Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1581: Endless Cycle

Episode Date: August 22, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Fernando Tatis Jr.’s “grand slam cycle,” the most exciting cycle sequence, unwritten rules, how to interpret reports of rising TV ratings, why umpires call more strikes when they work with the same catchers, historical precedents for the Cardinals’ overstuffed schedule, a confounding Clayton Kershaw commercial, and Jeff Frye’s […]

🎵 Are we lonely, lonely? That's less hot. Oh, yeah. That's good. It's hotter here, but not uncomfortably so. That's our weather banter for today. So we've got a couple guests lined up today. First, we will be talking to Ginny Searle, an editor at Baseball Prospectus, who wrote about Tom Brenneman's comments this week. Of course, Brenneman, the Reds broadcaster, Thank you. those comments. So we will talk to Ginny, who wrote about it for BP. And then we will talk to Craig Edwards of Fangraphs, who steered the Fangraphs trade value series this week. And we talked to him about how weird it is to try to figure out what trade value means in 2020 and

how he thinks teams should behave or will behave at the trade deadline, which is approaching very quickly. So we'll get into all of that very soon. A couple things I wanted to bring up before we do. One, I had a conversation with Sam recently about a conversation in our Facebook group that was going on about whether Fernando Tatis Jr. could ever do anything as noteworthy as his father, even though he is clearly a superior player and will probably soon surpass Fernando Tatis Jr. in career war. It's pretty hard to think of something that could happen that would be more notable, a more notable moment or highlight than Tatis Sr.'s two grand slams in one inning. And as soon as we had that conversation, he kind of came

close. I guess he's not there yet, really, but he did have his own Grand Slam-related moment, which we've talked about. But I saw this tweet, which was pointed out to us by listener Mike, and this is from Jim Russell on Twitter. He says, Fernando Tatis Jr. completed the Grand Slam cycle. He hit one, was on base for Machados, on second for Hosmers, and on third for Myers. The Padres hit Grand Slams in four consecutive games, which

has never been done before. And so we're trying to make this a thing, the Grand Slam cycle. Is this a thing? And does this rival Tatis Sr.'s Grand Slam accomplishment in your eyes? So I don't think it's quite the same as Tatis the Elder. I think that that is still a more notable individual accomplishment, but I don't dislike it as a fun fact. I think it's a pretty fun, fun fact. In fact, fact, fact, fact, fact, fact, fact.

I think it's pretty fun. It's pretty fun. I will say the following about it, which is always sort of my thought when we talk about cycles more broadly. You know, there's been discussion on this show in the past about how cycles are like kind of whatever. Like I don't get super amped about cycles um i think the only cycle we should get excited about and we can extend it to to this as well i want it to happen in progressive order i think those are fun but otherwise i don't care so you got to start with the the smallest thing and build your way up and so if he had been you know if he had been on first and

then on second and then on third and then hit his own that would make it even more fun but this is still a fun fact even though i tend to be kind of down on cycles as a thing to to note because it is rare and it is cool but it's also like yeah the grand slam cycle i'm not even clear on what the parameters are there like do you get a whole season to do it does it have to be the same game or consecutive games because like that's never happened before so i don't know know exactly how that would be equaled or matched but i guess it's kind of a cool singular accomplishment and it tells you just how important he is to this team that he's either hitting it or he's on base for it.

He's always involved in some way. And if, as Sam and I hoped, this is kind of a milestone moment for the Unwritten Rules conversation, if this kind of puts the nail in the coffin of that conversation to a certain extent, then that would be a notable thing that Tatis did. But yeah, I agree. It doesn't quite rival his dad's Grand Slam-related accomplishment. It's pretty tough to top that. What do you think is the optimal order of hits in a cycle if you want to maximize excitement? Do you think it is in order of ascending total bases,

or is there a better way? Because, I mean, the common thing and the joke is triple away from a cycle, right? Because triples are rare and you often get players who are triples away from a cycle and they very rarely get that triple. On the other hand, if they do get the triple, then that would be really exciting if you had the rarest hit left to go and you got it. And especially because it's a triple triples are exciting anyway there's the question of are you going to go for it are you going to stop it second or even try to score at times so maybe that's the best but i don't know what do you

think the the hierarchy is of exciting cycles stipulating that we don't think cycles are all that exciting to begin with yeah i i had said that i wanted it to go in ascending order um but i'm gonna immediately change that to say that i want the the final thing to be the triple because i think it having that hanging out there like you said it it ups the excitement of other things that might otherwise be sort of ho-hum right because you're going to get one of two things you You're either going to get a triple, very exciting. You're going to get, or you're likely to get a two plan as a guy tries to really stretch it, you know, stretch it. And then he gets called out and you're like, ah, oh no. Maybe that is facilitated by a really great throw or a nifty and slick little tag so i think that the triple should go last right after

the home run because you know for some guys the hardest thing in the cycle kind of depends on the player right i mean you're yeah you're the least likely probably to see a triple just because of how many there are but you know if you're well it depends on the year i suppose but like let's assume that the ball is normal it is not super juiced juiced ball. If you're Dee Gordon, you're like, the home run is definitely the hardest part of this for you, sir. Because you just don you're picking sort of what is on average the the most difficult or at least least likely and therefore the most exciting to see completed i think the triple is is on there and then you know if the guy doesn't get it well you've you've still seen a home run so you don't you don't go home upset or stay at home upset as it may be in our current moment. Yeah.

So there's that. Can I say something about the unwritten rules thing real quick? Sure. So the thing I found the most encouraging about that conversation, because it was very doofy, and this was a bad week for friends of mine who are not really all that focused on baseball, texting me being like, I'm going to do a swear. Meg, what the fuck's going on in your sport right now? Yeah, right.

This is a bad week for that. There's a lot of, what are you guys doing over there? So I think the thing that was the most encouraging to me was the response from both current and former players. Yes. Because, you know, we as fans and writers and analysts, we engage with the sport in a particular way. And I think we have expectations of the people who play it

and how sort of accepting and forward thinking they will be. And some of those are perfectly reasonable to have. And some of them are reasonable to have and likely to be held up by a culture that is, you know, is strange, even when it is not being sort of stubborn and backward thinking. Because it's just weird. It's a weird workplace.

These guys are odd guys. They do an odd job. It's a strange job. They have to be strange sorts. They have to be wired in a strange way in order to do it. And so to see the response of those people in the game seem to line up with what we hope the game's acceptance of both fun and the people who are most often called out for unwritten rules violation,

to see that line up so tightly was encouraging. If we're in the business of searching for silver linings i think that that definitely was one because i mean i don't know johnny bench i know that he sometimes sits at a bar with seven cheeseburgers in his hand right gotten rid of that one hasn't been on mlb tv lately the other one that hasn't been on mlb tv lately is the one where a guy hands him a baby to sign it is unclear if it is his baby where a guy hands him a baby to sign. It is unclear if it is his baby or if it is just a baby that happened to be in the restaurant, but that's not the point of this.

But I would imagine if you're going to pick a guy who, without knowing more, you might assume was a little bit stodgy about this stuff, he'd fall into that just because of his age and how much the game has changed since he has played and to have him be like, no, this was fine. It was great. Yeah. I thought so too. I felt the same way. And Bauman on the Ringer MLB show asked us whether we thought this would be good for baseball in the sense that all PR is good PR perhaps. And this was a conversation that we had around sign stealing too, because everyone was talking about baseball during times of the year when people aren't normally talking about baseball, but it was for a scandal related reason and wasn't clear whether this was helping baseball or hurting it. And I kind of felt the

same way here because on the one hand, depending on how this story was presented to you, A, if you don't know a lot about baseball, you just might not understand the story at all because it's like, wait, he hit a home run and that was bad and people were mad at him. It would take some time to just even explain why people were upset about this. But beyond that, I think the reaction might just be, oh, it's hidebound baseball being baseball again. Here they go again, have an exciting young player and they want to make him less exciting and they have all these stodgy rules and everything. It's like Lindsay Adler tweeted that every time there's a scandal like this in baseball, she just hopes that

none of the other sports notice. And it's just so embarrassing to be someone who loves baseball at these times. So if that's how you heard about this this just as another in a long line of stories like this then it might hurt but if you heard well things are actually a little bit different this time it seems like and players are actually supporting him and he's resolute in this style of play and fans and media seem to be supporting him too and things are changing then that would be a positive so i don't know what the spin on it was for most people who are not in this world the way that we are but like you i felt pretty encouraged by the reaction to it after that initial night so we'll see we'll see by the way about, I guess another point in the favor of some hits, you might get the question of, should the player stop to get the cycle, right?

Like if you need the single and you hit a ball in the gap or something, then it's, well, do I stop at first to get the cycle or do I take my extra base? Depends on the game situation, maybe, but that's an added layer of intrigue, perhaps. I would like it very much i would like it very much if a player came out and was like no i definitely could have stretched that to a double but i wanted to cycle guys yeah that would never happen i think it has happened i think i'll look up uh what i'm thinking of but i think there's some precedent for that. Also wanted to mention, you were talking about people not going to games this year. And in the absence of in-person attendance, it seems that MLB ratings are up. And there have been a number of stories about this.

There was one just on Friday by Daniel Kaplan at The Athletic that's getting shared around a lot because it reports that, according to Nielsen, not only are MLB ratings up overall, but they seem to be up particularly among women and among younger viewers, which seems encouraging. And I'm not sure what to make of either those demographic breakdowns or the overall increase because this year is so strange that on the one hand, I'm happy that more people are watching baseball regardless of the reason. And after all the times when negative stories about baseball ratings get shared,

often unfairly because people will compare national ratings of baseball games to national ratings of sports with far fewer games and that are less regional in nature. And baseball's regional ratings are very strong. But I don't know whether this is an example of things being skewed in a positive sense because of the other factors that are going on here. Like, for instance, he writes,

Nielsen analyzed TV viewership for the first 14 days of the 2020 MLB season, July 23rd to August 5th, 2020, compared to the same amount of time at the start of the 2019 season, March 28th to April 10th, 2019, for regional sports networks across the 25 primary markets where a team resides. It found overall viewership rose 120,000 to 2.8 million viewers, a 4% rise. And I've seen other stories about national TV ratings being up too, but a 4% rise. I mean, first of all, you'd think that it would be easy to explain that just based on people who aren't able to go to games, right? I mean, there are hundreds of thousands of people who would otherwise be at games who would be among the most likely people to be tuning in to watch

games if they can't go to them. So you would expect ratings to be up if you tell people they can't come see it in person. The only way to watch it is from afar, then you would think more people would be watching it from afar. So I know that's not the case in every sport. There's been a lot of conversation about NBA ratings being down. So it's nice that MLB ratings are not down, but that seems like it could be a factor. And then it's different times of the year. So they're comparing the start of last season to the start of this season. But of course, those are different calendar months. So I don't know whether comparing July and August to March and April skews things in the sense that school is not in session now and maybe there are more younger viewers who are able to tune into these games. So maybe that could account for that.

I don't know. And then also people are just kind of confined to their homes to a greater extent and have fewer other entertainment options. So that might lead to a ratings rise for baseball, too. So I'm not saying that more people are not watching baseball. I'm just saying, I don't know whether to interpret this as baseball is suddenly more popular and is gaining new viewers in areas where it has struggled to attract viewers or whether it's just, it's the same audience really, but they're watching it because it's a different time of year or because they can't go to games or because of the pandemic. playoff action and NHL playoff action, because there was some, I think there was some overlap

in those sets of days, but it was still bubble play for the NBA. So determining what the seating would be for the playoffs and, you know, they're really underway in earnest now, you know, the same is true for the NHL. So I'll be curious to see if there is some attrition there, which, you know, it'll be hard to attribute that to anything in particular some of it might be more competition in the sports space some of it might be that you know a month in we now have some teams that are like very well out of it right and others that are sort of more safe from a playoff perspective so you might see some attrition there i think generally it's a good thing because people can watch whatever they want at home.

Right. Right. You know, so we thought, oh, people will be excited about some baseball stuff and they'll still come to Fangraphs. And they were like, no, we have Disney Plus. Get away from me. So until there was baseball back, they didn't really have really have time for us. So I think that the fact that it has seen any kind of an uptick is somewhat encouraging, even if the magnitude of that probably obscures, as you pointed out, how much of it is the result of the season and certainly into the postseason where, you know, a lot of the money

argument gets made, it's never a bad thing for interested fans to be able to point to, you know, greater gender diversity and greater diversity of age and say, the game shouldn't be stagnant because there are new people here and they they might want something very different from their baseball so i think that's probably a pretty good thing just generally if for no other reason then ben if i have to watch one more roman ad we need something else yeah we need a different a lot of those yeah we need a different thing now i don't know that the the demographics of the game shifting around in terms of its viewership, I mean, shifting around at all are going to take care of that problem, but it can't hurt. Yeah, you mentioned another factor there, which is fewer games, shorter season.

So every game matters more or at least contributes more to the standings and the playoff odds and everything. So you'd think more scarcity, greater demand, perhaps. So that could be something too. Right. And then you have teams like, you know, even some of the teams that have fallen out of it or been a little less impressive of late are doing stuff that's exciting. Like we talked about how Tigers fans get to watch good young pitching now. And the marlins are calling up all kinds of folks it seems like there's a new debut every day so maybe you know as the sort of bottom of the league settles into itself we will we will see ratings sustained because i think that local ratings for teams remain good even when the teams are bad yeah in a year. And so perhaps there will be a little spike of interest

because people want to watch Mize or Sixto Sanchez or, man, the Red Sox really don't even have a great owner balance here. Sorry, Boston fans. But so, yeah, I think that it is good that given just the broad array of options that we have encouraging early results, and I hope that they sustain themselves both through the playoffs of other leagues and then the return of the NFL, which is like three weeks away, which feels remarkable. I guess the Astros had those zero ratings when they were bottoming out in their local market,

but that was extreme. So I also wanted to mention something that I think will be of interest to you because, like me, you care deeply about catchers and umpires and their relationships and the stats surrounding that. And Rob Arthur wrote something about that for Baseball Perspectives on Friday about the catcher familiarity effect, or I guess you could call it the umpire familiarity effect. But evidently, according to Rob's research, there is a slight tendency for umpires to call

more strikes when they work more often with the same catcher. So the more they work with that catcher, the more strikes they call. And again, it's small. It's like maybe a 1% increase in likelihood of a called strike. So maybe it's like one extra called percent increase in likelihood of a called strike so you know maybe it's like one extra called strike a game or something but this doesn't happen all that often in regular season games or regular regular season games because umpires move around and they don't work with one team all that often but this year they are and umpires are working like a whole homestand with the same team because they're trying to cut down on travel and so umpires and catchers are working in tandem more often than they have before and so this effect that Rav has found could be partially responsible for the fact

that there seem to have been more called strikes this year in accordance with the rulebook zone but just more pitches in the zone are getting called strikes this year than before and rob speculates that this could be a reason why and he doesn't know obviously what drives this effect but could be a few different things it could be that umpires get used to the catcher's receiving style or stance or they figure out how to get a better view of the pitch or they just understand their mechanics it's almost like a hitter recognizing a pitcher's release point or something maybe umpires get better at that with catchers they get less distracted who knows could be that catchers learn the umpire zone better yeah and study it more and

so they're able to call pitches to those areas where they know they're going to get strike calls. Could be a social thing. Maybe they're just buds because they're hanging out and they develop a rapport and a relationship. And maybe you're more inclined to call some strikes for your buddy who you're leaning next to constantly. So could be any of those three or all of them or none of them. But it's kind of an interesting thing that I had not thought of before that might be making more of an impact this year than in a normal year. And just think, if we'd had a robo zone, never would have seen that.

I know. That's the thing. It's like someone's probably listening to this going, well, if we had a robot zone, we wouldn't have this effect and things would be more fair and equitable for everyone. And that's true. I can't argue with that. And yet it's so interesting to analyze this and to speculate about why it happens. And we would lose that if we had the robo zone, which I guess for me as someone who writes and talks about baseball, I'm more incentivized to have things to talk about like this than other people are. Other people just kind of want the strikes to be called when they should be called and not to have calls go against their team. So I see why they might feel differently. But to me, this is the sort of stuff that really gets me going.

sort of stuff that really gets me going. I agree with everything you just said. And I will add that there's just been so much nonsense this year, Ben. And I don't think that the discourse could bear us adjusting to the regulation zone. I don't think we could stand it. Yeah. I think we have enough going on. I don't think we need another thing yet. I think we can, we should sort through the things we have, feel that we have addressed them sufficiently and can move on from them, and then we can worry about robots. Yes, strongly agree. Also, the Cardinals are back and they've played without further incident for, I think, six games as we've recorded this, and they have split those games, so they haven't looked obviously terribly rusty. But I got a question from Patreon supporter Kyle who wanted to know about precedent for a team having the sort of schedule that the Cardinals are now facing,

where they're playing tons and tons of games and doubleheaders in a short stretch. They came back to play 53 games in 44 days with 11 doubleheaders. came back to play 53 games in 44 days with 11 doubleheaders. But as Kyle noted, and this was reported by others and by the Elias Sports Bureau, the last team to have this kind of compressed schedule was the 1975 Twins, who played 54 games in 48 days with 11 doubleheaders, and they went 20 and 34 over that stretch. And Kyle wanted to know why that happened, why they played all those games in that short span of time.

And I did some searching. And it turns out that, as you might expect, they had a bunch of rainouts. So they had six games rained out in April. And they had to reschedule all those games. And I found an article about this from May 1st, 1975, that's talking about the schedule the Twins faced. And it sounds sort of similar to what we've been saying about the Cardinals here. So it quotes Calvin Griffith, the team president, saying, this is the worst spring I've ever seen, lamented Minnesota president Calvin Griffith, who has been in baseball 40 years the only other

one I can think of that can even compare was many years ago when we were still in Washington and had three games in Boston called off because of snow Minnesota lost a scheduled two-game home series against Oakland to a persistent low pressure system the twins hope to open a three-game series against Kansas City Friday the conditioning of the club starts to become a concern now, said Griffith. I don't know how our players can be sharp after a layoff like we've had. Twins pitching coach Lee Stange is also concerned about the inactivity of his charges. We've been idle so long that it's almost like getting back to spring training conditions, he said. The layoff figures to have an effect on all our pitchers.

It's going to be difficult for our people to be very sharp. To compound the problem, the Twins weren't very sharp when the skies turned gray after losing 10 of their first 14 games. We've been behind ever since our second series of the year, said Griffith. Another item of concern to Griffith is when the league and the Players Association will allow the Twins to reschedule the postponements. And then it goes on about how many games they already have scheduled and how many doubleheaders were already on the books. So again, sort of a similar conversation that we've had with the Cardinals here. And if you go back even further in baseball history, this was even

more common. So there was a little note in pages from Baseball's Past, the great newsletter that I often plug here, and Craig Wright, the author of that, said, I've been asked if any other team has had to play more doubleheaders in a shorter period of time than the St. Louis Cardinals must play this year after their schedule was shut down for 16 days due to players and staff testing positive for COVID-19. It actually happened a lot. Besides the fact that in the old days a lot of doubleheaders were in the original schedule, the quality of the grounds and the weaker groundskeeping techniques made it easy for the number of rainouts to pile up and result in a slew of additional doubleheaders in the last six weeks of the season. In September of 1928, the Boston Braves set a record where they had to play nine straight doubleheaders,

which was done in the course of 12 days. Oh my God. And the Brooklyn Dodgers of 1917 had a time when, beginning with August 13th until the end of the season, they had more doubleheaders, 18, than single-game dates. And, of course, these previous teams had nine-inning doubleheaders, not seven-inning doubleheaders. So all of this has happened before and hopefully will not happen again, but maybe will. The thing about the Cardinals is that I think very rapidly,

the only thing that will remind me of how wonky their year has been is the double headers. There was a little while where they like first came back where some of their guys had just very strange batting lines because they played like five games. You know, Paul Goldschmidt's looked like a normal line. It looked like a normal line. It looked like a normal line. And as an aside, I know we don't know who's good this year because nothing matters, but

Paul Goldschmidt has 165 WRC plus in 14 games. So that has to feel nice for him. But now all their dudes have mostly normal looking batting lines and Molina's back. And so I'm going to be very interested to see what our collective memory of this year is just generally because i think we're going to have big gaps but in terms of the specifics and sort of odd vagaries of this baseball season because some of the stuff will make it very obvious like when we look at the records that these teams ultimately have and the number of them that made their way

into the postseason and then i think that there will be some things that make us forget like you know i don't expect tyler o'neill to do anything but hit 200 and also have home runs that seems pretty normal to me so i am trying to both monitor in an active way my perception of the cardinals and not have that active monitoring alter the perception of the cardinals and not have that active monitoring alter the perception of the cardinals science is very difficult ben yeah observation it it alters things i think there are a lot of principles about that in you know anthropology and what have you so it's going to be a real sad weird doofy year to look back on. And I wonder what markers will make it obvious to maybe not people who live through 2020, but future generations of fans who look back on it.

When in their, you know, look down the career stats of Paul Goldschmidt, are they going to be like, wait, what happened to 2020? What's going on there? So, and then lastly you were having an exchange with listener sean who emailed about the honkuk tire commercial i'm so mad about this yeah i want to give you a chance to air your grievance here so sean wrote in about this have you all seen the honkuk tire commercial with clayton kershaw it bothers me to no end that the commercial is basically Clayton Kershaw gives up a home run that's hit so far he has to go get in his car and drive presumably several miles away to get it. And I'm not even a Dodgers fan. I just can't believe that he agreed to do it and they couldn't come up with a better way to incorporate him. Any suggestions for how they could have better used their 30 seconds in a way that doesn't say he's the worst ever at the one thing he gets paid to do and yeah if you haven't seen this i'll link to it but he gives up a home run except he gets in

a car with these super powered tires and he drives and he drives very far and he is able to catch the ball and then he tosses it to a few kids and the girl says see told you pitchers can play defense which is a weird conversation that they were just apparently having. What is this commercial? It's very strange that they would be like, yeah, let's get Quentin Kershaw to do this specifically. And that Quentin Kershaw was like, yeah, I want to do this. Right. OK, I have a lot of questions about this commercial.

The first of which is who wrote the ad copy for this? Is it a person who has never seen baseball before? If it is a person who's never seen baseball before, is Clayton Kershaw really the guy that's likely to be like, you know who we should get as the spokesperson for Dyers? Clayton Kershaw. I don't think that you as a non-baseball fan, he's not the first guy that comes to mind, even though he is a generational pitcher, super important, plays on a very prominent team.

I don't think it's Clayton Kershaw. So that's the first problem. The second is, I think that maybe what happened here is they saw Griffey's Nike commercial from back in the day, which I don't remember if we've talked about this commercial on this podcast before, but basically a ball, a home run gets hit in Yankee Stadium stadium against as i might add on a as i remember an anonymous mariners pitcher because why impugn that poor guy and griffey runs all across the country to catch it and then throws it all the way back in so i wonder if they saw that and were like that's a cool commercial but they didn't want to make it too similar and then they really lost the thread which is what I suggested to Sean.

But if you're going to use a pitcher, doesn't it make better sense to one, pick a guy who has just like throws gas and then put like little tires on the ball as it's zooming through the air, approaching the plate like like the tires are helping it go even faster. And then you can hear the smack of the glove and the guy swings through and whiffs badly. And you're like, ah. And then Sean, in a stroke of genius that suggests that he should write ad copy for years to come. I bet he'd take care of those Roman ads. Says that the tagline could be superior control.

Yeah. Make it. It's perfect. It is a perfect bit of ad copy. It is a far more sensical commercial. It is much nicer to Clayton Kershaw. I don't know that Kershaw would be the guy you'd pick in that moment

if that's the copy you're going with. But, you know, so I just, there are so many people who know a lot about baseball. And I'm sure that that a lot of us for a small fee would help companies avoid these problems in their commercials because you can say, hey, that doesn't make good sense. Let's do a different thing. Yeah. You'd think Kershaw's agent just would have been like, OK, so he's he has to give up like the longest home run ever hit. That doesn't make my client look great i mean

maybe the check was big enough that they didn't care i don't know but it's also just like why would you ask a pitcher i mean why not like just an outfielder or something i mean it's also just like cheating to get in a car and drive away from the stadium and catch the thing no matter how good your tires are but okay but i mean why not someone who is supposed to track down fly balls like clint kershaw doesn't catch fly balls in the outfield no it's just it's weird i don't know and and to an underrated part of how bad this commercial is to your point the uh the the little girl being like see pitchers do play defense is that a dip are we having a debate about that is that part of the uh the the little girl being like see pitchers do play defense is that a dip are we having a debate about that is that part of the zeitgeist that i've missed by being on

standing around debating that it's it's very odd i don't i don't understand any of it i think that the commercials this year i am really tired of hearing the at&t commercials with the gal who used to be on them or maybe was on a different cell service commercial who is excited about 5g i don't care about 5g anymore because of her i'm glad that they have stopped doing uh the commercials welcoming back baseball with a little kid at the end who goes play ball this is not that kid's fault but i hate that kid yeah hate that kid i mean not the actual kid i'm sure he's fine but like the kid he's playing in the commercial hate that kid so so baseball's back because i'm annoyed by mlb tv commercials yeah all right i found the example of the player stopping at an earlier base in order to get the cycle. So I'll read that here. This was actually sent to us by a listener last year. This is from a story in the Toronto Star last September. Fry, who deserves closure in the Blue Jays' cycle of life. When Jeff Fry woke up on Wednesday morning and read that Kevin Biggio hit for the cycle, he was transported back in time to one of

his own highlights, a moment that, on the surface, should be filled with fond memories, but in reality is pretty complicated even 18 years later. Biggio singled, doubled, tripled, and homered against the Orioles on Tuesday night to become the third player in Blue Jays' history to hit for the cycle. Former All-Star third baseman Kelly Gruber and Fry are the only other members of Toronto's exclusive club for the quirky feat. Fry earned his piece of history on August 17, 2001 against the Rangers. The eight-year veteran tripled in the second inning after Ricky Ledet misplayed a ball in right field, doubled in the fifth, homered in the sixth, and then completed the cycle in the seventh with a single, which could have been stretched into another double.

That's why Fry will be the first to tell you that Biggio's cycle occurred in a more natural way. Once Fry read about Biggio's big night, he pulled out his phone to watch the highlights, and the longtime infielder-turned-player-agent-broadcaster couldn't help but marvel at what he saw while throwing in a bit of self-deprecating humor. Just watching Cavan's game, his hits were a lot better than mine, Fry said before bursting into laughter. He crushed them all over. He turned on a ball down the line, smoked a ball to left center field. I guess he had one seeing eye hit, but it looked like he hit the ball really well.

I had a couple that could have been caught or held to a single. I got some help. Which brings us to the supposed controversy. Toronto held a commanding 10-2 lead in that otherwise meaningless 2001 game, as Fry prepared for his fourth and final at-bat of the day needing a single for the cycle. Almost everyone in the ballpark knew what was at stake, and Fry's shot at making history had been a topic of discussion in the dugout. A conversation with then-hitting coach Cito Gaston helped make that decision for him. Gaston told Fry that if the opportunity presented itself, especially considering the lopsided score, he should stay at first. Frey didn't remember this 18 years later, but he was also quoted at the time as saying Rangers third base coach Bobby Jones told him the same thing after the sixth inning homer. As fate would have it, Frey didn't hit one down the line, but he found the right center field gap. As he approached first base, the former 30th round

pick was spotted by television cameras screaming, what do I do? What do I do? In the direction of first base coach Garth Orge. Like almost every fan in the building, Orge yelled, stop, stop. Fry followed the advice and remained at first. Gruber, who happened to be in Toronto at the time, ran onto the field to celebrate the big moment and the game was put on pause as Fry received a standing ovation. Under normal circumstances, this would have been one of the best moments of his career. In some ways, it probably still is, but it's not all roses and butterflies either. Not then, maybe not even now. There were hurt feelings about the way Fry's situation was portrayed.

I got a lot of heat, Fry said. On Baseball Tonight, Tim Kirkjian did a whole segment on how it was a suspect cycle, how two balls were misplayed, and I should have had a double on my last one. I wasn't used to getting that kind of attention. It kind of ticked me off because in a way they were questioning my character. The reception from some members of the Rangers was

even worse. Fry was the type of player who prided himself on playing the game the right way. Yes, we already heard that. Oh gosh. He was willing to play any position, cared more about setting things up for the hitter behind him than his own personal stats, and genuinely believed in the unwritten rules of the game. As someone who followed baseball's code, Fry understood stopping at first might have rubbed some people the wrong way, so he wanted to clear the air. He took it upon himself to go over to the Rangers' side to personally apologize to Texas manager Jerry Nairn the next day. What should have been a lighthearted moment to alleviate any concerns instead turned cold and awkward. I felt bad

because it was against my old team, the team that drafted me. Fry said Nairn was the manager and he was the bench coach when I was in Texas. So I went over to their dugout before the game to shake his hand and apologized to him for stopping at first. He gave me the stone face and said, just play the game. Just play the game. Wait, so I'm sorry. Their preference would have been another double? Yes. They would have preferred that he be in scoring position.

Nothing about this game makes sense. Baseball is so silly. It's just so silly. Endlessly silly. We don't have time to unpack all of that. But all I will say is that is some of the silliest nonsense I have ever heard. Why are the Rangers always involved in this stuff? As an aside, I know they're not always involved,

but why are they always involved? Sometimes it's the Rangers breaking the unwritten rule when they drop a ball so that Mike Manger can get his 200 strikeouts. So it works both ways. Goodness, what a bit of silliness. Yes, indeed. I hope that we are right about advancing this conversation, not you and I.

I mean, like, I think we do our part, but because this kind of stuff is just so perplexing, makes your head hurt. All right. Well, speaking of other things that have made our head hurt, we will be back in just a moment to talk to Jenny Searle about Tom Brenneman's comments and the larger context for them, followed by a conversation with Craig Edwards about the trade deadline and Fangraph's trade value series. It wouldn't be 2020 baseball if we didn't have another disheartening display of how much further the game has to go to be inclusive and welcoming to all. We got another bad reminder of that this week when Reds broadcaster Tom Brenneman unleashed a homophobic slur on air in a hot mic moment. Big Slur on air in a hot mic moment. It bears discussing to understand how far we have left to go and to help us with that conversation. We've invited Baseball Prospectus' Ginny Searle to the program. Ginny, thanks so much for joining us. Hi, how are you? We're doing okay. We appreciate

you taking the time. And I guess it seems unlikely that anyone listening to this show hasn't yet heard the details of this incident. And we certainly don't need to reiterate the language that Brenneman chose to use. But I'm curious, as you were watching this sort of unfold on Twitter, which I think was a surreal experience for all of us, as Brenneman went on to call another five innings of Reds baseball after he uttered this slur on air, what your reaction, initial reaction was both to the incident itself and then to the response from the Reds organization and from the Fox channel that employed him? Yeah, well, I think surreal is a great way to describe it. I saw a couple people liken it to I'm not remembering her name right now. But the woman

who had a lot of racist tweets that resurfaced when she was on an international flight, and she arrived, I believe, in Africa to find she no longer had a job. And so I think that was kind of an interesting comparison, just in that it's very, you're really, you know, it was a very, it's very surreal to have someone, as you said, be calling on air and then making an on air apology like that. It's just it's not something you typically see. And I think Twitter, the way that Twitter and, you know, just the general reaction of, you know, media and the social media has been, I think it's been, you know, it was in the moment, it was very, it was unsurprising to see kind of the uniformity of it, right? This isn't, you know, I think that it kind of shows that people see this as substantially different from

something that, you know, an on-field remark as we've seen in recent years. day or two has sort of centered around Brenneman and his initial on-air apology, which just kind of checked every bad apology box that you could possibly come up with, and then sort of a more considered massaged, PR-friendly, lengthier apology that was published the day after. And I just sort of wonder whether you care what he says after the comment is uttered, whether there's anything he could say to change perceptions, because the kind of casual way that he said it makes it very difficult to pretend that you didn't know what you were saying or that that's not representative of who you are, which is what he has claimed subsequently. Yeah, I find it basically impossible to think that someone who has, you know, paid for their

words has been around the game for such a long time and just, you know, is a media personality, wouldn't have any awareness of what that word, you know, is and what it is intending to do. And I think that the general tenor of the reaction that people gave, which was to say he's trying to save his job, it seems difficult to not feel as if that's the case when I think that, you know, to give a full-throated apology in this instance, to say this was homophobic and this is not something that I want to represent me in the future, I'm going to take steps to make sure that it no longer represents me is, is a substantially different thing to say than what was said, because that's probably not a statement that's as likely to keep your job is I think mainly what it

boils down to. Right? Well, and it was perhaps an indication of just how wanting that apology was that several players in the Reds organization tweeted apologies directly to the gay community. And those were seemingly both more sincere and more on the mark, even though they themselves had nothing to apologize for. Obviously, Amir Garrett wasn't in the booth when this happened. And so I think that one of the things your piece did so nicely was to really center this around the community that needs to be both spoken to and encouraged within the confines of baseball, not only in the stands as fans, but in the locker room. You spend a good deal of your piece sort of reflecting on the life and legacy of Glenn Burke. And I'm curious, sort of what about this moment was evocative of his life for you?

I'm curious, what about this moment was evocative of his life for you? For those of our listeners who are less familiar with his legacy as a gay man in baseball, what about the experience of the locker room do you imagine player for the Dodgers. And he said that he wasn't necessarily ever trying to keep000 to get married, to which Burke reportedly replied, I guess you mean to a woman. And I think that, you know, he he was very specific in saying that he thought homophobia ended his career earlier than it would have, that he was traded from the Dodgers after refusing to be married. And that, you know, he was a highly regarded prospect, his numbers in the majors as someone, you know, of course, someone pointed that out in my piece, weren't you? But it's almost comical to think that that would be fully reflective of someone's ability when they were dealing with all the exigencies of homophobia. And, you know, in 1980, when he was in his last, his last, well, he didn't appear in 1980. But he was, he basically tried to catch back on with the A's after being traded and walking away from baseball in 1979.

And the A's manager, Billy Martin, introduced him with the same homophobic slur that Brenneman used. So I think that it's a moment that highlights where progress has, has not been made, right? I also mentioned, I think I did, it's hard to remember, Tyler Dunnington, a prospect for the Cardinals who retired in 2015, minor league player, claims that he, that anti-gay comments, both when he was in the Cardinals and as a college player before that affected him. So I think one of the things that's hard is it's really this overarching problem that is, you know, it begins before MLB, but it's not something that MLB has specifically been able to, you know, I think that it speaks for itself that there's not, there's not been a gay player who's ever come out openly in MLB and that the league lags behind other professional men's leagues and obviously far, far beyond women's leagues, which have plenty of gay players. men's leagues and obviously far, far beyond women's leagues, which have plenty of gay players. Right. And I think that's one of the things that the specific nature of this moment was discouraging because, you know, we got this glimpse into how Brenneman in a candid moment

when he did not worry about being observed or subject to the scrutiny of Twitter referred to gay people. And so I would imagine that for players, there would be a concern even as you might gain more acceptance sort of to your face. Although, you know, I think these experiences highlight that there is plenty of purposely directed homophobia at gay players, but that you also have to grapple with the concern of what's being said about you when you're not present, right? I would imagine that that is a very concerning and dispiriting, doesn't seem quite adequate to describe it, but concerning consideration for gay players and for gay fans who are given a public presentation of acceptance by the league,

but then clearly there are individuals employed by major league organizations that are not sort of embracing that acceptance and towing that line in private. Yeah, absolutely. I just think that it's a problem that goes beyond simply the booth or the field, or as you said, even just how people are going to be perceived by the general public, it's to be a gay player who's out in the league is obviously something that's going to bring a lot of scrutiny. And if a player feels that that is going to negatively affect their career, it's not surprising to me that they would, you know, not want to take that scrutiny, right? And yeah, I think disheartening is a good way to put it, because it's one of those things that

while MLB obviously can do more, it's, you know, it is a problem that people come into the minor leagues with. So it's something that as endemic as the problem is throughout, you know, just it's something that players have, you know, see a lot in their time coming up in the majors before then all of that. coming up in the majors before then all of that I think that it it shows that the solution has to be it has to be something that is it has to be something wide-ranging that people are not just feeling in one area you have to be feeling that this support is something that is not contingent on you know anything performance or being a particular type of person that was something Glenn Burke talked about that he thought because he wasn't he didn't fit the stereotypes people associated with gay people in the 1970s, he thought that it almost shielded him in a way. But then once he was basically, you know, it became more common knowledge, he basically said that he felt he went from being an integral part of a team's clubhouse

to much more circumscribed. And I think that until a player feels they have assurances that this isn't something that will negatively affect their career, it's hard to imagine that things change conscribed. And I think that until a player feels they have assurances that this isn't something that will negatively affect their career, it's hard to imagine that things change substantially. Yeah. And someone might say, well, Burke played in the 70s and Bill Bean, the only other MLB player who has come out after his career, he played in the 80s and the 90s. And now he works in this outreach ambassador role for MLB and has been on the podcast before. And, you know, now he works in this outreach ambassador role for MLB and has been on the podcast before. And you might say, well, societal attitudes have changed since that time. And so therefore, they probably have changed within clubhouses too. And maybe you

could say, well, it's just a Brenneman comment isn't necessarily in isolation emblematic of some larger problem. But as you pointed out in your piece, it's kind of an annual occurrence. It's sort of a pattern that these comments come out. And obviously, if we hear about one, that probably means there are many more that we never heard about. But could you recount the very recent history of some of these similar incidents and what the responses to those have been and whether you think it's been adequate or has helped at all? Absolutely. So I think in 2017, Kevin Pillar was suspended two games for using an anti-gay slur on the field. And it, you know, it was basically

something where you can, you know, sometimes you can read lips pretty easily. And it was pretty clear what he said in his, you know, to be honest, what he said was, it kind of echoes what Brenneman said. And this, he said, I'm going to use myself as an example of how there are words out there you can't use. It's not a word I ever use. It's just something that came out. Or it's something that just came out, which it's hard to, you know, it's saying slurs just isn't something that people do accidentally, I would say. So, you know, there's that. And then in 2018, there were all the resurfaced tweets of Sean Newcomb, Trey Turner, Josh Hader, that had not just homophobic, but in the case of I know, Hader had some pretty racist stuff. And then last year, George Springer was punished for calling, I think,

just in the dugout, or I'm not, he was referring to, sorry, he was referring to an umpire. And it wasn't actually clear if he, what his discipline was for using a different slur in the dugout, but it said the inappropriate behavior was addressed with Mr. Springer in the Astros. So it's something that when the punishments are happening in private, which I think is, it's not that these need to, it's not that we need to turn everything into a, you know, a public rebuke of everything about a player. But I think that if the punishment is going to stay private, and if the apology is not going to extend far beyond, this isn't me, and this isn't who I am, then it's hard to see how there's a dedication to

insisting that this isn't going to happen again. And, you know, I think it's a difficult question, not, you know, players aren't going to have this be a career ending thing. And I don't know that that's that, that it would be, I don't think that's reasonable, but that would be it. But it's also reasonable that they're producing value in a different way that a broadcaster is for a team. So I think that it's what needs to be taken into account is how the platforms of players are different, right? They're not chosen for their words, they're chosen for their play, but how they still have a responsibility. And I think that it's not just to do with homophobia. And I think that it's not just to do with homophobia. And I think it is intertied with these issues that we've been seeing in recent months of how players have to be better about, you know, and the league has to be better about showing itself to be continuously anti-racist and continuously dedicate itself to just, you know, movements of social justice like Black Lives Matter and how there was plenty of critique of MLB's response to that. So I think that what we're seeing here in a more overarching sense is kind of emblematic of how MLB continues to struggle with its place as a public institution

that has influence and power that people believe should be wielded responsibly. And, you know, power that people believe should be wielded responsibly. And, you know, it's hard to say how this can be done consistently and always better. But I think the fact that whenever something new pops up, and it's homophobia, or issues of MLB struggle with racism, things like that, it, I think it all links together into the league having inadequate responses. Let's talk about those responses for a second, because I think that these operate, I think there are two sort of constituencies that are being, in one case, underserved and sort of neglected, and in the other, inadequately addressed. So MLB has sort of two roles. They are an employer, right? So they have to deal with their players as employees who, you know, despite having a truly bizarre workplace, do operate in a

workplace. And then they are an organization that is at least supposed to be committed to a fan base and cultivating fans and creating an environment in which fans both want to watch baseball and feel good about being in the presence of other fans while watching baseball. So maybe we can take these in two parts because they're sort of related, obviously, but they are distinct from one another in a lot of ways. What do you think the league could be doing better when it comes to addressing sort of the employee part of this? So we know about Billy Bean's work, which Ben has mentioned, from an outreach perspective. But what beyond the sort of one and two game suspensions do you think from a player perspective would be useful in cultivating an atmosphere where the clubhouse treats everyone with respect,

regardless of orientation or sort of gender presentation? Well, I think that one template, if you're looking for it, is Sean Doolittle has obviously made himself involved in activism of all sorts, but the way that he and his wife have shown up for the LGBT community in all sorts of ways, through donations, through vocal support, through attending pride events, I think that that's very heartening to see a player do that. And I think that not, you know, I think obviously MLB wouldn't be in the business of pushing players into doing things that they don't want to in terms of support. But I think that emphasizing that these sorts of things do have value, and they do mean a lot to certain parts of the fandom can, I just think that encouraging players to, you know, not even

simply be more supportive, just be more, use their voices and the platforms that they do have to speak more in general, right? I think that even the abstract from the specific instance of homophobia, it's MLB players just in general, it's not a new thing to talk about, have been, they just tend to not be as outspoken as those of other leagues. And I think that in terms of outspokenness, it just means that a lot of times you don't see a player's personality as much. And I think that it just ties into letting players show us. I think that just having more players show support would be the best way to make this something that doesn't feel quite as pervasive. And is more diversity in the broadcast booth something that you think would help? I mean, it's not as if you need to be from a particular group not to know to use a slur

against that group. But even so, you know, a lot of baseball broadcasters look a lot like Brenneman or like Brenneman's father, who was also a broadcaster. And I know there have been some efforts to try to change that a little bit, but there still is a lot of uniformity there. And those are the people who are speaking for the sport in a sense, even if they are not working for a team, they're the ones who are kind of presenting the sport to the public. Yeah. I think that more diversity in the booth is something that the league needs just in general, because as you said, it's just very, very singular. There's a lot of the lack of diversity is, yeah, it's apparent. And it's not even something where you can point to just the way

that people are fed into the game and things of that nature. This is, it's all about selection in a very direct way. And I think that just having a broader diversity in, you know, of everything, of race, of gender, of sexuality, all of that in the booth is just going to contribute to having more varied and I would argue better because less, I think that monotony in the broadcast booth is something people have complained about for a long time and obviously that's not the major issue considering homophobia but I think that having more diversity is going in the booth is just simply going to make it a more enjoyable experience for the vast majority of fans who can feel more engaged by people who have more to speak about with them and aren't. And then, you know, it's,

it's not, there are many broadcasters, I would argue, probably most broadcasters probably wouldn't have done anything of this nature. And as you, as you've said, it's not, it's not simply about selecting someone of a certain group and assuming they'll have the right, the right ethics. It's about, I think it's just about making it a more integral part of the process of selection, thinking about how these people are going to speak to the various communities that watch and listen. So the Reds obviously won't have fans in the stands for a Pride Night at any point in the 2020 season, but presumably will for 2021 or hopefully will for 2021. And I'm curious what you think, what the organization can do over the next year and in the years to come to sort of help course

correct from this moment. We mentioned the player statements that came out immediately after Brenneman's use of a slur, but I don't think that that is probably sufficient to make fans feel comfortable that this is not a broader organizational issue, because while those statements are encouraging and while many of the words in the Reds apology, although not all of them, they managed to sneak in a bad, bad apology bit at the end of their otherwise, I think, pretty okay apology. You know, when we are given insight into private moments like this, we have to wonder how pervasive the sentiment is among other people, either on the broadcast side or within the organization. So if you were to advise the Reds about what the next, say, six to nine months, and then, you know, into the years to come after that should look like for them in terms of outreach to the community, what would you tell them that ought to look like? So I think that, you know, obviously Pride Nights are great. And that's something that it's awesome has spread throughout almost the entirety of the league at this point. But it is still ultimately asking the fans to come to you. And of course, that's generally

how spectator sports work. But I think that, you know, encouraging, encouraging and seeing if a player to might want to go to, if this is a thing next year, a pride parade in Cincinnati, something of that nature, I think that that would make a major step. And I think, in general, just having trying to more consistently show up and not simply be reactive, reacting to failures, but being proactive about things is really the next step. And do you think that long term, the importance of a player coming out remains really high, even in addition to all the other things that we've been talking about? It's not that that is a prerequisite for many of the things that

you have advised happening, but that would still be a really significant moment. And we've talked to Dale Scott, the former umpire who came out during his career, and he said that he felt he was pretty widely embraced after that point. And I wonder what you think the prospects are for a player doing that. You know, it's kind of hard to put pressure on any one player to shoulder that load and to be sort of that standard bearer and all of the media responsibilities, you know, that come with that in addition to everything else. But do you think that that will really be sort of the watershed that helps move things forward? Or do we not need that to happen in order for real progress to be made? Well, of course, a player feeling comfortable to do that would be incredible. And I really hope

that we are trending in that direction. And maybe this is optimism on my part, but I just hope that, you know, just on a societal level, we're moving towards a place where it seems less unthinkable to players. And I think that it would certainly have a major effect. But I think that it almost seems as if it's a circular, a circular thing, in some senses, for a player to feel comfortable coming out, they need to feel that they have the assurances that it will be safe, and their career won't be harmed by doing so. And it's almost, you know, it's, it feels like a lot to ask, you know, obviously, we're not asking anyone to make that leap. But I think that I think that seeing someone take that leap would be huge. But I think that the league continuing to make better and stronger efforts is, it feels as if

that's a bigger step down that path. Right now, I think that a player coming out would certainly force some steps to be taken more quickly than they might otherwise be taken, but there are still steps that should be taken right now. Yeah, it seems like there needs to be some additional groundwork laid to, as you said, assure whoever that first player is that they will not suffer consequences in their careers as a result of their life off the field. Well, Ginny, we really appreciate you joining us today. We will link to your piece at Baseball Perspectives so that those of you who haven't read it yet can take a look. You can follow Ginny on Twitter at Ginny Searle, and you can find all of her wonderful coverage of

transaction analysis and her great editing work over at Baseball Perspectives. Ginny, thank you so much. Thank you so much, guys. Okay, we'll take one more quick break. And we'll be back with Craig Edwards of Fangraphs to talk about the trade deadline and trade value. Just an empty world is all I have before me. have before me. I'd give anything if you were with me now. I'd trade all of my tomorrows for just one yesterday. I don't want to live without you. Anyhow. In the lead up to the trade deadline, this has been a busy week at Fangraphs with a very strange version of our annual exercise that is the trade value series.

And taking over that series and joining us today to talk about it is Craig Edwards of Fangraphs.com. Craig, how are you this morning? I'm doing pretty well. Awesome. Well, thanks for joining us. You're in an odd position because you have never done the trade value series before. You've certainly given feedback on the list as a staff member, but have not sort of shepherded that exercise through. So in some ways, this very strange year is normal for you because this is the first time you've done it, but obviously the trade market is in a strange spot. So before we dig in on any of the particular players that were ranked,

I'm curious what your process was. You don't have to betray any team confidences, but how did you go about assembling this list this year and how did it strike you as different than what Kylie or Dave Cameron might've experienced when they were in charge? Well, I think that in terms of what makes this year different is that we don't have a full half season of 2020 to go off of. I know that in the past, if you're unsure about a guy, it helps to, you know, have three months instead of three weeks. And so I think for a lot of players, then I'm just going to be relying on pre 2020 stuff, which isn't ideal. And then at the same time, when you're trading for a player, you're

generally trading, you know, those last two months of the season in a normal year are very important and teams place a premium on trading for guys in those last two months. But this season, it's only one month and the, you know, the financial situation and all the uncertainty going on in baseball makes it so that maybe teams aren't going to be placing a premium on that one month of production. So I opted to be a little bit more forward-looking than I would have, thinking more towards the winter and how players would be valued in 2021 and forward. And it's very difficult because even then, it looks like a lot of teams are going to be cutting back. And we don't exactly know what this winter is going to look like. And from the people I talked to, they said that the 0-3 guys, the players who are extremely cheap or still cheap in, still cheap in arbitration are going to be more highly coveted than even they were before. So, you know, I went through the process and tried to

figure out, you know, what the general value, you know, doing, you know, a little bit of math, looking at, you know, future war, future contract, that sort of thing, and came together with, you know, a rough list that I passed around to staff and people on teams and sort of used that feedback to figure out exactly how the players should be placed. And it's a very tough spot for comparing, you know, the younger guys to the veterans, because, you know, if you're talking about a player with, you know, 100 to 200 million or $300 million contract, you know, there's going to be fewer teams. But at the same time, are you going to have two or three very motivated teams versus, you know, 15 to 20 teams that would all be willing to trade for the, you know, less expensive player, but which one is

actually going to provide the higher value in those? It's a very tough distinction to make, particularly in this economic environment. Aside from directing traffic to Fangraphs.com, which of course is a noble goal, what do you see as the purpose of the trade value series? Just in any year, what do you learn from it or what does the author learn from it, what do you see as the purpose of the trade value series? Just in any year, what do you learn from it or what does the author learn from it and what do readers potentially learn from it? Well, I think that, you know, anytime you can go through and sort of just remind people generally, these are some of the best, you know, players in baseball and, you know, you know, players in baseball and, you know, sort of factor in how the financial aspect of the,

you know, the game works. I mean, you have the on-field and the off-field. And I think in general, people, you know, they don't always want to blend both. But I think that it's helpful when, in general, trying to figure out exactly where the game stands in terms of who are the best players. And people love trading season. I mean, whether it's at the trade deadline or in the offseason, you know, people want to know, you know, what is a good value, what, you know, which players would command the most in trade were they to be put on the market. the most in trade were they to be put on the market. And some of it's just, you know, they want hopefully to have players on their team be featured. And, you know, that's something that I think that it blends a lot of things together. But ultimately, finding another way to showcase who the best players are in the game and why they are is beneficial to everybody.

I think one thing that often surprises people when we do this exercise and the sort of poster boy for this in some ways has been Mike Trout, is that there are often a lot of very young guys, some guys who have yet to make their major league debuts, and we can talk about some of them in a moment, but then there are guys who are just so good

that despite having significant contracts attached to them, they managed to make this list, even though the number of teams that might be in a position to actually trade for a Mookie Betts or a Mike Trout or a Jacob deGrom, despite their tremendous talent and the value that their teams are getting on those deals is relatively small. So I'm curious how you thought about, and I kind of know the answer to this question, so I'm cheating a little bit, but I'm going to ask you because I think it'll be interesting to our listeners how you thought about those big contract guys as a group and sort of where they ought to be placed relative to one another because for the folks who have not yet dived into your series we have Betts and DeGrom

sort of at the back end of this ranking but still ranked and then you have Trout up toward the top although no longer in the the top spot for a of years now. So how did you think about those guys relative to one another and how they should be placed given the relative sizes of their deals? Yeah. I mean, when I talk to people, there is sort of the three big names with bigger contracts on the position player side were Trout and then Jelic and then Betts. And then you have DeGrom on the pitching side. And I think that it's hard to say, well, you know, a lot of teams aren't going to be in on these guys, but that's just the way it is.

You know, you would think that, oh, Mike Trout's available. Everybody's going to want Mike Trout. But the fact is, with the $350 million contract, not everybody is going to bid on, you know, DeSoto, Tatis, whatever type players. And Trout's projections, Trout's value is just so sky high through the roof that he still lands very high on the list. And, you know, you think about, you know, Trout being one and then, you know, Betts or Yellich or, you know, Bregman being, having the case for number two among the veteran players. I mean, there's still a sizable gap between the projections for Mike Trout and the projections for Mookie Betts and Yellich. And it's, you know, a couple wins every year. And over the course of four or five years, that adds up pretty quickly. And so,

you know, I did my best to sort of create like a present value and then create similar, you know, 10-year contracts and figure out exactly what it looked like, you know, the extra value beyond the contract that they were bringing. And for Betts, it was some value. And Betts was a guy that, got different feedback on in terms of where he might be placed. But in the end, I couldn't keep him out of the list just because it seemed like there was too much interest if he were to be traded. And the Dodgers got a pretty good deal on his contract. And for a guy like DeGrom, his contract is difficult because he has an opt-out in a couple of years. So there's really only a few years of control. I think that if he was going to

be a free agent, he might have moved up a little bit just because there's a little bit more downside when the player has an opt-out. Yeah. And Betts is an interesting case because he was just an honorable mention for us last year, in part because he was approaching free agency, and there was uncertainty about what his contract would look like. And now that we know, even though it's this huge deal, it allowed him to kind of creep back in because there's actually a defined answer to the question of what his deal will be worth. Yeah, and his deal is worth actually a lot more to the Dodgers than it is if you were traded because the Dodgers get like $100 million teens, whereas, but if he's traded, then all those deferrals come due and the contract isn't as good for the other teams, which ended

up pushing him back into the 40s. Yeah, that's kind of the irony of this whole series is that the guys who appear on the trade value list often don't get traded. I mean, Ben Clemens looked into that last year and found that it's quite rare for them to get traded shortly after they appear on the list, particularly the guys at the top of the list. And I assume that that just has a lot to do with the history that those guys have with their organizations

and what it would mean for a GM to kind of put their career on the line by trading one of these players. And so there are all these incentives not to do that. But do you think we occasionally learn something from real life trades that does inform trade value, whether it's someone gets traded for more or less than one would have expected? Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, the Mookie Betts trade can sort of inform what the going rate for a really good player with one year left.

And we see those trades occasionally, you know, on a lesser level, you know, Paul Goldschmidt a couple of years ago, you know, the last big deal that happened around the trade deadline for a guy whose trade value was pretty high like this, I think was probably Jose Quintana. for a guy whose trade value was pretty high like this, I think, was probably Jose Quintana. And the White Sox obviously ended up getting Eloy Jimenez, which turned out to be a pretty good deal for them. And I think that it's difficult to know because you're not comparing, oh, would this team trade Glaber Torres for Cody Bellinger one for one? I mean, that's not because that's just not accurate. You know, it's whether some team is going to put up a bigger package of players for somebody versus the other player.

And if you look up and down the trade value list, you know, universally, almost all of these teams are contending teams. And so contending teams aren't going to trade players that have a ton of value because they do have a ton of value and they're helping the team. Who were the players who sort of most surprised you when you were gauging front office reaction, either because front offices perceived them more highly or had less regard for them than you seem to? You know, Betts was one of the players that I was somewhat surprised that teams were still in on just because of how big the contract was.

Matt Olson was a guy that I moved way up from last year just because of, you know, everybody really, really seemed to like him. And I think, you know, towards the end of the list, Austin Meadows was also a guy that teams really like a lot more than, you know, what the projections say about him. prize say the average fan or the average non-fangraphs reader what would those be what would be the most controversial ones if you were just to go up to a kind of casual fan and say this guy is not even on the trade value list or look this guy is close to the top of the trade value list what would shock them the most you know i think that you know for for a guy like i think it's it's hard to to gauge the casual fan versus the i don't know if you want to call them the casual fan grass readers um you know i know you know in the comments you know are there any casual things i don't know i mean because in the comments uh the most surprising ones, I think, he was drafted last year.

He has maybe, I don't know, 100 professional plate appearances or something like that, just from the end of last season. In your conversations with front office types, and again, we don't have to portray any confidences, but I'm curious if you were able to glean just how active a deadline they anticipate we're having leading into this exercise, I think we all thought that it would be pretty quiet and that's probably what we'll end up ruling the day. But Kylie McDaniel reported that there are some data and video sharing agreements sort

of floating around for alternate site guys. So teams might have something better of an idea of what prospects who are in the 60-man player pool look like at this moment. So should you get a sense of how active your team contacts expect to be on the 31st? I mean, I think that a lot of these trades, you can expect to see a lot of players to be named later going back. I think that the video or whatever information the teams are going to get from the alternate site is going to help. But at the same time, there's only another 30 guys who are over there. And a lot of those guys are teams, you know, fairly highly rated prospects, and then who aren't going to get dealt. And then there's a bunch of guys who are maybe you know the type of younger relieverish

guys who who you could see going in in deals at the deadline because you know if you have a you know a starter reliever somebody who's going to help a team for a month maybe the value on that at this time is a young relieverish guy who you know know, maybe doesn't have the ability to be a starter, but can still contribute, you know, for multiple years for a team. Like those are the type of players that are more likely to be moved as opposed to any, you know, blockbuster type deal. And then you also have the fact that right now in the National League, everyone is contending except for maybe the Pirates, maybe the Giants. I think there's a little more up and down in the National League, everyone is contending except for maybe the Pirates, maybe the Giants. I think there's a little more up and down in the American League where the playoff field is getting a little more clear.

But you're not going to have very many teams that can sell right now, and that's going to make things a little bit tough at the deadline. Sounds like some young member of your household is pretty disappointed about this trade deadline. Yes, very, very disappointed and also with the closed door to my office. So what do you think the optimal behavior would be then? Because as you're saying, a lot of teams are close to contention. On the other hand, you have this expanded playoff format and that changes the odds for some teams, even if you do get into the playoffs. And then I guess there's sort of the subjective question about whether winning in this season is actually worth as much as winning in a regular season in terms of

fan perception or ticket boost or however you want to quantify that. So how would you, Craig Edwards, the GM, be approaching these next couple of weeks? I'd probably want to get started on the winter. I think that there are teams that are going to be looking to cut payroll. And if there's a guy who maybe has a higher contract and is a free agent at the end of 2021 or 2022, and that's a contract that you're willing to take on, then that's the type of trade that you should be trying to make right now. Because if you can get a good player for a very low cost, that's going to be helpful for you in the future. And you're not going to have

to give up the prospect value that you might have in the past. And it certainly seems like teams, even more than now, or more than in the past, are really going to be holding on tight to the prospects that they have if the ownership is mandating a cut in payroll because you have to have those guys. Yeah, and there's only a month left in the regular season, assuming everything goes well and nothing shortens that. There's just a lot less baseball left than there typically is at the trade deadline. And so you're getting less if you're acquiring someone who's only under team control for that season. You're getting a month and the playoffs in the best of circumstances. So it's just not really going to improve your odds all that much or make you that much better in terms of expected wins. So I guess what you would be willing to give up for that is going to be correspondingly small.

is going to be correspondingly small. Right. And if you're talking about, you know, what you're expecting for, you know, a month left from an average player is, you know, I don't know, three tenths of a win, which means that your expected ban is between one tenth and five tenths of a win. And it's just a lot harder to make an impact during that time. And it's also harder to have the expected production. You know, a lot of players have good Aprils, but at the end of the season, their stats look pretty normal. And a lot of players have bad Aprils, and the stats at the end of the season look pretty normal.

But if you have a trading deadline that comes with 27 days left in the season, the expectation for what you're going to beginning is a lot more uncertain. You answered this at points in your copy throughout the rankings, but I'm curious, who are the guys who you think are most likely to either move up or down dramatically when we do this exercise again next year, hopefully in July as it normally would be. You know, I think that, you know, you're looking at Jordan Alvarez, you know, when he had, like, you know, you factor in that he has knee problems and you factor in that, you know, he's maybe injury prone, but like you don't completely factor in being, being gone for the season. And,

you know, I, I think he's a guy who, who could move either way up or way down because, uh, you know, there's, there's certain players that have a lot more uncertainty with, with how they're going to do. I think that Wander Franco is a guy that a lot of people might have had you know in the top six maybe even top five if there had been a minor league season this year but uh with that uncertainty it pushed him just outside uh the top ten i mean if talking about guys moving moving down you're you have to look at the guys who only have two or three years before free agency you know know, like Aaron Judge is going to be a free agent after 2022. And so he's only going to have a year left when we do this next year. And Rafael Devers, Jose Ramirez are our guys, Jack Flaherty too,

who are going to move down because they're about to lose, you know, a third of their team control. And I think that in terms of guys moving up, in addition to Franco, it'll be really interesting to see what happens in terms of Bo Bichette and his injury. Cause I know there's a lot of people who are very high on him. Gavin Lux, you know, is, is another player who could move up, but we're not really sure. And then that pitchers, I mean, Shane Bieber was ranked highly last year, but he moved into the top 10 this year with a strong finish. Jack Flaherty didn't make the top 50. He made honorable mention last year, and he moved way up with his second half. And I think

that with the pitchers, there's a lot more opportunity to move way up if you can sort of increase the level of certainty that you have about the production right now. So I'm going to spoil your top trio here if I can spoil something that is already published on the internet but you ended up with and I won't say their names in any particular order but Fernando Tatis Jr. and Ronald Acuna Jr. and Juan Soto are your top three. And those are guys who get compared a lot and talked about a lot because they are so young and so exciting and so charismatic and sort of the faces of the let the kids play movement. And, of course, Soto and Acuna are outfielders in the same division and they often get matched up. So how did you try to distinguish between all of those excellent options?

How do you figure out how to rank those three guys? I mean, that's one of those things where talking to people in front offices wasn't as much of a help because there were differences of opinion depending on who I talked to. I think if you're looking at Juan Soto, the bat is just already there and complete. And so if you're a team that wants that really high floor, and that's what you have with Juan Soto, then you're going to prefer him to a guy like Tatis, who has been lighting things up, but there's a little bit more reason to be wary that it's not quite 100% in terms of what you're going to get for the next

five years or so. And Soto will get paid a little bit more than Tatis, and that factors in a little bit. But ultimately, Tatis' current ability to play shortstop, the fact that his errors or his defense is down because of throwing errors, which you would think is something that could be corrected considering he has a very strong arm, that ceiling made it, you know know it pushed him over Soto for me and I think that with Soto being a corner outfielder who defense and base running maybe will decline a little bit even as as soto's potential offensively gets better it creates

a bit more of a ceiling for him than it does for for tatis and then acuna i think that he's he's got short shrift i guess a little because uh he's he's been well known for longer a little bit. His projections are just as good or nearly as good as both Soto and Tatis, but he's more of a known quantity. Obviously, he's probably going to move into a corner permanently at some point soon, maybe right now, but he should still be a plus player on defense and base running. And his contract is just astronomically beneficial for the Braves. And that's not a tiebreaker. It's something that really, really sets him apart from Tatis and Soto because the Braves have team control for eight years, which is twice as long.

And those 26, 27, 28, 29, I mean, those could be his best seasons. And that's just an incredible value for the team. And lastly, non-trade value related question, is there anything that has particularly piqued your interest from an analytical perspective about this strange season, whether it's the schedule or the injury rates or the level of offense or the strike zone or home field advantage or any of those things? Is there something that you're keeping your eye on or that you've been intrigued by thus far? I don't know that there's anything in particular. I've just missed baseball. And so it's been good to watch it. Although I have found that I'm now like, I'm really bad at trying to figure out how far a ball is going to go based on the sound

on the bat. Because, you know, when there's a lot of fans and a lot of noise like when a player hits it really hard you really hear it and now that's happening basically on every single plate appearances you know when somebody hits a fly ball 300 feet like i'm like oh wow that one went far and it only went 300 feet and um i don't know exactly how to realign my ears to hear that. Yeah, I've been struggling with that also. Well, Craig, folks can check out the Trade Value series, both today's top 10 and the rest of the installments that have come up over the last week. And check out your writing at Fangraphs and find you on Twitter at Craig J. Edwards. Craig, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you.

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