Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1614: The Most Difficult Free-Agent Contracts Draft

Episode Date: November 10, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about Jeff Luhnow’s lawsuit against the Astros and Max Muncy’s and Joe Kelly’s comments about MLB’s permeable postseason quasi-bubble, then conduct their sixth annual free-agent-contract over/under draft. Audio intro: The Clash, "All the Young Punks (New Boots and Contracts)" Audio outro: The Electric Prunes, "Sold to the Highest Bidder" Link to […]

Everybody wants a bummer ride on the rock and roller coaster. And we went out and got our name in small print on the poster. A costly guard up manager, though he ain't the mafia. A contract is a contract when the girl out on the go. Hello and welcome to episode 1614 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs, presented by our Patreon supporters. I'm Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by ESPN's Sam Miller. Hello, Sam. Hello. Hi.

Hi. One of the reasons I was sort of pessimistic about this offseason was the prospect of relitigating the sign stealing scandal again. But I was not expecting actual litigation, which is now what's happening. So Jeff Lunau sued the Astros on Monday morning for breach of contract. And he is alleging that he should not have been fired for cause. that he should not have been fired for cause. He should have been fired just like most GMs are fired, where they're entitled to whatever their contract called for. And because he was fired for cause,

the Astros got out of the money that he was owed, which he says in the suit is a lot of money. According to this, they signed him to a contract in 2018 for more than $31 million, plus unspecified performance bonuses and unspecified profit-sharing interests scheduled to vest from 2021 to 2025. So he's saying that this cost him more than $22 million in guaranteed compensation and additional benefits. He is also saying that the penalties that the Astros were ultimately subject to were the product of a negotiation between Manfred and Astros owner Jim Crane, that it wasn't that Manfred imposed these penalties, it's that he sort of went back and forth with Crane on what would be acceptable. Don't know if that's true or not, but I know that MLB is probably not pleased with this. So we've seen Cora get rehired. We've seen Hinch get hired by the Tigers.

Luno seems to be the one who is out in the cold, and I guess he is just burning all the bridges, which maybe were already burned. And he's just saying, well, if I'm not going to get my job back or a job back, I'm just going to sue them for all they're worth and maybe also make a headache for Rob Manfred, which it seems like he has a grudge against him. That's a lot of money that they gave him. Did you know that he was making that much money? I did not know when I saw that number. Yeah, I didn't know that GMs broadly were. know that GMs broadly were like I knew that Friedman had gotten a huge deal and that that was sort of seen as the um like the most uh kind of prestigious contract that a GM had had I didn't

realize that just like I mean you know not like Jeff Luno is like uh you know considered replacement level or anything but I didn't know that just like you know GMs were making 31 million dollars now apparently no I don't know how many years that's know, GMs were making $31 million now, apparently. No, I don't know how many years that's for. And that was coming off a World Series winning season. And that includes bonuses and profit sharing. So I don't know exactly how he's getting to that number, but it's still a big number. Yeah, I kind of did a double take too.

Like, yeah, Friedman had to be recruited. He was swooped in on by a much larger budget team. And so, and that kind of shocked everybody at the time, even. Like, the amount that he was given seemed to be, like, a new level. But Luna was just there on the team. Presumably, they, you know, like, you just wouldn't, I don't know. I wouldn't have guessed. I would have guessed.

If I had guessed, I would have guessed 3.25 million a year for three guaranteed years. That's what I would have guessed. 31 million. whenever it was last month when luno did his first interview where he broke his silence and insisted again that he didn't know about the sign stealing scheme and then there was an article in the athletic where unnamed mlb sources came back and said that he did or that there was strong evidence that he did and a lot of this seems to hinge on like whether he read his emails fully that like some of the emails had info about this in them at some point and maybe he didn't read the whole thing like it doesn't paint him as a great boss if he didn't know that this was going on i guess there are degrees of culpability here and it seems like he was dismissed in part at least for just not making clear what the expectations were or what the new rules were and

just not telling the players or the field staff what they could or couldn't do. So he's trying to clear his name maybe a little bit. He's trying to claw back this money, which I guess makes sense given how much it apparently is. And maybe he's also trying to make Manfred and MLB look bad. And it would not shock me if there are things about MLB's investigation that the league would prefer not come to light because it seems like they were eager to get it over with. A lot of people were not happy with how it was resolved. I think it's understandable that players were not suspended, but I think a lot of people did not understand that they were not suspended. So I don't think MLB wants this to come up again and for another offseason to be about the science deal scandal and for who knows what documents to come up during discovery here. So I wonder if he's just angling for a settlement here or maybe that's the most likely outcome so that they don't actually have to air all of this.

that's the most likely outcome so that they don't actually have to air all of this. Apparently, it's not clear whether this can proceed in court or whether it would have to be subject to an arbitration according to the terms of Luna's contract. But it seems like he's either given up on getting a job in baseball or he's just ready to sort of fire whatever ammunition he has here. And I'm sure the league would like to silence him if possible. You think that this rules out the possibility of him getting a different job in baseball? I don't think it helps. And I think he was already the least likely. I mean, the other two guys, Hinch and Cora, have already gotten those jobs. It didn't seem like people were lining up to give Fluneau a job the way that they

were lining up for hinge and cora and it just seems like a lot of people don't like luno and and they like hinge and maybe they like cora too and so they were willing to forgive i just mean you keep sort of like framing this as burning the bridge and yeah i'm trying to figure out whether you think there actually was no bridge and or whether you think that if there was a bridge that this would actually burn anything i think there might have been a bridge to some sort of position i don't know whether someone would have just given him a gm job on day one but i think he could have gotten some special assistant job or something and some less public visible role, and then maybe worked his way back into a more prominent position when people's memories faded.

I think that could have happened. This just seems to me like, I don't know, bringing this up again. I guess you could say if he's trying to assert his innocence or that he didn't know about the extent of this, then he's trying to clear his name. He's trying to make himself more palatable. extent of this, then he's trying to clear his name. He's trying to make himself more palatable. But it seems to me that just going back into the breach here and suing and suing his former team might make another team that would consider hiring him less likely to do that. And while this litigation is going on, you're not going to hire him while this case is proceeding, probably. And

I don't know how long this will take to straighten out. So I think his bridges were more burned than the others to begin with, but this probably burns whatever was left at least for now. He could probably just switch into some other industry and get a job if he wanted to. Or if he was making this much money, then maybe he just doesn't need to get a job for a while. He's probably fine. Yeah. Can you imagine $31 million? Can you just imagine how much money that is?

I can't imagine working any job long enough to get $31 million. Like any job I had, any job that I had, if you got me up to, there is a point that I would quit working, and that point is probably way less than $31 million. In other news that MLB probably does not want aired, I talked a little bit last time about the Justin Turner decision and the lack of discipline there. Don't know if you have anything to add on that subject, but it seems to me that it was kind of curious how MLB pivoted almost about-faced from almost entirely blaming Turner in its first statement to being a little more measured and taking some responsibility on itself for Turner's conduct or their, I guess, failure to prevent

Turner from doing what he did in the statement that they released on Friday. And that might just be because they conducted an investigation and maybe some things would have come to light that would have reflected poorly on MLB2. Possibly the decision not to pull him from the game in the second inning when the inconclusive test came back, which we've talked about. But also there have been some comments by a couple of Dodgers in recent days that really cast into question the whole concept of the bubble. recent days that really cast into question the whole concept of the bubble. And I've been talking about it and referring to it as a quasi-bubble on the show because it wasn't really an actual NBA-style bubble. But I think we were told that it was maybe more secure, more impermeable than it actually was. And that was one of the reasons why I think someone said, Zach Binney, our former epidemiologist guest, said that maybe it was acceptable for them not to pull him from that game because they'd been in this quasi bubble and because they hadn't had a positive test for a while. just defending Turner or going after MLBs, what he seemed to think was unfairly targeting Turner, which I don't agree with. But Muncy did say, unfortunately, somehow he got it in a bubble that was supposed to be controlled by MLB. Yet at the same time, there was MLB staff,

there were reporters out on the golf course, walking outside of the secure zone, doing all of this stuff they weren't supposed to do. And Justin pays the price for it. And now they want to put it all on Justin. Joe Kelly went off at greater length about this. And he said, it makes sense that someone got the virus. It's a secure zone. But it was the first time in my life I have felt insecure. I was insecure in the secure zone. It wasn't called the bubble. It was called the secure zone for people who don't know. We were at a nice hotel, a beautiful hotel in Las Colinas, and there is a golf course there. And I happen to have a room, a villa on the 18th green, which is pretty crazy because

it's a secure zone. But my room, I would say, is no more than 20 yards from the green. It's still open to the public. So it's a bubble, except golfers are hitting golf balls next to my window and then crossing the secure zone tape line. People are yelling at them and the golfers are yelling back saying, no, I'm going to get my ball. It wasn't as secure as one might think because like I said, there was still a golf course open to the public 20 yards away from us every single day. of golf clubs in the hotel. I know for a fact that people staying in the hotel were playing golf that weren't baseball players. It was media. It was on-field talents, umpires. They were still allowed to play golf, et cetera. And he also added hotel staff. They come deliver room service.

They're supposed to leave it at the door. And numerous times they come in the room and deliver your food. And these hotel staff members go home every single day to their family and not stay at the hotel. So how is it a secure zone or bubble? We got lucky, I feel like. And then he said, if we weren't aware as players to try and stay away from getting it and we let our guard down, I'm sure it could have been more than just one. So I wasn't in the quasi bubble. I can't speak to the conditions there.

But it sort of seems like if they had tried to come down hard on Justin Turner and really scapegoat him, you know, whether fairly or even more so than he clearly deserved, then the Dodgers, who seem to all very much like Justin Turner and have his back maybe to an even greater degree than they should, probably would have come out firing and sort of delegitimize the whole quasi bubble enterprise so i would not be surprised if that was one reason why mlb backed off a bit and said you know it's it's our fault too what a fun league this is right now we we just transitioned seamlessly from uh cheating gm shaking down the league because they don't want to spend another off season on the cheating scandal to the uh to the league's uh uh you know fig leaf updated press reliefs because they don't want people looking too closely at their bubble yes i don't know though i mean people aren't mad at justin turner for getting covid they're mad at him for coming back onto the field and then yes taking

off his mask when he was standing next to other humans. Like, it doesn't really feel like how close the golfers are to Joe Kelly's balcony is relevant to whether Justin Turner, you know, like infuriated people with his actions once he realized that he was infected with the deadly disease, right? Yeah, I don't think it makes what Turner did any less bad, but I think maybe MLB could have come in for greater criticism if they had tried to say it's all Turner, it's just this rogue player, when they didn't maybe acknowledge that he was in conditions where it would have been more prudent to take him out of

that game before it even got close to that point. So I think the fact that maybe it wasn't as secure as it was presented or as some assumed could make MLB look a little more rash in just letting it even get to the point that he could come out or he could stay in the game for as long as he did. I can't remember if I asked you this, but do you think if Justin Turner had been on second base when the test result came in, they would have pulled him off the field? I kind of think not. I kind of think they would have waited until he got back. And I guess in fairness, he's probably not going to infect anyone when he's standing out on second base, but you never know. I mean, it seems like there was not much or any on-field transmission when they're out in the air and probably not standing quite next to each other maybe the risk is a little lower than when you're off the field but he should have

been it just it would have been so visible like the way that they ended up doing it where it was between innings and then like either people didn't notice that he was gone at first or no one quite knew why he was gone or what the sequence of events was and then all of a sudden the game was over but if they had come out in the middle of the game and told him too because he wouldn't known why he was getting pulled from the game so there would have been a big discussion maybe an argument of some sort about it it would have been very visible so i think they would have been really pretty desperate to avoid that. All right. Well, we can transition, I guess, from litigation and suing over the sign scaling scandal and suspensions or non-suspensions because of COVID to the free agent market.

Is there anything you want to get to before we do our topic today? No. All right. Well, we are here for our sixth annual free agent contracts draft. And as we have recounted, you completely cleaned my clock last year to such a degree that if you had just broken even, you still would have beaten me handily because I had one of the worst drafts that we've ever done, probably. It was a disaster. But the way this has always worked and will continue to work is that we will take a list of free agents ranked

and with their contracts estimated. MLB Trade Rumors is what we have been using lately. And we will try to find places where we disagree with that list. And we will take overs or unders. So if someone is projected for a certain amount and we think they will make more than that, we will take that player and say over. And then whatever the difference ends up being, if we're right, if they do end up making more than that estimate, then that amount is credited to our ledger.

And the same if it's under, if we think they're going to underperform the projected contract. And if nothing happens or if we're wrong, if we guess in the wrong direction, then that counts against us, right? That's how I ended up in negative territory last year. And at the end, we just add up all the overs and unders and see if we picked in the right direction. And last year, I think the last couple of years, we drafted eight players apiece. Eight players apiece? Yeah. And is it four? Did we say that it has to be four on each side? Is that a ring a bell?

No. No, I don't think so. Okay. No locations there. And it's like you get five million for being right and then you get oh right that was a new wrinkle last time right yeah i think it was yeah yeah so i guess so i forget what the details were but yes i think you get something just to be right at all and then you also get the amount that you're right by added to your total. All right. And that'll all be tracked.

And it's in the Google sheet that John Chenier keeps for us, which I will link to. And this is a tough year to do this because I don't think anyone really knows what this market is going to look like. But everyone assumes it's going to be bad. bad and so going into this like i wasn't even sure if we should do this draft again because if it was just going to be taking the under on everyone and then like you know having some impulse to like celebrate getting it right when when you know if it's just players getting underpaid or getting less than they would have been worth in previous off seasons so i don't want to be like taking a victory lap about that all off-season. But I think MLB Trade Rumors obviously has factored that into its estimates.

And I don't know about you, but I do have some overs here. I'm not going all under. So hopefully it won't be too depressing. Yeah. I think there are plenty that i would have overs on normally there's so many i would have overs on normally yes that my mind is just not going to be able to adjust enough so i definitely am still almost my first response to every one of these is over and then i have to remind myself why these are so low in the first place right and there has been i guess one somewhat prominent free agent signing one player who was on this list has been, I guess, one somewhat prominent free agent signing. One player who was on this list has been signed. Robbie Ray went to the Blue Jays for one year and $8 million, which isn't over because MLB Trade Rumors had him at one year and $6 million.

So it's possible to go over. And this market as a whole is pretty bottom heavy, I guess, or pretty evenly distributed. The top of the market. There are a few marquee guys. Obviously, Mookie Betts could have been on this market, but signed the expansion. So there's not as much top tier talent as last year's, let's say, but I think there's more depth. But I think even more players will be added to the free agent list as players get non-tendered sometime soon, probably. I don't know how arbitration is going to work this year.

That's a whole mess because arbitration is based on comps and what players got paid before. And this year, there's a short season, so you can't compare counting stats. So there doesn't really seem to be a method that everyone has agreed on for how arbitration is going to work this year. So that's just going to be a bit of a mess too. Anyway, we'll see. But let's get to the draft, I guess. Just curious, like, is it your hunch that collectively, I guess, collectively, do you think that MLB trade rumors looks, I don't know. I'm asking you to maybe give away too much, but are you in a state where you feel like contracts are in free fall this year or that there's still resilience? Because the most, the best evidence we have for resilience

probably is that Mookie Betts got his extension. And that was a huge commitment by a major league team that there will be baseball and fans that they will keep selling tickets in the somewhat near future. And that was not a small investment, right? I mean, they they put, you know, almost half a billion dollars behind the idea that baseball is coming back in some way. And that's the biggest investment that any team is is going to make or put behind a prediction on the future of baseball, like Trevor Bauer will get paid plenty, but no one's going to be asked to put $400 million behind their belief on the future of baseball the way that the Dodgers did put $400 million behind it.

And then on the other hand, I feel like the Brad Hand day was the day that everybody went, oh my gosh, like it's an earthquake. Because Brad Hand, so correct me if I get any of this wrong. I haven't been following it that closely, but Brad Hand, Cleveland's closer had a $10 million club option with a $1 million buyout. And Cleveland waived him in the hopes that someone would basically take him so that they wouldn't have to pay the $1 million buyout. So they had already decided that he was not worth, you know, $9 million for a one-year deal. And then they hoped that someone would claim him so that they wouldn't have to pay the million dollars. And nobody did, which suggests that nobody else thought that he is worth a $10 million one-year deal.

And Brad Hand, just to be clear, is an elite. I mean, he's like a top five reliever in baseball probably right now he has been for five years he's been near the top uh of the league's relievers he would have been an all-star for the fourth consecutive year this year he uh had a 1.37 fip this year he's as good as they come he's 30. And we know that closers who are as good as they come, generally speaking, if they're not super old, are looking at somewhere between three and five years and somewhere between probably 50 and $90 million. And so probably in a normal world with Brad Hand as a free agent, we would be talking about, I don't know, four years,

68 maybe for him. Maybe. And instead he cleared waivers. Nobody would take maybe the, well, do we know for sure that nobody wanted him at one year and 10 million? Maybe they just knew that they wouldn't be able to make it, put a trade together. I don't know. What do you make of that? Yeah. I mean, it seems like no one really wanted him And now he's a free agent. I guess like, maybe he'll end up getting something similar to what his option was for, but probably not much more than that, I guess one would have to assume. We have talked about this in the past, but sometimes players clear waivers, not because nobody wanted them, you know, wants to pay him what he was owed on his contract, but because they knew dollars is like outrageously low for recent standards of elite closers yeah i mean he lost some velocity i could see why there might be some nitpicks that you can make but that was pretty concerning yeah and when it was just cleveland not exercising the option then you could think, well, it's Cleveland. They're super cheap.

They're trying to trade Francisco Lindor like they haven't really invested in that team. But when it's everyone who has a crack at him and doesn't take him, yeah, that's worrisome. So I don't really know what to expect. It seems like a lot of teams could maybe have different evaluations of what's the likelihood that we're going to get a full season in next year and that fans will be in the stands. There's some good news about vaccines. Is that a reason to be optimistic? I don't know. Different teams suffered to varying degrees this year because of the lack of attendance. So there's just so much uncertainty, but it seems like everyone is pretty united that it's going to be bad. So we'll see how bad. All right. So I don't know who's starting here. You won last year. I guess that gives you the right to choose. Is that how we do this? I don't know how we do this. All right. Random number generator. Is that how we do this?

I don't know how we do this. All right, random number generator. I'm going to pick a number between one and two, and I've generated, and you pick a number. I say a number. One or two? Two. It was one. All right, I go first.

All right. I will take, well, let's see. I'm trying to remember how I even play this game. Last year, I remember I took Garrett Cole with the first pick, thinking that probably it would all be won or lost because his contract would be so much bigger than everybody else's, that there was a pretty good chance that the prediction would be off by a lot, by like $60 million in one direction or the other. Simmons at 12 million, for instance. Well, maybe he'll get two years and 20 million, or maybe he'll get one year and 10. And I can try to guess which one, but there's a very limited upside there. But I figured, you know, when it's a Garrett Cole predicted to make 300 million, you're probably going to get like a pretty big margin there and you could rack up the points. Anyway, I did that and it worked. So this year there isn't a 300 million dollar player here. I'm going to go

with, I'm going to just, I'll try this. I'm going to take the under on Trevor Bauer. Yeah, that's going to be my first pick too. Bauer is predicted at four years and 128 million dollars. Of course, Bauer has in the past suggested that he would be interested in short-term deals for as much of his career as possible so that he could maximize his year-to-year salary, kind of basically betting on himself that he saw an inefficiency in the way that players took longer deals that cost them year-to-year. And so if he thought to do that anyway, he might not take a four-year deal at $128 million, he might not take a four-year deal at $128 million as this prediction goes. But furthermore,

if there was a year that you would not want to lock in a lower average annual value, it would be the year when teams are all panicking about COVID. So I'm going to just guess that Trevor Bauer will go out there, be willing to take a $240 million deal if it shows up uh but that he will also be willing to take a one year 36 million dollar deal if uh if that's all that they're um you know if if that's what he's looking at yep i was gonna do the same thing and with any other year with any other personality i guess you would project more than this probably, or at least this much. You would not take the under on 4-128 coming off the season that he had. Of course, it was only a two-month season, but still, is he the leading candidate to win the Cy Young Award? He's certainly one of the leading candidates. He thinks he is. Well, yes, that's true. But he might actually be, and at

worst, he'll be a second or third or something. And coming off that sort of season, normally you're looking to cash in. This would be great timing for him in most years, but it is this year. So I don't know. It would go against the history of free agency, basically, to say, I will take a one-year deal after having like the best possible platform year. But because it's Bauer, because he has said that thing about one-year contracts going year to year, and his agent said something fairly recently saying that like despite

his comments about only taking one-year deals, like they're open to any type of deal, which you would expect, like why limit yourself if someone wants to make an exorbitant offer? But there's some possibility that he will actually do that or take a short-term deal just because of, you know, the market, as you said. And I don't know, like maybe teams will want to see what happens if there is some kind of crackdown on foreign substances as has been in the news again lately and he had that huge spin rake spike maybe they would want to wait and see you know what happens so yeah i could see it being fewer years and less money so i think that's a

good pick and there aren't really a lot of other places to go for like a huge strike here for one of us because there are only what three contracts on this list that are projected for 100 million or more and I don't know to me at least the next two don't look wildly out of line or anything so I don't know that there is a place where I could stand to make as much as you could potentially make with the under on Bauer. I guess I will take the under on Stroman at 4-68, and I don't feel great about that, but I think the fact that he missed the entire year because he had a calf injury and then he opted out, and so there's some uncertainty there he also has a qualifying offer attached and as we speak he has not actually rejected it yet yeah no that's a good that's a

good strategy always anybody who who's like uh potentially on the fence about a qualifying offer right you're i think your only good pick last year turned out to be jose abreu right taking the qualifying offer even though it was less than the average annual or more than the average annual value of what you i can't remember anyway yeah that was that he ended up signing the extension but oh yeah that's what it was yes he immediately signed the extension that would have made you the loser but yes because there you go yeah soman, I think he probably will reject it, but I don't know. He's on the borderline. He has to think about it.

Like clearly he is thinking about it because he has not yet rejected it as we record on Monday afternoon. So some potential that he just accepts it, in which case this works out for me. And even if he doesn't accept it, then he does have the qualifying offer attached. So there's some free agent compensation there. And he missed the whole season. So there's some question marks about how he will be in 2021. So, you know, and even if he doesn't want to take the qualifying offer,

he could, I suppose, still take a one-year deal for a little bit more than the qualifying offer just to demonstrate that he's still healthy and good and then in a better off season go for the bigger long-term deal so stroman yeah yeah he yeah yeah all right good good uh good pick especially with the qualifying offer i'm gonna take an over here i uh i feel like i do want to have some overs and i guess i'll take the over on marcelo zuna okay who is predicted here at four years and 72 million dollars and you know i mean he came within 13 points of winning the triple crown he's is he 30 yet he he's not 30 yet he

will be by um wednesday but he's not right now. He's still 29, which makes him young for a free agent. I feel like in a normal year, we'd be talking about maybe five and 125 for him. It's just impossible to know what any of this is going to do. But let's just say that in a normal year, I would expect a lot more than $18 million average annual value. But even in this year, four years might be a little light. I could see him getting five, especially coming off that year with his age and with the hope, I think, of a universal DH around the league in the somewhat near future. And also you wonder whether maybe the bargain that teams and players make this year

is that the salaries are going to be a little lower because of the uncertainty of 2021, but the length might be a little longer. Like that might be the bargain. Like teams might be willing to give a little on length as a salve to players that are really frustrated that they are not giving on dollars. Yeah, the thing about him that gives me some pause because he had an incredible offensive year, but

he had to settle for a one-year deal last offseason, or at least that's how it was often described, that he had to settle for one. And so whatever concerns teams had about him then, maybe not entirely allayed by a really great couple months. And I think the defense, like he worst outfielders again this year and in limited time because he DH'd most of his games. So that, I guess, tells you what the Braves thought about him. So I guess, actually, he played such a limited amount in the outfield that he wasn't actually listed as one of the worst, but he was still in negative territory, according to StatCast. So all of that, but I think there were questions answered on offense because he was one of these guys who had great StatCast metrics and hit the ball really hard, but also hit

a bunch of grounders and no one was really sure if the expected stats for him were actually what you should expect. And this year he did great and he hit more balls in the air and he was fantastic. So right-handed bat not too old yeah in a normal year you would probably expect more than this before the season i said something along the lines that it would be very hard for me to to have a that 60 games was not enough for me to really dramatically reassess a player especially especially a veteran player, no matter what happened, good or bad. And that I felt like there were very few players whose public perception was

going to change very much based on what happened in 2020. If it was a bad year, we'd say, oh, it was a short sample and a weird year. And if it was a really good year, we'd say, well, it was a short sample. And so there might be some adjustments made to what we think of players. But for the most part, I thought that whatever we thought of them coming into 2020, we would still think of them going out of 2020. And I was, I mean, I think I was wrong about that for myself personally. There are lots of players that I think a lot differently about now than I did three months ago. You mentioned that teams might think that the same problems that they had with Ozuna coming into the year, they might feel like he didn't answer them because it was only 60 games.

Do you feel like there are a lot of players whose career trajectories or public perceptions have changed dramatically based on those two months? I think so. I think probably more in the positive direction. It seems like if you had a really great year, maybe people are more inclined to believe that. Whereas if you had a lousy year, then people will just write it off as, oh, it's weird. It's small sample. It's 2020, which doesn't really make sense, I don't think, unless you think it's more likely for certain players to be disproportionately affected by the stress and the lack of fans in the stands, the psychological aspects of things.

But that's kind of my sense is that people are just more willing to write off a bad year and treat a good year as actually indicative of an improvement. All right. I think I will take an over as well. I'm going to take Marcus Semyon over. He is at one year, 14 million on the MLB trade rumors list here. I think that on the one hand, he had a really lousy year heading into this, but it's what we were just saying. He had a bad two months, and I think he's sort of viewed as maybe kind of like a one-year wonder because he had such a great 2019, and he was third place in MVP voting. But it wasn't really a one-year thing because he was really good in 2018 too, at least on defense. You know, according to the metrics, he's become a better defender over time and maybe not so much in 2020. But again, you know, two months of defensive stats, who knows? So he's been like just like a slightly below average hitter like every year of his career basically except for 2019.

And so, yeah, that's probably not who he is, but he too is fairly young. He just turned 30 in September. And if you believe the defensive stats, he's been, you know, either an above average player or an average player or like a superstar over the past four years or so. He's been pretty consistently good, and he's young enough, and he did not get a qualifying offer, which might make you say, well, that means the A's didn't think he had much of a market, that they didn't have to give him a qualifying offer because, you know, I guess like he would have taken it, and they don't want to be on the hook for that.

But you could also say, well, he's free of that draft pick encumbrance, I guess he would have taken it, and they don't want to be on the hook for that. But you could also say, well, he's free of that draft pick encumbrance, so maybe someone will pay more for him. So I would just think that on a one-year deal, he could get more and that he's someone who, if he wanted a multi-year deal, it would probably be out there for him. What is the qualifying offer this year? What was it? 18.9? That's what it was last year. So it didn't change?

I don't remember. Okay. It feels like the way that the qualifying offer is determined based on the previous year's salaries has created a, well, this year is going to be really weird and next year is going to be really weird and next year's gonna be really weird right because if you just assume that salaries are gonna be it was it was 17.8 last year okay it did a little bit so if you assume that if you assume which maybe this isn't true and maybe teams aren't assuming this but we're kind of thinking that based on brad hand if you assume that salaries are actually going to drop for free agents this year, then the qualifying offer becomes disproportionately daunting for a team that is expecting everybody else to make less.

And then next year, if things get back to normal and the qualifying offer is based on this year's salaries, then it's going to be too low next year. this year's salaries then it's going to be too low next year anyway the uh qualifying offers not surprisingly not making sense considering that the whole concept behind it doesn't make any sense i'm going to take the over on dj lemay who okay dj lemay who projected projected not projected predicted to get four years and 68 million dollars i am really i'm my brain is having a hard time squaring a couple things here i keep thinking that uh that the right answer is the under on everything because the world is falling apart and then i'm looking at these numbers and thinking well he's better than that yeah i. I'm just thinking like Ben Zobrist a few years ago made four years and I think 56 as a free agent.

And Ben Zobrist was four years older than LeMayhew is. And coming off of, you know, a couple of years where he had been like, you know, three win player. DJ LeMayhew just led the league in OPS plus and on base percentage and is basically going to have a second consecutive top five MVP finish and is only 31.

It just seems like, again, I'm not doing a very good job balancing what I know about the world with how I react when I see these numbers. But DJ LeMayu's like been a total superstar for two years, like, I mean, one of the five best players in baseball for two years, and he's not that old. And he plays, you know, a handful of positions. And everybody says, when's the last time you heard somebody say something bad about DJ LeMay? People talk about DJ LeMayhew like he's not they people compliment him as though

he's not good you know like he gets all the compliments that you give a role player meanwhile he's putting up MVP numbers. Yeah no he's great good at defense hits to all fields just seems like maybe he would age well has been good in Colorado has been good outside of Colorado. There's just nothing really bad that you can say about DJ LeMayhew. So, yes, I think that's a pretty decent pick. All right. I think I will take the over on Charlie Morton. And this is like a limited upside pick, clearly. But Charlie Morton is predicted to get one year and $8 million.

And I know that the raise declined his $15 million option. So he's probably not going to get $15 million and certainly not from the raise, at least. Now he's on the open market. It just feels like it's not really an open market with Morton because he's talked about retiring. He lives near Tampa Bay. It's possible that he will only want to play for Tampa Bay. And I would think that, yeah, maybe Tampa Bay declined the $15 million option and thought, well, we'll give him less than that, but we'll still resign him. And I would think that that would take more than eight.

but we'll still re-sign him. And I would think that that would take more than eight. Again, like I'm just kind of angling for the $5 million bonus and maybe a few million here, unless someone else comes along and gives him a multi-year offer or something, which like he totally deserves. I mean, he's still a really good pitcher. So it's possible that someone will come along

and offer him enough that he says, okay, I'm willing actually to live somewhere other than Tampa Bay. If it's just a one-team market and that team is Tampa Bay, then it's clearly not going to get much over $8 million. But how can you justify giving him a pay cut or not giving him more than $8 million based on how well he has pitched? So I just think if he signs anywhere and doesn't retire it's got to be on the the upward direction of eight yeah remember when we used to play what would you pay rich hill yes charlie morton is the same age that rich hill was when he hit free agency and i i think i would i would happily sign charlie morton to any contract that I would have signed Rich Hill to at that point. I mean,

I think if I were making an offer to Charlie Morton right now, it would probably be three years and $63 million. Yeah, right. If it were a normal year and a normal free agent, he would totally deserve something like that. Yeah. Yeah. So, all right. Have you noticed? So, that's, yeah, I just assume that Morton's going to retire, but. Yeah, he might. If he does, I guess it doesn't hurt me, but yeah. Doesn't it? I don't think so.

Why wouldn't it? You think if he retires, do I get a negative because he makes nothing? Well, what did he sign for? He signed for nothing. I don't know. It's tricky because like, what if Trevor Bauer retires? Like, would I get nothing? That wouldn't seem to make – well, I hope.

But that wouldn't make any sense because – I don't know. It seems to be like the spirit of this game is that we're trying to predict the market. What's the going rate? Does that mean you have to take – do you get credit then for the highest offer that was out there? The highest confirmed offer? If he turns down 18 million from the yankees do you get that no because you can never totally trust those reports i don't

think so okay so we're calling it if he retires it won't be because no one wanted to pay him anything i think so i don't know well yes we can leave that up to the judges, but I have a stake in this now. But I think that's more in the spirit of what we're doing. All right. I'm going to take the under. I'll take the under on. I'm going to take the under on Didi Gregorius. Yeah, I had that on my board. It's three years and $39 million.

and $39 million. And, you know, he, he didn't have a very, he did not have a robust market for his services after last year. And that was partly because this, I think that he saw this year as a chance to play the proverbial pillow contract season. And it wasn't a bad year on the surface, but the exit velocities on his batted balls were really kind of troublingly low. And so I think that this might be a situation where his raw stats, I think if he had had a 120 OPS plus over the course of 150 games, then it'd be easy to say, well, that's, you know, he, that's how he, that's how he does it. He has low exit velocities and a 120 OPS plus. But in 60 games, it's a lot easier to fluke into that sort of thing. And the exit velocity is probably, you know, is not a fluke.

I mean, he might recover from it. It might be something that he improves on. But we know that that reflects how hard he actually hit the ball. We don't know that he was really a particularly good hitter. He could have just kind of hit into some good luck for a season. So combination of age, trajectory coming into the season, and like I said, the exit velocity makes me suspect that he could have a hard time talking people into three years.

Yeah, no qualifying offer. And I could see him getting a multi-year deal but three at that rate yeah it seems like i mean he did he got one and 14 for 2020 and then he made good like you know yeah so well that's the question what that's the question is like a lot of this because even if you right he got one in 14 and now this prediction is three and 39 so three at 13 and if if it were not for the pandemic then then you would say well did he make good is is his is does he seem better now than he did one year ago will he seem better now than he did one year ago and i don't think that he necessarily did i like i don't it's not clear to me that uh that he

did like I I sort of feel about him like I did last year in fact I might feel slightly worse just because of the true like I I mean in 2018 he he was electric like he was at that point he really looked like a star I think that now he doesn't he doesn't look like a star to me anymore. It's all a little slower. It's all a little softer. And so I don't think that it's necessarily that he made good. And then you just add on to that the fact that, who knows, there's that chaotic unpredictability about the market. Yeah. And there are a lot of shortstops available, not only this offseason, but next offseason. Jay Jaffe just wrote about there's kind of a glut. And of course, if there are a lot of free agent shortstops or shortstops available on the trade market, then that means there may also be a lot of teams in need of shortstops.

So it's not like the market will be flooded and there won't be any demand. But still, there are kind of a lot. We've talked about Sememyon, and then there's Simmons, and then there's Gregorius, and there are others, international players, Lindor, et cetera. So it's not like he stands out on this market. All right. I will take the over on Alex Colomay at one year and six million. Way down the list,lex calame and again it's a reliever and the the market being what it is and brad hand being valued apparently the way that he is maybe there's a limited ceiling here but alex calame is a closer coming off a season when he had a 0.81 era and not a fluke. I mean, the.81 ERA was a fluke, but he's been a very good reliever for

several seasons now. He's been very durable for a reliever, hasn't really been hurt. And I just don't see why he would not easily exceed this. Like I see that there's some concerns, like he did not strike out a lot of batters. That is for sure. He had a 14.3% strikeout rate. In fact, his strikeout and walk percentages were exactly the same. So that is quite concerning, of course. he missed bats and not that teams are like paying for closers anymore or paying for an era but uh even his you know peripherals were pretty good and he's just been solid for so long and uninjured for so long that it seems to me that he would be a pretty safe bet for some team that's looking at least for a setup guy for a couple years let's say so i think he could do better than that i'm gonna take the over on jackie bradley jr okay this prediction is two years and 16 million dollars and let's just let's just go back to dd gregorius

let's just assume that actually the 3 and 39 for gregorius is just right which i have no reason i'm just i'm just guessing here i have no reason to think that it's not. So three years and 39 for Didi Gregorius plays a premium position coming off a 120 OPS plus, a poor year before that, but a previous good years with good offense. So that all basically describes Jackie Bradley Jr. too, in a lot of ways, he's the same age as Gregorius, by the way, as well. So Bradley Jr. had a 120 OPS plus last year. He was like, I think he was maybe even top 10 in the American League in war because his defense is always fantastic. And it was presumed to be by these metrics that struggle with short samples, but presumed to be good again last year. That makes perfect sense.

Bradley Jr., you can just, I mean, admire his defense with your own bare eyes. And I mentioned that like Gregorius, the good offense came with a somewhat worrisome exit velocity. Bradley Jr.'s average exit velocity was six miles an hour higher than Gregorius, which is a huge, obviously a huge tier above. So, I mean, he seems like in a normal year, again, I think in a normal year, I think you'd be looking at, you might find four years and $56 million. And I'm not ruling out that this could turn out to be a somewhat normal year. Okay. All right. With my next pick, I'm going to take James Paxton over at one year and $10 million. And boy, there's so much uncertainty around everyone.

There's more uncertainty around Paxton than most. But I just think he has been effective for quite some time. He just turned 32. You can't really expect much more out of him than, I don't know, 130 innings or something at this point. Like he's topped out at 160 in his career, and he's coming off another injury-plagued year. When he was healthy in pitching, he was still missing bats, and his peripherals were still pretty impressive. But he did lose a lot of velocity it just seems like that was maybe because he had a back injury and he was perhaps coming back a little too soon from that so this is like entirely dependent on him getting a clean bill of health and with paxton i don't know how clean a bill of health can be

at this point like you're just gonna pencil in some amount of missed time every year. But if he's more or less healthy, given his track record of pitching well when he's available, I think he could either get more on a one-year deal or maybe some team has some sort of incentive-laden multi-year deal for him to rebuild his value a bit. Just seems a little light for me, again who knows i am still trying to figure out this eight million dollars for charlie morton okay all right i'm gonna take the over on brad hand oh okay let's bring it back the world is weird and uncertain and we don't know how many stadiums are going to be open next year and we don't know for sure how long the season is going to be and all of that however i think that i think

that probably the number of teams trying to win should be about normal i think for the most part teams still want to i think that you're going to have roughly the same amount of teams that think now's a good time to make our baseball club better. And Brad Hand is like, he would make any baseball club much better. It just clears day. All teams need more relievers. All teams need the teams that have good relievers. They even want good relievers more because they can see themselves in the postseason and they want to have a deep bullpen of great relievers. I think that Brad Hand is going to have like, I know that, I know that he just passed through waivers, but I think there are going to be 22 teams that call Brad Hand's agent. And so out of

that, I think that things will shake out and he will end up getting, if not, maybe, I don't know, maybe the numbers are weird. Again, going back to what I said earlier, maybe the numbers get really weird this year on average annual value. But I think Brad Hand ends up with like maybe a four-year deal. I think some team gives him four years. And so instead of two years and 14, I think he ends up getting like four years and 36. Yeah, that's what he's getting, four years and so instead of two years and 14 i think he ends up getting like four years and 36 yeah that's what he's getting four years and 36 that'd be quite a twist all right well okay think about it let's say that you're a team that can get brad hand for one year and 10 million dollars do you want that when you could get him for four years and 36 i mean this is the this is one of

those cases where the one-year deal actually doesn't have as much upside for you. Like, he's a total bargain for all of those years. He's not old. He's not bad. And I don't know. Maybe he is. Maybe the velocity dip makes him risky, and that's what everybody is reacting to. So maybe they're all laughing at Crazy Sam right now.

But four years, $36 million, Brad Hand. Okay. I think I will take the under on Jake Odorizzi. And last year I was pretty bullish on Odorizzi. And in fact, you drafted him and you took the under on him. And that was a big score for you because he took the qualifying offer last year. And it looked like he made a big mistake by doing that because lots of pitchers who were not really better than Jake Odorizzi got more money than he did. It seemed like he had maybe misjudged the market because we were coming off a couple

cold winters and spending was back last year, at least for good players. And Odorizzi was one of the few who did not cash in in that market. And now things might work out poorly for him again, because now he's hitting free agency with no qualifying offer, but having missed most of the season with injuries and having pitched pretty poorly when he was available. He made four starts with a 6.59 ERA. He had an intercostal strain and a blister issue. And I don't know, like last year at this time, I think he looked really good coming off the 2019 season. He had great peripherals. Now it looks like maybe a little bit of an outlier or you just can't really be confident in him the way that you can't really be confident in Stroman. And so I think maybe he either goes for a one-year deal and tries to reestablish himself and make more next year or maybe just a two-year deal or goes for the security

over the dollars or something. But it seems to me like this might be a little rich or at least more than he'll get, although not necessarily a bad deal because if he comes back and he's healthy and he pitches like he did in 2019, that would be a steal. Yeah, I'm still looking for... How are Kirby Yates and Greg Holland the same amount here? That's a good question all right wow john lester five million wow yeah i should have read to the bottom of this uh i will wow there's some famous people at the bottom of this list yeah getting one year deals for like four million bucks chris archer wow yeah four million all right i will take carlos santana okay the uh over take the over you took him and you weren't sure which direction to go i was giving you room to maybe guess okay i mean i think that the if you're talking about how a 60 game season can really

mislead people on the statistical side the the two main ways are that you're going to have some crazy wars because the difference between like plus three and plus seven defense in 60 games is is absolutely margin of error territory and yet changes changes you from being, you know, like 18th in the league in war and like 84th. And so there's going to be that and then you're going to have batting averages. And there were a lot of really good hitters who hit under 220 this year. And part of that is that the game, you know, it's a low batting average environment. But I think that like batting average fluctuates a lot. And it fluctuates in 60 games a lot. And so you look at somebody like Carlos Santana, who over the last five years has been not not at the very top level of hitters,

but consistent and one of the probably I don't know, 30 or 40 best hitters in baseball throughout that time. And then the batting average plummets to 199. It drags a lot down with it, but he led the league in walks. He still, to me, looks like a very good hitter, very strong hitter, very controlled hitter, and he's a little old. And it is true that a one-year deal might be all that a fairly old DH slash first baseman is looking at right now. But I think that Carlos Santana, is that who I picked? Yes. I think he's got a little bit more than that in him. And we are, what is this, the seventh round?

Yes. And in the seventh round, I'm looking for places where I might get a half a million dollar win. All right. I think I will take the over on Andrelton Simmons at one year, 12 million. And gosh, I just I think of him as such a good player that that just seems low to me. Maybe I'm overrating him, but this year he was basically a league average hitter, which is more or less where he usually ends up. And I guess it's concerning that for once his defense was not off the charts great, and in fact was in negative territory according to

some metrics. Now, it's a small sample. Of course, he had an ankle issue, which may have hampered him. And he ended up opting out like in the last week of the season, which, you know, I don't know what to make of that. I don't know if it's just that he figured the Angels were out of it and he'd get a head start on his offseason or whether he was having a difficult time with this year for whatever reason. And once it became pretty clear that the Angels were out of it, he decided to stop gutting it out. So that makes me think that maybe he was just not very happy this season

for whatever reason. If he didn't finish it out, then maybe there was some difficulty. Maybe he found the circumstances to be trying in some way that could account for diminished performance. And it's not like he was bad. And he's only 31, and he has been probably the best defender in baseball over the past several seasons. And I don't know. We talked about how many short stops are available but boy andrelton simmons you wouldn't want that guy for multiple years i i think i still would or for more than

12 for one year so i will guess that someone gives him that you could be right i remember having a conversation wondering whether he would get even that much. I'm not convinced. I'm looking for a second source on defense. Because if you just look at the trend on his defense, it starts four years ago. He was literally the greatest shortstop that there ever was. And then his defensive run saved halved in 2018 halved again in 2019 and then dropped basically to to zero last year and so so there is a line there is a direction that it's that it's going but you know

trajectories like that are often often misleading and usually the answer is actually back up uh in the middle somewhere but you know he had zero barrels last year i i don't i'm not a uh i'm not a generally a barrel aficionado i'm just trying to figure out how you even do that how like how do you how do you manage to have zero barrels it's not like he not like he didn't hit the ball. Yeah, he had fine numbers. His exit velocity was fine. Launch angle was normal. And yet somehow, he did

not get that elusive barrel. That's odd. Yeah, it is odd. Alright, last one I will take. Wow. The Cubs paid John Lester $10 million already as a buyout. Because he had a $25 million option. Wow.

He could be, I should get, if I take him for the over, I should get the $10 million. I'll take Jon Lester as an over. One year, $5 million. I mean, I don't know. Okay. Yeah. All right. He's his his name brand at least exactly he's a proven winner exactly if you need to uh i feel like if you're a gm and you want to demonstrate to your fans that you had a big off season and made a bunch of splashes you do need to get a

legit splash you need to get someone like a bauer And it helps if you have two legit splashes. But then once you have two big, legit signings, and if you then fill it out with a bunch of famous 37-year-olds, it looks better and better to the season ticket buyers. So I feel like you make the two good deals. think uh the the ideal offseason this year for a team that's demonstrating its commitment is that you get like bauer lemay hugh and then you get like john lester and mike minor is a good no cole hamels cole hamels is a good one mark melanson i mean nlcs closer markanson. You get him. And it just looks like you filled out your 2022 promotional calendar already. Okay. My last pick, I will take Kirby Yates. You mentioned him earlier at one year and five million. I'll take the over on that.

Like 2018, 2019, Kirby Yates was like one of the very best relievers in baseball and had some injuries this year. But I could see teams going for more than this on a one-year deal or trying for a multi-year deal where maybe they get more value in the second year. So, yeah, Kirby Yates and I had a bunch of guys who were just kind of, like, in that territory who I wrote down but didn't feel any better about than the ones I picked. Like I considered taking Mark Melanson because, you know, one year, four million for a name reliever like him who has been good, you know, not like elite, but pretty dependably solid for several years now. Thought about him. Thought about Trevor May over at 2-14. Thought about Cesar Hernandez over at 1-6. Thought about Cole Hamels over at 1-5, as you mentioned. And I did think about the over on Justin Turner at 2-24,

just, you know, leadership, et cetera, aside from post-World Series lack of leadership. i considered nelson cruz over yeah at 1 and 16 you know we we did a whole episode on him in september 1588 and he's been so good and seems likely that there will be universal dh although that's not official yet and he is said to be seeking a two-year deal. And as you have documented, you don't always get what you seek. But it seems like given how great he has been and with the market that he might have, that he might very well get a two-year deal from someone. So he could clear 16 easily. But I didn't take him.

Yeah. I thought about the over on every person. Yeah. All right. Well, we did it. I have no idea who had the better draft or whether either of us did better than MLB trade rumors. Who knows anything this offseason, but we tried. It's a tradition. County. Not election news. This time it was Tony La Russa news. Jeff Passan and others at ESPN reported that La Russa was arrested in February on suspicion of driving under the influence, and he was charged with DUI on October 28th, which is one day before the White Sox hired him. The White Sox reportedly knew about the arrest at the time, so this was not a surprise to them, and a White Sox official told Bob Nightingale that La Russa will neither lose his job nor face any discipline from the team because of this. So add it to the list of reasons why this was such an odd hiring. I think when Meg and I talked about La Russa's

hiring, we didn't even get to the DUI that he had been charged with in 2007. I was aware of it, but there were so many other reasons why the hiring was strange and the process behind the hiring was strange that a 13-year-old DUI didn't even come up as far as we knew it was a one-time thing. Now we know it was at least a two-time thing. So maybe we'll talk about this more next time as more news surfaces. But when he pled guilty to the 2007 charge, La Russa said,

I accept full responsibility for my conduct and assure everyone that I have learned a very valuable lesson and that this will never occur again. Well, it seems to have occurred again. And there's really no justification for that. That will do it for today. Thanks, as always, for listening. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks.

Michael, Bertil Spolander, Michael Mandelbaum, Chris von Brecht, and Zach Trout. Thanks to all of you. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Sam and Meg coming via email at podcastoffangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. And we will be back with another episode a little later this week. Talk to you then. sold to the gold and glitter Going, going, going, going

Going, going, going, going Go