Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1411: The Trade Deadline Roundup

Episode Date: August 1, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about bigger bases in the Atlantic League, then recap and dissect the trade deadline, focusing on why the market took so long to develop, the significance of multiple teams both buying and selling, why some top contenders didn’t do much, what a wild card is worth, the Trevor Bauer […]

Last minute shakedown Last minute shakedown It's not easy to change Not losing this thirst. It's not easy to change, not losing this thirst. Hello and welcome to episode 1411 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. With me is Sam Miller of ESPN.

Hello, Sam. Hey, Ben. So this is our promised trade deadline recap. This is just going to be meat and potatoes trade talk. Unless you have anything else you want to get out of your system first. Uh, no. Uh, no. Well, all right.

Real quick. Alex Putterman wrote an article for the Hartford Current about the Atlantic League experimentation, as did Emma Batchelori, which we didn't talk about either one of them, I don't think. But there's one little detail in Alex's piece that I wanted to bring up where he's talking to the players. He talks to the players basically about each thing, and they talk about whether it's been a big change or a little change, and whether they like it or whether they hate it. And about the larger bases, this is what is said, players say the bigger bases haven't made much difference. And I think that

means that it is the perfect, like it just goes back. That's the perfect change. Nobody even noticed it. We know it made a difference. Like it's just simple math that it has made a difference. And yet the players don't even notice that. And I am going to just keep hammering this point that the larger bases is the most brilliant solution to anything. And I am going to, there are going to be things that they do that I hate and things that I do that I mock. But at the end of the day, if I get larger bases in the major leagues, it will all be worth it. Yeah, I like the bigger bases.

I saw a picture of them recently, and you notice, you can tell, like, hey, that's a big base right there. But I can see why. Well, maybe it's just that they've been bombarded with so many other more obvious and earth-shattering changes, the bigger bases. At least the bases are still there. They're still stuck to the there. They're still stuck to the ground. They're still in the same general location. So that's something they can count on. There are still the same number of bases. You still have to touch them to be safe. So nothing too wild is going on there. So yeah, that's probably a good thing. I don't know whether

you can actually see the difference in, I don't know, success rates and advancing extra bases or stolen base rates or stolen base attempt rates or anything like that, and you'd have a hard time isolating the effect of the bigger bases because there's other stuff going on too, like changes to pickoff moves, for instance. But I agree that something subtle enough that players are not mad about it is probably a good way to go about things. What I have not seen in any articles is, unless I just read too quickly past it, is a explanation of where these ideas come from, what the process is for deciding what to do and who is doing it.

There is, I would say, tonal inconsistency between some of these moves uh like the you can go to first on a wild pitch is just like some like i mean that's like very different from let's give the umpire instructions to be a little bit more conservative with check swing calls uh and you just it's hard for me to imagine the same person came up with both of those it feels like this is like a ringer staff recap of a Game of Thrones episode where it's just like really whiplash going from one to the next. The shifts one has been, I think,

mentioned in both Alex and Emma's pieces. It's such an odd one because as it was noted, there aren't shifts in the Atlantic League and it really feels like stacking the deck there so that they can be like ah we banned shifts and nobody complained or it went smoothly or whatever when there just are no shifts and so like again i would be interested in hearing how these were decided on and whether it was done by committee or whether everybody got to throw one into the hat like a suggestion box in the break room or if they were voted on or what

yeah it's it's strange it seems like it was probably something like the focus group sketch from i think you should leave the netflix sketch show which I don't know if you've seen. I haven't. But the guy who is a meme now who suggests that there should be cars where the steering wheels don't fly off when you're driving. So there's one guy in the meeting who's suggesting stuff like that and banning the shift. And then another guy is like, what if we just made the bases a little bit bigger? What if we just told the umpires not to call so many strikes on check swings and then someone else is tossing out some wacky wild idea and somehow it just all got lumped together and it's happening all at the same time. Anyway.

I mean this in, Ben, I mean this in total sincerity. This is not something that I am just throwing out there. I genuinely believe that you should be on whatever committee it is that decides what they're going to do. And I don't, again, I do not know. Maybe they do have your equivalent somehow in this. Maybe Jeff, for instance, now that Jeff is part of the system, maybe Jeff is actually suggesting some of these. But if they don't, I think they should have you, or maybe there might be one or two other people in the world I would consider as qualified as you. And I'm a little disappointed that we haven't heard from them. Specifically, you haven't heard from them. It's hard to know whether I'm ever acting in good faith. So I could

see why they would pass me over for you. But they should have you doing this. I think that you could be the logic enforcer in this process. And you know that I believe that systems and companies need a logic enforcer. Well, you don't know. Maybe they came to me and I turned them down. But no, that didn't happen. I was not invited to serve. But I might serve if asked. No one's asking.

I'm sure they have very capable people involved. Well, I don't know. Capable people who have run a minor league league a not a minor league an independent league team well no probably not there aren't a lot of people with that very specific skill set who know who uh do the things that we do so people who have talked to dozens of sources about the strategy yeah i don't know if you've read the only rule whether our performance in that book would give you confidence or not that we should be people on this committee but uh know if you've read The Only Rule, whether our performance in that book would give you confidence or not that we should be people on this committee.

Because if your goal is to implement changes in such a way that players and coaches and managers are all on board with it, I don't know that we passed that test. All right. We should probably talk about the thing that people probably want to hear us talk about. Let's go. Because we talk about the Atlantic League a lot. This is trade deadline day, and the trade deadline took its sweet time getting started.

And it looked like the Jesus Aguilar trade might be the biggest deal made on Wednesday for much of the day. And then everything happened all at once. I would not be surprised if more moves were announced after the deadline than were announced prior to the deadline, on deadline day at least. And before you know it, it turned out to be a really busy day. And actually, I think there were more trades made this July than in every previous July on record. there were more players traded on deadline day than in previous deadline days. And I don't think there was more war moved, but it was still pretty high on the war moved leaderboard too. So in the end, yeah. Do you think that we need, is it a phenomenon worth discussing that everything got pushed back until the very last second? Do you think that there is something about modern baseball that that captures? Is there significance to it? I mean, when we talk about players not signing until very late in off seasons these days, we think of that as a very significant thing.

Like that is not a insignificant development in baseball and the baseball industry and lots of explanations are offered for why modern gms are more likely to be presiding over such off seasons is this significant or is this just like human nature is somehow that it's not necessarily a permanent trend but even if it is it's just human nature and it doesn't mean much and i mean because i went into i don't know what it was like watching it but yeah i went into uh to an interview at 12 12 pacific and uh yeah aguilar was was the only trade i think at that point uh and came out at 115 and there were a lot yeah yes there were Yeah. I mean, I had a take gestating in my head for much of the day about what I would write if there turned out to be no trades to write about. All right. So tell us about baseball in that world. What were you going to tell us? What were you going to tell us

about baseball? What narrative had you concocted where it made perfect sense? of had you concocted where it made perfect sense. I hadn't settled on something firmly, but I was starting to think, well, yeah, maybe I could connect it to the slow off seasons. And maybe it is like that non-competitive tendency of teams not to upgrade. Like we've been talking about our teams colluding or are they not colluding, but they just have the same evaluations for all their players. And so the effect is equivalent to collusion. And I was wondering, are we going to be saying the same thing about the deadline if all the best teams decide that they're not going to upgrade significantly? Is that because they just looked around and they got the sense that those other teams weren't going to either? And they figured, well, if

our rivals don't upgrade, then we don't need to upgrade to keep pace. And it's also, I think, partly what we had been talking about previously, which was that this was kind of an unusual year with the standings. And you had a lot of teams in the wildcard race, and you had a lot of teams that were leading their divisions that didn't really need the help, at least to make the playoffs or to win their divisions. And so all that stuff was floating around in my head. And if that had turned out to be the case, I'm sure I would have tried to connect the dots and come up with something coherent there. And maybe it would have meant something, but as it is, that got blown up and I'm happy it did. And I just got to write about Zach Greinke instead, which was fun.

I do think that the way that the playoff race where there's so much fluctuation, I think that was pretty significant. At about an hour before the deadline, the Yankees were ahead 2-0. And then as the deadline approached, the Diamondbacks took a 3-2 lead. And I think that really shifted the playoff race enough that a lot of teams decided, okay, now we've got the last bit of information on the standings that we're going to get. This is as close to locked in as it's going to get. Diamondbacks three, Yankees two, let's move. Yeah. I do make fun of GMs for procrastinating

sometimes because I like to think of major league GMs as like a kid who realizes that they have a paper due in the morning or something, and they're just just pulling it all nighter to do it at the last minute. And I think there probably is some of that. It's just natural human tendency when we have a deadline. We don't really bear down until the deadline and it was like with two hours left to the deadline like talks are intensifying or something as if teams had not realized that that the clock was ticking here there were a lot of tweets that were it was like 12 minutes to the deadline and it was like these teams are starting to talk about these guys it's like could you have had these conversations sooner i mean i think that part of it probably is that teams were actually trying to get the most information they could.

And teams are learning things right up until July 31st. And because there's no August trade deadline this year, there was more pressure to make the moves that you were going to make now. And obviously, there's more uncertainty in certain teams cases and so yeah they wanted to wait just to see what they knew what the playoff odds looked like what other teams had done how players were performing there is value to knowing what you know right before the deadline but is there value at 359 eastern as opposed to i don't't know, 10 a.m. Eastern? Couldn't we spread these things out a little bit more throughout the day? It feels like given the lack of the August trading period, waiver trade period, that there would have been more incentive to, there would have been more early trades because

GMs know that there's no fallback position and they would have been really nervous about getting like, you can't be 10 minutes too late. Like then you're stuck. And so I would have probably expected that that would have caused a little bit of earlier trading so that teams really make sure that they've got themselves covered, even if it's not the end of the plan, even if it's maybe not the final piece that they want. At the very least, they've got themselves covered as far as depth. But I guess the other way that you could look at it is that because it is a hard deadline, it might not be that, how to put this, it might not be that a lot of earlier trades

weren't happening so much as the hard deadline made a lot of trades that wouldn't have happened really come together. I mean, humans need a deadline to act a lot of times. And the stronger the deadline, maybe the more urgency to act. And so maybe it was that, like, maybe they all actually woke up this morning, like, we're pretty good. But then as that deadline started ticking closer and closer, and he started to really feel like, oh, wow, there's something really final about this. The urgency picked up. I don't think that's really the case. That doesn't sound like them to me. Well, there must be some anxiety because if you have someone hurt in the next three weeks, usually you can do something at that point. And now you can't. And when the deadline is approaching and you're thinking, geez, what if someone pulls his hamstring and he's done for the year next week? And I can't go get someone and I don't have a prospect at that position I can just promote. I better go trade for Jed Jorko or

whatever just to make sure that I have someone, some redundancy at that position. So I think it was a very slow developing deadline, but it ended up being pretty busy. And I'm sure that there were moves made on deadline day that would not have been made if not for the unified deadline that teams just would have waited and said, we'll see what happens and where we are. And this probably isn't going to make or break our season, but because it was a consolidated deadline, they figured, well, it's now or never. So yeah, we'll go get that third reliever of the day just because it's it's our only chance so it ended up being very compressed but also very busy and a lot of those moves because they were depth moves were not really impactful moves not big name players being traded and so until the cranky deal you really just had two that anyone would have wanted to talk about or you know were of interest to a general audience i think you just the best players dealt to that point were marcus stroman and trevor power and

those are both interesting trades and there were other kind of nuanced trades, but no stars, no big name guys until the Astros bailed us out and really gave us something to talk about. So an argument against trying to rationally explain the late movement of the deadline is that the whole trade deadline was super weird. Like there were a lot of really weird things happening like for instance the best player traded arguably was traded from a contender to a non-contender which is unusual for trade deadlines i'm talking about trevor bauer of course like can you think of any other example where like the biggest name on the trade deadline went from a playoff team to a non-playoff team. That's really, really weird. Very strange. I'd love to see some research just about precedence for a team that is trying to contend

and trying to get better with this one trade, trading a player who's been as valuable as Bauer since the start of 2018. That's got to be very rare. And I was sort of fascinated to see how Cleveland would try to thread that needle because, of course, Bauer was one of the most rumored trade targets leading up to the deadline. But the question was, how do you trade a player who's pretty good and get better at the same time? And I think maybe they did. I like how they ended up doing that. I thought that was creative and beneficial. I like how they ended up doing that. I thought that was creative and beneficial, but it's got to be a short list of teams that are not thrown in the towel. It's not a white flag thing. They're actually trying to get better, and yet they're also trading for someone who is, at the time was weird for any particular team either. I mean, all three teams, I think it makes a lot of sense. And maybe we'll talk about all three teams.

But it's always a little weird when a player gets traded, especially in July. I guess a way of putting it is when the team that is willing to pay the most for a player is not a team that is poised to make use of that player in the nearest term. You know, you're going to get basically what, two post-seasons at two Octobers out of Bauer, right? He's a free agent after next year. Yep. And so you would think that the teams that are thinking one sure October now and one hopeful October next year would just simply be willing to pay more to acquire that player than one that's only going to have one October. But I don't know, maybe Bauer is just a case like no other. I don't know.

I don't know. But yeah, I thought that for Cleveland, I agree when people were talking about how Trevor Bauer was available really even earlier this season, it was like, wow, they're already giving up. Would they really give up when they're only two games out of the wildcard spot? I mean, I know the division's out of reach, but would they really give up? Would they trade Bauer?

And then they climb back and now they're in the division race and they have a wildcard spot. And you just figured Bauer was unavailable, but then the rumors kept coming and it seemed really weird. And then you realize like oh they're using one of their most significant players to trade for players right now in the

middle of a pennant race who will uh who will help them and it makes a lot of sense their outfield we laughed about their outfield at the beginning of the season and they addressed two needs they got a lot of players they got a lot of years of those players they shed a player who may or may not who knows i don't know some people say something some people say other things about his value to a club off the field but they certainly got rid of a player who threw the ball over the center field wall the other day they got rid of that player and uh probably save some money i my my reaction to the bauer trade was that it probably makes them about the same this year maybe slightly better and probably worse next year and then probably better all the years after that while saving some money. And again, I have no idea whether this was a part of the math or not, but also getting rid of a player who threw the ball over the wall.

Right. Yeah. I mean, if they had been more aggressive, perhaps over the offseason about upgrading their outfield, which was clearly a weakness at the time, maybe they wouldn't have had to make this move. But given where they were, given how they've pulled very close to the Twins in the Central and they're leading in the wildcard race, and even though some guys have sort of emerged or restored themselves, Oscar Mercado has been good and Tavernay Quinn has been better than he's been in some time, they still obviously needed outfield help, and they got lots of it. They got Yasiel Puig, they got Franmil Reyes, who in addition to being very fun players are also good and useful players and guys who will make them much better. And Puig is just a rental. He is going to be a free agent, but Reyes is not. And they needed power. Both of those guys provide power.

I think it makes sense. And they have Clevenger back now. Salazar's about to be back. Kluber is on the way to being back. So I guess they felt comfortable enough, given those guys and Shane Bieber's success, that they could trade power and be okay. Yeah. I mean, you don't need five starters in October. It is the conventional wisdom that you do need four. And I'm not totally sure that you do need four. I think that since you're only going

to go to your fourth spot once, you can only go to your fourth spot once, even in a seven-game series. At most, your number four starter is going to be half as active as your one, uh, in a, even in a seven game series at most, your number four starter is going to be half as, as active as your one, two, and three starters. And, um, if you do it, you know, if you plan it and you basically do a bullpen game one time, you wouldn't want to do bullpen games probably all through the post season, but you got your one, two, three, and a bullpen game. Uh, particularly, I think if you do your bullpen game in like game two of a seven game series, then you would only have to go. Everybody could pitch on full rest.

Everybody else could pitch on full rest twice, I think. And so this isn't true for every team. This might not be true. This might not be true for Cleveland. They might not be thinking along these lines. But in a way, when you get to the postseason, you could argue that four good starters becomes surplus. And since we're talking about that trade, I guess we can talk about the rest of it. So the Reds got Bauer.

Bauer signed through next season. Obviously, they hope to contend. They've been aggressive over the past year. Obviously, they hope to contend. They've been aggressive over the past year. They wanted to contend this year, and they put together a contending team that is not contending because they have not sequenced their runs very well. So they've outscored their opponents, but they have a losing record. And they've got a good pitching staff, so arguably they could have used offensive help more than Bauer. But I think Bauer and Castillo and Gray and the rest of the pitchers

that they had, they traded Tanner Roark to the A's, but they've got good pitching. They seem to have revamped their whole pitching approach and their coaching staff. And so I think they're fairly well positioned to be in the running next year. I don't know that they'll enter the year as the favorite or anything, but even if they played as well as they are currently playing, but just had the runs shake out a little bit better, that would be good. So I can sort of see what they did this for, and they're taking something of a risk. They traded the best prospect in the deal, traded the best prospect in the deal, Taylor Trammell, he went to San Diego. So San Diego gets Trammell and they deal Reyes, which I also sort of understand because Hunter Renfro has emerged as maybe a better friend of Reyes. And they have some corner outfielders. I mean,

I don't know, they sort of had a surplus of them, but at the same time, they now, I guess, have to trust Will Myers, who hasn't been great. And their only true center fielder in the group is Margot, maybe, and he hasn't been great either. So I guess they're hoping that Trammell turns out to be that guy, but he is not clearly a true center fielder himself. He's actually been playing more left field, has more of a left fielder's arm, and has not hit for a lot of power in AA this year. So a lot of questions there. We haven't talked about Logan Allen either, but he's there also. Yeah. And by the way, I just want to jump in and say, I agree that it definitely is pronounced Tremellin, and I knew that. I knew that. I already knew that. Yeah, thanks. I knew that before a minute ago. Sure. So yeah, I don't know. Is there anything else to say about this trade? Yeah, here's something that is interesting to say about this trade. Not exactly about this trade, but I think this is a fair time to point out that another thing that is very weird about this trade deadline is that the Reds were both buyers

and sellers. Yeah. The Giants were both buyers and sellers. The Diamondbacks were both buyers and sellers yeah the giants were both buyers and sellers the diamondbacks were yeah both buyers and sellers that's not even getting into well the mets were buyers and spent the entire week seemingly sellers and then didn't end up selling anybody it's including including like players who are free agents in two months yeah and now if this were a previous mets front office we would joke about how they probably are planning to to trade players in the august waiver trade deadline um but it's a fresh start it's a new organization i don't know we should take shots like that at the metsets. No. And so those things are all, there's many, that's a weird thing.

I mean, has there ever, like, look, the Reds find they acquired Bauer presumably almost entirely for next year. I presume that they saw Bauer as the free agent pickup that they could make right now. And I guess that I would say the same for the Mets and Stroman, although that doesn't explain why they kept Zach Wheeler. So maybe I shouldn't say that. But the Giants and the Diamondbacks definitely both made moves to get better in the next two months and trades to get worse in the next two months. That seemed to be complete, like not geared primarily toward next year.

Geared probably primarily toward, I don't know, where they, I don't know. I don't exactly know. Yeah, it is. Well, a couple of those teams, really, I guess all those teams are kind of on that bubble, which you just wrote about this week about wildcard teams. Should we talk about that? Yeah, I guess we kind of did a couple weeks ago about what's a wildcard worth, but you did some research and basically you found that teams that are going for a division spot are more willing to make significant moves, but only a little bit. Only a little bit. And I think the key thing, actually, I think the key thing in retrospect, what I probably should have found to be the key thing.

I don't know. Look, maybe they were trading for Mike Leak for next year, not for this year. Maybe they thought we need Mike Leak for next year. Maybe that's why the Diamondbacks went and traded for Mike Leak. But I don't know. No, I think what I should have, what is a significant conclusion from that, if you think that my methods, methodology is valid at all, is that, so what I did is I took all four, all the teams in the last some years, I don't remember how many years, since 2014, I think, I took all the teams on July 31st,

sorted them into four buckets based on what percentage of their playoff odds come specifically from wildcard. So these are only teams that have at least a 25% chance of making the playoffs. And the buckets were basically like all of their odds are wildcard odds. So like the Phillies right now, or the A's right now are all wildcard odds or all division odds like the Dodgers are like 100% to win the division or between 20 and 50% of their odds come from wildcard and between 50 and 80% of their playoff odds come from wildcard odds. And so yes, what I said, what I concluded is yes, division teams do tend to trade more at the deadline than wildcard only teams, although not by that much. But what I think is more interesting is that wildcard teams trade

essentially just as much wildcard only teams trade essentially just as much as the other two middle buckets. And so, so even those teams that are likely that are more likely to win the division but have still have some general uncertainty they all like i guess a way of putting it is that all teams with uncertainty trade about the same as each other and all teams with certainty trade a little bit more than that to oversimplify things but that's kind kind of the conclusion. And it's just an interesting phenomenon. It's an interesting way that GMs all view this, which is that they see the trade deadline mainly as an opportunity to acquire players for October. And they're very scared, I think, or less willing to spend significantly to get players if they're not sure that that player is going to

have a chance to make an impact in October. Like they don't want to waste their bite at the apple. And you could imagine a world where they saw it completely differently and thought, well, we're two games out of the playoff spot. We have to do something or we're going to miss the playoffs or we're in the wildcard game and we have to do something or we're going to get knocked out after one game. But they kind of don't like they sort of do because they still make a lot of trades. So maybe they do. But it's just interesting that the more certain you are to make the playoffs, the more likely you are to make a trade. And I'm not saying that that's wrong. I'm saying that it is interesting. So the teams that were in both of those boxes,

the Giants who traded for Scooter Jeanette, but also traded away Sam Dyson and Drew Pomeranz and someone else. Mark Melanson. Mark Melanson. So they are kind of in that spot where technically they're close to contention, but playoff odds-wise, they're not.

Then the Diamondbacks, who traded away Zach Greinke, but also traded for Mike Leak, and they made another move with the Marlins as well, but that was more of a future-for-future move. Yeah, although it was more of a future-for-future move, but prospect-for-prospect trades are so rare, so unusual that you have to figure that it was at least partly influenced by the Diamondbacks getting the nearer term future. Like they did get the player who's already in the majors who can contribute today, who can contribute for even the next two months. Zach Galland for Jazz Chisholm.

The excellently named Jazz Chisholm. So yeah, then you have that. And then you have the Mets who are also kind of in that fringes of, you know, they've been playing well enough to act like they're kind of in it, but probably aren't really in it. And they went and got Marcus Stroman,

but they were also at least talking about trading Noah Syndergaard and more seriously talking about trading Zach Wheeler.ard and more seriously talking about trading Zach Wheeler. So it is odd that there were multiple teams on both sides of the line there. Maybe it's evidence of greater flexibility in thinking. Why should we declare ourselves to be buyers or sellers? Why need it be a binary thing? Maybe there's a future-oriented move that helps us, and maybe there's a present-oriented move that also helps us. Why wouldn't we want to get Zach

Greinke's contract off the books or a big chunk of it if we aren't really intending to contend next year? At least that's not our peak prime part of the window. And maybe that helps kickstart the rebuild in the way that trading Paul Goldschmidt did and having lots of draft picks this year did. But how does Mike Leak fit into that, I guess, other than just, well, we traded a starter, so now we need a starter. So we'll get one of the few guys

who throws even less hard than Zach Greinke, Mike Leak. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know either. I think the generous way of putting it, which I think maybe is the best way to think about these things because GMs are making self-interested moves that they think are going to benefit them, is that it reflects the ability to hold two different views about your team at once and to not have your brain start smoking when you think of those two things in opposition, but to try to make them work together.

And so one way of looking at what they did is they just had a chance. I mean, like they're in the long-term aspects of things. They had a chance to acquire a lot of things that are going to be really good for them in the long-term and they couldn't pass that up. And at the same time, even after trading Zach Granke, they're not out of the post-season race entirely. They still have a shot. Even if you swap out Granke for Mike Leak, you still have a shot and we're getting to the point, which I think this is going to maybe lead into a different question or a different comment that I have. But we're getting to the point where the end of the season is close enough that you're into sort of small sample territory for the rest of the way. And who knows?

Maybe like anything could happen. Maybe the Diamondbacks with Mike Leak will still manage to win the division. And so that gives them a picture. Wild card? Yeah, sorry picture wild card uh not yeah sorry wild card and that still gives them somebody who can start the third game or whatever of a post-season series and with very little cost right so yeah you know is you gotta like it look i i am not i i have not thought enough about these moves to say that like i like them or that i'm like uh

putting a big like stamp of approval on on whatever they did today or that they make sense but like we have a tendency and we see teams that have a tendency to really firmly establish themselves as either playing for now or playing for later and that creates various uglinesses that I think are sort of bad for baseball. Good for the team, but bad for baseball. And so if in fact the answer to this is that Mike Hazen and the Diamondbacks figured that they were not going to ignore the future aspects of the team, nor were they going to ignore the present aspects of the team, but try to think along both lines of thought in parallel, then I would say that that is good.

And I like it when teams do that. Yeah, I guess I like it if you can rebuild without completely tearing down and having to tell your fans to check out for a few years completely. So I applaud that when it happens. I would guess that these teams are still not acting selflessly like in the best interest of baseball if they don't think it's in the best interest of their team. But maybe they do think it's in the best interest of their team. I don't know. Are there Diamondbacks fans out there who are thinking,

gee, this is lousy. We just lost Paul Goldschmidt. Now we lost Zach Greschmidt. Now we lost Zach Greinke, but we at least got Mike Leak. No, of course not. No, they're not thinking that, but you know what a Diamondback fan would say is if the Diamondbacks go 17-7 in the next four weeks and they see Mike Leak starting and he's, you know, gone three and one with a 3.3 ERA for them in that time. And it's him instead of like, you know, an opener they've never heard of. Then in a very subtle way, they'll think, you know, it's not a bad team.

Like they'll just, they'll just sort of gradually come to accept that the team is winning and they're happy about that. Like, I don't think that you, this is not like, like you don't make this move to placate your fans. You make this move because you figure that, uh, they'll be happy if you're winning and, and who knows, like it's, it's a very low cost shot at, um, getting a better picture than would have been starting if they hadn't gotten Mike Leak. Um, and he signed for next year. Maybe they think that it's a good price. I don't know if they do or not. Yeah.

The reason that teams historically have declared themselves and picked a lane and planted their flag on one side of the buyer-seller divide is that there is an advantage to doing that if you say, well, I'm giving up on winning for the next couple of years and I'm just shifting my focus to a few years from now. And so I will allow these teams that are trying to win currently to plunder my roster and give me their prospects. And I will end up winning the surplus value or I will end up getting more long-term wins above replacement

because I'm willing to shift my horizon here. That's essentially what the Blue Jays said, right? When the Blue Jays bragged about having converted, what, 14 years of team control to 42 team control years or something after the deadline. Ross Atkins talked about the years of control. Probably not the most inspiring message, but there is some benefit to doing that in the long term at least if you do have some kind of financial constraints or you're you're operating under some so i see why teams have done that and maybe there's a danger in not doing that if you're

the giants and you're kind of hedging your bets and you're in the middle and you're saying, well, I'll trade Pomeranz and I'll trade Dyson and I'll trade Melanson, but I won't trade Smith and I won't trade Bumgarner and I'll also trade for Scooter Jeanette. Do you end up in a situation where you're trying to do everything at once and you'd just be better off doing one or the other or probably the other, probably just getting rid of everyone because your your odds are so low as it is okay but um what what are we what are we talking about here are we saying well i sure like the zach the zach granky move but that mike leak deal doesn't fit or what they're doing or are we saying i sure like that mike leak deal but i can't believe

they traded zach granky from a team that's only two and a half or whatever games out of the wildcard. Which one are we saying is the bad one? Because if we're saying that the Granke deal is a good deal, then the stakes of the leak deal are quite small. And that gets into my let a surprising season bloom if you can without like shooting yourself in the foot too bad. And so then i would like that now if you think i think that there's also a case that the diamondbacks with the league's

i think second best run differential and only a couple games out of the postseason may have had maybe should have had an uh felt an obligation to let this season bloom further, given how close they are. And so if you want to take that and say that the Granke deal is part of this trend in baseball that ultimately is fan unfriendly, that's fine. But I think we're, it feels like we've been mostly focusing on should they or should they not have gotten weak. Yeah, or just that there seems to be some cognitive dissonance there which you're picking up on on multiple teams on both sides of the border which i i don't think

we usually see and maybe that is i did start this conversation by saying it was weird you're right yeah so maybe it's just a weird confluence of teams that are in it but don't really think they're in it. Although the Diamondbacks are in it more than the Giants are in it. The Diamondbacks are in it more than the Rangers who they didn't trade Mike Miner. They didn't trade Hunter Pence. They didn't really trade anyone. There are some teams that are kind of on the border and they didn't do as much as they could have to maybe maximize their future. I don't know. It's fan unfriendly in the sense that I think if a team is currently contending, fans want to see you let it ride it out.

On the other hand, there are teams that have tried in the past to give their fans a competitive product every year and sign some free agents and not bottom out. And then they just end up winning 73 games every year. And that doesn't benefit anyone either. a shot at contention in, I don't know, 2024 or something because they didn't go all out in tearing down this roster right now, then you could make the case that in the long run, that is fan unfriendly. But I don't know. It's been a lot of fun seemingly to be a Giants fan lately and Giants fans like Madison Bumgarner. And maybe that was a case where Bumgarner is good enough to get a qualifying offer and you don't think you're going to do that much better than that when you trade him with a couple months left on his contract. So maybe they just didn't think that the benefit would be so great there. But someone like Smith, for instance, who seemed like a month ago,

virtually certain to be dealt. And then he wasn't, even though they did move some guys. So they're not trying to maximize their chances. They're not saying, hey, we're in this wonderful, improbable position. So let's double down or let's at least not mess with the success we're having. They did do more selling than buying on the whole. So they kind of were like, well, this is fun. Let's see if it can keep going. But on the other hand, we're not going to help.

And we're actually going to hamper a little bit. So if you're going to do that, then should you just go all out? I don't know. But it is odd that a bunch of teams did both. We don't see that happen very often so let's see we uh in okay so 2014 the Dodgers basically traded for nobody the deadline and they were criticized and then the next year they made that trade for like Matt Latos and like there were a whole bunch of people in the Matt Latos deal and that was not

seen as a as a very big deal as like befitting their World Series ambitions and then the next year they they got Josh Reddick and Rich Hill which is a nice that's a nice move that was a a good move and and they spent like they really they gave up a lot to improve themselves for the postseason and for the stretch run then the next year they went out and got you Darvish at the deadline, who was, who was like the star on the market. And then the next year they went out and got Manny Machado, who is like an all time star, like an all, like a hall of famer. And so every year ratcheting up more and more and more. And it seemed like, I don't know, maybe they had a philosophical shift or maybe they were feeling more organizational pressure,

maybe more pressure from ownership or maybe more pressure on themselves. And then this deadline, they basically did nothing. Yeah. Adam Kleric and Jed Jorko. And Adam Kleric, I mean, what do you think are the – he seems like a guy that you get because you can't trade for anybody in August and so you need more depth just in case like a reliever goes down in August. Like he will not probably pitch an inning in the postseason with the lead of like two or fewer runs, maybe three or fewer runs at any point.

So this, I mean, I, I, in some sort of round table somewhere on ESPN, I said they were going to get Felipe Vasquez. Well, they tried, which seemed like it would have made a lot of sense, but they didn't. And maybe the price was maybe, maybe the ask was just too much, but there were a fair number of, of, it seemed like there were a fair number of good relievers out there. Maybe, and I'm not even saying they should have. I'm not saying that I'm putting a stamp of disapproval on them. I'm just wondering why you think they did that.

Do you think it's that they, I don't know. Talk about it, Ben. Well, they weren't the only team. No, let's talk about the Red Sox and the yankees yeah well let's just let's separate the red sox because the red sox go back to the wild card question in fact didn't dave dombrowski basically give a mike hazen quote today did i see that yes where he's basically like why bother yeah the wild card yeah that's essentially what he said yeah so right you had the red sox and and the cardinals who didn't really do anything other than trading

jed jorko to the dodgers so those teams are uh the cardinals are currently leading yeah no aren't they leading the division race they're the division i don't know i believe that right now they are every day they're i believe in. No, they're tied for first place. Okay, yeah. Although that was before today's action. Let's see here. It doesn't matter. The deadline was at 1 o'clock. Yeah. Right.

So you had the Cardinals. Even though we've been talking about how many moves were made, and there were a lot of moves made, you also had a lot of teams that are currently in playoff position or very close to it who did nothing yeah and that's the dodgers and the yankees they they did essentially nothing nothing of significance all right and red sox and cardinals split those two things up though because i think they're both interesting on their own so let's put the Dodgers aside for a minute. A weird phenomenon. I've said phenomenon so many times in this episode. A weird thing about the trade deadline that I noticed this year, and I think it mostly happens with teams like the Yankees and the Dodgers. I don't think it happens so much with teams like the Twins or the Braves. But so I saw everywhere how important it

was for the Yankees to address their starting rotation problem because their starting rotation has been bad this month because a bunch of their pitchers don't look all that reliable right now. And then I also saw a lot of names offered for who they should get. And every single one of those pitchers, if they were in the Yankees rotation right now, would be seen as part of the problem of the Yankees rotation. Like it was like a whole bunch of guys who have like an ERA plus of like 102 or maybe they've been really bad this month or maybe there's like Syndergaard, for instance, like everybody want to know a Syndergaard. Syndergaard's a stud, right? I mean, he's awesome.

But if he were on the Yankees right now, it would be, well, he has his ERA is worse than the league average. He has a career low strikeout rate, a career high walk rate, and more home runs allowed than any season since his rookie year. And he's only thrown 160 innings once in his career. And can you really count on him? I mean, it would basically be he's James Paxton in this story, right? And so I guess you could say, well, the fact that the Yankees have all these starting pitchers who we thought were awesome three months ago, and they have disappointed just goes to show how much you can never have enough and you should stock up and they should have depth and get more than you need. But ultimately what it comes down to is you don't really know who's going to be pitching well a month from now or two months from now. And the

famous good player that you trade for, who's seems awesome, might be underperforming in two months, just like maybe like James Paxton is. And maybe, so I don't know. It seems to me that they have in Tanaka, Hermann, Paxton, Severino coming back. They have four pitchers who are absolutely as good a bet to be good two and a half months from now as any name that I saw linked to them in the last month. And so it makes perfect sense for me that they didn't go out and get any of those players.

Well, at some point during the day, there was a rumor that they were going after relievers instead, that they decided that they didn't like any of the starting pitcher options or they were too pricey. So they would just double down on their bullpen of doom. And they ended up not really doing that either. So I don't know. You had the Nationals and the Braves almost rebuilding their entire bullpens. Both of those teams traded for three leavers. The Yankees didn't, but they also had much better bullpen than those teams did.

They had less of a need for it. better bullpen than those teams did. They had less of a need for it. And the Yankees and the Dodgers are locks, essentially, to win their division. I mean, the Yankees, I guess there's a little more uncertainty than the Dodgers just because they're two teams that are good and are closer. But the Dodgers in previous years, they made the big deadline moves that we were just talking about, and they didn't win the World Series, but they got there. They're certainly capable of getting there without making a major move right now. So if not for what the Astros did, we'd probably be looking around at all of these other leading teams and thinking, well, it's status quo. None of them did anything significant, but that's okay. If none of

them do, then they don't need to keep pace with each other. Maybe that's what they thought would happen, or maybe they just didn't like any specific moves and they figured, well, we're going to make the playoffs and that's the best thing we can do. And then whatever happens after that, we just didn't think there are any difference makers out there who were really going to swing a playoff series for us. So I can understand why their fans are disappointed. And I think they both could have used something. I think the Dodgers could have used a leading inning reliever who is more imposing than Adam Kleric. I think the Yankees probably could have benefited from another pitcher, the right pitcher. But I don't know. I guess they were just in a situation where the incentives were not so dramatic because of how they're lined up for a division.

Or who knows, maybe they're kicking themselves and they're super angry that they didn't get something done. Or maybe they almost had something done and it fell through at the last minute. I don't know. get something done or maybe they almost had something done and it fell through at the last minute i don't know it's always hard to judge the dodgers postseason bullpen because you never know which starters i mean i can hardly keep track of how many good starters they have in their organization at any given time but you don't know who's going to be healthy and who's going to get who's going to get bumped basically and like i think i remember this. So Maeda last year was bumped to the bullpen. Am I remembering correct that he was dynamite in that role and that they had him basically,

he was like their highest leverage pitcher other than, than Kenley Jansen at the time? It was the year before, wasn't it? He was bumped to the bullpen last year, but I think he was more effective the previous postseason. Yeah, it looks like, it looks like you're right. And so, so if you'd asked me at the trade deadline in 2017, I might have said, well, who's pitching the eighth inning? And I would not have known it was Maeda. And I would not have, even if I had, I would not have known how

well to predict that. And so they basically have, you know, seven-ish starters who are all good. I don't know if Rich Hill is planning to be healthy again or not, but that still leaves two. And then they've got, you know, they've got other players coming up. They announced that they're going to call up Dustin May and he's going to make his major league debut on Friday. And I don't know the way, the way that relief pitching works. I would probably guess that May could, could also potentially be a difference maker in

October as a reliever. So maybe in fact, they have spent more time thinking about this and playing out the scenarios than I have. And they just laugh at the abundance of arms that they're going to have in October. If you just look at their bullpen right now, though, this is a team that is so deep and so good absolutely everywhere. And their bullpen has been like it hasn't been good this year. And there isn't really anybody that you look at and say that you want him pitching the ninth, eighth or seventh at this point, except for probably Kenley Jansen. pitching the ninth, eighth, or seventh at this point, except for probably Kenley Jansen. But I mean, in a perfect world, if you took the name off the back of his jersey, it'd be the seventh, not the ninth. And so you would think that this would have been like just a very obvious thing for them to do. But like I said, they have so much more knowledge about how they plan

to use everybody and how good everybody will be. And they also know, I mean, like two years ago, they went and got you Darvish and he ends up essentially costing them the world series. And then the next year they go out and get Manny Machado and he ends up kind of costing the world series. And if you think those guys are unpredictable, like try trading for a reliever and seeing what he does in three innings for you that it all comes down to. So I could see why they would also be like anybody we get is a pumpkin waiting to happen. Yeah. Or the opposite because sometimes they'll go get a guy and and he'll be dynamite down the stretch and you never expected that he would be like tony singrani or someone so yeah maybe adam

cleric will be just unhittable in la who knows but yeah i think what the astros did which we've been dancing around talking about we kind of buried buried the lead here. The team that won the trade deadline, we're talking about an hour in here. But I think the aggressive way that they upgraded makes them look even better and is even more beneficial in relation to these other teams that are their likely playoff opponents that essentially stood pat for the most part. I mean, the Astros are fairly likely to face the Yankees or the Red Sox or the Dodgers at some point in the postseason or the Cardinals or who knows one of these teams. And the Astros went all in and they got a lot better. And these other teams, for a lot of them, just didn't do a whole lot.

You could kind of lump Minnesota in there. Minnesota got Dyson, who was maybe the best reliever, traded at the deadline, and that's something they needed. So that counts. That keeps them out of the Yankees-Dodgers group, but their lead over Cleveland is down to three games now. So it's not like they can feel very secure, and maybe there's more they could have done, but they've been pretty busy over the past year or so. There was a rumor that the Mets were asking for Byron Buxton for Noah Syndergaard, and the MLB trade rumors write up of this. Oh, wow. While looking for this quote, I just remembered, I've just found something else that I

have to get to, Ben, before this episode ends. they wrote uh the mets had asked the twins for center fielder byron buxton as part of the return for syndergaard and ask that minnesota was rather obviously unwilling to oblige and um do you think that that's rather obvious that you wouldn't trade byron buxton, who I think has three and a half years, for Syndergaard, who has two and a half years until free agency? Is that? It seems to me, like I'm not saying I would make that move, but that seems about right to me. Yeah, it's not obvious. Yeah, you could argue that it's not that big an upgrade because Buxton has been worth about as much as Syndergaard this year, just through his defense and competent hitting. There could be more in him, but there could be less too. We've seen

a lot less some years. So if you're trying to get a lot better, maybe that's not the greatest way to do it. But in terms of fair value, no, it's not preposterous, I don't think. All right. So were we back to the astros is that yeah let's just let's talk about the astros finally so the astros made the big move yeah for the the second time in three years except in july this time instead of august they traded for zach renke and i mean the astros it had been clear i think that they'd been going after a starter and they'd been connected to Bauer and to other guys and Matthew Boyd and others. But I think the Grinke thing happening at 4.13 Eastern, I think, was when Ken Rosenthal reported it. That was a bombshell. And it cost them. It cost them

not their top prospects, Kyle Tucker and Forrest Whitley, but probably their next best three prospects potentially, depending on the site and the prospect ranking. So they gave up Seth Beer and they gave up JB Bukowskis and they gave up Corbin Martin, who made his big lead debut this year, but then had Tommy John surgery. And they gave up another 20-something ranked prospect, probably a future utility guy. And then they also took on about two-thirds of the remainder of Zach Greinke's contract. But they got Zach Greinke, who is the best player traded at this deadline. ace but he is a top of the rotation pitcher and they now have just the the most overwhelming playoff rotation that any team can construct right now they have verlander they have cole they have granky they have wade miley as the fourth guy that is just a dominant top three and i don't know if they were the world Series favorite or the Dodgers were coming into this, but I think this move probably pushes the Astros on top in my personal power rankings. That's a lot to have to beat those three guys in a playoff series.

Of course you'd call him an ace, Ben. Yeah, I guess you would. He is about as good as he's ever been. I mean, he doesn't get as many strikeouts as he used to get but he is great and the astros have uh like two of the three 35 year old plus pitchers who are still really good essentially and the other one is charlie morton who was very recently an astro there are a lot of parallels between Verlander and Granke and between these trades. This time, they were really aggressive in 2017 when they made the Verlander deal on August 31st with seconds to go. They were kind of pushed into

that because the team had struggled in August and they'd had some injuries and Dallas Keuchel was upset that they didn't do anything on July 31st. And so they kind of grudgingly made this move. And obviously Verlander was dominant down the stretch. He helped them win the World Series. He's been anchoring their rotation ever since. And Granke is similar in that he's 35, Verlander's 36. They are both well-preserved.

They are two of the best pitchers of their era. They're future Hall of Famers, et cetera, et cetera. They have maintained their effectiveness in different ways, where Verlander still has the stuff that he used to have. He still throws mid 90s. Granke does not. He has lost a bunch of fastball speed, and he now averages 90 or so, but he's still very effective because he doesn't walk anyone he's got great command he throws a bunch of pitches at all sorts of speeds and no one knows what he's going to throw next and he throws more off-speed stuff and he's always been an experimenter and kind of a pitching scientist type and so he's always felt like someone who would age well, which I don't know that we're

actually that good at predicting who will age well and who will not. But Zach Greinke, he's someone who, if I had told you five, 10 years ago, Zach Greinke is going to be really good at age 35, you'd say, yeah, that makes sense. Zach Greinke is going to age gracefully. So that is just, I don't know that they could have done anything more to make themselves better. And they also made other moves. They reacquired Martin Maldonado, who they acquired at the trade deadline last year. That's sort of a lateral move, maybe a slight upgrade over Max Stassi, who went to the Angels. And then they also made another potentially significant move with the Pujays, where they acquired Aaron Sanchez and Joe Biagini.

So they had weaknesses, relative weaknesses, if you could call it that. Their vulnerabilities really were the back of the rotation because Miley's probably not quite as good as he's looked ERA-wise this year. And then beyond that, they've had some injuries and some ineffectiveness. And Peacock and Josh James having shoulder problems. And McCullers out for the year. And they needed something. I think you could say they needed something. And Granke is a huge upgrade. They're not unbeatable.

No team's unbeatable. No team's the favorite over the rest of the playoff field. But boy, they were already really great. and they made themselves a whole lot better. Yeah. I mean, when they won the World Series, there was a part of me that was just not that impressed. And I thought, I mean, clearly it was a great team but at the time uh i did sort of have a position that if you are willing to to tank for four years i i i think that it's i it was my position that it's kind of easy to build one good team if you sacrifice four teams to do it and so i at the time thought okay uh of course they won, uh, of course they won the world series.

Of course they won the world series. Like, uh, who wouldn't win the world series? Uh, and you know, the Cubs had done the same thing. And I think that it's the next year. So one year, I think that you can do one year. Uh, the next year they were even better. And they, you know, I, I wrote a piece after they got bounced from the ALCS in which they outplayed the Red Sox by runs scored or by OPS. The Red Sox were also a phenomenal team and merited their victory in that series, in the World Series.

But you could very easily say the Astros deserved it just as much, that they were really good. This year, they're even better, probably. They going to win, you know, 100 games for the third year in a row. And you look at like the Cubs, for instance, the Cubs used their time in the wilderness to build a super team, a really phenomenal team, a hundred win team, a world series winning team. And that is what I think that you can do if you tank for three or four years. I think that the advantages that you get from pushing all of your resources into the future and letting them congregate into one magical season,

you get a year where I don't think it's that hard to build a great team, barring bad luck. But then it's hard to keep that team together. It's hard to do it forever. And the Cubs, that was kind of their one incredible team, right? Am I right? Yeah. They've been good since.

They've been good. Yeah. No. So you can, you can build a team that's good enough to win a hundred games. And then you can also build a team that's going to stick around and be competitive for a few years. And you can have that nice window of maybe five to seven years if you're a wealthy team and maybe three to five years if you're a less wealthy team.

And I mean, the advantages don't dissipate immediately, but they had 100 win season and it's kind of gotten a little bit progressively worse each year since then, which is kind of like what I would expect. The Astros, that has not happened. I have come to appreciate that they did not have one neat trick for winning the World Series. They are really good at building a baseball team. All like they continue to be like I mean, I don't know. I don't want to I don't want to like overstate this.

But I think that they are just like better than everybody else at putting together a baseball team right now. that they are just like better than everybody else at putting together a baseball team right now. And maybe I will, maybe in a year, maybe they'll, you know, as, as, you know, Cole hits free agency and, you know, someone gets hurt and someone gets old and decline phases start and, you know, a couple of prospects have busted or whatever. Maybe then in fact, they'll start to look like a normal team, but right now they already were really doing something special, and then they just added Zach Greinke. Yeah. I don't know if the way that they've sustained their success is more impressive than the way the Dodgers have, because that is also really impressive, that they just seem to have this renewable resource of young guys who come up and they're not just winning the division

every year. They're running away with it. So I think that's right up there. But the Astros gave up a lot to get cranky. I think the Diamondbacks did fairly well, but I don't know that it hurts the Astros because the guys that gave up were not ready to contribute right now. And because they've done such a good job at player development and because they hung on to their very tippy-top prospects, I don't know that this really cost them all that much. Yeah, Cole is about to be a free agent and who else? McHugh, maybe Peacock. Some other guys are also going to be free agents and they just got Grinke who's under team control for two additional years as well as Sanchez who also is. whether they're going to unlock something, whether they will find something in those guys to make them even better. On the one hand, you'd think Granke is the perfect candidate for that because, of course, he's going to be receptive to it and he always wants the information. On the other hand, maybe you figure there's not as much to get out of Granke because he's probably already extracted everything that he could out of his natural ability. So I don't know which one you'd say there. Sanchez, though, I think is someone that, I mean, teams had already connected him to

the Astros or one of these other smart player development teams and said, if you put that guy in the bullpen, he's not effective in the rotation. He's got the blister problems. He's not going deep into games anyway. Move him into the bullpen. Tell him to throw his high spin, you know, signature Astros style curveball a whole lot more than he's been throwing it. He still throws hard. He'll throw hard in the bullpen. It's very easy to imagine Aaron Sanchez just being like the best reliever on this team down the stretch. And I don't know whether they made these moves in part because Ryan Presley is dealing with an E thing right now, but if they could do what they did with Presley last year, then you can kind of dream on what they can do with Sanchez. Now, my only regret here is

that Greinke is going to an AL team, which means that he doesn't get to hit anymore, which I'm sure he's sort of upset about and actually does sap some value from him just because he has been so good at hitting compared to the typical NL pitcher. But I am looking forward to seeing what those guys can do. And man, I mean, just having Cole and Grinke and Verlander pitching in the same playoff series. That's going to be a lot of fun to watch and very scary for opponents. So the Astros probably already had the best World Series odds of any team, certainly any AL team, but I think they improved them about as significantly as you can

in one day at the deadline. So I guess good job by them. As it stood going into the trade deadline and really like as it's stood for a couple of months, we had three incredible super teams, superpowers in the league, the Dodgers, the Astros, and the Yankees who have all been really incredible for the past few years. The Yankees have just been getting, it seemed like, better and better, and all three of them would be the best team in many eras. And I wonder if you think that this trade deadline has shifted so that those three teams are no longer in the same tier, but that

the Astros are clearly a tier above, or that maybe the Yankees have dropped a tier by their inactivity? Well, the headline on my article says that the Zach Greinke trade makes the Astros the clear-cut World Series favorites, which I didn't exactly write, but I kind of wrote more or less in my article. So I think it does, but I don't know that it puts them in a different tier entirely. I think it does, but I don't know that it puts them in a different tier entirely. I think even going and getting Zach Greinke is going to move your playoff or your World Series odds by, what, a percent or less. So I think, you know, it only tells you so much. But they've obviously been good at tearing down their team and being terrible for a few years and building back up again. But they have made the aggressive moves that you have to make when you get good again.

And when someone gives you the opportunity to get Verlander and to get Granke, guys who had a fair amount of money left on their deals. And the Astros assumed most of it because they thought those guys would make them better and they will so they're really imposing right now they just seem to be operating on all cylinders so what uh give me a general rule of thumb whereby a pitcher who is in the top x uh top x number of pitchers by war over X number of years is an ace. So like, for instance, if you want to be absurd about it, a pitcher who is in the top three in war over the past three years is an ace and everybody else sucks. Like that would be like an extremely rigid or, you know, something like, so you get to pick the rank, the minimum rank, and you get to pick the number of years that you're looking at. So give me a rank and a years to qualify as an ace.

So I guess you could go a couple of ways. You could say like the number one pitcher over two years, let's say. Wait, the number one? Yeah. Only the number one? So Max Scherzer is an ace and nobody else in baseball? No. So, all right.

I guess if you're going to, like, would you call someone an ace based on a year, even if he is the number one? It doesn't matter to me. I'm asking you. Well, first of all, I hate the ace conversation. No, I know. I know. I know. I just want to settle something.

So there are, you know, I don't know how many pitchers there are in the world that you think qualify as an ace, as an ace, like by the term ace. But I just need to know what time frame you're looking at and how far down a leaderboard you're willing to go. Okay. So if you were top 10 over the past three years? Grinke is sixth. Okay. So yeah, I'd give you that. And if you were, I don't know, top five over two years, let's say.

Well, so you're saying only five pitchers qualify though? Or you're saying if you meet either of those standards? Either. Okay. So you can either be really, really good for a short time time or you could be one of the best pitchers over a longer time because because this year he's 12th in in war over the past two years he's 10th over the past three years he's sixth over the past four years he's ninth over the past five years he's fourth so i just i just want to say that i think that he's he's nice yet it's it's disqualifying almost if you're if you're

bad right now like even if if you were if you met those qualifications and yet you had been kind of lousy for the last couple months in my mind i feel like you can lose a said pretty quickly because a said's like you know you need someone to take the ball tomorrow. And if someone hasn't looked good, but anyway, Cranky's been good lately. It's not as simple as I thought. All right. Can I just end this with how Peter Gammons ended his trade deadline column yesterday? Was this the thing that you had to say before we ended?

Yes. Okay. All right. So these are the final, he was talking about how, you know, like anything can happen at a trade deadline and you never know when a little bit of magical fall into your lap or something. So these are the stories he tells. Woodward, the Mariners GM, Woodward was playing golf and Sandy Alderson agreed to send Ricky Henderson to the Jays. Then Woodward called Gillick and agreed to do Johnson for Al Leiter and Mike Timlin, a deal the Jays actually preferred, but Gillick could not back out of his word to Alderson. So Henderson went to Toronto and Randy Johnson stayed put. So this, uh, the point of this story is, ah,

lucky Pat Gillick. He tried to trade. No, unlucky Pat Gillick. Uh, he tried, he almost had Randy Johnson, but he didn't. Next paragraph, last paragraph. In 1997, the day before the deadline, Lou Piniella's Mariners blew a 7-1 lead and lost at Fenway Park. Heathcliff Slocum had thrown gas for Boston in their comeback win and Woody Woodward called Dan Duquette about acquiring him. Duquette asked for either Jason Veritech or Derek Lowe. And then he didn't hear back until 11.45 p.m. right before the deadline. Woody Woodward wanted to deal and asked Duquette to remind him of the names he mentioned, Veritech and Lowe, either one. Woodward misunderstood and thought Duquette wanted both

and agreed to give them both. And 86 years after the 1918 World Series, Lowe won the clincher in the ALDS, ALCS and World Series with Veritech as catcher. So the point of that story is that like this little surprise fell into Dan Duquette's lap

and changed the course of the franchise. So really though woody woodward is just getting dunked on okay he because he misunderstands he is willing to give twice as much as he was even being asked for he just a total own goal right like that is the point of that story is not just did he trade two stars for heathiff Slocum in one of the all time worst trades in retrospect, but he wasn't even being asked for both of those stars. He just threw them both in because he was that cavalier about trading those guys. the first story is not only did he try to trade randy johnson and fail and like have him him like just totally get bailed out by pat gillick's like uh you know sense of honor but the day of the trade deadline he was playing golf and couldn't be reached to trade randy johnson at the trade

deadline and so these stories are obviously both about Woody Woodward, which is quite a coincidence. And one of two things clearly has happened. Either Woody Woodward, who is retired but still alive, has reflected on his career and he knows he had some good moves. I mean, he traded for Randy Johnson, for instance. So he had, I'm sure he has a long list of awesome trades and so on. And he is, you know, he is comfortable telling Peter Gammons, even these stories that make him look bad. He is willing to share even the stories that embarrass him. Or else somebody all these years later still has an end for Woody Woodward and called Peter

Gammons and just laid it out. Just like pulled out his Woody Woodward oppo file and just like took advantage of the moment. Like Kamala Harris at a debate. So I don't know which one you think. It doesn't really matter. It's just that I didn't expect so much Woody Woodward woodward history no but i'm glad we got it yeah i would think probably maybe it's a gillick thing i don't know if that's a nice trait of successful people when they're able to talk about their lack of success their failures often it's instructive but it's also very relatable i think when you have the

confidence to do that and to say i mess up sometimes too and here's a couple times that i did but yeah different era when you could go golfing on deadline day and not be reachable yeah all right so uh apologies to anyone whose team we gave short shrift to here. We've been talking for an hour and 20 minutes, and there were just too many trades to get to all of them, really. I would have liked to talk about a few other things. But, yeah, maybe Meg and I will catch up next time we talk, like the Mets and Marcus Stroman and not making those moves,

and they should be good next year. Look at the good players that the Mets have. I don't know if making those moves. And they should be good next year. Look at the good players that the Mets have. I don't know if they will be, but they should be. We didn't talk about the Rays trading for Trevor Richards and Nick Anderson. That was kind of an interesting deal. We didn't talk about the Cubs acquiring Nick Castellanos, who I think fits quite well in their roster. That makes a lot of sense. So there were good moves made. Phillies, Corey Dickerson. I don't know, actually. If you're going to name them all, you could do that in their roster. That makes a lot of sense. So there were good moves made.

Phillies, Corey Dickerson. I don't know, actually, if you're going to name them all, you could do that in the outro. Yeah. I like the Corey Dickerson trade a lot. Me too. That's a really, that's a sweet little trade. Yeah. Yeah.

Lots of nice little moves there. So it turned out that there were just too many to devote time to all of them when I figured we might have a hard time coming up with interesting ones. So thanks to teams for bailing us out, giving us some content, and maybe we will circle around and get to some of it on later episodes. But we did it. We did the deadline episode, so I will talk to you next week. All right. All right, that will do it for today. Thank you for listening. Please don't be too mad at us if we neglected your team. Doesn't mean we hate them.

Just means we had a ton to talk about. And if we didn't devote a lot of time to a certain trade, I would direct you to Fangraphs.com where the staff did a bang up job of documenting every trade. I believe there's a post for every trade that was made,

no matter how minor and insignificant. So you can find your coverage at the website. Kudos to Meg and Dylan and Rachel for directing traffic and the staff for stepping up. You can support this podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Following five listeners have already pledged their support, signed up to help keep the podcast going

and gain access to some perks. Matt, Craig Kennedy, Robert Riley, Jeremy Stull, and Christopher R. Giallaretto. and gain access to some perks. Matt, Craig Kennedy, Robert Riley, Jeremy Stull, and Christopher R. Giallaretto. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild, and you can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments

for me and Sam and Meg coming via email at podcast.fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. You can buy my book, The MVP Machine, How Baseball's New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players. Some teams will be building better players out of the players they acquired at the trade deadline, so you'll want to know how they may do that.

Exciting day. Let's all take some time to digest it and have a breather. And we'll be back to talk to you again a little later this week. You could wear my shoes I could have your hair Like that atmosphere I'm rippling in The skin that I'm in