Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1312: A Puig of Their Own

Episode Date: December 22, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the Daniel Murphy, Trevor Cahill, Anibal Sanchez, and Andrew Miller signings, react in real time to the three-team Jurickson Profar trade, and answer listener emails about signing Bryce Harper for one year, signing Harper as a catcher, choosing between watching games and having access to all other information, […]

Hiya folks, just a quick note, a couple big trades went down after we finished recording this episode, so I tacked on an addendum with Zach Cram of The Ringer who joined me to talk about that news, both the Dodgers-Reds blockbuster, and Jerry DiPoto getting his transaction fix, so we will proceed with the previously scheduled episode, and stay tuned till the end to hear that conversation about the late breaking news. The time, the time rolls on like a river, and oh, there's just so much to do. And I just can't do without you. Hello and welcome to episode 1312 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs, who is preparing his stat blast as we speak.

Hello, Jeff. Why would you shed light on that fact? Now people are going to overanalyze every pause. Dylan, make sure I don't pause. Maybe they'll forgive anything that's not very insightful that you say because you're currently preparing a stat blast. So we are going to do emails. And then at the end, I'm going to talk to my colleague, Katie Baker, about a league of their own. Great baseball movie director, Penny Marshall, died this week. So it is a good time to revisit perhaps her most celebrated work, and we will do

that in a while. But first, any banter that we want to get to? I guess there have been a few transactions. Our buddy Travis Sochik wrote at FiveThirtyEight just this week about how cold the hot stove is and how compared to previous seasons, he looked at the first 50 days, I think, after the World Series, and he compared this year and last year and going back to 2013, and the drop in spending has been pretty precipitous. I think he found that it was like $1.23 billion was spent in the first 50 days of the offseason in 2013. in the first 50 days of the offseason in 2013. This winter, it's $442.5 million, which is just a small fraction of what it was five years ago. And obviously, this is down even from last year.

So it has been slow, and we've talked a lot about the reasons why it's been slow. And it's probably not going to speed up unless there's some CBA fight in a few years and the Players Association actually succeeds in getting players paid. But there have been a few moves that we can talk about. We've got Daniel Murphy going to the Rockies. We've got the Nationals signing Anibal Sanchez. We've got the Cardinals perhaps signing Andrew Miller, the A's signing Joaquin Soria. So where should we start? Should we start with Murphy? Because Murphy's kind of an interesting one Because last year it seemed like the Rockies

Were a really good fit for Daniel Murphy And you wrote at the time about how strange it was That the Rockies did not claim Daniel Murphy When they had a chance to And some people speculated Well, maybe it's because of his past comments And his apparent homophobia And maybe they just didn't want to pick him up Well, no it's because of his past comments and his apparent homophobia, and maybe they just didn't want to pick him up.

Well, no, clearly not. It was not that because they have signed him to a two-year, $24 million deal. V, look up, enter, ready to participate in conversation. Yeah, so Murphy was clearly a good fit for the Rockies a few months ago. And now, it's funny, I think he was a better fit for them then now this is a this is interesting timing because for the rockies who had ian desmond at first base anyone would be an upgrade so daniel murphy doesn't hurt the rockies but it it's easy to i think look at a case like murphy and you say okay this guy was an elite hitter two years ago he was an elite hitter three

years ago he still makes a lot of contact he's He's not coming back from knee debridement and microfracture surgery now, so he could have a full healthy offseason, and then the world will be his oyster. But he's also in his mid-30s. And it's interesting, if you look at Murphy's stat cast numbers, his exit velocities, I spotted something, and I don't know if this is just reinforcing the fact that he was coming back from injury or if something has changed, but

it's not just that Daniel Murphy hit worse in 2018 than he did the years before. We already knew that, and he missed almost half of the season. But he didn't hit the ball as hard, not on average, but even at maximum. His peak exit velocity was down several miles per hour. The top 5% of his exit velocity is down substantially from where he was at his peak. And he still makes contact, but he's not pulling the ball in the air as much as he did in the recent past. So it's hard for me to figure out whether Daniel Murphy is now just worse and he's not able to swing in the same way or if it was all just a consequence of him coming back from injury. But there is reason to believe that Daniel Murphy's real power hitting days are coming to a

close, in which case the Rockies might have just signed like the left-handed Wilmer Flores because he looks like a really similar kind of player and is less of a defensive liability so I don't know how well Daniel Murphy is going to take the first base he's not that nimble anymore I really liked Daniel Murphy I thought he had a cool like late career breakout it's inspiring that you could see him do that and it makes you wonder about other players who have similar profiles you can make changes in their 30s but I am I am not convinced that Daniel Murphy is actually going to be a good investment for the Rockies. But again, he does make them better anyway.

And in Colorado, if you have lost some of your peak power, it's a pretty forgiving environment. Yeah. And if you make a lot of contact, that is the best place to put the ball in play. So he's got that going for him. And yeah, as you said, might not work out great, but the Rockies have a recent track record of their free agent signings not working out great at all. They've barely gotten anything from a lot of their biggest investments in that market, and they've made up for it by being great at player development and bringing along a whole starting rotation of young homegrown guys. And so we'll see if they can break that pattern here. So we'll see if they can break that pattern here Another move that you wrote about that I actually did not mention in my quick summary there Was Trevor Cahill Trevor Cahill also signed with the Angels Who are now also the employers of Matt Harvey

As we spoke about earlier this week So Trevor Cahill on the surface We talked about him at some point Because he's kind of an attractive pitcher In the sense that he gets strikeouts and ground balls, at least when he is healthy and pitching. You wrote that there have been two Trevor Cahill's. Who are the two Trevor Cahill's? Trevor Cahill, like you said, is attractive, statistically attractive. I don't want to comment on anything else. But Trevor Cahill has been in the last two years, at times, really interesting.

And even if you just look at his overall numbers this past season, he made, I think, 20 starts for the A's. He threw 110 innings. He had the same park-adjusted FIP as Charlie Morton, who is good. And he had one of the lowest contact rates in baseball. His contact rate was just like that of James Paxton or Noah Syndergaard. Trevor Cahill makes it hard to hit the ball, and then he makes it hard to hit the ball in the air. So just based on that, strikeouts and grand balls, that's great.

This is Sabermetrics of 15 years ago. That's exactly what you want. That's why everybody loves Dan Reichert. Going to just keep shoehorning in Dan Reichert references into the podcast. I had the thought this morning. I woke up, and I saw a tweet by Corey Kosky, and I was like, oh, yeah. I have these weird Corey Kosky references in the back of my head that I just can't bring up anymore without introducing them.

Like Corey Kosky, Jeff Cohen, I and these things don't. Anyway, I'm going off track. At a certain point, though, it gets to the point where it's like, oh, he's one of those guys we remember. It's like the Deadspin David Roth series. Like, let's remember some guys and pulling random players out of baseball card packs that becomes something that is an exercise in nostalgia. And then you just bring up one of those names and everyone's like,

oh, I remember that guy because I was watching baseball then too. We were both alive then and we had a shared interest and that plays well. So I guess there's like a period where it's not old enough to be nostalgia inducing. And then eventually it gets to that point. You can just start summoning these names again. Corey Kosky retweeted Justin Morneau writing about his MVP season. Is Justin Morneau classic rock now, or is he still like new wave, or what is he? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, yeah, he hasn't been gone that long.

Yeah, I've separated myself from the point. Trevor Cahill, in 2017, he was a starter for the Padres, and he looked really, really good. And he got traded to the Royals. And at the time, I wrote about how the Royals traded for a really interesting pitcher. And after that, he sucked. He was hurt, and he sucked. He had, like, a bunch more walks than strikeouts, and he barely pitched, and he spent the year on the disabled list. And then, in 2018, Trevor Cahill came back.

He pitched for the A's, and he was really, really good until about the middle of August. And then he sucked. Then he was bad. He had a few starts where he walked six guys and struck out one or two. It wasn't very good. So Trevor Cahill has been for, I don't know,

like 130 innings over the past two years, like a really good five or six inning starting pitcher. Just a ground ball machine who throws enough strikes, misses enough bats that he's been really effective. And then both of his seasons have just gone off the rails. And when you think about Trevor Cahill, you think, oh, durability issues. He's just not able to pitch for that long. He's not a seven month pitcher. He's not Max Scherzer or whatever. But what is interesting that I learned about Trevor Cahill, maybe you already knew this, Trevor Cahill has actually never had surgery for like an injury-prone pitcher. He's never had anything go so terribly wrong.

He's had like a set of impingements, whatever that means, but he's never had Tommy John. He's never had shoulder surgery. He's never had hip or knee surgery. He never had brain surgery. He never had any surgery I could find a record of. So he's injury-prone, and we know that, and I think the Angels are going into this with clear eyes, and they're thinking, okay, well, we signed Trevor Cahill to buy ourselves some time. But I know when you take out the worst starts of any pitcher, his numbers look better.

But with Cahill, when he's healthy, he really is quite good, and he has a really good changeup, a really good curveball. He doesn't throw that many fastballs anymore. He pitches backwards, great repertoire. So the Angels are probably going to get like four interesting good months out of Trevor Cahill. It's just a matter of trying to figure out which months those are going to be. Yeah. So he was one of the guys who helped prop up the A's rotation, which was full of guys who weren't expected to pitch at all, let alone pitch well. And so now he's gone. He goes to a division rival. The A's rotation depth chart right now

is Sean Mania, who may not pitch at all this season. I'm just looking at the MLB.com depth chart here. Sean Mania is listed as the number one starter, but he had shoulder surgery. And then Andrew Triggs is number two. He has thoracic outlet syndrome. And who knows?

We've seen with Harvey, there's no telling how pitchers will come back from that. And then number three is Paul Blackburn, who missed most of 2018 with an elbow injury. I don't think he had surgery for it, but that worries you. So that is it. That is the entirety of the A's rotation depth chart right now. Two guys who are, well, really three guys who are coming off of serious injuries and can't really be counted on. And so I guess that's why they signed Soria, who bolsters their bullpen, which was a huge part, the biggest part of their success in 2018. But there is a limit at some point to how many relievers you can have to make up for not having any starters.

And I wonder what it is that they're doing given that, I mean, we know they're the A's and they rarely spend. But, like, why let Cahill go? Why let Mike Fiers go? Like, they could have kept Mike Fiers for not a whole lot of money probably, right? I mean, not much more than Matt Harvey signed for or not more at all. And Fires is a decent depth guy. So I don't know. They have to have some starters at some point.

You can do openers sometimes, but not every day, or at least you need someone who can go more than an inning or two at a time. I mean, I know they have Daniel Mengden, who's whatever. There's Frankie Montas, who can kind of start. Chris Bassett is there. But I think the really interesting ones are they've Daniel Mengden, who's whatever. There's Frankie Montas, who can kind of start. Chris Bassett is there. But I think the really interesting ones are they've got the prospect, Jesus Luzardo, who's likely to come up in, I don't know how long he'll spend in the majors next season if he's healthy, but could be up pretty early. And then they have AJ Puck, who was a potential Rookie of the Year candidate, potential breakout candidate this past season. And then he needed Tommy John surgery in the spring training.

So those are the two really exciting ones maybe like stretch run options for the a's god knows what james caprillion or grant holmes might be able to do there are pitchers available but yeah even looking at the fan graphs depth chart which i am responsible for the current ace is daniel mangdon you just can't do that and i i guess i can't say you can't do that because, again, they had Lasseter's rotation and they made it work. But this is a team that if you look at the standings, like as good as the A's were last season,

there's a very real chance that they've been bypassed now by the Angels because the Angels have added Cahill. They've added Matt Harvey. I know that right now the Angels project, just according to Steamer, this is early, but they project for five and a half more war than the A's do this coming season. Now, the Angels' bullpen consists of people not unlike you and I,

so it's not like they have a complete roster either. That was you and me. It's you and me, not you and I. So there's a lot of work to be done. The Angels' catcher is right. Here's a game. Name the Angels' catchers right now. Oh, boy.

I don't think. I know Jose Molina, he's the catching coach i believe he was just promoted from catching coordinator so i'd put him back there any day but i don't know ah i might also take him over kevin smith or jose brisenio those are the angels smith catchers you did not just make up kevin smith i did not it's real k-e-v-A-N Kevin Smith Kevin Smith who the Angels picked up Who I believe played for the White Sox It's not really worth looking up anyway

The Angels Might be in the act of bypassing The A's right now A's are going to lean heavily on their bullpen But yeah they are going to need some starting options But down the stretch Luzardo and Puck I think should be Could be a lot of fun and hopefully they have better health have better health luck this coming year than they did last year, because those are two pitchers who I would love to see pitching back-to-back.

Yeah, I mentioned Fiers and that they could have kept him. He was one of the guys that they non-tendered, along with Kendall Graveman. And I think Fiers earned, what, $6 million last year. I think MLB Trade Rumors had him projected to earn $9.7 million in arbitration, which is not a lot when you look at Matt Harvey getting 11 plus incentives. I mean, I'd rather have Mike Fiers than Matt Harvey at this point, probably, right? So I don't know. That seems like an example of A's cheapness and cobbling together a team instead of just spending, which has kind of always been the way that their ownership insists on doing things. I was curious, looking at Matt Harvey, I saw looking at his fastball stat cast data.

In the last four years, his four-seam spin rate has dropped fairly precipitously. This is off the top of my head, but I think in 2015, he ranked in the 80th percentile of starting pitchers. And then in this most recent year, he ranked in the 29th percentile. Now, anyone who is familiar with this stuff understands that spin rate correlates pretty well with like swings and misses. So Matt Harvey still throws his fastball in the mid 90s, but he doesn't seem to be getting the same spin. I was wondering what you think about the theory. I haven't researched this much, but Matt Harvey hasn't just had Tommy John surgery, but he's also had thoracic outlet syndrome surgery to relieve those symptoms. And one of the manifestations of the condition that he had was numbness in his hands. Do you remember that?

Numbness in his fingers? So I wonder, I mean, it makes sense intuitively that a lot of spin rate some of it is velocity but you've also got grip and finger pressure and it's how you're releasing the ball if you had to guess do you think finger numbness uh you could attribute the decline in spin rate to just different workings of matt harvey's fingers and then if so like do you think that could be recoverable yeah i mean it sounds plausible not being able to feel the ball. It seems like something that would probably impact how you hold it and release it. So yeah, I could buy that. That's plausible to me. Yeah. Just conjure your inner driveline baseball here and

tell me what you think about pitcher medicine. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, by the way, while we've been talking, I have some news because the team that we have just been talking about has made some. that one but Oakland traded for Jerks and Profarts A three team trade we've seen a lot Of those lately the Rangers Got a bunch of Minor leaguers Brock Burke Eli White who is someone I spoke to for the book Actually Kyle Bird

Yoel Espinal and International Dollars and then the Tampa Bay Rays Involved in yet another three team Trade they get the 38th pick in the 2019 draft Emilio Pagan and Roley Lacey and most of the players involved here are players we would have to do some research on to be able to speak about intelligently I think but Jureks and Profar we know who that guy is well give me a moment to get my head around this one. Let's, I don't know, who's, so Profar would be the most interesting one here, right?

Of all of the names. Definitely the name people know. Okay, so what this would be an indication of is that the A's no longer think that they can re-sign Jed Lowry, who I think that they wanted, they wanted to bring him back. And now they presumably will not. So Profar slots in as Oakland's second baseman. He is a guy whose career is back on track after missing, what, basically two full years because of shoulder problems.

Not really a strong defensive shortstop at this point. So they have Semien to play there. So Profar steps in for Lowry, and Oakland is giving up. Help me. Walk me through this, because who? So the A's are sending away Eli White, who I don't know who that is, but also the 38th overall pick. Okay, so that's the and Emilio Pagan. So the draft pick seems to be the biggest loss here, right, from the A's side?

Yeah, Eli White, he's a prospect. I know about him because I wrote about him. Yeah, Eli White, he's a prospect. I know about him because I wrote about him. He entered the year as an unranked guy, and then he made some changes with some technology, and he gained some power and changed his swing a little bit, and he ended the year, I who plays lots of positions and was in AA, and he's just a former 11th round pick who sort of raised his stock. So, you know, pretty decent prospect there, but not giant names here. Okay, so at least from Tampa Bay's side, I know Brock Burke was a recent add to the 40-man roster. Kyle Bird was a recent add to the 40-man roster. Kyle Bird was a recent add to the 40-man roster. Tampa Bay, I think, needed to make some sort of consolidation trade, and that's not exactly what this is.

It's not like they traded a handful of prospects for a proven major leaguer, but they did lose two 40-man players. They picked up one in Emilio Pagan. I don't think Raleigh Lacey is 40-man eligible yet, and they get the 38th pick in next year's draft, which is worth some millions of dollars to them. So Tampa Bay this kind of shifts some pieces around Pagan I think is like one of those interesting high fastball and and curve pitchers who kind of fits into their whole weird pitching philosophy so kind of get it from Tampa Bay side I know people like Brock Burke he is an interesting starting pitching prospect this is it's hard to talk about prospect trades on the

fly because I need to research each and every one of them yeah so it's hard to reach a full conclusion but for the fact that this is the wrong day to have a chat and then immediately have to hit the road and go start doing holiday stuff with family because this would be fun to pull apart and i'm not going to have the opportunity except for right now when i'm doing it insufficiently yeah well not much hot stove action in terms of signings, but we've seen teams compensate with trades, which is perhaps related. And yeah, we talked to Levi Weaver a couple months ago about Jarekson Profar and his resurgence and coming back from injury

and establishing himself as a pretty decent player, a three-win player this year. So nice to see him do that and resurrect his status. And now he's had to fight for playing time for years. And anyway, now he will just have a job. And good to see him make good after years of looking like potentially a busted top prospect. So this is supposed to be an email show and so where do you okay so one one thing we can talk about in the in this trade this three-team trade is that again

for the second time recently right we've seen a competitive balance draft pick traded so as a consequence of that it's only fair to bring up when, if and when, will baseball ever allow all draft picks to be traded? Do you look at that as an inevitability or do you look at that as a red line that the league's not going to cross? I don't know. I mean, it seems like most media people are in favor of it just because it would be fun, I guess, to talk about. But it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of momentum toward it. But it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of momentum toward it. I think I remember reading an article not too long ago about how some people in the game are very much in favor of that happening. But I don't know.

I mean, it would be interesting, I guess, to give teams another way to craft trades. But I think there's also some concern that maybe if you can trade draft picks, then the teams that are not currently trying to compete will just start trading all their draft picks. But I don't know that that would happen that often because, I mean, everyone wants prospects. Even if you're not currently contending, you want cheap players you could sign who will be very cost efficient for you for years. So it's obviously a reality in many other sports, and I would not be surprised to see it come to baseball. Right. To whatever extent people worry about how non-competitive teams might handle their draft picks, we haven't seen non-competitive teams just shedding their draft picks now to the big spenders. Teams who have those competitive balance picks tend to hold on to them or use them as assets, as we just saw in this

trade. So it does, I don't know how high a priority it is. It's probably not a very high priority at all, but it does feel like something that it only makes sense. It's not just one of those things that writers clamor for because it would be interesting, but I also think it would be good for the game. So let's give it 15 years. Okay., yeah One other thing that occurs to me What does this mean for Franklin Barreto And his future in the A's infield Because I think he was kind of the heir apparent At that spot, right?

Because they've got Chapman obviously Just cemented at third base And then Semien at short And Olsen at first And that leaves second base for Barreto Or it seemed to But now he's blocked by Profar, so I don't know what you do with him. Right, so Simeon, now because this is the A's, anyone could get traded at any point, but Profar is a, I believe, a two-year player. Simeon could

get moved, but it's, I don't know what it means, but so far, so Beredo is playing in Venezuela this winter, and he has mostly played second base, and he's played a few games of shorts up, but he's also played five games in the outfield. And I don't know if that is because of the team he's on, Aragua, or whether that's because of the A's requesting it, but he's started four games in left field, and he's started one game in center. started one game in center and i wonder because he is uh he's young he's a good athlete he's only 22 years old i wonder if the a's might be imagining that brano could make it as some sort of like super sub i don't want to just keep going to marwin gonzalez but that's like the the current ben zobrist i guess that we can ben zobrist still being current but you know different yeah it's also worth observing that this year in the majors frank Franklin Bredo had 29 strikeouts and one walk. So that also can't be ignored. Very real chance he's not ready, and he might never be ready.

But because he is agile, he can move around. You look at the A's, he could be sort of their adept guy they have around the infield, who's more athletic than Chad Pinder. They're a depth guy they have around the infield who's more athletic than Chad Pinder. And right now in the outfield, the A's have Steven Piscotty, who was good, but they have Ramon Laureano, who's, you know, a high volatility player in centerfield. And they have Nick Martini and Mark Canna and Chad Pinder in left. So there are at-bats likely to be available in the outfield, and maybe Barreto will make himself available there.

All right. So we should get to emails, the things we haven't talked about, the Miller signing with the Cardinals. That's not official as we speak, but you all know who Andrew Miller is. Obviously, he was diminished by injury this past year, but it sounds like he is working on a multi-year deal in St. Louis. And then as for Anibal Sanchez, who had quite a surprising resurgence with Atlanta in 2018, he now fills the Tanner Roark spot with the Nationals and rounds out a really, really, really strong rotation, which is Scherzer, Corbin, Strasburg, Sanchez, Ross. That is quite a top five. So I don't know if the Nationals are currently the favorite in that division, probably, but we have seen how the Nationals being the favorite in that division goes. So nothing is assured there, and it's going to be a really competitive spot that I'm looking forward to watching all year.

So emails, let's do some. While we're on the subject of the Nationals, we can answer a question about Bryce Harper, who probably will not be related to the Nationals for much longer, isn't currently. But question from listener Take, who says, in his recent column about the Cardinals acquiring Goldschmidt, Craig Edwards mentioned that Harper should still be an attractive free agent for the team. What if, however, the team is solely focused on being successful next season and doesn't want to bring in a potentially risky long-term contract? How much will Harper and Boris accept for a one-year deal? We don't have to make this specific to the Cardinals. What would it take to sign Bryce Harper to a one-year contract? Which you would think, I mean, he's coming off a down year, an inconsistent year, kind of. So he might be more receptive than some to the concept of a one-year contract. Just cash in right now, have a great

year, and then sign the long-term deal. I mean, it's not going to happen, but it's less implausible than it would be otherwise. But what kind of money would we be talking about here? Well, let's see. So he's going to be 26 years old. So he'd still hit the free agent market again next year when he's 27, which is still considered young. So let's see. I think 45. Okay. You? Yeah, I guess that sounds about right. We've never seen that, obviously, because we've never really seen a player decide to do that. I know Trevor Bauer is dead set on signing a series of one-year deals and essentially volunteering himself to pitch every fourth day and just giving teams a shot at riding him really, really hard with no risk because get 45 for a year, so maybe teams would be reluctant to, but I think if a player like Harper were willing to agree to it, yeah, you'd have to pay him at least that much, right? I mean, even given all of the warts that Bryce Harper has, he is still really good, and for a single year, everyone would want him. So I'd be curious to see.

We won't see it unless Bauer actually does it. Another question about Harper, this one even less plausible. This is from Joseph who says, Bryce Harper started out as a catcher. How much would he make in free agency if he demanded, like Manny Machado, to play his old position for at least 100 games a year? So Bryce Harper says, you know what? I want to go back to being behind the plate. Who signs him and for how much? I think he gets the exact same contract that he's going to sign because you can't actually write that into a contract. So then I think some team would just give him the money and say, well, actually, we're not going to do it. So psych.

Yeah, maybe. Although if he's really committed to it, I mean, would you sign a guy for a $300 million deal knowing that you are immediately going to go against his wishes? That seems like a bad foot to get off to in your relationship. Yeah, but on the other hand, you would be protecting Bryce Harper from embarrassing himself as a $300 million player who's a terrible defensive catcher. So I think, yeah, I don't think he would suffer that much there would be a lot of written about it and there would be some articles of like people talking on background in spring training saying bryce harper isn't happy but he would figure it out yeah it's fun to speculate about what bryce harper would be if he had continued to catch i don't know whether he

could have caught at a major league level but obviously the bat as a catcher would be phenomenal if it actually held up i mean he has had a lot of injuries in the outfield so it's possible that he would have been even healthier as a catcher i don't know but i guess he was moved because his bat was ahead of his defense and teams just wanted to get his bat up to the big leagues as a teenager and catching and defense was going to take time and maybe also this helps him lengthen his career but if he had stayed back there he would be quite an offensive force if he could be anything better than a a dome at level defensive catcher yeah yeah it's uh how long has it been since harper caught gosh i, it must be like what he was drafted as a catcher, I think. So it's been since then, I guess, about a decade, maybe a little longer. How bad do you think Bryce Harper would be

as a catcher? I don't even know the right way we would measure it. Like his game calling, maybe his game calling would be okay because he's a a he's a good hitter so he'd figure out how to call pitches but like his framing technique is blocking just his stamina like his knees would get beat up but like how many runs just based on i gotta know defensive run saved how many runs below average do you think bryce harper would end up if he caught 120 games next year oh man 50 at least i yeah i know russell carlton did an article this summer i believe about what happens when non-catchers catch like sometimes there's just someone who is pressed into service back there and you get an emergency catcher situation and so he did the math on all the aspects of their defense and he found that it would be just shy of 50 runs. So the difference between one of those emergency catchers and an average catcher over 162 games would be about 50 runs. And, you know, that's maybe 30, 35 runs for an actual catcher season because catchers don't catch 162 games unless they're Salvador Perez a

few years ago. So that's like a major leaguer emergency catcher who is probably caught in some way more recently than Bryce Harper has. So that's probably like where you start and then maybe it gets worse than that. Yeah. Okay. That sounds fair. All right. Question from Mike. Say you have to spend a year in a cabin out in the wilderness somewhere without having to worry about your day job. No radio or TV, only internet connection. The service provider gives you two choices. A, you have live streaming, so you can watch all the live baseball you want, but you won't have access to the rest of the internet. So no Twitter, Reddit, fan crafts, baseball reference, MLB trade rumors, MLB network, highlights, podcasts, et cetera. B, you can follow baseball as you do now, but you won't have live streaming capabilities, so you can't watch any games live or after the fact.

Given the choice between only watching games and only following MLB on other media, which would let you enjoy the sport more as a fan, what would most fans choose? I'm guessing this affects only baseball, so you don't have your other internet access cut off. This only affects your baseball internet access. Yeah, you take the games, right? We all get into this because of the games. And if I didn't have to care about my day job, I wouldn't care about all of the other stuff. All the other stuff is just noise. It's designed. What we do is designed to fill the gaps in between baseball games. And the longer you go without even being able to see any baseball games at all, not even in retrospect, not even like really highlight. I guess you get highlights, but you don't get to watch games. then you just lose whatever attachment you have

to the sport. So you just take the games, you think about it less seriously, and that's all that you need. And during the game, if something happened, then the broadcasters will fill you in on whether there is a trade. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, at a certain point, the numbers would just be so divorced from reality. I mean, maybe this is just one year that you're doing this, but if you did this for many years, then eventually you would never have seen the players play who are producing these stats. So it would all be just sort of meaningless. And I would really miss all of that ancillary stuff. Obviously, it's not just something I do because

it's related to my job. It's also something that really enhances my enjoyment of the sport. So I would really miss being able to go to someone's fan crafts page. I would miss podcasts. I would miss all that stuff. I mean, just even watching a game and not really knowing what kind of season everyone's having other than the snippets that they give you on the broadcast. I mean, it would definitely hurt my enjoyment of the sport, but ultimately you're going to get more entertainment out of the almost bottomless well of televised baseball than you're going to get probably out of the similarly bottomless well of baseball reference. I mean, I love baseball reference, but probably you're just going to get more net entertainment out of all of the hours that are in a baseball season than you would out of browsing baseball references pages as much as I do that too.

Yep, that sounds appropriate to me. All right. Have we allowed enough time for you to finish your StatBlast research? Yeah, kind of, sort of. Okay. Okay. Today's here's to day's to past. out like one the the players who had the biggest one season relative to i guess the rest of their careers so i don't have a perfect way of looking this up i can tell you that by the way there is a player in baseball history whose name is ted kazansky ted kazansky that's close it's awfully close but uh anyway i i have i used fangirls went back to 1900 and i looked at every every player's career wins above replacement every position player i should say every position player's career wins above replacement every position player i should say every position player's career war and then that same player's best individual season war and then i just found

the difference i subtracted career war from the best war and looked for the players who have the biggest difference between like their their best season and then what they did the rest of time now this might not surprise a lot of people but the the number there's one issue with this is that when you have players who with negative career war it kind of warps the results in a way so for example by this by this flawed method the biggest one-hit wonder is bill bergen who in a season he was as good as negative 0.8 war which was his best individual season with a career war of negative 16.2 which gives him a difference between the two of 15.4 that doesn't really count so i don't really know like there's there's a tommy tevenow season for example he had a career war of negative

6.1 but there was one year where he was 2.5 wins above replacement. That's kind of interesting, right? Because that's the difference of 8.6 war. There's also, there's a Chick Galloway, Chick Galloway. There's a season in which Chick Galloway was worth 2.2 war. He had a career war of negative five. That's a difference of 7.2. If you look at Chick Galloway's career, there was one year where he had an OPS of 801. This is 1922.

He finished 11th in the MVP voting. The next year, his OPS dropped off by 113 points, although then he finished 8th in the MVP voting. So he did better in the MVP ballots, but worse in every single statistical category as I look at it. I will point out this is a season in which Chick Galloway stole 10 bases and was caught 19 times. So we all yearn for the glorious golden days of baseball.

Now there's a scheme Lilo season where he was worth 2.6 wins above replacement. He had a career war of negative 2.4. There's an Andujar Cedeno season where he was worth 2.9 wins above replacement. But he had a career war of negative 2.4 there's an andujar sedano season where he was worth 2.9 wins above replacement but he had a career war of negative 1.9 george wright had a three war season but if we really want to talk about like i guess true one hit wonders if you will we should take

a look at cito gaston cito gastonicks out in the numbers. Some of you might remember this. Many of you won't because many of you wouldn't have been alive. But Cito Gaston in 1970 for the Padres was worth 5.5 wins above replacement. He slugged 543. He was just, he was the machine. He got on base. He did everything. And in his career, I'll remind you, he was with 515 war in 1970. And in his career, he'll remind you, he was with 5-on-5 war in 1970. And in his career, he was worth 0.8 war.

So the rest of his career, he was worth negative 4.7 war. This is kind of depends on your definitions. But this is a one-hit wonder in that Cito Gaston had one truly outstanding season and then did nothing the rest of his career, not counting his managing a baseball team. But he had a career Wc plus of 94 but in this season he had a wrc plus of 144 so cito gaston seems like the truest one hit wonder by uh by this method but i uh i could be talked away from it i guess but that's a pretty outstanding year that he had any other good seasons that show up there on your list? Just because that's, I think, the most interesting to me is guys who were actually good, not just good relative to their terrible other seasons. Yeah, right.

So there's like a Vaughn Joshua, whatever, 2.5 war. He had a season, but he was bad for his career. As I'm scrolling, Alex Centrone, Skeeter Newsome is up there. Two and a half war in a season. Coco LeBoy, this is a fun stroll through somebody else's memory lane. I'm just looking for bigger numbers as I scroll. Darnell Coles had a 2.6 war season. Gil Cohn, a three war season.

He was below replacement for his career. And I'm just continuing to scroll and scroll and scroll and see doggeston boy that really quite the dani santana here we go this is a little different but dani santana had a season in which he was worth 3.9 yeah more and dani santana by the way played in the majors last season yes so but for anyone who doesn't remember so dan Danny Santana is still, he's only going into his age 20 a year. He could have a whole career. But when he came up with the Twins, he was only seventh in the Rookie of the Year voting, but he batted 319. He had an 824 OPS.

And he's bad. He's just a bad player. So since then, he hasn't hit at all. I will remind you. So as a rookie, he batted 319 since then he's batted 219 as a rookie he slugged 472 since then he's like 319 so danny santana is making a case to be i don't know next in line behind aceto gas but i think even after danny santana's rookie year people looked at him and thought there's no way that this is real. I think he was one of those high BABIP guys. Yeah, we actually brought up Danny Santana on a podcast this summer.

I think it was maybe a stat blast because he could end up being the guy with the highest rookie war who finishes with a sub-replacement career war. He is not quite there. I guess he's at.3 for his his career now but if he does dip below replacement level before he is out of the league then he will be on that list and uh and cito gaston is another guy who came up i think in that stat blast for highest single season war by someone who had a career replacement level or below so, these same names kind of come up again and again. And thank you to Jacob Mooney, Patreon supporter, for inspiring this stat blast.

And I wanted to mention we got an email from listener Sivan who pointed out that one of the strange hypotheticals that we discussed almost kind of came true in the NBA recently. hypotheticals that we discussed almost kind of came true in the NBA recently. Remember when we talked about whether Chris Davis, a team could trade for the wrong Chris Davis and how long it would take for the team to realize that it had acquired the worse Chris Davis, if it had wanted the better Chris Davis, if all it could see was the stats and not the player, something like that. So that was obviously implausible that a team could trade the wrong guy with a similar name, but it evidently kind of came close to happening in the NBA very recently. So this was a deal that was happening evidently between the Grizzlies, I think, and the Suns and Marshawn and Dylan Brooks. So I'm just going to read a stream of Adrian Wojnarowski's tweets about this subject. So these are all in a line here. Sources with Zach Lowe deal in jeopardy over which Brooks, Marshawn or Dylan, the Suns believed they were getting in the trade.

Memphis will not put Dylan Brooks in the trade, sources said. Next tweet, deal suddenly in peril. Memphis and Phoenix didn't Brooks in the trade, sources said. Next tweet. Deal suddenly in peril. Memphis and Phoenix didn't communicate directly on trade, using Washington as a conduit in coordinating the three-team deal, sources tell Zach Lowe and me. Grizzlies believed they were trading Marchand, but somehow Suns believed it was Dylan. Next tweet. The deal is dead, league source tells ESPN. Tweet after that. Memphis Phoenix finally talked directly, realized there was confusion on which Brooks was in deal, and Memphis refuses to include Marshawn over Dylan.

Source tells ESPN Grizzlies are out, so Suns Wizards would need to do a deal directly or find a new third team. And last tweet. Washington believes it was told Dylan Brooks in conversations with Memphis. The Grizzlies insist they told Washington it was Marshawn. One rival GM texted me and said, maybe Washington can put Scott Brooks in if there has to be a Brooks in the deal. Welcome to NBA trade season. I guess that's kind of why it can't happen.

That came closer to happening than I would have thought possible. But at some point when the paperwork has to be signed, you actually see the name on there and some cooler heads, wiser heads prevail. So Cito Gaston comes out in second place here, actually. Max Muncy currently in third, but of course, we'll see what Max Muncy does. But in first place, by this little method, we actually have 1970 Billy Grabarkiewicz. Do you remember 1970 Billy Grabarkiewicz? Can't say I do. He was a 24-year-old shortstop for the Dodgers.

He made the all-star team. He batted.289, and he had a war, a fangraphs war of 6.1. Outstanding rookie season for Billy Grabarkiewicz. He had a career war of 5.7. The rest of his career, he was worth negative 0.4, and it seems like it was injuries. There's a whole Sabre bio here that I just don't have time to read. His nickname was Grabs. That makes sense. He had 28 career home runs, 17 in this standout season, hit a career OPS plus of 101. Just his career went off the rails. He only played in 44 games the year after he was one of the best players in baseball, and he didn't play baseball after turning 30 years old. So Billy Grabarkowitz had a career that was ruined by injury, but he

also shows up as someone comparable to Cito Gaston in this way. So while Cito Gaston was not great for his career because of his own talents, Billy Grabarkowitz was injured. So that's too bad. But when I go into Google, the autofill is Billy Grabarkowitz insurance. So someone is out there, at least with his name, if it's not actually him. All right. Linder says, I was thinking recently about how rebuilding has always been associated with cutting payroll in the short term. Wouldn't it be a smart idea, given sufficient finances, to expedite a rebuild by trading for a horde of players with awful contracts, such as Albert Pujols, Miguel Cabrera, Jacoby Ellsbury, Jason Hayward, etc. Although some of these have no trade clauses with their large contracts,

it seems as though acquiring these guys would allow a rebuilding team to stack up a group of prospects very quickly. Has this been attempted before? Would this idea work? Also, would it be fun or sad to watch a team full of former stars play at replacement level? Well, it would be sad it is hard to when you when you're rebuilding attendance goes down revenues go down and so profits go down quite substantially and owners aren't super happy about paying out a lot of money for players who are bad even if you justify it by saying hey we're getting these prospects so i So I think you can sometimes convince an owner to invest in one bad contract, especially if

there's budget room to play with. But no one has $150 million of financial flexibility in a given year to just throw around and spend on dead players for the sake of collecting prospects. So it's possible, but you'd kind of need like a Mike Illich in there, not just your standard baseball billionaire to do it. Because, you know, all the franchise values are up, so you could still justify it, but like the team would lose a lot of money in that season. Yeah.

We've seen individual trades like this, right? I mean, sometimes teams will accept some salary, take on salary to get a player who's more attractive or a team will package prospects with an unappealing player just to get him off the book. So that does happen, but it would be difficult to convince an owner, I think, to let you do it on this sort of scale. of scale but if you did yeah it would probably work pretty well if you were just willing to have a huge payroll for a terrible team in the short term it it would expedite your rebuild yeah no it absolutely would work in theory but good luck getting this to happen in practice yeah all right let's see if we can squeeze in another one here is a question from another ben you've spoken previously about whether it would be interesting to not read about any of the offseason moves, then show up at spring training and see who is on which teams.

My question is, how would free agency play out if teams didn't know any of the transactions occurring, at least the ones they weren't involved in? Let's say MLB changes the rules. Free agency begins at the deadline for teams to set their 40-man rosters in anticipation of the Rule 5 draft. At this point, teams know who is available, who is on each 40-man roster and can conduct business as usual, except that then there are no announcements, no press conferences, nothing. If a team calls up

an agent about a player, then that player has already signed elsewhere, they get a stock answer, sorry, player X is no longer available to sign a contract. Teams aren't announcing trades, so if Jerry DiPoto tries to swing one, he finds out his target's been traded because the other GM texts back, he gone. When a player gets DFA'd in the offseason, no claims are made because no one knows that anyone has been cut from another team's roster.

And then on the first day of spring trading, there's some big event where the teams unveil their new rosters. It's on MLB Network or something, and baseball Twitter goes supernova. Do you think more free agents would sign in November, since teams wouldn't be aware of players cut during the offseason? Would that give an advantage to

players, since they could then reach out to the teams that they would want to play for? Would the unknown status of certain players change offseason player valuation at all? What? So it's just the fog of war. No one knows anything except at the beginning of the offseason, and then you know nothing except what you do until spring training starts.

So do players get paid more in this scenario? Do they sign more quickly? Do you just do all the action like immediately while you still know who is on what team? So hold on. I'm focused. So you said if a player gets designated for assignment, nobody knows?

Like no one can? You can't look up the waiver wire or whatever. Okay. So one thing, oh, God. But so the players who get designated for assignment are just SOL in this case because they're not going to get. Yeah. I mean, I guess it becomes the player's responsibility and the agent's responsibility to be very proactive about finding a job. So that's one difference.

I mean, you'd have to just reach out to every team and say, hey, I'm available. So you could do that. So every player who's DFA'd and who is, they would probably just reach out and say, hey, I'm available and I want a job. So you'd know in that sense who is available and who isn't, although you wouldn't know necessarily if someone signs a contract and is off the market. Okay, so agencies would have to hire more people to serve as agents to be in constant contact with every single team and be like, hey, by the way, this player is a free agent. Are you interested in signing him? Yeah. Teams would be so put off by having to be in constant contact that they would probably just want to resolve things sooner to get this over with so then you would have greater

urgency and i don't would this end up with like quicker contracts but also shorter contracts do you think like would you uh i'm exhausted even imagining the hypothetical Yeah teams Wouldn't know from like rumors Who they were bidding against Or if a guy had an offer already Although the agent could just tell them that I would think that One byproduct of this would be Just that there'd be

New methods of trying to gather information On everyone's status constantly And maybe teams Would not actually know that much less than they do now you just have like interns assigned to like call every agent every day and just be like so did your client sign yet or you know maybe teams would come up with you'd have to be wary of collusion of course but you'd think like if there were no official MLB transaction system, they would all just kind of like pool their information just because they would all want to know what is going on. Because this would just be a headache for everyone not to know what is happening.

information passing system would just kind of spring up and you'd get more people employed just monitoring everyone and just having like a big board in the baseball operations department that is tracking everything that's happening. Yeah, that sounds about right. You would definitely have, especially with all the friends that people have that work for different teams that have moved around, you would just end up having some sort of like black market for information to try to keep track but oh god this wouldn't be good for anybody this would be a nightmare yeah i don't think there are any redeeming aspects of this really the only thing i mean if like a comparable player had signed you could make the case that you're worth more than you actually are. If like a player who is better than you signs for less than you want, no one knows about that. So you could just say that you deserve more, but it doesn't mean any team's going to give it to you. So I don't know

that this would actually increase salaries. Maybe just in that teams would be so eager to get things done and get guys signed before everything is just a great unknown. Maybe they would just offer more up front just to get guys off the market before they just lose track of who's actually available. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, you would not have the Travis Hotchkiss article that was just written about how the market has been slow because people would definitely scramble to make use of the information that they can at the beginning. But yeah, this makes my forehead sweat. And I will shoehorn in one more piece of information because I had a sneaking suspicion. So the Rays had traded for Emilio Pagan as one of the lesser heralded, I don't know, parts of this three-team trade. But I thought it

was true. And so looking it up, this past season, there were 495 pitchers, according to Baseball Savant, through at least 104-seam fastballs. Emilio Pagan ranked 32nd in spin rate, just behind Aroldis Chapman. So probably not too hard to figure out what the Rays see in Pagan. High spin, fastball kind of guy who probably should never face a left-handed hitter. Anyway, that is the maybe least interesting part of the whole trade. I believe Eric Langenhagen is writing it up for Fangraphs.

So that is a great relief for me. All right. So you've got to go to a chat. So we will end the email portion of this episode there and take a quick break. And I will be right back with Katie Baker to talk about the league of their own. In the littlest league possible Gonna make a big splash Don't have to talk trash In the littlest league possible In the littlest league possible

Actress and director Penny Marshall passed away earlier this week, and in the wake of her death, many people have praised perhaps her most celebrated and enduring work, 1992's A League of Their Own. My ringer colleague Katie Baker, one of the world's foremost Rockford Peaches appreciators, wrote a great retrospective on the movie for its 25th anniversary last year, and she joins me now to continue to talk about why A League of Their Own, while pretty appreciated, is still underappreciated, which I did not have to twist her arm to get her to do. Hello, Katie.

Hello, Ben. How are you? I am doing well. So for people who have not read your retrospective, which hopefully they will rectify sometime soon, can you give them the basic origin story, how this movie came about, how Penny Marshall ended up directing it? Yeah. So Penny Marshall really was, you know, not only the director of the movie, but really the reason that the movie happened in the way it did. She saw a documentary about the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League that was done by the son of one of the women who played in the league. And I think the documentary was on like PBS or something. And she saw it and loved it. Baseball League that was done by the son of one of the women who played in the league. And I think the documentary was on like PBS or something, and she saw it and loved it. And I think some people were like, oh, this could be a made for TV movie.

And she said, no, this should be a feature film. And so she really kind of shepherded it along through the process. And there was a lot of, you know, kind of casting issues and they were filming during pilot seasons on TV. So there was a lot of uncertainty with like actors and actresses, but, you know, she, you know, the movie was really her baby. She was the one that made the decision to include women who had actually played in the league and in that kind of closing scene where they're all playing baseball at Cooperstown. So, you know, she really wanted to Kind of do it right once she had seen the story Yeah, and I want to ask you about

Some of the casting stuff and the what-ifs Because there are a lot of interesting ones But before we get to that You mentioned in your article something that I probably Would not have guessed, which is that A League of Their Own is the best grossing Baseball movie ever And if you adjust for inflation

It's not even close. It kind of dwarfs everything else in box office. And obviously, economic success doesn't mean artistic success. But I think even though League of Their Own is regarded as one of the best baseball movies, it's usually like on a second tier, I would say, when you hear people talk about baseball movies. It's always like a Kevin Costner movie that's up there. It's either Bull Durham or it's Major League, which maybe Major League deserves that spot. I don't know. But what would be your argument that League of Their Own is, I don't know, the best baseball movie or worthy of being in an equal spot in the Pantheon with anything else yeah i mean i just i think that

what i kind of always come back to first of all is just how watchable of a movie it is yeah you can honestly just there's so many good performances and good actors and lines and i just feel like you can watch it again and again you know that's obviously not the only criteria but you know i think some movies that we still continue to hail as these amazing sports movies, Field of Dreams, you know, they're not something you can necessarily watch again and again, unless maybe you're my dad. But, you know, I think the combination of, you know, the kind of social context of, you know, when and where it was happening in the U.S. makes it an interesting movie on its own. And then the baseball scenes are actually, I think, pretty fun. I mean, the women did a lot of, they had to do a lot of kind of their own stunts. The tryouts that the actresses went to were not too dissimilar from the tryouts

that the players went to. They were on the field and throwing and running. And so I don't know, I just think, I think the combination of factors, you know, the story of the sisters, I just think it really kind of stands the test of time and is a movie that can be appreciated by, you know, anyone. Obviously, it's really cool for women to see so many women on the screen in a sports movie, but they don't try to, I don't know, I don't think they really try to hit you over the head with the fact that it's a women's movie. They just made a good movie and it happened to be about women's baseball. Yeah. And it's so quotable. It's incredibly quotable. It's just a really well-written script with great dialogue. Do you have a favorite line and who was responsible mostly for making it sound so good?

I mean, the screenwriters that worked on the film were at the time they're very hot in hollywood they had just done like parenthood and you know they were very funny so they are probably to praise for a lot of the lines i think city flickers is another movie that they had written so i'm always so partial to john levitz's character i just feel like everything he says is hilarious you know the way it works is the train moves, not the station, and just his performance is great. And speaking of Penny Marshall, when I talked to John Lovitz for the story,

which was a trip in and of itself to have the voice of John Lovitz on the other side of the phone, he was telling me just about kind of all the directorial decisions that she made that kept him in such a small role. And she said to him, you know, you're in the film just enough when there was another scene that he wanted to kind of put in there. So, you know, so she's to praise for a lot of that. But, you know,

also just the interplay between all the women. It's not even like a funny line on its own, but my friends and I will always kind of say like, has anyone seen my new red hat? And, you know, it's just like these little lines that don't even mean anything, but like just persist, including like the cadence of the line. Like everyone I know can just repeat exactly how it was in the film because they practically memorized it. Yeah. And you wrote about that in the piece, how it was kind of this seminal movie for you and your best friend at the time, and you knew all the lines. And probably that was the case for a lot of women and girls who were watching it at that point and didn't have a whole lot of other baseball my best friend's house, you know, best friend forever and ever and ever, seventh grade, you know, probably even younger, actually, like fifth grade, you know, relationship, which is such a formative experience for any, you know, young person. And we would listen to the soundtrack over and over. There's like that Carole King song, Now and Forever, that we'd be singing at the top of our lungs. The Madonna song, This Used to Be My Playground. We love that one. And, you know, it just, I associate

the film with that time in my life. And the thing is, like that friendship, you know, it ended badly. We had gotten some fight in like sixth grade and they're, you know, kind of never recovered. But I think that's like illustrative of the complexity of friendships and relationships. But I think that's like, illustrative of the complexity of friendships and relationships. And I think the movie does a good job of sort of showing, you know, the nuances of those sorts of things, and not being too like overly cutesy, or I don't know, I just think there's like some good layers to the way they portray like female friendship and female, you know, teammate relationships. And the actual baseball is really good in the movie, which can be a problem with some

baseball movies. Sometimes there's too much baseball and the action doesn't actually look that great. And the actors you can tell are not actual athletes and it just kind of takes you out of it. And sometimes there just isn't really much baseball. Baseball's kind of of part of the movie but there isn't actually much of it on screen and i feel like league of their own is a really nice mix of very baseball focused with a lot of on-field action that is actually done really convincingly and looks faithful to the truth and you're not sitting there like waiting for that to be over so that you can get to the next character-building scene.

It really fits well in the movie. Yeah, I agree. I mean, and coming from you, that's obviously high praise because you have a sharper eye for those details. But yeah, I agree. I mean, I think there's a scene where I think it's the catcher, and she has a huge bruise on the side of her leg after she slides into base. Yeah. And that was like that was a real bruise that she got while filming it.

So it just really shows, you know, how seriously they took it. And I think the the level of, you know, if you're making this movie about women's baseball and the baseball is bad, like it's just going to make the whole movie seem second rate. And I think the fact that they cared so much about recreating those scenes and making it fun to watch sports-wise, obviously, is one of the things that I think elevates it to the tier one versus the tier two. Yeah. So you were talking to a bunch of the people who

helped make the movie, and you had a lot of little tidbits in your piece about people who could have been cast, were almost cast, who refused to be cast because Madonna was in the movie, which was weird, or early versions of the script that could have looked different. So what were some of the ones that you either wonder how that actually would have looked or you're relieved that it didn't actually end up happening that way? Yeah. So the one that you're referencing is Deborah Winger was originally, I think, was playing the role of Dottie and the Geena Davis part. And when she found out that Madonna was involved, she kind of bristled at the idea of she called it an Elvis movie and she didn't want to be part of you know a Madonna star vehicle which is funny because I think Madonna is so great in the movie and doesn't stick out as being you know some famous person that just got shoehorned in like

she feels like a character and so the other ones that stick out to me are Moira Kelly was supposed to play Kit of the Cutting Edge fame. And the Cutting Edge, actually, she injured herself while filming that to the point where she couldn't participate in the movie. So, you know, we think about Geena Davis and Laurie Petty as like the icons of that film. But they were both sort of, you know, a plan B or C situation. sort of, you know, a plan B or C situation. And then one other one that's funny is that Penny Marshall's brother, Gary Marshall, plays Walter Harvey, who's, you know, the money bags behind the whole empire. And it was based on, you know, on Mr. Wrigley himself. And her brother played the role because they wanted Christopher Walken, but he was too expensive.

Yeah. And another one you mentioned is that in some early version of the movie, there was supposed to be some kind of romance element between Jimmy and Dottie, which sounds horrible. I'm glad that that didn't happen. Yeah. I think there was even supposed to be a scene where they, like, you know, where they mooch or something. And yeah, I mean, that would have just, in my opinion, like torpedoed the whole movie. I'm so glad that they had the instincts not to put that in. I mean, we always kind of joke about how sports movies, oftentimes

the worst part of them are like the, you know, the whatever relationship is getting kind of pulled into the plot. So I appreciate that they, you know, mostly avoid that in the movie. I think someone told me that, you know, when they started showing it to test audiences, everyone was like, kind of, kind of revolted by the, by the idea of a relationship between those two, especially because, you know, Tom Hanks ends up, you know, kind of becoming a good coach, but he's also, you know, an alcoholic, you know, peeing lush. And so it's like, right, Daddy Henson can do better than that. Yeah, right. So what about the beginning and end of the movie, which takes place at the Hall of Fame at the opening of an exhibit about the

All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. And as you mentioned in your piece, Penny Marshall insisted that it not be the same actresses in old people makeup, which I think was a good choice. But on paper, that sounds like it could have strayed into Field of Dreams, like mockish, overly sentimental territory. But I think it works out well to start and end that way. Yeah. I mean, you know, seeing, seeing first of all the casting that they did for those that ending scene is just i just think it's so brilliant like every woman looks like their character but not like you said not in some overly stage makeup way yeah and one thing i should say is that the um the woman who plays like the older gina davis was always just, I couldn't get over how similar they were.

And I'm pretty sure I read or was told that they like dubbed in Gina Davis's voice. So that's like part of why it's so uncanny. But yeah, I mean, that the scene at the end where they're playing baseball and where they, you know, kind of all come together at the Hall of Fame, I think was inspired by Penny having gone to a Hall of Fame, you know, they opened a women in baseball exhibit that she attended. And I think she was so moved by everything she saw that it was really important to her to, you know, have that aspect of the film. And something that I didn't know when I wrote the piece last year, but that I found out when I was, you know, when she just passed away was that Steven Spielberg approached her after he saw the movie

and asked her about that ending scene and she told him she used the actual you know people from the historic period and he asked if he could you know kind of play off that and use that concept for the ending of Schindler's List so you know that yeah so the um you know the influence of the movie is you know when you hear something like that it's's kind of very striking, just in terms of the decisions that Penny Marshall made. that it meant a lot to the women who it was about if they saw it did a lot of them see it did a lot of them express opinions about how it represented their experience yeah i mean i think when i spoke to the son of the i mean i spoke to the guy who had made the documentary whose mother and aunt were in the league he said um when the film came out his mother i think was very sick but so she wasn't able to go to the actual premiere but he was able to sit and watch the movie with her, which she said was such an amazing experience.

And that she was, you know, she was so happy to see the representation, you know, on film. And I think for a lot of the women involved, I think especially just because of the way that it was treated like a very serious movie. And it was and, you know movie. And their involvement was welcomed. And I think they have a positive feeling overall about being portrayed in a feature film, which doesn't always end well for everyone. Yeah. And it's funny, you mentioned that Deborah Winger was worried about it being Madonna's Elvis movie. mentioned that uh deborah winger was worried about it being madonna's elvis movie and i mean in 1991 when this was being made madonna was one of the most famous people on the planet so to have her be in a baseball movie was a pretty big deal and it was funny how you mentioned that people just

weren't able to call her madonna in person like how do you address madonna when she is just on set with everyone else and it's kind of like she does really blend in like you'd think that if you got madonna in your movie at the height of her fame you would i don't know just go out of your way to put the spotlight on her in every scene and that's not really what happened she's just like there with rosie o'donnell and all these other people and just kind of blends into the rest of the cast yeah like I mean can't you imagine like in a lesser film where you know Marla Hooch is singing it had to be you and Madonna like gets up and does a number and it's like you know and

like hey it's the swing dance scene I guess but that's true that's true yeah but you know I think the the line that Lori Petty said to me she she was like, like, what do you call her? You can't call her Madonna. That's like calling her the Empire State Building. And Penny Marshall, I think, felt the same way. So she she got around it by just always referring to Rosie and Madonna as a pair. And so she would call them Roe and Moe, all kind of all one word. But it is funny to just think about what it must have been like i mean there are obviously a lot of stars in the movie you know i think laurie petty

had like just come off of doing fast point break or something but yeah to have madonna in the early 90s and to use her and like you said in a way that wasn't like hokey i just think makes the movie so much better i mean my favorite scene with her is when she's sitting in the back of the bus, like, you know, teaching people to read by using like romance novels and smacking her gum. And it's just, it's such a real character. Like I know that person. I've sat in the back of the bus with that person, you know? So, yeah. And you talked to a curator at the Hall of Fame about the popularity of the exhibit about that league, and I guess partially about the movie. And it sounds like that is like one of the big draws at the museum is that exhibit, and it's kind of a staple there. So I guess that's one reflection of the movie's legacy,

even if it is sometimes overshadowed by the Costner canon. Clearly, there is a lot of appreciation and love for this movie among baseball fans and at the Hall of Fame. Yeah. And I mean, even, you know, the curator I spoke to, it was John O'Dell. He said that people still come, you know, girls come, sometimes they're even like wearing a Rockford Peach outfit or something. And, you know, they're, they're too young to have even been around when the movie came out, you know, so it really has kind of lasted into new generations that are, you know, discovering it, I'm sure because their parents love to watch it, or maybe they're athletes themselves. And it's just a great example. But, but yeah, people come to the Hall of Fame, you said, to see that exhibit exhibit or they come and they ask about that exhibit. And I think they, in like the mid-aughts, I think they expanded it a little bit and he made the point that they left room to expand it further. So hopefully there'll be some new material to put in there at some point. So yeah, that speaks to how important the movie was as just a representation and showing

women and girls, people on screen that are often not there. And that brings up a piece that Brittany de la Creta wrote. Brittany has contributed to The Ringer and has been on this podcast. And she wrote a piece about A League of Their Own earlier this year and some of the things that are not in the movie, namely that all the stuff about charm school and wearing dresses and comporting yourself in a ladylike fashion at all times was in part a response to fears about lesbianism in that era and how no one wanted an appearance of impropriety or what would have been considered impropriety at that time. And that's not really in the movie. And it's 1992 and it's perhaps not

surprising that it's not in the movie. And I don't know whether it mars the legacy of the movie that was so important from a representation perspective in one way, but there are probably people who are watching that movie and thinking, I am not represented in this movie because that was a big part of that league and some of those women's stories too. So in what way should that affect how we think about the film, do you think? Well, I mean, when I read Brittany's piece that you're referring to, I was very struck by just the sheer number of women that she either spoke to or kind of had researched who, you know, who, I mean, unsurprisingly, living in close quarters with a lot of like-minded athletic humans, you know, had made, you know, in many cases, kind of lifelong lasting relationships that, like you said, were extremely frowned upon.

And, you know, players were, like you said, the charm school scene is hilarious and so fun to watch. But, you know, it does have kind of a darker underbelly in the sense of they wanted people to go to charm school so that they acted like ladies. Damn it, you know. But I think, you know, like you said, it came out in 92. It doesn't excuse it. I was trying to remember, like, I think it wasn't until 97 that like Ellen DeGeneres came out, you know, which was kind of a pivotal moment. So it preceded that, you know, I do think another thing Brittany mentioned was how even with these women, a lot of times they went through their whole lives not maybe not

even coming out themselves like a lot of times in their obituary people were referred to as like their special friend or so you know I think it it's illustrative of the fact that you know it got kind of covered up then it kind of has continued to we've got people like britney who are bringing those stories to the forefront which is great and it does make you think you know maybe there's room for you know a way to tell those stories in a in a more focused way i mean it's hard because the movie is so visually it just i just think it overshadows too much if you tried to make another movie it would be you know it would be hard to kind of get over the league of their own aesthetic and everything but yeah i mean i think

it you know i think it's a good example of the fact that even as this is a movie that in many ways is groundbreaking for its representation of women and the fact that it was directed by a woman there's still so many other places that it could have gone. And, you know, I think those stories are increasingly being told. And unfortunately, when, you know, the movie came out, I think it just wasn't something that they wanted to focus on. You know, they don't really have many relationships at all in the movie. So I don't know if that played into it. Probably not as much as just the kind of social scene at the time.

But yeah, I thought Britney Spears was great and it was good to get that kind of perspective on a movie that, you know, most people are kind of afraid to criticize in any way. So I thought that she did a really good job with that. Yeah, you mentioned Ellen. Also, Rosie O'Donnell came out in 2002, I think. Oh, wow.

So yeah, so this was, you know, a decade before that. So one of the things that people talk about with this movie, of course, one of the nice things about sports movies is what ifs and people kind of reading things into the text that is not even necessarily there. But with A League of Their Own, that big question that people pour over endlessly is did Dottie Hinson drop the ball on purpose as Kit slid into home plate during game seven of the women's world series so that her sister could have her big moment and there have been a lot of analyses of this and you asked about it and you have an opinion on this as well so So what do you think? So yeah, it's actually, if you go online and Google this, like you can find some amazing analyses on like Reddit and similar places

where people are getting into the idea of like, well, you know, she drove all the way to Yellowstone with Bob. And so she would have been sitting in the car. She would have been really rusty, you know? So I don't think she dropped the ball on purpose. And so, you know, it's funny when I asked Lori Petty about it, she was like, I knew you're going to ask that. Everybody asked me that. And she, Lori Petty, I think is protective of the kid character, was like, no, I kicked her ass. You know, she didn't drop it on purpose. And then similarly, the man whose mother, you know, the man who had written the original documentary, And then similarly, the man whose mother, you know, the man who had written the original documentary, he almost gets like offended because, you know, his mother in some ways is the inspiration for the Dottie character.

And, you know, he's like, my mother would never betray her teammates. You know, but obviously it's less purposely, you know, kind of vague as to what happens. I don't know. I change my mind all the time. I used to just assume that she dropped it on purpose. And now, having read some of the very, you know, specific forensic analyses of, you know, Dottie's rest level and, you know, and kind of the and the and the difficulty of making that play and holding on to the ball. I sometimes do like to think that, you know, she, she's just, you know, as karma is coming back to her, she, she left the team in the middle of the playoffs and that's what happens. Yeah. Yeah. Is one way or another more satisfying in a narrative sense or a character sense? I guess, I mean, it's one way more resonant or emotionally satisfying? I think when you ask it that way, I kind of think it's more satisfying to me if she didn't mean to drop the ball because it, you know, it kind of shows that Kit did it on her own. And so I don't know.

I mean, what's your analysis of the scene? I think I'm kind of with you, too. I think it might cheapen it almost if there was an element of intention to it. I mean, it would be touching, I guess, the gesture that you do that for a family member. But on the know, and all your teammates? It's like, there's a, you know, we've spent the whole movie loving this team and then, you know, which by the way is something that I have always liked about the movie is how they, they don't win. And it does have, you know, I think that's another thing that makes it kind of a, just differentiates it as a sports movie. It's,

it's not like the perfect happy ending. It's, you know, it's kind of a real world ending where they get on the bus afterwards and the Racine bells are excited and they're all pretty bummed. Well, I will link to your piece and to Brittany's piece and encourage everyone to go read Katie's retrospective and everything she writes. And I know that our boss Bill Simmons is really ramping up the Rewatchables podcast for next year. I think there's supposed to be a new episode every week. So just saying, if he's looking for material,

I think this has been a pilot episode for Rewatchables about A League of Their Own. I know. Well, it's funny because I get tweets, and a lot of them are from men who are like, we need A League of Their Own Rewatchables. So yeah so i agree bill if you're listening make it happen yeah all right well thanks katie this has been fun yeah thanks so much ben i really appreciate it okay let's take one more quick break and then i will be back with a second ringer colleague zach cram whose favorite

baseball movie as it happens is is A League of Their Own. But we're not going to talk about that. We are going to talk about Dodgers-Reds trade and the Mariners trade and trading prospects. All right, so we were about to put this podcast to bed. Everything was sealed and done, and we were ready to settle into our pre-holiday weekend. And then suddenly we were singed by the our pre-holiday weekend and then suddenly we were singed by the stove which grew very hot late in the work week we had a couple big trades and to talk about them so that this episode can be as current as possible i am joined by my ringer mlb podcast partner zach krem hey zach happy to be here so you were at a holiday party when this

news broke or you were about to be so you were not any more prepared than I was for this news and I don't know if either of us was emotionally prepared for Yasiel Puig to be a member of the Cincinnati Reds. It's sad. I think that's my first emotion here and I think the first emotion that a lot of us had when we were just talking about it internally. He had been such an icon in Los Angeles going to Dodger Stadium where the World Series has been the last few years, and you see a lot of him. The fans just love him whenever he does anything.

It sort of amplifies their excitement even beyond whatever that thing is supposed to generate. I can't help think about basically the last thing he did in a Dodger uniform, which was that magnificent bat flip after his home run, and the Dodgers just lost it. And that could have been like a World Series highlight that played for decades, and now it's just sort of a footnote, and now he too is kind of a footnote. Tough fall for Los Angeles.

They lost you first. You moved to Chicago, and now they're losing Yasiel Puig. It's a lot for the city to recover from Well they got some competitive balance money back in return So I think that's a fair trade That's something Yeah so we have to talk about money All these trades are now about money and the competitive balance tax

So here we go I will lay out this entire trade as succinctly as I can So Matt Kemp, Yasiel Puig, Alex Wood all went to Cincinnati along with catcher slash infielder Kyle Farmer and crucially $7 million. And in return, the Dodgers received Homer Bailey, who has already been released, LA not wasting any time. Then also two prospects, Josiah Gray and Jeter Downs. Jeter Downs you may have heard of because he's named after Derek Jeter and is also a prospect of some repute. We can talk about the salary relief aspect of this.

So this is the second winter in a row that Matt Kemp has been salary dumped. I guess he's a more appealing player than he was at this time last year by some amount. But what is the big picture here? Because this is six war worth of value, at least in terms of 2018 production, that the Dodgers are surrendering here. So why do they want to do this? Because they don't want to spend money.

That's a bit of an oversimplification. But when you have Buster only tweeted tonight, the Dodgers are experts at baseball money laundering. And I'm not sure if Major League Baseball is in a position where they want, I don't know, their second or third most well-known franchise, had a lower average value throughout his entire contract. So it saves them, what's the final number, about $16 or $17 million to the competitive balance tax next year. So I think that drops their total to around $180 million for the competitive balance tax. The threshold after which teams will have to pay the luxury tax next year will be $206 million. So that gives the Dodgers a decent amount of wiggle room. Not quite enough wiggle room if they just want to sign Bryce Harper outright, but now it means if they do sign Harper, either

they'll have to pay less in the luxury tax than they otherwise would have, or they just need to shed one or two more pieces and then they can fit Harper's entire salary underneath that limit. So Dodgers fans, I'm sure, are super psyched about getting under the $206 million. That's what everyone wants their team to do. They have done that. Of course, this is just a prelude to other moves, one would think, as you just said. So the thing I don't understand, everyone immediately, our minds went to Harper and we did the math. And as you said, it doesn't look like they can get him and also be under that limit unless they make some other move. But getting over 206 is not like touching lava or something where the second you go over it, you get burned.

Like if they were to just sign Bryce Harper right now for what we expect Bryce Harper to sign for, you would expect that they'd have to pay a penalty of what, like a couple million dollars maybe in extra taxes or something? Why is this a big deal? Is it just the fact that if you go over multiple years in a row, then the penalty climbs and so it's like a forward-looking penalty that they would incur? Or is it really just like a couple extra million, which who cares? But and even last year, the Dodgers dropped below the luxury tax, right? So they could presumably go over the next year. And I think it's easy to compare to the trade last year they did with

Atlanta, where they exchanged a lot of money to help their luxury tax profile. But if you look at the players they gave up last year, it was Adrian Gonzalez, Brandon McCarthy, Scott Casimir, Charlie Culberson. None of those players, as sort of big names as they are, was as impactful as Puig or Alex Wood. And that means the Dodgers, like you said, are giving up real value. They also entered the offseason with maybe too much depth in the outfield and starting rotation. I don't think the loss of Alex Wood is a huge deal when you have all the starting pitchers they have. I'm not sure if Wood would have even made the opening day rotation. But if you lose Puig and Kemp, who maybe doesn't profile as a great player going forward, it could have been a fluke last year. But they went from having too many hitters to maybe not enough. If Alex Verdugo takes Puig's spot in right field, he's the Dodgers' great prospect.

Alex Verdugo takes Puig's spot in right field. He's the Dodgers' great prospect. But then you have Verdugo and Bellinger and Jock Peterson in the outfield. They still have enough players right now, but all it takes is one person to regress or become injured, and then you miss Puig's bat because as much as Puig is sort of known as a flashy personality, he's a very good hitter too with a WRC plus of 120 the last two seasons. That's not a bat you can just easily replace right away. And it seems like this was in the works for a while. We'd been hearing rumors about maybe some sort of swap here with the Dodgers giving up guys and the Reds getting guys. And that was something that surfaced during the winter meeting. So it took some time to put this together. And as you're saying, Dodgers have a lot of depth. That's sort of their signature trait as a team. And even in the rotation, I mean, we've seen that they have a lot of depth there too, but they also have a lot of guys who get hurt you figure probably kershaw's going to be on the

dl at some point given his recent past and rich hill you could say the same thing and ryu certainly and bueller is young and they probably don't want to work him too hard although they had to this past year you could see where wood would have been valuable depth too. So they're giving up something of value here and you figure they're going to go get something of value. So do you have any thoughts on what that might be unless it is the obvious Bryce Harper? Is there something better they could do? They've been linked to some of the Indians starters, for instance, too. Well, I think that's an interesting question because the obvious fit with Cleveland was maybe a Verdugo for a

Kluber trade, Cleveland needing an outfielder. They don't really have Verdugo to sacrifice at this point. So I'm not sure if that takes them out of the market there. Maybe they re-add Yosemite Grandal on a short deal because they kind of need another catcher. So I think Andrew Friedman had a quote where he just said, basically, this gives us a lot more flexibility. And I think that's true if they're operating with the idea that $206 million is the absolute maximum. I think both of us have thoughts about that notion. But if that's the case, it does afford them more flexibility to add the two hitters they need, or maybe the reliever they need. They already added Joe Kelly, but the Dodgers have a history of not having enough relievers. So I would be pretty surprised if this is the last move they end up making. So what do you think the legacy of Puig's time in LA is? He just turned 28 years old. It

seemed to happen sort of suddenly because when he came up, he was one of the most exciting and one of the best players in baseball. And he was that way for, you know, his first couple seasons. And then things sort of fell apart and he was in the minors and there were scouts saying he's done and his swing is slow and his body is big and people were writing him off entirely. And, of course, he survived a few near trades in the past. a few near trades in the past. And then he rehabilitated himself to the point where he's been a productive player the past couple of seasons. Not really a star in terms of stats, definitely a star in terms of just personality and the amount that we talk about him and the highlights that we watch. I guess maybe that is the legacy just as much as his on-field production. And some of the clubhouse stuff kind of died down

over the years as he matured somewhat or was disciplined, but he's been overall almost like a 20-win player for the Dodgers over the past several years. I wonder in retrospect how much we will end up associating this Dodgers sort of era with Yasiel Puig. Obviously, Kershaw is the named star, but Puig was in LA for six seasons, and they won the division all six years after not having made the playoffs for several years before he got there. I remember maybe his legacy will be that first miraculous run when they were a below 500 team, and he got called up, and all of a sudden, I forget the exact number, but didn't they win like 42 out of 50 games or something? And I think that sort of fits with what you're saying, that it's sort of these

serious highs and serious lows, this ebb and flow where when he was great, he was phenomenal and beloved. And when things weren't going as great, he was maybe not a scapegoat of sorts, but he got a lot more blame than someone like Kershaw did. So I guess we should talk about the red side of this trade. It kind of goes against this podcast's history to do so, but that is partly because the Reds just have not been a team worth talking about very much for almost the entire time that this podcast has existed, and they are doing their best to change that now. This is not their first move of the winter, and this is a pretty high-profile one. So do you think that the Reds

have made themselves into a potential contender at this point? Maybe. I think I, too, have not thought as much about the Reds this season. Did you know that on the Fangraph's death charts right now, their DH for next year is listed as Michael Lorenzen? That's interesting. That makes me want to think about the Reds. Yeah. Fortunately, they don't have to have a full-time DH, but Lorenzen is one of the more interesting Reds of the past few years, which is not really saying that much, but his potential to be a two-way guy is one of the things I was looking forward to going into the 2019 Reds season. But I think our colleague Michael Bauman in his write-up about this trade mentioned that the Reds had a lot of high-end talent.

They have Joey Votto. They have Eugenio Suarez, who's one of the best underrated players in baseball. Even Scooter Jeanette has hit really well the last two seasons, but they just didn't have any depth behind them. Puig gives them that. Alex Wood and Tanner Roark, who they traded for earlier this offseason, give them sort of a higher floor. I don't know if that helps them contend in the Central just by themselves, but I would be not shocked if they won more games than they did last year. Yeah, that is a really tough division for them to try to mount a challenge. I just don't know with the Brewers and the Cubs and the Cardinals.

I mean, they do have young guys who are coming up and are promising, but maybe this is more about making them somewhat interesting. And I guess you could envision them as a wild card contender. To me, it's still sort of a stretch, but they should be more watchable than they've been for a while. And Votto and Puig sounds like a good buddy cop comedy premise. Just those two alone seems like something I would watch. They haven't won 70 games in a season in the last four seasons. So even I saw some criticism on Twitter that, oh, they were giving up prospects for players who are free

agents in a year and won't help them make the playoffs anyway. But there's something to be said for competence. There's something to be said for Nick Senzel comes up and is able to play on a not 95 loss team. And it's not like the prospects they gave up are Nick Senzel. They gave up players who are decent prospects, but they're pretty far away. I think Jeter Downs was in single A last year, and Josiah Gray was in rookie ball. So it's not like they were going to help the Reds immediately next year anyway. And if Puig is good, then either they can trade him again at the deadline, they can give him a qualifying offer and recoup a draft pick. It's not like they gave up prospects and got no future value in return. And then after that move was made, I assume Jerry DiPoto just felt some pressure to make a trade of his own. And so he did. And he acquired Domingo Santana from the Brew the odd man out last year with the Brewers after they got Kane and Jelic. There just wasn't a whole lot of playing time for him.

He didn't do much with the playing time he got. He spent some time in the minors, but still sort of a promising player. He doesn't really project to be any better than Gamal at this point, but there's sort of a perception that there might be more to him than that. Weirdly, I think the Mariners have made a lot of interesting additions for a rebuilding team, like adding Edwin Encarnacion, who probably won't play for them, but they added Omar Navarez, and they've added a lot of prospects who are closer to the majors than a typical rebuilding team might. So I think there's part of me that keeps looking at this Mariners roster and wondering, could they make a run? And then I look at their pitching staff and no, they cannot make a run. Yeah, no, I don't think so. But this is a good opportunity to talk to

you about something that I wanted to talk to you about anyway, which is a bit of recent research that you did for the ringer. And you put out a piece called Why trading for top prospects is less of a win Than MLP teams seem to think And so this was Inspired by actually something that Bill Simmons said on Slack Just having a perception that Maybe trading for prospects

Doesn't work out that well At least pitching prospects in particular But we are also seduced By the promise of prospects. But he kind of wanted someone to take a look and see whether the actual results worked out in favor of the team that is getting the prospect. And so you did a bunch of number crunching and data entry, and you came up with an interesting conclusion, which is that prospects who get traded don't necessarily pan out as well as

prospects who stay put. Yeah, I think this built on, incidentally, a result you found at Baseball Prospectus a few years ago, where I think you just looked at top 10 prospects who had been traded. And I looked at anyone who was ranked as a Baseball America top 50 prospect and was traded, I think I cut it off at while they were a top 50 prospect. So, you know, someone who was a top 50 prospect and got traded three years later didn't count against it. And if you look at that group from 1990, when Baseball America made its first list through 2011, they had 697 different players. And out of that group, about 15% had been traded. There were some superstars in that group, Jeff Bagwell, famously,

Kenny Lofton. But far more often, the guys who get traded either produce negative war or very little war. More than half of them, I think it was 57, 58% ended up producing one war or less per season in their first six years, which I use because that's the six years of team control has before a player hits free agency. And basically, the players who are traded are both less likely to become stars than the players who are not traded, and they're more likely to become busts. So they get the wrong part of both the high end and the low end. And you talked to some people who have been involved in trading some of these prospects and trading for some of these prospects. And it's kind of logical that

this would be the case. But what did they say? And what have you concluded about why this has actually been the pattern? Yeah, I think if you think about the circumstances that make a trade, you need a team that wants the player, but you also need the team that has the player to be willing to trade him. And you might expect that the team would only be willing to trade a player if they maybe aren't as high on him as the public consensus is. So one example that I used for the lead of my piece was Jesus Montero, who was traded for Michael Pineda in this huge trade, and kind of neither player panned out. At least Pineda had a few good seasons for New York, although he was injured a lot and sort of inconsistent. But Montero was a top 10 prospect at both Baseball America and Baseball

Prospectus three different times. He had the September call up for the Yankees where he hit 328. He had four home runs in that month. Everyone thought he was going to be a star. And then the Yankees were willing to trade him. And it turns out they kind of knew something. I talked to a guy who was in the Yankees front office at the time, and he said, basically, we didn't think he could stick at catcher and maybe his bat would have been good enough to play a designated hitter, but we also weren't sure about his body. He might not mature as well. And that's essentially what happened. The Mariners bet on him and it didn't work out. And that's sort of indicative of this kind of trade where a lot of times you have the team that acquires the prospect can scout, they can now look at TrackMan

and all this high speed data, but they're never going to know as much about the player as the team that's giving them up. There's an information gap there. And oftentimes, that's probably enough to account for this difference. Yeah. And today there are even new technologies that teams have access to that other teams do not, whether it's wearable stuff and swing sensors and things that are not public knowledge. So it makes sense that there would be things that teams know. And obviously makeup is a part of it too, personality and work ethic and all of that. So I don't know what the takeaway is, because obviously you do still have to trade for prospects at times if you want to be good in the future. But maybe it should affect

how fans think of some of these moves so that if you are trading a star, don't necessarily expect to be getting a guaranteed star in return. And I also think it works the other way, too. If you're a team of, say, the Yankees and you're trading for James Paxton, if the Yankees fans are upset about giving up someone like Justice Sheffield, who's a top 50 prospect, he would fit in this pool. And it's, I think, really easy to see prospects and just think about the best case scenario in the future. And you read the write-ups of Justice Sheffield, You might do a little internet scouting. You look at his Fangraphs player page, and you could see him being a number two starter someday. But it's far more likely that he's not going to pan out. And I think the Yankees' willingness to include him in the trade might be indicative of that. Sheffield,

having already been traded just two years earlier, going from Cleveland to the Yankees. So if anything, I think it's maybe a lesson to fans of contending teams to not be so worried when their team trades a prospect. I know it's kind of a tough thing to do because we analyze baseball and we want to think we know a lot. And in some cases we do, but the teams will always know more than us. And it's kind of hard to just defer to team authority and think, oh, well, they know this guy might not be as good as the prospect analysts say he might be. But in some cases, that might be the case. It kind of reminded me of what you wrote during the playoffs about second guessing managerial decisions. It puts us in a tough place about, well, they know more than us. Do we second guess them? But that's kind of what the

data showed. All right. Well, I'm going to end this podcast before someone else makes some sort of move. I will try to post this while it's actually up to date. So you can all read Zach's article and all of his articles at The Ringer and find him on Twitter where he tweets interesting facts that other sites sometimes appropriate on their own social media accounts. Zach, it has been a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you so much. You know, we talked about the Daniel Murphy signing and we talked about the Dodgers-Reds trades. It occurs to me that I don't know who's going to play center field for the Rockies or the Reds. I suppose the leading candidates are Ian Desmond and Scott Schepler, respectively. Not great, Bob. So that will do it for today and for this week, although not this year. We will have episodes next week. I don't know how many of you will actually be listening to them next week, but they'll be there for those of you who want them.

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those of you who are celebrating and Merry time off from work. to those of you who are celebrating, and Merry time off from work to those of you who are not. We will be back to talk to you next week. I'm ready my hands