Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1304: The Roving Righty

Episode Date: December 4, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the nomadic Andy Wilkins, revisit the Mariners-Mets trade and Robinson Cano’s graceful decline so far, discuss the Mariners-Phillies trade, the career of Jean Segura, the Mariners’ rebuild, Jerry Dipoto’s flip-flop about tearing down the team, and the status of the investigation into allegations of racism among Mariners brass, […]

Must be another one. Must be another one she loves. Must be another one. Must be another one she loves. Must be another one she loves So we landed one of our white whales here. We've been talking for a while about getting Oliver Drake, the much-traveled pitcher Oliver Drake, on the podcast, and today we have. He will be joining us shortly. I will also be talking to Baseball Prospectus' Jonathan Judge about BP's new hitting metric, Deserved Runs Created Plus. That will be after we talk to Oliver. For anyone who hasn't followed recent episodes, Oliver Drake set a major league record this year by pitching for five major league teams. Now, I wanted to confirm something about his just being with different organizations. So I asked Dan Hirsch, the incomparable Dan Hirsch of Baseball Reference, to do a search on transactions and just look for guys who have made as many team changes as Oliver Drake has

this year, even if they haven't actually pitched in the majors. There is only one other player in baseball history, or at least as far back as the transaction data goes, that has changed MLB organizations five times in one calendar year. And that is Andy Wilkins. Andy Wilkins, who is, I guess, a first baseman who was in the majors briefly with the White Sox in 2014 and with the Brewers in 2016, and he in 2015. So between those years, he also belonged to six organizations. those years. He also belonged to six organizations. The even worse thing about Andy Wilkins, I guess, is that he didn't even pitch in the majors that year. So he was doing what Oliver Drake was doing, except he wasn't even in the big leagues at all. So that's rough. Sorry about that, Andy Wilkins. Which basically means he's getting less support in all of the transactions, less support for housing and just support from the front offices and everything that you need to have some sort of soft landing and money so no money andy will i i remember i think i wrote about andy wilkins at

some points but uh andy wilkins never uh never traded never got to be part of a trade it was always he was uh he was drafted he was drafted, he was drafted twice. He was drafted by the White Sox, but then he was selected off waivers by the Blue Jays. He was purchased by the Dodgers. He was selected off waivers by the Orioles, selected off waivers by the Mariners, selected off waivers by the Rangers, selected off waivers by the Brewers,

granted free agency, signed as a free agent with the Twins, granted free agency, and signed as a free agent with the Twins. And what's interesting is that that means andy wilkins this year at least in terms of the larger organizational property belonged to the same club this year as oliver drake who finished the year as a as a member of the twins so wilkins and drake i don't know if they ever got to interact because again wilkins

was not in the majors this season but at least there is someone who's uh got a sympathetic ear out there also i wanted to ask you because we were talking about this briefly oliver drake according to basebar references nickname presumably his players weekend nickname was bucko yeah his middle name is gardner which means his full name is oliver gardner drake it seems I know nicknames are supposed to be organic and they just kind of come up. This is sort of organic, but like Oliver Gardner Drake, obviously you go by Olive Garden,

which means obviously you go by breadsticks, right? Like, is there any alternative? He has to go by breadsticks. I don't know. Do you want to be associated with Olive Garden? Is that something, is that a brand you want to align yourself with? I don't know. Maybe my perspective is skewed because there's an Olive Garden? Is that something, is that a brand you want to align yourself with? I don't

know. Maybe my perspective is skewed because there's an Olive Garden in Times Square a few avenues away from me that is kind of a very typical tourist trap. And so people make fun of the tourists who come to Manhattan and then go eat at Olive Garden. But I don't know, wholesome establishment, I suppose. But actually, Bucko, I found a tweet by Mike Berardino, who says that bucko is short for buckaroo, which his father started calling him as a boy, and friends and family still call him that to this day. So I guess it has some sentimental meaning to him.

Well, I guess buckaroo breadsticks could be something that, it could be like his signature dish when he gets all the time to work on cooking when he's not. You know, all the time that you spend waiting to be claimed off waivers where you've got three days to 10 days to just kind of sit around in limbo. Learn to cook, learn to bake. Yeah. Anyway, Oliver Drake will forever be the answer to a trivia question or at least until someone else plays for six major league teams in one season. But sounds like he has a nice perspective on it. And I guess it's good to be known for something. I'm sure he hopes to be known for other things too. In a way,

Andy Wilkins kind of has bragging rights, not bragging rights that anyone would want, but Andy Wilkins belonged to six different organizations. So he made the same number of team changes as Drake, but Drake twice went to the Blue Jays. So Wilkins, in a way, went to the most unique destinations in one year. So there's that. It's interesting to me that you can have a guy like, these are two different pictures, but you can have a guy like Oliver Drake, who's just bouncing around constantly, not getting an opportunity to really settle in. And then you can have a guy who's like Blake Parker, similar sort of journeyman who just sort of wound up for several months as like the closer for the Angels. Now, Blake Parker is presently out of a job. He was not tendered a contract last week. So he's out there and he's likely to just kind of float around and look for

some sort of medium leverage bullpen role. like the the gap between oliver drake and someone who has been a closer in the major leagues for more than a week is really shockingly small so when you were out there in the market looking for bullpen help you can think that you have found the solution but you really don't know because all all someone like oliver drake has to do is like keep five more splitters down below the zone each season instead of hung over the plate. And then all of a sudden, you have a guy who can pitch the eighth or ninth inning. Yep. So to transition to higher profile transactions, in a sense, we've already gotten some of this stuff out of the way.

The Cebu Lions are posting Yusei Kikuchi this week on Tuesday morning. Well, we already talked about Yusei Kikuchi this week on Tuesday morning. Well, we already talked about Yusei Kikuchi, and it seems like as we speak, the Mariners are very close to finalizing the Robinson Cano, Edwin Diaz blockbuster, which we discussed on Friday, and nothing really has changed about that trade since then. Has your thinking evolved in any way

since we discussed it last? No, I still, I think it's a, this is a transaction that like cries out for a strong opinion. And I really don't think that there's one to be had. And I know we talked about this, so there's no reason to relitigate all of it. But I think, I do not think that the Mets are organizationally, what's the word, coherent. I don't trust the Mets operation because I don't trust Mets ownership and just a major league team is a reflection of its owners. But I don't think this is the transaction that gives away the fact that the Mets are run poorly. I think this transaction is fine and excusable. I am going through some numbers looking at how players have aged, looking at players who were good between the ages of 33 and 35. I have sort of the makings

of a spreadsheet here. I was curious about what happens when these players are 36 and what they do between 36 and 40, because you and I talked about how Robinson Cano was still quite good. I was looking for players who were about as good as Robinson Cano between 33 and 35, quite good i was looking for players who were about as good as robinson cano between 33 and 35 and their median war between those three years was 13.8 that's an average of about four and a half wins per season that's quite good that's about where robinson cano has been the past three years between the ages of 36 and 40 those uh those players i'm looking at a sample of 41 players here those players averaged 1.2 war per season that's bad uh they their their median was two about two and a half wins above replacement in their age 36 season that's what cano is coming up on and then they would get

worse henceforth there is of course one player who ruins this model that's barry bonds who was worth almost 10 wins a year in his late 30s and his first year of being a 40. So Bonds ruins everything. That's why I like looking at medians instead of averages here, because averages are skewed. Anyway, Cano can still play. He's going to get worse. And with Diaz, he is one of the, I don't know, three best relievers in baseball, but he's also volatile. So it's going to be really interesting to me to see what else the Mets do this offseason. And I think that's where it'll be possible to develop a strong opinion, because if they, like, trade Noah Syndergaard for an underwhelming package or something,

then it's just going to be weird, and they're not going to be in that great of a position. But the National League doesn't have super teams like the American League does, so I think the Mets can come out of this okay. And I think the Mariners can come out of this okay as well. And I guess we have another Mariners trade basically to start talking about. Yeah, they're just queuing them up one after the other. One more thing about Cano, because I wrote about him and his continued productivity. We all know the names of the guys who signed long-term deals in their 30s and then tanked and became immovable contracts. I mean, Mo Vaughn and Ken Griffey Jr. and Albert Pujols and Shinsu Chu and recently with some extension guys, David Wright, Miguel Cabrera, Dustin Pedroia. I mean, A-Rod the second time, Jacoby Ellsbury,

Carlos Lee, Jason Wirth, you could kind of reel off these names. I looked for guys who have maintained similar production as Canoe after signing a long-term deal in their 30s. So the only guys to outproduce Canoe in the first five years of a deal that was longer than five years and took effect in their 30s was Adrian Beltre, who, as we have discussed, is just an all-time great player with almost like an upside-down career trajectory, and Mike Messina, who was excellent in his Yankees free agent deal. And then if you look at guys who signed extensions that took effect at that point, you've got Jim Edmonds who continued to be very productive,

Joey Votto who has continued to be very productive. Edmonds and Beltre were the only two players to be better in the five years after they signed those contracts than in the five years before, although Mike Messina came close, as did Miguel Tejada, who was better than I remembered, really, after he left the A's. He was a really good player for the Orioles and then the Astros for a little while. I have Edmonds right here in the spreadsheet that I was looking at. Between the ages of 33 and 35, Jim Edmonds was worth about 21 wins above replacement, which is crazy. That's like seven

per season. And from between the ages of 36 and 40, he was worth a total of five, five wins above replacement. It all came crashing down pretty quick on Jim Edmonds, but nevertheless, he, uh, as, as you said, he was a very great player even after signing a contract for, uh, for a little while. Yeah. Generally, like it's a pretty small sample, even after signing a contract for a little while. Yeah. Generally, it's a pretty small sample, but guys who have signed a free agent contract of at least six years when they were 31 or older, as Canoe was, they've gotten about 40% worse in the first five years of that deal than they were in the five years preceding it. And then obviously they get worse from there and Canoe will probably get worse from there too. It's probably not going to be a great second half of this contract, but even the fact that he has maintained his talent and

production long enough to make this deal feasible. I mean, yeah, the Mariners had to kick in some cash and the Mets were sending back veterans and, you know, a lot of it was making the money work to complete this trade. But the fact that Cano could be moved and wasn't just like complete dead money that a team was trying to get off the books, but is still a player who actually projects to be a top five second baseman next year. I mean, that's pretty impressive. And obviously he had the PD suspension. And if you'd like to, you can credit some of that longevity to that. It's kind of hard to know whether that was responsible or how much it was responsible, but he has certainly defied the norms for players like him. And I know one of the

criticisms I've seen the Mets get for this is that why did you trade for Robinson Cano when you have Jeff McNeil? But if you look at the Mets, this isn't, it doesn't have to be a zero-sum situation because you improve the depth, right? So now McNeil, and provided he doesn't get traded, he can sort of float around. He can now be a super utility guy. He can back up Cano at second. He can back up Todd Frazier at third. And this also makes it more feasible for the Mets to succeed even if something goes awry at first base. Whether that means Peter Alonso isn't ready or Dominic Smith can't do anything, then Cano can go over there and McNeil can play second. So it's not like Jeff McNeil now is blocked or out of a job because the Mets got Cano.

That's kind of an overly simplistic way to think about it. I think this goes poorly if Diaz breaks, and Diaz could break. There's like a, I don't know, one in three chance Diaz just falls apart because his arm stops working. We can't predict those things. There's increasing reason to believe that no one will ever be able to predict those things. It could be that pitcher injuries just end up being like earthquakes. They happen, they're devastating, and we'll never be able to tell when they're about to take place.

But outside of that, I mean, there is an opportunity here. And all of a sudden, I mean, historically, the NL East has been pathetic. It's not quite as pathetic as the AL Central, but there have been a lot of years where the NL East was just bad. But the Mets clearly think they can win in 2019 the Nationals are already positioned to win in 2019 the Braves have picked up Josh Donaldson in case anyone forgot and they just made the playoffs so they'll be pretty good for 2019 and oh by the way the Phillies could sign Manny Machado or Bryce Harper and they are in the process of getting Gene Segura so yes there's going to be one very bad team in that

division next season, and the other four all are going to be thinking about the playoffs, which is fun. It's a nice antidote to last offseason's talk about how no one was trying. Yeah, and I guess what the Mariners are doing is kind of a bummer, and it was reported, I think, by Jeff Passan last month that the Mariners were considering doing something like this, just a full tear down. And we talked at the time like, wow, what does it look like if Jerry DePoto, the most active trader in baseball over the past few years, if he decides to tear down, what would it possibly look like? And DePoto tried to downplay that possibility. He said, we're just too talented to do that. Evidently not, because they have done that.

And even before the dust settles on this Canoa trade, it has been reported that there is another trade that has been agreed to. We don't have all the details as we speak, but the basic framework is that Gene Segura is going to the Phillies and Carl Santana and JP Crawford are going back to Seattle. So this does not preclude the Phillies getting Machado or some other big free agent. They have assured everyone of that, but this is just another step in the total teardown of the Mariners. And this is a guy who was extended by Seattle not all that long ago. I am interested. First of all, there's probably some whole,

like, oral history of the moment the Mariners decided to tear down article to be written because I do actually believe that Jerry DiPoto did not think this was going to happen at the start of the month. Something changed, whether that was his own perspective or maybe permission from ownership. I don't know.

I don't have any insight there. But I think you can evaluate all these moves individually and for all i know there's still more to come maybe the mariners are gonna trade mitch hanniker i don't know but you look at what they've been able to do and like they got omar narvaez last week who was just like quiet but he's already established at the major league level lots of years of team control malik smith has four years of team control justice she Sheffield, Eric Swanson, they're pretty close to being major league ready if they're not ready. Right now, JP Crawford is major league ready. He's been underwhelming since he was a top 10 prospect, but he could be an everyday player in the majors. And to the Meritor's credit,

even if you think maybe they haven't gotten exactly what they should in all of these deals, I think that they have done an interesting job of stocking up not just prospects, but good prospects or players who are ready to step into the majors pretty soon, if not immediately. And some people would say, well, that maybe that's a half measure because they're not tearing down completely and going all the way down to the lower levels of the minors and building up from the foundation. But I don't know what the pitching is going to look like for next season.

I think when this is all said and done, the Mariners could be like not a dreadful team next season, and they will have a lot of cost control getting to the majors or already in the majors. So I know it's hard to say what the Angels' future is because they have an improving farm system, but they could lose Mike Tratt in two majors. So I know it's hard to say what the Angels' future is because they have an improving farm system, but they could lose Mike Trout in two years. The A's are not a team that's going to be competitive over and over and over again because they just don't have the budget. The

Astros are tricky because you can try to evaluate their timeline and, you know, they've already lost some good players. They're going to continue to lose good players down the line, but they're so good at player development, maybe they'll never be bad. So you can't really bank on the Mariners getting good when the Astros are on the downturn because they might never be bad. So you can't really bank on the Mariners getting good when the Astros are on the downturn because they might never have a downturn. But it is at least interesting to see the Mariners getting so many players who they can see being part of 2019, because it means at least ideally for them, they might be able to sort of skip the one really, really terrible year that's usually part of this. And there are probably some Mariners fans out there

who are thinking, what is going on? This team just won 89 games and was contending for a playoff spot all season and looked like it was going to win a wild card for much of the season. And now suddenly we're blowing it up. As we discussed many times throughout the season, the Mariners were not a true talent 89-win team. They had a 77-85 Pythagorean record, and the other methods of determining what a team's expected record should be were no more optimistic about them. So that is obviously what is driving this. And really, there's no better time to tear down than when you have tried not to for 17 years and it has not led to a playoff appearance I mean at a certain point what you've been doing is not working and I think DePoto inherited a team without a really rich farm system and you

know he's just been kind of shuffling pieces around and just trying to put this team close to contention for the past few years and he's gotten close a couple times but it hasn't been enough and there just isn't enough here to build like a division favorite he's just kind of trying to cobble together a wild card contender so you almost have to do this at some point now when you've gone 17 years without making the playoffs and you're not that great a team in the present, when you blow it up, it's kind of hard to have a lot to blow up. I mean, the White Sox were kind of the exception a few years ago when they decided to do this because they had all these guys like Eaton and

Sale who were really good and under team control and signed to excellent extensions and they had all these guys like Eaton and Sale who were really good and under team control and signed to excellent extensions and they had a lot of value. The Mariners don't have as many people like that. So I don't know. I mean, every publication basically had the Mariners with a rock bottom dead last farm system last spring. I don't know where it will be this coming spring. I don't think it's going to be like a top tier system, but it won't be 30th anymore. So that's progress, I guess. Right. And I mean, that system won't get credit for having J.P. Crawford, who is a former top prospect, but has enough major league time. It's interesting. DePoto has been in charge of the

Mariners for three years, for the most part. And over the past three years, the Mariners are actually fifth in the American League in wins. And they're fifth by 12 over the A's in sixth place. And on down, the White Sox are in last. But of course, the Mariners have not made the playoffs. But, you know, you win 89 games. I know the Mariners got lucky. We all know the Mariners got lucky this past season. But most of the time, 89 wins does get you to at least one playoff game.

And they came very close a few years before that. lucky this past season but most of the time 89 wins does get you to at least one playoff game and they came very close a few years before that so and on the one hand you could say depoto has done a good job of getting a competitive team out of an organization that was in terrible shape but nevertheless here we are i wasn't sure if the mariners would ever agree to do the full rebuild because they've already did this a decade ago and it went horribly but it is kind of exciting to to see because they you just don't like to see those teams stuck in the middle i think there was when the the second wild card was first introduced there was an argument in favor of just trying to be in the middle because you could make the wild card game

and then anything was possible but i think increasingly it no longer feels like that's a winning strategy because you just get your ass beat in by the yankees in that wildcard game and then you move on to whatever you do the next year so in this era of of super teams and just dominant teams in the american league doesn't really make sense to try to win 85 games and hope for wildcard spots so good for the mariners for making a choice and making the difficult choice. And we'll see if they lower ticket prices for next season, because a lot of people aren't going to want to watch this team. Yeah. And Segura has kind of had a strange career. This is actually the fourth time he's been traded, which is kind of a lot for a 28-year-old who was a pretty highly rated prospect and has been a very good player.

I mean, he's had kind of an up and down career. I mean, he's suffered some off the field tragedies. He lost a young son. And I think that affected his performance as it would anyone's. So there were years where he didn't really hit and was just kind of a fielder first. And then over the past few years, he has been one of the very best shortstops in baseball, who is still a pretty good fielder,

but also is one of the better hitters at the position, was an all-star this year. So it's been an unusual trajectory. But at this point, Sigura is a really, really good player who would be a big upgrade over what the Phillies got from Crawford last year. Right. This kind of a limited market. You look at what the rumored trade return is from the Phillies for Segura and you might say, oh, that's kind of underwhelming depending on what you think about J.P. Crawford. But look in the American League, for example, for teams that might be looking for a shorts up.

Red Sox? No. Yankees no rays no indians no astros no a's no you can go to the national league braves they're happy with their shortstop nationals are happy with their shortstop the cubs are happy with their shortstop the cardinals have a shortstop the dodgers have a shortstop the rockies have a shortstop you're looking at like the phillies make sense as a trade destination obviously and like the brewers makes sense as a trade destination but outside of that there's really not a an expansive market for a guy who's still 29 and is in the black in terms of his value for a little while yeah going going into his age 29 season but yeah there's there's something a little similar segura and and cano because as as we talked about a lot of people will refer to Cano

almost derisively and say like oh why did the Mets trade for like a first baseman or a DH but his defensive numbers are better than that and like Segura I've heard a lot of people saying that Segura is probably not long for the shortstop position but by the numbers he's basically average now the numbers aren't perfect but whether it's DRS or UZR, he's fine. He's not good, but he's not a disaster. He's just a fine shortstop. But, you know, teams have their own evaluations. The word gets around. We sort of get an inkling of what those team evaluations are through the rumors, through people who say that he might not be long for shortstop. His steals have gone down. Segura once stole 44 bases. bases last year he stole 20 and was caught 11 times

etc so you know he's got a an unusual build but he's got really good contact skills a little bit of pop and he's been an above average hitter for three years in a row so if and when this goes down i'm going to be interested to see what the full terms are but there's been talk that carlos Santana is going back, which is, I mean, interesting because Santana could help the Mariners right away, but they could also try to move him around. I don't know. On the one hand, it seems like DePoto is trying to get everything done before the winter meeting, so maybe he can just not go, but I'm not sure that Jerry DePoto can ever stop making trades. trades. Yeah, I mean, Santana, he's clearly in decline. He's not a very good hitter anymore for a first baseman, but he's very durable. And this is a team that just had Ryan Healy. So if they do keep him, he might be an upgrade or maybe they'll try to eat part of his contract and send him somewhere else for a prospect. We'll see. They're just coming up with another way to block Dan Vogelbach here. It does seem like the Mariners will be saving some money in this deal,

unless there's more to it than we know right now. One last point on this, because we've talked about how strange it is to discuss DePoto and all these Mariners transactions, while as far as we know, the team and DePoto himself are still the subjects of an active investigation by MLB into the allegations by Lorena Martin of racist and sexist comments and behavior. And DePoto was not just implicated in those allegations. He was very specifically charged with comments that would be appalling if they were true. And obviously, we were not there. Obviously, we were not there. We do not know the truth of the situation. But the fact that he is being allowed to do this teardown, to conduct this while this investigation seems to still be going on, I mean, it suggests to me that I guess ownership is not concerned about this? You'd have to think that, I mean, if they thought there was a real possibility that these allegations were going to be corroborated, in which case DeBoto would certainly lose his job, you wouldn't want that guy overseeing this sort of franchise-altering direction change here. And particularly because of the nature of the accusations, right, where there's this bias against Dominican players specifically.

And now DePoto has just traded the team's two highest profile Dominican players. Like, can you imagine if evidence came out that supported those accusations, how bad ownership would look? I mean, even if they got rid of DePoto, How bad ownership would look? I mean, even if they got rid of DePoto, they would have let him continue to be the GM, trade these Dominican players when those allegations were already out there. I mean, there's no coming back from that PR-wise. actually happened and what's true and what isn't. And we're reserving judgment until we find out as much as we can about the situation. But you'd have to think that ownership does not expect the other shoe to drop here and for DePoto to come out looking really terrible. Right. There are essentially two options here. One is that ownership is content with their internal review of the circumstances and they have decided there's actually no validity, no merit to the accusations that everything is fine. One is reminded that the Mariners team president and CEO was implicated in a summer article about old sexual harassment allegations that involved him and some other people who worked for the Mariners years ago.

That team president and CEO, Kevin Mather, was ultimately promoted to a new job. Now, you know, he's undergone counseling or he's, you know, team press releases have tried to whitewash things as much as they can and you know maybe maybe he's better maybe he's learned for all the experiences and whatnot but the Mariners ultimately were already in a situation where it was a bad look to have allegations against someone who was promoted before any of this came to public light and now of course I don't know what the status is of the league investigation. We're never really given updates justifiably. So I don't know if the league is already in there, if they've already started, if they're already finished. I don't know if do we expect like a statement to say the Mariners have been cleared of all the charges.

I think I remember the league was investigating what assault claims against Yasiel Puig a while back. And then ultimately they determined that there was nothing to it. And we found out about that, but I don't remember if they made a statement about it. So anyway, if you're a league source out there who's listening, feel free to let us know what the status is of your investigation into the Mariners. But meanwhile, it's either the Mariners are involved in a horrible, unethical, immoral cover-up, or they have decided actually Jerry DiPoto and his staff are just fine, and we don't think anything is going to come of this, and so of course we're going to allow them to conduct this tear down. And I'm going to guess

it's mostly that one, but you can never write off the possibility that everyone just sucks. All right, and last thing, some news just broke. As we were speaking, the Dodgers extended Dave Roberts. And normally we don't talk about managerial moves like this. Roberts had already had his option picked up for 2019, but now he will be under contract for an additional three seasons. So through 2022, I mentioned this only because you would have thought coming out of October that Dave Roberts was like the worst manager in baseball, that the Dodgers had to get rid of him, that they'll never win a World Series with Dave Roberts. there were a lot of fans who felt that way, certainly, and criticized his decision-making in the World Series. And no one has a bigger stake in Dave Roberts being good or bad than the Dodgers front office. And they have just decided that one of their top priorities of the winter was making sure that Dave Roberts would continue to be this team's manager for a long

time, which again, doesn't mean that they're right, that it's a great decision, but there's so much that we don't know about these decisions, about what managers do behind the scenes. There's just no way to know. And the people who do know or who know as best as anyone can have decided that he's the best man for the job, which I wrote about this during the playoffs. We talked about it, just the difficulty of second guessing. And a lot of the things he was criticized for, I think, made some sense and were justifiable. But it just goes to show, I mean, the disconnect between the typical fans or many fans' perception of their manager and how the manager actually is or how

the front office views him is often extremely wide. I would have gotten a kick out of it if you said, well, the Dodgers extended Dave Roberts. We don't normally talk about these things. And then we just stop. I also, I think that the Dodgers are an interesting exercise. This is about more than just Dave Roberts, but they're an interesting exercise in managing fan expectations because as we have talked about several times,

the Dodgers have won the National League West for six consecutive seasons. Now, Dave Roberts has been the manager for the last three of those seasons, and only once did they win more than 95 games, and once they also won more than 100 games. But in an era that really is still defined by a lot of parody i know that there have been tears in in the recent season or two between the best and the worst but a lot of teams are trying to win and even more important than that a lot of teams have come around to sort of the the freedman kind of thinking or the money ball

kind of thinking like teams increasingly are thinking in a similar way meaning there are fewer competitive advantages to be had, at least in terms of intellect and team-building strategy. And in that environment, the Dodgers have won first place in their division six years in a row. They've been to the World Series two years in a row. They've been to the NLCS three years in a row. Dave Roberts has gotten a team to the NLCS,

Game 7 of the World Series and Game 5 of the World Series, and Game 5 of the World Series in his three years, but because he couldn't get that last win or those last three wins, he's been criticized as a failure, someone that the Dodgers should get rid of. Unquestionably, the Dodgers have been the most successful team in baseball over the past half decade, but they just haven't gotten over the hump, and that's just because fan expectations shift remember it was not that long ago that the dodgers were floundering with just like this corrupt fraudulent ownership group and they didn't have a very good major league product and they looked lost they are great they're like a team in the second or third best situation in major league

baseball and dave roberts has guided a team with a lot of different personalities and money and ego deep into the playoffs three years in a row. It's really, truly remarkable. And, of course, he's made some strategic mistakes. They all have. Everybody has. Just pull up, I don't know, no one searches message boards anymore, I guess, but pull up team blogs.

Just go to Twitter, whatever. Go to Twitter. Everyone, go to Twitter. Everyone hates everyone's manager. Everybody hates Aaron Boone, thinks Aaron Boone is a moron for the Yankees winning 100 games and then losing to the Red Sox in the playoffs. So if the last thing that you have to criticize is your own manager, then you are either a Cardinals fan, it's justified, or you are a fan of the other teams. And that just means that your, your roster is pretty good. All right. So we will take a quick break and then we will be back in just a moment

with Oliver Drake, who checking to make sure. Yep. He is still a Toronto Blue Jays pitcher. We'll be right back. rare, cause nothing else could compare, not that I'm aware of. This must be rare, cause nothing else could compare, not that I'm aware of. Seems like we've traveled for days till we finish our work. So we are joined now by Oliver Drake, who is back with Blue Jays, hopefully for a lot

longer than he was the first time around. Oliver, thank you for coming on. No problem. Glad to be here. So how's your year been? Anything out of the ordinary happen? Just constantly on the move. So kind of a home base every new month, it seems. And yeah, it was an interesting year. Yeah, I can imagine. So you were with the Orioles organization for nine years, which is a long time to be with one team in this era. And I assume you

got used to things there. And then all of a sudden, things could not have gone more differently over the past couple of years. So from your perspective, how did this happen exactly? Yeah, I mean, I started out my career with the Orioles organization was there for a while, long enough that I pretty much knew everyone in the organization, knew the way everything worked. And then in 17, I got traded to the Brewers and basically stayed there all year. And so I was getting used to things there. And then this year, it was just from Milwaukee to Cleveland to Anaheim, then to Salt Lake City, then back to Anaheim, Toronto, and then ended the year with the Twins. And it was my wife's first year actually traveling with me during the baseball season.

And she kept joking that she didn't remember it being like that on any other teams I was on. So she got an experience of what the baseball life can be like for sure. Obviously, you being the pitcher, you're not in charge of your own transactions. But since you're not just doing this alone, do you feel some sort of sense of guilt when you have to talk to your wife and be like hey i'm sorry honey but we have to pack up and get moving again like how how from her perspective how does she not hold you like somewhat responsible for this sequence of transactions oh i mean i don't know i'm a i'm a lucky guy because she was uh she she was amazing this whole season and kind of kept both our lives together.

Because there were a lot of times I was on the move and she would end up packing up an apartment and finalizing everything so we could get out of there. Making sure cars were getting shipped. So having her with me as a part of this, she definitely saved me a lot during it. But there was definitely some of that that guilt feeling especially in cleveland because the day they dfa'd me we had just signed a lease to an apartment and she had spent all day on unpacking both our cars and setting up the apartment so i remember calling her after the game and she was so excited about how she had the apartment all unpacked everything everything was all set up. Oh, no.

And I kind of had to sit there and be like, well, we're about to start packing that all up again tomorrow morning. Yeah. So tell us about the logistics of this. How much did the teams help you make the arrangements? And at what point did you just say, all right, I'm not even going to bother unpacking anymore? And at what point did you just say, all right, I'm not even going to bother unpacking anymore? The team, fortunately, you know, every single one of them was amazing, was helping me get set up.

You know, when I joined the organization, they helped with apartments and anything I needed. But by the time we got to Anaheim, my wife and I just decided after we had two apartments two months into the season that it was probably time to just stay in the hotel and go from there and just see how the season played out. So we mainly just stayed in the team hotels the rest of the season, except in Salt Lake City. We ended up just doing that Airbnb there. But fortunately, I felt very fortunate that the teams were very helpful and understanding of the situation. So on July 26th, you were claimed off waivers by Toronto. And on July 30th, the Blue Jays designated you for assignment. Now, you're back with them now. You've already been with the Blue Jays in November and December, longer than you were during the season.

been with the Blue Jays in November and December longer than you were during the season but could you talk a little about the process of what it's like to then have to move to a team that does play in another country yeah that that one uh by then my wife and I kind of thought we were pros um at getting ready to move until uh when I told her that Toronto had claimed me I remember she just kind of had this look of like, uh-oh. And I was like, what's wrong? And she realized her passport was about to expire a week later. So that brought in a whole new logistic of, okay, how do we get this taken care of? And she ended up flying home while I met the team in Chicago.

And she was going into, we're from Massachusetts, so she went into Boston, and there was a way to expedite a passport. So she went in to do that so that she could meet me in Toronto when we came back home. But we ended up not meeting at the end of last season because two days later, I was back home waiting to see if I got claimed again, and that's when the twins met. So take us through one typical transaction. How do you find out about it? Who calls you? What's kind of the immediate step that you take? How quickly do you need to move to the next team?

How does all that work? Yeah, usually it's kind of weird how long it can take. Sometimes teams can try to trade you, and then you go on to the waiver wire. Yeah, usually it's kind of weird how long it can take. Sometimes teams can try to trade you, and then you go on to the waiver wire. So my understanding is to be on it as brief as three days, or it could take kind of 10 days of being in limbo. So there were some times when right after it happened, I would just fly back home, which was different, because I don't think I've ever been home in the past, you know, 15, 20 years during the summer because I've always

been away playing baseball, whether it was college or in pro ball. So being home in June and July felt a little weird, but we'd come home and we'd wait. And then every day, you know, if my phone rang, I'd look to see if it was the organization I was with who had just designated me. Because usually they're the ones who would let me know first. So when I was with Milwaukee, they called to tell me that I had been traded to Cleveland. Cleveland called to tell me that I had been claimed by the Angels and so on. So usually they give you a call and then the organization that picks you up will call shortly after that. and the organization that picks you up will call shortly after that.

And that's when the logistics of, all right, can you get here for tomorrow? Or how soon can you get here? And so most teams, it was, you know, you're there the next day and ready to rock and roll. So I'm curious, the Tampa Bay Rays claimed you off waivers on the first day of November, and then they designated you for assignment on the 20th, and that's how you wound up with the Blue Jays. Now, of course, there is no baseball happening in November. So is anything different in your life having been property for three weeks of the Tampa Bay Rays? No.

Getting kind of moving around in the offseason is kind of easy because nothing really happens. You don't have to be anywhere. It's just we're getting to the time where it'll start to be, you know, looking for places for us to stay in spring training. But other than that, it's a phone call, and it's just kind of, oh, I'm with a new team. And, you know, you just go about your normal offseason routine, and you don't have to worry about, like, packing up or anything.

It's just kind of now starting to look at different places to stay for spring training. your normal off-season routine and you don't have to worry about like packing up or anything. It's just kind of now starting to look at different places to stay for spring training. And do you have time to form any relationships or develop an affection for the city or the ballpark or something? Like at one of these stops, did you make a friend or something? And we're like, oh, I like that guy. And now I've got to leave. So this sucks. Yeah. I mean, that happens with every team got to leave. So this sucks. Yeah. I mean, that happens with every team you're on. You know, you go around. Obviously, the longer you're with a team, you develop closer relationships.

But I was fortunate, you know, that every team I went on, all the guys were awesome. And definitely as it continued, everyone kind of was very curious about what my year was like and, you know, there would be a lot of running jokes about it. So how did this affect your pitching exactly? Because, you know, your ERA probably didn't end up where you wanted it to be, but teams are looking at things other than that these days. And you actually pitched pretty well if you look at the peripherals. But how much did just being transplanted like this and having to work with different coaches and different catchers and just everything changing and just the uncertainty of not knowing where you're going to be from week to week, how does that get in your head or does it not?

You know, because you're trying not to live and die with every outing and wondering like, oh, if I have a bad one, am I going to be on the move again? Or, you know, how explain the catchers exactly how you like to pitch and then getting an understanding of what you like to do. And then the hardest part was probably the in-between teams when you're sitting there and you're waiting around and you're trying to find someone to play catch with or stay sharp. and you're trying to find someone to play catch with or stay sharp because I'd go, I'd pitch in the game, and then it'd be almost two weeks before my next appearance in a game, and you're stepping in, and you've got to get major league hitters, so you have to find ways to get those guys out and stay sharp. But I kept joking that a lot of times when I was home, my catch partner was a fence at my old middle league field

because I'd just go there and throw some baseballs against it and just try to stay ready. So at least speaking psychologically, given what you went through, you set a record for the most teams played for in a season. That's a fun one, goes on your plaque. But what percentage of the days do you either wake up or go to bed feeling like, all right, this is good, a lot of teams want me versus what percentage of the days do you either wake up or go to bed feeling like, all right, this is good, a lot of teams want me, versus what percentage of the days do you feel like, oh, this is bad, a lot of teams don't want me? How do you maintain perspective on this? I mean, I always try to stay real positive.

You know, you take the ups and the downs, you know, in this game and just in life in general, you know, you can have good days, going to have bad days. And I'm very fortunate to have a strong support system from my wife to my family and my friends. So, you know, even when times get tough, they stay super optimistic and that definitely helps get you in a positive mindset. So really it was just kind of the support from them that made it a lot easier. You talk to your agent very frequently throughout this process and say, hey, can I do anything about this? Can you help me stay on a team for more than a month at a time? I mean, obviously, you know, his hands are kind of tied too,

but are you just kind of texting like, hey, hear from anyone? You know where I'm going? I mean, a lot of that stuff kind of out of both of our hands. You know, we can't really do anything about that. So we just be talking about it. you know where i'm going i mean a lot of that stuff kind of out of both of our hands you know we can't really do anything about that so we just we just be talking about it you know we'd laugh kind of about how just you know crazy it is you know he he kept telling me i think after the third time that he you know not often you see guys get cleaned that many times and it's been about three more times since that so it's we just kind of laugh and joke

about it and uh just kind of wait for a phone call to find out where we're going next you you had mentioned a few answers ago you talked about had forming relationships with with the catchers on your teams and now you spend about a week and a half in triple a this past season but at the major league level alone by my count you threw to 11 different catchers, which is even more than two per team. And the most innings you threw to any single catcher was 12 and a third to Mitch Garver in Minnesota. So understanding the importance of the pitcher-catcher relationship, you're spending so little time with these guys that these guys generally don't really know much about you or your repertoire. How difficult is it to get on the same page?

And who's calling the game when you're making your first and second appearance with a new team? Yeah, I mean, it is tough. Fortunately, I'm not a guy with a ton of pitchers. So I try my best to explain with them beforehand what I like to do in certain situations and then they also try to use their knowledge about the hitters and what my strengths are and

how that matches up fortunately you know catchers in the game nowadays a lot of them work so hard and they put together game plans on hitters and they you know really want to know how a pitcher's strengths match up against a weakness but it definitely also puts some more um focus on my end towards how to get hitters out because i had to realize the catcher and i aren't going to have the relationship built up until we spend some time together so i had to kind of you, put in more homework with what hitters I was facing, how my strengths play against them and how I'm going to get them out. So it just kind of put a lot more on my end of it, especially early on in the beginning. Yeah. You should have had a pamphlet printed or something like, hi, I'm Oliver. Here's what I throw. Here's what I like

to throw. Yeah, exactly. Like a blanket, a blanket, like resume almost, kind of like that. Yeah, right. So since you played for five different organizations in one year, I mean, teams do things differently. They have different use of stats and different managerial styles and coaching styles. Was it just kind of the same wherever you went or were there dramatically different routines or atmospheres or like, do you get a sense of how a clubhouse is compared to another clubhouse and is it dramatically different from team to team? Yeah, that's kind of a neat thing. Like I said, I started my career with one organization for so long. I only saw one way about going about the business.

So now I've definitely gotten to experience a handful of organizations. And there's some similarities. There's some differences. It's kind of cool to see the way everyone kind of does the same thing differently. So some teams use information and the analytics differently. So it was neat to kind of get, you know, a couple of different organizations kind of looking at the same info of my stats, particularly in being like, oh, this is what we like. And then someone else might have a different opinion, but it definitely takes a little time to get there. So there are a few

organizations that I didn't get a fully clear understanding of how they went about the business because I wasn't there that long. But it's cool to see, you know, how six or seven different organizations run things. Yeah. And you hear about that often when a player gets traded to a new team, maybe they'll sit him down and say, hey, we think you should throw this pitch more. Have you thought about maybe you thought about maybe putting this pitch in a different location or something like that? Did you have any of those meetings when you arrived at a new team? And did teams recommend different changes that they wanted you to make?

Or was there not even time? A lot of them were great in the terms of, hey, you just got here. Let's get you settled in and be comfortable and go about your business the way you do it. And then after we get a feel for you and seeing you pitch a handful of times, then they would start to suggest things or present me with the analytics or what their accounts and their research teams felt were my best attributes. And so it was great in that terms where no one just threw anything right at me because it was a lot to just kind of getting settled and taking care of moving with my wife.

And, you know, I wanted to get out there and just try to get people out and get back to pitching. And then they were a lot of times going to present me with whatever information they had so if you're taking a bigger picture look at this you you were drafted out of the naval academy and there have been you were one of only two mlb players ever drafted out of the naval academy you played along with mitch harris in school there was also someone in 1921 named nemo gains who came out of the Naval Academy that's a while ago you probably don't know him very well but now you were you were drafted out of your uh

your sophomore season and did you go to school with the ambition of the understanding that you were going to try your hardest to make the majors or was it sort of a a plan 1A or plan 1B? I knew that I would have been sophomore eligible because I went to a prep school and reclassified my sophomore year. So I was a year older than the rest of my class when I showed up in college. But I never really thought it was actually possible for me that to happen. I came out of high school in Massachusetts and I was a good player around the area, but I didn't really have many, I didn't have any pro teams looking at me out of high school. Naval Academy was my only D1 offer. And I went there just because it was

the best of both worlds for me. I got to play D1 athletics and I also got to get the best education. So I showed up on campus there pretty much 100% committed to having to graduate from there and then serve for the time afterwards. But I also knew in the back of my mind that I was going to be soft and eligible for the draft. But fortunately, when I got there, the pitching coach, especially Scott Sweetholm, really helped me out. And I made some big gains, started throwing harder and popped up on some scouts' radars. Yeah. So did that background make what you went through this year any easier? I mean, I guess, you know, if at one point you thought you were headed for

a military life, you would have been used to being transferred and not knowing where you were going to be from year to year. So in a sense, this is kind of the other career where things end up like that. And just, you know, coming out of the 43rd round of the draft, which doesn't even exist anymore at this point. And I guess there were teams probably that didn't realize you were draft eligible because you had pitched a year in high school before the academy. But still, to come out of the 43rd round and not be a top prospect, I mean, does that help kind of maintain perspective and say, well, this is weird and this is kind of tough on me and my wife, but hey, I'm in the big leagues and, you know, I beat the odds just getting here. Yeah, exactly. You know, it's kind of a positive outlook. And, you know, there's still everyday aspects of my life where, you know, the lessons I learned from those two years at the Naval Academy, they, you know, they affect me still

to this day. And, you know, you just kind of, I mean, I'm sure for the rest of my life, there will be experiences I have and, you know, hard times and good times. And, you know, I can look back and just look, oh, like the Naval Academy definitely helped prepare me for these moments. Because the education I got for two years was something I couldn't have got anywhere else. So there have been a lot of things along this ride that that's helped me with. You had said earlier that thankfully you're not a guy who throws a lot of pitches, and for the most part you're a four-seam and a splitter guy, and you have a couple other breaking balls that are infrequent.

But at least for a lot of players coming up, a splitter is a relatively uncommon pitch, and I was just wondering when it was that you decided you were going to dedicate basically half of your repertoire to the split. Yeah, it started out, I think I first picked it up in 2010 around the end of the season because I was a starting pitcher and I just got sick of not having a change up. I think every start I would be trying a different change up grip. I just couldn't make it work. And I don't know what it is about the split. I just picked it up one day in a bullpen. I said, I'm going to try

this. And ever since then, it's kind of had success with it. So I started throwing it probably almost half the time. Once I got converted to a reliever, the coaches in the Orioles system kind of looked at me and were like, well, if you're going to be a reliever, let's focus on your two best pitches. What are they? And I said, it's a fastball and a splitter. And fortunately, I've had success with it. So you didn't pitch for any terrible teams this year, but you started out with a couple of teams that made the playoffs and you finished up with a few teams that didn't. I don't know whether you had time to even start to feel like part of the team at some of these stops but was there a different atmosphere at all when you're pitching for a team that is leading its division

as opposed to a team that's already been eliminated or are you just kind of trying to focus on what you can do and hoping you'll be there the next day you know i was fortunate where every team i went to uh you know was just focused on winning um even at the end of the year when teams are out of it you're still you're still trying to win games because winning baseball games is what it's all about and it's a lot more fun winning games than losing so in the beginning you know everyone's chasing it and then at the end when teams are out of it all the teams that I were on, they were still focused on winning and going out there and playing their best. So that's kind of what it's all about. Everyone wants to win. And you also

want to go out there and perform the best of your abilities. Right. You'd figure by the end, even if the team is out of it, everyone at that point is playing for a job. You're trying to stay employed the next season. Certainly you're pitching for a job. So, you know, it's a different motivation, but the same motivation in a way. And when you were talking about the splitter, you said that you picked it up when you were a starter. But of course, in 2013, the Orioles had you make the permanent move into the bullpen. And now it was that move that allowed you to have success immediately. And shortly thereafter, you were able to get your way to the majors but i was curious what it's like when you were you're 25 you knew you were a late round draft pick it was already going to be difficult maybe for you to get the same notice and attention but how how did it feel how did you come

to terms with shifting from being the guy who's in charge of a baseball game to working into a more limited capacity in the bullpen was that a blow to the ego or did it just feel exciting that you could have a new route to the majors well that kind of that came after I had a shoulder surgery in 2012 so after I basically missed three quarters of the year in 2012 due to the surgery so after that I knew my career kind of as a starter was going to be over just due to the fact that my age was getting up there and I probably wouldn't be able to throw that many innings my first year back and get built up to enough where being a major league starter was not realistic for a couple years.

So when they presented moving to the bullpen, I was all for it just because I knew that would be a quicker route for me to be able to get up to the major leagues. And I just kind of shifted focus then from having to be worried about going through a lineup a handful of times to just kind of go out there and shut teams down for one to two innings. So have you thought at all about rule changes that could prevent this sort of carousel that you've been on this year? I mean, it seems to happen to

someone every year, maybe not quite to the extent that it happened to you this year, but are there any ways in which you wish, I don't know, the CBA could be changed or transaction rules could be altered to make this either less likely to happen or I guess less disruptive when it does happen? You know, shorter waiting periods or something, the days when you're just sitting around trying to figure out where you're going to go, anything like that? No, I haven't really put any thought to that you know it's just kind of after uh you know it started happening my wife and i just tried to look at it as you know in the most positive light that we could so at the end of the day i was still fortunate enough to be in clean by teams and playing in the big league so you know that's that's what i want to do and so i'm just happy teams are giving me the opportunity and you know i'm just going about it and it's

kind of just the nature of the beast that's the way the business is set up right now so it's not really my job to be concerned with the rule changes in that i'm just my job to show up and pitch and get people out whenever i get the chance now that you've you've entered your your early 30s i understand you might be feeling increasing competition from younger pitchers around the sport. But one thing, aside from pitching for five different teams this past season, one thing you have seen in your own career, you've always been able to strike guys out. And your velocity has actually played up a little bit the last few years. You've gained about a mile and a half from where you were when you first debuted in the majors.

I was curious if you could speak to what you think would be responsible for you being able to have your stuff play up in the last couple years. It's just, you know, I got a real good off-season program. I work out at Cressy Sports Performance up in Hudson, Mass. And I'm fortunate that this gym is 45 minutes from my house. There's not really many baseball-specific gyms up in the New England area. So the staff here and the programs they write, the throwing programs, it's just kind of been really beneficial to my career.

So I think that's been a huge part of it. So they got a great staff here that come in and they look at you as an individual and they find out what works for you. And I've had success with them the past handful of years. I think I've been working out here since 2011. So they prepare me for the season. They keep me healthy throughout the season and feeling strong. And I've been fortunate to reap some of the benefits where, you know, as I've gotten older, I've had a little bit

of a tick up in the velocity, like you said. For someone who was in the minors for years and has dipped back down there and then been back up in the big leagues again, what sort of difference financially does that make to your life, just the difference between AAA and the majors? Even if you're not making great money by big league standards, any big league money is better than AAA money. So what kind of difference has that made in your life, if any? Yeah, it makes a lot of things, especially as you get older and you start trying to plan things out for your life, whether it's buying a house, starting a family. The way you can be financially changes drastically, whether you're in the minor leagues or the major leagues.

So you kind of got to be realistic with planning things out and err on the safer side of things. At least that's the way i look at it and uh just kind of hope for the best so but yeah that's definitely an uh an aspect that as i've gotten older and gotten married and you know life has progressed you know you start to look at that a little more the last thing i want to ask you you can correct me if i'm wrong but to my understanding it looks like you you never hit in college. You never hit in the minors. Why would you have hit?

But you did hit one time, June 28th in 2016. You came up. The Orioles were ahead of the Padres 11-1. You had the chance to hit against Kevin Quackenbush, and you lasted a mighty three pitches. You struck out. Looking at the video, you accepted it. You turned away. You went right back to the dugout. But you did take one swing. You made contact. Hit the ball video, you accepted it. You turned away. You went

right back to the dugout, but you did take one swing. You made contact, hit the ball foul, looked like it almost went fair. I was wondering, do you ever reflect on that bet at all, just as some sort of weird highlight or low light of your career? Do you ever think about Kevin Quackenbush, just call him in the middle of the night, talk about how he struck you out on three pitches? Yeah, I don't know him personally, but I remember coming in, I had just pitched an inning, and as I got to the top steps, I was informed that I was hitting third, which kind of took me back for a second,

but I was like, all right, here we go. So it was kind of a scramble, get me a helmet that fit, some batting gloves. The Orioles had a bat for the bullpen, so I grabbed that. And I remember sitting there that people are asking me about the last time I hit which was probably the fall of freshman year but yeah I walked up and the info I had been given was he's a four seed guy with a good curveball so when I got to two strikes I was uh I was like well he's probably gonna throw a curveball if it's down don't swing

because you're gonna to look pretty foolish. So he ended up painting it on the outside corner, and I kept looking. But I like to tell people I've never swung and missed in the big leagues because the one swing I took, I fouled it off. Right. So, Leslie, I guess you're back with the Blue Jays now. You know they must like you because they've acquired you twice this year. Do you have any sense, I mean, do you try to glean like where do I stand with this team or how are things going to shake out? I don't know what kind of conversations you had when you found

out that you were coming back to the team, but what's your level of confidence that this ordeal, this odyssey is over for the moment? Yeah. I mean, right now I had a good talk with them. So right now I'm preparing for spring training with them with the idea that I, I go in there and pitch well, you know, I can win a spot in that pen. You know, it's, it's nice to be claimed by a team for a second time because like you said, that makes you feel like they, you makes you feel like they like me. But at the same point, if there's one thing this year that's taught me,

it's don't get too comfortable too early. Like I said, it's getting to that time to start looking for a place in spring training. But at the same point, I think we're going to hold off for a little bit and wait to see as we get closer because I could get a phone call at any time. Yeah. Well, you just got half an hour closer to opening day without anyone calling you to tell you you've been claimed. So that's good news, I guess, unless someone called you and you ignored it because you were doing an interview. But I hope... Yeah, no, there were no phone calls.

ignored it because you were doing an interview, but I hope... Yeah, no, there were no phone calls. Okay, good. So I hope that that continues to be the case and that you have a more stable year, both for your sake and your wife's next year. But it's nice, I guess, that you've been able to kind of joke about it and maintain a positive attitude throughout this, because I can imagine that a lot of guys might get frustrated, which I'm sure you have, but you also seem to have kept some perspective on it. Yeah, for sure. So it was a crazy year, but looking back now, my wife and I got to go to places all over the country, a lot of cool cities. And looking back, we had a good year.

All right. Well, thanks very much for coming on, Oliver. No problem, guys. I appreciate it. All right. So we will take one more quick break, and then I will be back with Baseball Perspectives' Jonathan Judge to discuss BP's new hitting metric, DRC+, and why BP believes it's better than our existing hitting stats. Money don't follow sweat. Money don't follow praise. Oh, it don't follow the reason. People don't get what they deserve.

People don't get what they deserve. People don't get what they deserve. People don't get what they deserve. All right, so on Monday, Baseball Perspectives subjected all of us to yet another stat that we now have to remember and incorporate into our toolboxes. It is called Deserved Runs Created or Deserved Runs Created Plus. And here to explain why it is actually worth knowing about and why we should all pay close attention to it is Jonathan Judge of Baseball Prospectus. Hello, Jonathan. Hey, Ben.

Hello. So you have already written a pair of articles explaining this new metric and its advantages over some of the existing ones, but give us a quick summary. I have already received an email from one listener who said that he's busy and he hopes that we could have you on so he doesn't actually have to read anything. I encourage everyone to go read Jonathan's articles anyway, but you're here. So Deserved Runs Created, what is the big idea here? So Deserved Runs Created addresses a couple of problems that

we thought were sort of holding back hitter metrics. The first one is that we think that existing leaderboards are, I wouldn't call them a sham, but I think they're very misleading in that they sort of purport to report to you the contributions of all these players. And what they really are is just summarizing what happened on all the plays where that batter was hitting, which is fine. And it's not like it's misleading you into thinking Mike Trout is replacement level, but there's something about that that's a bit of a disconnect. The other thing is that not all baseball outcomes are equal. And I don't just mean in terms of run value. There are some of them that we know are far more likely to have been the result of the

batter's skill than others. likely to have been the result of the batter's skill than others. So strikeouts and walks, for example, really do tend to reflect a lot of batter and batter skill in part because they're sort of composite events that involve actually multiple sub-events to get there. Balls, strikes, fouls, etc. Whereas things like triples and singles are a lot more volatile and a lot more circumstantial. And if you sort of approach those events and sort of give credit for them somewhat in relationship to how likely it is that the hitter's own skill is driving that event, we find that as we measure it, the accuracy of the hitter metric starts going up, like way up. And when we discovered those two things, we, you know, we kind of said, this looks like we're onto

something and I've kept working on it and working on it. And now it's gotten to the point where we're really confident that it is going to provide a new level of insight that we think is really worth knowing about. So this is a similar stat to the ones people are used to, OPS+, WRC+, you can look up DRC+, and it is just on the same scale where 100 is average and higher is better. I guess the only thing people might notice just from scanning a leaderboard is that in general the range is a little lower the extremes aren't quite as high or quite as low so mike trout is still the best hitter in baseball and still course field is the best hitters park in baseball it's not dramatically changing our understanding of baseball although on that latter point this does seem to be friendlier to rocky's hitters check out

todd helton and lar Larry Walker, for instance. So that's interesting. But you would be a little less likely to see like a 200 or something than, say, a 180, which is, I think, where Mike Trout was, right? He was 203 using BP's old offensive metric, and now he's at a 180, but he's still first in both. And that stems from essentially this idea of giving partial credit in which there really is never, almost never full credit being

given on any one play, but there is a lot of it. And so inevitably, if you are assuming that a fair amount, not the majority of it by any means, but a fair amount of what's going on is just sort of random variants and hitting them where it isn't and things like that. You know, you're going to have less sort of skilled application to sort of move around and assign to different bins. So yeah, so it's a little bit more compressed than other metrics. And that's something you've seen elsewhere because OPS Plus, for example, has a more extreme range than WRC Plus, which sort of tries to be a little more careful in terms of the various categories that puts different events in. And DRC plus is more careful than WRC plus.

And perhaps not surprisingly, then the scale compresses a little bit more again. So you had already rolled out deserved run average, which is the pitching equivalent of deserved runs created. So now they're both out there, both sides of the equation, and they've both been rolled into baseball prospectuses, win value metric, wins above replacement player. So they are reflected in that. And is this kind of related to the age-old debate about predictiveness versus performance in season that people will rekindle every year when they're talking about, say, baseball reference pitcher war and fan graphs pitcher war? And how, well, if you're looking retrospectively and you want to say this is what a guy was worth, then you want the baseball reference version. what a guy was worth, then you want the baseball reference version. Whereas if you want to say, well, this one's more predictive, then maybe you want the fangrass version. It seems like what you are aiming to do here and perhaps have accomplished is kind of combining both of those things so that

this is more predictive, but it also is a better reflection of how the player actually performed. Yeah, it's both. And I think the problem with arguing over favoring one war because it's more predictive and the other one about more what it happened is I think both of those are incorrect. You know, the reliability. So let's so I mean, we wrote a long article about this a few months ago to try and put all this on an objective footing. It was called the expected contribution. And It was in early August. And what we kind of said was there are sort of three ways you can measure a statistic in sports, and particularly in baseball. You can look at its descriptive power, which is how well it describes, you know, sort of run scoring in the same year. You can look at how reliable it is in terms of how

similarly it rates the same players from year to year. Or you can look at its predictiveness, which is to say, how well does it predict actual run scoring in the following year? And I use year for convenience. It could be month, it could be week, it could be whatever unit of time that interests you. And so the thing is that those all three are not in and of themselves... I mean, first of all, they conflict with each other pretty obviously. And so the goal shouldn't be to say, well, I have to pick the one

that's most future looking, or I have to pick the one that's most past looking. What you should do is try to find one that maximizes all three of them. And because otherwise, what you're basically doing is I wouldn't say you're robbing Peter to pay Paul, but you're sort of selling out, you know, important parts of the metric. And what I would say is you actually don't have to choose between them. What you should be doing, the entire point of any MVP award, any war or war calculation is you are trying to figure out the actual probable contribution that the player made, period. probable contribution that the player made, period. That's it. And so that is what we're trying to do. And the thing is, if you are able to isolate what that probable contribution was, then you actually solve all of these other problems. Because guess what? When you get

the contribution right, you also pretty much tend to nail how well they're contributing to run scoring. And if you have their contribution right, then not surprisingly, they're going to contribute pretty similarly the next year. And they're also going to contribute to run scoring more accurately. So if you kind of keep your eye on the ball of the real issue, then you don't have to worry anymore about this, do I want predictive, do I want reliability? Because if you're doing it right, you can get all three. And that's what DRC Plus does. Yeah, right. So if you're looking at baseball reference war, for instance, and it's just assigning value to a pitcher based on how many

runs he allowed or his team allowed while he was pitching, people will look at that and say, well, that was his value during that year. But really, his value was whatever he contributed to that run prevention and drc dra they will try to get at that so that if there was a defensive contribution if there was a park contribution if there were other factors that were leading to that run prevention or run creation then it attempts to isolate that so it's just trying to isolate here's what this guy was actually worth almost separate from what actually happened because sometimes what happens is a little different from a guy's actual contribution to the play it's a fine distinction i guess but i think it's an important one i think so too said, I think there are still times when I would want to see true average or WRC plus

just to know what actually did happen during someone's plate appearances, just in terms of the outcomes. I mean, for comparison's sake, partly, but I think there's still applications for the stats that we're used to. So the only validation I have done of this stat is to look for William's Estadio and see where he ranks, which is, I think, the most important criterion here. So sorting all players, minimum 90 plate appearances last year. According to BP's old offensive metrics, he was the 38th best of all

players. According to DRC+, 35th best. So DRC Plus is capturing some extra value that William Vestidio was providing. So I like the stat. I think it makes a lot of sense. It checks out. So I know a lot of other people will want to see some deeper validation than that. I don't know why, but I think they will. And you all at BP have been very good about opening the books and putting all the code out there and explaining how you get to these things. And you haven't done that yet, but I assume that is in the works. It is. And there are sort of a couple of different ways to do this. And we keep, as you can tell, somewhat to people's frustration, we keep trying to find a new

mousetrap to build in that respect. So we've done a few things this time, upfront. We have created actually a sort of mini deserved leaderboard that converts DRC's opinion on these various events like singles, doubles, triples into sort of deserved average, deserved OBP, deserved OPS. We may regret doing that, but the point was to let people kind of see sort of what, you know, and I think maybe during the season, we might actually just break it down into deserve singles, deserve doubles, deserve triples, because that's actually what DRC is tracking. It's sort of rescoring each one of those events. And so one of our thoughts is, you know, rather than pretend that people really want to go and do linear algebra with us, which I'm pretty sure most people don't

want to do. What they do want to do, though, is they want to know what it's thinking. They want to look inside its brain, not all the way in, but at least the frontal area, and just figure out why it doesn't like it. And an answer such as, the metric doesn't buy your guy's nine triples last year and thinks it's more like five, I think people find that sort of reassuring because it's like, oh, I can kind of see that those are kind of flippy. Or, you know, he was walking at such an incredibly high rate that he was given a little more credit for that because that was considered to really reflect a skill that he has. Oh, I get it. So that's one thing that we're doing is trying to sort of actually tell you what components DRC seems to be impressed with. And we're giving you the runs above and below average also,

which is another way of sort of seeing the way it does that. And then having done that, and then giving you the benchmarks for ACUPR, you know, predictiveness and reliability, which hopefully tells you if nothing else that it's doing a good job. Then next week, what I want to do is start climbing into the code and sort of walking people through the process. Because it is somewhat elaborate. We had to sort of create our own modeling context to make this work. And I think it will be interesting to people who really enjoy

that sort of thing. Yeah. And so for the crotchety columnist who will write a column saying, no one can even calculate this stat. I mean, that is true. I can't, and very many people other than you can't. And even if you walk us through it and you put your code on GitHub or whatever, I won't be able to replicate it. So to a certain extent, I'm trusting you, which I do. But I guess I could see why someone might not if they don't know about your work and they can't follow the validation that you'll be presenting. But I think to a certain extent, we have to be comfortable with not being able to see completely transparently why a stat is saying something, which is something I'm not completely comfortable with.

something, which is something I'm not completely comfortable with. I mean, if we're looking at batting average, it just reflects hits over at bats. And sure, some of those hits probably shouldn't have been hits, but they were hits. So it's measuring something concrete that actually happened. Whereas the mixed model techniques that you've been using for the suite of BP stats, it's factoring in a whole bunch of things that could influence a play, and then it's spitting out, okay, here's what this guy was responsible for. And it's kind of difficult to say exactly why it's saying that in some cases. If that makes people uncomfortable, I completely understand why. It just kind of comes down to, well, do you want the most accurate and predictive stat? Because if you do, it might just be so complex that it's hard to reduce to its components in the way that the traditional

stats that were not as telling were. Yeah. And I think the, I was thinking about this, this problem myself, sort of leading up to just the release of this statistic. And one analogy that I, that I found kind of comforting was to say, you know, I don't think there are very many people in this world or among baseball fans who know what a Markov process is. On the other hand, I think almost all of them know about cruise control and like it, and they turn their cruise control on. And why do they do that? Is it because they understand what a Markov process is? No, it's because they understand that from a performance standpoint, the speed remains the same

and they don't go wildly accelerating into the vehicle in front of them. And so therefore, from a performance standpoint, whatever the hell these little mice are doing in there to make the engine go the same speed, it must be OK. So I guess what I would offer to people is that that's why we do the

benchmarks, because those benchmarks are things that anybody can go and download any of these stats from fan graphs or from the baseball savant, baseball reference, or BP. And you can run those through the machine. And the fact is, either you are matching up next year's results better, or you're not. And there's really no substitute for that. And the reason why we started going to the benchmarks was because we really felt that baseball statistics was sort of going off the rails and that people were deciding that they liked statistics, not based on whether it worked or not, but because whether they liked the way it was explained or if they liked the way that it was marketed and it seemed cool.

And none of which should have- I don't think any of these stats seem cool. I got to break it too. Thank you. Yeah. Well, certain others, maybe more so. But my point just being that we are really trying to give people the sort of objective assurance that even if they don't understand everything that's going on, that these people do, and more importantly, these people have proved it to me, not because they were really earnest about it or because you know ben thinks that they're really very bright but because you know we went and we just said look you you know you just look at how we rate them this year and how we rate them next year and how many runs that they score and we're either right or we're not and if we right much, much more often than the other metrics, including batting average and including WOBA, then, you know, chances are that's kind of like your cruise

control. It's going to keep going at 62 miles an hour and it's going to keep working. And maybe eventually you'll be okay with that. We'll see. So what are some of the factors that DRC takes into account that other stats currently do not, like, for instance, the quality of the opposing pitchers, which seems like a big one. It is. And so the quality of the big sort of three factors that I would say sort of repeat in every single model are the quality of the opposing pitcher and the quality of, not the quality, but the nature of the stadium, controlling for handedness. In each and every single one, you have three sort of flagship variables that are always present.

The identity of the batter, the identity of the pitcher, and the identity of the stadium controlling for the handedness of the batter. And then depending on the event, we added a few more. And I would say somewhat in contrast to DRA, which partly due to all of the pitch tracking technology has a lot of additional covariates. DRC really doesn't. We actually use the exact same formula for DRC in 2018 that we do for 1921. And that is also convenient because it makes it easy to compare but it's also we just found that very basic numbers actually work best so you know when we when we have it we will control

for example on walks and strikeouts we will control for framing when we have it because that is helpful when we have home runs we will control for pitcher ground ball rate and for temperature because those help but a lot of the others you, we will control for pitcher ground ball rate and for temperature because those help. But a lot of the others, we might control for two or three additional things maximum. Other than that, it's just sort of the mathematical framework that is really doing most of the work. So I think that sometimes people kind of get the image that we're like mad scientists back

there sort of throwing this in and seeing what happens and throwing that in and seeing what happens. And this time I really think the math is doing the work. It really is. And we're trying to find things that really aren't too complicated, but that we can just sort of make it aware of. And that seems to really be what's driving the results. Another byproduct of continually improving stats is that stats change and win values change and what we think about players change. And that's another thing that I think makes this a tough sell to some fans is that a batting average will be the same forever unless, you know, an extra hit is discovered that wasn't recorded or something. But a war or a warp will change almost on an annual basis and sometimes significantly. That can be a feature in that we are continually improving our estimates here. And if we know more about baseball than we used to, then why should we not update our stats to reflect that? On the other hand, it is hard to stake out a position on something knowing that your basis for that position may change. For

instance, I saw some listeners in our Facebook group were just discussing, evidently according to the new baseball prospectus, Wins Above Replacement player Miguel Cabrera's warp for 2012 and 2013 are now higher than Mike Trout's for those years. I don't know exactly what changed there. I didn't look into it too deeply. But, you know, we all staked our opinions and reputations on, oh, Mike Trout is the most valuable player. And it's old school people who are saying that Miguel Kibera is better. Now, suddenly, the stats have flipped

on that specific question. So this is just something that I guess we just have to get used to. And I don't know if we just kind of couch our opinions on things because what we're saying now, I mean, maybe five years down the road, there's a better data source that you incorporate into this

and it changes things again. Yeah. And what I would say is that, you know, I think this is actually a big topic internally for us. To those who aren't aware of it, I actually first presented a draft version of this at Saber Seminar, which is the seminar that everybody who loves baseball and baseball analysis should go to at least once in their life in Boston in August. loves baseball and baseball analysis should go to at least once in their life in Boston in August. And it was well received. A lot of the performance numbers were somewhat similar to what they are now. But we went back and it went through the internal BP review process, which is brutal. And there were many themes that were said, you have to fix this, you have to double check this, you have to be able to explain this. And one of them was Trout. And it was, you know, Trout was getting, you know, penalized a little bit. And yes, he was dipping below Miguel Cabrera, at least in hitting in it, you know,

for a year or two. And to that, I would, I guess I would, I would respond and say, number one, you know, the pitch, the case for Trout, as I think Rob Arthur finally reminded me, was not just that he was a really good hitter, just that he was a really good hitter, it's that he was a really good hitter and a center fielder and good base runner while he was at it. So from an all-around standpoint, I think Trout remains extraordinarily valuable. The only reason why he wouldn't be on top for some of our metrics is because occasionally we have a catcher who really hits the Dickens out of the ball. is because occasionally we have a catcher who really hits the Dickens out of the ball. And because we count framing, if Buster Posey has a great year, Buster Posey can beat anybody.

At least he used to be able to. So I think that having Miguel Cabrera sneak ahead of Trout in hitting is hardly the end of the world. I think what makes Trout Trout is that he's doing this all as a center fielder. In terms of having stats creep up on you or not, yeah, I have that concern. On the other hand, I would say that if you went all in on OPS Plus or WRC Plus, and those kind of arguably led you astray to some extent, I mean, I don't really know what the response is to that. It seems to me it has to be that you have to then say, okay, how can I do better next time? Not that you were doing poorly by any means. Mike Trout and Miguel Cabrera were both fantastic hitters. And I actually think if you look, maybe that's where I point people to the standard deviation that we report around all of the DRC values and say that it's pretty rare that the top five or 10 batters in a season are not going

to be overlapping within their respective error bars. So, you know, the idea that one of them was ever definitively better than the other in hitting is frankly just kind of ridiculous. And I think that to the extent people really thought there was some handed down by Moses answer to that question, I think the problem may be how certain they ever thought the answer was, not so much how they chose to answer it. Yeah. With Trout versus Cabrera, I mean, even when you factor in all of it now, Cabrera is ahead just in warp, which takes into account everything. So it's not just the hitting, but if you look at Trout's defensive stats, his fielding runs above average

values for those years, he was negative according to baseball perspectives, his fielding stat. And that would not be the case if you looked at other fielding stats for those years, probably. So that's, I guess, another issue is that you haven't applied the DRA, DRC formula to fielding yet. So we're still melding these new advanced ways of looking at things with sort of a very old school way of looking at things. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. Defense remains challenging.

And maybe defense will be this year's project. We'll see. Yeah. Defense will be this year's project. We'll see. So before we get to deserved defensive runs or whatever, one last thing about DRC. It is not currently taking into account launch angles or exit velocities, any of the stat cast data. It could conceivably.

You could put that all into the model, but you are not right now. And I know people will have questions about that. Any particular reason why you're not? And if you were, do you think it would help? Well, we haven't asked for and we certainly haven't received permission to incorporate it. So that's an excellent reason. Getting sued is bad. So I don't know what the reaction would be to that. I mean, I think it's less of a deal when someone's writing up a fantasy column or something and they sort of work these metrics into their sort of personal formulas and write a column about them. I don't think anyone cares

about that. I think that however, when baseball prospectus then starts using something as an input, I think that's a little more complicated. So I guess what I would say is we don't do it right now. I mean, in part, I will have to admit, I was somewhat delighted that we could do better not having them. To me, that sort of makes a point that's important, frankly, about the future of public analytics and the fact that as so much of public baseball analytics work seems to be vanishing or becoming harder and harder to do or we get very limited amounts of information, at least in the opinions of a lot of people, that frankly the only thing we have that keeps public

analytics going is the use of superior methods. And so if even if we don't always use or have available to us all the tools that a team would have, as long as people are doing advanced research and using the best methods, we can actually do pretty darn good work and often better than what you might think with some of the sort of more, I don't know, state-of-the-art inputs. If we did include it, and we might, I mean, we do both sort of public work, and we do private work also. So it wouldn't surprise me if we were incorporating it in some sort of private project or another in the near future. But I think it could help a little bit. I think that it, I think that it would have to be sort of used with care. I think the tendency of some folks to sort

of just take average exit velocity and average launch angle and build a metric off of it. I think the tendency of some folks to sort of just take average exit velocity and average launch angle and build a metric off of it, I think that's, you got to be careful there. I think that that is a useful thing to do to get a snapshot, but I think it's also a very rough one. And I think that eventually the mixed model is just going to do a better job of evaluating a hitter because it's just much more subtle in how it sort of makes its decisions and then it sort of sticks to it. So I do think it could become a little bit better. I'm not sure that the actual DRC numbers would change. What I think would happen would be that the SDs would narrow.

So instead of having, you know, it might go up or down by a few points, certainly, let's say Mike Trout would go up to like a 183 or a 170, you know, whatever. But I think that the real thing would be instead of him being plus or minus 10 or plus or minus 12, like he might be right now, it would be more like, you know, plus or minus five. I think that would be the main impact of adding exit velocity and launch angle, if I had to guess. So last thing, this is kind of the first big rollout by the new BP ownership group, which you are a part of. You are a part owner of Baseball Perspectus, which was recently sold to members of its own staff. So tell us whatever you can about, I don't know how this happened, what effect it will have on the site going forward, what it is like to be a part owner of a storied baseball analysis company.

what you will find is that having Baseball Perspectives run on a daily basis by people, once again, who are actively involved in creating its content, both statistical and editorial and fantasy, will really sort of change the website back to what I think people sort of remember, those of us who do remember from back in the day. You're going to see a much more active and aggressive approach to keeping the website updated, including the sortable stats. We mean it. They're changing. They really are.

We have people who are working full time on doing things like that right now. As opposed to the latest project that didn't quite get there, of which there are many in the past, we really are very focused on making it work and trying to be both. Trying to be both providing good content but also creating good statistics that the public can use and also trying to nurture uh young talent and encourage you know have an intern program where we compensate people and bring them in and give them a project and work with harry pivlitus and then of course with the rest of us looking in and giving suggestions and um i i think it's it's going to be the sort of environment people are going to be really excited to support and see what we're up to.

All right. Well, I wish you the best. And I recommend that everyone go read the articles that Jonathan wrote and that other people will be writing all week at the site. I will link to them. And we appreciate you trying to make us better at Evaluating baseball players even if it's Not always easy and For coming on the show it's always a pleasure Thank you Ben all right so that will do it

For today we now have the final Mariners trade it was what we said before Except the Phillies also got James Pazos and Juan Nicasio Juan Nicasio had a weird year by the way A 6 ERA but one of the best strikeout minus walk rates in the league for a reliever. Really good deserved run average, speaking of DRA. As Jeff wrote in his post at Fangraphs, quote, on the Mariners end, it feels light. It feels like

there should be some kind of young third piece. Definitely not a trade that on the surface looks great for Seattle. We'll see what other dominoes fall, but somewhat underwhelmed by this trade return. As we were saying, there may not have been a better offer out there for Segura. It's interesting, though, that DePoto just seems to be in such a great rush to get all these deals done. I think the Paxton trade was okay for the Mariners. I think the Canoe trade was fine, maybe better than fine, but these aren't overwhelming returns. I kind of wonder whether it's worth waiting and seeing whether something might materialize later in the winter. Anyway, that's not the DePoto way. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Following five listeners have already done so. Chris Stone, Andrew Freeman, Spencer,

Rodney Knox, and Melissa Goodwin. Thanks to all of you. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectivelywild. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. You can rate and review and subscribe to effectively wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. Seen some ratings lately, but not really reviews. Always happy to have those. Please keep your questions and comments for me and Jeff coming via email at podcast thefangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance, and we will be back to talk to you soon. I'll see you next time.