Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1635: The Padres’ Wild Day

Episode Date: December 29, 2020

Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley, and FanGraphs lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen convene to discuss the latest epic Padres transaction spree (in which San Diego traded for Blake Snell and Yu Darvish and signed Ha-seong Kim 김하성), touching on A.J. Preller’s penchant for frenetic activity, the Padres’ rebuilt rotation and crowded infield, the prospect packages going […]

Listen up, this is how it's gonna be. We're qualifying finals and shine on TV. And we are gonna need a new routine. We need some new dudes on a new team. We need the very best boys we can find. It's gonna be hard and it's gonna take time. But if we stay on our grind, the world is gonna watch us shine. Hello and welcome to episode 1635 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I am overwhelmed. This is not an emergency episode, technically, because we were supposed to record an episode anyway. But if we hadn't been, this would have been an emergency podcast worthy. It's the Prellerpocalypse again.

Yes, the Prellerpocalypse. And to help us sort through the Prellerpocalypse, because it seems like we get at least one a year, is Fanagraph's lead prospect analyst, Eric Langenhagen, to tell us about all the many, many prospects who have exited the Padre system over the last 24 hours. Eric, how are you? I'm great. I don't have 27 more prospect lists of unprecedented length to do on my own. So this is fine.

Can totally sit and work on this. Actually, no, this is fine. This is like I said to Meg last night that this is like writing a third of the raise list tonight. You know, or not a third of it, but you know what I mean? 5% of it or whatever. So a chunk of the Cubs list will just get written tonight, in essence. Well, thanks for doing some pre-writing podcasting. And

man, most people take it easy this week. I mean, I'm off at the ringer this week. I'm not writing, so it's not on me to write about these trades. Sorry to Michael Bauman and Zach Kraman, whoever's covering for that. But really, most of us, even if we're at work, we're not fully at work. we're not fully at work.

We're not present at work mentally, psychologically. This was the week when, Meg, you probably thought there wouldn't be enough content. So you're running best of Fangraphs pieces, as you do every year at this time, which is a nice way to recognize the great work that has been published at Fangraphs this year, but also a nice way to have content in a week when there might not be content. But that is not a concern this week there is content well i i have to say i'd rather it be this week than last week which is when the the rumblings of both of these deals started and i was prepared to be a terrible editor who said hey guys yeah you know how you like your families well unclear if that's

universally true in baseball no one's seeing their families this year anyway right i guess that's true if there's ever ever a year to do it it's yeah all right so i guess we should summarize which might take a while what the padres did all did all on one day, Monday. We are recording late at night Monday after the news of the Udarvish deal broke, but there were other deals made before then. So the Padres first acquired Blake Snell from the Tampa Bay Rays, and that was for a package of players that consisted of Luis Patino, Francisco Mejia, and Blake Hunt and Cole Wilcox are the prospects. I guess they're all kind of prospects, but technically prospects. They have not made the majors yet. That was just the

beginning, really, because there was another mega deal made. The Padres also acquired Hugh Darvish, whom Preller had a hand in signing in Texas when Darvish first came to the majors and Preller was still with the Rangers. Now he has three years and about $59 million left on his deal, almost all of which it seems will be paid by San Diego. According to one of his tweets, Darvish seemingly wasn't informed officially of the trade by the Cubs, so apparently he was finding out about it along with the rest of us. So for the second time, Preller acquires Darvish and Victor Caratini from the Cubs for Zach Davies, Reggie or Reginald Preciado,

Jason Santana, Owen Casey, and Ismael Mena. They are all the prospects other than Davies, who is the big leaguer in the deal. And not done yet, the Padres also made a pretty major free agent signing on Monday, too. made a pretty major free agent signing on Monday too. They signed Ha Sung Kim, one of the best players in the KBO, who actually ranked 8th on Fangraph's list of the top 50 free agents going into this offseason. So no slouch either. Might kind of get lost in the news of acquiring two top of the rotation starters,

but that's a pretty compelling player too. And that's for what it seems like maybe at least four years. We don't have exactly the terms, but at least four years and something like $7 to $8 million per year. Boy, even for AJ Preller, he really had himself a day. Good for him. I appreciate his lack of work-life boundaries. It's quite a haul today to get Snell, Darvish, and Kim. I mean, I think both of you at least watched some KBO stuff at the beginning of the year. Did Kim flash for you as you were watching

him? I'm sure you're both familiar with the numbers at this point. I'm curious if you knew early on this year that it was clear he was going to come over and be of interest. I'm always skeptical of my own ability in a limited look to say, oh yeah, like that guy's really good, which is probably a thing I should address with my therapist. But I remember seeing early on, you know, the scuttlebutt was all about Sangbom Na, and then I saw Kim and I was like, I don't know, this seems good in the field. This arm seems impressive, but I don't think that my KBO viewing was sustained enough for me to feel especially confident in that view. we were starting to put together the top 50 free agents and Dan did sort of a special run of zips projections for the guys who seemed likely to be posted and the numbers that came back for Kim were like you know eye-popping if they were an established big leaguer that had numbers like that he probably would have been he might have been the best free agent available on the market

now obviously we don't quite know how his skill will translate to major league baseball but yeah it's an impressive addition to a team that is already pretty potent both in the field and at the plate have you written about kim at all ben no i haven't and we'll have to figure out and i guess the padres will also have to figure out where he fits. I don't want to bury the lead here. I guess I want to ask you about Kim, and we did ask you about him last time you were on about a month ago when we were talking about non-tenders. We got a quick little Kim scouting report, but now that it's real, we can revisit that. But I guess just big picture, Preller has outdone himself here. Like, even for him, does this rank at the top of the list of pro apocalypses like we have the

the first one when he took over and immediately tried to make the padres into a contender overnight without doing a rebuild which didn't work so well but he sure tried and he sure made a lot of moves in a very short span of time and i think as we talked about at the trade deadline this year, he topped himself there. He made even more trades or even more players were acquired in the three days or so that he made a flurry of moves, including acquiring Mike Clevenger at the deadline this year. He's also made splashes for Hosmer and Machado. There's no more entertaining GM in baseball now, I don't think. And I think we said that at the trade deadline too, but he is just all in. When he goes in, he tends to do it all at once, which like, even if you spread what

he did today over an off season, it would be a pretty big off season. Like if this had been over the course of, you know, four or five months and we were looking back in March, and we said, hey, AJ Preller, he acquired Blake Snell. He acquired Hugh Darvish. He got Kim. That's a pretty good off-season's work. He did it all in one day, and I don't know what to make of his tendency to do it all in one day. We got an email earlier today from a listener who just goes by T, and Eric, maybe you'd have some thoughts on this he said is there some strategic advantage in making all your large impact moves at once

does Preller's flurry of moves stop the Dodgers from driving up prices or do they deleverage players positioning once club needs are more clearly understood any other reason like just logistically it must be hard to manage all these things at the same time. Like even if some of them come together quickly and others are being talked about for a while, does he manage it so that they all get done on the same day and it's just like huge headlines? Or is it just a coincidence? Or is there some advantage to striking really quickly and just getting all your work done in one day? Yeah, I wonder if there's some four-dimensional chess thing going on.

I can't conceive of it intuitively off the top of my head as that question was put to me. I think it's probably coincidental. If you're looking to add pitching, in this case, big game hunting for starting pitching, and you start calling around and you're making a flurry of calls, it's pretty likely that if any of those calls are going to come to fruition, this timelines could be similar. So it's likely that the Padres went out there and said,

we want to acquire pitching and Snell and Kevin Cash don't seem to be getting along based on how things ended there. And the Rays are always in sell high mode and the Cubs seem to be wanting to shed payroll. So those would be natural places to call when you're looking for pitching. But I don't know if there was a strategic decision to do a bunch of stuff all at one time and time out Kim's posting day in such a way that he would get done

in a similar timeframe. So, yeah, I think it takes a lot of like, a lot more than would actually be able to go on. I just think that it's likely that the Padres decided that we need pitching, call the Reds, call the Cubs, call the Rays and whoever else might have it to move. And then they just say, we'll take them all. Thanks. I wonder if there's something, I mean, I think that what I'm about to say is undermined a little bit by what we have heard the organization say when it comes to budget for 2021. But I wonder

if it's a little bit like going for it on fourth down in a football game so that you know how many two-point conversions you end up needing. If your goal in the offseason is to acquire starting pitching because you have a lot of promising pieces, some of them are hurt, some of them are going to be out of service basically for 2021, if you're going to acquire that stuff in the trade market and there are limited options that are of the caliber that this team wants in order to compete with the Dodgers if you miss on that stuff well maybe you still have the opportunity to take a run at you know someone like Bauer or whatever and turn to the free agent market which is known to be moving slower this year than uh than the trade market seems to be although all of that activity is courtesy of Hiji Preller. So I wonder if there's

something to knowing what avenues are actually available to you and then having the time to pursue other options in the event that the Cubs don't like the prospect package you're offering or the Rays think that they can get more for Snell than they did, although that seems hard to believe. So I wonder if there's something to that, but otherwise, I don't know that doing it all at once as opposed to spreading it out has a ton of obvious value, but maybe I'm missing something. It's fun. It dominates the news cycles,

which is not something you could ever say about the Padres prior to Preller. That's the thing I appreciated about him. Even when he tried to skip several steps and just get good immediately it was fun to like have the Padres be the team that was trying to win the offseason and get good because not only had they not been good for a long time but they'd just been so anonymous and so like mediocre just stuck in that 70 something win range and never really signing stars or anything it was just they were the most forgettable franchise in baseball really and since preller took over for better and worse at various times he has really made them the lead story in baseball which is just a lot of fun and obviously they've been the lead story a lot over the last year just because they're really good which is

also fun and even more fun that they took a really good team and they're trying to make it better. So this was only necessary or making both of these moves were only necessary because of Clevenger's injury. And so that's a third really good starter that they acquired this year. And if I were writing about this, I would probably be trying to dig up some data and find like some sort of precedent for acquiring three pitchers like this in a single year. I did see Sarah Langs tweeted something courtesy of Elias. The Padres would be the first team to acquire two pitchers in a single offseason who both either won or finished top two in Cy Young voting in any of the prior three seasons. top two in Cy Young voting in any of the prior three seasons.

And that's not even including Clevenger, who has not ranked in Cy Young voting, but has pitched like a really great top of the rotation starter when healthy. And he is not healthy now, which is why they had to do this, or at least part of the reason why they did this. And these are not rental players either. They have these guys for a few more years like snell and darvish are both under contract through 2023 right and they reached that agreement with clevenger who had tommy john surgery earlier this offseason so he's under their control through 2022 so i mean we're getting ahead of ourselves a little bit here But if you start looking ahead to that 2022 rotation

It's like a lot of things could go wrong or have to go right here And you never know with pitcher health and all of that But imagine a rotation that's like Denelson LeMet, Mike Clevenger, Blake Snell, Hugh Darvish, Mackenzie Gore, Adrian Morhone Like, I don't even know how you fit all these guys in there. And, you know, pitchers and some of them will probably break or disappoint or something. But you can definitely look ahead. And if you're a Padres fan right now, it's just like dream come true to imagine that group to pair with the position players that they already have, which has been the heart and soul of this team. the position players that they already have, which has been the heart and soul of this team.

Yeah, I think that, I wonder how Lemaitre and his injury history, which is pretty spotty, how that's going to continue to play out or if that'll eventually force a move to the bullpen. But yeah, we've seen this as teams have either rebuilt or acquired a bunch of high-end starting pitching in a short window of time. Some of it is going to break down. There will be attrition. Those big-time Royals teams eventually came together and won a World Series, but it's not as if Luke Hochaver panned out. It's not as if Mike Montgomery totally panned out.

It's going to take a mix. You need a critical mass of these guys, even at the highest level, in order to get there. And so now it's about trying to buttress them with depth, with the depth that it took the Dodgers so long to acquire in their bullpen before they finally got over the hump. And it's just a thing that teams are looking for in the middle of every summer, which is just continuous pitching depth to deal with injuries and keep guys fresh. And they sent Zach Davies back in one of these

deals today, who is, you know, a back of the rotation bedrock of sorts. And they'll depend on Chris Paddock to find out about Chris Paddock. Sorry, Chris Paddock. He comes off one like semi-disappointing partial season like a year ago we were talking about chris paddock like a future star so sorry to snub you yeah good news chris you don't need a third pitch after all it's fine so it is incredible they that they built one of if not the best farm systems in baseball and and are now using it to do video game style trades where this is not unlike a rotation that any of us who have played a franchise mode

of MVP baseball would have built eventually. So it's incredible. This is maybe the only kind of rock star GM in all of sports because it's not someone who's, you know, constantly wheezing and pushing their glasses up their nose. So good for the Padres. And it's it certainly is very, very exciting, but so are the players who they, they gave up the last 24 hours. So it'll be interesting to see there's just a, such a critical mass of those guys as well.

That's likely a couple of them turn out to be very, very, very good. Yeah. so tell us about them yeah i was gonna say you saw some of this contingent during instructional league um and have seen all of them at various points in the past so what did what did the rays and the cubs get today right so uh let's start with the rays trade. And so the big name there is obviously Luis Patino, who only turned 21 in October. He was coming off of kind of a spotty rookie year, came out of the alternate site and threw multi-inning relief outings on the big league team. Was throwing really hard.

Some of the action on his fastball was cuttery, which is not necessarily ideal. It's the type of thing that, like, the Rays had to try to coax out of Tyler Glasnow's fastball a little bit. So they'll have to try to do the same thing with Patino's, who, despite the fact that he was sitting like 95-99, touching 101 during the course of the summer, you know, was not missing as many bats with his fastball as you would expect for someone who throws that hard. But this is a guy who's still relatively new to pitching. He's a converted infielder, got very strong very quickly as a teenager. He's a really hardworking young guy. The Padres really loved him. He added a bunch of velocity and learned English over the course of like a couple

of months. And so now he's array. And it's a lot like the Chris Archer deal in that this is the guy who has a chance to be like last now as good or better than the guy who they flipped in the deal. So the fact that Patino struggled as a 20-year-old, he was as young as a college sophomore this summer and pitching in the big leagues during a weird pandemic shortened season, like just toss this first year out. Don't worry about it. I think he's going to be an all

star starting pitcher for the Rays. And then also in that deal, they got Blake Hunt, who is going to be on my top 100 this off season. So this will be the, this will be the third time. I mean, I can't speak for what the other publications are going to do on their 100, but I don't know if Hunt was going to be on it before this trade for others, but he blew up in the fall for me. I was lucky enough to see a couple of weeks of instructional league ball here in Arizona. Once I convinced some teams to subject me to scout protocols and let me in. And I saw a bunch of the Padres and Hunt was popping in the mid one-eighths, was hitting for power. He's gotten a bunch stronger since he was a high school pick, SoCal high school pick in a year where there was a lot of SoCal high school talent.

So, you know, he looks like a potential everyday catcher, obviously for the Padres. Austin Noel is under control for several years. They've got Luis Campisano, who I think is better than Hunt, who is another excellent 21-year-old from the same draft class as Hunt. Long-term catching prospect for them. And then they got Victor Caratini in the Darvish trade today. So their 40-man catching situation seems pretty stable, even though Campisano had a marijuana bust this offseason. So Hunt, yeah, Hunt I really like for the raise as well. And then Cole Wilcox is the other prospect. $3.3 million bonus in the third round of the 2020 draft.

It's a record for a bonus in that round. Wilcox was one of the better high school pitchers in the draft a couple of years ago. And some teams were a little later on him. He was like in that Kumar Rocker bucket where there wasn't a whole lot of projection left And some teams were a little later on him. He was like in that Kumar rocker bucket where there wasn't a whole lot of projection left on his body. He's a bigger kid. And so he was sitting like 96 to 99 for some of his starts, but that was it, right? Like there was no room left on his body for any kind of growth. And you go, oh, well, who cares?

He's throwing 96 to 99. But that's also what like Tyler Kolek looked like in high school, what Riley Pint looked like in high school. So some teams were kind of put off by that. And Wilcox ended up going to Georgia. He was also older for that high school class, which is part of why teams were kind of off of him. And so old, in fact, that he eventually became, he was a sophomore eligible college player.

You can be, you're eligible for the draft in college after you've either had three years removed from high school or if you turn 21 within 45 days of the draft, and that was Wilcox. So he was part of a very prominent rotation at Georgia with Emerson Hancock, who the Mariners took in the top 10 of this past year's draft. And then Wilcox was also in that mid first round range talent wise and again just sort of fell to the back of some teams groupings and you know was a Boris advisee and so there were some signability concerns and it was going to take someone who created the kind of pool space that the Padres ended up creating to sign him to an over slot deal lest he go back

for his junior year at Georgia and they got a deal done and he's upper nineties, nasty slider. The shape of his fastball isn't necessarily ideal. And again, we're talking about a pretty hefty guy. So there's some relief risk here, but also he's got, you know, mid rotation starter potential. He'll be just outside the top 100. And then Francisco Mejia, if you want a caveat as to why you shouldn't care about anything I just said, just look at where I had Francisco Mejia ranked at one point. Mejia was a huge prospect at one time with Cleveland, switch hitting catcher with really remarkable feel for the barrel, really little explosive guy who looked like he was going to hit and hit for power. He was a really terrible defensive catcher, but had big time arm strength back there.

And the hope was that eventually the defensive stuff with catching would iron itself out. And it just hasn't. It still hasn't. He's in his mid-20s now. He's catching lesser stuff in the Dominican Winter League, which is almost over. And he still looks terrible.

So he's going to catch a thing for the Rays because they need depth at that position they re-sign zanino michael perez is gone other than ronaldo hernandez now mejia and zanino like those are the only three catchers even close to being 40 man worthy in the org and so they needed a catcher so we'll see what happens with mejia but ultimately he's just too aggressive of a hitter and can't really catch. So now you've got like a third base or left fielder with a terrible approach and that just hasn't worked. So it's a mixed bag for Mejia, but the other three guys going back to Tampa Bay are very, very exciting.

Hunt has to be added to the 40-man next offseason. So expect him to start to be in the mix for the Rays in the spring of 2022. Ronaldo Hernandez is the other young catcher on their 40-man. They need to figure out what he is relatively soon. He's got like a weird swing. He's another flawed guy. Big power, big arm strength, a lot of swing and miss, not very mobile back there.

That's going to be more important soon as framing kind of goes away. So they've got some decisions to make at catcher in Tampa Bay, but an exciting package coming back for Snell. And the Rays already had your top-ranked system in the game, right? And so now they've added some really impressive prospects to that. Is this, to put it in context, like, is this better than the Padres system was a couple years ago is this like just the best system in recent memory and in your time covering the game I think

it's tough for me to to know that there was a brief time when like CJ Abrams who's going to be a top 10 prospect and Fernando Tat Tatis, and Mackenzie Gore, who definitely there's some, you can interpolate some red flags about Gore based on them promoting Ryan Weathers for the playoffs, and Gore never really getting off the ground this year, contributing to the big league team like they had hoped. We don't really know how Gore looked during the summer

because the Padres did not opt into video and data sharing, and in fact, that they were training at the University of San Diego where there's not a track man unit or anything like that. So we don't really know about Gore, but yeah, this Rays system is ridiculous. They've now acquired Hunt, Harry Berto Hernandez from the Rangers, who's another guy who I have in my top 100. And yeah, Randy Rosarena, who also was in my 100 last offseason, is better than I thought he was. They got him. So yeah, he's still prospect eligible. It is crazy.

They have the top right prospect in baseball in Wander Franco. And yeah, it's ridiculous. They're really good at executing a plan, which seems to be finding players with premium tools, regardless of what that means. It's often just a back-to-ball skill thing, but sometimes it's defense and running as they acquired Manny Margot for sort of specialist type reasons that seems to have worked out for them. Although that trade in general was not great for them because they gave up Cronenworth. But yeah, they had Cronenworth at one point too,

right? And Michael Brasso was never on a list of mine and is definitely a good role player. And so they have so many guys that some real players tend to get lost in the shuffle, which is why there are 63 guys ranked on their list. So try to make sure that doesn't happen. over the system, we should talk about what they gave up here. And obviously it makes sense that they would get good prospects back in this deal because Blake Snell is a very good pitcher and a very valuable pitcher. He signed for three more years at very team-friendly rates, very reasonable rates. It's like, what, roughly $40 million due to him over the next three seasons. Anyone would be happy to have him at that rate. And you could kind of predict that this was going to happen. I don't know how much of it is Snell being miffed at the team and at Cash for pulling him in Game 6 of the World Series

and how much of it is just the race. This is what they do. This is probably what they would have done anyway because it's been their MO that you trade guys too early rather than too late trade them as soon as they get expensive and by expensive I mean expensive by raise standards not expensive by major league baseball standards for a pitcher of this caliber but this is how they keep it going they get guys they make them into good players or they let them develop into good players and then they deal them before you can get attached to them generally,

unless they happen to get someone like Evan Longoria to sign a long-term extension. So I think Snell is maybe a little overrated, and he's still a very good pitcher, but I think just the fact that he won the 2018 Cy Young Award, and so everyone introduces him as 2018 Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell, I think maybe exaggerates how good he is in my own opinion, just because, I mean, A, if I had had a vote that year, I don't think I would have voted for him. I probably would have considered Verlander more deserving that year, and also he benefited from Chris Sale and Trevor Bauer getting hurt. So

not that he was an undeserving winner, but I don't necessarily think that he was the best candidate for that award. He was the one with the BABIP suppressed low ERA and the flashy win-loss record. But beyond that, that year looks like a little bit of an outlier if you look at his career resume. And clearly he has not been durable. Even in that year, he threw 180 innings, and it'll be interesting to see whether the Padres use him any differently than the Rays did, as the Rays kept an incredibly short leash on him. That's what led to that Game 6 storyline. He just never went six innings all year,

and he's still very valuable going five innings and making them be good innings, but when you think of aces, you think of someone who could at least pitch into the sixth inning or get more than 18 outs every now and then. And he just doesn't do that. Or at least the R maybe they'll let him go a little deeper and maybe we'll see whether he's actually capable of that or whether the Rays were right that he would fall apart after a certain time because he is not pitched well when he's pitching third time through the order. But all of that said, still a very good pitcher, if perhaps maybe a little inflated because of that win. And so you got to give up something good to get something good. And the Padres did, although I guess we can talk about whether they give up anything that really set them back in any way. They're an interesting contrast. I know, Eric, you wrote about this when

you wrote up the prospect side, because they are in some ways rooted in a similar set of approaches for data acquisition and player acquisition, right? They take scouting very seriously. They invest in that side of the front office. But there's the sort of usual underpaying of players that we're used to in the game. And then there's the Rays not wanting to even pay arbitration salaries to their guys. So I think that there is a level of cheapness there that is kind of unique within baseball. But I think that it's important to be precise in how we talk about that because when the deal was announced, when the Snell deal was announced, I saw a fair number of takes on Twitter that the Rays just don't try. And I think that that's a mischaracterization of what's

going on here. I think that we might look to the Darvish deal for an organization that is actively not trying to really do much to win. But I think the race try very, very hard and have a lot of folks in their front office whose singular goal is finding a way to win in spite of pretty significant budgetary restrictions. So they're an odd org because on the one hand you want to applaud the acumen of the people who work for them who are able to do a lot with uh not very much and who you know manage to turn out teams that are competitive every year even if they haven't won a world series in a while but at the same time you're like well what if you did that and you were willing to spend on you know Trevor Bauer or you know last year if you had been in the race for one of the you know the frontline starters what would you have looked like

in the postseason if you had done that so there I I feel frustrated by the Rays because I like so much about them and not just because of the people I know who work for the team, but I find myself very frustrated by them and wish that they would be smart and spend money. But then I guess they'd just be the Dodgers. Right. We got a relevant email just quickly read earlier today from listener Alex, who said, how do we judge the Rays? And he wrote, I saw Sam's classic love this trade for the Rays tweet brought up again last night. And in reading the Twitter reaction, it almost feels like we've come full circle in six years. Now, since basically any noteworthy trade involves them trading an

established guy who dares make a penny above a pre-arbitration salary, we hate the trade. And any defense almost has to be whispered and caveated. On aggregate, I think this is a positive development surrounding our analyses with greater context is good. But what does it say about the Rays and the sport in general that we basically decided to examine their transactions solely in the everything that's wrong with baseball today construct? I mean, I think Michael Bauman put this well, that like, disliking the Rays has become something of a shibboleth for one quarter of, that like disliking the Rays has become something of a shibboleth for one quarter of for a particular quarter of of baseball Twitter I think that we can be frustrated that their payrolls are not higher

while still applauding them wanting to win pretty consistently despite that fact I think that Emma Batchelori had a really nice take on this which is that that I think the real issue with them is not that they're a team that isn't trying to win or that they're so cheap, although they're being so cheap does interfere with them. I think sometimes really knocking down postseason competition, but that if you're a fan of that team, who's jersey do you buy if you're a fan of the race because you can pick a guy and i don't know how many blake snell jerseys were getting sold i don't mean that as a knock on blake snell but like i don't know he's not fernando tatis jr right right but but like let's say he's your guy right and he won a cy young and you're so excited by him and then you know he's gonna be gone and

i think that a lot of fans condition themselves true for laundry but this is that taken to an extreme and it can sometimes feel like the team isn't keeping you know its contract with you is the way that Emma put it right that that you invest something in the team and then the team invests in its guys and then you get to watch them for a long time and that hasn't been the way that baseball has operated in a lot of contexts and for a lot of teams for a long time and that hasn't been the way that baseball has operated in a lot of contexts and for a lot of teams for a while but this is such an extreme version of that that i understand why absent any of the labor stuff or if this suppresses salaries elsewhere or if you hate the way that guys have to cycle through there so often like even if all you're

focusing on is the experience of the fans i think that there's you know i think there's real beef to be had there even if those fans do often get to root for a team that's pretty good so there's you know it's they're tricky they're a tricky case for me because i in general want players to make money commensurate with the value that they bring to the field and i also like the the fun and creative stuff that the rays do and i just wish that they would spend like even 30 million dollars a year more just 30 like you don't have to be a top 10 payroll in baseball but just let you spend a little bit more yeah spend a blake smell yeah i mean they shouldn't be a top payroll team you know

that would be surprising you can understand why they might pinch pennies a little more than the average team and yet not to this degree I mean you could say that any team owned by billionaires could afford to run a pretty decent payroll out there

but relative to the other MLB teams owned by billiony and hearst the razor in a less advantageous situation and yet you'd think they could afford blake snell and yet as you were suggesting they're like part of the contract that you have with fans yes it's to get to keep your franchise players and have some recognizable stars on the field it's also to win and put a competitive team out there. And they do that. And they consistently do that. And I think that is part of why they not get a pass necessarily. But A, I think it's, you know, we're just sort of sick of saying this about the Rays because like, this is how they operate. This is pretty much how they've always operated under this ownership

group. It is probably how they will continue to operate. So it gets to be a broken record if you just talk about their payroll over and over even if it's still important to point out but also it's the fact that they've proven that this works for them you know and maybe it would work even better if they did everything they're doing and they could also afford to keep blake snell but they have proved that when they deal a guy like this, it's not like the Pirates trading Josh Bell, let's say. And, you know, Josh Bell is not a superstar necessarily, but an exciting player and one

of the most recognizable Pirates. And granted, it's a new regime in Pittsburgh with Charrington and Baker and all the rest. So maybe we shouldn't judge them by the failures of the past regimes. But when the Pirates deal someone like that, it's like, oh, it's the Pirates just being cheap and bad again. You can't necessarily expect that the players the Pirates get back will be good. If anything, like the players they trade to the Rays will get so good that the players they get back will not be good enough. So I think it's different in this case like it's definitely like you contrast the the rays and the padres and these are two teams that went into the playoffs the

rays won a pennant the padres and the rays were you know certainly top two teams in their respective leagues this year and on one side you have the padres just doing everything they can to convert these prospects into great players and get even better and compete with the one remaining team in their league that may be better than them and then you have the Rays who have either traded or allowed to walk their what game three and game six starters in the world series you know could have kept Charlie Morton, didn't, just didn't exercise his option, let him leave, and now have dealt Blake Snell. And so typically you would say, gee, this team just won a pennant and they're still like going to need those players to get by the Yankees and the Blue Jays and all these

other good teams. Why would they be dealing these good players? And yet, because of the raised track record, you kind of say, well, I guess they know what they're doing. And not to compare Mookie Betts and Blake Snell, because Betts was by far the better player when the Red Sox traded him. But there's this great outrage when some other teams trade their face of the franchise, as there will be if Cleveland trades Lindor. And with the Rays, you're just conditioned to expect it. Maybe it'll be a little different if Wander Franco turns into one of the best players of baseball.

Maybe it'll be a little different if Wander Franco turns into one of the best players of baseball. But with a Snell caliber player, it's almost as if for Rays fans, you just know, well, we'll enjoy him for a few years and then he'll be gone and we'll be on to the next ones. Right. And there's more uncertainty there too, because Brendan McKay, who you think would have been part of this rotation contingent during the 2020 season, had shoulder surgery. You're never sure how he's going to come back from that. Brent Honeywell is now on what his fourth surgery since his last appearance. He was once a top 100 prospect as well. Another one of these like five pitch guys,

mid 90s stuff, a couple different styles of change up almost like a Japanese pitcher. And yeah, Colin Poche also coming off of Tommy John. So there are other guys internally who you'd expect will have a chance to be about as good as who they've ended up losing. But, you know, they're diversifying risk by patching holes with guys like Michael Waka and finding Trevor Richards and Ryan Thompson's off of the scrap heap and basically turning them into useful big leaguers because of the context in which they're deployed. the scrap heap and basically turning them into useful big leaguers because of the context in which they're deployed. And yeah, we do have an issue in baseball right now where the smarter teams are operating in a more uniform way. That is the way that the Twins and the Rays and Cleveland are operating. Milwaukee certainly is on this list as well, where they're going wide in the farm system. They're diversifying through volume and pumping a ton of dollars into player development and churning out big leaguers that way. And they are considering a certain subset of them pretty marginal. And that's where all the non-tenders are coming from and where all of the proclivity to deal away

guys entering deeper into their RBers is coming from and trying to take advantage of, as you mentioned earlier, Ben, like premature extensions for players like the Braves were able to do with Acuna and Albies and the Rays were once upon able to do with Evan Longoria, sort of precedent setting. We only remember the good SNL sketches,

right? We don't remember the Jonathan Singleton. We don't remember the Jonathan Singleton contract off the top of our heads. We don't, you know, Scott Kingery's extension doesn't look so great after that 2020 season. So it's definitely a mixed bag of trying to behave this way, but it is becoming more pervasive. And there's going to be, it's harder for teams like this to find the sort of roster equilibrium that they are seeking when everybody else is behaving this way. When everybody else is looking for the same track man friendly pitchers you're looking for, there are far fewer available in the later rounds

of the draft than there used to be. And so this is a thing that I think teams are going to start to butt up against. And so who will start to zag while the rest of the teams are zigging? I think the Padres might be in that bucket right now. Yeah. Yeah. I think that when you are willing to strategically spend sometimes ahead of when your window of contention is really open so that when it is, you have sort of generational talents on your roster that don't come available in the free agent market very often. And when you have this prospect depth and then you deploy it really smartly because you have to consolidate it somehow and you can only fit 40 guys on the 40 man and you're willing to do those things, even when you go into an off season like this one, where you are perhaps being more budget conscious just because of the pandemic, you're in a much better position to execute some sort of a strategy where the goal is to get back to the postseason and win a World Series.

view as cheap and limited by sort of arbitrary self-constraint, I think they are of a different category in the sport than, say, we might put the Cubs in, which might be a very smooth transition to talking about the prospects that the Cubs acquired here, where you are able to facilitate the Padres' vision because you don't really see a ton of point in trying to maintain the payroll you have in a week central on a roster that is now old and past the 2016 high. I think that it's important to be precise about where the issues in all of these franchises lie, not to give anyone an easy time, but because I think they are categorically different and they have very different implications for the sport, even if you have a lot of mimicry

across those front offices. So why don't we use that as an opportunity to talk about what went in Chicago's direction today? Because I think everyone, regardless of how you felt about the Snell trade on the Snell side of it, looked at the Rays return and thought they got good, interesting young players, many of whom are either in the top 100 now or likely to be in the top 100 this coming year. I don't know if that is the consensus that is emerging around the Cubs deal, which if you are to look

at Twitter right now, has lit everyone we know on fire. So we'll talk about the Cubs as an institution, I think, in a second. But first, Eric, do you mind running us through the prospects that they got in return here? Because some these names I think are less familiar to me and to Ben and and thus are probably a little less familiar to a lot of our listeners sure yeah I'm really excited about this group too I think it is every bit as as good as well maybe not there's no Patino in this deal but I think that there are a bunch of really exciting young players who I've been pretty high on for a little while here Reginald Preciado is a Panamanian shortstop, might have to move to third base eventually. He got the highest bonus for an amateur player coming out of Panama in the country's history. He was 11th

on my 2019 international player rankings. Ismael Mena was 12th. And in retrospect, that was a little bit low. Preciado is another one who looked unbelievable to me in the fall and is going to be on this off season's top 100. He's 6'2 or 6'3, about a buck 80. He still is just 17 years old, I want to say. Although I'm pulling that up to confirm right now, he's a switch hitter. They gave him Corey Seager's swing at some point between last fall when I last saw him and this fall of 2020 when I next saw him. He ended up with something pretty comparable to Corey Seager's swing. It allows him to be pretty short to the baseball and still impact it with power through his natural strength. He's going to get bigger.

He's going to get stronger. Again, he's just a kid. Whether he stays at short or third, I don't know. It's 50-50. He's going to be on the left side of the infield regardless. And he might end up in that Seager bucket where you look at the guy and go, geez, I've got Presiato, by the way, listed at 6'4", 180, at 17 and a half years old as we're sitting here today.

So he might have that look of a third baseman visually, but just be able to play shortstop by some combination of his arm strength and good defensive positioning. But he's a top 100 guy for me for sure this offseason. A chance to be a switch hitting shortstop with power. You know, there just aren't very many guys like that. And then the other players who they traded for, Jason Santana. Santana actually had ranked ahead of Preciado on last year's Padres list

because Santana blew up last fall. The time between when I saw Santana during extended spring training of 2019 and then when I saw him throughout the summer in the AZL and then again in the fall of 2019, he had gotten bigger, especially up in the shoulders, really had broadened out, was rotating with more ferocity, still had pretty good barrel control for someone who had grown into at least a full grade's worth of bat speed over the course of about eight months.

As we're sitting here now, he is about to turn 20 years old, 5'11", 170. So you can see he's a little bit more of a sure thing to stay at shortstop just because he's not as, at big of a risk as Preciado, say, to put on 30, 40 pounds over the course of the next four to five years. So Santana's a little bit older. He was 2017 July second class for 300K. This is during a time when San Diego was still in the penalty box

coming off of signing Morejon and Luis Almanzar and Justin Lopez and Yorty Barley, a bunch of guys who have kind of turned out to be a mixed bag. They found this guy for 300K. So I'm a big Santana fan as well. And then they also acquired, let's see, there's just so many guys. Oh yeah, Ismael Mena. So Mena is another guy who took a leap for me in the fall. When you were talking about 17, Mena's now just shy of 18. Eight months of physical growth for guys like this can be a big deal. And so so Mena when I saw him fall of 2019 which was the first time I laid eyes on him he kind of had that tweener outfield look to him physically where you just weren't sure if he was going to grow into the power necessary to play a corner and he didn't have like the overt physical skills to play

a really good center field or anything like that and then then yada, yada, yada, 12 months go by. And this kid looked like a monster on, you know, the backfields in Peoria this fall. He's, he's a couple inches bigger now. And again, broader shouldered from being in a pro weight room for the last year. His swing is still kind of funky. I'm going to try to get a bunch of video up overnight for folks to see these guys. Cause I realized people don't know who the hell they are, but this gets strong and he's grown into like three full grades of arm strength, which isn't all that meaningful, but is definitely notable and kind of strange.

But this is definitely a big time arrow up guy from the last 12 months or so. He was a 40 future value, 20th on the Padres list during the course of the summer. He is gonna be a 45 future value and somewhere probably in the top 10 to 12 of the upcoming Cubs list. And then the last guy is Owen Casey. And truth be told, Casey, who I did not see in the fall, I have the biggest error bar around his evaluation as any of the guys who I've talked about today. He's a giant framed

Canadian outfielder. I think he was the first Canadian kid drafted in 2020. And the Padres have done this where they end up taking someone who wasn't necessarily a fixture on the showcase circuit the summer before, but had a big spring coming out as a senior. We had fewer players like that in 2020 than before because a lot of guys didn't play senior varsity baseball because of COVID. But Casey was with the Canadian national team for a little while during spring training, and they always end up playing some pro minor leaguers in Florida, and he looked pretty good there. So again, the Padres' tendency to do this with players like Josh Mears, Mason House, Hudson Head. Again, not everyone has heard of these guys, but the results have been mixed at best. So not a lot of track record on this guy. It's another

giant framed outfielder with big time power projection who you look at and say, this guy might be, you know, be built like Hunter Renfro one day or might be built like Will Myers one day. Like it's that type of frame, that type of body on a lefty cold weather bat. So probably gonna take a little longer for him to barbecue. Need to do more work on Owen Casey to feel a little bit more clarity as far as what I think of him

because I haven't seen him in person just yet. So he was lower on my draft list than his bonus would indicate he should have been. And certainly after a trade like this, the Cubs seem to have been on him pretty strong as well. So I need to do some reworking on Casey, but he's more in that deep projection flyer area for me as we're sitting here right now. Interesting. Okay. So yeah, as Mike was saying earlier, I mean, there's a difference, I think, between a straight up salary dump and a deal that is partly motivated by salary concerns, but also is done with an eye toward rebuilding and getting better and competing. And those are the buckets that you can put some teams in versus the raise where, you know, yes, we want players to get paid what they're worth and we want teams to spend, but

ultimately the goal is winning. And often when we say that we want teams to spend, we say that because we want them to win. We want them to compete and the raise keep competing other than I guess 2016 was maybe their down year recently. But they've shown that they can do that. Does this mean to you that you think the Cubs should also be in that bucket? Because I think there are a lot of people who will look at just how stingy Cubs ownership has been and the fact that they've been willing to entertain other deals and not spend and might say, well, this is just straight up getting rid of Darvish's salary.

But there's enough talent here that to you, at least it's, I don't know, a good faith effort at getting a decent return for him. I think so. I, you know, I think Darvish's evolution has been pretty fascinating to go from from someone who was very very fastball heavy and as i'm i'm hoping to have a kohei arihara piece on the site tomorrow morning too and going through looking at some of the japanese pitchers who have come over and most of the guys who have were relying on breaking balls over there have not necessarily fallen short of expectations over here but there's definitely a bigger gap in their drop-off from their NPB performance compared to the splitter-heavy guys. And now Darvish has just become someone who throws

any pitch in any count, which is a fascinating approach that I think will become more valuable as, again, there are game theory elements to this, but as hitters' approaches become more focused on where they can do damage in anticipating certain types of pitches, which it seems as though is occurring at the big league level, pitchers like Darvish are going to be able to hold water for deeper into their careers, even if they start to lose stuff, just because they have so many pitches that they can kind of throw first strike whenever they want. So as far as the Cubs are concerned here,

yeah, I think that this is, it's an interesting group considering that now the Cubs suddenly have as many young teenage shortstop prospects as just about anybody else in baseball, except for maybe Cleveland. In addition to the guys that they acquired, they just drafted at Howard in the first round. You know, so this is the group that's going to be competing for at bats in the lower levels next year is everyone who they just acquired via trade ed howard who's just shy of 19 at this point i want to say and fabian pertus who's 20 and christopher and rafael morel both of them are i want to say between 18 and and 21 like uh Kevin Made, who is also just over 18, who's another, what did he get, $1.5 million internationally last year.

These are all the guys who are going to get run out at the lower levels of the restructured minors next year. I think you can only have one complex level roster based on what folks in baseball are anticipating. So how the Cubs go about trying to develop all these players simultaneously is going to be interesting to see. But, but yeah, I think that this is not,

it doesn't have the Patino piece. It doesn't have the, you know, whether you like the glass now or Meadows most of that group piece, it doesn't have anything quite like that coming back it is closer to the package pittsburgh got for garrett cole in my opinion where it's like a mix of a different type of different types of players here rather than kind of the low ceiling higher floor types like colin moran and jo Musgrove, this is long-term going to take maybe five years, but some of these guys might have huge monster ceilings. If Preciado, Preciado is the type of

prospect who, if he told me in, if he had gone to college, he'd be at the top of everyone's draft projection for three years from now. What he looks like at 21 could be what Fernando Tatis looked like at 21. It could be what Corey Seager looked like at 2021. So there's a chance to get to that place with Preciado, but not clearly there yet just because the guy hasn't had an opportunity to play. And so on that level, perhaps it falls a little bit short of what you want

because you want that guy who you feel good about laying up as a star or an above average regular of some kind in the near future. But I don't know if that matches up with the Cubs timeline to compete again anymore. Yeah. Well, I was going to ask you what you think that timeline is because it seems like sort of the end of an era here with John Lester's option being declined, although he still could resign and Theo leaving and, you know, Schwarber being non-tendered and even like Len Casper leaving. It just seems like the band is breaking up a little bit here. And this is still a team that just won the division, you know, barely, but they did. But now to take Darvish out of the mix and, you know, maybe Bryant is still being discussed and I wonder

whether this is kind of the the beginning of a larger sell-off or whether it's just well let's try to keep competing while we restock the system a little bit like do you think that they will try to straddle those lines or are you expecting sort of a full rebuild? I think they can conceivably do the former, right? Like I think there's a series of outcomes where either Bryant gets dealt, although they certainly would be selling low on him at this point, or someone like Rizzo, which I think is less likely because I think that there's a personal connection between that player and the org that is difficult to break

but like with Miguel Amaya who's another top 100 prospect another Panamanian player catcher who's playing in Puerto Rico right now a winner league ball but like he's a good player in my opinion and so maybe that opens up you you trade Wilson Contreras like he'd fetch quite a quite a return in my estimation there are some good young players who are on the precipice of the big leagues here. I think that Albert Alzalea made some strides with a second breaking ball last year as opposed to them trying to shove a change up down his throat.

They've gone to two breaking balls in there that might unlock something with Alzalea, but certainly not on the level that can replace Darvish one for one. Braylon Marquez is a big, he's listed at 6'4", 185. He's probably about 260. It's embarrassing, Cubs. Update your heights and weights. Your org is the worst at it. Please update your heights and weights. But he's 21 going on 22. He throws 100 from the left side. I have him in relief, but they don't think that so maybe there are some ways to patch together some young guys in a way that uh that will replace some

facsimile of of darvish i think that the where the cubs have failed is at drafting pitching the last half decade or so. And around that 2016 title team, they drafted for a few drafts in a row, like almost exclusively college pitching. It represented a ridiculous ratio of their draft picks for a stretch of time. And none of them have really become anything yet. Some of them still might be back of the rotation type pieces. Corey Abbott is probably first among those.

But to just whiff on college arm after college arm really hurt their ability to build pitching depth behind their veterans and stay competitive in a big way either by developing pitching in-house or by developing prospects who are good enough to flip for the pieces to keep them in true contention for the last couple of years. I wrote in the middle of the 2020 season that even as the Cubs were winning the Central pretty comfortably at that point, that they just weren't a contender. They just didn't have a contender's bullpen. And that I thought the White Sox, even though they were sort of in a thick mix in the AL Central, did in fact have, thanks to a bunch of rookies largely,

a contending bullpen. And that's still the case unless they move Marquez back there. So, you know, the Cubs have changed a bunch of what they're doing on the player dev side the last couple of years. I think some of it is working, or I did for a while. Like Nico Horner, while he was at Stanford, could not lift the ball at all. And then they changed his swing

almost immediately after drafting him and he looked very different. But he still isn't really lifting the ball. He's a zero degree launch guy last year. Jordan Nwogu from Michigan is another one who if folks pull up video of him from his college days, he's gonna need a swing change. Brennan Davis, high school outfielder who they drafted,

had a messy swing in high school. They fixed, quote unquote, that as well. He looks much better as a hitter now than he did as an Arizona high scorer. So there's definitely some good stuff going on with the Cubs. But I do think that there's going to be at least a short-term rebuild here, probably in like the three-year range, if you're optimistic about it. The rest of the teams in the division are quite good, and the Pirates have a little bit of a head start as far as being full on go for a rebuild here lately. Yeah. Yeah, I'd have a lot more sympathy for this approach if the Cubs were the race, right?

Like, I think that part of what is frustrating about the situation that Cubs fans find themselves in is that the financial precarity of Tampa Bay is just not present to the same degree in, really, as it is down in St. Petersburg. I'm going to mix up all the stadium names and cities and places. And so I think that it's hard to swallow an approach like this, especially when you started your great era of Cubs baseball that ended in a World Series by suppressing the service time of Chris Bryant to get an extra year out of him on the back end and then like for what you know and some of that is not the fault of the

front office right like they couldn't anticipate some of the injury stuff and so i don't mean to say that like they set out to job chris bryant and then undermined him in an active way. But it's just when you are willing to engage in tactics like that with the kind of money that ownership has to then spend so little time as a real contender and not an NL Central contender, because I think those are different things lately, I think would be really quite frustrating, especially when in theory, the team's ownership has the financial resources to buttress some of those, you know, college arms that haven't worked out and to bring in guys, you know, like you Darvish to help to keep the window open longer. And I think that this Cubs team in this in the 2021 NL Central can probably be fairly competitive because no one

seems to be trying especially hard to to win but I think that this is one of those trades where we can like the long-term projection for the prospects who are involved and still feel kind of gross about what this particular exchange says about some segments of the industry because the Cubs shouldn't have to play the game this way. They're making an active choice, and all teams are, but they're really making an active choice to conduct business in the way that they are, and that's kind of a bummer because it's like, you know, the Go Cubs Go thing got really annoying really fast,

but that's superior to sitting there over the course of the winter just wishing that that they would decide to spend more to to win and to retain their players and to not you know job guys like Chris Bryant you don't think you don't think the team plucking rule five picks from Baltimore is in position to contend. It's always a really good sign when you do that, because famously, that's where the best major leaguers come from. Baltimore's rule five contingent. So maybe we can circle back to San Diego before we wrap up here. Obviously, a lot of talent has changed teams here.

These are not just slapdick prospects to use Blake Snell's terminology from last year. Have the Padres given up anything that will come back to bite them? I mean, obviously, they've gotten great players back here, so they've gotten their values worth, I suppose. But at this point, they're really only chasing LA, and it's a tough target, obviously, because the Dodgers are the best team in baseball they've been the best for a while now consistently and that's really the only team that is ahead of San Diego at least in their league at this point and so you know they're stocking up here you know

they're going after death because they are trying to replicate the Dodgers model. Essentially, they're trying to beat the Dodgers at their own game, which is pretty tough. And we know that Preller is very aggressive. He likes making moves. He likes making splashes. Some of those splashes have hurt in the long run. You know, the ones that he made early in his tenure, maybe he was a little overaggressive. So are we in a point now where we'll be looking back in a few years and say oh boy the Padres pushed too many chips in and they sure could use some of these prospects who've made good with other teams or is this good is this just yeah they gave up the guys that they had to give up to get this caliber of player and they held on to a lot of guys that they didn't deal you know it's not like mckenzie gore

was going in one of these trades so and they they will not trade abrams like there's no way they will trade cj abrams it seems yeah they've kept a lot of the guys you know a lot of the players they've dealt it seemed like they had redundancies just because they have such great young position players and they also had so many prospects that there were just too many players you know to fit on the roster and so it doesn't really hurt just too many players, you know, to fit on the roster. And so it doesn't really hurt them. Like those players might pan out and be good, but they didn't even have a spot for them necessarily. So do you think that they did a good job of sort of assessing what they needed and what their strength was?

Like, yeah, it's great to have a strong farm system and to stockpile prospects. But eventually those guys need to either graduate and get good or you need to deal them to get established players and that's what you're supposed to do with a great farm system and that's what they've done i think it's pretty likely that just based on the sheer volume of guys that they have moved to this point that someone is gonna turn out to be really good you would have thought that that were true of, if we can think of some of the other teams in the last, I don't know, decade or so who have really pushed chips in to try to compete. It's not like Kyle Drabeck or Michael Taylor really became anything, right?

Like those Phillies teams who were like, let's collect Oswalt and Halliday and Lee and Hamels and Blanton. You know, Josh Outman is still sort of internet famous for what his delivery looked like once upon a time, but he didn't really do anything. Adrian Cardenas, same thing. I guess Travis Darnot eventually kind of came around, but yeah, I'm struggling to think of, you know, so you mentioned sort of kind of butted up against Xavier Edwards there, who was the, you know, quote unquote slapdick prospect who was traded for whoever Tommy Pham. It's clear that Pham and Snell are buddies. And I think that's great. I like Xavier Edwards a lot.

He might kind of be like Luis Castillo, not the pitcher, the former Marlins second baseman. He sort of has that type of skill set. So if you think that's getting burned, maybe there's one. Andres Munoz, who they traded to Seattle as part of the NOLA deal. You know, he's 21 and a half. He sits 99 to 102 and has to find a plus breaking ball, but he might be a closer eventually. Emmanuel Classe, who's also in this sort of bucket of potential late-inning reliever who had a PED suspension in 2020, they traded him for Brett Nicholas, the third catcher on a 40-man type guy, just because Classe was a 40-man crunch victim and Classe turned out to be pretty good. Other than the guys who we talked about from

today, as I'm sitting here looking at the board, I like Jason Rosario. He's got a really interesting skill set. Owen Miller is probably a fine bat to ball, middle and field type guy who plays a role on a team. Nobody else is really standing out to me as someone who might turn into a star. Gabriel Arias, who was part of the contingent that went back to Cleveland for Mike Clevenger, has that level of ability as well, but he had an over-aggressive approach before they traded him. They tried to do some virtual reality training, and it seemed like it was working in the spring of 2020 before we had our shutdown. But for Cleveland in the fall,

he looked kind of a mess again from a bat-to to ball standpoint. So he's a very volatile prospect who's got some big tools. So other than the guys we talked about today, I really like Xavier Edwards quite a bit. Everyone from Edwards high school class, which was I think the 2018 draft. If you could align those kids up to play like a Sandlot style World Series against one another, he's going first. He's only like five foot eight or whatever. So it doesn't have the long-term physical projection that other guys from that draft class did. But he's only like five foot eight or whatever so it doesn't have the long-term physical projection that other guys from that draft class did but he's a switch hitter with excellent feel for contact he's got ultra short levers he's really hard to beat in the zone with velocity and he makes a ton of contact and plays up the middle so you know i think they have like a sean figgins comp on him

and i have like the luis castillo thing sort of floating around. He's the one who I think is most likely to burn them. But even then, he doesn't have a big-time power ceiling here. So I think the guys who the Padres needed to hold on to, chief among them is C.J. Abrams. They should not trade C.J. Abrams. He's unbelievable. He's a top three or five prospect for me this offseason, I think. So regardless of where he ends up defensively,

that's the guy who they need to hold on to. And otherwise, I think they're doing fine. Yeah, it's fascinating because the Padres could have said, look, we're already really good. We're good enough probably to make the playoffs and maybe we can't catch the Dodgers or it would be really hard to catch the Dodgers. And so we'll be content like this and, you know, maybe things will go right for us and things will go wrong for the Dodgers and it'll work out. But otherwise, we'll just keep these great prospects and we'll be good for a long time because that's part of the Dodgers model. If they're trying to emulate the Dodgers, part of that is not trading your prospects all that often, you know, keeping them, turning them into good players. And the Dodgers will occasionally

deal for a star or sign a star I mean they traded for Hugh Darvish so they've done that too but a lot of it is no we're going to hold on to our guys and so the Padres could have said we'll copy that aspect of what the Dodgers did and maybe they are doing that to an extent by holding on to certain guys whom they consider to be in that class of just unmovable prospects. But, you know, it would have been easy for them to say, we'll just play second fiddle to the Dodgers for a while. And once you get in the playoffs, you know, it's anyone's game.

And this way we will continue to contend indefinitely. And so they're really just making a bet here on going toe to toe with the powerhouse, with the juggernaut. So do you think they're good enough? Do you guys think they can catch the Dodgers either now or in the medium term? I feel more confident now than I did this morning or yesterday morning, certainly. I mean, this is a really, this is a really talented baseball team. Yeah, it's so much fun too like it was already the most

watchable entertaining team and now you're adding you darvish who's like one of the most fun pitchers to watch and and kim who seems like he'll be a lot of fun like oh man this is just they have a diversity of approaches in their rotation that's really engaging they have a bunch of like young players from all over the world yeah right there's just like a lot there's a lot here for people who want to feel excited about baseball to latch on to there's sort of a flavor for everyone both among their position players and their pitchers starters and relievers it's just a really fun group they have the the good uniforms now they've left their boring days behind them in all sorts of ways and you don't like sand you don't miss the the late trevor hoffman era sand they were just like

and like the the very boring navy ones they had for a while. So I just, you know, I think that it's always going to be a tall order to catch Los Angeles. You know, when I joked that the raise plus money equals the Dodgers, that's a real thing. I've made this joke before. They're your friend you went to high school with who had a perfect GPA and was pretty and funny.

And you're like, how is this a thing? How are people allowed to be like this in real life? Well, Megan. So I think it's a really hard task, but I think that they are good at identifying where they're weak. They go out and address those things. They have the prospect capital to do it. And I don't know. It sounds like they have the buy-in of ownership.

It's just a really exciting club. That's the part for me that is still lurking with the Dodgers is they also have a farm system. They're also really good at that part of it and have an everyday catcher to trade in kyber ruiz who they just don't have room for on the big league roster who they could for sure you know if they wanted to trade for francis golden door they probably could but kenley jansen can't close games forever the cracks are starting to show yeah and i like brewstar gratterall but

the fact that he doesn't generate swings and misses on that fastball despite how hard it is that's not great for october there are just times when you can't allow a ball in play and missing caleb ferguson next year because of of tommy john is gonna sting and so i'll be very interested to see i don't trust joe kelly any farther than he could throw a baseball through his window um i'm interested to see. I don't trust Joe Kelly any farther than he could throw a baseball through his window. I'm interested to see what David Price brings to the table. What kind of role he ends up filling. Might be back to old school rookie year. David Price with the Rays.

Closer duty. That would be pretty dope in my opinion. And as much as I love Dustin May and Tony Gonsolin. And Father Time is undefeated. So he's coming for Kershaw. He's coming for Kenley. He's coming for Kelly and Price and that stuff's going to happen at some point.

So what the Dodgers are able to do to fill some of those holes that I think, especially in the bullpen, like San Diego's just got so many potential weapons there, whether it's Lamette who moves there because he can't stay healthy in a rotation or Anderson Espinoza comes back from Tommy John and gets put in the bullpen or Javi Guerra who has converted to pitching within the last year and a half and his first bullpen he was 97 to You know, like the Padres still have a bunch of like bullets left in the gun that some

of them are going to be blanks and some of them are not. And one of them might be the one that when push comes to shove in October, kills the Dodgers. Our depth charts have updated to reflect the Snell move, but not yet the Darvish move. And I'll remind our listeners that at this moment, our depth chart projections are only determined by Steamer. We haven't yet blended Zips in, although we will be able to do that in fairly short order, which is very exciting. But right now, our depth charts have the Padres rotation sixth in baseball, although very narrowly behind

the Yankees. So right now with Davies rather than Darvish are projected for 13.8 wins. Davies has a 1.2 war projection. Darvish has a 4.2 war projection. So I think that they're at least on the pitching side very well positioned to challenge LA in the division. And yeah, it's going to be a lot of fun. It's going to be a fun race, yeah, because the Dodgers are bringing back basically the entire team that just won the World Series and had like an all-time great season

coming off another pretty all-time great season. And we would probably think of this 2020 team as like inner circle all-timer team if it had been a regular season. So yeah, that's's gonna be quite a race and eric where do you think kim will even fit on this team because like you got tatis at short you got machado at third you've got hasmer signed forever at first like cronenworth of course is at second coming off of his rookie of the year runner-up campaign there have been some conflicting

reports today. Some say that he won't move to the outfield. Others say that he will and could replace Profar and left. I don't know. If you get a DH, I guess you can find a little more room in that lineup at least. But, man, Kim, I mean, he is young, as we just determined last week what young is, Meg. He is young. as we just determined last week what young is Meg.

He's young. He just turned 25 in October, and he's coming off a 30-homer year in the KBO. Like, he's got speed. He's got it all. So do you think he will have any adjustment issues? And I don't know. How do you see this infield shaking out? You know, I taught Brendan Golowski,

who is writing about Kim and that signing for the site on, I don't even know what day it is, whatever tomorrow is. It's going to run tomorrow. Tuesday. It'll run on Tuesday, yeah, because we're recording this at 9 p.m. He and I have some disagreements about Kim's defensive ability. He's got him as more of a second base only type of guy, whereas I think that Kim could play shortstop. Galowski's got questions about his throwing utility, which I think that Kim could play shortstop. Golowski's got questions about his throwing utility, which I think are founded. But yeah, I think second base, some sort of blend with

Cronenworth. I still think there's a chance that one of someone else gets traded. Like, does Will Myers get moved as part of this? I don't know. But if it were me, Cronenworth's quite good at second base and can play like a viable short and at first and has played the outfield before i think cronenworth on a contending team is probably your super utility type who's moving around and occasionally the badgers there to get your multi-position action going oh yeah and and I think that what it lets you do, because don't necessarily fit defensively to actually fit together. It's sort of like rather than platooning with two corner outfielders where it's like Cleveland does it with Jordan Luplo and Tyler Naquin, or whoever the lefty bat du jour is, Brad Zimmer and Daniel Johnson with Luplo, whoever it's going to

be, right? The way that the Rays and the Dodgers and now perhaps San Diego will do it is there's a piece who can swing back and forth between a couple of different positions who allows for that type of thing in a way that is a little more complex and nuanced than your typical platoon situation. So I think that the answer is to move Cronenworth around just because he already has experience doing that. Although Kim has a little bit of it as well. It has mostly been on the infield that short and at third and at second base.

And two of those three positions, you're not, you're not moving those guys, you know, it gives them depth in the event of injury as well. I think it threatens Jorge Mateo's roster spot. I think it threatens Greg Allen's roster spots and some of the skills that they bring to the table,

namely speed, become a little bit redundant, especially Mateo, who's also a right-handed hitter. So those guys will have to watch out, but there's nothing wrong with Cronenworth taking an at-bat for Myers or Tommy Pham or Jorge Oña or any of the other right-handed hitters occasionally. And the inverse is true. Like I'm sure there will just be times when Kim hits for Trent Grisham against a lefty or something like that coming off the bench. And then it goes into

the game at second base while Cronenworth moves to wherever Grisham was in the outfield or however. So yeah, I think that the answer is to move Cronenworth around. And I think it's weird that they said off the top that they're not going to do that. Like, why wouldn't you do that? Yeah. Well, there are ways this could go wrong, I guess. I mean, we saw it go wrong with Clevenger. Of course, that can happen with any pitcher.

Could certainly happen to Snell, who has had bulky elbow and arthroscopic elbow issues and shoulder fatigue and that sort of thing and Lamette of course had his injury issues so you never know but they have acquired quite a lot of depth here and not just depth in like league average arms but depth in like aces so that's uh pretty impressive i had forgotten until today that the rays only had snell because of the padres really indirectly but i had forgotten that whole sequence where brad hop was released i think by the the rockies midway through the 2010 season and then the rays picked him up for like 15 games and then the padres signed him as a free agent and so he was a sub replacement player for them but the Rays got a compensation pick and they used it on Blake Snell and that 2011 draft that

was the one where the Rays had like 10 first round picks you know counting the supplemental round and I just looked at their entire draft that year so Blake Snell has produced 11.4 war via baseball reference and the entire rest of their draft class, not just the first rounders, but everyone produced negative 1.5 war to date. So just a one man draft that year, even though they had all of those picks. So the Rays screw up sometimes too,

but, but they did get Snell and yeah I guess I don't know like if the Rays will just be like uh all role-less pitchers you know this year where it's just like a bunch of guys who throw two to four innings or something because like this year like if the the roster sizes are down to 26 or something, you have to have someone throw some innings. But I guess they just figure, well, we'll get rid of this guy who only goes five, and we'll just replace him with a bunch of relievers who go two or three or something. That's just what they do.

At a certain point, you run up against the number of pitchers you're allowed to have on a roster, but they have managed it somehow. It's very kind of you to not bring up Danny Holson in that conversation. It's like a really nice thing. My big question with Blake Snell going back to the West Coast is whether he, a Washingtonian, will start talking like he's from Shoreline.

Yeah. I don't understand your accent, Blake. We don't talk like that where we're from. There's nothing wrong with it. It's not a bad accent. It's just not his. I don't like your accent, Blake. We don't talk like that where we're from. There's nothing wrong with it. It's not a bad accent. It's just not his. I don't understand. Maybe he's buddies with hilarious Baldwin.

We would never impugn him so. I'll make fun of Snell. He made fun of Xavier Edwards. That's true. Poor Xavier. He's in the crosshairs now. All right. Have we covered it all?

AJ gave us a ton to talk about here, but I guess we have summed it all up to the best of our abilities. I just appreciate whoever hid his phone over Christmas. Yep. Yep. Well, this is more than I thought we would have to cover this week. So thanks, AJ, for that. Well done. thanks, Eric, for jumping on on short notice. And now I guess you get to write about all of this now. and being willing to be a little cavalier with my own health during a couple weeks this fall and go to some games ill-advisedly. And so I'm glad that the result of that is being able to come on Effectively Wild.

Some good came from that, yeah. Yeah, that spoke well of the Padres' prospect packages that they gave up, I think, because we were like, oh, we better get Eric on to tell us who these people are. So like other than, you know, some of them, like we know who Luis Patino is. But the fact that a lot of them we had nothing really intelligent to say about them suggests that they didn't give up some of their inner circle prospects. And that's why we need a lead prospect analyst who knows everyone. All right. So we will end there. That will do it for this episode, although not for today.

We'll have another episode up soon. That one will be about the Hall of Fame with our pal Jay Jaffe. We hope that you're having a more relaxing week than AJ Preller, and we're grateful that you've chosen to spend some of your time with us. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. 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. James Rosenheim, Jay Case, Eddie Dudek, David Dudley, and nbeck27. Thanks to all of you.

You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. 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 Meg coming via email at podcastoffangraphs.com or via the Patreon MESTI system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. Keep an eye on your podcast feeds because we will be back soon. Talk to you next time. All in a day's work. All in a day's work. It's all in a day's work.