Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1455: The Fifth Free-Agent Contracts Draft

Episode Date: November 12, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about the baffling trade rumors swirling around Mookie Betts, Francisco Lindor, and Kris Bryant, try to discern why they would be on the block, discuss how the likelihood of the top-rated team winning the World Series compares to the likelihood of the best team taking the title in other […]

Got a glimpse of the fortune, not as good as coming home Wish the headman's handbook was nothing that I ever, ever own But it's too late for anger, and there's no more time for lady luck She's looking for a stranger, all she wants to do is Be sure that you want to be free Be sure that you want to be free Good morning and welcome to episode 1455 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs.com, brought to you by our Patreon supporters.

I am Sam Miller of PSPN, along with Ben Lindberg. Ringer. Hello, Ben. Hi. Almost two hours ago, John Marossi tweeted, At least one player among Namooki Betts, Francisco Lindor, Chris Bryant group will be traded this offseason. Among Namuki bets, Francisco Lindor, Chris Bryant group will be traded this offseason. In the opinion of multiple MLB team execs I've checked with over the last 24 hours, keeping in mind that we know from our exhaustive work on the Krasnick's surveys of GMs that GMs are not actually that predictive or are not very good at predicting what is going to happen

even when it comes to their own actions and those of their contemporaries. So this does not mean that this is actually going to happen. But let's assume that all these players are actually being shopped, that one of them might be traded, that all three of them might be traded. I guess I don't understand. And I don't know. I'm not saying that I find it to be incomprehensible that a team would want to trade one of its players, even though that player is very valuable to them, if they think that they can, you know, acquire other things that would also be very valuable to them. All transactions involve swapping something that somebody wants for something that somebody else wants. And so it's not like by trading a player, you're saying, ah, this thing is worthless.

I mean, obviously, very valuable. These players are very valuable to them. And yet it just seems like they are more valuable to these three teams than they could be, or at least they are as valuable to these three teams, probably more valuable than they would be to really almost any other team. Two of these three teams are extremely wealthy teams. They are the teams that are most able to afford these types of players. And I mean, like all three of these teams are competitive. They're not just competitive,

but these are the three teams that came the closest to making the postseason last year yeah like they are the like they are the literally on the line between competing and not competing more than any other team in baseball and you have the sort of continuity factor that there's this fact that these players have built something great in these cities they will be i mean if you trade them now you don't even get to retire their number someday. You don't get to like have them back when they, when they retire and have the, like the, the ceremony for them because like, they're just the guy that you traded after four years. They didn't even like, uh, like they didn't spend the bulk of their career with you. They didn't set any team records with you. I don't even know. It feels like you're building something great when you have a player that you draft and who then turns into a superstar and maybe wins an MVP award or finishes second or third in the MVP voting and puts up seasons that nobody that you've ever developed has done in decades. I feel like that sort of thing builds on itself and that it becomes

more valuable the longer you have that player. I don't know. Am I wrong? Do teams just think that fans crave novelty above all other things and just want new players? real value there is to a franchise from the marquee value of a player being the face of the franchise and coming back to old-timers days and having his jersey retired. I'm sure there's something to that, but even putting that aside, it doesn't make sense to me. Whatever you think that's worth, just based purely on how good these players are and the position that these teams are in, it's very hard for me to figure out how this makes sense. Because as you mentioned, these are teams on the bubble. These are teams that should be trying to get better and trading their best players or arguably

their best players is not a good way to get better, certainly in the short term and even in the long term, because these are not old players. These players are in their primes of 25, 26, 27, or just about. It's really difficult to get equal value back for players who are this good, because when you trade a superstar, the odds are against you getting a superstar back, one of the very best players in baseball. These are like, you know, top 10 players in baseball. I mean, Betts is the second best player in baseball. And Lindor is kind of coming off a down year for him. But you certainly would have him on the short list of best players in baseball. Bryant had a bounce back year.

He is great. And even if you think, well, we want to get great prospects back or something it's i think the history of trading like players at their peak who are this good you very rarely even if you're looking long term you very rarely get back someone who is going to be as good as the guy already is or a package of players who collectively will be as good as the guy already is, or a package of players who collectively will be as good as the player already is. It's really hard to do that, and it just doesn't make much sense to me. And yes, these players are getting more expensive. So according to MLB Trade Rumor's arbitration projections for 2020, Lindor is projected to make $16.7 million next year, Bryant $18.5, and Betts in his last year before free agency $27.7.

So if your sole goal is to, say, get below the threshold for the competitive balance tax, then I guess you're going to start by looking at your most expensive players, and these will be among your most expensive players so if you just say i need to get below this number for whatever reason then it might be easier to do so by trading one of your more expensive players but these players are also good that they are worth way more than they will be paid yes the thing like if you if you still want to be competitive the bang for your buck that you're getting, even with bets the most expensive of them, because baseball players, the very best players in baseball, don't really get paid what they're worth. I mean, Mike Trout gets $35 million a year, and we talked about it when he signed his extension. He's

probably worth twice that, if not more, because he is a, you know, nine war player or whatever. And if you just do the dollars per win projection, you can look at the fan graphs value tab for these players, and it will show you what the estimated free agent value of their production would be. And it's always way, way more than their actual salaries, because you just don't get players totally breaking the scale. So everyone, even the best players in baseball are in this kind of narrow range. Well, and these players have not had a competitive marketplace for their labor yet either. They're all playing under suppressed salaries because of the collective bargaining agreement and because they have not been able to hit the free agent market and negotiate teams

against each other. Yeah. So it doesn't make sense to me. And I get why teams would want to get below the competitive balance tax, particularly Boston, because they've been over it multiple times and they've had the highest payroll in baseball. And if you want to get upset about teams not spending, they're probably better teams to direct that emotion toward than the Red Sox because they have spent. But, of course, they seem to have the means to do that. And even for them, even for a repeat exceeder of that threshold, it's just not that much money. It's like the Red Sox paid like $12 million as a result of going way over the competitive balance tax and paying the maximum penalty in their World Series here. And $12 million, I mean, of course, it doesn't always lead to a World Series championship, which more than pays for that small surtax. But it's just not that much because it's

a tax on the overage of what you spend after you go past that threshold, and no teams go past by that much. So it's 12 million for the Red Sox. That's like the most ever. And I guess also their top draft pick maybe got bumped down 10 spots, which is not that bad because they're not picking at the top of the draft anyway. So I just don't see why you would construct your whole strategy around getting under that number it's just it's not that much to pay yeah i so um all right so then uh like we we think it's weird but what is the what is the rationale here what do you think gets these three names into tweets like is there are we missing the three-dimensional chess aspect somehow is there something that teams are getting out of floating their best players in trade is there is there something

is there some benefit of it even if you don't trade them conceivably i mean it just to me it feels like it to the degree that there would be any secondary effect of having your your best young superstar in in trade rumors uh if you didn't actually trade them it seemed like it would all be negative i mean it tells them it tells the player that you're that you're not that committed to him that maybe you don't think that he is uh the sort of player who is capable of leading the team to a world series that he is not enough that this team is not enough it tells the whole team that it's not. And it tells the fans that you're kind of a bunch of cheapskates who are trying to ruin their experience. And then if you don't trade them, you couldn't even pull it off. Yeah, right. Yeah. There aren't that many

teams that are going to be, I mean, if you can't afford these players or you've decided that you can't afford these players and you're the Cubs and the Red Sox, how many other teams are out there that think they can afford them and will not only afford them, but give you a lot of great prospects back in return on top of paying the salary. So it doesn't really make sense to me. I guess if you were to pay their salary, it wouldn't count against your competitive balance total. So if like the Red Sox paid a bunch of Betts' salary and then sent him somewhere else, they could get good prospects back if they paid that salary. And I guess it could just be as simple as an owner being short-sighted and saying, I want to be under this number. You have to be under this number. It's an ultimatum. And you're

the GM or the chief baseball officer or whatever we're calling it these days. And the easiest way to do that is by trading your big ticket item, right? I mean, just on the balance sheet, if you trade the guy who's making 20 million, then it's easier to get under than moving three other players who add up to the same salary so it could be that which would be just very silly and shooting themselves in the foot or i guess it could just be that they think there's no chance that these players will stay long term i don't know why they would think that but maybe they think i don't know bry Bryant is angry about the service time manipulation still, or they think that Mookie is just, he has no affection for the Red Sox or Boston, and he's just going to take the top offer. And you could easily get outbid, even if you're the Red Sox, by someone else who wants Mookie even more. And so he's got one year left, and you figure, let's get something for him while we can.

But again, that's sort of a sad state of affairs. If A, you don't really care what happens this year in 2020 and you have a much better chance to win with those guys. And B, you can't just pony up and sign those guys to an extension. So last year when the Diamondbacks traded Paul Goldschmidt, Goldschmidt was not as young as these players are. He wasn't, you know, I don't know. He's a fantastic franchise player, but he was one year away from free agency. The Diamondbacks were not very good. The Diamondbacks didn't seem like they were going to be in a position to win last year with or without him. last year with or without him however i also thought at the time like oh boy that that's uh that's that's aggressive i mean you're taking a team that had a winning record the year before that has uh you know a lot of good things going for it and they trade him away for luke weaver and carson kelly who you know if you're diamondback if you're if you're trying to sell season tickets to the diamondbacks in 2019 uh you'd much rather be able to put Paul Goldschmidt

on the cover of the brochure than, well, you wouldn't even put Luke Weaver and Carson Kelly, but whoever you would have left, which I guess would have been Zach Granke and Robbie Ray, and that's not as good. But then Carson Kelly and Luke Weaver were better than Paul Goldschmidt last year and and Christian Walker was just as good and Christian Walker was good at first and so so I don't know do you I don't know if this matters to the people who run these teams uh anyway but do you think that 2A Diamondbacks the Diamondbacks fan, it was satisfying to have Carson Kelly and Luke Weaver last year instead of Paul Goldschmidt? Do you think that like that is a message that gets through like, oh, we got these two players who collectively are, you know, maybe even better than Paul Goldschmidt. even better than Paul Goldschmidt. And just if that's all you know, is that satisfying? Or do you think that there is something about franchise players, about recognizable names that you have

developed, that you have brought up from their rookie year, that you have seen go from promising rookie to superstar, and then even to somewhat aging players slightly in decline, that is valuable and that owners, thatms that uh that teams are are you know kind of undervaluing i think all else being equal a fan probably enjoys the same amount of production coming from someone they have an attachment to and someone they've seen be great and they have a history with then just a totally fresh face. I mean, unless it's, you know, Fernando Tatis Jr. comes along or something, then that's even more exciting. That's your future franchise player. But yeah, I think there's something to be said for a star

performing, but I think ultimately wins trump that probably. So if you're a Diamondbacks fan, you're probably pretty happy that the team did well without Goldschmidt and is probably better positioned in the future without Goldschmidt. Yeah, it's tricky because you don't know the average Diamondbacks fan. I mean, there's like some part of the fan base that is obsessed with everything and is reading the blogs and following the analytics and maybe knows that they won 85 instead of 84 because of this trade. But the wins aren't always that visible. And I could imagine that there are a lot of Diamondbacks uncles out there who are like,

they won 85 games and if they had kept Goldschmidt, they would have won 88 and they might have made the playoffs. So it might not even feel like you're getting the wins wins wins can sort of be sneaky yeah and to be clear I'm not saying that you should never trade a star player or even a franchise player there are times when it does make sense to do that I mean the old Brent Rickey trade a player a year too early rather than a year too late of course Brent Rickey was kind of a cheapskate, and a lot of owners and GMs have been historically, but that's a way to win, like not getting too attached to a player who's been good for you in the past because you're paying for the future performance. So if you look at a guy like Goldschmidt who was heading into, what, his age 31 season.

He's 32 now. And maybe you thought, well, this is the time to deal him if we're going to deal him. And we might not want to resign him and he might not want to resign. So let's bail out a little early. And that looks smart now because then he had a down year and maybe it's the beginning of the age-related decline. So that is something that i think teams do have to do from time to time but i think it's a little different when you're talking about goldsmith than when you're talking about lindor or when you're talking about bets

given the age and the recent trajectories now i guess we could say that we shouldn't really be lumping in bryant with l Betts. You know, he's that caliber of name and he has had that caliber of season, but his six, seven war years are now a few years ago. You know, 2017 was the last time that he was really that kind of player. And since then he's missed some time and he had the shoulder injury and he had a bounce back year this year, but still was like a three or four win player. The defensive ratings were quite bad. So you could say that Bryant, who is also the oldest of the trio and is going to turn 28 in January, maybe he is someone that you could consider moving. There's also the ongoing mediation or arbitration about his years of service time stemming from the grievance about his service time manipulation early on in

his career. So there's some chance that the Cubs could have a year of control taken away from him, although presumably that would be priced into his value because teams know that there's some chance of that too. Yeah, that's true. I would probably consider Betts to be the second or third best player in baseball and Lindor to be maybe the fourth or fifth best player in baseball. And Bryant, I don't know, off the top of my head, I would probably put like in the around 30 maybe. One last thing about this. A year ago, Cleveland was coming off of a division title and was apparently shopping

Corey Kluber and maybe some of their other starters and i think we probably had some of the same same reactions like how why wait why and then they ultimately ended up trading trevor bauer in the middle of a competitive season when they were in a playoff race and hearing that they were shopping trevor bauer might have also made you think wait wait, wait, what, why? And they ended up trading Trevor Bauer for really, you know, like major league talent that they needed. Not even Carson Kelly or Luke Weaver kind of things where you're like, well, he's thrown 60 innings and he's got six years of service time.

And, you know, but like actual major leaguers who were like hitting home runs at that very moment. And so, and in fact, the trade of Trevor Bauer for Fernando Reyes actual major leaguers who were like hitting home runs at that very moment. And, and so it, and in fact, the trade of Trevor Bauer for Fernando Reyes and, you know, so we didn't just, it actually felt like it made them possibly,

you know, I, I can't remember exactly what I said, but I think I remember thinking that it made them maybe slightly better last year because they, the need was in the outfield slightly better last year and maybe slightly worse this year and then better in the future. And so they did not trade Trevor Bauer because they were in any way devaluing their position in the pennant race at the time.

But they actually traded Trevor Bauer, I thought, to make themselves a little bit more formidable in that pennant race. So do you think that we're how likely do you think it is that we're overreacting to this? How likely do you think it is that we're overreacting to this? Because we're so used to trades of a veteran for young package being about shifting costs and also shifting talent into the future. Do you think that, in fact, any or all of these players would be being traded in order to make these teams better, not cheaper, but actually better in 2020 and maybe 2021? Is that like, are we kind of just brushing past the possibility that these are actually like baseball trades? I guess it's conceivable. It's hard when you're starting with a player, particularly because Betts or Lindor

to match that value. They're obviously a better class of player than Trevor Bauer is, or at least Trevor Bauer was this past season. And I don't know that these teams have as glaring holes as Cleveland did in its outfield, which was just, I mean, it was replacement level all around pretty much at that point. So that was kind of an easy place to upgrade. It might be a little harder to find such an obvious place to upgrade

on those rosters today, but it's possible. I mean, there's nothing wrong with listening to offers. Any team should be willing to listen to offers on anyone. It's just that if you entered this offseason with your goal to be trading Mookie Betts, that's quite strange because usually your goal is to get Mookie Betts and if you have him to hang on to him somehow. I mean, he's one of the best players in franchise history and there's a very long franchise history there. And you can't really think of a more marketable and personable player than guys like Mookie Betts and Francisco Lindor for whatever that's worth. Would you trade Mookie Betts for Chris Bryant? Two years, two years, presumably two years for one year. Huh. And, and higher salary for lower salary, at least for now.

No, I don't think I would. Okay. Would you trade Mookie Betts for Francisco Lindor? Also two years for one year. Yes, I might do that. I would do. So our unofficial power rankings for these three trade shits are number one, Francisco Lindor, number two, Mookie Betts number three Chris Bryant yes I think

that's true and I guess you could take like the ultra cynical stand that it just doesn't matter how good your team is right like that's kind of the very nihilistic way of looking at all this is just the the way that MLB's economics work. You're just assured of getting a good amount of money before you do anything. You've got teams like the Cubs and the Red Sox that just sell out all the time. Presumably there's some limit to the fans' loyalty and patience, but those teams draw no matter what they do. Cleveland doesn't draw no matter what that team does. matter what they do Cleveland doesn't draw no matter what that team does so I guess you could just say well we're gonna make about the same amount of money either way and therefore we will just trade our more expensive players but I don't know that teams look at it quite to that extent

even now there's certainly something to be said revenue-wise from making the playoffs, from having a chance to win the World Series. So I'd like to think that teams aren't at the point of just, you know, we'll make the same amount of money either way. I think that people with teams mostly want to win. They may want to make money even more than they want to win, but they do want to win if possible. That's a part of why owners buy teams is to get to brag that they own a successful baseball team and to be the big man on campus in your local community. So I would like to think that there's something to that. But, you know, Rob Arthur has shown in recent articles in Baseball Perspectives, he showed that last week he estimated that about 40% of the drop in attendance in the past five years is because of increased costs of going to games, increased ticket prices. And he also showed that that probably makes sense in the long run or even in the short run. I'm reading here,

this result also shed some light on the way ticket prices continue to rise. If a single dollar of ticket price increase only dissuades about 3,000 fans per season from showing up, the team loses less than $200,000, assuming a median price of $60. That $150,000 loss is dwarfed by the extra buck the remaining 28,000 or so fans per game spend to acquire their seats. For every dollar they lose by increasing costs, they gain about 10 back from their smaller fan base paying more. So at some point, there has to be kind of

an inflection point where you're charging so much that no one's going to games. But I don't know. There are a lot of rich people who might pay those higher ticket prices and then you care less about what your actual attendance is because you're making a good amount of revenue anyway. I don't know if there's a point at which you start to lose long-term affection for your franchise because people aren't going to games and seeing it play in person, but maybe that doesn't matter so much anymore when baseball broadcasts are great and we all enjoy

watching baseball on TV. So I don't know how Rob's study is affected by the secondary market because often you can get tickets for less than the list price, but if that's the case, if these non-competitive games and higher ticket prices are driving a lot of this attendance decrease, and yet teams are making more money anyway, then they don't have as much reason to actually care about wins. You started that by saying the cynical thing. It doesn't matter if you win because your revenue is baked in. All right. I will just defend these three teams possibly. A half-hearted defense.

I don't really know what's going on. I haven't thought this all the way through even. But it does seem to me that all three, I don't know, with the exception of Lindor maybe, it feels like Bryant and Betts, I would speculate, to the extent they're available, are available specifically because their teams did not make the playoffs. That this is a reaction to a feeling of dissatisfaction with how the season went, and they're reacting to that.

And so it is not them saying, it doesn't matter if we win or lose. It doesn't matter if we have a good team or a bad team. We just need to cut costs. I think if either one of these teams had made the playoffs, they would have felt that they had a successful ball club as it was that they wouldn't need to do something quite so radical and possibly unpopular to fix it. I find it to be sort of odd to think that your reaction to just missing the playoffs would then be to trade your best players or i guess one one of your best players uh in brian's case uh so i don't know that i think that it's the right reaction to it but i do think that it is a reaction to the disappointment and it is

not it it is not probably the cynical viewpoint although there is some of that cynicism probably within it as well so just the idea being that we didn't win with them, so we should do something different? Yeah, I don't know. Or just maybe the idea being that we didn't win with them, and if we don't do anything, it's going to get worse. And we don't want to go back into the slide. We don't want three or four years of being bad. Now's the time to stop this know, reinvigorate things. And maybe that does come to some expense in 2020, although maybe not as, you know, like as the Bauer trade was an example, maybe you do it in a way that makes you, that isn't merely about shifting focus to the future, but that it's about, yes, avoiding a small failure becoming a more pervasive failure.

Well, we have a draft to do, but one bit of banter I wanted to bring up that actually ties into what we're saying here. One reason why you might not feel motivated to be the best team you can be is that in baseball, the best team doesn't always win and doesn't even have that much higher a chance of winning than the next best team or a team that's the eighth best team. And we all kind of know that. I think people who listen to this podcast have a sense of that. And we all say the playoffs are a crapshoot and everything. But Neil Payne wrote an article for FiveThirtyEight this week that really drove that home to me, the way in which MLB is a total outlier when it comes to the major sports in the likelihood of the best team winning. So he did this little exercise. He called it paper championships. He looked for teams that were not the best team in their respective sport in a given year that did win the World Series. And he defined best team as

the team with the highest ELO rating, according to 538, which is just derived from basically who you beat and who you lose to. And it accrues so that teams that beat a lot of other good teams are rated more highly. So this year, for instance, the Astros were the highest ELO rated team in baseball, but they did not win the World Series. And Neil went back to the mid-60s and he looked at the rates in all the major sports at which the best team wins the championship. And in baseball, he looked at the rate at which a team other than the best team wins the championship. And in baseball, he looked at the rate at which a team

other than the best team wins the championship. And in baseball, it's more than half the time. So 52% of seasons going back to 1966, some team other than the highest rated team in baseball won the World Series. And that is just a total departure from every other sport. So he looked at NFL, NBA, college football, men's college basketball, and women's college basketball. Every other sport but baseball is in the 20% range. So between 20%, 20.4% for the NFL, and 27.8% for the NBA. They're all in that range. And baseball is more than double almost all of them.

It's more than twice as likely in baseball that the best team will not win than in any other sport. And this makes me think— So wait, can I just— Yeah. So 80% of the time in those other sports, the best team wins? Yeah, or 70% to 80%, yes. Got it.

And this made me think of another study that was done by a few people, Michael Lopez, who is the stats director for the NFL now, and also Greg Matthews and Ben Bommer, who are well-known analysts. And they published this in 2018. And I will link to all of these things that I'm mentioning here, but Michael Lopez did a blog post about their findings, which was basically how often does the best team advance in a playoff series in each sport, and how likely is it that the best team will win? So they used the NBA as the baseline because the NBA is the sport where the favorite, the better team, is most likely to win. So reading from this post,

two NBA playoff teams from the last decade are drawn at random and play one another in a best of seven series. What is the probability that the better team wins? And they calculated that it's about 80%. So you just take any two NBA playoff teams, play a best-of-seven series, four out of five times the better team will win. So they looked at how many games you would need in a postseason series in each of the other sports to match that NBA rate of the better team advancing.

So in baseball, you would need a best of 75 series to match an NBA best of seven series in terms of the likelihood of the better team advancing best of 75. random, it would be best of 51. In the NFL, it would be best of 11. Of course, the NFL plays single elimination playoff games. So even though any single NFL game is more telling of true talent than any single baseball game, they only play single elimination games. So when you look at it, compare the sports, the odds that the better MLB team will advance are the lowest of the sports, but not that much lower than the NHL or the NFL. And then the NBA is just on an understate how random the baseball playoffs are and how unlikely it is that the best team will just roll over everyone else and cruise to a World Series. So I think that has to be in the mind of these teams, and it's rational for it to be in the mind of these teams, that you're only going to do so much, I think, to go from

third best team to first best team because it just doesn't increase your odds of winning World Series all that much. That said, you do want to make the playoffs. You want to at least get into the tournament. And you can really hurt yourself if you're so passive that you don't even do that. And that's what happened to Cleveland this year where they just didn't even get a chance. So I think you can go too far with that.

But also you just have to remember that baseball is totally different from every other sport when it comes to the best team actually winning. Yeah, well, look, you can hear that and you can tell the story that it's such a crapshoot that it's hardly worth holding on to Mookie Betts when he barely increases your chances of winning the World Series.

And so you might as well shoot the moon and try to trade him for a bunch of prospects and then build a 148 win team. And then maybe you'll have a chance. That's one way that you can hear that. The other way you can hear that is exactly the opposite and say, this is all so, so haphazard in how it plays out that why not just put out the team that you like, the players that you like, the players that mean something to you and your fans, the players that you know are good, the players that are going to let you sleep at night because you know that they're good. And you can just very easily push this conversation we had back, we had just now, push it back one year and pretend that it was all about the Nationals deciding to trade Steven Strasburg. The Nationals had just come off a disappointing season. They had been making the playoffs a bunch, and then they didn't make the playoffs.

They had a failure of a season. They could have said, oh, well, we don't want this to get too bad on us. They were losing Bryce Harper to free agency, so things were probably not even going to get better. They were trying to stay under the luxury tax after being over it two years in a row. Steven Strasburg had one more year until he opted out, and they could have said, well, why hang on to him for one more year? We might as well trade him. We're not probably going to get good enough this year anyway. And that's not what they did. They kept Steven Strasburg.

They got Patrick Corbin. get good enough this year anyway and that's not what they did they they kept steven strasburg they got patrick corbin it in the way that baseball is exactly as neil payne describes it completely unpredictable and hard to trust that the best team is going to win out over a small sample the nationals were indeed terrible for two months and then they came and they got much better they made the playoffs they lost the first half of every postseason round except for one and then when they needed to they won and now everything is awesome they got to have steven strasburg for that year he might win the cy young award i don't know if that's going to happen or not but he definitely became a washington legend and they won their world series and so you know you know, just like jump into it, jump into the chaos. And, uh, I w I would say jump into the chaos with, um, the, the team that you want to have.

I mean, this wasn't it fun to have Steven Strasburg instead of like, uh, three, three prospects, one of whom had 60 games of service time. One of whom was in low way. And, and one of them was like number 40 on a prospect list. I don't know. I feel like the lesson from Neil's study is maybe not give in and give up, but to just keep on pushing.

Yeah, yeah. That's a good takeaway too. All right. So we've got a draft to do. We are doing our off-season free agents contract draft this is i believe the fifth time that we have done this on effectively wild so just to set it up we start with the mlb trade rumors predictions of how much free agents will make every year they rank the top 50 free agents and they provide estimates of their total contract size and then we draft i

think we did eight players each last year jeff eight yeah it's too many oh my goodness i have i will say i have no idea how to how to pick these players i didn't i didn't know back in the day like i never had a strategy here like i don't think i ever shot i don't think i ever shot better than 50 on picking these let alone picking the most it's hard to do yeah i mean you mentioned the krasnicks which by the way i was thinking of earlier today too because i was missing them because we always got a good episode out of that yeah the the jerry krasnick uh front office polls that he would do for ESPN every year. And as he always found, executives were not great at predicting things.

And now he doesn't do those because he works for the Players Association, which is our loss but probably their gain. So the way that we do this, we take these contract predictions and we draft them either as overs or unders. And if we get the direction right, if we draft over and they make more than MLB Trade Rumor's predicted total, then we get credit for the difference between their contract size and MLB Trade Rumor's prediction. between their contract size and MLB Trade Rumor's prediction. If we take the under and they make less than MLB Trade Rumor's prediction, then we get the difference there credited to our tally too. And if we draft wrong, then that gets subtracted from our total. So Jeff and I last year, actually, we came very close, but Jeff won. So we each did fairly well i guess jeff was correct in the amount of 115 million dollars i was correct 103.1 million dollars and jeff's strategy

basically and i don't know if it was a strategy or just what happened, but basically he took the under on everything. Seven of his eight players were unders, and he was not really wrong to do that because given the way that the free agent market has gone the last couple of years, picking the under on our expectations, which are calibrated from previous offseasons, probably was the way to go. from previous offseasons probably was the way to go. I will say, though, that we both did pretty well, but almost all of our earnings or whatever you want to call it came from our first picks because MLB Trade Rumors was very bullish on what Bryce Harper and Manny Machado were going to get. They predicted $420 for Harper and $39090 for machado and we both took the under on those and that was 90 million for each of us so that's most of our totals so we didn't do that great on the other ones and i hope that this will not become just uh picking under on everyone because

that will be a very fun game yeah i mean it wouldn't it wouldn't the expectations have been adjusted i mean what happened last year is that that salaries salaries were under expectations in 2017 and then before we had totally accepted that that was the new landscape they were even more under in 2018 than expected and And Tim Dirks, who's doing these projections, he's been here. Right. Yes. He knows what's going on. And so now these expectations are set by those past two years. And I mean, I was starting to say I was always bad at this. I never really knew how to pick these contracts exactly. And I'm looking now. And in fact, the first year that we did this, we both did pretty well. I was credited with $57 million to the right, and you were credited with

$71 million. So we both actually did okay there. I'm looking for the other ones now. But these days, it feels like the same way. If you had to have a home run prediction pool where you're predicting how many home runs everyone was going to hit, like not who would have the most, but how much everyone was going to hit. You'd go, well, can I, can I tell you three weeks into April? Because like, how are you, you just like the, the dominant force is no longer necessarily even the players. It's the market or in the home run analogy, it's the ball. And I don't know whether last year was weird because last year was weird or whether last

year was weird because it was year two and a 20-year trend. Like the other day I was looking at the 19th. So salaries obviously before free agency were very different. They were set by like not even market forces. They were set by like weird personalities. But like the highest, let me see if I can get this exactly right. I was looking at the highest salary in baseball since 1874. And again, not market-based, but it went up, right? It was sort of kind of steadily going up with inflation and with like the other people in other jobs getting paid

more and Babe Ruth comes along and pushes it up and so on. And then in the 1950s, so in 1950, the highest salary was Joe DiMaggio. He made $100,000. In 1951, the highest salary was Joe DiMaggio. He made $90,000. So he got a pay cut. In 1952, Ted Williams, $85,000. That's what he got paid for the next three years. In 1955, Ted Williams, $67,000. And then 1956, Yogi Berra, $58,000. So the high salary actually over the course of six years was dropped in half. And so that was a trend.

And I don't know whether yet we're seeing a trend that is just not gonna stop or whether whether teams are gonna look around and say oh wow the teams that spent money last offseason like like that worked for them um or maybe they who knows who knows lots of things could turn it around uh so it neither one would surprise me and it is hard to pick which market i'm going to be banking on this winter because you do have to pick you have to pick is it going to be worse is it going to be better is it going to be the same you you can't pick these players until you have made a decision which of those three atmospheres are we going to be breathing in this year? Yeah. I mean, it seems like no underlying conditions have changed in any obvious way. We don't have a new CBA yet.

None of the trends that we've really seen toward more analytical front offices or teams caring more about competitive balance tax, none of that seems to have reversed itself. The comments that we're hearing from front offices don't seem to sound any different. So it would be somewhat surprising to me if it were just a great market for players again. I don't know what would be driving that. It's possible that there could just be some regression off a couple really bad years i don't know but uh i wouldn't be banking on a big bounce back so i guess that's my prior yeah i i think two years ago i think i had convinced myself that if you added one more buyer to the mix that it would have been a normal off season that they i don't remember why i thought this but but I had sort of vaguely convinced myself that one more team, like you just needed one more team to see themselves as buyers, as having like $65 million to blow this offseason.

And so then I thought 2017 was going to be the fluke, and then 2018 was worse. And so I was wrong. I was entirely wrong about that. And so I don't know. Yeah, there were, for whatever it's worth, there were more qualifying offers this year than last year. I think there was a low of seven only last year, and there were 10 this year. Although the qualifying offer amount went down, right, because it's an average of the top salaries, which decreased. So the actual amount was not higher.

And I don't know if there are any like signals from the early things that we've seen like is jd martinez not opting out is that a signal that scott boris expects this to be another down year because he seemed like he's kind of on the bubble like you could imagine him making more than was due to him, three and 62 and a half or whatever it was. But he's the kind of player who is not faring well on the free agent market these days. So I didn't know if that was a sign like, oh, we're in for another hard year or what. But we don't know. No one really knows. We won't know until we start seeing some contract signs.

So we're guessing here. Yeah. My recollection from the JD Martinez example was that doesn't he have a – doesn't his contract – his average annual salary go down after this year? And so doesn't he also have an opt-out after next year? And so it makes more sense to opt out after next year than this year. Yeah. So this year, yeah, this year he's making $24 million and then he has another opt out. And so you could, yeah, you could, you could say maybe Scott Boris is worried that there isn't a market there for three years and $62 million. But maybe you could also say, you know, he had a good year this year. He's, he doesn't seem to be aging poorly. If he has another good year this year, could even be a better year this year. I mean, he could get,

have some more power this year. Then he gets 24 million this year and gets a hit free agency next year when he'll only be needing to replace two and 40 to, uh, and, and that'll probably be his last like multi-year contract given his age. And so I don't know, I wouldn't draw, I wouldn't necessarily draw anything from that decision. Okay. So let's draft. And i don't know i wouldn't draw i wouldn't necessarily draw anything from that decision okay so let's draft and i don't think we're not going to get any 90 million dollar scores here either of us because the numbers just aren't as big and i don't know whether that's a reflection of tim adjusting based on what we've seen in the market, or just the fact that as great as Garrett Cole and Anthony Rendon are, they are not as young as Machado and Harper were. Those guys, even though certainly Harper had not been as good in recent years, just the combination of talent and youth was very rare for people like that to hit the free agent market. So this year, your top end estimates are Garrett Cole at eight years, 256, and Anthony Rendon at seven years, 235. So even if we were to take the under, it's, well, it's hard for me to imagine it being so far under that that would be a

big difference, but we'll see. I don't know. Can I, can I propose a small tweak to the rules, to the scoring? Okay. So that, cause we have 50 players to choose from and it feels kind of like anticlimactic or, or just maybe even strategically bad to pick Pedro Stroop either way when it's like $5 million, like, what are you going to take the under and get a half a million dollars? So I think that what we should do is if you get the if you get the direction right you get 10 million straight up you get 10 million for being in the right direction and then and then on top of that by how much you were right oh okay all right sure all right okay you want to go first i'm going to take the under on pedro strobe uh no uh i'm not going to do that i don't want to get how many are we picking can we do seven well eight's too many

we've done eight the last couple of years i don't know all right one two three four we did seven in the sam years well those were the days all right all right we'll do eight i don't know uh all right i'm gonna take the i'm gonna take the over on garrett cole okay garrett cole is eight years 256 million what do we do about opt-outs they just don't count they just don't matter yeah it's just guaranteed what do we do about swell ops we don't do anything and incentives all of that it's all just guaranteed money okay so so it's very risky to take garrett cole here right because if if he ends up signing so it's eight years 256 if he ends up signing uh for whatever reason like maybe he ends up signing a five-year deal for 200 for some reason maybe that's what he wants now i'm done i'm not getting

back i shouldn't pick Garrett Cole here, except that I don't even know if we're going to return to this draft and see who won. So I'm going to say Garrett Cole, I feel like eight years, 256 is that's eight years at $32 million each. And one thing that seems consistent about the top free agent every year is that they want to have they want to set a record that it doesn't even matter what the record is bryce harper just wanted to like 13 years and 335 million dollars i don't even know if that was the right contract for him i don't even know if that's what he should have done i think that might have cost him money but he wanted to have the biggest contract ever and so he took as many years as it was going to take to get there and or the longest contract ever or whatever anyway

it was the biggest at the time right because then did he do that before trout yeah he did that and then trout came yes and then trout wanted to have the biggest ever and so trout waited for harper and then trout signed his extension and so uh anyway, Garrett Cole, I think is going to want to set some sort of new mark. He's the best pitcher on the market. He's pretty young. He's awesome. And I think he's going to want to set some new mark with his record. And $32 million a year is not the record for average annual value for a pitcher. Average annual value for a pitcher record is what? it's like 34 or something i should have looked this up yeah i believe so i believe the average the record for

uh average annual value for a pitcher is well it's different there's different things here it's maybe it's 36 or maybe it's 33 anyway i don't think he's signing for 32 million a year uh at least i don't think that's what he's going out there for. So I could get burned. He could end up signing a deal for seven years and $36 million a year. But I think he's going for eight and 36. I think he's going for eight years, $288 million. That sounds crazy. I think that's what he's getting. Yeah. Given the years that he's coming off of It's not unrealistic I don't think it's a bad pick I don't know I don't know that you're going to gain a huge amount But I don't think the downside risk is really that big

I can't imagine him going that far under this It's just, it's hard to imagine a more appealing free agent Than Garrett Cole right now Yeah, and you have, you know You have teams that are interested You know you have teams that are that are interested you have big market teams that are interested there should be some there should boy all this stuff again three years ago this would have been like you you it'd just be so much easier to envision all the ways that a player could get all the money and and now you're now

you're just anticipating that it's going to be february and uh john morosi is going to be calling all these teams and going how come you haven't made an offer to garrett cole and they're just going to be going we don't like him and you're there we're there again i mean last year was last year was very scarring for anybody who's trying to do this draft all right i'm gonna say under on Zach Wheeler. Zach Wheeler is MLB Trade Rumors' fourth-ranked free agent. They have him at five years and $100 million. And when I saw that, I just thought, Zach Wheeler, $100 million? That sounds like a lot. So that's basically what I'm going with. Now, since then, I've looked at his stats and evaluated his free agency, and I could certainly understand why a team would want to give him that much. He's coming off a couple of really good years, and it depends on what war you look at. He's like a couple wins better by Fangraph's War than he has been by Baseball Reference War, but he's had a couple good years however you look at it he's got the spin rates that teams are looking for he's one of the guys who people are writing posts

about well if you just tweaked his pitch mix a little bit he could be even better than he's been so it's conceivable but i just don't know he doesn't have the the feel of a hundred million dollar free agent to me for whatever that's worth, which is quite possibly nothing. And he's like a couple of years ago, it seemed like he was on his way out. He had injuries. Obviously, he has restored his reputation since then, but I just don't know if he's considered dependable and elite enough to get that kind of contract. if he's considered dependable and elite enough to get that kind of contract. Yeah, that would have been a pick that I would have made as well.

Every time I'm reading a free agent rankings and I get to Zach Wheeler, I think, oh, wow, that's high. He's fifth on MLB Trade Rumors. No, fourth on MLB Trade Rumors rankings, which I don't know i just uh i i guess i'm uh i guess people view him that way i view josh donaldson that way and josh donaldson is ranked below him so yep all right uh yeah zach wheeler 100 million dollars that seems seems like a good pick i will say i will take uh jake odorizzi yeah at three years and 51 million dollars under i assume i'll take the under yeah yeah otorizzi he has never made 10 million dollars yet he has never hit free agency yet but he hasn't he

has not yet made 10 million dollars he um got 9.5 million in this final year of arbitration eligibility and i don't think in my opinion i don't think that he dramatically reshaped what he has seen as, although he had a very good year. You know, he made his first all-star team. He was a good pitcher on a good team. But, you know, he is, he had a very bad second half and he is, I think, somewhat of a limited pitcher. I don't, I don't think that there's a lot of sense that he's going to break out or anything

like that. I think he is, I don't know, is he that different than Lance Lynn and Mike Miner, guys who were getting three years and $30 million over the last few years? I'm not sure he is. And so I could see him making three years and 45. I could see him making three years and 48. Hopeful he's not going to make three. Well, I'm not hopeful. I feel bad. And then Jake, now I'm rooting against you. That's the problem with this. I don't want to be picking all unders because I don't want to

be rooting against people making money. I hope they make money, but yeah, it's just for fun. Yeah. So anyway, I don't know. Jake Odorizzi, I'll take the under. All right. I think I will take the under on Hyunjin Ryu. Oh, interesting. I might have taken the over. Yeah, at 354. I just kind of worry about the durability and the fact that he declined late in the season as he went on, and he is going to be 33. And he had this durable year, 182 innings this year, but 82 the year before that, 126 the year before that, four the year before that, zero the year before that. So I just don't know. I would not be shocked if he got, say, a two-year deal and maybe even a higher average annual value than this is predicting,

but just not that third year, which would take him under. I just, I don't know. His combination of age and lack of durability, I don't know that a team will be that interested in signing up for the long term. Although, of course, on an inning per inning basis, he has been really great in the past couple of seasons. Yeah, you're right. It's very easy to imagine him getting like two years and 42 million or two years and 44 million or something like that. That's a good pick on the years.

All right. I'm going to take the over on Mike Moustakas, who is two years and 20 million dollars. And Moustakas has been has signed. What is this is third year in a row. No, this is this is third year in a row hitting free agency. The first year he had big expectations. He's an all-star coming off an all-star season hitting the market for the first time and nobody would uh nobody would sign him and he ended up signing for one year kind of a pillow contract with the royals uh one year and 5.5 million

dollars they traded him to the brewers and then he hit the market again and again couldn't get a multi-year contract and signed for seven million dollars with the brewers and i feel like there's a this is reminding me of the nelson cruz journey where nelson cruz hit the market and couldn't get a multi-year deal was very disappointed signed a one-year deal i think that happened twice and just kept mashing and then he finally got this big deal with a big one-year deal. I think that happened twice and just kept mashing. And then he finally got this big deal, big four-year deal, I think four years. And there was some criticism of it

and he totally lived up to it and more. He was a stud. And I don't know, Mike Moustakis over these two one-year deals has been very good. He made the all-star game again last year. He's been 2.5 war and 3.2 war in those two years those are very good seasons for a third baseman who still plays good defense average defense and you can you know you can sell this to your fans i mean this is a this is a 30 home run

more than 30 home run hitter over his last three seasons. He's hit 101 homers. He's, uh, you know, he's a, he's a very good player. He's a very good player. Mike Moustakis doesn't get enough credit. He's a very good player. He deserves multi-year deal. And, uh, and I'm saying this year he gets, uh, he gets at least three and maybe six years, six year deal. Yeah. All the years that he wanted to get before and didn't get. He'll just get them all at once. Lump sum. All right. I'm going to take Yasiel Puig over. Yasiel Puig is at one year and eight million.

And I know his performance has fallen and his stock is fallen. But one year and eight million for Yasiel Puig. It's got to be more than that, right? Even if it's a pillow contract, you figure 10 is the number for a pillow contract. Yeah, right. And I don't know that I'm going to strike it rich here, except now that we have our $10 million bonus for picking the right direction. But yeah, he's still only 28 years old.

He's turning 29 next month. And that's young enough that I'd have to think that there would be a multi-year deal out there for him if he wants it. And if he doesn't, then yes, he's done enough. He played well enough in the second half of the season with Cleveland to restore his value so much, even though his power didn't really come back at all. In fact, it fell off. His discipline came back a bit and he was pretty productive. And I just think that he's done enough. And he doesn't really have the, like, no one's really talking about him being a bad clubhouse presence anymore. So maybe he has matured and aged out of that. So I'd have to think that he could do better than that.

Yeah, it's yeah, I don't know. It's it does seem like out of 30 teams, one is going to be excited by by the energy in the biceps. I mean, like war-wise, he just hasn't been that good. He was, you know, a 1.2 war player this year at Fangraphs. He was a 1.8 war player the year before in 125 games. But, you know, I think he's like an average player, let's say, and that should be worth more than that at his age. Yeah, okay. I'm going to take the over on Kyle Gibson gibson ah i was gonna do that too so kyle gibson is two years and 18 million dollars and uh and

remember jake odorizzi was three years and 51 million dollars and there's just not that to me there's not much that there's not that much air between these these two i mean if you look at i mean they were I mean, they were on the same team the past two years, so it's pretty easy to just compare them straight up. So in the past two years that they've been teammates, Gibson has thrown more innings, and they have almost the same ERA. Odorizzi's ERA is slightly better. And I feel like Gibson's kind of unusual enough in his style of pitching that he, he will appeal to some team that says, ah, we can work

with that. I feel like it in this, in this moment, it helps to have something you do unusual, something about your spin or something about your repertoire or something about where you locate your pitches that a team can see that and say, ah, there's something there that we can work with instead of just being a generic. And, uh, so I like Gibson, he's a little older than Odorizzi, but he's also been very durable in his career. And I don't, I don't know that he's going to like, uh, get, get three years and 51 million, which is what Odorizzi is predicted to have. But I think a, in a a good winter he would like in it like three years ago i think he would have i think he probably would have gotten three years and 51 million dollars kyle gibson three years ago but he doesn't need to for me to win this game two years and 18 seems

too low yep that probably would have been my next pick so that's a good one i will take the under on Steven Strasburg at 6 and 180, which I think is the right range AAV-wise. But I'm just basically banking on this being a five-year deal instead of a six-year deal. It just seems like given his age, what he's going to be 32 next year, that it might be a little bit tough to find a six-year deal out there, although it could certainly happen. But if it's five, then I think it'll be under 180. He's a qualifying offer guy too, although I don't know that that would affect him. So yeah, just purely banking on it being a shorter-term deal than they are expecting. If I had not had the first pick, if you had not said pick first, I don't think I would have taken Garrett Cole but it felt appropriate with the first pick to take Garrett Cole yeah so now I'm

wondering whether you knew me well enough I did not predict that no all right how many have we done four four all right four I've got to find four more in here that I have opinions about. Yep. All right. I don't feel good about this one, but I'll take the under on Yosemite Grandal. Four years and $68 million. And I think he's worth that and more. I love Yosemite Grandal. But I'm just counting on last offseason in which he did get multi-year deals. I mean, he didn't have to sign that one year $18 million deal that he signed, but he was

not getting the contracts that he thought he was worth. And I'm going to bet that that represents the industry consensus about him that that something about yasmani randall as a catcher is not as popular as his raw publicly available framing and wars uh suggests and that he is seen as somehow as a flawed defensive catcher and um so that there will still not be that same uh there there will still not be huge interest in him for a four-year deal although he had a very good year and everything about him says that we have publicly says that he's very good um and he doesn't have a draft pick attached to him this year and there's all sorts of reasons to think that many teams would be fighting for yasmani grandel the other

thing is that last year there were a bunch of teams that needed catchers really badly it seemed like and just didn't just decided we don't need we actually don't need catchers sam we're happy having catchers who you think are bad and i think that i i'm maybe there's a chance that in fact there is a shift in how teams prioritize filling that position and that we just might not see a lot of um a lot of investments in catchers particularly catchers that can hit would it even enter your mind with grandal if you were thinking about a four-year deal would you even think about maybe we'll have robot umps by the end of that contract and he'll be less valuable or is that still too soon for you to

even factor it into your calculations no too soon i don't think that's happening in the next four years even if it does i'm not betting on it and um so no it would not now if it were it could i i don't i don't think this would ever come into my mind if i were thinking about drafting a catcher either but if i were drafting a catcher out of high school and it was a you know someone like austin hedges where i could just you could just tell he's the he is uh he's the zach granky of framing you could see it as an 18 year old he's smarter than everybody else it's going to be a huge part of his game and i anticipate he will be part of the organization for 12 years then maybe then probably although i don't even know. Maybe not. The momentum.

Am I wrong that it feels like the momentum toward robot umps has slowed even as they expand the experiment? That the feeling that this is a undeniable good among like kind of the sports philosophers has sort of stopped that there's a lot more worry about the inaccuracies the inexactitude the fact that players do not find it to be actually a positive experience when they've played with it i would i would say the opposite i think i think the momentum has picked up although there are reservations certainly but i think i don't know those reservations might be limited to a few fan graphs and baseball perspectives authors. I don't know. I don't really know what the fan on the street thinks of Robotums, but I think probably they think bring them on.

And as for what MLB thinks, well, clearly they are interested in pursuing it. thinks well clearly they are interested in pursuing it so i think the fact that it was tested in real leagues and is now coming to affiliated ball that that says it's it's progressing toward it not away from it i can't remember does is it your opinion that the robot ump is more likely to benefit the hitter or the pitcher i did have an opinion on this right now. I always have to rethink what my opinion was, but my opinion was that it would help pitchers, right? Yeah. I think that's, yes. That is also my opinion, which would make this the wrong time for MLB to be thinking seriously about bringing it to the majors. True.

They have some other things to tweak first i think all right i am going to take the under on jose abreu at 2 and 28 which is not a big number obviously but jose abreu just has not been that valuable a player in the last couple years he's still an above average hitter but not that far above, despite the 33 homers this year. Who didn't hit 30 homers this year. He still just doesn't walk much, and he is very negative on defense, at least according to the stats. So he's been a sub to Warplayer each of the past two years. He has a qualifying offer attached to him.

Each of the past two years, he has a qualifying offer attached to him. So I could just see him either accepting that offer or just lingering for a while and not besting the two and 28. So I'm going under. Okay. Yeah, especially with Edwin Encarnacion out there. Yes. I feel like I probably would rather have Edwin in carnacion and it's only probably going to be one year for him i wouldn't rather have him over a two-year deal or a three-year

deal or a four-year deal but for a one-year deal yeah all right i will take the over on howie kendrick i don't know if there's a good pick howie kendrick is two years and $12 million. And I mean, speaking of would you rather have a Bray or Edwin Encarnacion, I'd rather have Howie Kendrick at this point. I mean, Howie Kendrick, I don't know if I've made this comparison. Well, no, this is absurd anyway. But what Howie Kendrick has done offensively going from like where he was two years ago to where he is now is quite similar to what Christian Yelich did just in terms of like completely like reinventing himself as a like near elite hitter. Now, Yelich was better and Yelich is considerably better. And for that reason, Yelich is a news story in a way that Howie Kendrick is not. But like Howie Kendrick was one of the couple dozen best hitters in baseball this

year. He is like three years ago, he was left for dead. And then he started figuring some things out. His launch angle has comp is very comparable to Yelich's. It was very comparable at the low end, and it is now very comparable right around the league average. And, you know, he was kind of a, he was a stud this year. Like, he was really incredible. Now, obviously, he's not Christian Yelich, obviously. And this is both a smaller, a much smaller sample of him performing like this. And, again, he's not he's, he's not young

and he's not, this is probably not permanent in the same way that it is with Christian Yelich, but I mean, I would definitely want Howie Kendrick next year to be in my team's lineup. I mean, there's no doubt about it to me that he's, he could be one of the four or five best hitters on a, on a good team. He was the third best hitter on a world series winning team just right now. Yeah, that would be on, he was on my list for sure yeah both kendrick and hudson daniel hudson are at two years and 12 million on this list and i think that kendrick is the better player would be the better investment probably but two and twelve like i would think in an earlier era those two guys would probably cash in this winter right just based on their playoff heroics i mean you have the the closer

on the world series winning team he's a free agent and he had a low era for that team he's gonna make some money and yeah kendrick with his i mean not even just his superficial stats his stats period were just good and of course had some of the biggest hits ever this postseason so i would think that both of those guys probably in the past where teams maybe would have been more inclined to to give guys a boost because of that heroic performance in october they would have been set up well. Nowadays, I don't know that there will actually be that much of an effect from that, but yeah, I would take the over on Kendrick. And Hudson, I'm kind of on the fence about.

I don't think I want to take him with my pick, but I might take him with a future pick if you don't. Yeah, me too. with a future pick if you don't. Yeah, me too. So we'll see. All right. So I am going to take the under on Madison Bumgarner at 4-72. And 4-72 is a reasonable amount. I didn't look at that and I wasn't shocked.

I would not be shocked if he were to get that amount. But he does have the qualifying offer attached, and he is on the downside of his career, and he's lost some stuff, and the luster is off, and people have invoked Dallas Keuchel when talking about Madison Bumgarner and wondered, is Bumgarner going to be the Keuchel of this offseason? And it's not a perfect parallel, but you can certainly see why people have said that. Keichel was coming off of a 3.3 war year last offseason when he sat out for half the season. Bumgarner is coming off of a 3.2 war year, both Fangraphs wars, so they're coming off similar seasons, and they're roughly the same age. Keiko was and is a little bit older, but they

are sort of, you know, same recent trajectories and kind of soft tossing lefties. And so maybe some similar concerns, both qualifying offers. So is Bumgarner going to end up sitting out half the season? Probably not. I would think that, I hope not. But there's some chance that that could happen or that he might settle for a shorter-term deal or something, in which case there could be some benefit to my picking him here. So I'm going to say that, although if he ended up nailing that number that would not shock me either yeah i i think i believe that i have agreed with you on what on every one of your picks what like you know over or under like i it's hard to know if i really believe that because as soon as you say it i might just be like oh my friend ben who is really smart and like smarter than me even though this contest is like, we're not that great at it,

said so. But I think that I have agreed with all of these so far. All right. I'm going to take, I really, you know, it's, it's annoying me that like, like,

so Anthony Rendon is number two on this list and Josh Donaldson is number five. And I would like to address those, but I don't know which way I would go. I genuinely don't know whether it's up or down. Not only does it seem about right, but there's a decent chance that it's going to end up being like, I mean, it could end up

being $30 million in either direction, which is just a draft killer. You're picking something you don't really know about and it's going to end up influencing or affecting the rest of your results more than any other pick that you can make. I'm going to take the under on Marcelo Zuna. And this one, I don't know, you know, Marcelo Zuna, watching him play defense, he looks like a person who's battling car sickness. Like it does not look good and the the

numbers are fine you know he used to be good yeah he used to be genuinely good like the no doubt about that like there was no doubt that he used to be a good outfielder and even today he he's he's he grades out as fine for a left fielder which is not actually good but you know it's not gonna it's not gonna hurt your team and i don't know your team. And I don't know if I believe that. I don't know if I believe the defensive metrics about him. I don't have anything better to go on except that I've, um, you know, seen him play and he looks uncomfortable on the field. He looks slower. He looks tentative and he has a bad arm and all those things make me wonder not whether he can help a team, but whether he slots into the Jose Abreu sort of class of player where he's just he's a non non impact non impact. I don't really want to use non impact as the as the adjective there, but like a non elite bat at a bat first position, which teams need those.

Those those players are are often very important on winning teams but we have seen that market more than any other collapse in the free agent uh market and so if ozuna is seen as a above average batter in left field and and and not more uh then i don't see a three-year deal for him uh i don't see a i I mean, that's a player where if you change the name, now he's young, he's young, so that helps. But if you change the name, then you might be talking at someone who's trying to get like a one-year $8 million contract some years. So anyway, Marcel Lozuna wouldn't shock me if there was a lot of interest in him, but it also wouldn't shock me if he ended up being the player who in February hasn't gotten the multi-year offer at all and

he ends up taking a one-year deal all right for my second last pick I am taking Delon Batances the over on one year and seven million which is somewhat risky obviously he missed almost all the season with a shoulder injury and then he came back and struck out the two hitters he faced and then immediately hurt himself again with a potentially quite serious injury, a partial tear of his Achilles tendon. And he's a big guy, and that is worrisome, obviously. But he was just so dominant for a five-year stretch and was very dominant as recently as 2018. And I just have to bet that some team is going to see the upside there and give him more, maybe even give him a two-year deal. I don't know when he will be fully healthy again, but maybe give him a two-year deal and hope that year two is even better. The risk here for me is that he signs some sort of low-guaranteed,

high-incentives deal, and I will not get credit if he hits the incentives, but I'll still bet that he can top $7 million. Yeah, I immediately targeted him as a person to take the over on, and then I started thinking, what happens if he doesn't sign a deal until like after the season has begun i don't know maybe someone will have declared a winner by that point so i didn't know how what his recovery was gonna look like but it doesn't seem obvious that he's gonna even be healthy by opening day so i don't know but yeah it could be all right

i'll take i feel like i'm taking a lot of overs. Yeah. I'll take the over on, how many do we have left? One. This is my last one? Yep. Oh, thank goodness. I'll take the over on, boy, there's all these relievers that have these two-year deals in the teens.

And again, like three years ago, it just would have been so easy. Pretty good relievers get three years. If you're a seventh or eighth inning guy, you get three years. So we'd be saying Will Harris, three years, three years, 24, three years, maybe three years, 21, maybe three years, 27, but three years. And now it's two years, 18. Yeah. I mean, the reliever market has held up a bit better, I think, than other subsets of the market, but still, yeah. Well, all right. I mean, the reliever market has held up a bit better, I think, than other subsets of the market, but still, yeah. Well, all right. I'll take Will Harris. I'll take Will Harris two years, 18 million. I'll say that it's at least two and 20 or at least three and 21. All right. And I will finish by taking the over on Edwin Encarnacion at 1-8,

which, you know, low upside because he's going to get a one-year deal. But if he does better than 8, which seems reasonable, then I'll get your $10 million bonus that you've added this year. And he's coming off a really strong year. So with a player like that, there are always only so many markets. But still, his bat has held up, even improved this year. So, I'm going to hope that he can do better than that. Neither of us took Hudson.

I guess it's just, it's weird because we were just recently talking about Hudson as like one of the few reliable, trustworthy pitchers on a very good World Series winning team. And yet neither of us thinks that he can clearly do better than 2-12, which I guess is just like you look at his peripherals and they're just not good. Even with the Nationals, they weren't that good. He had a 2-27 BABIP with the Nationals this year and the other stuff stuff was not so hot so i don't know if that means that we are underrating him now or whether we were overrating him two weeks ago yeah yeah you could pretty much anybody who's in here in a two-year deal you could persuade me that that the over is there yeah i mean dan hudson like it you're right because 10 or 20 years ago we would have been talking about how much those three weeks changed the impression of him and now you just

you don't know if gms look at players that way right or just his 2.47 era this year versus his like 5.08 xfip for instance yeah i have no idea i have no idea about how any of these i'm gary cole's gonna sign a three-year 140 million dollars deal just to make a just to make a point all right yep so we didn't take rendon at what was it seven and 235 was that what they had him at which uh is like right where that's basically what arenado got tacked on to his deal a year before free agency. And we didn't take Donaldson, you mentioned, at 3 and 75 because, yeah, those just felt about right. So anyway, some big names still on the board, but we did it. I don't know if we did it well, but we did it.

All right. All right. That will do it for today. Thanks to everyone for listening. And thanks to official Effectively Wild scorekeeper John Chenier for keeping track of all of our past drafts and competitions and presumably this one too. I will link to the Google sheet where all of those are tracked. It is always linked from the file section of our Facebook group, as are many other podcast-related documents. I'm already ruing my failure to draft Kyle Gibson before Sam. I saw a tweet from John Heyman after we finished recording

that said, Kyle Gibson getting buzz even in markets, stacked with top starters, 10 teams showing interest. I think that pick will pay off for Sam and for Kyle Gibson. Thanks to those of you who wrote or tweeted or commented about the Eddie Robinson interview. I'm glad you seem to enjoy it.

I just get such a kick out of talking to people like that. This is a guy who lent Babe Ruth a bat on Babe Ruth Day and had Rogers Hornsby as an instructor. He's just a direct conduit through the last century of baseball. He's connected to those guys, and now I'm connected to him. And so are you, if you listen to the interview. So it's really thrilling for me to be able to collect that oral history, and it's reassuring to think that someone who is almost 99 years old could be of such sound mind and sharp memory. It gives us all hope. Most of us aren't as lucky, but it's at least possible. And one thing I meant to mention, before we brought

Eddie on on our last episode, I noted that he had faced former podcast guest the late Ned Garver many times and that he had done quite well against him. Well, there is an even more direct connection between Eddie Robinson and Ned Garver. Eddie was traded six times in a span of eight years from 1948 to 1956. And in the last of those trades, he was sent from the Kansas City Athletics to the Detroit Tigers in an eight-player deal, four for four. And one of the players coming back to Kansas City from Detroit was none other than Ned Garber. So they were traded for each other, which is kind of cool. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up.

Pledge some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going. Jacob Vernick, Patrick Heal, Leith McAnduar, Dawson Allen, and Jason. Thanks to all of you. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. Please keep your questions and comments for me and Sam and Meg coming via email at podcastatfangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. We will likely answer some emails next time, so get them in soon. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance, and we will be back to talk to you a little later this week. Each had their use It was so hard Tearing apart Now I know you gotta get it right at the start

I learned my lesson now I learned it the hard way If you wanna be in love You gotta pay and pay and pay