Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1461: Hot Stove Stirrings

Episode Date: November 26, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about what the Padres’ 2017 Rule 5 trio is up to now, the Mariners’ aggressive Evan White extension, how teams would distribute their spending if every player (amateur or pro) were a free agent but spending were capped at a percentage of MLB revenue, the just-announced All-MLB Team, the […]

You look so young. Have you ever been afraid? You look so young. And I'm feeling so ashamed. Ooh, ooh, ooh you're hearing the old school podcast experience like before there were microphones. You should be sitting in the Honda Fit killing crickets. I could be, yeah. Although I think, I don't remember how I did it back then. I might have had like a little headphone microphone at that point, earbud microphone. But yeah, this was the way we did it. It sounded bad. I think I used to, you always sound good. And I think that my line was that it sounded like you were in a studio and I was shouting from the far end of a barn. Yeah. Well, we used to record over Skype all the time, which never sounded as good as what we use now. It's like podcasts

in general sound better now than they did in 2012 when we started, I think. So if you era adjust how Effectively Wild has sounded over the years, we probably do okay. But we've kept up with the times because the methods have improved. It's a new world out there. I was listening to an old podcast just this morning. In fact, it was episode 1299 of this

very podcast. And you and Jeff Sullivan were talking about Alan Cordoba. Do you remember this story? I do not. Don't come back to me, I hope. All right. Yeah, Alan Cordoba was one of the three Padres Rule 5 picks from 2017.

So in 2017, the Padres carried three Rule 5 picks on their Major League roster all year long, and it was one of the most outlandish or aggressive instances of tanking for the future that i think we've ever seen i mean other teams have gotten worse than those padres did but i don't know if any team has done anything that was as explicitly about making them bad that year for some future benefit than carrying three rule five picks and not because no team has ever carried three rule five picks but because because the three that they had were all

extremely young. Like these were not rule five picks from double A or even high A. I think they were from low A, short season ball. These were players who were like 20 years old and were jumping from low A to the majors and they hung on all year long. And I wrote about the three and you and Jeff talked about the three at the time. And then after 2018, which was about one year ago, just slightly more than one year ago, you guys recorded an episode where you talked about Alan Cordoba, who in response to an email question, somebody had pointed out that he had gone from the majors to high A, and his numbers had gotten significantly worse and wondered if that was unprecedented. high A and his numbers had gotten significantly worse and wondered if that was unprecedented.

And Cordoba was a shortstop who had had a 579 OPS for San Diego as a overmatched 21-year-old. And then as soon as they were allowed to send him to the minors, because rule five picks have to spend the year in the majors or else be offered back to their original team. But after he spent the year in the majors, he could go to the minors. They sent him to high A, which tells you something, right? He went from the majors to high A and he had a 543 OPS that year. He hit 206, 233, 310 in a hitter's park, in a hitter's league. And so then this was a year ago that you and Jeff recorded this episode. So there's a whole year of Padres rule five player, I don't know, future results. And I thought I wanted to see how they did. And so I'm going to give you an update.

Okay. Yeah, I have no idea. Alan Cordoba, shortstop, spent this year as well in high A. He did not advance a level. He stayed in high A. He's 23 now, which is a little on the old end for a prospect in high A, but it's not outrageous. If you were a college draft pick in the eighth round or something, it's quite possible that you would spend your age 23 season in high A. And he hit 301, 367, 412, which is pretty good.

That's almost an 800 OPS as a shortstop. I don't know how his defense was as shortstop. Well, I do actually. He hardly did any of it. He has now been converted to a left fielder and a third baseman. Well, left field and third base. He played five games in shortstop and also five in right field, but he is now a, and eight in center field. He's now a super utility guy, basically. 800 OPS with 32 steals. His briefly incredible minor league plate discipline, which Jeff had theorized was why the Padres had picked him up, is not permanent. He struck out 77 times and walked 31 in 470 plate appearances. So he is aggressive. He is fast. He had a good batting average,

and he plays a bunch of positions. So I would say that that is a not quite org filler, not quite a prospect. And so that's Alan Cordoba. Okay. I believe that when you recorded last year, he had just been DFA'd or released or whatever you do to somebody in high A. And he is still in the Padre system. So maybe they re-signed him. Somehow he's still a Padre. All right. Luis Torres was the catcher that they had. And as a major leaguer with the Padres at age 21, he hit 163, 243 and slugged 203. And then he went to high A last year in 2018, and he had a 727 OPS plus.

Well, this year he was in AA, and he was very good as a 23-year-old in AA in the Texas League. He hit 300, 373, 500. He slugged 500, and he is still a catcher, primarily a catcher. And he's a 23-year-old who raked in AA with 15 homers. So that's pretty good. Yeah. Hope he gets back up there. And then the third of the Rule 5 picks was Miguel Diaz, who was maybe the most successful of them in the majors because he had an ERA of 7.34 that year. He also spent 2018 bouncing around, actually. He was in AA, AAA, and occasionally the majors. This year, he spent most of the year in AA and AAA. He had a 3.86 ERA, 40 strikeouts,

10 walks in 30 innings, which is all good enough as a starter, which is actually pretty good. So 24-year-old starter in double and AAA with pretty good numbers, but only made eight starts. I think he was recovering from something and he threw six innings in the majors and they were not good. So all three of them still in the organization. All right. I hope they make it back. That'd be quite a story if they all managed to fight back to the big leagues. I mean, it's not likely, I guess, but... Do you want them to make it back as Padres though though do you want this to pay off for the padres yeah i guess i'd rather see them do it somewhere else maybe oh you could argue you can't prove what would have happened if they had not had that rule five experience maybe they would have developed more quickly and been better maybe

it was bad for their development or maybe getting some exposure to the big leagues. I mean, I'd have to think that it must have just been so overwhelming for them to be in that situation that I don't know whether you'd be able to learn from it or whether you'd just be traumatized by it. But I'd like to talk to all of them about it if they were able to make it back just about how different it is actually getting there the usual way as opposed to just skipping multiple steps like that. Yeah, it's hard to know. I mean, obviously, from one standpoint, the Padres clearly fielded a bad product. And I don't tend to like to support that. And it seems likely that this is not the ideal player development path for players. But

like you say, we can't prove it. My guess is it's not ideal. From the player's standpoint, I'm sure they were quite, there were probably things that they did not like about it, like feeling like you were the worst player in the world. But on the other hand, they did get, you know, they got service time and they got to live rich for a year. But of course, that means three other people did not.

And so it's not like the Padres carried 28 major leaguers that year. They still only paid 25 at a time. So I think all in all, I would say that this is not behavior that I would want to incentivize at the major league level. So yeah, like you, I'm rooting for them all to make it. But it wouldn't bother me if they all made it after, like, say, they became minor league free agents and signed elsewhere. It wouldn't bother me. Speaking of inexperienced players doing things that are usually reserved for experienced players,

I was going to bring this up. You wrote about six and a half years ago for BP about the future of contract extensions and how we would see contract extensions change. And one of the things you speculated about was that we'd start to see teams sign players to earlier extensions, you know, sign players in the low minor leagues, let's say, to an extension. And yes, of course, it's risky, but it could work out potentially for both sides. And so we haven't really seen that happen to a great extent, but we did just this past Week see a new Type of extension signed so

The Mariners signed first baseman Evan White who is their 2017 first rounder And he has been in AAA he played four games in AAA In 2018 but he spent the Entire 2019 season In AA and he signed a

Long-term extension the first player at that level to sign one he signed a six-year 24 million dollar extension with three club options that can take it up to 55 and a half million and obviously if he turns into a good player that would massively favor the mariners but he is still a AA player, or was most recently, so there's still some uncertainty about that. He is currently ranked 58th on MLB Pipeline's list of the top 100 prospects in baseball, and he's coming off like a 830-ish OPS season in AA. So I don't know if it's smart or not. I don't know that much about Evan White as a player other than what I've read about him in the aftermath of this signing. But this is an example.

This is a step along that path that you foresaw. Huh. Wow. Double A, huh? Yep. Wow. That's interesting. I would sign that deal if I were in double A. Yeah. Well, it's right. It could work out against him if he turns into a good player but at that age of first baseman and double a and he's not super young either he's what is he 23 i think

because he was a college draftee so it's not like he's a slam dunk he's gonna turn 24 in april so there's certainly some risk for him that he won't make it. And this way he guarantees his financial future and his family. So you see how this works out. And you also see why if he does make it up to the majors, then this will be a glaring thing that, you know, could be very bad for him or at least could cost him money in the long run and maybe could cost other players money if they start signing team friendly extensions that that, on the whole, will favor teams, but in individual cases might favor players. So that's how this sort of thing starts.

So we'll see if this starts any trend, if anyone else signs AA players or even goes further from the majors, because why stop there? Do you think if they went into the next collective bargaining agreement i don't know what i'm gonna say i have no idea how stupid it's gonna come out okay okay roughly 50 of revenue has historically gone to player salaries right yeah it's it's varied it used to be more it's been around there lately depending on how you calculate revenue but yeah but we pick a number that we're all comfortable with. I don't know what that number is, but like it's whatever. So let's say it's 52%, right? What if the collective bargaining agreement was simply that teams would spend 53% on payroll, on player salaries, and there would be no other restrictions at all on what

people could earn in the draft, in minor league, in international free agency, in their first six years, none whatsoever. Teams could spend it however they want as long as they spent at least 53% of their revenue on salaries. What do you think teams would choose to do? What would be the most radical things that teams would do differently with that money? So there's no slots, no bonus pools. It's just anything goes. You can sign any player to anything at any level. Yeah. And I don't, I don't even know how you would enforce this on a team-by-team basis. So there's a problem there that I haven't thought through.

Never mind. Well, so you'd still have a draft and you'd still have the international signing system, right? So it wouldn't just be that like every amateur player is a free agent. You'd still have to go through that system. So players would not have leverage to just sign with the highest bidder that's right that would still keep salaries pretty depressed but you'd be able to do what teams could do prior to this current cba where you could sign someone to way over slot and you know you could try to get them to sign with you and that was a way that some either smart or wealthy teams could try to game the draft

a little bit. So I'm sure we'd see a return to that, right? Except if there would be, if there'd be no penalties associated with it, like if you couldn't go over some threshold, then yeah, you'd see much bigger contracts for at least individual amateur players, right? But because it would still be so depressed just by the draft system in general, I don't know that it would— Well, yeah, but let's focus on the first six years, though, on the players who haven't hit free agency yet, but now they're free agents from year one.

So there's no arbitration system? There's nothing. Everybody's a free agent if they haven't signed a contract. Okay. In fact, take away the draft, take away everything. Everybody's a free agent if they haven't signed a contract. Ooh. Okay. So you can sign, you can, yeah, everybody's a free agent if they're not under contract. Huh? All right. Well, I mean, then you'd proportionately speaking, you'd see more money going to amateur players, right? Not as much as big leaguers, but now it's just so depressed that you'd see more. Then it's like the few times that we've gotten to see what an actual free agent on the amateur market would be worth, or at least someone who has a choice of more than one team like Kyler

Murray or the Scott Boris loophole draft pick free agent guys, like they signed way bigger deals. So you'd see more money there. But if you were able to pay players or had to pay players in their first few years of service time, what they were worth, that's like on the one hand, that's like what the owners would not's like, on the one hand, that's like what

the owners would not want. But on the other hand, if it's still sort of capped because we're saying 53% or whatever, then it wouldn't get way different from what it is today in terms of total spending. Yeah, I'm trying to think. I mean, I'm specifically thinking about this from Evan White's perspective. So Evan White would theoretically get more. If he went to the Mariners now and said, I want an extension, the math would not be based on, well, what are the actuarial tables say you're going to make in your arbitration years? Like you can't, if you're the Mariners, you can't say, well, we're going to start with, you would only make 1.5 million in your first three years.

And then if things work out, you get two and a half million your first year of arbitration and five and a half your second and eight and a half or your third or whatever. And then we're not going to buy out three years of free agency because they're all years that we're buying out of free agency. And so from Evan White's perspective, if he's a pretty good major leaguer and he went year by year, then he would probably make like $90 million or $170 million or something like that. And so he would get a lot more. If he were in AA and he wanted to sign a long-term deal, he would get a lot more. And then that money would come from somebody else. If we're assuming that owners are still going to stick to around 53%, that money would come from somebody else. And

presumably that it would come from Nick Castellanos or whoever, a 29 to 33-year-old free agent, who would suddenly see that there was a lot less money for him. And so you'd have Evan White, who is entering the prime of his career, would be getting paid a lot more. And then free agents who are not would get paid a lot less. And so would that trade-off make anybody happy? Would that be a trade-off that everybody would like?

I mean, obviously, Nick Castellanos right now would not like that scenario. But if this were the way it worked, do you think that people would like it more? Would it be better? If the same amount of money is going to the humans playing the baseball in fact slightly more but it was distributed in a radically different way would it be good or would it be bad is the way that it works now the good way well it's worked okay until recently yeah but i think in a way it would seem fairer because this would be closer to what players are worth that they get paid what they're worth currently or in the short term, as opposed to having to be underpaid for several years and then potentially overpaid for the years after that to make up for it, or at least that's how it used to work. to make up for it, or at least that's how it used to work. So there's something kind of appealing about that, about just, hey, you're worth this much right now.

This is what you get. I don't know what the union would think about it because a lot of these players who would be making more money are not in the union, or at least not yet. Like, you know, Evan White is not in the union, and a draftee is not in the union, and a minor league free agent signee is not in the union. Like, a lot of them will be in the union and a draftee is not in the union and a minor league free agent signee is not in the union like a lot of them will be in the future but they are not currently represented

by the union and so the union would oppose it right because they wouldn't want their members to make less so that potential future members would make more if you look at the system as it is now as the best way to get the most total dollars out of owner's pockets and into players' pockets, then from the union's perspective, that might be considered really successful. So that might be it. I mean, it might just be that this is the way that you end up getting shaking the most dollars free. But I've always found there to be something sort of a little bit cruel about it where you make a lot of the players live the first half of their career in fear and uncertainty. And then you make them live the second half of their career oftentimes being made to feel like a burden because they're the ones who are getting paid more than the star 24-year-old who's getting paid the minimum and who everybody actually wants on their team. And instead the, the, the teams are able to, they're able to quite convincingly

paint the picture to the public that these high priced stars are too high priced because they're in decline. Whereas if they were paying the young players, what they were worth early on, I think the ownership would have a harder time selling that story to the public. No one's going to believe that, for instance, nobody believes Mike Trout is overpaid because he's still really good. And everybody believes, well, I mean, if you just do it with Albert Pujols, if you just switch Albert Pujols' first half of his career and second half of his career, I don't think

that there would be this, it'd be harder to paint Albert Pujols as a burden in the first half of his career than it is for ownership to point to him in the second half of his career, right? And so instead of paying them when they're undeniably, you know, quote unquote worth it, and then they do it the other way. And I always find it just, there's something kind of that I feel sad about that whole system. So that's why I ask. I just wonder how everybody would want it to be if they could. If we were guaranteed getting the same dollars in, how would everybody want it to be done? How would you want to share? I have a theory that I don't know if it's true and I haven't ever, I don't, it's not

been tested and I don't, I haven't like found research to support it or anything like that. But I have a theory that teams want two things. They want to spend less money. And so given the choice, they will get really cheap. And we have seen them do that over the last few years. They will not spend a penny more than they have to. And so we're seeing free agents who don't get signed and teams that don't invest in the minor leaguers and all of that. So they definitely want to cut costs. But they also do want good players if they're sure that the players are going to be good. They don't like the uncertainty of it.

And if you could give them a system that they thought the returns were going to be really good, then they might spend more, if that makes sense. If you could guarantee them that the players they're signing are going to be good, then they would sign a lot more players. That they might actually spend more money if they weren't so worried about feeling like they got ripped off at the end of it. Like they want to save money, but they also want to spend money. They just don't want to get ripped off when they spend it. don't want to get ripped off when they spend it. And so that's why it feels like all the rules that are in place to limit players earning their money when they're on the upswing. And then to try to funnel the money into the second half of the career when everybody kind of knows they're

on the downward trajectory, it doesn't feel like a good way to make owners want to spend their money. And I think that there is a part of owners that does want to be big people in their community. And they want to have people who pass them on the street say, hey, thanks for building a good baseball team instead of, hey, why don't you actually try to win and spend your money on your baseball team? hey, why don't you actually try to win and spend your money on your baseball team? So, I mean, if you spend a lot of money to acquire all or part of a baseball team and then you just go around and people are yelling at you all the time, that's probably not that much fun. I mean, there are still some perks, obviously, and in the long run it's probably a great investment,

or it has been historically, but I think a part of it is that you want to be famous. You want to be a big shot and you want people to like you and celebrate you. And so if you win, then that's more likely. And I'm sure they'd all rather win and spend less to do it, but they'd rather win than lose, all else being equal. Unfortunately, it usually isn't all else equal. Yeah. And I isn't all else equal. Yeah, and I could be underestimating the amount that they just don't want to spend money, full stop.

And we have decades of the draft before there were hard limits on how much they could spend on draftees when they all went along with the fake limits, even though everybody knew that draft picks were really good investments and they still wouldn't give money to college kids and high school kids. They still like refuse to go over the recommended slots. And so that's pretty strong evidence that even then they just didn't want to spend the money for some reason. Although maybe they thought maybe they were too risk averse. Yeah. All right. Couple of quick things. So MLB announced this new thing called the All MLB Team. I don't know if you saw this, but this is very similar to something Jeff Passan has been doing on his own for years now. He just released his most recent All MLB Team last week, I think, at ESPN, and I voted for it. I always vote for it. This is very similar, except it's an official MLB-sponsored thing, and it's basically like best player at each position. There's a first team and a second team, and it's not just league-specific. It's position-specific, and there are three outfielders.

It doesn't have to be left, center, right. There's a DH. There are five starting pitchers, two relief pitchers, et cetera, and it's half fan vote and half expert vote. I'm not sure exactly who is in the expert vote, but it's a decorated panel of media members, broadcasters, former players, and other officials throughout the game. So I don't know if this will end up actually reflecting the best players in baseball or not because you've got fan votes and then you've got former broadcaster, former players and broadcasters and media members. So I don't know how great it will be. But I like the idea. I like having an end of year, all star team, essentially, that's what this is more or less, because we have all star teams. And that's something that we think of when we look back at players and evaluate their careers we say oh he's a six-time all-star or something but of course all-star voting i mean it depends on did you have a good first half it doesn't reflect the whole season that you had and it can

also reflect other things like uh you know were you on a team that had no other good players or were you well at a position that had many great players that would also apply to this all MLB team. But anyway, I like the idea of having an end of season thing where we can actually look at the finished season and say who had the best year. And unfortunately, we don't have several decades of it like we do with the All-Star team. So it'll be a while before we start really citing this if we ever do and saying so and so was a you know four-time all mlb player or all mlb first team or whatever but

i like that it exists and it's something that i could imagine bringing some value to the table in future years yeah it's also a great way to get on the emailing list of scott's miracle grow its affiliates and and select partners. Yes, which is probably a big part of the reason that MLB wanted to do this because they get a certain amount of money every time you go to MLB.com and vote and see ads. But yeah, anyway, it's something that wasn't announced beforehand. It wasn't announced until now, and it's going to be – the results will be announced, I think, at the winter meetings, which is already a busy time. So I don't know. Like you already have awards week in baseball, and then the winter meetings, those are already the weeks when we're talking about baseball in the offseason.

So it seems like this should maybe be in a middle week when it's not one of those weeks when no one is talking about baseball unless it's Astros sign stealing. But anyway, don't hate it in principle. And last bit of banter, I just wanted to bring up the early indications on the free agent market. I wanted to see whether you think there is anything that has happened so far that makes you think that this year is going to be any different from the last two. And I'm lumping together the last two. They're a little bit different. 2017 was really extreme. I wrote an article December 1st, 2017, and noted that that November had been just the slowest November in decades just based on the number of transactions.

Not a single top 50 free agent, according to MLB trade rumors, signed that November. So last year wasn't quite to that degree. Like there were some top 50 guys who signed. I think like CeCe Sabathia was on the top 50 list. Hyunjin Ryu was on there. Kurt Suzuki, I think, was on there,

but like not top guys. And then there was like Steve Pierce, Jeff Mathis, Trevor Rosenthal, Adam Wainwright. Those guys signed last November. No one really big signed until the 26th of November. That's when the Braves, who have been the very active team so far this year, signed Josh Donaldson and Brian McCann. Anyway, this year so far we've got Yasmany Grandal going to the White Sox, and we've got all the guys that the Braves have signed, Will Smith and Chris Martin and Travis

Darnot. So certainly Grandal is better than anyone who signed in November 2017, and I guess better than anyone except Donaldson who signed last November. And then there's a smattering of other pretty good players who were like on top 50 lists Smith and Martin and Darno all were but does anything here make you think that oh things are looking up this is unusual I guess the other data point would be that Grendel got four years and 73 million and last year he was reported to have had a four years and 60 million offer from the Mets that he turned down early in the offseason then ultimately signed for one year I don't know

that that's apples to apples because he had the qualifying offer and the draft pick compensation attached to him last year he was also coming off in October when he'd been benched for bad defense and granted he was a year younger then but you, this year he was coming off a really strong year, just more durable or at least played more games than he had when he was with the Dodgers. And they tended to rest him more. So I don't know whether this is, you know, the fact that he got more now. Is it because the market is stronger or is it because he didn't have the qualifying offer attached? it because the market is stronger or is it because he didn't have the qualifying offer attached or because he just like accepted what the market was as opposed to last year when he thought four years and 60 was like too low he he didn't want to accept that and set that precedent but maybe now

he's just resigned to getting less so i don't know anything encouraging here or not really i'm not good at this sort of thing so it's it hard for me to say. I wouldn't say that I have been knocked off the axis, off my axis one way or the other. But of the people who have signed, the contracts have very closely resembled Tim Dirk's predicted signings at MLB Trade Rumors, the ones that we were trying to predict against a couple of weeks ago, which suggests that whatever he was expecting, whatever maybe the conventional wisdom, I guess, would be a better way to put it, whatever the conventional wisdom was coming out of last year, coming out of the experience of last year and the last two years, is about right. And so that would maybe mean that there is neither a turnaround nor a continuing trajectory,

that maybe it is leveled off. Yeah, it's hard to see why anything dramatic would have changed because the core root causes, as far as we can tell, of this free agent downturn, it just seems to be teams' front offices getting better at projecting future performance and only paying for that future performance as opposed to past performance. And maybe team revenue being less tied to team performance. And so you don't feel the same pressure to have to spend on players because you figure you're going to make a good amount of money before you even play your first game. on players because you figure you're going to make a good amount of money before you even play your first game and then maybe the trend toward just younger players being more productive and improved player development and so more of the talent is concentrated in those early pre-arbitration or

arbitration years and none of those three legs of that thing really seem to have changed all that much or that you would expect them to be any different now than they were a year ago obviously the cba hasn't changed so it would be nice but surprising if something really dramatic happened this offseason so i don't know why it would have changed in a market way yeah so ben but what do you think of the way that they're choosing the MLB.com players of the year? Because the point of such a thing is to have legitimacy. I mean, you and I could name our MVPs, our Hall of Fame and our players of the year and nobody would show up to the ceremony. Something about the way that each of those is done or for how long they're done, but probably also the way that those are selected causes the players to, you know, to draw honor out of the out of being named to those things. And so how would you want these to be selected in order to have them actually catch on as things?

catch on as things? Well, the fact that it's a fan vote, I think on the one hand, maybe it means that you get a less accurate team because, you know, players from teams with big fan bases or teams that for whatever reason are motivated to stuff the ballot box that year, they might be disproportionately represented on that team. And then that detracts from the legitimacy of it as an analytical tool. But then again, this is pretty close to how all-star teams work, right? So if it's intended to be kind of like a full-season analog to the half-season all-star team, then it sort of makes sense that you'd do it in a similar way, right? That you'd have fans voting. I guess the difference here is that you don't have any player vote component. You have former players maybe as part of this expert pool, but not active players,

which again, not necessarily a bad thing if you want actually the best players to be on this team. But still, maybe leads to less legitimacy or players not really caring about it as much. But I generally think that having a hybrid system of trying to balance two different voting pools causes it to be less intuitive and to look less legitimate. I think you should stick to one voting pool personally. So I would probably do one or the other. But so let's say, though, that the fans are going to do it

and you have the voting as they have here. One thing that is different here than like the all-star ballots that I used to punch when I was going to the ballpark is that they have all the stats there. You get to see all the players' stats. And so I'm curious what stats you would put. So I'm curious what stats you would put. Because other than fame, overall broad fame and hometown, the stats are going to carry pretty much all the way.

The stats are right in front of you. You're just going to look at them. You're going to see them. And it's going to be hard not to just, I mean, nor necessarily should you. You're going to look at the stats and go, oh, well, those are the best stats. His stats are better than his stats. How can I possibly vote for, you know, Yuli Gurriel when his stats are right next to Pete Alonso? And so which stats would you put there to A, because you could just put the war. Yeah.

And that wouldn't, I don't think that would be fun. You kind of want to get as close to putting the war as possible without actually putting the war right yes so what would you put there so i'm looking at the ballot so what they actually have is batting average homers rbi stolen bases and ops and right i don't think i would just want to put war that's just not much fun i i do want it to reflect who the actual best players were so you'd think that i would put war but yeah i want it to reflect who the actual best players were. So you'd think that I would put war, but yeah, I would try to put like the components of war basically, and then let people draw their own conclusion. But I wouldn't, you know, this is going to be going to a lot of casual fans who are not really up on sabermetric stats. And I guess you could say that this would be a way to introduce them to it, but it might also turn them off. So I'd want to do a little bit of outreach here and have a blend. So I'd probably have like, you know, they have OPS, I'd have OPS, maybe I'd put an OPS plus, but I don't know that you really need both.

homers which they have and i guess i'd put like a defensive run saved or something except that if you did that then do you have to explain well this is relative to other players at that position and so therefore this guy's drs is not really equivalent to that guy's drs at a different position then it gets kind of complicated so and then if you just put like their defense value which is what fangraphs does like like their defensive run saved at their position plus the positional adjustment, you could do that. But then, you know, you have to explain what that is and it requires some detail. So that's not great. You can't explain any of these stats. No, you can't do anything.

Everything has to stand on its own. You could have just like at the top just a little mini glossary or something but so yeah i'd have dingers i'd have uh ops and i don't know like i wouldn't put average and i wouldn't put rpi but it's hard to have like advanced stat versions of things like would you put like base running runs instead of stolen bases or something like that i don't know yeah it's tricky because stolen bases are less of a part of base running runs than they you know have ever been these sure yeah so you also they there is no playing time here which um i mean when i see jordan alvarez's line i, I think you have to put his plate appearances there because some people will see that and they will need those plate appearances to knock

him down. Right? Yeah. You see his 1,067 OPS, it's the best OPS, but it's only 370 plate appearances. You need that context. Whereas I also might go the other way i might see the 27 homers and and realize it's in 370 plate appearances and i might bump him up because of that but one way or another you need the plate appearances yes yes i think that makes sense unless you're going to limit it to only

qualifying hitters uh-huh plate appearances homers ops and well they're already sorted by position so defense is not that big a deal because right they're already grouped by position yeah well so maybe if you can you put a defensive rating if you acknowledge that it's like only relative to players

at that position and they're grouped all together anyway I don't know it's iffy that you can do that without confusing people but maybe i'd try that yeah i think uh yeah all right i would do i think you could i think you could put like drs you're already at the position it's so you know like they're clumped by position so i don't think it's going to be that confusing they're going to be compared against each other so yeah i would I would do plate appearances, home runs, stolen bases, DRS, slash line. And then you don't have anything park affected though.

And so I would, I'd throw one to the stat heads. I'd do WRC plus or something like that. I wouldn't do OPS plus because you already have OPS in the slash line. But something that is park adjusted, I think, is important. So you don't have the slash line and OPS and WRC plus, right? You just have a slash line and WRC plus. Correct. Okay. Yeah. I like that. All right. And then pitchers. Oh, all right. Move on. Pitchers. Oh gosh. Well, you'd have just, it's probably closer to what they actually have here. I mean, what they have here is – well, they have win-loss record.

They have ERA. They have WIP, and they have strikeouts, just total strikeouts. So I guess I would have ERA, FIP, strikeout rate, I guess strikeout percentage. But I don't know. If you wanted to ease people into it, maybe like strikeouts per nine and walks per nine or something, and that's pretty good, I guess. I would do record, ERA, FIP, and innings, and yeah, strikeouts per nine. Uh-huh, yeah. I'm not giving them a win-loss record. If they want to look it up, they can.

I don't know. Yeah. I mean, I do like to see a pretty win-loss record. Like I like the aesthetics of a 20 and 5. Yeah, sure. But I don't want it to be, I don't as a voter want it to sway me. And so, yeah, I guess as a voter, I don't want it to sway other people as well. So, all right.

Yeah. Take out. Boy, it's hard to do it. But yeah, take out. Yeah. You got to take it out. Take it as well. So, all right. Yeah, take out. Boy, it's hard to do it. But yeah, take out. Yeah, you got to take it out. Take it out. All right, take out. All right.

By the way, Grendel will be making $18.25 million during this contract. That's what he made last year too, if you include his buyout. And it's better than last year that he got this deal for him, but still just seems to fall short of how valuable he is as a player. And I don't know what it is. I mean, at this point, he's a 31-year-old catcher, so I understand why he's not going to get like a seven-year deal or something. But he just hasn't really been paid. Again, like he's going to max out 18.25 at a single season salary this is a player who's like been consistently a four to five win or better player and i don't know whether it's just

continued skepticism or lack of awareness of framing and the value he brings there or or what but what more can you do than yasmini? He's been so good. And for the White Sox, obviously they have more to do here, but they finally got a guy. They've been rumored to be after free agents in the past and didn't get him and didn't make competitive offers for the most part. Now they got one and it's about as big an upgrade as they could probably get because they were, if not the worst framing team last year, maybe the second worst framing team, and he's, if not the best framing catcher, very close to it. So it's a huge upgrade for them. And people say, well, yeah, where's the pitching? And yes, they do still need pitching, but Grandal helps with the pitching too because he is such a good receiver and they may

have more to do and the AL Central is vulnerable. And so, you know, one or two more significant moves and maybe you can talk about them as a contender because they have the young guys who are returning from injury or proved themselves last year are still promising. Anyway, my point is that Yasmini Grandal is really good and four years in 73 is better than what he commanded last year. But I he's he's worth more than that so i don't know what it is about him that hasn't led to that big payday well and there was that weird way that the dodgers didn't seem to be that convinced that he was that good either right he didn't play as often as an elite catcher would they gave a lot of playing time to their second catcher relatively speaking sometimes he lost sometimes he wasn't he didn't even seem to be the primary

catcher for stretches of time, including he sat more post-season games than you would expect an elite catcher to be. And so you wonder whether it's that, you know, he is not for some reason perceived as good as he is, or whether he is for some reason benefiting from public metrics more than teams more, more accurate. We just don't know what that is. But I love Yosemite Grandal. And I one time got in an argument with Yosemite Grandal because I was saying that he was better than he was. And another reporter went and asked him about what I was saying. And he said, that's stupid, which was a weird thing.

By the way, one last thing from the first part of this conversation, which is that someone pointed out that unions often, in some ways, unions exist to protect older workers more than any others because older workers are so often more easily pushed out. In most fields, your salary goes up as you get older. And so companies want to get rid of older workers as they get more expensive. And so the want to get rid of older workers as they get more expensive. And so the union specifically is protecting your job security as you grow up. Now, baseball is very different. We don't have an expectation that your salary is going to keep going up until you retire. And we also don't have an expectation that your job is going to be safe until you choose to retire.

So maybe that doesn't apply as much, but I think it is relevant context. And we might be underestimating the extent to which the players union does have a good reason for prioritizing older workers beyond what is sometimes thought of as just, you know, the older skewed demographics of union reps. Yeah. All right. Last thing. And I guess this won't be that long because we've already talked for a while. I just wanted to bring up your article from last week. You wrote about the MLB genie who can grant one wish for fans of all 30 teams, but those wishes come with a catch. Grant Brisby tweet from October And he tweeted Tim Lincecum and Max Scherzer are the same age I'm not saying that I would trade The 2014 World Series for Lincecum Still being able to throw 97 miles per hour For 200 innings but well I've at least thought about it for the last half hour So the conceit here was

We come up with one of these for every team Your trade a 2014 World Series for Lincecum still being great And you you came up with one of these scenarios for each team, and you embedded polls in here. So you've asked fans to vote, and all of these have a good number of votes now. And I don't really have specific questions other than, like, I want to know what people picked for a lot of them i don't know whether you have all the results recorded you do okay so i i don't we don't have to go through every one necessarily but i would like to know for instance like what were the the easiest

calls like the ones that maybe you didn't calibrate to be as agonizing as as you wanted them to be or whatever fans just for whatever reason they judged them to be oh agonizing as you wanted them to be or whatever. Fans just, for whatever reason, they judged them to be, oh, that's easy. I'll give up this to get that. So what were the most lopsided results that you have here? Well, all right. I can answer that. Before I answer that, I want to just note that so when Grant tweeted that, I was shy.

I said, of course you would. You would definitely trade the 2014 World Series for another five years of Tim Lincecum pitching like an ace. I know that Lincecum's decline, and then disappearance, and then attempted comeback, and then re-failure. I know that weighs very heavily on Grant. And it seemed to me that he would have picked that over a third World Series title. And it was interesting because he said he didn't think he would, but he didn't say because I really loved that World Series title, I needed it, it gave me a sense of self-worth, I went to the parade, without that, who are the Giants as a franchise?

It wasn't about the victory in the World Series. Actually, it was what he cited was the run of Madison Bumgarner, specific player glories. Like it is the performance of individual players that meant so much to him more than it was the flags fly forever defense that a lot of people would give to some of these questions. So I do think that flags do fly forever, but the value of the flag is really different for different franchises, depending where you are. And so for some franchises, if you push them further away from a World Series, the voters just rebelled. But I think that for a good 10 teams in the league right now, there's just not that much benefit to a World Series. You want it. It's better than nothing.

There's not that much benefit to a World Series. You want it. It's better than nothing. But there are other things that you could draw more joy from, I think, from your team's recent history than a second or a third World Series in this particular era. All right. So the most lopsided surprised me. I was not expecting this. It was the A's.

And this was, would you, as an A's fan fan trade their five postseason appearances this decade so they've made five postseasons this decade three in a row and then two in a row if I remember correctly and would you trade those five postseason appearances for a world series appearance in 2002 so 2002 is the money ball year it was, the most famous, I don't know, the most famous team. Like it's the one team that your non-baseball fan family know about because they saw the movie. And it ended in, well, it basically, the two big moments in that season were in the telling of the Moneyball story, their loss that ended the 20th, 20-game winning streak. And then their early exit from the post season they get to the post season they lose in the alds and that sort of sets the theme of the

a's for the next 15 years they can billy beans you know shit doesn't work in the post season and so for the eight years or so after the book came out when all this stuff was very controversial like it was in some ways hard to defend the a's approach to your uncle who kept saying like well if they bunted more um then they just then they'd be good but instead they they can only win in the in the playoff in the regular season yeah but the genie is just guaranteeing a pennant right he's only not a world series win, only a World Series appearance. So you do not get the flag. The genie will never, he, you know, no team gets a guaranteed World Series win, only in this case to the World Series.

And so you, the A's still might lose. They might not get the ring that they have, but they at least would have post-season success. And so I didn't think this would, I thought this would be a pretty, I mean, five winning seasons for a small market team. Those have been fun teams, but A's, the winning A's teams in this decade have been among the most fun winning teams in baseball. I love them. They're great. They're joyful teams. And this team currently has actually stuck together. Like Billy Bean and the A's front office haven't traded off everybody. They haven't really made a trade since, what, since Cespedes and Josh Donaldson.

They've otherwise have mostly kept their good players. Well, I guess Sonny Gray. But they mostly have kept their good players around. And so there's a little bit of continuity here. I thought that it would be hard to give up the success of this decade. 86% said, said yeah give me the World Series appearance that was the most lopsided 86 to 14

The only one of these that got more than 80-20 So I don't know if I It's hard to put yourself in the mindset of Another fan base of course And you don't know that it was all A's fans voting for the A's poll It could have been other people too.

But if you gave me the title, then I'd say yes, probably. But I don't even know, does winning a pennant even change the Moneyball narrative? Because if you win a pennant and you don't win the World Series, and then you don't get good again, and you're not good for like the whole decade of the teens basically because we're taking away all those playoff appearances. Then don't you still have the Billy Peen can't win in the playoffs or coupled with like Billy Peen just isn't actually that good. Like he built that one good team that won a pennant and that was that. And then his teams were bad for a lot of the next 15 years like i don't know that i'd go for that and you're you're only guaranteeing like a 50 shot at that title here and that to me that's like that's everything whether you win that series or not so yeah but that's your movie

that's the team that's the movie that people are going to know your your fandom the years of your fandom they will know that team for yeah 60 years you know is it is it that much more of a hollywood ending if you make the world series and lose than if you just don't even make the world series i it could be i mean a you have a 50 50 chance of winning so yes then it is and uh i think it's still a significant difference that's two postseason that's two series wins it's a bay bridge series against the giants uh that year i think it i mean i i didn't think it was going to be a lopsided result so i i agree with you to some degree but yeah i think that it i think that it does change the narrative of Moneyball a lot if you have that because the A's of this decade are no longer litigating whether Moneyball is good or was good. They were in the middle of

last decade, but now it's so distributed throughout the league and the ready-made excuse that, well, the A's can't compete now because every team is doing what they did. They all took what they were doing. It's not really a culture war anymore. It's not really controversial anymore. It was last decade. And I think that it would have shut up a lot of that because they were still good for the next four years after that. They made a couple more playoffs, but then they kept getting knocked out real quick. So I think it would change the story a lot. All right. What else? What else?

What else was lopsided? Let's see. Would you give up Jorge? Oh, this is an interesting one. Would you give up Jorge Soler as a Royals fan in exchange for getting to see Alex Gordon try to score in the final inning of the 2014 World Series? Jeff and others have written that he was almost certainly going to get thrown out. World Series, Jeff and others have written that he was almost certainly going to get thrown out. But not getting to see that play will, I think, haunt Royals fans and baseball fans forever.

Yeah. As a non-Royals fan, I would. Yeah. Because Soler's not like a superstar. He's good, but not as good as someone who typically leads the league in homers probably. And also the Royals are bad now. They are bad, but don't see i thought the reason that jorge soler makes a good you know sacrifice is that that he was good and exciting in this otherwise totally dismal year he was one he was

one and you got a home run chase you had that in their own weird way the royals were playing relevant baseball on the last weekend of the season. And if you take Jorge Soler out and it's just the year that Whit Merrifield led the league in outs recorded or whatever, then you're no different than the Orioles and the Tigers. And so I think Soler was a real necessary bit of joy in this season for them. And the Royals haven't had a whole lot of sluggers. necessary bit of joy in this season for them right and the royals haven't had a whole lot of sluggers i mean they had the steve balboni was the the record royals home run hitter for many years with 36 until mike moustakas hit more but they haven't had many like you know 40 something homer guys so that's a novel experience for them too so i thought that that would be enough just because

the royals aren't getting anything except a new way to lose the 2014 world series but um but yeah i mean i i if only there was a way to play it out so that we could see i mean it's like when you're playing poker and the hand ends before the final card is flipped up and you just desperately want the dealer to like you know flip that card so you would know that you were you know know, going to be beat anyway. That's, I think, the experience. This one also surprised me that it was fairly lopsided. 77% of Tigers fans said they would give up Miguel Cabrera's batting title in 2012. Wait, what was the result for the Soler one? Oh, sorry. 79% would give up Soler. Yeah. 77% of Tigers fans would give up Miguel Cabrera's batting title in 2012,

and thus his triple crown, and I think probably thus his MVP award, but more importantly, his triple crown, if it meant he would still be a good hitter today as well as over the past three years. And I define good hitter as whatever he did in part-time play in 2018, whatever he did in part-time play in 2018, which was he hit 299, 395, 448, which is a 128 OPS plus. So not nearly great Miguel Cabrera, not even, not an all-star. I mean, we're talking about over the course of a full year as a first base DH, that's like a two and a half win player, but he would be a two to two and a half win player and still be you know reaching milestones uh you know he would have three thousand he would have passed three thousand hits he would have passed 500 home runs and he would still be productive so would you

trade the triple crown which i mean that year that race between him and trout was such a memorable part of this decade and such a controversial part of this decade and if he doesn't win the triple crown trout don't i mean trout i mean not only is it the only triple crown over the last 50 years like it's a big deal already although it turned out to be kind of less of a big deal i think we talked about it at the time it's like it happened on the last day of the season and we all went oh okay um but it seemed like it was going to be a bigger deal. I guess it was kind of a big deal. I think if he doesn't get the Triple Crown,

don't you think Trout wins the MVP like maybe unanimously? Well, I don't know, but yeah, he wins it, I think. And so I thought Tigers fans would be very territorial about that Triple Crown, and they were not. They were all willing to give it up for a sort of somewhat more productive non-sad decline version of Miguel Cabrera, which I guess speaks to both their love of Miguel Cabrera and the heaviness with which he exists every day. Yeah. Maybe it just means that they like him so much they wanted him to be good for longer, even if it means one less award or honor.

Yeah, exactly. And to cost him the Triple Crown, I didn't even have to make him worse. I only was giving Mike Trout five extra points of batting average so that Trout would win the batting title. That was all it took. He didn't even have to win. Which reminds me, this is one that I was surprised by the results as well. This one is about Mike Trout and it was,

would you trade 20 Mike Trout career war for 30 Brandon Wood career war? So basically Mike Trout is still one of the 15 greatest players ever through age 27, but he is no longer the greatest player ever. And he probably only has one MVP award and he's clearly the best player ever. And he probably only has one MVP award and he's clearly

the best player in baseball, but not, and not historic in the same way. But Brandon Wood is not a bust. This great prospect, great guy who like Angels fans had to watch fail for five years and then five more years kicking around the minors and independent leagues. He's Todd Frazier. He's got a good, healthy career and he makes $130 million. I thought that would be a good one. And you get 10 more in the process. 30 Brandon Wood war for your team is 10 more than 20 Mike Trout war. So I thought that that would be a good one. And only 24% of people were willing to save Brandon Wood's career. 76% said, get him out of here. I want every Mike Trout fun fact I can possibly get.

In fact, they might trade 20 Brandon Wood war and have Brandon Wood be a negative 25 career war to get Mike Trout 20 more. Yeah, yeah, I understand that. I think I would probably vote that way too. Sorry, Brandon would, but so what are the closest, what are the like toss up 50, 50?

All right. So 50, 50 on the dot is the twins winning one series, one postseason series against the Yankees in exchange for 27 more years in the Metrodome. 50, 50 on the dot. I mean, they still would have gotten rolled over by the Astros in the next series probably,

but the Yankees have been doing mean things to them for a long time. Close to 50-50 was 50-50, but it has separated a little. Would you undo, as a White Sox fan, would you undo as a white sox fan would you undo the fernando tatis junior trade so you still keep fernando tatis jr but for some reason nobody thinks frank thomas was that good and so he never win he never wins an mvp award never makes the hall of fame he's just as good but yeah everybody thinks he's overrated. They write columns talking about how he's one-dimensional. He just is like 3% and out while Harold Baines is making the Hall of Fame. And it drives you crazy.

You don't get it. You can't convince anybody that Frank Thomas was great. And everybody's like, come on, he was okay. It's not the Hall of Very Good. So that was about 50-50. And the Marlins, would you trade their 1997 World Series if it meant they could be a real baseball team? That was about 50-50.

And this one, the phrasing in the poll is slightly different than the phrasing in the article. So this is the Orioles. And the article, as it spells it out, is the Orioles win the wild card this year. So they go from 115 losses to winning the wild card, even though they're hardly even trying. Like how incredible, what fun this year would be. We would all love it. It would be the story of the year.

this year would be. We would all love it. It'd be the story of the year. But the trade-off is that the Orioles decide at the draft that they don't want to spend the money to get Adley Rutschman. Instead, they go cheap and draft somebody slightly worse. So they still get a great draft prospect, but they don't get the best draft prospect. The poll is phrased, would you trade Adley Rutschman for a completely bonkers wildcard run in 2019? And so I think probably people were answering that as though you don't get any elite prospect. So that one is maybe skewed. It was 50-50, but it was maybe skewed by the freezing. All right.

Any others very close to that 50-50? Oh, yeah. Would you trade, if you were a Brewers fan, would you trade in exchange for Ryan Braun never getting caught doing steroids? Maybe he did them. Maybe he didn't. You would never know. Like, who knows?

Maybe. We don't know. You never hear the words said about him, though. In exchange for that, would you accept CeCe Sabathia being bad after they traded for him in 2008? So they still trade for him. He comes over. It's a pennant race. And he's just bad.

And that's it. Like, he's not a legend.'s a pennant race and he's just bad. And that's it. Like he's not a legend. He's not, it's not terrible, but he's just not a legend. He just is whatever. And that was 50, 50, although now it is 52% say no. The weird experience is that these, the, I created a Twitter account to host these polls. And so people are, have been interacting with this Twitter account for a week and I don't I get all these I get all these mentions but I don't know which polls they're replying to when I see them you know yeah so people I just

get these this is a no-brainer and then I have to look and see what they mean and I that there are people on the 50-50 ones will say this is a no-brainer. They'll say it's a no-brainer yes on one that everybody else voted 78-22 no. So it's been very interesting to see how strongly people feel about their polls. A couple others I wanted to know the answers to. The Yankees fan dilemma. So Mariano Rivera is still pitching. He never retired, but no Gleyber Torres.

Yeah. So as you noted, this could go in multiple directions because maybe Mariano Rivera is still pitching, but he's terrible. Although I don't know why he would still be pitching, but whatever. But whatever, maybe he ruins his spotless on-field performance and you actually get to see him struggle and be bad and look old, which would be depressing. But on the other hand, he was just about as good in his last year as he'd ever been, really. So he could have kept going and maybe would have been better for even longer. So what did people say about that one? Two-thirds said they would not give up Gleyber Torres in order to get another five years of Mariano Rivera being active. And I, in the poll, I specifically said Mariano Rivera still being active and good.

Ah, okay. Huh. Interesting. And I'm shocked by that. To me, that seems like it should have been lopsided the other way. Yeah, if you specified that he would still be good, because to me that's the big risk is that he might not be good, and I wouldn't want to see that, and then I'd be kind of happy that he went out perhaps a little bit early and still looked as great as he had ever been. I wouldn't want to see him break down and have a 6 ERA or something,

but if you're telling me he's going to be good. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Now implied is that eventually if he's not retiring until he gets bad because he retired when he was good. So if he's not retiring until he gets bad, then eventually you are going to see the bad version. You eventually will. He's not retiring until he has forced you to see him be bad. So you're not getting out of it entirely. But yeah, I mean, he'd be, I don't know if he

would still be good right now. He retired after his age 43 season and he was better in his 40s than he was before his 40s. And so there was absolutely no suggestion that he was getting worse. It doesn't seem to me that unreasonable to think he could still be pitching well right now that he could be closing in on a thousand saves and I would trade I mean if you're just looking at it as a war math would you trade 30 Klaber Torres salary suppressed pre free agency war for like 13 but they come from like your favorite yankee of all time doing incredible historic things i think i would i mean i'd way rather i'd way rather have

one war of mariana rivera than five war of any other human being if i were a yankees fan especially because you know you didn't win a world series anyway. That's true. It's not like Gleyber Torres got you to the promised land or something, so knowing what happened. But then again, you have Gleyber Torres now for the future, whereas he wouldn't in this scenario. So I get it. Maybe you just feel like, well, Rivera had a great career, legendary, best reliever ever, unanimous Hall of Fame selection. You can't really do better than that in terms of legacy, like a few more years of being great, not going to make us think he was that much better than we already think he was. And so why not just have him go out in the best possible way and whatever. I get it, but sort of surprised that it's not close. All right. And then the Dodgers fan won. So they never trade Jordan Alvarez, but Kershaw's best October moments are erased. Clinching appearance and relief That goes away his start After that that was strong basically

All the arguments that we can Marshall to say no Clayton Kershaw He actually has been very good at times In October that goes away But you get one of the very Best young hitters in baseball for a Very long time I'm amazed At how often I find myself bringing up

Those Kershaw moments because I mean I live in Southern California I Interact with a lot of people who are Dodgers fans and every October they go is Kershaw really that bad in October is this real like is he ever going to be good and I always say he's had great outings and I point out that he has had both extremely like memorable postseason moments like that relief appearance, and then also dominant ones like his first start in the NLCS that came three days after that. And so to me, those were really significant moments in his career. It seemed like he had ended the narrative after that. And I think if I had asked this question, even... I mean, obviously, Jordan Alvarez in 2016

would not have made sense to anybody as a question, but if I had asked this question right after that, then I think it would have been easier to say, yes, it's such a relief for him to finally be free of that. But then the narrative just came back. The relief of the narrative got unrelieved. He's back to having to deal with it all the time. And so now that it looks temporary, I can see why people would not hold on tight to those moments quite as much. But still to me, like getting Dan Murphy to pop out is like one of the great,

one of the great, one of the top five pre-World Series post-season moments of this decade. Great. One of the top five pre-World Series postseason moments of this decade. Such an incredible moment. And with, you know, Ken Jansen had just, you know, had thrown 55 pitches and was just trying like desperately to get to the end of the game. And he couldn't do it. And here comes Kershaw who had pitched like the night before, right? Yeah, I think so. And to get out of that was, oh, such a moment to take that away.

And then to take away his incredible start the next but anyway Dodgers fans were like yeah absolutely take it I don't want it I want Jordan Alvarez it was 70 to 30 in favor of in favor of getting Jordan Alvarez okay yeah I kind of get it now because you know Kershaw already has the reputation even now even with those moments so might as well get Jordan Al alferez if you can i guess it was uh he had pitched in nlds game four but it was two days before that game so all right and then uh the other one rockies so they get a true slugger they get like a 50 homer guy and get to unleash him in course field and we get to see him hit titanic blasts and see how many homers he'd hit.

But decade-long playoff drought, so they lose their playoff appearances. Right. They lose their two recent brief playoff appearances, and I think I specifically say they don't even get better. I'll give you Giancarlo Stanton for entertainment, but the Rockies are not going to get John Carlos Stanton's worth of better. It's just, they're just going to get more interesting. And that was pretty lopsided, 70-30 in favor of the slugger. In favor of the slugger, really? In favor of the slugger, yeah. I thought it was going to go the other way.

Wow. Gosh. All right. Which, I mean, if you're the Rockies front office, you have to be looking at this poll and going, oh, that's what they want. I mean, I can do that. I can't build a winning team. That has been proven to be beyond my skills, but I can do the get one slugger guy. And I mean, it has to be, I would say that there are at most five or six sluggers in the game that qualify and maybe as few as three. And so it is not going to be easy to go get one of these players. But that should be priority number one, goal number one.

Yeah, right. All right. And then Mets. No Bernie Madoff, no Ponzi scheme, but no Noah Sindergaard. This one should have been, I either don't understand this scandal or Mets fans don't. I got a lot of very angry, not angry, but very certain responses that absolutely not. You cannot give up Noah Syndergaard. You just cannot give up Noah Syndergaard.

And I mean, the fact is Noah Syndergaard has not exactly pitched the Mets to glory, nor has he pitched Noah Syndergaard to glory all that much. And it was, they did vote two to one in favor of giving up Syndergaard for no Bernie Madoff. But I thought it should have been, like, to me that should have been even more lopsided. All right. And last one, Pirates. No Chris Archer trade, but also no wildcard win in 2013. So they make the wildcard game in that season still, but they don't win it.

And so their whole recent run, they never advance beyond the wildcard game. And the very, the last comment, the last mention that this Twitter account has received, the most recent one it received, all these polls just closed a few hours ago, I think, was from a Pirates fan who says, there is very, very little I would give up the 2013 wildcard win for. And 65% would give back the win for, you know, getting that trade undone. So it was, they were in favor of it, but it was somewhat divisive. And I did get a bunch of people who said, nope, that win was the high point of Pirates fandom. And they're, I don't know, at this point, I don't know if you could say that Klasnow and Meadows

would be enough to make them a relevant baseball team going forward anyway. So they might be in for five tough years either way. would be enough to make them a relevant baseball team going forward anyway. So they might be in for five tough years either way. And there's the real, I mean, I tried to make, the genie's position was like that everything else stays the same, there's no butterfly effect here.

You switch the players, you switch the teams, but we're not gonna like say, and now everything is chaos and anything could happen. But with the Pirates specifically, I do think that you have to allow the possibility that the Pirates reached a point in the organization that they were just not capable of developing

those two people anymore yeah maybe so well I don't know though they I mean it's not like they had a deep playoff run they lost in the division series anyway so gosh I don't know and then you're talking about years and years of watching those really good players do their thing. Even if you don't necessarily put together a winning team, you still get more entertaining teams because you get to see those few players you gave up in that deal.

So, well, all right. Fun exercise. I will link to the article for anyone whose team we did not cover and you want to see what the call was. So I guess I don't know if this can be an annual thing. I guess it'd be tough for it to be an annual thing. But it was a fun one-time thing anyway. All right. All right.

That will do it for today. Thanks for listening. We will have a full slate of episodes this week, even though it's a holiday week, so that if you're traveling, you will have something to listen to. Or if you want to tune out your family on Thanksgiving, you can plug in your earbuds and listen to Effectively Wild. Not that we recommend that, but sometimes you just have to. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. slash Effectively Wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks.

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You can send your comments and questions for me and Meg and Sam via email at podcastfangraphs.com or via the Patreon listing system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. And we will be back with another episode very soon. Talk to you then. Well, Cricket didn't need many friends Because the genie was such a perfect companion His mother, Mama, and such an independent boy Just remember when you need a hug So close your eyes And give the bottle a run