Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1485: Block Bluster

Episode Date: January 11, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about 2019’s non-playoff teams actually being the big buyers this winter, the six-player Rays-Cardinals trade involving Matthew Liberatore and José Martínez, working with friends, and the Mariners not making trades, then answer emails about what constitutes a blockbuster trade, the worst go-for-it trades, and whether it’s better for the […]

🎵 Hello and welcome to episode 1485 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Doing well. Nice thing about the fact that we do these things as kind of the last task in our week, often on Friday afternoons, is that I always feel really loose. This is the only thing standing between me and relaxation. Not that recording this podcast is not a joy in itself and a relaxing experience, but it makes me feel a little giddy that we're almost there yeah it has been it has been a busy week it has been a busy week at fangraphs it has been a

busy baseball week and a busy friday thursday and friday uh so yeah we'll we'll get through this little bit and then everyone can go have a pleasant weekend and if you're listening to this at the start of your week, then too bad. I guess you're in for it. Your slog is just beginning. Yeah, but, you know, people tuning in on Monday, you know, their Fridays probably didn't involve, say, salary arbitration settlements or multiplayer trades. So understood in those terms, I their fridays were relatively quiet true yes all right so we've got a bunch of stuff to talk about we've got a big trade we've got a

follow-up to some banter that sam and i spoke about not too long ago we've got some emails to do so shall we begin with the banter do you want to tee up this topic that we previously discussed but now has been revisited with some new and enlightening conclusions? Yeah. So this offseason, which has been very busy, left an impression early on that the folks, and we have talked about this on the podcast, but that the teams that were sort of on the verge of being playoff contenders had been the most active. And we like to challenge and test uh narrative assumptions and so ben clemens when it did that and he did a whole bunch of math and it was sort of a weak conclusion that you know that wasn't really entirely true and then there have subsequent to that been many more signings because again quite busy this winter and so good old ben uh thought

hey i'll i'll test this out again and i'll do it in a slightly different way because there was still this sense this nagging sense that it really seemed like it should be true it seemed like it should be true and ben approaching it from a slightly different perspective found found that it was so what ben did for fangraphs and we'll link to this article in the episode but was to say well what if we instead of just thinking about adding war uh to rosters in terms of what's being added if we thought about it in terms of sort of the net war that is occurring to the roster so when we think about it that way instead of of here, he used the Nationals as a good example. You know, between Anthony Rendon and Steven Strasburg, if you count those as sort of a net effect, they essentially got 5.7 war back by bringing back Strasburg.

They lost seven war by losing Rendon. The Angels, by comparison, just add seven war by losing Rendon. The Angels, by comparison, just add seven war by signing Rendon, right? So they don't have any losses. And by going through and sort of doing that math, he found that in this year, the net war added in free agency between playoff teams and non-playoff teams sort of evened out, and that there's some real up-and-comers that were leading the charge in terms of war added for the 2020 season. So, you know, the White Sox, who have been very busy, which is what spurred this whole thing, have added the most of that group, 9.3 net war added.

The Angels follow that up with 7.3. Obviously, much of that is Rendon. follow that up with uh 7.3 obviously much of that is rundown the d-backs who i just continue to enjoy from a rebuild perspective 5.6 the blue jays 4.4 as they went about basically remaking their entire rotation uh the rangers 3.5 and then some of the big postseason teams from last year or the last couple of years were the ones to lose the most. So the Astros led the way losing nine war. You know, when you lose a Gary Cole. Right. That's most of it right there. That's most of it. But the Brewers lost seven. A lot of that is Grandol. The Dodgers lost 6.4. That's going to be Ryu and Hill and some others. The Rays lost 3.8. The Cubs 3.4. And Ben makes

the point that, you know, playoff teams have more war to begin with and so more war to lose in free agency. But that, you know, we finally have an indication of the thing that we suspected all along, which is that there are some middling teams that are adding talent and trying to get better. And we like that conclusion

because that hopefully leads to more good baseball. Yeah, and I think he was using 2019 war, right? Not projected war, but it should be. I mean, the guys who were among the best last year are usually projected to be good the next year. And these are free agents. If you're coming off a big year, then you're probably going to be a big free agent. Yes, even despite the fact that playoff teams have more war to lose, he compared to previous offseasons and found that this is somewhat unusual, at least relative to the past few offseasons. And like 2018, for instance, the 2017 to 2018 offseason, there was just almost no net movement at all. It was just like the teams that were already great stayed great and the teams that were not playoff teams actually lost war collectively.

And I think that contributed to some of the slowdown in spending. And there is another article by Craig Edwards that just ran that was about which teams spend in free agency. And if you're close to a playoff spot, do you spend more, that sort of thing. And he also found a rebound there among some teams that are kind of on the bubble trying to get better and both of these are heartening and i think they match what we thought what our gut sense was so it's always nice when we can make the numbers match what we think not that he was manipulating things so that it would match he was just looking at it in a different and i think better way so yeah non-playoff teams have been the big winners of this offseason and that's a relief because last year as craig has shown was just historically stratified and lopsided and

imbalanced and so any movement back in the direction of parity is probably an improvement yeah i agree with that and you know like you look at a team like the white socks and they've done all of these great free agent moves we don't necessarily like the economic circumstances that lead to a pre-debut extension like the one that louise river signed but you know they have they have that they have more fun prospects coming up so you just you're able to feel excited as a fan of a team that didn't really go anywhere last year before opening day. And I think, you know, when we come down to it, that's probably the most that anyone can

reasonably ask for is that you have a sense that like, yeah, we could go somewhere with this. It's not assured, but, you know, we're going to be in it. We're going to be able to have conversations about what we might do in October that include baseball. And that's pretty exciting. Yeah. Competitive balance wise, economically, it's been an encouraging offseason. I wouldn't say that it has laid all of the concerns to rest, but it has been better than the last couple of winters in a lot of ways. Yeah. And I think considering some of the other macro stories in the game, probably very important that we not add to that a bummer of a free agent market. Because I think our impression of baseball would be pretty negative if that were the case. And we have to grapple with reality as it's presented to us. But it is nice to not have a completely dire

picture presented to us as we're going into the 2020 season so good job good job white socks all right so speaking of transactions i guess this is a transaction between two 2019 playoff teams and it's a trade not a free agent signing but there was a big move that was made on th between the Rays and the Cardinals. And I assume you have edited the coverage and maybe followed this a little more closely than I have. So do you want to lay out the people who were moving between these two teams and what it all means? Sure. So the Cardinals have rid themselves of Jose Martinez. At long last, the move we all thought would come,

Jose Martinez goes to the American League. They send Jose Martinez, Randy. See, I practiced. I practiced this name, and I know how to say it, and now I have a mental block. Yeah, I asked you to explain this trade for a reason. There's some complicated pronunciations involved here. Arazorania.

That's not quite right. But he is going along with a competitive balance A pick. And so that's the business there. And then we have a top 100 prospect in Matt Lieberthor, a comp B pick, and a DSL catcher who the guys are actually pretty interested in he didn't play much in 2018 this is ed uh edgar i practiced i got in my own head i'm disappointed that it's liberatore is that right i was hoping it would be just a very bombastic like liberatore no i guess No. But no, I guess not.

It's just liberatore. Too bad. Edgardo Rodriguez. There we go. Look at me saying names. It's very important to say names correctly. Yes. We need to prioritize it, and that's why I get in my own head, because I don't want to

goof about it, because it's very important. We try to. Not always easy. Not always easy, but a thing that we need to strive to get right, all the same. So this is an interesting trade. At least, so when Ben wrote, Ben Clemens also wrote about this. Ben's been very busy. All these busy Bens.

So when he wrote about this trade, he liked it better for the Cardinals. Obviously, they have an outfield backlog. This helps to clear out some of that. Martinez is a player who really needed to play in an AL ballpark because the fielding is quite poor. So they address some of those issues. They get a top 100 prospect in the balance. I imagine looking ahead to a draft that is thought to be very deep, even beyond the first round, or just continuing to accrue draft capital they get to reunite some friends right they get to bring together Libertor with his very good friend

Nolan Gorman who's one of their top prospects so Ben really liked this trade for the Cardinals I see why I think it's interesting from the Rays perspective because they have been a team among a few others that we have identified at Fangraphs is facing a ton of 40-man crunch, right? Every year they have this set of decisions that they have to make with respect to the 40-man and who they're going to put on it and who they're going to protect from the Rule 5 draft. And they have this incredibly deep system

that's screamed out for consolidation. And they are trading for talent that is controlled for a long time. So this is sort of consistent with what the the rays have done in the past but is also like ready to contribute right now and you know you might be higher or lower on any of these guys but i think this is sort of the it seems to be anyway the inevitable sort of result of that process that they were going to implement this as a team that's not going to spend a lot of money, but does have all this incredible depth. And they're trying to put

that to use for guys who are going to be able to contribute to the 2019 version of their team, whereas some of these other guys like Libertors, you know, he's a little ways away. So, so yeah. Yeah. So I was monitoring the reaction to this trade before I really formed much of an opinion myself, because I won't claim to have been an expert or to currently be an expert on most of the players involved in this trade. Yeah, I will admit to not being an expert either, but luckily I get to bother people who are, so it's nice. Yeah, and I get to read the results of their labor. So I think what was somewhat strange about the initial reaction to this trade was that, I. So I think what was somewhat strange

about the initial reaction to this trade was that, I mean, I think there are two basic traditional reactions to raise trades, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but there is the reaction that is best embodied by the famous Sam tweet from six years ago.

Love this trade for the raise. Who'd they give up and who'd they get so just basically hey rays have a history of fleecing people so if the rays make a move then it must be brilliant and now we must try to find the way that it is brilliant if that is not immediately apparent and sometimes it is like sometimes it does seem on its face very clever and you can say oh those clever rays and then there's also the reaction that is just like oh those cheap rays they're trying to cut costs again like you know when they made the tommy fam trade for instance and it was like well i i see what they're doing here they're trading

the best player in the deal but they are getting cost control and additional years of team control and that's never really much fun to talk about but that is the way that the rays have historically operated and it has kept them in contention most of the time so there are those two reactions and the initial reaction to this trade i think was more just kind of confusion like i i think it's easier to see why the cardinals wanted to make this move just because jose martinez has seemed like such an obvious trade candidate for so long. So if you can give up a guy who doesn't really fit on your roster and get one of the best pitching prospects in baseball, that seems like a win. And you kind of have to work harder to figure out how it makes sense for the race which i i think ben did and it's very

rare that we get trades that are just outright inexplicable and it's obvious that one team made a massive mistake so i i wouldn't say it falls into that category but jose martinez i i think he's kind of been like a razy player in the past and that he's always hit the ball hard or had good stat cast stats or he has in some past seasons maybe not as much recently but yeah he he sort of fits there except that now they have a lot of outfielders and i don't know exactly how they fit everyone in there and if he's dhing then it seems like there would be a lot of juggling to do there but uh i'm sure jeff knows what he's doing i'm sure this was all jeff's doing yeah they they do have they have sort of an interesting two-tiered outfield approach and

that they have a tier of outfielders who are good at playing the outfield and a tier of guys who can kind of fake it sometimes and i think martinez falls squarely into the second category because of some of the other guys they have on their roster who might also fit that description they do seem like they're going to have to do a bit of juggling although i guess martinez is the only righty among him troy nate lowe right so they you know they're you imagine there are going to be some some matchup considerations that are coming into play there in terms of who's playing on what day and whatnot but yeah it's going to be a lot of juggling and it will continue to force 40 man questions this does not resolve any of those for the raise it just adds some more names to the mix so it's going to be interesting to see how they balance that stuff if there are moves that come subsequent

to that they obviously did an additional trade with the Astros on the back of this to clear some 40-man space. So there is sort of a perpetual motion machine that sort of feels like it's operating in the background of the Rays roster. And this doesn't seem to stall that in any way, but that's okay. They presumably think that these are guys who are going to be able to help them contribute in 2019. And then you have, you know, you have Lieberthor who was what in rookie ball and a ball last year. So, uh, he is a bit away, even though we think very highly of him. We think pretty highly of, of all the prospects who moved in this, uh, in this deal. I think they were either scheduled to be before they moved or now scheduled to be the third guy in the Cardinals' top prospect list.

So they're just swapping spots. I have a non-baseball-related question to ask you about this trade, though. Okay. Because I'm fascinated by – I think work friendships are just really lovely. I like work friends. I have a lot of work friends. I like my work friends. They make working more fun.

And now Gorman and Lieberman are going to be able to be work friends they've been chat they've been friends best friends since they were children uh one of the delights of this trade was all of the various pictures of them as tiny baseball humans and now they are big baseball humans um and so they are prepared to be great work friends and i'm sure they are both thinking of this as as delightful and i am wondering to you and my question for you is is there a way that that goes badly are there circumstances under which you don't want your non-work friends to become your work friends well if they played the same position then that could get awkward but gorman's a third baseman so it's not like they'll

be competing for the same job so what if he boots a ball in the field while his best friend is pitching? That happens. That could very well happen, yeah. And if you're a good pitcher, you're supposed to be stoic and be a nice teammate and not show up your fielder for screwing up and hurting your ERA. But, yeah, I would think, I mean, unless it's one of those cases where, like, your relationship is better in moderation and you find that when you spend too much time with each other, then you don't enjoy each other as much anymore. But presumably they've spent a lot of time together in the past, so they should know. So I don't know, unless there's jealousy, like one of them makes the team and the other gets cut or something but again

they're not fighting for the same roster spot so i guess you could say that like if you're already real life friends then maybe you don't need to also be work friends maybe it's just too much of that one person and you don't want to bleed together those aspects of your lives so you don't want to kill independent nolan or or independent matthew and have those two spheres of your existence become one but yeah i would guess it's it's probably pretty fun to just get to play baseball with your pals maybe maybe he'd be more inclined to forgive errors in the field because it's his buddy and he'd be like hey i know that like uh i i'm making up things i'm not wishing these things upon gorman's family i want that what are you saying about gorman's fielding here no i think it's fine no i mean just like people make

mistakes even very good fielders make you know they make errors every now and again even very good ones but like maybe he knows that uh i don't know like uh the he his buddy went through a bad break i don't know anything about his personal life i'm just i'm putting forth things that affect people's moods or like uh you know he he got in a fender bender and it was his fault now he's gonna have more expensive insurance and so he's like hey you know you're having a day and so you made a mistake and it's okay that's true if you know what's going on in the person's personal life, you might be less inclined to say, what is this bum doing? He's not preparing. Why is he screwing up my stats? But if you know that the person is going through some difficulties or something, or you know that they do prepare in general and they're not kind of failing to hold up their end of the bargain,

they just happen to make a mistake because humans are fallible. I guess that could help your response to that occasional error. I am going through a mental roster of my friends to think who I wouldn't want to work with in a professional setting, but I won't say any of the names in case they listen to the podcast because that would be rude. Yeah. Yeah. So there's always an aspect to raise trades where it's like the dust settles and they just did five things and you think, well, couldn't you have just not done that first thing you did? Like, couldn't you have kept Tommy Pham or just like signed him to an extension or something? And then you wouldn't have had to go out and sign and trade for outfielders because Tommy Pham is already good. That would have been so simple. Yeah. But it's the Rays. So, of course, they can't do that. They have to get a cheaper player who can be Rays affordable for longer. And so given the constraints that I suppose ownership has imposed on them, this is the dance that they have to keep doing. And generally, they do it well. And it's not like Jose Martinez is young.

I mean, he's going to be 32 in July. So, I mean, that's not that much younger than Tommy Pham, right? Tommy Pham is, how old is he at this point? He's also 31, but an older 31, but I guess a more accomplished and expensive 31 as well. So that explains it. But yeah, you have to do a lot of mental math to to figure out why this works yeah you do but that's that's what we're here for man sam is i i feel like sam's tweet it is famous within baseball circles yeah but it really should have transcended that by now i think it needs to be up there with some of the the real greats not that they're actually great tweets but you know the ones that we fool ourselves into thinking are greats on the hell platform yeah because 338 retweets as that's criminal everyone get out there

retreat sam's tweet i don't know if he would want you to he doesn't really generally want anyone to consume his content but but uh it's an excellent tweet that deserves to be retweeted. I like that the consistency they have displayed in their approach over the years means that even when for a while we were distracted by the shaking of keys that was everything that Jerry DePoto did, we still hew to that tweet. It helps that so many of his trades have been with the race uh i think that keeps it in circulation also but you know that guy's been trying to red paperclip his way to something for years now and we still are sitting there going those rays they sure are shifty poor jerry he's been so not busy this winter. He's barely made any trades. I think he made two very minor trades. I guess he just made all the trades that it was possible to make.

I don't know what else he could do, but I mean, he must be biting his nails or something. I don't know how he's getting through this. I read a piece, I think, in The Athletic about Jerry's sort of newfound perspective on the toll of work after because we goofed about it because he was okay but like remember when he made a trade from the hospital yes I do in Vegas so that seems bad and so there was a piece in the athletic about him sort of re-evaluating because I think probably even for people who are inclined to work too much, and I can't relate to that at all. Once you land in the hospital, you're probably like, okay, well, I need to think critically about my choices. So maybe he's relieved to have reached this phase

of the step back or the rebuild or whatever the heck they're calling it these days, because it has allowed him to also recuperate slightly. Yeah. Could be true. I hope so, for his sake. Yeah. And for ours, because we have fewer transactions to cover on Christmas or whatever when he usually made his moves. I don't think I brought this up when we recorded our minor league free agent draft. But, you know, this time of year especially, I have notifications on Twitter notifications for Ken Rosenthal and for Jeff Pass passon because they you know they do such a good job breaking news and i got an alert the saturday before christmas and i my my heart fell because i was like i don't want to have to bother people

today i don't want to make anybody write a thing and then i opened it and it was cj crone to detroit and i was like never mind mind. We're doing great. So it's a real roller coaster. I was grateful. Even we did get a Christmas transaction. Did we? Yeah, Encarnacion's deal with the White Sox was announced on Christmas Day, but like in the evening on Christmas.

And I don't mean this in any disrespect to Edwin Encarnacion, but he is not a player of the caliber or import where I feel the need to roust people from their family celebrations. Like the transaction analysis signal for that one. Yeah. So anyway. It is interesting though that, I mean, we were just talking about Tommy Pham and he was of course traded from the Cardinals to Tampa Bay not very long ago. And that worked out pretty well for Tampa Bay. He immediately just found the Fountain of Youth when he got to Tampa Bay

after kind of underperforming in the first part of 2018. But you can't really let that stop you from trading with that team again. I guess if they get the better of you once, you don't want to cut them off as a potential partner if you think there are needs that they can fill so you just kind of chalk that up as uh okay maybe they got the better of that one but uh maybe the the verdict's still out on that one i don't know but ben started his post by referencing that uh that little swindling so yes yes yeah it'll happen. But I have a feeling that the Rays being the Rays are probably pretty high on, at least on Randy, you know, seems likely. So good for them. I think we've been asked before, and I could have sworn that we had talked about before,

but I could not find any previous instance of our discussing it on the Effectively Wild Wiki or our archive of email questions. So I guess we should tackle it now. So this was a question from Billy, who says, what exactly constitutes a blockbuster trade? Multiple outlets have referred to yesterday's Cardinals and Rays swap as a blockbuster trade. Multiple outlets have referred to yesterday's Cardinals and Rays swap as a blockbuster. The trade involved two minor leaguers, one of whom is pretty highly regarded, two MLB players that combined for 417 plate appearances in 4.8 war, almost all of which comes from Jose Martinez, and a swap of draft picks. Is this trade relevant to both clubs? Yes, but Blockbuster is defined via Google as a thing of great power or size. This does not presently resonate as a trade of great power or

size, but what do you think makes a trade worthy of the title Blockbuster? So I love this question because we are so imprecise with these things. It's like breakout. What does that even mean? Who even knows what that means? So I thought that I might, as an entry point to this question, look to some of the media reports over this off season. So this is an ESPN piece by David Schoenfeld where he was doing one blockbuster move for all 30 MLB teams. So that seemed like a promising start. And I'm going to exclude the signings from this because they're not relevant to this particular question. But I'm going to go through a couple of the trades, not all of which are tagged as blockbusters, specifically within the piece, although I presume their inclusion means that they are, in fact, blockbusters. So the first actually involves our good pal Randy. Boston Red Sox trade right fielder Mookie Betts

and right-handed pitcher Nate Evaldi to the Cardinals for Tommy Edmund, Randy, or... Why? No, I'm determined because it's really rude when people get this stuff wrong and I am just having a mental block. It's like I've used this analogy before and I know it's not relatable to you,

but it's like if you stop to think about braiding your hair for even one second and your fingers just forget how to do it but this actually involved both Ronsaria and Jose Martinez and Brett Cecil so this includes that but the headliner at least from the Cardinal side here is Tommy Edmund along with good prospect and then also Jose Martinez to the Red Sox for Mookie Betts and Nathan Eovaldi. Would we consider this a blockbuster? It's closer, I guess. I don't think that this latest trade satisfies my personal criteria for blockbuster.

I don't think it does either. But I think that we're going to get to the criteria that matter to us by looking at some of these other options. Yeah, right. Yeah, I think that clears the blockbuster bar. I would assert that it is pretty close because it involves a former and quite recent MVP. Indeed, it does. This theoretical Red Sox Cardinals deal. It involves a good prospect who was included in a deal for a top 100 prospect. It involves Tommy Edmond, who Tommy Edmond is like exciting and scrappy and funny in the way Cardinals players are. So close. I think that any trade that involves Mookie Betts is going to be, regardless of the return, termed a blockbuster. But I think that we could look at this and say

that the return is perhaps not blockbuster. But I think that we could look at this and say that the return is perhaps not blockbuster worthy, which probably indicates that you shouldn't trade Mookie Betts as an aside. Okay, here's another one in the same column that, again, not termed a blockbuster in the column. Cleveland Indians trade Francisco Lindor to the Dodgers for Chris Taylor, Kiebert Ruiz, Josiah Gray, and DJ Peters. Yeah, I mean, I'm inclined to agree with you that if you're trading one of the best players in baseball, it's probably a blockbuster. Although there's something about quantity that comes into play too, and the quality of the return. But yeah, I mean, if it's headlined by Betts or Lindor, I will unreservedly give it the blockbuster tag.

And this one would involve a return that is a top 100 prospect. Indeed, last year was a top 15 prospect in baseball in Ruiz. So you got that. You got one of the best players in baseball going to one of the best teams in baseball. So I think, and we tend to, I think non-prospects tend to be high on Dodgers prospects because they tend to be pretty good. So I think we're within spitting distance. The rest of the next couple are signings in this article. Okay, here we go.

In a three-team blockbuster, three teams, blockbuster, blockbuster being used. Houston Astros acquire Wilson Contreras from the Cubs and Amir Garrett from the Reds. The Reds acquire Chris Bryant from the Cubs and Josh James from the Astros. The Cubs acquire Forrest Whitley, Abraham Toro from the Astros, and Nick Lodolo and Tony Santillan.

I can't do names today. I think this is a legitimate blockbuster. I can't do names today. I think this is a legitimate blockbuster. I think so too. Yeah, it's got the former MVP in there. It's got three teams, which I think always adds a little blockbuster point. So yeah, that qualifies. Several very good prospects.

It has Amir Garrett. He's good. So yeah, I would trim this. I'm not going to go through all of them because there are a lot here and i think that we've we're starting to arrive at some of the things that matter like the presence of a former mvp a young winner or rookie of the year assuming that the rookie of the year win is recent because like you could have a guy who was the rookie of the year 10 years ago and then what is that worth i think the presence of top prospects tends to sway the balance. And then I think that if you have notable major leaguers swapping for each other, that has the potential to be a blockbuster. But I think that there's

probably a pretty high war threshold that we should apply to that. And I have a suspicion that we will not have the sort of discipline that we ought to around that and that there are probably some real loosey-goosey blockbuster headlines. Yeah. Yeah, there's been blockbuster creep, I think, over time. And I agree. It has to be – the headliner has to be sexy. It has to be a player who is currently – I don't know if I'd say a star, but pretty close to a star, I think.

Maybe if it's just a famous player who's no longer good i don't think that necessarily gets you to blockbuster there needs to be like an accomplished player who still projects to be good and the audience varies a little bit like maybe a fangraphs readership would consider certain trades a blockbuster because they may be more familiar with highly touted prospects or maybe some player who's underrated by a more mainstream audience. And so it could be a Fangraphs blockbuster, but not an MLB.com blockbuster in certain cases, let's say. But yeah, I think you have to have a quality headliner

and quantity matters. But if it's just sort of, you know, like a five for five where it's just kind of a, it's like the 20th through 25th man on each roster, or it's the 24th and 25th man plus a few minor leaguers of non-note, then I don't think you can just keep adding to the trade like a fantasy trade where you're just like, I'll give you a bunch of guys who can't even make my team for this other pretty good player. That's not a blockbuster. Trading you the privilege of DFAing these players yourself. Yes, right.

Yeah. And it's been speculated that this trade could be a precursor to maybe an Arenado trade or something. And that could be a blockbuster. Yeah. So, like, you know, the more players are in the trade, I would say that helps, but you need the quality in addition to the quantity. I don't know. There has to be at least, let's say, a top 10 prospect or something. I mean, those guys very rarely get traded, but there has to a prospect that like a non prospect knower would know or a player who projects to be worth gosh i don't know like four or five

wins or something it has to be like an impact player involved in the deal i would say yeah and i would prefer although i realize that this is probably not a criteria we can hew to just based on the motivations of teams. It would be nice if they didn't involve players who are being moved predominantly for salary relief reasons. I'd like it to be about the baseball. Wouldn't we like all the things to just be about the baseball? Yes. So, you know, for instance, if Mookie Betts were to move with David Price so that Boston could move David Price's contract,

that would be a blockbuster because it involves two very high profile players, one of whom was recently the MVP, one of whom was recently a very good pitcher, and certainly has been signed to an incredibly lucrative contract. But I would feel worse about it because it would seem like that was mostly about getting David Price off the books. Right. But I guess we'd be more interested in doing bad price puns in the headlines there. So we'd probably be spared the blockbuster moniker altogether.

Does the team matter if you have a trade between two bad teams, let's say? Because one of the definitions of blockbuster that I'm reading right now, at least, says overwhelmingly impressive, effective, or influential. So if it involves impact players but isn't really influential because it doesn't really have the potential to swing playoff races let's say is it still a blockbuster does that matter i mean does the team matter even if it's like a team that has a lot of fans and is one of the top teams gets a lot of attention does that matter or do we evaluate it independent of those factors i think that it is a factor to consider i would like to resist making baseball

like the marvel movie universe in this respect where we care about box office which i think this is really a proxy for here but i think that you can have bad teams that say perhaps move. I think that a bad team acquiring, you know, a top 10 prospect in service of becoming a better team, that's a blockbuster, right? Because it's like, hey, the Reds want to be good. So they're getting this guy, you know, like that. I'm just picking a team that's closer. But like the Mariners, you know how they're bad? Well, they just got that guy. So they're going to be better.

You know, then you could term it a blockbuster, and I think it would feel honest. But no, we can support indie trades. They don't all have to be CGI trades. Yeah, right. This analogy is breaking down pretty quickly, but you know what I mean. I don't think you can retroactively apply the blockbuster label either like if it turns out that a prospect in the deal who was not highly touted at the time

goes on to become a great player you might look at it after the fact and say oh that was a blockbuster but if it didn't seem like one at the time i don't know that you can call it a blockbuster i don't know that's fair like You have to evaluate it based on how it was perceived at the time. Or I guess you can say in retrospect it was a blockbuster, but at the time no one really thought of it that way. we love to look back on trades that ended up, this might be a nice segue into our next email, that are retroactively lopsided. We love those trades. That's a separate category of trade. I think that the impression it makes in the moment is important to whether or not we classify it as a blockbuster because that feels like it needs to be based on recent ticket sales. We're not era adjusting this. I'm just mixing all kinds of stuff together today. It's Friday.

We're loose. Yes, exactly. All right. Shall we answer that next email question? You have it up. I have it very handy. This is from Colby. I will not read the whole thing,

but I'll read much of this thing. On a previous episode, Ben and Sam briefly discussed the Dodgers' bad luck trades in 2017 and 2018 for Darvish and Machado. As you noted, both were good players, but considering they were required not really to help secure a playoff berth or even a World Series berth, but really with the pretty clear hope that they would be the final piece needed to win the World Series, the trades were pretty disastrous. Obviously, it doesn't mean they were bad decisions, only that their results really stung. were bad decisions only that the results really stung as you i think noted darvish was far and away the leader in negative championship win probability added in the 2017 world series

and machado was solidly negative in 2018 fourth worst my question are there other perhaps more extreme examples of go for it trades that have backfired this spectacularly how much of this work can be done with set parameters and rankings and how much requires some anecdotal work and then he goes on to note that he is a rangers fan and so the 2011 trade for koji ahura still drives him bonkers bonkers is a good word we should use the word bonkers more so we get nervous about questions like this because we provide some answers and we can hear as if they were in the room with us listeners screaming what about that guy yes so these make us a little nervous but i thought we could go through a couple that seem particularly egregious in hindsight and so i i once again want

to start i guess well no i didn't start this way, but we will start with a Mariners trade. Okay. And I'm going to nominate to this when the Orioles got Adam Jones, Chris Tillman, and George Sherrill from the Mariners for Eric Bedard. Yeah. That was not a great moment for the franchise. No. And it resulted, I mean, obviously Adam Jones is now going to go play in Japan, but it resulted in for many, many years, anytime the Mariners would go to Baltimore to play the Orioles, a recounting of this trade. A recounting of this trade, because if you recall, the Mariners were coming off an 88-1 season. They wanted another race to pair with Felix. They made this trade for Bedard.

I think this is probably one of the more, this is one of the all-time or at least recent time cautionary tales right because jones went on to be great bedard yeah i mean bedard didn't pitch poorly when he pitched but didn't pitch a lot didn't pitch a lot didn't pitch a lot turned out turned out didn't didn't come in to do what he was meant to do. Then Adam Jones was a five-time All-Star, so, you know. Remind me, was this a straight rental? What was the terms of was Bedard under team control for a while? That is a terrific question that I need to refresh myself on. Yeah, because he was on the Mariners for a while,

and he was not old at the time that that trade was made. So it's a little different, I guess, if you're talking about Darvish or Machado, where you know going in that it's a rental, that they're about to be free agents, and that you are acquiring them solely for the next three or four months if you're including the playoffs. And if it doesn't work out then,

then the trade just didn't work out. You can kind of close the book on it, at least pending the development of the prospects you surrendered. Yeah, he, as you noted, stayed with Seattle for a little while. He was there, you know, when he did pitch, he was there for the 2008 and 2009 season. He lost pretty much all of, he lost all of 2010 to injury.

And then I think they ended up declining their 2011 option. injury and then i think they ended up declining their 2011 option and he was re-signed to an incentive-laden deal but then he was traded to the red sox for nothing yeah for a bunch of for a bunch of nothing with josh fields oh that's right i had forgotten about that man sometimes your memory shields you from aspects of things, but then it comes back. I mean, I feel for Eric Bedard because I think Mariners fans hate him, and I feel comfortable using that word. And this trade wasn't his fault. He didn't do it.

He probably didn't want to have to get shoulder surgery either. He probably would have preferred to not do that, but he did. So I would nominate that as one here were there were there any that struck you as fitting the the specific criteria of this batter so there are some that spectacularly backfire but you don't know it right away right so people always cite the john smoltz trade for dole Alexander or the Jeff Bagwell trade for Larry Anderson Those trades didn't Backfire immediately like Anderson Pitched really well for

Boston and Doyle Alexander Pitched really well for Detroit But what they got from those guys Obviously was not nearly What they gave up which was Hall of Fame players but it took some time To figure that out. So trying to think of trades that meet exactly the Darvish Machado criteria,

where not only did you in the long run give up more than you got, but the players you acquired to help you themselves spectacularly backfired at the time that you acquired them to help you. That's a more limited sample, and I'm struggling to come up with any off the top of my head. Would we count, I mean, it looks a little, it still looks bad to very much be clear, but would we count like the Shelby Miller deal with the D-backs as one?

That was just like obviously bad right away. That might be the last obviously terrible yes on the day it happened trade in baseball i'm see this i can hear a voice saying you're forgetting an obvious thing yeah no that was that was up there yeah yeah i think that's a good example of one that i mean that was like at that moment, I think, everyone was down on it. So you didn't even have to wait to see what the players did. I think there was kind of a consensus right away. So maybe that's a little different too.

I think, I don't know, like I'm looking at a helpful list that David Schoenfield curated for us at ESPN just this past summer where he looked up the worst deadline trade for every team. And again, like Smaltz is on here and Bagwell is on here. So this is not quite the same. Or speaking of the Mariners, trading Derek Lowe and Jason Baratek for Heathcliff Slocum. I mean, that's a pretty good one, right? Because Slocum was not even good for them. So that kind of backfired right away. Yeah, that one was bad.

They did get the best name in the deal. Yes, they did. But that doesn't count for anything. Yeah, so Slocum in his first trade, well, I guess with the Red Sox, he was bad and then he went to, and he was a little bit better. But yeah, that was notorious trade. So I'll scan this list, and I'll link to this list, and maybe we can find one. But it's hard to satisfy exactly the criteria that we're talking about here with the Machado and Darvish example.

the criteria that we're talking about here with the Machado and Darvish example. So this gave me occasion to think about, and perhaps this would be a good topic for its own podcast, but to think about a slightly different set of parameters here, which is that sometimes the trades we see that look the most disastrous in hindsight, and I do think they benefit from hindsight, but are the deals that move a prospect who ends up turning into a very productive big leaguer early in a new regime for a team, right? So like some recent examples, well, I guess coming and going related to the Mariners. I have Mariners on the brain. I don't know why uh he wasn't a prospect when this happened but you know jerry depoto moved on from chris taylor he moved on from katel marte he also got jared kelnick so that's a probably a net positive and i'm wondering you've thought a lot about player

dev you wrote a whole book about it ben and i'm wondering what the right if you have thought about like the right time frame for evaluation for those internal prospects when a new regime is coming in because like I think about what the the pirates have done this offseason they obviously have new leadership at the top and some internal reorging seems to be going on and they've been pretty quiet and you know it's a slightly different situation they're in a competitive position where they can be quiet because i don't think that anyone's really expecting all that much of pittsburgh next year but you know i always get nervous when gms who are brand new start moving prospects i'm

like how do you know those guys do you even know their names right and there is a i think a tendency to be a little less attached to them because you were not the one who acquired them. But I don't know that that is rational. Like they're the players that your team has at its disposal. And so whether you acquired them or not, you should, in theory, look at them the same way. You don't have the personal history with them and maybe your reputation is not as tied to them but still you should familiarize yourself with the scouting reports and the makeup and all of that and why your team originally acquired them but yeah i think you're probably a little less likely to hold on to a

player who is not performing because you're just hoping that they can salvage their career and thus your decision to acquire them but i think the time it takes to evaluate players and prospects has been reduced somewhat just because we have these technological tools and these things that can give us a sense of a player's true talent in a smaller sample. So, you know, you don't necessarily need to take years now to see what you have in a player. It doesn't mean that there aren't some late bloomers who come along and surprise you, but I think you can kind of get a more accurate picture from that snapshot. Like people always used to say, it's like a snapshot player development. It's like, this is what that player is today. It isn't necessarily what he'll be tomorrow, but there is, a i think an ability to perceive what a player will be or at least if you have some idea for what that player should do differently and you

talk to him and he isn't receptive to that then i guess that gives you the go-ahead to trade him maybe because you figure well he's not going to listen to us maybe a change of scenery will make him more receptive to this change so yeah i think you can cut bait more quickly than you could confidently in the past but that doesn't mean you should be in too much of a hurry to move on yeah i suppose too it depends what the if you find yourself with a new gm it's generally because something has gone wrong and i suppose it depends on the nature of failure right if it is if part of it is being tied to scouting or player development, maybe you look around and you're like,

well, we don't have to care about these kids. You should care about everyone, should be kind. But you're like, eh. Yeah. They were maybe selected for bad reasons or they've been developed in such a way that it has harmed their value even if they were, and their ability even if they were originally quite promising. So I guess depends that way too but anyway i've just been thinking about it because

sometimes these trades happen and they they move guys and they're brand new and i'm like i'm surprised you know how to work your phone takes a while figure that out where's the printer paper who knows i think i found one on david's list here that maybe satisfies our criteria. So the Corey Kluber-Ryan Ludwig trade. Oh, that's a good one. double a at the time but was a prospect and he not the prospect that uh that he should have been based on his subsequent success but we know what he went on to do and ryan ludwick meanwhile in 2010 for the padres uh he had a 631 ops in 239 plate appearances he did not help them make the playoffs and they did not make the playoffs and then he he was with them, I guess, for part of the following season before they got rid of him, and he wasn't good that year either. So they got, like, replacement-level play out of Ryan Ludwig and did not get the playoff berth that they were hoping for, and they gave up Corey Kluber.

So not great. Blumber. Yeah. That's a good one. I'll scan this list to see if I can find any others that match. Yeah. Yeah. Do we want to do Kevin's good email? Sure. Or I guess this was a Patreon message. So hey, Kevin, thanks. Yeah. This is a follow-up to the conversation that you and Sam had about sign stealing. I'm sure you are loathe to answer another question about sign stealing. I don't know. I'm not really, I'm not really bored of it yet. So feel free to ignore. We're not,

Kevin. Here we are. So far, the 2018 and 2017 World Series champs have been implicated in sign stealing scandals. As a Cleveland fan, this made me contemplate if I'd want to know if the 2016 Cubs did something equal to the Red Sox and more so to the Astros. Knowing that the chances of a championship being vacated are minuscule and awarding the World Series to the Red Sox and more so to the Astros. Knowing that the chances of a championship being vacated are minuscule and awarding the world series to the loser, even slimmer as a fan, would you rather know the team you lost a championship to cheated, or would you rather believe you lost fair and square? I decidedly choose the latter.

Even if somehow they decided to award the world series to Cleveland, I'd get no joy from this. It would feel like the 48 championship, just another championship I didn't actually witness. This is a great question and very well phrased, I thought. Yeah, it's a really good one. Yeah. So it's tough. I think, right, on the one hand, I kind of want to think that it was on the level and not think that my opponent was cheating. level and not think that my opponent was cheating because if you can't retroactively get that title then i think you'd feel even more well literally cheated as opposed to just well they outplayed us

it didn't go our way that's the way the baseball bounces and i think in addition to being disappointed you'd then feel bitter and angry about it and you'd always wonder what might have been so in a way i think it's worse right it doesn't unless it does it bring you solace because you figure well it's not legitimate like there will be an asterisk attached to that team's victory because they didn't win it fair and square and so it makes our team look better by comparison, like at least we lost, but we were the honorable team. We were playing by the rules. I sometimes remember at three o'clock in the morning, snarky comments from rude men on the internet from years ago. And that is not a productive exercise. And it is one that I wish

I didn't do. And those don't matter, right? The opinions of those men don't matter. They have not impacted my professional success. They cannot harm me. They are in the past, but I can't let them go. And so I think that it is better to lose fair and square because I think your ability to move on from it is significantly greater. I think that if you don't, it can metastasize in a way that impacts your perspective on the sport, maybe like other parts of your life. Yeah. Just to be dramatic. So I would much rather lose fair and square because at some point you have the appropriate distance from it to say, well, they were, they were better. Maybe not for the whole year. Cause the playoffs can be fluky, but in, in that series, they, you know, they pulled it out

and we, we did our best, you know, we got our, we got our Roger Davis home run. We got it, but we just needed it to be a little bit better. And it wasn't right. And so you sit there and you're like, I can move on from that. But if it was a cheat, then every conversation you have about baseball, you have to first have five minutes on how you were cheated out of a World Series, especially if you're a team like Cleveland where there's been this prolonged absence

and you have these two franchises that have this festering need for a World Series win and then you were cheated out of it and you might not live to see the next one, I think it could define your whole life. Yeah, right. I mean, there is the potential for payback for vengeance beyond the grave, right? So if the team is revealed to have cheated, then they will suffer some penalty for that so you can't beat them you can't claim that title but you can at least ensure that they get fined or someone gets banned or they lose draft picks or whatever it is so i don't know if that would be satisfying again it like can't give

you the title it doesn't redo that world series so maybe it's unhealthy to focus on wanting that team to pay for its sins but there is that aspect to it i suppose but i think that the problem with that is that that continues to center it around the the team that isn't your team like i bet yeah you know if you ask baseball fans like committed baseball people who read fan graphs or read your work at the ringer i'm sure that they know on some level you know it might take them a second to recall it but i bet they remember the team that the black socks played in the 1919 world series right but i bet i bet most people don't i bet your average fan doesn't remember that it was the Reds, right? All they remember is the cheating team. They remember the cheating team. And so as a fan of the aggrieved

team, there's not a lot of satisfaction about that because it's not about your team and what they did at all. It's about the cheating of the other team. And we don't get to feel vindicated and superior. And we like to feel aggrieved, I think, as a species, but I think we enjoy feeling superior more. I might have a very low opinion of people. So I don't think that it would be satisfying even when you get justice from beyond the grave because it's not about your guys.

And that's what we want. That's why the World Series matters to people because it isn't the team that's the best team over the course of the regular season. It's the team that we all remember from that year and and this robs you of that so i think you just want to get you just want to get spanked and then be able to move on with your life because you still get an opportunity for you know to to persevere and for vengeance but then it's about you know doing a thing and winning a thing and not sticking it to the cheaters which can be satisfying but i think isn't quite as

it's not as satisfying an emotional experience i mean i don't know what it would be like to lose on cheating in the world series i'm still learning about the world you probably take that i guess man no i don't know that you want to add grievance to the already sad cocktail of mariners fandom that might be very dangerous who knows what would happen you have to be good to get to the world series though so that would be nice oh but man you just sit there and you'd go we we waited you know i'm i'm picturing myself like very old in this situation. Like I'm 85 and I haven't really been a fan for a long time. But they get in and I'm like, I feel something. You know, I'm old lady texting with Jeff being like, do you feel a thing about the Mariners, Jeff?

And he'd probably go, no. But I would feel a thing. And then they'd lose for cheating. And I would know that I would never get to see them again in my lifetime and it would be awful it might kill me yeah i found one more trade here that might work this is from david's list too july 31st 2012 the rangers traded kyle hendricks and christian viennueva to the cubs for ryan demp. And Dempster, he did go seven and three, but with a five plus ERA in his two months with the Rangers. That was the year that the Rangers blew a four game lead on the A's with six to play. So they fell into the wildcard game, which they then immediately lost.

So Dempster started, he writes that six game skid with a loss to the angels four runs in five and two thirds and he also started the season finale a loss to the a's in which he gave up five runs in three innings and then of course hendrix became hendrix which no one expected at the time but again that backfired pretty much immediately i just also long term oh yeah i just don't think that you should trade for players whose name is close to dumpster i think that that's just a rule i don't think you want to mess with the the world's impression of that and sorry ryan that's not actually your name but i'm just saying it's close enough that i couldn't be trusted with it so yes all right do we want to do one more you picked that one more personal catchers question Why don't we save personal catchers

Because I want to remember why I wanted to talk to you Because I do want to talk about it But I don't remember why So let's save it Alright well we can end there then We've reached our weekend We did it Alright talk to you next week

See you later Some sad news to pass along We were just talking on a recent episode About Hal Smith's legendary home run in Game 7 of the 1960 World Series. Pirate's catcher homered before Bill Mazroski's shot, and Smith's homer, by championship win probability added, was and is the biggest hit in history. Well, Smith reportedly passed away on Friday at the age of 89. But we won't forget the history he made. I will include a clip of the call at the end of this episode. Do yourself a favor and go watch the video, which I will also link to on the show page.

And note how little celebration there seems to be of arguably the biggest hit in history. It was a different time. That will do it for today and for this week. Thank you for listening. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild, as have the following five listeners who have signed up to pledge some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks. Benjamin Baker, Andrew Patrick, Sean P. Montana, Kiel Crow, and Thomas Klulau. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash

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messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. And we hope you have a wonderful weekend. We will be back to talk to you early next week. All the seven together I should try to love each other When I hold this love together All the less and all the better All the less and all the better

7-6 New York. Two balls, two strikes. And Hal Smith hits a drive to deep left field. That ball is way back out there. Going, going, going. And Pandemonium breaks loose at Forbes Field.