Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1650: The Only Nolan

Episode Date: February 2, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley break down the Nolan Arenado trade from the Rockies’ and Cardinals’ perspectives, reflect on the Rockies’ rudderless state, touch on a few more minor transactions (Alex Cobb to the Angels, Didi Gregorius to the Phillies, and Eddie Rosario to Cleveland), remember the career of the now-retired Dustin Pedroia, and touch […]

It's just a game, the rules never change Nothing for nothing It's just another dice to put you on the list Nothing for nothing No money they don't make anymore Not around me Matters won't beg from the poor Beautiful Beautiful Might as well beg from the poor Poor, poor, poor, beautiful

Beautiful, yeah Poor, beautiful Hello and welcome to episode 1650 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'm doing all right. So last time we talked, we had a presentiment that something was coming. We just sensed that once we were finished recording, there would be something that we wished we had been able to talk about when we recorded. And we just couldn't because news tends to break late at night, which is not convenient for

couldn't because news tends to break late at night, which is not convenient for podcasters. So the Nolan Arnauto deal got done, or at least almost done after we talked about the NL Central and Nolan Arnauto trade rumors, et cetera. So here we are to talk about that trade today. Yeah. I mean, I will give you this opportunity, Ben. We can pivot if you so desire to the angels, like scintillating, scintillating acquisition of Alex Cobb. Would you prefer to talk about Alex Cobb? Because like, we can if it's really important to you. No, I'm kidding. Probably shouldn't lead with the Cobb trade when you have the Aranato. I was going to call it a blockbuster. I forget we discussed the definition of blockbuster on the show at some point, and I forget exactly what we came up with, what the prerequisites are for a blockbuster when it's like partially

salary relief and no big players going back the other way. I don't know if that really counts as a blockbuster. I think maybe one of our conditions was that it had to be like prominent players changing teams going both ways. So I don't know if this fits, but whenever there is a superstar traded, it's a pretty big deal. Yeah, I am comfortable Ben Clemens, when he wrote about this for us very late in the evening on Friday night, used the word blockbuster in his headline. And I also recalled that we had had a conversation about it, and I also could remember the specifics of it but I thought I think this is fine yeah episode 1485 we talked about it people can go back or maybe I'll check the effectively wild wiki as we speak here and see

what we said but yeah big deal Nolan Arnauto going from the Rockies to the Cardinals still has not been completed as we speak on Monday. And this is taking a while to get done because there are all sorts of moving parts and it's a complicated deal because of the amount of money that is changing teams here and because of Arnauto's contract terms. So what do we know exactly right now based on what's been reported? We know that Arnauto is going to St. Louis. We know that the Rockies are supposedly sending 50 million or so of the, what, 199 that he had coming to him over the next six seasons. Correct. And we know that multiple prospects are coming back from St. Louis to Colorado, though not notable prospects, really. And also,

we know that Arnauto will be deferring some of the money that is owed to him and that there will be another guaranteed year tacked on to the end of his deal for $15 million, and he'll be getting another opt-out. Basically, when it's a deal like this with a lot of money changing hands, the league has to approve it, the Players Association has to approve it. And the Players Association not really in the business of approving trades that are just like players taking less money than they were supposed to take. So they have to get something back essentially. Arnauto has to get something in exchange for agreeing to defer some of his salary. and that would be getting another guaranteed year and a second opt-out

because he has an opt-out coming after this coming season. So now he will reportedly have another opt-out after the 2022 season. Have I left anything out? We know some of the identities of the players coming back, but maybe not all of them. We know some of them. So we, at least as it has been reported,

and I worry, Ben, that we are setting ourselves up to do this whole conversation, and then we will conclude it, and we will immediately get the full terms of the deal, and then we will feel very silly. But at the risk of all that, the package of prospects, as it was reported, includes at least Austin Gomber. When this originally hit the transom, there was some conversation that Luke and Baker might be part of the deal. That seems to have been debunked. It is surprising that we don't have a firmer grasp on who the prospects are in this particular package, but I think that we will know in short order. But yeah, I think that you've hit on all the specifics. It's so strange because we had the Real Muto signing, which is just, it's just a signing, right?

Like he just signed a deal for a number of years and it didn't really have any fancy bells or whistles. It was very meat and potatoes. I don't know how many more sort of little catchphrases I can throw in here. And then this hit and it was so complicated that everyone involved had to spend the weekend making sure that he was not like horribly disadvantaging nolan arenado and messing with the league and that the money was right and

so it is quite complicated and i'm sure that we will have more to talk about once we actually know the exact contours of it but nolan arenado is now a st louis cardinal i forgot about the no trade clause too another wrinkle to this that he has to agree to it he. I forgot about the no trade clause too. Another wrinkle to this, that he has to agree to it. He has to waive the no trade clause for this to happen. Right. And then that no trade clause is going to be reinstated as part of his contract with the Cardinals. So he will once again retain his right to refuse a trade. So it's definitely, I don't think that it forecloses the possibility of another team emerging in the Central, but it definitely shakes up the balance of things. And I don't know, I guess the Cardinals just really like to go shopping in the NL West. Yeah, maybe we can talk about the Cardinals side of this just so we start with the happy part first.

The fan base that's celebrating this move, not the one that's mourning it. And yeah, the Cardinals, we've taken the NL Central to task for its collective inactivity this offseason. And last week, we talked about just some glimmers of life there. And we talked about the Wainwright re-signing and the fact that Yadier Molina seemed to be nearing a deal with the Cardinals and the Cubs went and got Jack Peterson. But those were all just lateral moves, as we said, or just bringing back players. And as we've said, like the team that was willing or able to make one major move and go get a star, whether it be via trade or free agency, seemed really positioned to take the lead in this division because no one

else was doing anything. And if anything, teams like the Reds and the Pirates have sold off some players. So the Cardinals have seized control here, I think. Now I should mention, I'm just looking at the fan graphs, depth charts, and projected standings and projected war totals. The Brewers are actually above the Cardinals right now, but I don't know whether you've updated this for the Arnauto deal yet because it's not actually done. So that may change things, but certainly the Cardinals have placed themselves ahead of Cincinnati, ahead of Chicago. When you can add a Nolan Arnauto and not really give up anything, apologies to Mr. Gomber, but in terms of players who were really going to help the Cardinals a lot in 2021, I think this is a sizable upgrade despite the questions about Arnauto's health and his

shoulder coming off of last season when he had the AC joint issue that he was playing through, and it seemed to sap much of his power. And you hope that if he is healthy, that that will all be back. But I guess until you see him demonstrate that, there's some uncertainty about it. But still, having been as quiet as the Cardinals were up until that point, really, that just makes it more exciting. I think the fact that it seemed like they weren't poised to do anything, that they weren't going to bring back Colton Wong, that it was even taking a while to bring back franchise icons like Wainwright and Molina. It just seemed like it was set to be a very slow winter and then to go get a superstar. I think the impact of that, you'd be happy getting Arnauto no matter what the prelude to that was,

but when it seemed as bleak as it did and as slow as it did, and then all of a sudden, Arenado falls in your lap, that's got to feel twice as good for fans of that team. Yeah, the timing of this was so funny, not just because it happened late, and so it sort of continued this trend of Major League Baseball teams not wanting the people who cover their teams to have normal Friday nights. Although, what are we all up to anyway? What are out doing ben nothing we're at home editing a podcast yeah we're hanging out we're doing we're doing at home stuff so i suppose in that respect it's not all that that different we're just doing home stuff in front of our computers which we wouldn't

necessarily be doing um but you know this this happened to correspond with craig edwards departure from fan graphs and i was messaging with ben clemens and i just thought to myself i was like well it feels right that from one cardinals fan to another we shall pass the torch of late night uh deals and ben was thrilled i mean i think that it is a testament to his uh strengths as an analyst that uh nothing in his his uh write-up of the deal struck me as particularly Homer-ish, but he did allow himself a little bit of excitement at the end. Because yeah, if you're a Cardinals fan, Aaron Otto is one of the most exciting position players in baseball. I think that you outlined some of the reasons why we might see a bit of a dip in his projections going forward as a result of how his 2020 played out but

I think I'm pretty confident or as confident as I can be that the injury stuff will resolve and he will be back to his old self and also just in a place where he is not dealing with the sort of public battle with the front office that he was having to navigate through and a participant in while in Colorado and so yeah if you're a Cardinals fan, you have to be over the moon that for a collection of guys who at best were going to be useful contributors several years down the road, that you're able to lock up one of the better players in baseball. And for the foreseeable future, I think the other thing about this

that is so fun is because there's so much time left on his deal you're not doing a one-year rental like you can go out and buy an aeronauta jersey guys like that's probably a safe bet i say that and then he'll be like my opt-out in 2022 is very attractive so uh if that happens to you i'd like to apologize i once counseled my young cousin who is a fan of the rockies that sure she could she could buy an Arenado jersey. He's not going anywhere, so you will yet on the St. Louis depth charts at FanGraphs, which is perhaps prudent because it's not officially done. So right now, the projections say that the Brewers are two to three wins ahead of the Cardinals and the Cubs and the Reds who are all kind of clustered together. So you would expect that once Arenado gets added in there, that the Cardinals will jump to the top of that division. And yeah, I mean, I think he pretty much becomes their best player right away. I mean, pending the health concerns, but you've got Goldschmidt, of course,

and the Cardinals have done such a great job of developing good players or average players. It just seems like they always have someone to fill those spots from within, but not always superstars. And yet they have gone and gotten Goldschmidt, and now they've gone and gotten Arnauto. And I think to have him, who he's been the best third baseman in the game, according fangraft's war since 2015 that position is very deep these days and given the health concerns i don't know exactly where you would stack him up there but you know he has been a perennial gold glove winner every year and seemingly well deserved passes the eye test with flashing colors and passes the defensive metric test too. And also a perennial MVP vote getter and silver slugger winner and all-star, just a legitimate superstar.

And obviously the numbers are juiced a little bit by Coors Field, but you can't make the mistake of just looking at his road stats and saying that that's the player he is either. And Cardinals fans know that very well from the Matt Holiday deal when Holiday went from being a really good hitter in Colorado and people looked at his road splits there and said, oh, he won't be the same guy outside of Coors Field. And then he was like exactly the same guy, if not better, when he was with St. Louis. And so you'd have to expect that Arenado's numbers too will slide in somewhere between his Rockies road stats and his Rockies home stats once he doesn't have to deal with some kind of altitude course field hangover effect. And once his outside of course field performance becomes his home team and he gets his home field advantage, he should

still be a really good offensive player and a great defender. And he doesn't turn 30 until April. So there's just a lot to like here. Just a great player and also a really riveting and watchable player who will just make as many highlights per play as just about anyone in baseball. Yeah, I think that Arenado is, he possesses a skill set that I find, I'm going to shock you by saying, I find Nolan Arenado imminently watchable as a player. I'm the very first person who's ever had that realization.

But I think that the combination of his truly spectacular play in the field with his offensive production is just a very potent combination of things. If you are trying to go to the ballpark to like make baseball memories, that kind of player offers you so many different things to choose from. And you're likely to see one good thing in the course of a game. So that's exciting.

I think that, you know, it'll be interesting to see, uh, how sort of how St. Louis deals with the Matt Carpenter of it all. Clearly Matt Carpenter has not been his usual self and I think would be considered defensively inferior to Aaron Otto

even in his prime. He will no doubt move off of third base. That is to be expected, but you can assume that he's going to be first in line if there is a DH in the National League. So that maybe puts him in a position that's a little bit better for Cardinals fans and the organization. It's just it's good. It's a good trade for St. Louis. I have no notes.

Yeah, I can't think of any nitpick or negative. Like if you're a Cardinals fan, you just have to be really happy. I mean, yes, there's some uncertainty about the state of his shoulder perhaps, and maybe he won't be a 40 homer hitter in St. Louis, but really what's not to like about having this guy under team control for a while? And yeah, given his contract, I mean, it's hard to project a year or two down the road, especially with CBA negotiations coming up. As it stands right now, you would think that he probably would not opt out. If he had to decide now whether he needed to opt out or not, probably his contract right now seems like as well as he could do or better

than he would do today coming off of the 2020 season. So who knows what will happen in 2021 and how he'll play, let alone 2022 and what the CBA will look like and what the market will look like. And getting that extra opt-out gives him more time to make that decision and assess the state of things and see what the market for his services would be. But there's a good chance that he will be playing out the rest of this contract in a Cardinals uniform. And yeah, but there's a good chance that he will be playing out the rest of this contract in a Cardinals uniform. And yeah, really what's not to like about him. And as Ben noted in his write-up, he even improved his contact rate and swing strike rate and all of that this past year, which granted, maybe that was because he was not hitting for as much power and maybe he knew that he was

not capable of hitting for as much power. And so knew that he was not capable of hitting for as much power and so maybe that is why he went with a more contact oriented or or less swing oriented approach but even prior to that when he was hitting for a ton of power he was still a pretty good contact hitter especially by modern standards so really just a an entertaining player and a really good player who's just been year in and year out, just like a five to six win guy. And he won't continue to be that through the rest of this contract most likely, but he could very well be that for the next few years. And that sets up the Cardinals really well in this division currently. So we've been giving this rave reviews from the St. Louis side.

Now, I guess we have to talk about the Rockies side. So cover your ears, Rockies fans. I mean, for Rockies fans, it's not even so much about this trade specifically as it is about the circumstances that led to this trade and just the whole couple of years that set the stage for this it's similar in some respects to the other deals that we've talked about in the past where it's like you know Mookie Betts or Francisco Lindor where you're giving up a face of the franchise type who has been with that team his whole career. And naturally, you want to see them stay and star for your team, and especially with Arenado, who just signed his extension a couple years ago. And at the time, at least, it seemed like there was a good chance

that he might be a Rocky for life and that you'd get to enjoy him forever. And so if this were purely just about, well, we traded this superstar who's meant a lot to our fan base, and we did it to save money and get financial flexibility or whatever, then you could condemn it in the same terms that a lot of people, us included, kind of ragged on the bets and Lindor trades. In this case, not that this was a good trade in isolation, but it's just part of a pattern, really. It's almost like they boxed themselves in to a point where it almost sort of made sense for them to trade him in a way, or at least it's just part of the overall situation there, as opposed to one single move that kind of comes out of nowhere because it's not like with Cleveland or with Boston that they still had a really strong team and seemed positioned to keep winning with that

player even with Arnauto I don't know that the Rockies outlook for 2021 and beyond was particularly rosy I want to acknowledge the parts of the Rocky situation that isn't their fault before I say a bunch of things that aren't very nice. Okay. Like, my grandparents are Rockies fans. Let's bum my grandpa out. I want good stuff for that franchise so that my grandfather can be happy. Yeah. Nice city.

Nice ballpark. Beautiful ballpark. Support the team there when it's winning like yeah yeah it's to have a good rockies team so i think that the rockies are responsible for their sort of position in the division relative to their competition to a point right like they make decisions about their roster and who they sign and how they develop players and who they draft that they're responsible for i I don't think that anyone envies them, the position they were in. Even a good Rockies team, like even a playoff Rockies team from a few years ago,

is in competition for a wildcard spot. There's just very little wiggle room. There are very few paths sort of through which they would, in 2021, be able to get past the Dodgers and the Padres. So I think that it's important to acknowledge that part of this, that the prize that they are realistically striving for is not the division, but it is a wildcard spot. Now, like that is a perfectly reasonable thing to strive for. As an aside, one of the Padres or Dodgers will end up in that conversation too, right?

Because only one team can win the division. But they do find themselves with a very difficult task set before them and they play baseball on the moon. So I think that it's fair to say that there are some just natural organizational roadblocks that Colorado has to deal with that other franchises don't have to deal with or don't always have to deal with in the case of the sort of heightened competition at the top of the division so there's that part but they're the weirdest team in baseball ben like the way that they operate as an organization is so bizarre and it starts with the way that they try to allocate free agent resources it seems like every offseason there is one rocky's move where a player who is okay but not great is signed for a lot of money often to play out of

position and we all sit around and go what exactly is this organization doing this offseason their front office their baseball operations group went through a reduction. It was a smaller baseball ops group to begin with relative to their peers. So I do not ask this in a snarky way, but I am kind of curious, like who advised on this trade? So there's that part of things. And so I think that an organization that plays in Colorado is going to have to be really good and really savvy at drafting, at player development. They is going to have to be really good and really savvy at drafting, at player development. They're going to have to embrace analytics. This is an organization that you would think would be trying to, you know, squeeze every run it possibly can out of its

roster. And they would look to whatever methodology they could to do that. And instead, they have been a relatively small baseball ops group headed by a GM who has been just outright antagonistic to at least members of the press who discuss analytics. I can't speak to what his actual thoughts on the matter as a philosophy for organizing a baseball team are, but it's just they're a really strange organization. And the one thing that they had at times proven willing to do, and we saw this in Arenado's extension, was spend some money. But they haven't spent that money very wisely. They spent it on players who aren't very good. There was this, you know, there was the Ian Desmond deal. There were all of these

relievers. They gave all of this money to none of them were good. Yeah. Daniel Murphy. Yeah. The list goes on and on. The list goes on and on. And so it's a combination of things that I think is kind of unique in baseball in terms of the exact particulars that are fitting together to form the yucky puzzle that is

the Rockies. So it is not so much, as I said, that they're unwilling to spend money, but they just don't spend it well. They don't seem to develop their guys terribly well. There are certainly notable exceptions to that. And then there's the sort of public personnel squabbling. And I don't mean to say that that's all in the front office. Those sort of bombs got lobbed from both sides. But it is a very strange thing to get in a public squabble with the face of your franchise a year after you've extended him, trade him, and then turn around and say, well, we're going to spend that money to extend Trevor Story.

And I'm like, I don't think that you are. No. What has Trevor Story said about that? Yeah. No, what has Trevor Story said about that? Because, yeah, if I were Trevor Story, I would not be eager to sign on the dotted line right now, having seen what happened with the previous superstar to sign long term and then immediately want to leave and not be supported by good players who could produce a contending team. So yeah, everything you just mentioned, I mean, it's been widely documented that the Rockies have just gotten nothing from the free agent market and maybe worse than nothing, like negative war perhaps over a span of years.

And any one signing can go wrong on you and it's not necessarily an indictment of your decision-making. But when that many moves backfire, then you have to start to wonder. And especially when it coincides with, as you said, just not a whole lot of investment in the R&D department, which has become even smaller lately. And as you noted, I think they had like six analysts prior to this winter, which was already not a big number in comparison to other teams. And then like four members of that group left. So it's now just kind of a skeleton crew there.

And it's tough to compete with all of the other teams that are running out like dozens of analysts when you just have a handful or even fewer than that. So that just kind of tells you where the emphasis might lie. And yeah, I mean, a GM, you know, Jeff Breidich publicly feuding with your star third baseman who is signed long term, that's just not great. when he signed that deal that the Rockies were going to continue to invest in the roster and put a contending team around him and either didn't do that or tried to do that and failed probably a little bit of both and suddenly the team was lousy and it's odd the opt-out that was in his deal I think was something that Breidich suggested like he said at the time that he was the one who pushed for the opt-out, that Arnauto wasn't actually that interested in it being there. It wasn't a priority of his, and Breidich suggested it would be a good idea, which is kind of strange because we tend to think of opt-outs as more of a player-friendly thing. And so I don't know why he was pushing for that unless there was some kind of concession on the other side.

But anyway, then the Rockies ended up in a position where he's feuding with him and the team is bad and it's probably not going to be good in the short term. of his deal were fairly friendly to him seemingly. There just didn't seem to be a big chance that he would want to stay in Colorado because he is clearly unhappy there. And the team is probably not going to look a whole lot better positioned next year than it is right now. So they were probably going to lose him either way. And they kind of got themselves into that situation to an extent. And so I don't know what the right way to wiggle out of it now was. It didn't seem like there was really a route to winning in 2021 and beyond that is very clear. And I was just trying to think like, what team would I least want to be rooting for right now? And I don't know that there's any team that would be at the top of that list or at the bottom of that list other than the Rockies, just because

of how they seem to be run, how they seem to stack up in the short and medium term, and the perpetual contenders that San Diego and LA have put together, not to mention the Giants and the Diamondbacks, which aren't in the Padres or the Dodgers league right now, but seem to have smart people running them and maybe have some sort of plan or are coming out of a rebuild as opposed to the Rockies who are maybe embarking on one. It's just not entirely clear how they see themselves. And it's a shame because they have done a pretty good job of finding good players and developing players, and yet they could not surround them with a good supporting cast. So you look at those Rockies teams that made the playoffs just two, three years ago, And you look at all the talent that they had with Story and Arnauto and Marquez and Gray and others,

and they just sort of wasted that, it looks like. It's just sort of squandered. They're a good case study, I think, for people like us who are constantly trying to refine the argument around what we think good front office is due to try to win because it's so obvious, and this is probably an obvious point, but that there are so many different interlocking pieces

that an organization has to execute on simultaneously for a good team to hit the field, right? It's not just enough to spend money. It's not just enough to develop players because you play on the moon. And so you have to do all of these different things. There's a huge personnel management component to an effective organization that seems to have just gone wildly awry here when it comes to the relationship between Arenado and the front office. And so the things that any team has to do to put a winning team on the field are multiple. And then when you factor in the

stuff that they have to overcome based on where they choose to play baseball, you have to execute better more often. And they have not been able to do that. And I think that they made, I don't know if I want to call it a mistake, although I guess it's hard to think of another word to describe it, right? They made this mistake of, you know, they gave him an opt out, but they made his deal too good. And so given the circumstances of the market, it was unlikely he was going to take it. And so they were just going to be on the hook for Nolan Arenado and like a sub 500 team in perpetuity. And I don't quite understand why they think the idea of, you know, of signing Trevor Story to a long term extension is going

to be all that much easier because even if the, you know, he had confidence that the relationship wasn't going to just play out again only with him at the center. I don't like you said, I don't know how this team is going to be any better in 2021 or 2022. Yeah. So it's just, it's a real shame because it is a beautiful ballpark and it is a place where people want to be excited about baseball. And they have that weird dinosaur. They wear purple, Ben. And more teams should wear purple.

You know, purple is an underutilized sports color and so it it's it's too bad that this is kind of where it always seems to land with them but this is kind of where we are and i think that they're an organization that candidly is probably you know forget the play on the field. Like the organizational philosophy of the Rockies needs to shift if they're going to be a club that is going to return to the postseason because they never seem to know what they were doing. Yeah.

You know, they're sort of perpetually caught in this place of not having a compelling path forward and understanding of where their organization is. They don't have a good farm system. They are lackluster at best when it comes to R&D capacity. So it's the sort of thing that someone needs to say, okay, we're just going to clean house and we're going to start over to a large extent. And their roster it's just there's just not a lot here that is all that compelling apart from you know the dinosaur and the purple and you know

they do have a couple of good players but it's just not enough to compete in that division and even with large swaths of the nl central not trading for nolanado, there's enough wildcard competition that they're going to find themselves in a sort of tricky spot if they don't re-jigger what they have going on there. I don't know. I'm intrigued by Brendan Rodgers. I think Herman Marquez is good. Yeah, they have good individual players, and we're always hesitant to say, hey, just tear it down and start over and do yourself to several seasons of sucking.

Like, it's not fun to do what the pirates are doing now or what the Orioles are doing. The one thing that's kind of in the plus column for me with what is sometimes called tanking, which is that if you are tanking in the short term with an eye towards getting good again at some point in the future, and when you're talking about the Pirates or something, you always have to be skeptical that they are ever going to invest in that roster even once they come out the other side of the rebuild. But at least you can say, well, yeah, they're trading everyone who's not nailed down now, but hey, they have Ben Sherrington and he's had a track record of developing good players. And so maybe they can at least get good for a while before they inevitably start another

sell-off as long as Bob Nutting owns that team. But at least they have a plan. At least you can start to put a year on it. And sometimes it can be better to just be really bad for a few years if you think it gives you a better chance of getting really good on the other side of that, as opposed to getting locked into where the Rockies are now, which it seems like, well, they're not good now and they're not going to be good next year, one wouldn't think. And there's no year when you can kind of project based on what they have currently that they would be good again. Like when you're talking about the Pirates or the Giants or the Orioles or any of these teams that have been going through a rebuild or will be going through rebuild, at least you can project. And it might be disturbingly far in the future, but you can at least say, hey, look at all these good, exciting players we have, or look at the good things that we're doing with those players, like the Tigers, for instance, who are bad right now, were bad last year, but at least they promoted some exciting pitchers and prospects, and they're doing interesting things with pitch development. And you can kind of have confidence that, okay, maybe, you know, a year, two, three down the road, whenever it is, the Tigers could be good again. Whereas with the Rockies, it just feels like they haven't even really begun the process of getting good again. And as long as they persist with this current roster, like, it almost does feel like what's the point,

you know, of keeping the good players that they have currently and trying to win with a fraction of what the Padres and the Dodgers have as long as those teams are going to be good. Maybe this is just a time to clean house both upstairs and downstairs and sort of start over

because this is just not working. Which I hate to say because I, you know, at some point, my grandparents are going to get to go back to the ballpark and I want them to have something to watch that feels worthwhile, but I don't think that they will. Yeah. Yeah. I was just reading Nick Groke and, you know, Saris wrote in December

about those departures from the Rockies R&D department. And they wrote, some Rockies players have grumbled in recent seasons about a lack of available resources in their attempt to overcome Coors Field and its inherent disadvantages. When they approached the front office for help, those players were often turned away by an analytics team overwhelmed with other duties. And it goes on to talk about how Charlie Blackman basically took it upon himself to try to figure out how to hit after being in Coors Field and the hangover effect and what drills to do. He was just kind of doing that on his own. And you would think that if you're the Rockies and you know you have the institutional disadvantage of competing

in Coors Field, that you would be devoting more resources to helping players counter that and compensate for that. And it seems like, if anything, they were doing less because those people were so overburdened that they just couldn't help out the players. And that's not good. So really, they need to, to i think approach that in a completely different way and maybe the people who are currently running the team will learn from these mistakes and change their ways but it doesn't seem as if there's been a whole lot of progress toward that lately so maybe it just does take new management but you know i think usually if there's a dispute between the GM and your superstar, if you're a fan, you probably favor the superstar. And I think especially that's the case if the GM has not really distinguished himself when it comes at least to free agent acquisitions.

Yeah, I just I'm remembering the brain surgery quote oh right yeah what was that exactly I have to find this I guess this was in a response to a book that Drew Goodman wrote about the Rockies and there was a section

in that book where Jeff British takes a shot at baseball writers I'm quoting here I think I'm personally blessed with the capacity to not really care what is said about me all that much. I don't buy into the whole media evaluation. The reality is, and this is going to sound petty and bad. And you know it's going to be good

when a GM decides to put that on the record. I love that at no point in these interviews when guys decide to go on the record like this, they say, and this is going to sound petty and bad. And then they never pause and go so you know what i'm not gonna say it right i think i'll i think i'll stop there because that's what group chats are for if you just subjectively look at the people who are evaluating us every day you know they've never come close to doing this job and all the work that goes into it and most of them probably 99 of them they've never even led anything in their lives.

They've worked for themselves. They've been self-interested beat writers who have worked for themselves and they have a job to do every day. I had the good fortune of seeing that for a long time before taking the job. So I knew not to put a whole lot of time and energy into what they think about me.

It'd be like if I went to a hospital every day and wrote a blog about the job done by one of the surgeons and the things he screwed up. That's crazy. I know nothing about brain surgery nor have i ever even worked on the path to become a brain surgeon that's what goes on in this industry and other sports industries and here's the thing ben there are literal rocket scientists that work for major league baseball teams now yes uh there are people whose degrees are in chemistry and it's the kind of chemistry i don't understand i don't know what the individual words describing the kind of chemistry they do means but i think that one he is overestimating the degree or underestimating i

should say the degree to which we can draw inferences using data between decisions the front office makes and the resulting play on the field and he is overestimating how difficult his job is because sure it would be weird if you went to a hospital every day and wrote a blog about one of the surgeons i think they'd ask you to leave and the things he screwed up you know maybe that would be weird if you're not a brain surgeon, but if you know that a surgeon has done brain surgery and now the guy he did brain surgery on doesn't have an arm anymore, you'd probably notice that and you might say something about it like he went in for brain surgery and now he only has one arm.

Something went wrong here because the brain surgeon took his arm off. I think that you could observe that and be like that's probably bad Yeah, or just file a malpractice suit or something, right? And so I appreciate that front office folks have a really hard job And a lot of the analysis especially that goes on in rnd these days is really complex and It exceeds my capacity to do. But I think that we have outputs from the work that goes into those, into the decisions that team makes, that teams make that allow us to assess them. And we're not going to get every single aspect of it right. But we're not

fumbling around in the dark either. We're not sitting in the hallway outside the surgical theater being like, what possibly could have happened in there? So anyway, I just think that it's a weird organization and I'd like if it were better because I like it when my grandparents are happy. Yeah. And I guess we should say that this is also partially an ownership issue too. So even if you were to get a new GM or new front office regime in there. As long as Dick Montfort is there, as much as I enjoy his periodically responding to fan emails out of nowhere, that's a nice little quirk. It's always weird.

I get a kick out of his odd emails to fans. But other than that, not really the number one owner you would want to have. So I think there's blame to go around. And I guess we've ragged on the Rockies enough. Hopefully this has been cathartic for any Rockies fans who have been listening, if they could bear to actually listen to the postmortem on this trade. But we'll follow up as necessary when we get the actual terms. And hopefully that won't be by the time I post this episode, but it probably won't change anything in the broad strokes about what we said here. So this was in the offing for a while and there had been trade rumors surrounding Arnauto and

even surrounding the Cardinals for quite some time. So this is the winter of long rumored trades actually getting done, I guess. So at least they're in the rearview mirror now, and Arnauto can move on to his next chapter, which should be a fun one for Cardinals fans. So anything else that we want to talk about in terms of transactions? No other blockbuster deals that have been done, but a few less notable moves.

Eddie Rosario going to Cleveland, an actual outfielder going to Cleveland. How about that? That's encouraging. Didio Gregorius going back to the Phillies. Another deal that has not yet been finalized as we speak, but sounds like it will be. Alex Cobb going from the Orioles to the Angels for about half of Cobb's salary and a pretty notable prospect, Jemai Jones.

So I guess that basically rounds up the transactions that have happened, if you have any thoughts on those. I am pleased that Cleveland has finally acquired an outfielder. It will remain endlessly funny to me that that was not part of the like imminently major league part of the Francisco Lindor trade. So that remains funny. But I like Eddie Rosario. I think that that's a nice pickup for them. I don't really have any thoughts on Alex Cobb.

Is Alex Cobb better than I think he is? He does not appear to be better than i thought ben he is having um a better time than he did in 2019 but you know he threw 12 innings then so what does that even matter yeah i find myself wishing that there were an obvious slam dunk really good free agent pitcher available whose social media presence i didn't find as tasteful because i once again i'm renewing my plea to please just put a 500 level baseball team around Mike Trout but considering what they're gonna have to spend to do this it seems like a fine throw spaghetti against the wall and see if it sticks that's a weird thing to say about human beings because I assume Alex Cobb would not stick because

he's a grown man yeah the angels arms have been spaghetti in recent seasons. That is maybe their primary problem. But between Cobb and Bundy and Heaney and Quintana and Canning and Otani, we hope. I've heard of all of those guys. So that's progress, I guess. So and they've talked about a six-man rotation. And I guess they now have six men who you would feel okay about putting in a rotation. So lots of question marks about many of those players, but also some history of success at least so if they are not going to go get the top of the rotation type

which you would like them to do after all this time of trying to do that but if they can't do that then i guess the next best thing is to collect a bunch of decent guys or have been good guys or could be good again guys so between Quintana giving you some durability and Otani maybe not giving you any guaranteed durability at least, but I don't know. Maybe there's some semblance of a decent rotation there. Right now they are, with Cobb included,

16th in the Fangrass starting rotation depth charts projections, which they only have to be middle of the pack everywhere else to make the playoffs with Mike Trout and Anthony Rendon. So I guess if that works out to that extent, like if they do have a middle of the pack rotation, that would be an improvement and also maybe adequate. Yeah, I feel like I've been saying yeah a lot.

Have you seen Miss Congeniality, Ben? I don't think so. Well, Sandra Bullock in Miss Congeniality, before she has undergone her transformation and before she has enjoyed the tutelage of Michael Caine, says yeah a lot, and Michael Caine keeps correcting her to say yes. And then at the end, it doesn't matter anyway. So I just feel like I've been saying yeah a lot. Leave this part keeps correcting her to say yes and then at the end it doesn't matter

anyway so I just feel like I've been saying yeah a lot leave it all this part all of it in Dylan leave all of this part in the other stuff that I've goofed I would appreciate your edit but this leave that stuff in I think that you are correct that this is a marked improvement on what they were able to put on the field in 2020 you know like james paxton is still free agent yeah not that he helps with the durability part no but but uh he's got he's got upside um i i don't know i just would like to feel confident going into the season that i am going to get to watch mike trout and and Rendon and Otani play in October. And I don't have that confidence, and that makes me sad.

But I think that this is absent sort of a more slam dunk move. You know, it's fine. It's fine. I guess we should talk about Didi. That's probably the most exciting signing of all the ones that you mentioned. Maybe the last enticing shortstop on the free agent market. Indeed. I mean, of the free agents, I think that that's right.

It's been a funny off season for the Phillies. We were, and I will admit to this, we were very ready to say that they were just completely disinterested in spending any money. And I don't know that they are necessarily all that better off than they were at the end of the season but they would have been considerably worse off if they hadn't done the things that they had done and uh dd's a good shortstop and he had a good year for them and so i think that that this was the prudent thing to do and it seems like they were really it was probably them and Cincy and then you know as a consolation prize they shipped a shortstop to Cincy who was a rule five guy so I would imagine that Cincy is

going to be looking for some trade options there but yeah it's kind of what we said about the Real Muto signing it's like well good to have him much better to have him than not have him but even with him it's not really a clear path to the playoffs or at least to a division title. It just seems like sort of treading water and the water where they've been lately has not been warm. So it's not really a great position to be in, but at least they have evaded getting worse and maybe some things will break right.

So there's that. getting worse and maybe some things will break right so there's that and i guess the only other thing i wanted to bring up briefly was that dustin pedroia announced his retirement made official what seemed to be inevitable for some time and just wanted to spend a moment saluting dustin pedroia and how good a player he was unfortunately it's kind of kind of a David Wright situation where you think back to how he was on a Hall of Fame trajectory and had most of a Hall of Fame career, and then it just all fell apart very suddenly. And while he was good and healthy, he was really, really good. And I was just looking from 2007 to 2016. So that's a 10-year span from his first full season to his last full season before the knee injuries really started. He was the seventh best position player in baseball by Fangraphs War and I think 11th best overall player, if you include pitchers as well.

And I think baseball reference is even higher on him than fan graphs were. So he's someone who might still get Hall of Fame support just because of how good he was for an extended period. But we don't have to talk about everything in terms of whether you're a Hall of Famer or not. We can just say he was a really good player for a long time and meant a lot to that team and its fan base and won a couple World Series. And I know because he dates back to a time when I was still a fan and rooting for a team, and it was not Dustin Pedroia's team. And in fact, it was a team that had a rivalry with Dustin Pedroia's team. I was not a great fan of Dustin Pedroia's at the time. I was not really

rooting for him, but I respected and admired him. And he was kind of one of these, he always gets called scrappy and gritty. He's like the epitome of that, just the personification of grittiness really, and was not a big guy and proved everyone wrong and kept doing it and maybe had a little bit of a chip on his shoulder because of that, but really meant a lot to that franchise. And so sorry to see him go, or at least sorry to see him go out the way he did, where he was trying to get back on the field for a few years and just wasn't able to do it. So this closes the book on his career, but it was quite a career. I always feel strange commenting on careers like his

because it feels so intimate for folks from Boston who root for the Red Sox. His career was so important to them. He was such an important part of that franchise. He was part of a nucleus that really revitalized baseball for a lot of folks there. It feels feels like i'm you know he's retiring i imagine he will end up having some role in the organization after his retirement i know that the red socks in the press conference announcing that said that he can really have whatever role with them he wants so i doubt that his sort of time having an influence on boston baseball is actually done even if his playing career is but it always feels feels like I'm intruding on a family matter in moments like this.

But one tidbit that our pal June Lee at ESPN tweeted that I think we just have to feature here because it is such a strange way to underscore his importance in Boston and New England more generally. June tweeted that, A tidbit I once heard from someone in Red Sox marketing. When Vita Coco, which does coconut water, made an advertising push in 2011,

they chose Rihanna as a national spokesperson. But for the campaign in Boston, they chose Dustin Pedroia because research showed Pedroia had more influence than Rihanna. Yeah. Doesn't shock me. No. Also, not news I was expectingihanna. Yeah. Doesn't shock me, but also not news I was expecting to hear. No.

I think that because this is a moment that Boston fans probably have some feelings about, we will not take this as an opportunity to remark on their taste and simply say that he was a great player who a lot of people didn't expect to be. And I wish that his career had been able to end differently for his sake and for ours. But I hope that he finds some baseball role

that is exciting to him if that's what he wants. And that if he doesn't, that he goes back to shilling coconut water because we could all stand to be better hydrated. Yeah. One of the upsides of losing my fandom of one team in particular is that I don't really have to root against anyone, at least not for like tribal reasons. I don't have to dislike any player because they play for my team's rival or something or have some inherent bias against that player. So I get to just enjoy everyone. So even though when Dustin Pedroia came up, I was not pleased at his success. Now I can look back at his career and enjoy it and enjoy what he accomplished. And when any player comes along now, I, oh, but what will this mean for my team's success? And there are things that I sort of miss and regret losing, having gone from being a fan of one team to just being a general observer of the sport. But that's one thing that I'm actually happy about. I think that's one of the benefits of making that trade off is that you get to be excited about every team and every player,

which is kind of nice. Yeah. That is one of the things that we should talk more about, except it sounds like we're bragging. So then I guess maybe we shouldn't. Everyone like what they like, just don't eat dolphins. Yep. Okay. Well, I guess that's it for the real news that has happened.

There was still some non-news about further negotiations between the league and the Players Association, which I don't totally understand. We've talked about it enough. I don't want to talk about it at length here, but it kind of reminds me of when I used to play fantasy and I just really wanted one player who was on someone else's team and I'd just make an offer and they'd say no. And then I'd say, well, how about this? And I'd make some other offer that was in no way more appealing than the previous offer. And I would just kind of keep coming up with different permutations of that trade to try to get this one player who that owner had no real incentive to trade to me. And I just figured, well, maybe if I bothered them enough or I just keep rearranging the terms, eventually they will

just give up and give me this player that sort of seems like what's happening with the league and the players association right now because like there's already a deal in place there's a cpa that says how long the season is and when it will start and mlb seemingly mostly in an effort to get expanded playoffs which will be incredibly and lucrative for them just keep making different proposals to try to get expanded playoffs, which will be incredibly lucrative for them, just keep making different proposals to try to get the Players Association to sign off on that. And they keep saying no, or as we speak, I guess there hasn't been a formal rejection to this latest offer, but it's been reported that a rejection is inevitable and that there may not even be a counter

because MLB just kind of keeps saying like, hey, give us expanded playoffs and we will give you stuff that is not as valuable to you as that would be to us. And I don't really understand why they think that's going to work or maybe they don't think it's going to work. And it's just about putting pressure on or about getting expanded playoffs in the news cycle or making the players association look like obstructionists or I don't know exactly what the strategy is, but I kind of hope it doesn't persist right up until opening day, but I sort of think it will. So we'll probably get various permutations of this just like up until the hour before first pitch. And that's when we will get

a deal, which would be in keeping with how last season worked. Let me sleep. I was talking about this with a friend over the weekend, and his insight, I think, was good, which is I agree with you that this does not seem likely to change, and we don't have to rehash all the reasons why, but I guess since it's unlikely to change from the perspective of the league, there's not a ton of downside to trying, I suppose, on the off chance that, I don't know, the union gives an inch or, you know, in a more likely scenario that there is some government guidance issued that requires a reworking of the season for actual pandemic reasons which we are on record

as thinking are very good reasons to contemplate reworking the season because we just want folks to be safe and for community resources to go where they're most needed but i guess there's not a ton of downside but it does it does seem it does seem sort of silly and it's stressful and i don't know that it serves anyone to have to relitigate this stuff in public again because that got so nasty the last time. And it just left everyone feeling sort of yishi about the season. will change and the second most likely scenario as you said is that we get a a much smaller deal on a much smaller set of questions than is currently being proposed but yeah if i were the union i just keep thinking back to the conversations that we had last year with eugene friedman it's like you probably should not open up settled questions of bargaining if you don't have to so i imagine they won't and we will

have a sort of uneasy truce going into the actual season and then the off season will start and we will all be very stressed yeah but in the meantime i think we'll probably end up having something like a full season of baseball which i don't know how advisable that is from a public health perspective but will be a change of pace i don't know a welcomeable that is from a public health perspective, but will be a change of pace. I don't know a welcome one, but a change of pace nonetheless. So there you go. Yeah, it would be a relief not to have to multiply the season stats by anything to project it over a 162-game season. I've gotten used to multiplying everything by 2.7, but it'd be nice not to have to do the mental math every time.

So, yeah. All right. Well, i guess that's all i've got so now it's a race between me and the baseball news breakers to see if i can post this episode before they break some news that we didn't discuss can i make you feel better sure i read you something that was tweeted while we were recording okay it might make you think well i don't know i guess it kind It might make you think, well, I don't know. I guess it kind of depends if you think that. Bob Nightingale, 52 minutes ago, as we were recording this, tweeted, St. Louis Cardinals and Rockies continue working

around the clock on finalizing the Nolan-Aaron auto trade. The complicated deal has still yet to be submitted to the Players Union slash MLB for approval. So it will take at least another day, if not longer, to become official. Hashtag patience. for approval so it will take at least another day if not longer to become official hashtag patience so it will either break on friday or 10 minutes after we are done recording well i've never known that source to be wrong we can end there bye bye ben well i lost the race with the news breakers we waited as long as we could but it wasn't quite long enough. A deluge of news came out just after we finished recording. So the Nolan Arnauto trade was

finalized. The terms were essentially what we discussed, but the players the Rockies received were Austin Gomber, third baseman Mateo Heal, infielder Eli Horace Montero, and a couple of right-handed pitchers Tony Losey and Jake Summers. I think Montero was the highest ranked prospect according to Baseball America and he had been 14th in the Cardinal system. So no top prospect here to console Rockies fans. Again this isn't the same as the Lindor trade or the Betts trade but at least in those swaps you had something significant coming back that wasn't a lotto ticket that was really far away. You had Alex Verdugo. You had Jeter Downs. Or in the Lindor trade, you had multiple established, potentially promising major leaguers. Not so here.

And there are more concerns about Arnauto. And his contract is bigger, like if you trust the projections, he's in line to earn more or less what he will be worth, which means not a lot of surplus value, but still quite a blow to lose a player like him and not get a good or great player back or even a top prospect. So it's all finalized, but I don't think that this would significantly change anything we said in this episode, and I guess the trade would be a blockbuster by our previous definition, which according to the Effectively Wild wiki was that the trade has to include a big-name player such as a former MVP, Rookie of the Year, or Cy Young award winner.

The number of players should matter, but quality has to be high. A 10 player trade of unknown prospects does not qualify as a blockbuster. So yeah, I think we can call it a blockbuster. In other news that broke after we finished recording, the MLBPA did officially reject the league's offer for a 154 game season. the league's offer for a 154-game season. And so MLB announced again that the season will be starting on time as will spring training. Until that actually happens, we probably won't know for sure because they may continue to make offers. But for now, at least, they have seemingly agreed to abide by the CBA.

We also recorded before the report by the Athletics' Katie Strang and Brittany Giroli about Angels pitching coach Mickey Calloway's apparent pattern of sexual harassment. While he has been with the Angels, while he was the manager of the Mets, while he was the pitching coach in Cleveland, he reportedly made lewd comments and sent lewd texts to several female reporters. Perhaps we will talk about this next time, by which point I would be surprised if Mickey Calloway is still employed by the Angels. But you can probably get the gist of what we would say by going back and listening to our recent conversation about Jared Porter, which, as we noted at the time, was not an isolated case,

and this is yet more evidence of that. One would hope that these things coming to light is a step toward preventing future behavior like this, but it's still a sad state of affairs that this behavior is common enough for these reports to be coming out with some frequency, and you have to wonder how often this is happening in ways that aren't as easy to document as text messages and emails. At least there are receipts for this behavior, which makes it undeniable and inarguably bad. There are probably many instances where there's not as clear a digital paper trail and people may be even more hesitant to come forward. So it seems as if this may be the tip of the iceberg and everything

below the waterline may be more difficult to document, but just as unacceptable. And lastly, just to end on a not terrible note, we talked about MLB hiring Theo Epstein and Ken Griffey Jr. recently. Well, the league announced several more hirings on Monday. The league has hired former Marlins executive Michael Hill as a senior vice president of on-field operations. Hill oversee umpiring and disciplinary matters. And then the league also hired a handful of real remembersome guys candidates. Raul Abanez, who it sounds like will sort of replace Chris Young,

who left to take the Rangers GM job. I guess Hill is taking on some of those responsibilities too, but Abanez will focus on rules and equipment and on-field technology. And then Rajai Davis will be the director of on-field operations, along with Nick Hundley and Gregor Blanco. He'll work on rule changes and amateur baseball and mentorship of minority players. And former player and manager Bo Porter will be a consultant on coaching development and will assist with the identification and development of candidates for coaching positions throughout amateur and professional baseball with a focus on underrepresented groups. So it sounds like MLB is making an effort to improve its record with diversity hiring

and bring in former players, which I think is important. As much as we celebrated Theo Epstein's new role, I think I mentioned at the time that it would be good to pair his insights with those of former players who could talk about how those rules would affect them. So I certainly don't know these players personally, but it sounds like the league is looking in the right directions to fill these positions. You can support Effectively Wild 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. Javad Vaziri, Rick Glidden, Morgan Gray, Jason George, and Greg Powell. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild.

You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify 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 podcast at fangraphs.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. I don't ever want to feel stuck to you