in 2023 But for 2019, it's fun Yeah, we were hearing also on Friday That Craig Kimbrell is looking for Or asking for a six-year contract And he's not going to get it, I don't think But the fact that he's even looking for it

Just imagine if Edwin Diaz were a free agent he's not going to get it, I don't think. But the fact that he's even looking for it, just imagine if Edwin Diaz were a free agent who is coming off a better year than Kimbrell and is way younger than Kimbrell. I mean, whatever Kimbrell thinks he can get, Diaz could get way more. It's always helpful to remember, I think, Sam Miller's article from a couple years ago, where he went back and he looked at what guys who are expecting or asking to get actually end up getting. And he found that in a fairly large sample, it was 87.5% of what they were asking for is what they get both in terms of years and dollars. So if Kimbrell is asking for six years and he's going to get 87.5% of that, that would mean more than five years, which would still be a lot. But I don't know if he will actually get that. But helpful to remember that what someone is seeking is usually not what he actually obtains.

Is it Kimberley Jansen who has the biggest reliever contract ever is that correct i don't know well let's let's at least pretend that it is kenley jansen sure as has been pretty much as dominant as is craig kimbrough signed with a big market club and signed around a similar age and his contract is what is it allow me to remind myself five years and 80 million dollars so that's uh now granted, that's Kenley Jansen, who's kind of a one-pitch dude, and he has a track record, now a fuller track record, of having problems with his heart. That is an important part of your body you want to have working.

So I can see Kimbrel getting the five. But yes, six feels like that's busting through a precedent I can't imagine any team would be really enthusiastic about. And I wonder if the Mariners go through with this and they've already made the Paxson trade and then there's some suggestion that maybe they'll then try to trade Mitch Hanager, who's a very valuable player. I wonder what their farm system will look like when the dust settles because it was basically dry. There was just nothing left in that farm system when the winter started. Having traded all of these players and maybe more to come, I wonder how much you can rehabilitate a farm system

that is just empty in one winter with a series of trades. I mean, we saw the White Sox get an enormous prospect haul when they traded a bunch of guys, but those guys were young and signed for years and really, really good. You know, Chris Sale and the like, I guess Haneker is really good and Diaz is really good. And those guys are under team control, too. Not so much with Cano. But I guess, you know, if you really do go all in, you can really change your farm system in a single offseason. Yeah, I wish that there was an easier database to access where you could just look over like the organizational rankings, whether it's from Baseball America or MLB.com or whoever, whoever does it so that I could see how much the White Sox moved up between years easily. I don't have an easy way to do that, but I can at least see.

Well, I clicked on a headline that was more promising than the article actually is. This is very useless to read, so I'm just going to skip it. So here are last year's. Let's see if we learn anything from this. Here are last year's top 10 relief pitchers in Fangraph's war. I bring this up because this year the top two, by a healthy margin, were Blake Trinan and Edwin Diaz. Blake Trinan, remember, who was acquired for it. Well, he was, I guess he was part of the Sean Doolittle trade, but he was Blake Trinan.

2018 was not Blake Trinan in 2017. Anyway, in 2017, the top 10 relievers were Kenley Jansen, Craig Kimbrell, Roberto Worsuna, Corey Knabel, Pat Nischik, Chad Green, Andrew Miller, Anthony Swarczak, that's funny, Felipe Vasquez, and Mike Miner. So not counting Mike Miner

because he converted to starting, we've got Tommy Kenley. So Kenley did not have, to my recollection, that great of a 2018. I think there were probably some injury things and was even on the playoff roster. I think he maybe flirted with some playoff action, but he finished with a 6-5-6 ERA. I can say that that was bad.

Andrew Miller, of course, was injured. Anthony Swarczak is now part of this trade as a salary dump. Patton Nischik never really got it figured out. Corey Knievel ended well but i think he spent time in the minors right he was demoted he lost his his closing job yeah then came back and was really good but yeah right so it's uh it's pretty encouraging you know you you look up there jansen was mostly good again even though there were some some flaws kimbrough was mostly good again but he worse. Osuna had his own other considerations.

I don't really know. I remember in 2017 thinking a lot about Chad Green. But this year, I don't remember thinking much about Chad Green at all. Maybe that's because Dylan Batances came back and it was so good. But let's all just do a little check-in on how Chad Green was in 2018. The answer is pretty good. Worse, but pretty good. little check-in on how Chad Green was in 2018. The answer is pretty good. Worse, but pretty good.

So anyway, that's just one stupid example of a top 10 list from one year and how, I don't know what I said, but like 40% of that list was not very good this past season. And some of the other pitchers were worse than they were the season before. So the safe expectation here is that Edwin Diaz will not be as dominant as he just was, but it sure is fun when you get those unicorn relievers like a Kimbrel or like a Jansen who are just great pretty much all the time. one not yet completed trade, and we've got some other moves to discuss. So maybe we can end this discussion. I'll just say that Jeff Passan tweeted while we were recording this that this deal probably won't be done today, may not be done until Monday, and there's still some question about the money, but sources say it's likely to be in the mid $20 million range that Seattle is sending to New York to cover Robinson Cano's contract. So that's essentially what we were saying and thinking. So we'll see if that holds up. I have breaking news. The San Diego Padres did not non-tender Brian Mitchell. You wonder,

did Brian Mitchell save his season as discussed earlier with his final appearance of the year? Brian Mitchell, of course, for anyone who wasn't paying attention all the way through, trying to pull up absolute final numbers for Brian Mitchell this year, 73 innings, 43 walks, 38 strikeouts. That's terrible. Brian Mitchell was bad this year, but in his last game against San Francisco Giants, he threw eight and two-thirds innings of shutout baseball with seven strikeouts. Did Brian Mitchell save his job? It looks like he did.

Although, granted, he and the Padres avoided arbitration by agreeing to a one-year $910,000 contract. So if you non-tender someone who's making not even double the league minimum, then you really hate that guy. So Brian Mitchell, maybe don't get too comfortable. Yeah. But one more thing I meant to say about Cano, I think, you know, we didn't even mention how the Mariners did during his time in Seattle. And I think a lot of people probably would evaluate that contract based on the fact that the Mariners did not end up making the playoffs with Cano, which I think is probably the wrong way to look at it. I think you have to

evaluate each move on its merits and the player's performance in isolation. But obviously, if the Mariners had somehow known that they wouldn't even make the playoffs with Cano, then they just wouldn't have spent that money on Cano, I guess. But the fact that they wouldn't even make the playoffs with Cano, then they just wouldn't have spent that money on Cano, I guess. But the fact that they did not surround Cano with good enough players to make the playoffs, not his fault. I mean, maybe having that contract on the books dissuaded them from bringing in other people that they could have spent on, but I'm sure they could have afforded that if they had wanted to, and they didn't. so cano held up his end of the bargain really and the mariners didn't so not only that but he was good for them and now he is bringing back some value in this deal to them too so

have to see it as a success in that sense i think it's it's a little strange to me that there was so much urgency to trade robinson cano in first place. I just never really expected it to be part of what the offseason would look like because he just didn't really have, his contract was underwater despite how good he was for the first half of it. But I wouldn't be surprised if the Mariners saw this as pretty much their only realistic opportunity to ever trade Robinson Cano and get out from under his deal. I mean, with his no trade protection, he seems like he probably did want to go back to New York and didn't really want to entertain many alternatives to that. So I never really, I didn't buy a month ago when there were rumors going around that the Mariners

were talking about moving Cano. I didn't think it was realistic, but credit to them, I guess, for almost finalizing such a trade. I remember coming back from a vacation and then very shortly thereafter, after I returned and I still had like plain brain, Robinson Cano signed with the Mariners and then I had to deal with that. And now I have plain brain and Robinson Cano is on the verge of leaving the Mariners.

So whatever Robinson Cano content you read for me five years ago or now, it will be insufficient because my brain is acting insufficiently. so you have prepared a stat blast and we have teased some omar narvaez content so want to wrap up this part of the podcast with that yeah might as well although i'll also point out so it's been rumored recently but it's come true the brewer's non-tendered jonathan, which is interesting because, you know, pitchers come and go, but Jonathan Scope, of course, was an all-star

last season. He actually finished 12th in MVP voting. He had a worse first half, but still a reasonable first half of the Orioles this year. Terrible with the Brewers, didn't really use him much in the playoffs, and now he's been non-tendered. He's 27. He's going into his age 27 season, and the Brewers didn't want to pay him. Of course, for jonathan scope the brewers gave up three players one of them i don't really know much about but luis ortiz is someone who they got as part of uh the jonathan lucroy trade a few years ago so he's an interesting player who broke into the major leagues this season and also more importantly and kind of hilariously Jonathan VR who down the stretch dramatically outplayed Jonathan Scope while playing the same position Jonathan VR will be with the Orioles for I don't

know three months next season before he's traded but it is just a fun little example of even in a season where so much went right for the Brewers this was a year where they traded Jonathan VR for Jonathan Scope and they traded Brad Miller for G-Man Choi. So even if a trade doesn't work out, you can still go on to have a really, really fun season. So never make too much of any transaction. Omar Narvaez time. Okay.

I've talked enough. Talked enough. So let's talk some more. 5,000, simply 3, or a minus, or OBS plus. And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's to Deist-a-plast. One of the interesting things about Omar Narvaez is that the Mariners were able to get him. He's got, I think, four years left of team control. He's a young catcher who can hit.

You don't think that you're going to get a player like that from the White Sox for a contract year, like seventh inning reliever who is overextended if he's pitching in the eighth or the ninth but the other thing that's interesting about omar narvaez is that his defense is really quite terrible so uh this is it's always fun to dig into leaderboards because it i like to be reminded of how bad catchers used to be because i can say omar narvaez is bad but we're gonna call on our old friend ryan domit here in a minute okay, so recently, somewhere in the past month or two, Fangraphs rolled out a few new catcher statistics. They have come by way of Baseball Info Solutions,

so now we have like a framing number. We have sort of a catcher ERA equivalent. We have a running game metric. We have just a general fielding metric. So including framing, those numbers go all the way back to 2010 so we're looking at like nine years of data which is which is pretty good and since 2010 there have been 110 catchers who have caught at least 1 000 innings so can you guess who has been i looked at defensive run saved per 1 000 innings do you have a guess who has been the most

valuable defensive catcher on average over that span of time? Would it be Grandal? No, Grandal is actually 12th on this list. He's down there with Sandy Leon and Russell Martin. Well, I guess it's not Tyler Flowers, who would probably be on top of a BP list in the last few years. I don't know. Who would it be? So it's not Jeff Mathis. I was expecting you to guess Jeff Mathis. So number one is actually Austin Hedges, who is at 18 runs above average per 1,000 innings. But on the other side, Omar Narvaez is not good at this, but I was curious exactly how not good he is.

So Narvaez is actually average minus 13.4 runs per 1,000 innings. That's bad. That's like really bad for a catcher that ranks him just outside the bottom 10 percent of this leaderboard but it does get worse I I guess I might as well just read the names up so we're just going in like ascending order of bad catching so I should say descending order of good catching Omar Narvaez he's uh he's there at 12th worse than Nick Hundley. Rob Johnson, John Jaso, Mike Napoli,

Coyne Hill, Ramon Hernandez, Willen Rosario, Brett Hayes, Gerald Laird, Carlos Santana, and Ryan Domet isn't just last. Of course, it's always fun to talk about margins, right? Carlos Santana is a catcher. He's not a catcher. He's barely a first baseman at this point. Carlos Santana is a catcher.

Per 1,000 innings, rates out as 19 runs below average second worst do you want to do you want to guess where Ryan Dometz averages was per 1,000 innings as a catcher according to baseball intro solutions not baseball prospectus numbers you've looked at right yeah the baseball prospectus numbers are I would guess even more extreme I think because the the framing numbers tend to be bigger I believe but uh yeah I mean, at baseball prospectus, he was like, I don't know, negative 30 or something at least, like on an average, and negative 50 in his worst season, I think, or maybe worse than that. So yeah, somewhere in that realm.

Exactly right. Negative 30.4 runs per 1000 innings that's a separation between last place and second to last place by 11 runs separating domit and carl santana i also looked at uh at baseball prospectus numbers going back to 2008 i was just curious about uh about framing numbers but what i couldn't do at baseball prospectus is combine all the seasons so i was just looking at individual seasons and this is i was came into this thinking maybe narvaez would be lower on the board than than he actually is and realistically i could let's whatever i'm just gonna pile on ryan doma here i know we've done this a million times but like the worst according, according to Baseball Prospectus now, this is looking at individual seasons, individual catcher seasons.

The second worst framing season by a catcher on a recent record, 2014 Jared Seltz-Lamakia, 27 runs below average. 27 runs below average. Worst catching season, 2008 Ryan Domet, 54 runs below average. Literally twice as bad as the second worst framing season on record one area that did interest me is that omar narvaez was actually five runs below average blocking pitches this past season i didn't know it was even possible to be five runs below average blocking pitches but not only is it possible will and rosario in 2012 was 11 runs

below average at blocking pitches in will and rosario in 2012 was a terrible pitch blocker and a terrible pitch framer so in a sense i guess will and rosario is sort of a pre-existing example of the omar narvaez skill set because rosario could hit he was a pretty talented offensive catcher and then when uh i believe the rockies non-tendered him and he couldn't find a job anywhere but i think he went went up in korea so this is all to say i was kind of floored when i got an email and the mayor has traded alex colomay for a cost-controlled young starting catcher and i get it now i think i get it a lot more maybe some of these numbers are biased by the fact that the White Sox have just had dreadful pitching staffs. That could be part of it, probably is part of it.

But whenever I looked at those video replays of like the worst called balls of the season or of the first half, without fail, somewhere near the top of the list, I would always find Omar Narvaez trying to catch a pitch. So I think I understand the trade a little better now. Yeah. I feel bad for Meg Rowley because she not only does not get to watch Mike Zanino anymore, she now has to watch Omar Narvaez. And I know that she is a great appreciator of catcher defense and framing. And unless they can somehow fix Narvaez, she's going to be watching a whole lot of bad catcher defense yeah I was reflecting recently just because uh shortly before I started my full-time job with Fangraphs there was a brief interim period where I didn't have a full-time job it lasted about two weeks in between SB Nation and Fangraphs all I did during that time was just write about the Mariners on a casual basis, and during that stretch was when Felix Hernandez perfect gamed the Tampa Bay Rays, and that was a

game, not only did the Mariners win that game 1-0, but that was a game caught by John Jaso, who was another terrible defensive pitcher. So you feel bad for Felix as well as Meg Rowley, because Felix at this point needs every edge he could possibly get. He spent most of his career with terrible pitch framing. It held him back earlier, and if he's even on the team in 2019, which is a very sad conversation, he is going to be pitching too. I don't have a fun analogy as to what Omar Nevaez is like to pitch to. Yeah, Felix and Seager are now, I think, the sole remaining players from the 40-man pre-Depoto, so he's almost done with his complete

remodel. All right, we should talk about a few other transactions because there is another notable trade that seems very close to being completed has not been yet but this involves another catcher and a good one Jan Gomes is evidently going from the Cleveland Indians to the Washington Nationals who already added Kurt Suzuki this offseason so this is kind of an interesting trade because Gomes is good. He was signed to an extension by Cleveland, and then he stopped hitting, but then he started hitting again this past year, and he's also a good defender. And he's going to a team that definitely needs catching help. The Nationals have just acquired completely new catchers this winter because they had, you know, what, Matt Wieters and

Pedro Severino or whoever was their catchers last year. It was not a great situation. And now they've gone and gotten Suzuki, who has really reinvented himself as a very good hitter over the past few years, not a great defender, but Jan Gomes who can do both things. And this just for the Indians seems to be a cost saving move. Now they're getting a pretty good prospect back in this deal. I guess an outfielder, Daniel Johnson is the guy who's supposed to be in this trade, a fifth round pick from 2016. And he's a top 10 Nationals prospect. I think he was at AA and then was in the AFL and was not good there. But it really just seems like the Indians have just decided

that they have to save money for whatever reason. And so we've heard all these talks about Kluber trades and Bauer trades and yet also a Carrasco extension possibly in the works. Anyway, Cleveland should be good again next year. And losing Gomes on paper, at least, is kind of a big loss. Yeah, I think Roberto Perez is pretty good, capable of starting catcher. But the Indians are in just such an interesting position. And it reminds me a little bit of where the Mets are too with Noah Syndergaard.

We can talk about that in a minute. But at least with Gomes, now the trade is actually official. As you were saying that, the trade became official. So Jan Gomes is going to the Nationals. And the Indians are getting Daniel Johnson, also pitcher Jeffrey Rodriguez, and a player to be named later. Rodriguez was in the majors this past season, not very good. So, you know, it doesn't really change the package that much.

But it's interesting because Gomes is not that expensive. His contract for this coming season was going to be about $7 million and then team options beyond that. So nothing too bad. But if you're the Indians, it's probably more money than you want to pay to a player who is not your dedicated starter. They like Perez, so they're just trying to reshuffle. I think what is going to be most interesting, and this is relevant to the Indians and relevant to the Mets,

the Indians still want to win. I think part of the reason they're doing this is because they know that the AL Central is so terrible. The Mets also want to win, but the Mets sound like they are motivated to trade Noah Syndergaard. The Indians sound like they're motivated to trade one of their starting pitchers, probably Corey Kluber or more likely Trevor Bauer. Now, you can do that, but this would put those teams in a really unusual position where a team is trying to win and it's subtracting. But by doing so, they're not just presumably looking for a prospect package in return the Mets could use a catcher center fielder the Mets have needs they would want to be trading Noah Syndergaard for players who are in or close to the major leagues but then the team trading for Noah Syndergaard whoever that is would be less motivated to give

those players up because those are the players the teams want to have so i you don't often see trades made between teams who are trying to be in the hunt it's really uncommon and so i it's hard for me to know what a trade like that would look like what a trevor bauer trade would look like for the indians at least the jan gomes one is simpler to understand because jan gomes is simply a cost that the indians apparently couldn't afford and they don't need to pay even though he's helpful. Clearly, $7 million was more than they wanted to pay for what they see as a backup catcher. Yeah, I mean, is that fair, though? Perez, I know, is a very good defender, but over the past three seasons combined, he has a 57 OPS plus, and that's in part-time play.

57 OPS plus and that's in part-time play he's never played more than 70 games in a season and he's almost 30 so it's not like you would expect a breakout or something I mean is it fair to just depend on a guy like that to be a starting catcher for a team that expects to win its division and be back in the playoffs again. I mean, we talked about how they traded Mejia, who could possibly have been a catcher but may not end up as a catcher. But I don't know, is there another high-level prospect who slots in here? Or maybe they make some other move, but I would be wary of going into a season with Perez and just a bunch of depth. Yeah, I mean, I hate ending up being put on the spot in these situations where I recognize the name Eric H-A-A-S-E, but I don't know how to pronounce it because it's not a name I've heard out loud.

I'm going to say Haas. Maybe it's Haas. Could be Haasi. I don't know. I really am sorry that I don't watch more baseball on television where everybody's name is pronounced. Baseball reference is not helping me with this one, but he is a catcher. He's about to turn 26 years old, but he's somewhere in, I think, their top 10 prospect list. He's been in AAA. He appeared,

I think, this past season very briefly in the major leagues. Strikes out a lot, but he does hit for power. So he is, he is at least i think they've determined to be a capable backup there are a lot of catchers also who are out there on on the market there are a lot of free agent catchers who are of vague interest so i don't think that the indians are are in a bad position i do think gomes is a good get for the nationals and i think that yeah with how active the braves and phillies and metra being it's easy to forget that the nationals are actually a good team and probably going to be a really good team. So that's one of those stories to pay attention to because the Nationals, despite how much they underachieved, they do anything, just from all the kind of hidden revenue sharing, as Joe called it, which is, you know, only a handful of teams really get on Sunday Night Baseball and Fox games and end up in the playoffs. Everyone gets to share the money from those giant broadcast deals.

And so there's the deal with Fox and there are deals with TBS and there are deals with ESPN and it goes on and on and you just add it up. And between that and between MLB Advanced Media, which teams are still getting some money from even after the giant lump sum that they all got from the sale to Disney. I mean, there's just a lot of money that is going into teams' coffers just for existing, essentially, which has made it a lot easier for teams to rebuild because their immediate income isn't quite as tied to whether they're winning or not. And that applies to Cleveland, too. I know it's a small market. They don't draw well. They haven't drawn well lately. So that hurts a little too. I know it's a small market. They don't draw well. They haven't drawn well lately. So that hurts a little bit, I know, but you would still think that a team that is in the playoffs every year and is getting all of this extra money from these giant deals,

you'd think that they wouldn't have to make a move like trading Jan Gomes, who's pretty good and is not super expensive. So I don't know what that says about their ownership group, but not ideal. I know we've talked before about how the ideal circumstances is everyone operates with open books, right? And then we can actually know what we are talking about. I understand that whenever I talk to people who work with teams, of course, they are providing a perspective that is, I don't know if it's driven by bias or having an agenda intentionally, but they'll say things that maybe people who aren't with teams would disagree with. But to an individual, every single person I've ever talked to about this with a team has been like, you know, we understand

like the owners are trying to run a business, but they all want to win. All the owners want to win. They invest. They don't want to necessarily put more money into the team than they're making, but owners typically, at least as it's presented to the people who work for teams, are running margins that aren't quite as big as it seems like they are from the outside, which can be hard to understand when you see payrolls that aren't skyrocketing when you have limited draft spending and international spending. But I guess there is that hidden aspect of what are you paying for all your other employees what are you paying for the tech that those employees are using there are a lot of unseen expenses that teams have but i can't in any way speak to how those add up because i have no idea how much a

number of employees cost or a bunch of high-tech cameras cost. But make no mistake that at least in the past few years, it's not a coincidence that as spending restrictions have been implemented, teams have just gone on like a hiring spree, because that seems to be one of the few remaining areas. Yeah, exactly. And of course, franchise values are always climbing. So even if you're not currently operating in the black, you're still making money in the long term if you were ever to sell a team. But yeah, I mean, it is a business and we don't expect most business owners to operate at a loss if they can avoid it you just kind of hope that because a team is almost a civic institution in a way that you'll end up with an owner who cares about winning and wants to be beloved because he invests in the team more so than just turning a profit every year but perhaps unrealistic to expect that because at any given time that is not the case with with most franchises in baseball so

everyone always wants another mike illich and mike illich's are great from the fan perspective but on the downside is when you have one mike illich then you just try to hold everybody else to that standard and that's just not how it works for for better or worse so i don't know who i'm not giving enough credit to there's maybe another mike illich out there somewhere like Like the Giants, for example, are a team that spends a lot of money, but they're under a lot of pressure to spend a lot of money. But I can't really speak with much authority beyond this. So that's where I wind up.

The Angels have now non-tendered their closure. What an interesting day it is. Yeah, well, this is the tender, non-tender deadline day. This is the day that teams have to decide whether they're going to offer contracts to arbitration-eligible players. And so a bunch of guys have been let go. And you mentioned Jonathan Scope already. A couple other interesting names, Billy Hamilton and Matt Davidson, both non-tendered by the Reds and White Sox, respectively. And we've talked about both of these guys quite a bit over the years.

Hamilton just, I think, has to be said, is one of the more disappointing players, probably, in recent baseball history. I mean, maybe we all expected too much of him, and perhaps that is on us, but we all envisioned him as the new not ricky henderson because ricky henderson is one of the best players of all time but just a guy who was going to challenge stolen base records potentially in an era when we don't see that sort of thing and

that just hasn't happened because he can't hit and we now have a very large sample saying that he cannot hit he's coming off yet another disappointing offensive season or would be disappointing if we weren't just expecting it at this point and the really sad part is that he just doesn't get on base enough to steal and I almost wish because the Reds haven't been playing for anything anyway, that he just would have stolen, no matter how inefficient it was, that he would have just gone just to entertain the people. He was, every year of his career, he had stolen more bases than the previous year. He went 56, 57, 58, 59, and then he fell down to 34 this year which was disappointing and another sub 300 on base percentage and finally they just cut him loose and he has been a valuable player at times despite the lack of offense because he's a really good fielder and so there's still a role for billy

hamilton on some team you know he can still definitely be like your extra outfielder pinch hitter type guy he's ideal for that role but I wish that he had turned into something better than that yeah because at this point he's going into his age 28 season he's going to start to lose some foot speed eventually he already seems like he's not quite the defender that he was when it was earlier in his career but clearly he's going to get jobs somewhere he seems like he's not quite the defender that he was when it was earlier in his career. But clearly, he's going to get a job somewhere. He is the most valuable base runner in baseball, depending on how you want to put that over a denominator. So he is still valuable. Travis Sotrick wrote a speculative article about him last spring,

trying to think of some sort of interesting other alternative non-starting role that Hamilton could occupy to take maximum advantage of his legs and minimum disadvantage of his bat. Hamilton did not respond to that proposal very well. Everybody should go back and read that article. It's a good time. But he'll get a job somewhere. Seeing Hamilton get non-tendered is just such a jolt, not just because of what Hamilton was as a prospect.

Also, if you need further evidence of how fast we're all growing older and getting closer to death, it feels like a year ago, Hamilton was in the minors. It does. Remember how often we wrote about stopwatches and fractions of a second in the math of stolen bases? Right. That's the other thing, because it like hamilton would just like break base running because he was so fast that it just seemed like he would be uncatchable like if he got a decent jump he just got down to second so fast that no one would be able to catch him and the other disappointing thing is that that didn't really turn out to be true either like he's a good base

dealer but he's not an otherworldly base dealer he gets caught his success rate what is it do you have it handy in the big leagues in the minors he was like a let's say 82.5 percent success rate which is good but not amazing in the minors and in the majors majors And in the majors, 87 out of 340. Yeah, 81.5. So, I mean, that's good. It's valuable. But it's just he looked like he was just going to be possibly an all-timer or, you know, just challenge what we thought of base stealing. And that just hasn't happened.

Didn't you do a post? It was like post-worthy when Hamilton got caught. Yeah. There was a Yeah. One centeno. Yeah, like Molina versus Hamilton or something. What was your post event? Oh, God. I probably wrote several. I mean, I remember writing the post earlier in Hamilton's career that's just like, let's watch Billy Hamilton make a run happen. It was just one of those like, here he is just sprinting his way around the bases on like four different events. And they were fun. There was a lot of attention.

There was a lot of traffic on those posts because Hamilton had the potential to be this sensation. And maybe he still has been. I don't know. Like that post that Travis Sajic wrote about him this year was still very popular in part because of who Billy Hamilton is, how he's recognized, and also in part because people further recognize that he can't hit, which is really too bad. But I guess, I mean, as long as Terrence Gore is getting jobs, like Hamilton's got a while to go. But, you know, the hitting has evolved to not even a little bit. So that much is disappointing i'm trying to figure out how many bases billy hamilton ever stole against john lester but unfortunately this

is not as easy to pick up as i expected it to be and the other guy i mentioned matt davidson is notable well he was a pretty good player this year. He hit a little bit better. I guess he probably tanked a little bit down the stretch. I don't know. But he recovered offensively from a down year last year. And the really interesting thing about Matt Davidson is that he appears to be like a fully qualified relief pitcher, essentially. When he has made occasional appearances as a pitcher he's really looked good he pitched three times this season he pitched three scoreless innings and he had good stuff he throws hard he has like a legitimate breaking ball he had a sub three fip in his three innings

and he actually said in october there was a story that he was in training to be a serious two-way player, that the White Sox had given him the okay to do some serious pitching work this offseason, which maybe they just gave him the okay because they knew he wasn't going to be playing for the White Sox. But if he's actually committed to that bit, then I don't know, maybe he will get more action out of the bullpen this coming year and could be like a, I don't know, Drew Butera or someone like that who can actually hit a little bit. So that's interesting. Yeah, there was a, I remember there was a point early in the year where I thought, wow, Matt Davidson looks like he figured out

hitting. And then here we are now. And all I can think about is Matt Davidson as a relief pitcher. So life comes at you fast. I don't know what else to say. I hope he gets that opportunity because, like you said, he does seem to have bullpen caliber stuff. Yeah. Well, were there any other moves or non-moves? The A is just every time I refresh MLB trade rumors as we speak, there is someone else getting non-tendered. I refresh MLB trade rumors as we speak, there is someone else getting non-tendered. He's just non-tendered Mike Fiers and Kendall Graveman and Corey Gearan. They're just dropping like flies

over here. Of course, the Cubs, after much speculation, did not non-tender Addison Russell. Both they and Russell released very long statements justifying why they did not and saying that they can rehabilitate him and that it's the best place for him to be, all that. But it mostly boils down to, I guess, the fact that they still probably think he can be good and not very expensive, although he has not been lately. And I thought at one time that maybe they would cut ties with him, but evidently not. I just refreshed MLB trade rumors again. The Orioles have non-tendered Tim Beckham and Caleb Joseph. Speaking of good defensive catchers and guys that we thought might be better than they were. Anyway, lots of interesting names just out there now as free agents if anyone wants them.

This is not the night I want to be working on the Fangraph's depth charts, but here we are. Last, if anybody out there still wants to know how the industry and how the A's feel about ERA by runs allowed per nine version of war, Mike Fiers last season, four wins above average, which ranked him right around guys like David

Price, Charlie Morton, Kyle Hendricks, Zach Wheeler, Noah Sindergaard, out of a job. A's didn't want to pay him, I don't know, $8 million, $10on, Kyle Hendricks, Zach Wheeler, Noah Syndergaard, out of a job. A's didn't want to pay him. I don't know. $8 million, $10 million, whatever it was. Whatever it was going to be. And you know what?

Makes sense. It's 2018. We understand how these things go now. But still, I mean, if you're Mike Fiers, I don't know how well-versed in the advanced numbers Mike Fiers is. But if you're Mike Fiers, you get this phone call, this text you this this tweet from him will be trade rumors and you're like what could i have done but yeah that's that's life and in baseball in 2018 you can be cj crone you can have a really really good season a two win season and then you're only going to get paid five million dollars or something like that and you're with a team that just clearly

traded for you because they saw something in you and And then one year later, you're out of a job. There's only so much you can do with your performance. What a frustrating existence it is to be a baseball playing millionaire. Yep. All right. We've just got a few minutes here. Only other thing I wanted to bring up. I don't know whether you had any time to see or study them this week, but this was like a banner week for ballpark renderings.

study them this week but this was like a banner week for ballpark renderings there were many many many renderings released of future hypothetical ballparks i mean there were some i guess of globe life the rangers new remodeled stadium with a retractable roof but there were also many mock-ups of what an oakland ballpark would look like for the A's and what a Portland ballpark would look like for the Portland team that might exist someday? Did you see them? Did you have any thoughts on them as a Portland resident? Did anything about the news this week make that seem like a more real prospect? I didn't have enough time to really dig into these things but i i uh i know that i'd been reading recently about when portland was going to settle on a site to develop it is of course

always a little interesting to have a team getting into the development process for a ballpark for a team that doesn't exist so that is worth keeping an eye on but i can never speak with as much information and authority on portland and baseball as as i think people think that i should because i don't really know what makes a viable market and what makes a viable stadium proposal. I don't really know if the Oakland stadium proposal is viable. I am very vulnerable to the PR speak whenever these things are put out there in the public. I just read it and I see the quotes and I see the pictures and I think, wow, what a great ballpark. Can't wait till it's open. But most of the time or half the time, these things don't ever end up going anywhere. The Ottawa Senators are mired in some sort of catastrophic new arena plan where they

were going to move downtown. And so it's amazing how many different factors can tank a plan like this. So, you know, until there are shovels in the ground, then it's all just nice looking art. But that's a big freaking gondola. Yeah, right. Yeah. The A's, I mean, it sounds like maybe they don't want or aren't seeking much public funding, which would be nice if that's the case and would make it more feasible. I don't know. The ballpark was an interesting design. It looked kind of nice. A lot of people were wondering why there was no batter's eye. Evidently, there's a retractable batter's eye so that you can see into the park when it's not actually being used, which is kind of cool. I don't know. It could happen. I guess we've seen it not happen so many times that that seems like a nice rendering. And I don't know, there was a lot of like water

in that rendering, which seems optimistic for California. I don't know whether that will be the case by the time the A's have a new ballpark. Anyway, hopefully that will happen. I guess if you're the A's, you probably like the fact that this Portland news is happening at the same time, because of course, teams always like to be able to threaten their municipality by saying, we could go here. So the A's are probably thinking, oh, this is good timing, or I don't know if it's coordinated in some way, but to have a realistic possibility somewhere else just kind of gives a team leverage. So we'll see. Guess we'll have to see if there's any more news on the Rays moving to Ybor City because

otherwise the Rays might be eyeing that Portland ballpark plan thinking like, hey, you know, that looks kind of sexy. Yeah. All right. Well, we can end there. There are many more transactions to come. I'm just skimming Ken Rosenthal's feed. And I guess there's a possibility that the Cubs might still trade Addison Russell now that they have picked up his contract. I don't know. And of course, Gene Segura might be on the move too. There was talk that he might be in a package with Diaz and Cano and he's not. So maybe he'll go somewhere in a

standalone trade. I don't know. Lots of stuff happening, but that's better than nothing happening. So we will reconvene early next week and we'll talk about anything that has actually changed after we stop talking. I wonder if the whole idea here is for Jared to do everything before the winter meetings even begin? I'm sure he'll be busy then, too.

Well, we had so many players to talk about who will be playing in 2018 that we neglected to talk about Garrett Richards. He was signed by the Padres to a two-year, $15 million deal. This was good news for Garrett Richards. It was also good news for me because I had him in my off-season contracts draft. He was predicted to make $10 million, and I took the over on that. So gives me a cool $5 million. None of Jeff's picks has signed yet, and two of mine have, Josh Donaldson and Garrett Richards. So I picked up small gains on both of those guys. But Garrett Richards, I just figured his stuff is so good that there would be more interest in him than there is in the typical Tommy John victim.

And I think that turned out to be the case. Padres are a logical landing spot for him because they are on the rise. And by the time he is back and healthy, perhaps they will be really ready to contend. So it makes sense for both sides. All right, that will do it for today and for this week. Thank you for listening. You can support the podcast on Patreon at patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount to keep the podcast going.

Ted Livermore, Adam VanderYacht, Simon Pincus, James N. Gannon, and Michael Edler. Thanks to all of you. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild and you can rate

and review and subscribe to effectively wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms sorry we didn't get to emails this week we'll do our best

to get to them next week we had too many pressing Pesopalo and Twilight conversations but you can send us your questions and comments via email at podcast at fangraphs.com.

You can also reach us via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins, as always, for his editing assistance. We hope you have a wonderful weekend, and we will be back to talk to you early next week. I'm Mr. Robinson And he's a quiet girl

Drinks with generals and county wives Has a family business, he's doing all that But Louis Tang goes Down in the quank goes Makes them tickle, makes them talk And if you don't fit, they put you in the dock Just sits in his leather chair and treadles his bum He's the secretary in for Pitchers and Bums